Winter time hive preparation

Today let’s talk about winter time preparation for spring. This consists of making sure your equipment is ready and waiting for the honey bees. The spring is a very busy time for honey bees.  Winter is a busy time for beekeepers. I like to take this time to clean and inspect hives that don’t have bees in them. This is a prime time to paint wooden ware and replace wax foundation in your frames.

Winter is also a good time to go and visit with fellow beekeepers at classes that are usually held at beekeeping conferences all over the state. In these events I learn from other beekeepers about issues that affect all of us. We see how beekeepers from other countries take care of their bees and what issues are affecting them. I also use this time to look back on records that were kept in the years past. These records can help me do what works best first, instead of using the old trial and error thing.

Ventilation problems

I read the other day that sometimes honey bees may become ice bound in the winter. When this happens, it can look as though the beehive starved, even though there can be a full super full of honey below the cluster, this can be a hard thing to prove. This can be caused by a poor winter location. Some locations are wetter and increase the chances of moisture build-up. Also, this may be caused by poor air ventilation in your hive; you always need air circulation year round. It is important that you have a lower and upper air access, even in the smallest amounts, to allow a small convection within the hive for moist air to leave the hive.

I have heard of many things being done to help maintain moisture in the past year, external heating elements for the hive, indoor winterization, and crazy things like that. But the best way to ensure that your bees are going to enjoy a dryer winter season is to ensure that the hive is properly insulated on the roof. Heat rises in the hive and it is through this heat loss that the outside temperature fluctuations will directly affect moisture content.  That is why it is important that we offer as much space for the bees to regulate their own hive temperature with very little stress on the bees as possible.

Long day

Tonight I wanted to tell you about a dear friend of mine. Earlier this morning I got a call from my wife, our dog could not stand or get up on her own. My family was left with a terrible choice to have to make. Tirzah was a beautiful Husky mix that took care of us for 16 years. She loved us and always was on watch to make sure we were ok. When I got home from work this morning we made the decision to put her to sleep, so we went to the vet. Tirzah brought my family so much joy over the last 16 years, and she will be missed every day.

Let’s talk about the bees for a moment. Today was a warm and unseasonable day with temperatures in the mid-70s. Now as I write this post its 66 degrees near 11 pm. In the next few days it will be in the 30s or even 20s. What does this mean for the bees? Well they have been out flying today taking cleansing flights. Hopefully they will understand bad weather is on the way. One bad part of this is the honey bees are burning energy and they eat honey every time they fly. This time of year when they burn energy they are not replacing the honey they eat, No nectar. This can cause some big problems for a bee keeper if they don’t pay attention to the food stores in their Bee hives. We may have to feed our bees soon.

Winter time inspection

In the morning as temperatures rise about 60 degrees I plan on doing a short hive inspection. What I’m looking for is first and foremost, are they alive. Then I will check their food stores and numbers. This time of year honey bees need to be healthy and strong. It is usually bitter sweet for me because sometimes I’m successful and other times not so much. We feed our bees in the fall trying to help them prepare for the long cold months of winter ahead. Some beekeepers treat their bees with chemicals in the fall to hopefully get rid of pest.  I don’t, we have always let the bees take care of them self’s and we have also introduced genetics in our apiary that hopefully will fix this problem without chemicals.

In the morning I will have my fingers crossed that all is well and the bees are smiling at me. I will have food in hand so to give them a little boost. No smoke will be needed as the bees will be in a good mood to see me. Most of our hives are very good nature and are usually glad to see me.

Bad day

Today a friend of mine called and told me he had already lost half of his bees, this is all too familiar. Last year I lost 28 hives in one winter, that’s 75% of my total apiary. This just about put me out of business. Every beekeeper tries their best to take good care of their bees but sometimes I think Mother Nature has different plans for us. Dead bees and empty hives.

