Changing Seasons

The beekeeping year can be divided into two extended management seasons: spring management and fall management. September sees changes in the bee yard which result in changes in beekeepers’ hive management. Honey bee colonies forage any flowers in bloom. Summer flowers that bees use to produce light colored and mild flavored honey are dying back. Beekeepers harvest delightful summer honey and sell it at a premium. Fall flowers are now coming into bloom. From the nectar of fall flowers, bees produce honey that is typically darker in color and more robust in flavor. The aroma of the honey is likewise changing from mild to more pronounced. Today, I noticed the more pungent odor of fall honey being ripened by the bees as I opened my hives for a regular seasonal inspection. Bitterweed and fall asters are coming into bloom in central Arkansas. They soon will be followed by the bloom of smartweed and goldenrod. These fall wildflowers produce ample amounts of nectar for the bees to convert into honey. Prudent beekeepers leave the resulting stronger-flavored fall honey in the hive, and bees use this honey for food throughout the winter.

Another change occurring at this time of the year involves the population of bees and their parasitic mite pests. Honey bee populations peak in late summer and then gradually decrease through the fall. Parasitic Varroa mite populations are reaching their maximum now. If left unchecked, the mites will weaken the honey bee colonies and spread viral diseases which will kill the bees. Beekeepers need to measure the number of Varroa mites in their hives and take corrective action if the mite load exceeds treatment thresholds calculated by the Honey Bee Health Coalition. Methods of sampling the mites and optional treatments are available in the pamphlet, “Tools for Varroa Management: A Guide to Effective Varroa Sampling and Control,” available at honeybeehealthcoalition.org. I assisted James Metrailer, shown in today’s photo, sample Varroa mites in his Kenyan Top Bar Hives.

--Richard

Independence Day

Independence Day, the Fourth of July, is a day of celebration in the United States. It’s the day that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, marking the beginning of a new country. The Fourth of July has always been a significant day for Peace Bee Farm. Colonies started in the spring, from nucleus colonies, like the ones in today’s photo, packages, swarms, or colony divisions should now be well established. The memorable date is a good time to make some important bee hive record-keeping checks. We always counted the number of full-sized hives in place on the Fourth of July. When we harvested honey at the end of the summer, we divided the total weight of honey harvested by the number of hives in on the Fourth of July, giving a measure of the honey yield per hive. By keeping records of honey yield in each bee yard, the beekeeper can compare bee yards. While the yield of any bee yard may vary from year to year depending upon surrounding agricultural plantings, a measure of the honey yield over time can help the beekeeper determine which bee yards are low producers. These yards may need to be abandoned in favor of more productive yards. The Fourth of July is a day in which the bees are busy filling honey supers in the Arkansas Delta’s agricultural areas with soybean and cotton honey. In central Arkansas’ river valleys and Ozark Mountain foothills, early July marks the end of the spring honey nectar flow.

The Fourth of July is also a landmark in the beekeeping year. Swarms captured and hived before this date stand a good chance of building a large population of bees and accumulating enough honey to survive the following winter. Swarms captured after this date will likely starve over winter. These swarms need to be combined with existing colonies. After a quick count of your hives, enjoy the day devoted to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

--Richard

Making Queen Bees

Every honey bee hive has a queen, and only bees can produce honey bee queens. Queen production peaks in the spring when there are drone bees available to mate with the queens. Timing is critical in queen rearing. I assisted a group of Arkansas beekeepers who performed the steps required to produce a number of queens. Strong and healthy honey bee colonies reproduce on a colony-wide basis by swarming. Swarming is the culmination of a month-long process in which the colony divides and half of the bees fly away to find a new nest. One of the final steps in swarming involves the colony producing one or more queen bees. This natural process of producing queens was replicated by G. M. Doolittle more than one hundred years ago, and the Doolittle Method is used today to produce queens world-wide. This method requires beekeepers to establish a number of different hives for queen production with each hive set-up to accommodate a different step in the queens’ development. Typically, beekeepers establish queen-mother hives, queen-cell-starter hives, queen-cell-finisher hives, and queen-mating-nucleus hives with bees of the appropriate age and necessary food. This hive preparation is often a shared endeavor among cooperating beekeepers. Our early-April queen production effort involved six seasoned beekeepers.

