Reversing the Bee Hive

Throughout the spring, healthy honey bee colonies rapidly increase in population. This occurs as flowering plants are making nectar and pollen significantly more abundant. Both are collected by foraging worker bees and welcomed into the hive. The pollen is stored in close proximity to the brood nest where the queen is laying eggs and the workers are feeding and tending to the developing brood. The nectar, which will be converted into honey, is stored in the hive area outside the brood nest beyond the surrounding pollen. However, if there is not enough free honeycomb cells available, the bees will store the nectar in the brood nest. When this happens, beekeepers describe the hive as being “honey bound.” A serious hive problem results because the queen is left with no place to lay eggs. Prolific queens need at least 1500 empty cells per day to lay the eqqs necessary to sustain the colony’s population. As the brood nest becomes congested with nectar and honey, the colony starts making preparations for swarming. It is important for beekeepers to check for brood nest congestion and to take corrective action.

Honey bees cluster together and generate heat during cold weather. It is common for the cluster of bees to gradually move upward in the hive over the winter months. In the spring, beekeepers need to determine the position of the brood nest and the cluster of bees. Some colonies will move back down into the lower portion of the hive during the spring, but it is common for bees to remain in the upper half of the hive. This has the effect of the bees living in a hive of one-half its normal volume. Reversing the position of the hive bodies gives the colony greater capacity in the brood nest, providing cells for the queen to lay eggs. This is an important beekeeping measure in swarm suppression. Today’s photo: a queen bee on a honey-bound frame with capped honey, liquid honey, and pupa-stage brood.

--Richard

Bee Hive Size

Honey bees live in cavities. In Ethiopia, natural cavities are hollow trees or crevices in volcanic rock walls. Ethiopian farmers also keep bees in three distinct styles of manmade hives. Traditional bee hives are long baskets, usually constructed from cane or strips of wood. Transitional bee hives, also known as “top bar hives,” are open baskets with strips of wood at the top to hold the bees’ combs. Modern bee hives are wooden boxes with removable frames to hold the bees’ combs. Honey bee colonies will generally maintain their brood nest in a hive as long as there is food available in the region and the hive remains suitable to the bees. To try to determine why the Amhara beekeepers are experiencing their bees' absconding and swarming, we look closely at each of the three manmade bee hives.

The first concern for a bee hive to be suitable for the bees is its size. For the farmers to build up a population of bees capable of producing a surplus of honey the hive must be large enough for the bees to greatly expand their brood nest. In nature, bees often select a cavity with a volume of about 40 liters. After the colony fills this volume, the colony divides; and half of the bees swarm in search of another cavity. We measure traditional and transitional hives and find them to have a volume of about 89 liters. A modern Zander hive with two brood nest boxes measures about 84 liters, probably a suitable volume. It appears that the use of a single Zander brood nest box by some farmers probably leads to brood nest congestion and swarming. The Amhara farmers recognize that they might be able to reduce swarming by adding more hive boxes and frames as bee populations grow. In today’s photo, seasoned Ethiopian beekeeper, Gebeyehu, brings one of his traditional bee hives to the Machakel training facility for us to examine. Hive size is important wherever we keep bees.

--Richard

Managing Top Bar Hives

Fall and spring hive management in top bar hives is similar to that of Langstroth hives. Bees tend to build their brood nest in a top bar hive near the hive entrance and expand horizontally with new combs. Two combs holding honey and pollen near the hive entrance provide food for the brood. Hive manipulations can be visualized as if a Langstroth hive is lying on its side. Just as the beekeeper moves the winter cluster downward in the fall in a Langstroth hive, he or she moves the cluster forward toward the top bar hive entrance. Over winter, the bees move horizontally away from the entrance into the honey storage combs. In the spring, empty combs near the entrance should be moved to the rear, and the brood nest pushed toward the entrance.