Every year we get inspected by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to insure our bees are healthy and safe for sale to other beekeepers, last year was no different. So when January 2013 rolled around my losses were so big we called our local honey bee inspector for some helpful advice. What we found that week was a possible varoa mite infestation. I don’t like using any chemicals in my hives because my own children eat this honey and we won’t to keep them safe as well. So as we when into 2013 season we tried to be diligent and take the best care of our bees we can.

Honey Bees in the Winter

Yesterday I was looking across the field at some of our bee hives, and thought wonder how they are doing today. Honey Bees work all spring and summer collecting nectar and pollen to feed the hive through the winter months. When it gets colder than about 45 degrees the honey bees cluster together inside the hive. They usually cluster near or on honey; the queen is near the center so they can keep her warm by vibrating or shaking their bodies. The worker bees rotate from inside the cluster to the outside and repeat.

The bees stay in this cluster all winter until there is a day where temperatures rise above 45 degrees. On these days the honey bees take what is called “cleansing flights” or using the restroom. While the days grow colder the honey bees will have all they need in the hive. The honey is both a food and hydrating substance needed for survival. They use each other to keep warm. Once the days get warmer their lives start all over getting ready for the next winter. 

Bees since of smell

There are some new and interesting facts I’ve learned about Honey Bees. It has been brought to my attention that not only are honey bees wonderful and very efficient pollinators, they are doctors also. Yes this seems to me to be a little on the strange side, but what I read they has been a new study relating a possible cancer diagnosis with honey bees and their amazing sense of smell.

“New research from Inscentinel, a UK-based firm specializing in insect research, suggests that honey bees can be trained to detect certain early-stage cancers in humans. Using this breakthrough, Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a glass device for diagnosis using honey bees and a patient's breath”. (Wagner)

I watched a video pertaining to this subject and I think it is very likely that this could help a lot of people. It has long been known that animals are used to assist us in many ways. Dogs are used to help folks after sickness and also help diagnosis. Now maybe people will view Honey Bees in a different light and not only associate them with a sting.

http://bcove.me/zurnjv45

Works Cited

Wagner, Meg. Honey Bees Trained to Detect Cancer on Patients' Breath. November 2013.

Communication 2

This blog entry about communication is one that interests me the most. Honey bees communicate in many different ways, smells, touching and dancing. The information found here was from NC State University. 

The late Karl von Frisch, a professor of zoology at the University of Munich in Germany, is credited with interpreting the meaning of honey bee dance movements. He and his students carried out decades of research in which they carefully described the different components of each dance. Their experiments typically used glass-walled observation hives and paint-marked bee foragers. First, they trained the foragers to find food at sources placed at known distances from the colony. When the bees returned from gathering food from those sources, von Frisch and his students carefully measured both the duration and angle of the dances the foragers performed to recruit other bees to help gather food. Their findings led them to the concept of a dance language. Von Frisch’s work eventually earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1973. 

The waggle dance or wag-tail dance is performed by bees foraging at food sources that are more than 500 feet from the hive. This dance, unlike the round dance, communicates both distance and direction. This dance, unlike the round dance, communicates both distance and direction. While several variables of the waggle dance relate to distance the duration of the straight-run portion of the dance, measured in seconds, is the simplest and most reliable indicator of distance. As the distance to the food source increases, the duration of the waggling portion of the dance also increases. (Dr. David R. Tarpy)

Bibliography

Dr. David R. Tarpy, Assistant Professor and Extension Apiculturist. http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/apiculture/pdfs/1.11%20copy.pdf. April 2004.

 

Communication 1

There are electric fields that build up on honey bees as they fly, or rub body parts together that may allow the honey bees to talk to each other. Scientists have long known that flying insects gain an electrical charge when they buzz around. That charge, typically positive, accumulates as the wings zip through the air—much as electrical charge accumulates on a person shuffling across a carpet.

It has been known for some time that bees perform an intricate dance in directing their hive mates to a source of food. Now most bee keepers can show you the most looked at and studied form of communication called the “waggle dance.” When there is a dense patch of flowers or a source of water, they walk across the comb in the hive to show a pattern consistent to the direction of and also the distance to the flowers.