On grafting day, we searched the queen-mother hives for one-day-old larvae to graft into queen cell cups. Worker bees tend to these young larvae and convert them into queen bees. We found that our first queen-mother hive had progressed in its natural manner toward swarming. The queen had stopped laying eggs, and day-old larvae were not available. We found four queen cells produced for swarming, like the one in today’s photo by Desmond Simmons. One queen was actually in the process of emerging as an adult. We used these queen cells to produce four additional colonies. Grafting continued successfully with larvae taken from other hives. At the end of the day we started the development of queens for two hundred new hives.

--Richard

An Unexpected Beekeeper

One hundred people quite deliberately headed toward Savannah, Tennessee in spite of extreme rainfall, flooding, and violent weather. They were drawn to the Savannah Area Beekeepers Association’s sixth annual Short Course in Beekeeping. One person, however, a businessman, Paul Durr, braved the weather to attend the meeting by accident. Mr. Durr misread the announcement in the local newspaper. Interested in furthering his business skills, he thought that he would be attending a bookkeeping course—not a beekeeping course. Once he arrived, Mr. Durr decided to stay for the day. He did, after all, have a long-time interest in honey bees, having shared his home with colonies of bees that have lived in the space above his ceiling for 40 years. Mr. Durr sat in on beekeeping sessions throughout the day.

I had the honor of giving the keynote presentation, introducing the new beekeepers to the history of the beekeeping craft by tracing the tradition of beekeeping from its honey-hunting roots with our cave-dwelling ancestors. Training sessions were conducted by invited speakers and talented Savannah beekeepers. Dr. Jeff Harris from Mississippi State University, renowned for identifying honey bees with the Varroa Sensitive Hygiene trait, spoke on developments in breeding parasitic mite tolerant bees. EAS Master Beekeeper Kent Williams described measures for increasing honey production, and Trevor Qualls taught the new beekeepers how to install packages of bees into their hives. Other speakers described the bee hive equipment, methods of feeding bees, catching swarms, and what to expect in the first two years of beekeeping. Conducting a random drawing, “Coach” Lynn Wood, the Tennessee Beekeepers Association’s Regional Vice President, awarded three bee hives to new beekeepers. Mr. Durr was drawn as a hive winner. He was surprised to end his day becoming an unexpected beekeeper. His greater surprise came in learning that “Coach” Wood remembered teaching him years earlier in high school. Today’s photo: TVA releasing two million gallons of Tennessee River floodwater per second at Wilson Dam, Florence, Alabama.

--Richard

Can Plants Hear Bees?

Whenever I encounter evening primrose plants in bloom, I watch them for a while. These native plants attract a variety of bees and other pollinators. At night, evening primrose is highly attractive to large moths. In the early hours of the morning, fast flying blue orchard bees visit the yellow flowers. Later in the day, butterflies, honey bees, flies, and other insects actively forage evening primrose. In today’s photo a honey bee collects nectar from evening primrose.

Honey bees can detect differences in nectar sugar concentrations of one to three percent, and foraging worker bees seek those nectar sources with the greatest concentrations of sugars. Lilach Hadany, a researcher at Tel Aviv University, questioned whether plants could hear sounds similarly to animals, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/flowers-can-hear-bees-and-make-their-nectar-sweeter/. Hadany’s findings reveal that at least one plant, evening primrose, responds to the vibrations of pollinators’ wings. Within minutes of exposure to vibrations in the range of honey bee wing beats (0.2 to 0.5 kilohertz), evening primrose increased the concentration of sugars in its nectar. Hadany’s lab found that within three minutes of exposure to honey bee wing-beat-frequency vibrations the plants increased the nectar sugar concentrations from between 12 and 17 percent to 20 percent. In field observations, her researchers found pollinators around evening primrose plants nine times more frequently after the plants were visited within the past six minutes. The resulting sweeter nectar is naturally more attractive to bees and other pollinators. Since flowering plants, such as evening primrose, depend upon insect pollination for reproduction, any plant that attracts more pollinators has a reproductive advantage. Evening primrose flower petals are shaped like an open bowl. Such shapes concentrate and increase vibrations. The researchers at the Tel Aviv lab found that evening primrose flowers concentrated vibrations of the frequency range of honey bees. The ability of a flowering plant to increase its nectar’s sugar concentration would make it more attractive to pollinators and more likely to be pollinated, the first step in the plant’s reproduction.