 All bee hive manipulations of modern hives can be accomplished with top bar hives if the bees build straight combs centered on the top bars. Carefully built top bars of 32 millimeter width are necessary for comb management. If the bees build combs connecting the top bars, the hive can’t be easily manipulated. Bees tend to curve their combs toward the hive entrance. Cutting away curved portions of combs encourages the bees to build straight combs centered on the hive's top bars. Ethiopian beekeeper Teshome recognizes that by building top bar hives of standardized dimensions he can move combs between hives. This allows him to de-queen poorly performing colonies or those with defensive behavior and bring in combs of eggs and larvae from his best colonies to control and improve bee genetics. He can also rear new queens and make colony divisions in his top bar hives. Today’s photo: a mud and dung coated Tanzanian top bar hive in use in Ethiopia. The Tanzanian hive design employs vertical box walls. This rear view shows one empty frame behind top bars. Under a thatched roof, the hive stand’s plastic sheeting and oiled posts protect hives from ants.

--Richard

Top Bar Hives

Beekeepers are making preparations for adding new colonies in the spring. While most will house their bees in modern bee hives, some will chose hives of other designs. The Kenyan top bar hive is the choice of a number of hobbyists who want to keep a few bee hives at their home. This removable comb hive is simply a box with sticks, called top bars, to hold combs. A benefit of top bar hives is that they can be constructed at low cost from locally available materials using ordinary hand tools and simple building skills.

Larry Tomkins, a knowledgeable beekeeper from Northeast Arkansas, shared his top bar beekeeping experience with the Arkansas Beekeepers Association. Tomkins, who began beekeeping with Langstroth hives, explained how he enjoys building top bar hives that he constructs from scrap lumber. Tompkins uses the hive design developed by the Peace Corps, http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/Plan%20files/pTop%20bar%20Kenya.pdf. Tompkins built the top bar hive that he brought to the ABA Spring Conference for 79 cents, the cost of screws. There are no standardized top bar hive plans; there is only one critical measurement: Top bars must be 32 millimeters in width. A beer bottle cap makes a handy measuring device for constructing top bars. Building top bars of the proper width is important for maintaining bee space. Bees build cross combs on improperly designed top bars. Top bar hives are attractive to some beekeepers because, unlike modern bee hives, there are no heavy boxes to lift. All hive work is accomplished at a comfortable waist-level height by removing one comb at a time from the hive. Since harvesting of honey from top bar hives involves destroying the honeycomb, old beeswax is continuously replaced in the hive. Comb replacement is good for colony health; environmental chemicals and bee disease spores are removed from the hive. Today’s photo is a Kenyan top bar hive in use in Ethiopia.

--Richard

Help from Birds of Prey

The bee hive in the fall is full of bees, brood, and food. However, by mid-winter, the hive is partially empty. Short-lived summer bees are gone; drones have been ejected; the year’s last brood has emerged; and a significant amount of the food stores have been eaten. The cluster of bees is slowly moving upward in the hive. As the bees eat their honey stores, they leave empty cells. The hive may have half of its cells empty. The empty air-filled cells make excellent insulation from cold winter drafts. Actually, little wind blows through the parallel sheets of bee hive comb.

If they are able to enter, mice find bee hives a welcoming home in the winter. Mice are known to build nests in the lower corners of bee hives. They are actually a greater nuisance to beekeepers than to the bees. If worker bees find a mouse inside the hive, they often sting it to death. Since they can’t drag the mouse outside, they entomb it in propolis. This prevents the spread of odor and bacteria throughout the hive. Beekeepers reduce the size of hive entrances in the winter to help keep mice out of the hive. Rodent populations, like those of many insects, expand widely every few years. This year, large populations of field mice and rats were observed over a wide area. Hawks and owls, birds of prey, are effective natural predators of rodents. Red-tailed hawks are common hunters throughout North America. Easily identified by their bright white breast feathers, they often perch on a low tree limb or fence post while waiting for a rodent to move. Then, they swoop down and grab their prey with sharp talons. The red-tailed hawk in today’s photo is frequently seen hunting on the ground in one Peace Bee Farm bee yard. Today, I found four nesting boxes occupied by sleeping screech owls, highly efficient night-time mouse catchers. Year-around, birds of prey help to control bee yard rodent pests.