It appears that they also transmit information by means of sound. The first and most obvious guess was that the bee might create the pulses of sound with the waggling of its abdomen.  The other possibilities are that the bees produce sound by vibrating their wings. The function of sound was illuminated by considering the question of whether or not the bee’s judgment of distances is affected by the wind. When a bee flies to a source of food against the wind, the sounds indicating the distance tend to be a little longer than when it does not fly against the wind. .  (Perkins)

Bibliography

Perkins, Sid. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/28/bees-buzz-electric-field-communication_n_2966015.html. March 2013.

Honey Bee Health Part 2

I just read this report and wanted to pass it on to you. RIVERSIDE, Calif, traditionally, honey bee research has focused on environmental stressors such as pesticides, pathogens and diseases.  Now a research team led by entomologists at the University of California, Riverside has published a study that focuses on an anthropogenic pollutant: selenium (Se). “Metal pollutants like selenium contaminate soil, water, can be accumulated in plants, and can even be atmospherically deposited on the hive itself,” said Kristen Hladun, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral entomologist.

According to Hladun, knowing which contaminants are the most important to regulate is key to minimizing the exposure of honey bee hives to contaminants.

“Beekeepers can take steps to prevent bees from foraging during flowering periods of plants that have exceptional pollutant levels or to move hives away from contaminated areas,” she said.  “Also, better management of weedy plant species that are known to be Se-accumulators can prevent them from becoming a route of exposure.”

After I read this report it made me think of ways to try and protect my honey bees from metal contaminants. Learning that these contaminants are in plants, the water they drink and in the soil there is not much hope for me protecting them, so instead all I can do is try not to pollute the earth any more than it already is.  (Hladun)

Bibliography

Hladun. "Health of honey bees adversely impacted by selenium." Press-News.org (2013).

Honey Bee Swarms

Honey Bee Swarms are one of the most beautiful and interesting phenomena’s in nature. A swarm starting is a thrilling sight. A swarm may contain from 1,500 to 30,000 bees including, workers, drones, and usually the older queen. Swarming is an instinctive part of the annual life cycle of a honey bee colony. It provides a mechanism for the colony to reproduce itself. The tendency to swarm is usually greatest when bees increase their population rapidly in late spring and early summer.

Overcrowding and congestion in the nest are factors which predispose colonies to swarm. The presence of an old queen and a mild winter also contribute to the development of the swarming impulse. Swarming can be controlled by a skilled beekeeper; however, not all colonies live in hives and have a human caretaker.

When honey bees swarm they will settle on a tree limb, bush, or other convenient site. The cohesiveness of the swarm is due to their attraction to a pheromone produced by the queen. The swarm will send out scout bees to seek a cavity to nest in and will move on when a suitable nesting site is found. Rarely, swarms may initiate comb construction in the open if a suitable cavity cannot be found. You may want to call a local beekeeper to see if he would like to collect the swarm. Contact your county extension office or Department of Agriculture for a list of beekeepers in your area. Late season swarms after August are of little value to beekeepers, they usually don’t live through the winter.

A swarm in May - is worth a load of hay.

A swarm in June - is worth a silver spoon.

A swarm in July - isn't worth a fly.

A beekeeper can capture a swarm by placing a suitable container, such as an empty beehive or even just a bucket, on the ground below the swarm and dislodging the bees. If you can coax the bees into a hive, watch the bees’ scent-fanning at the entrance to signal the entrance to the new nest as the bees march into their new home. If for some reason the queen does not go into the new hive, the bees will abandon it and form a cluster where she lands. If you use a bucket simply carry them back to your apiary, spray a little sugar water on them to mask their sent and keep them from flying. Then the beekeeper can just dump the bucket load of bees into a new hive.