--Richard

Pax Vobiscum

A beekeeper friend who is an avid outdoorsman proclaims, “I’d rather catch a swarm of bees than a five-pound bass!” Beekeepers manage colonies of honey bees for various purposes: honey production, crop pollination, to improve fruit orchards and vegetable garden production. However, many beekeepers tend to hives simply for enjoyment. Friendships develop between beekeepers who work hives together. Beekeeping tasks vary throughout the year with some months considerably busier than others. Winter months require little work inside the hives where the bees are alive and active, but clustered together for warmth and not flying. At this time of year, beekeepers can construct and repair hive equipment, plan for the next year’s activities, and devote some leisure time to reading. I like to reread some of my favorite beekeeper authors, such as Richard Taylor. He offers thoughtful views of beekeeping in The Joys of Beekeeping, 1984. Taylor writes of the relationship between bees, beekeepers, and nature. He explains, “When I see a bee tree I know its inhabitants are the evolutionary product of millions of years, and that what I call ‘my own’ bees are but the smallest step from the bee tree. The forests lure them back and always will.” Regarding the swarms that my friend loves to catch, Taylor says, “Swarming is of course essential not only to the survival of the species but also to nature itself, for without bees the many plants—both wild and cultivated—that depend upon them for the viability of their seed would also be threatened with extinction.”

While setting-up my backyard hives for winter, I noticed a downy woodpecker that has learned to use a twig as a tool to gather food from a suet feeder. Taylor writes, “We need the whole of nature, and we need to be reminded that we are a part of it.” The Underhill family of Peace Bee Farm wishes you good health, and cheer, healthy bees, and enjoyment of nature. May peace be with you.

--Richard

The Winter Solstice

The sun rose this morning as far south along the horizon as it will appear anytime through the year. We call this day the winter solstice. This is also the year’s shortest day. Starting tomorrow, the sun will appear to rise slightly farther to the north daily until the summer solstice, June 21, when the sun rises in its northern-most position. These apparent movements of the sun along the horizon have been observed since ancient times. They allowed early peoples to develop calendars, vitally necessary for telling farmers when to plant precious seeds needed to feed increasing populations. The life cycles of many species are tied to the seasonal changes associated with the length of days. Among those species is the honey bee. For the honey bee, the winter solstice is the beginning of the new year. Queen bees start laying eggs on the winter solstice.

Here, in the temperate zone, the blooming of most flowering plants follows the length of days as well, blooming spring, summer, and fall. Few flowers are found in the winter, and the life cycle of the honey bee follows the availability of flowers. The bees gather nectar from flowers, convert it into honey, and survive on it through the winter. The honey bee is unique, being the only insect in the temperate zone that stays alive and active throughout the winter. Honey bees eat the high-energy honey that they produce and generate heat by vibrating their flight muscles. They are thus able to survive in cold weather, clustered tightly together to retain warmth. Other insects, like lady bug beetles, hibernate in cold weather, protected under tree bark or leaves. Wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets die off annually, leaving a mated queen to start the next year’s colony. I communicated today with my friend, EAS Certified Master Beekeeper Wubishet Adugna, in Ethiopia, shown here with coffee that he exports. Wubishet’s tropical honey bees follow seasonal changes based upon annual rainfall patterns instead of the length of days.

--Richard