--Richard

Regulating Hive Temperature

A beekeeper in Minnesota is carefully measuring the temperature inside his bee hives. He recorded a daytime temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit and a nighttime temperature of 38 degrees. He asks me what I think of the temperature differences, and he asks if I feel that there is a problem. While Minnesota experiences extremely cold winters, honey bees are very capable of regulating the atmosphere of their hive. They also employ measures to conserve energy and food reserves necessary to survive harsh northern winters. First, they do not attempt to warm their entire hive, only the bees and brood. The bees form a cluster to generate and conserve warmth. Loosely packed bees inside the cluster generate heat by eating their high-energy food, honey, and “shivering” their flight muscles. These bees can create about 104 degrees in their muscle tissue. Bees on the outside of the cluster form a tightly packed crust to hold in the generated heat. As bees on the outside chill, bees from the inside change places with them. The bees are not wasteful of honey stores needed to feed the workers generating heat. They do not attempt to warm the entire hive, just the cluster of bees.

The bees’ second honey conservation effort involves lowering the cluster temperature whenever there is no brood present. Brood must be kept warmer than adult bees. Brood is held at 95 degrees Fahrenheit. A number of races of bees, especially those originating in northern Europe and Asia, restrict the feeding of their queen to force her to stop laying eggs in the winter. When the colony is not tending brood, it lowers its colony cluster temperature to around 70 degrees, the daytime temperature measured in the Minnesota hive. The temperature of the hive outside the cluster drops at nighttime. In today’s photo, we see bees gathering granulated sugar that I placed for emergency feeding atop a hive’s inner cover. Bees access the sugar through the inner cover’s center hole.

--Richard

Abandoned Bee Hives

When honey bees swarm they frequently move into cavities previously used by other colonies of bees. They are attracted to old bee nests by hive odors of beeswax, honey, propolis, pollen, bees, and their pheromones. It is common for a colony of honey bees to occupy a hollow tree for a couple of years and then die after being weakened by parasitic Varroa mites. Even if the combs are destroyed by hive scavengers, like wax moths and small hive beetles, the cavity is likely to attract another colony of bees. The same sequence of events commonly occurs when people attempt to drive honey bees from the walls of their houses. Old colonies are soon replaced by new colonies. Colonies of bees replace one another so frequently that it may appear a hive is occupied continuously when it actually held a series of different colonies. The attractiveness of hive odors makes old bee hives effective bait hives for capturing swarms in the spring and summer. Old abandoned bee hives are attractive to swarming honey bees as well.

I received a call asking me to remove bees from some abandoned hives. I found a very large feral colony occupying a stack of rotting hive bodies. While wood rot and termites had consumed most of the woodenware, combs were held together by propolis. One by one, I transferred the frames of brood into new hive boxes. After all intact frames were moved, a number of broken pieces of brood comb remained. I placed these in a nucleus hive. After several weeks I found the feral queen hiding among the broken combs in the nucleus hive. The bees in the larger hive produced a new queen. I now have two strong hives with good behavior and characteristics. I welcome these locally-adapted feral genes into my bee yards. Was the colony in the abandoned hive equipment truly feral? Possibly, or its queen may have been purchased from a breeding program by another beekeeper. Lucky find.

--Richard

Fall Bee Hive Management

In the fall it is important to look inside the bee hives and set them up for winter. Fall bee hive management is designed to help the bees survive the winter. This week I checked bee hives with Corinth, Mississippi beekeeper, Heidi Hendrix, and my 12-year-old grandson, Ethan. There are two important issues for over-winter success: food and hive ventilation. We make sure that the brood nest is located low in the hive with frames of capped honey above. To get this arrangement, we may need to move frames or rearrange hive bodies. It is the tendency of honey bees to move upward in the hive over the winter. The heat of the bees’ winter cluster warms the stored honey above the cluster; the bees eat this honey; and then they move up to occupy the empty cells. If the bees begin the winter with their brood nest located high in the hive, they may not move down to feed on available honey stores. It is frustrating for beekeepers to find honey bee colonies that starved while there is plenty of available honey stored inches away from the bees’ winter cluster. If the hive is light in weight when one end is lifted, the bees need feeding. For fall feeding, “heavy” syrup of two parts sugar to one part water is readily converted to honey and stored.

