Bees in the Chicken Yard

We are three weeks into our calendar year, and the honey bee is well into its year. It is still the middle of the winter, but the weather is unseasonably warm. Yesterday, with heavy rains and thunderstorms sweeping across the Delta, I held the chickens inside their house. The fuzzy little Silkies rolled about and dusted their feathers in the sand and hay covered floor. Today, with warm weather and breaks in the skies, I released the chickens. Shortly, I noticed dozens of honey bees inside the chicken house. The bees were wallowing in the dusty sand where the chickens had done the same the previous day. Other bees were landing in the chickens’ grain feeder. An equal number of bees were outside the chicken house wallowing on the ground in grains that we feed on the surface. The bees were digging through cracked corn, wheat berries, and grain sorghum that the poultry scratch through in their daily foraging. No, honey bees don’t feed on grains like chickens do; these bees were collecting dust.

Honey bee colonies may begin producing brood anytime after the winter solstice, December 21. Brood production requires a considerable amount of protein to feed the larvae. While honey bees derive their protein from pollen, very little is available early in the year. The bees often mistakenly gather dust from various sources while searching for pollen. The bees do not have the ability to tell the quality of the protein they collect. They may be collecting an incomplete protein from a flower or a completely different substance, like the chicken feed dust. It is common for people to find honey bees in bird feeders in the winter and early spring. These bees are collecting dust from the millet seeds. In response to the bees’ desire for pollen, I gave a supplemental feeding of pollen substitute, a fermented protein food based on soy flour and brewer’s yeast, to my bee yard which will be producing this year’s queens.
--Richard