What can be done if a honey bee swarm establishes itself in an undesirable place? Honey bees are beneficial pollinators and should be left alone and appreciated unless their nests are in conflict with human activity. If honey bees nest in the walls of a home, they can be removed or killed if necessary; however, it is advisable to open the area and remove the honey and combs or rodents and insects will be attracted. You can prevent swarms from nesting in walls by preventive maintenance. Honey bees will not make an entrance to a nest. They look for an existing entrance, so periodic inspection and caulking is all that is necessary to prevent them from occupying spaces in walls.(Marion Ellis)

Bibliography

Marion Ellis, Extension Apiculture Specialist. http://entomology.unl.edu/beekpg/beeswarm.shtml. n.d.

Bee Hive Parts

There are many different types of beehives and hive configurations that beekeepers use.  I’m going to talk about the most common type of hive, which is called the 10 frame Langstroth beehive. There are four basic components to a beehive.  They are the bottom board, the supers, the frames and the inner cover.  Within those hive components there are many different options to choose from.  A common configuration is made using deep supers for the brood chambers and the medium supers or shallow supers for the honey.

There are two basic bottom boards that beekeeper’s use. There are solid bottom boards and the screened bottom boards. The screened bottom board simply has a screen on the bottom. The solid bottom is comprised of just a solid floor.

Deep super is a large size hive box.  Each super holds 10 frames inside it that the bees build wax onto. Some people use an 8 frame hive box which would require 8 frames per super. Super Frames (with foundation), these are the heart of the hive.  They are made from wood or plastic and usually have foundation in the middle. Foundation is made from wax, wax with wire, plastic or a combination.  The bees use the foundation as a model to build their own wax onto.  Some beekeepers may choose not to use foundation at all, but this requires a slightly different frame setup not described here.  Each super in a 10 frame hive needs 10 frames with or without foundation.

Queen Excluder, this is a flat rack made of metal or plastic, with holes large enough to allow the worker bees to get through and small enough to exclude the bigger queen bee. This is a handy piece of equipment to have. The most common use is to prevent the queen from laying eggs inside the honey super.

Inner Cover, this is a wooden cover that goes on top of the uppermost super. It has an entrance hole to the outside and a hole in the middle. It also has two sides one for the winter and one for the rest of the year. The inner cover is vital for proper hive manipulation.

Outer Cover or Hive top, there are several different outer cover types. Most covers seen are telescoping outer cover.  That means it fits over the inner cover with sides that hang down over the top super.(BEES)

Bibliography

BEES, BEVERLY. http://www.beverlybees.com/parts-beehive-beginner-beekeeper/. n.d.

It's all about the Queen

Worker honeybees are all females and are the only bees most people ever see. They forage for food and build and protect the hive, among many other societal functions. All honeybees are social and cooperative insects. A hive's inhabitants are generally divided into three types.

There is only one queen per hive. The queen is the only bee with fully developed ovaries. A queen bee can live for 3-5 years. The queen mates only once with several male (drone) bees, and will remain fertile for life. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day. Fertilized eggs become female (worker bees) and unfertilized eggs become male (drone bees). When she dies or becomes unproductive, the other bees will "make" a new queen by selecting a young larva and feeding it a diet of "royal jelly". For queen bees, it takes 16 days from egg to emergence, Worker bees 21 days and Drone bees 24 days.

Royal Jelly is the substance that turns an ordinary bee into the Queen Bee. It is made of pollen which is chewed up and mixed with a chemical secreted from a gland in the nurse bee's heads. This milk like substance is fed to all the larvae for the first two days of their lives, but queens swim in it their entire grow period. The larvae chosen to become a queen continue to eat only royal jelly. The queen grows one and a half times larger than the ordinary bee, and is capable of laying up to two thousand eggs a day. The Queen Bee lives forty times longer than the bees on a regular diet. There is no difference between a queen bee and a worker bee in the larval stage. The only factor that is different between them is that a developing queen bee continues to eat only royal jelly. (Gecographic) (Cassino)

 Bibliography

Cassino, Mark. http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/honey_bee.htm. n.d.