The second important issue in bee hive set-up for winter is ventilation. Bee hives are warm and damp on the inside. Cold winter temperatures outside the hives cause condensation to form on the inside hive walls. The effect is opposite that of a glass of iced tea on a hot, damp Delta summer day where condensation forms on the glasses’ outside surface. Water dripping in the hive can kill bees. A small vent at the top of the bee hive is all that is needed to remove hive moisture. Today’s photo shows a full box of capped honey above the brood nest.

--Richard

Transitions

Three types of bee hives are used in Ethiopia. Ninety-seven percent of the hives are traditional hives, long baskets built at no expense of cane and banana leaves. These hives are usually hung high in trees, but they are also attached to the outside walls of houses. Some traditional hives are placed inside houses under beds. Modern bee hives similar in design to the Langstroth bee hive comprise two percent of Ethiopia’s bees. The remaining one percent of Ethiopian bee hives is top bar hives, described as “transitional hives.” These simple boxes are also built from locally available materials at no expense. Transitional hives provide an economical method of managing honey bees that allows for the benefits of modern beekeeping: ease of hive inspection, ability to combine and divide colonies, move brood between hives, requeen, and improve genetics. Most importantly, transitional hives allow for the non-destructive harvesting of high quality honey. Beeswax is harvested by crushing honeycombs. Hive products are collected without killing or losing the honey bee colony. Today’s photo from Ethiopia shows one of Teshome’s transitional bee hives mounted in a tree. This top bar hive is covered in plastic and foliage as is the custom in Ethiopia. I recommended that Teshome consider removing the foliage to improve air circulation. Chalkbrood, a honey bee fungal infection, is a major hive problem in Ethiopia’s rainy season.

Many transitions are occurring on Ethiopian farms. Beekeepers earn additional income with transitional and modern bee hives. Using standardized sized hives, beekeepers can move combs from one hive to another. Teshome recognizes the benefits of improving queen bee genetics; he uses similar techniques in cattle breeding. He foresees the ability to produce gentler bees by selecting queen stock from his best hives. His farm is steadily transitioning to a broader based economy. Teshome eagerly traces the design of my hive tool so that he can have the local blacksmith produce tools for area beekeepers to take a more hands-on approach to beekeeping.

--Richard

Bonebunga Area Projects

Guta, Tucho, and Gedefa take me to see a number of the projects that the Education For Development Association is supporting. While my part of their effort involves teaching the farmers ways to employ modern bee hives in their beekeeping operations, the EFDA is involved in numerous other efforts to improve the lives of the Ethiopian people. A number of their ongoing projects involve agriculture and the protection of the land. In today’s photo, EFDA staff member Gedefa points out to me terraces being built on the steep, highly erodible hillsides being farmed in the Western Highlands. In the foreground, a trench is planted with vertiver grass which will become a hedge to slow rainy season torrents of water rushing down the hillside and hold the soil. The vertiver hedge slows water run-off and increases water absorption into the soil. The four-foot tall foliage of vertiver grass is a useful agricultural product as well. It is harvested as animal feed; and it makes a good thatch for the roof of their round farm houses, called “toculs.” Vertiver grass is used in traditional medicines, and essential oils extracted from the plant’s roots are used in the production of perfumes.

In the deep valley in the distance, coffee plants are propagated under slatted shades. The coffee trees will be transplanted to grow in the shade of larger trees. Surrounding the coffee tree nursery we see the growth of a forest planted to replace natural forests cleared in times past. Beyond the ridge line, natural forests exist in the mountains leading down to the Blue Nile River. As we cross the ridge line the forest is hidden today in a blanket of heavy rainy season fog. Other projects we visit include training of leather workers, blacksmiths, boat builders, fishermen, and clay workers who build fuel-saving stoves. Almost all Ethiopian farms include honey bee hives. The farmers eagerly embrace my ideas for increasing their family income with transitional top bar hives and modern bee hives

--Richard

Teshome's Farm

Guta, Tucho, and Gedefa of the Education For Development Association staff take me to Laku Igu village to visit the farm of Teshome, one of the individuals being trained and assisted by the EFDA. The farm illustrates the diversity of farming activities employed in Ethiopia’s highlands. I wade through knee-high potato plots to see Teshome’s traditional bee hives, clay hives that look like large water jugs, and top bar hives. These hives are mounted on stands under a covered shed near his house. The covering protects the hives from the heat of the dry season sun in this land close to the equator. Teshome also keeps top bar hives in trees and modern Zander hives on high platforms that he proudly shows me in today’s photo. These hives are elevated to protect them from ants, Ethiopia’s principal bee hive pest, and other animal raiders. Elevating bee hives also protects them from grass fires. Surrounding the bee hives are gardens, orchards, and pastures with cattle. The EFDA introduced apples to the Ethiopian highlands and taught Teshome how to care for the new addition to the agricultural economy. Teshome grafts cultivated apple stocks and produces apple trees for himself and to sell to other farmers. He learned to prune fruit trees, and care for the trees that are thriving on the porous volcanic soil amended with organic matter from the farm. Family members turn the soil with steel-tipped plows pulled by teams of two oxen. The EFDA trained a blacksmith in the village who supplies steel tools to the area farmers.

Teshome invites us into his house for a lunch of potatoes and Lage coffee from the Abe Dongoro district. Coffee was discovered in Ethiopia, and the rich Lage is not yet available anywhere else in the world. I am delighted to have the experienced Teshome as a member of my beekeeper training group at Shambu. In the training sessions, he welcomes suggestions for improving the honey bee stocks through selective breeding.

--Richard

Small Hives are Vulnerable

Beekeepers can establish or expand their bee yards by purchasing hives from other beekeepers, purchasing nucleus hives, dividing existing colonies, catching swarms, or raising bees in queen mating nucleus hives. Beekeepers trying to expand their bee yards start with small populations of bees. Often nucleus hives smaller than full-size hives are used for expansion. These hives are especially vulnerable to a number of pests. As each of these new hives builds in population it is subjected to attack from numerous pests. Weak hives are regularly approached by wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, wax moths, small hive beetles, and mammals. However, the most persistent attackers of bee hives are often worker honey bees from other colonies in the area that attempt to rob honey stores. The best defense against bee hive pests is a strong population of honey bees. Bees can drive away intruding wasps, yellow jackets, wax moths, dogs, and other mammals. They remove the larvae of wax moths, and drive adult small hive beetles to the corners of the hive. Guard bees trap small hive beetles in propolis “traps” that the workers build. Small hive beetle traps often line the ends of bee hive frame top bars. Here, many beetles die of starvation. The bee populations of expanding colonies often fare better in small-sized hives because there is less open space for small hive beetles to move freely and lay eggs.

Our experience in rearing queens and expanding colonies at Peace Bee Farm is consistent: We have considerably greater success in rearing bees in nucleus hives than in full-size hives. Today’s photo shows worker bees returning to their small, expanding colony in a queen mating nucleus hive fitted with an entrance reducer and a screen to restrict robber bees. Bees from the colony learn to negotiate the space between the screen and the hive entrance. Robbers are attracted to hive odors and fly directly toward the screen where they are challenged by guard bees poised on their hind legs.

--Richard

Social Courts and Social Bonds

Ten neatly dressed women sitting in the shade of a spreading ficus tree appear to be conducting an important meeting. My Ethiopian contact explains that I am witnessing a Social Court, a structure that exists in rural Ethiopia where a police or governmental presence is rarely seen. Community leaders convene a Social Court to settle domestic disputes or community complaints. A person found guilty by his community may be fined, forced to perform work, or shunned, a harsh penalty in a close-knit interdependent community. Social Courts are an effective control over the behavior of rural citizens. They hold the community together and give offenders a real understanding of the group’s expectations.