Gecographic, National. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/honeybee/. n.d.

 

How is Honey made?

Honey is made by bees in one of the world’s most efficient facilities, the beehive.  The 60,000 or so bees in a beehive may collectively travel as much as 55,000 miles and visit more than two million flowers to gather enough nectar to make just a pound of honey. Honey comes in all types of colors and flavors. The color and flavor of honey depends on the how old the honey is and the kind of flower that the nectar was extracted from.

Honey bees collect pollen and nectar in the spring when most flowers and plants are in bloom. They use their long, tube like tongues like straws (called proboscis) to suck the nectar out of the flowers and they store it in their stomachs and carry it to the beehive. While inside the bee's stomach for about half an hour, the nectar mixes with the proteins and enzymes produced by the bees, converting the nectar into honey.

The bees then spread the nectar throughout the honeycombs where water evaporates from it, making it into thicker syrup. The bees make the nectar dry even faster by fanning it with their wings. Once the honey is 18% or less moisture, the bees seal off the cell of the honeycomb with a plug of wax. The honey is stored until it is eaten. In one year, a colony of bees eats between 120 and 200 pounds of honey. (Honey)

Bibliography

Honey. http://www.honey.com/honey-at-home/learn-about-honey. n.d.

POLLINATION

When conditions for flight are not ideal, honey bees work close to their colonies. Although they may fly as far as 5 miles in search of food, they usually go no farther than 1 to 1-1/2 miles in good weather. In unfavorable weather, bees may visit only those plants nearest the hive. They also tend to work closer to the hive in areas where there are large numbers of attractive plants in bloom.

Pollination of crops is a specialized practice, not just a sideline of honey production. Beekeepers who supply bees for pollination must learn the skills of management that are necessary for success in this phase of beekeeping. Bees for pollination should be placed within or beside the crop to be pollinated.

More than 100 agricultural crops in the United States are pollinated by bees. This means bees are important, if not essential, for the production of more than $15 billion worth of agricultural crops produced across the US. Examples of bee pollinated crops include watermelons, cantaloupe, citrus and apples. Although some of these crops are pollinated by bee species other than honey bees, honey bees are the only ones that can be easily managed, moved around and are known to exploit a wide variety of crops.

(http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/vista/html_pubs/BEEKEEP/CHAPT8/chapt8.html)

Local beekeepers

Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply. Multiple factors pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition are believed to cause the losses.

Local beekeepers are working to get their bees healthy, as we move into the fall season. We feed our bees because there was nothing left for the bees to get, no flowers with nectar left. If you have bees, you need to check them because they could be on the brink of starvation.

Honey bees are crucial to pollinating flowers and food crops. Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world's food, over 70 of them are pollinated by bees. In our area, many of our fruit and vegetable crops depend on bee pollination to grow, including tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, melons and blueberries.

Without bees to pollinate many of our favorite fruits and vegetables, the United States could lose $15 billion worth of crops not to mention what it would do to your diet.(KEIM)

Bibliography

KEIM, BRANDON. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/winter-honeybee-losses/. May 2013.

Honey Bee Health Part 1

I brought some of my hives home today that were out on pollination contracts close by our home. These hives have not been opened in 3 or 4 weeks. They were strong and thriving the last time I looked at them. Today was different; there were dead bees on the ground in front of the hive entrance. I asked myself what could be going on, what happened to the health and happiness of this colony of bees.

Lesson learns many years ago, if you take honey from the bees and don’t leave food for them in a time of need then you have to feed them. You have got to feed them a sugar source and also pollen is always good, but use pollen patties in small pieces because of hive beetles. It is the end of August and there isn't much in the line of nectar sources around here this time of year.  

I guess the main thing to remember about colony health this time of year is check the hives supplies of food and check for mites. Last winter we lost 20 plus hive to mites. This was a hard lesson learned. All the colonies had plenty of food supplies but the bees were dead and gone. So check for mites and feed.