Examples of social bonding abound in Ethiopia. A strong example is the Ethiopian tradition of family, friends, and invited guests sharing the same food from a common serving—and eating by hand. The meal of meat or vegetables is placed on a thin sheet of fermented bread, known as injera. Those sharing the meal tear off pieces of injera to scoop up bites of food. Social customs in Ethiopia build bonds between friends as well as between those meeting for the first time. Ethiopians always stand, shake hands, and acknowledge everyone in the room. However, if a person is sick or his hands are not clean, he offers the wrist as a handshake. In the Ethiopian countryside, one sees the close bond that Ethiopians have with their animals. When young boys herd the family’s animals, they mind their owners like well-trained dogs. Beasts of burden carry bundles of goods along roads ahead of their owners who follow on foot. Animals and people sleep together inside small huts for protection from predators. Quite a few Ethiopian families maintain a bond with their honey bees, mounting their hives under the low-hanging thatch roofs of the family’s hut. Children play among the flying honey bees. People, livestock, and honey bees live in close proximity. Wubishet Adugna and I share bereles of tej.

--Richard

Summer Nectar Flow

A hot, dry summer is often the backdrop for a good honey production year. This year’s wet, stormy spring kept farmers out of the fields in the Arkansas Delta. Planting was delayed, but a healthy crop of cotton and soybeans followed. These crops account for an abundance of Delta honey. Honey bees gather significant amounts of nectar to make a surplus of honey in strong hives. A surplus of honey can only be produced if the colony is strong and productive, the hive is near a good source of nectar, and the queen is producing large numbers of eggs in the weeks prior to the major nectar flow. The timing of the colony’s population build-up is critical for honey production. If the colony is just starting to expand during the nectar flow, there will probably not be enough of the older worker bees, the foragers, to gather enough nectar to make a surplus of honey.

I tested using additional entrances to my stronger hives this year. The entrances are placed between surplus honey supers at the top of the hives. There is evidence that the entrances allow foragers to deliver their nectar more efficiently. Nectar is taken directly into the honey supers without having to be carried through the brood nest. Upper entrances also allow for extra ventilation at the top of the hive. However, the wooden shims used for the upper entrances violate the concept of bee space. Every opening inside a bee hive should be three eights of an inch. The shim’s wider gap between supers makes a space that the bees fill with honeycomb. In fact, many of the hives equipped with upper entrances became clogged with burr comb in the space between supers. Burr comb, which is any honeycomb that the bees build that does not conform to the shape and order of the hive’s removable frames, tends to break when the hive is opened for inspection or honey harvesting. Today’s picture: burr comb, a sticky mess.

--Richard

Bee Hive Upper Entrance

Natural honey bee hives in hollow trees often have multiple entrances. Bees fly in and out of knot holes or broken openings linked to the tree’s cavity. I watched a colony of honey bees in a sweet gum tree for four years. The bees entered the hive through a hole in the tree near the ground. At times, the bees also used a second entrance, a knot hole three feet above and to the side of the tree. The bees would use the upper entrance for awhile, and then seal it with propolis. Eventually, the honey bee colony swarmed and settled into a wood duck nesting box about the size of a deep bee hive body. The duck box had a large entrance hole near the top, facing east. The bees survived a winter in the duck box, and I hived them the next spring as my first managed colony.

Honey bees readily use holes in rotted corners of beehives as extra entrances to the hive. The late George Imirie designed shims with openings to give bees an upper hive entrance. See http://www.tnbeekeepers.org/learning.htm, and then “George Imirie” and “Optimizing Honey Production.” The blue-colored Imirie shim shown in today’s photo allows foraging workers to enter the honey supers without passing through the hive’s brood nest. Imirie felt that using upper entrances with frames of drawn comb increased his honey production. Adding an upper hive entrance also increases ventilation through the hive. Jerry Hayes conducted a small-scale investigation into the effect of upper entrances to bee hives. The report can be viewed at http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/jerry-hayes/queen-excluder-or-honey-excluder/. Hayes compared three configurations of bee hives: control hives with entrances at the bottom and no queen excluder, hives with entrances at the bottom and a queen excluder, and hives with an upper entrance above a queen excluder. The hives with upper entrances outperformed the other hives in two ways: There was less brood chamber congestion from honey, and more surplus honey was stored in the honey supers.

--Richard

Looking Ahead

The past four years, marked by heavy colony losses, have been costly to beekeepers. News stories have made this a time of expanding awareness among much of the public of the dwindling number of honey bees and the importance of honey bees and other pollinators in producing our food. Hopefully, the next five years will bring about a greater understanding of the conditions affecting honey bee health. Beekeepers will continue to study honey bee biology and try to learn more about the pests and pathogens that attack bees. Concerted efforts will be made to improve plant diversity on farms and public lands. Farmers will modify their tillage and planting practices to provide food and habitat for bees and native pollinators. Beekeepers will fight to resist the importation of bees from foreign countries to lessen the possibility of spreading pests and diseases. Queen bees may be carefully imported to expand genetic diversity. Hopefully, we will learn how to solve beekeeping and environmental problems with lesser use of chemicals. Colony Collapse Disorder will become another controllable condition of the bee yard.

Already, we are seeing an increase in the number of people putting a couple of bee hives in the back yard. They bring ideas and enthusiasm. They attend beekeeping association meetings and learn how bees are affected by humans and how we alter the environment. The hives of these new beekeepers also serve the existing bee colonies by supplying diverse drones to mate with queens. Most new beekeepers in North America build traditional Langstroth bee hives, but many explore other styles. Two writers offer views of bee hives developed in other countries and in earlier days: Buck White’s Bee Hive Journal, http://beehivejournal.blogspot.com/, offers design drawings for numerous bee hives and equipment. Amy Leigh shows bee hives from around the world at http://benefitsofhoneyblog.com/beekeeping-innovations/. She describes Langstroth, National, and Egyptian hives as well as skeps, bee gums, and hollow log hives. Erin Underhill, age seven, feeds a queen mating nucleus hive.

--Richard

Sharing Ideas

Much of the craft of beekeeping involves positive and negative experiences being passed along among beekeepers. Recent blog pieces involving installing packaged honey bees brought comments and questions from several places around the world. Discussion came from Russia and New Zealand as well as several locations in the US. New beekeepers were interested in gaining insights from successful package installations, and seasoned beekeepers were willing to share their experiences. Two specific topics were discussed: wetting the honey bees before placing them in the hive and methods of placing the bees in the hive. I like to give a package of bees a light spraying of sugar water as soon as I receive it to help hydrate the bees after shipment. Before hiving the bees, some beekeepers like to moisten the bees’ wings with sugar water. The wet bees are not as eager to fly, and they may be easier to house in a new hive. In either case, it is important to be careful not to chill bees by spraying them if the weather is cool. The other topic discussed among beekeepers involved placing a sheet of cloth on the ground and allowing the bees to walk across it to the hive’s entrance. If a queen, confined in the hive, is emitting strong pheromones, workers will fan pheromones at the hive entrance and attract colony members to the hive. If all goes well, the bees “march” into the hive. The problem that may arise is that packaged bees are often not organized as a colony. Bees poured onto a cloth may merely fly away. A safer introduction method may involve pouring the bees directly into the hive.

For different perspectives on beekeeping, see http://ludditeapiary.blogspot.com and http://kiwitopbarhive.blogspot.com. Each descriptive writer keeps bees in a different type of hive using similar beekeeping principles. The Luddite keeps bees in Warre hives; Marcia uses Kenyan top bar hives. In today’s photo, Mary Phillips successfully completes installing packaged bees in Langstroth hives. Each shares ideas.

--Richard

Building Bee Hives

There are a number of reasons that people engage in tending to honey bees. For many the bees are used to provide pollination of crops. Migratory beekeepers carry hives great distances to provide pollination service to farms and orchards as crops come into bloom. Other beekeepers tend to stationary bee hives to provide pollination service and produce honey crops. Commercial beekeepers grow bees to sell the queens, packaged bees, and nucleus colonies. Homeowners and gardeners tend to bee hives to produce honey and pollinate home gardens. Observation bee hives are kept in schools, zoos, museums, and public areas for educational purposes. Colleges and universities maintain bee yards for teaching and research. Some people keep honey bees simply for the enjoyment of watching and listening to the bees. Many of these enthusiasts never harvest any honey.

In today’s photo, Mary Phillips is building bee hives for the Urban Farms in the Binghampton neighborhood of Memphis. She is assembling Langstroth hives in the wood shop at Peace Bee Farm. We always enjoy having her back at the bee farm. She worked with us to gain experience in beekeeping, and now she is adding honey bees to the Urban Farms to ensure pollination of their crops. The Urban Farms regularly see visitors; many are neighborhood children who are not aware of the source of food or how it is produced. For them the bee hives will help explain the important role of pollination in food production. The Urban Farms and their manager, Mary Phillips, are working to ensure the inner city area has access to healthy, locally produced food. The Urban Farms was voted a Local Hero award by the readers of Edible Memphis magazine. Edible Memphis, a quarterly magazine devoted to the harvest of the Mid-South builds ties between farmers, food artisans, and the community. The magazine can be found at www.ediblememphis.com. You can follow activity at the Urban Farms at http://www.bdcmemphis.org/urban_farms.html. These bee hives will pollinate and educate.

--Richard

The Bee Hive in Winter

Honey bees area unique among insects. In temperate areas, they spend the winter inside the hive alive and active unlike wasps and hornets that die in the winter or lady bug beetles that hibernate. The honey bee accomplishes its winter-time survival by making and storing a high-energy food, honey. By eating the high-energy food, the worker honey bee is able to generate about 104 degrees Fahrenheit of heat in its flight muscles to warm the colony. Again, the honey bees are unique among insects, which are cold-blooded animals, in their ability to generate heat. The bees use the heat that they produce to warm the center of their cluster of bees. They hold the heat inside the cluster by forming a tight layer of bees on the outside. These bees, which eventually chill, periodically exchange places with bees inside the cluster. The cluster of bees expands and contracts with the outside temperature. The bees don’t waste energy warming the entire hive cavity, only the cluster of bees. The colder the weather gets, the more tightly compacted the cluster gets. As the cluster shrinks, it leaves a surrounding area of empty honeycomb. During prolonged periods of cold weather, the bees often remain tightly clustered; and they don’t venture the short distance to where honey is stored in the hive. Beekeepers often find colonies that have starved with ample stores of honey only inches away from the cluster.

The structure of a bee hive makes it quite an effective housing for surviving the harsh elements of winter. Empty cells of honeycomb make excellent insulation, and parallel sheets of comb effectively block winter winds. As the cluster of bees consumes the food stored above them, the cluster moves upward into this space. This upward movement of bees during the winter gives beekeepers an opportunity to move bees from lower frames as I am doing in today’s photo. I am transferring bees from the dark-colored deep hive body into medium boxes filled with honey.

--Richard

The Warre Hive

Some individuals are attracted to beekeeping’s lack of complicated modern technologies. In fact, most of the great inventions of modern beekeeping occurred in the mid-1800s. They include L. L. Langstroth’s 1851 removable frame hive, beeswax foundation for hive frames, the honey extractor, and the beekeeper’s smoker. While the durable Langstroth hive is the one most widely used to house managed colonies of honey bees, there are others. The Warre hive, pronounced “war-ray,” and the Kenyan top bar hive are two hives that use only wooden bars to support the sheets of honeycomb instead of complete frames. The Warre hive stands vertically and resembles a Langstroth hive in outward appearance. Brood nest and honey storage boxes are similarly stacked atop each other. The unique element of a Warre hive is the upper box, which slightly overhangs the hive. This box has a sloping, vented roof and a canvas floor. The box is filled with straw or other moisture-absorbing material to help control the atmosphere in the hive as well as hold hive scents. Abbe Emile Warre, who developed this arrangement in France and called it the “People’s Hive,” felt that it allowed the bees to control the temperature, humidity, and oxygen and carbon dioxide levels within the hive.

With the combs hanging unsupported from top bars in both Warre hives and Kenyan top bar hives, honey harvesting is destructive of the beeswax combs. Most honey is harvested by mashing the comb and draining the honey. Without full support of the combs as in the Langstroth hives, these hives are not well suited for transport. However, both hives are popular with beekeepers who want to provide pollination for gardens or intend to infrequently manipulate the hives. Beekeepers must delicately handle the U-shaped combs that the bees hang from simple top bars. In today’s photo, The Luddite, checks the fit of top bars for a Warre hive she is building. The complete Warre hive can be seen in the February 6, 2011 posting.

--Richard