April is Busy

 

April is the busiest month for bees and beekeepers. Populations of bees are expanding toward their maximum, and flowers are coming into bloom in abundance. Bees eagerly gather nectar and pollen to produce brood food for rapidly expanding colonies. Heavy springtime nectar flows often lead to brood nest congestion when nectar is stored in the brood nest. Without available cells for the queen to lay eggs, the colony divides and swarms, with swarming reaching a peak in April and May. Beekeepers attempt to capture swarms of bees, as these have the potential of growing rapidly into productive colonies. For those hives that lose a large population of bees through swarming, it usually means the loss of the year’s honey crop. April saw periods of nice weather, conducive to bees’ foraging, interrupted by periods of extreme weather. Numerous thunderstorms and tornadoes along with severe localized flooding lingered across Arkansas and neighboring states. Some bee hives were overturned by strong winds, and some were flooded.

 

April found beekeepers busy expanding their operations. Bee Day activity at Bemis Honey Bee Farm in Little Rock attracted beekeepers from throughout the region to pick up hundreds of packages of bees and nucleus colonies. I participated in speaking sessions held throughout the day. Dr. Cameron Jack of the University of Florida spoke on varroa mite and small hive beetle integrated pest management practices, and he described his ongoing research on seasonal varroa mite treatments. Bo Sterk and Dave Westervelt of Bees Beyond Borders, www.beesbeyondborders.org, spoke on swarms and splits, common mistakes made in the bee yard, and feeding bees among other topics. Dr. Jon Zawislak of the University of Arkansas described queen genetics, and I spoke on honey bee communications. An interested group followed my presentation on ethical beekeeping. I joined Bo and Dave who remained in Little Rock for two days of beekeeping workshops, sharing their experience, much of it involving their training of beekeepers across the Caribbean. Today’s photo: catalpa, a prolific bee forage tree.

--Richard

Beekeeping at Heifer Ranch

 

Heifer Ranch at Perryville, Arkansas, part of Little Rock-based Heifer International, is celebrating its eightieth anniversary with a mission of ending hunger and poverty while caring for the earth. The ranch, a model of regenerative agricultural practices, tends to livestock using methods beneficial to the land. Assistant Rancher Lizzy Parker tends to the ranch’s bee hives and cattle along with their sheep, hogs, turkeys, and chickens. Lizzy keeps thorough records of her honey bee colonies as she does her individual cattle. This year has been busy in the ranch’s bee yard. Lizzy rearranged the hive stands along the edge of one of the ranch’s pastures, facing the morning sun and with afternoon shade to help cool the bees—and the beekeeper! She transitioned the bee hives from traditional Langstroth deep hives into lighter-weight medium-depth hives by cutting down the hive boxes in the ranch wood shop. Lizzy established bee hives, identified feral colonies among the ranch’s bee trees, lured swarms to bait hives, combined weak hives, expanded strong hives, and managed queens.

 

Lizzy, whose background as a science teacher and banker, is expanding her knowledge and experience in beekeeping. She attended four beekeeping classes at Bemis Honey Bee Farm in Little Rock, and she participates with activities of the Ozark Foothills Beekeepers Association. She compares the principles of genetics and breeding of honey bees and cattle. She provides resources of young brood to colonies in need. Working with Heifer Ranch’s bees, she discovered that colonies may experience brood cycle interruptions, often through supersedure of the queen. She learned to observe colonies over time as the bees are often able to correct hive problems themselves. I have been pleased to visit Heifer Ranch occasionally to provide a little assistance in the bee yard. While gaining experience herself, Lizzy is helping share the craft of beekeeping by producing a short video of the twelve rules of apiary etiquette, the steps beekeepers employ to safely and gently handle honey bees.

--Richard

Lizzy Parker

Rita Peace Underhill Memorial Beekeeping Scholarship

 

I am pleased to announce that the Bemis Honey Bee Farm has established a Memorial Beekeeping Scholarship honoring my late wife, Rita Peace Underhill, who along with me built Peace Bee Farm. Rita loved the Bemis family, and I value their friendship and generosity. The Bemises have been quite instrumental in serving and promoting the beekeeping industry in Arkansas by supplying bees, equipment, and training. Bemis Honey Bee Farm also hosts two annual public beekeeping events at the Little Rock farm, Bee Day in the spring and the Arkansas Honey Bee Festival in the fall.

The Rita Peace Underhill Memorial Beekeeping Scholarship is designed to help establish a new beekeeper in Arkansas between the ages of 16 and 30. The scholarship will provide a Bemis Deluxe Beekeeping Kit with its woodenware, jacket, gloves, hive tool, smoker, feeder, bee brush, and beginner book. The scholarship also provides a live colony of honey bees and registration to a beginner beekeeping class at Bemis Honey Bee Farm. I am honored to be the instructor for this class.

The deadline for application for the scholarship is March 1, 2024, and the winner will be announced on March 2, 2024. Arkansas applicants may apply for the scholarship at

https://forms.gle/MFxvLgw6fdEqZ8QH8

For a PDF file of the application, email: emily@bemishoneybeefarm.com

I am humbled by the generosity of the Bemis family for creating the Rita Peace Underhill Memorial Beekeeping Scholarship. It will be a pleasure for me to participate in the training. It is a most fitting tribute to Rita, who loved beekeeping and the people that she encountered along the way.

--Richard

Rita Peace Underhill

Pax Vobiscum

 

December 21 marks the winter solstice, the date with the year’s shortest daylight and longest night. The solstice falls among winter days in which religious and cultural holidays are celebrated around the world. The winter solstice is also recognized as the start of the honey bee colony’s year. It is on the solstice that queen bees start laying eggs after an egg laying interruption in the fall. Today, when temperatures rose above 50 degrees allowing bees to make foraging flights, I observed foragers bringing pollen into the hives. The arrival of pollen is usually associated with egg laying occurring in the hive. When brood is present, the colonies must warm their hives to 95 degrees by consuming their honey stores to generate heat. Though there are few plants in bloom during the late fall and winter, I have observed bees foraging on fall asters on the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Some honey bees and native pollinators have been foraging the citrus-scented blossoms of mullein, shown in today’s photo.

 

As we end the beekeeper’s year, it is a good time to reflect on the friends we have encountered. I am especially appreciative of the Bemis family, who operate Bemis Honey Bee Farm and Supplies in Little Rock. The Bemis’s business includes the production of honey as well as bee hive equipment and bees. The honey bee farm also provides beekeeping training, which I participate in, as well as hosting two annual public events, Bee Day in the spring and the Arkansas Honey Festival in the fall. I am overwhelmed by the generosity and thoughtfulness of the Bemises who established the Rita Peace Underhill Memorial Beekeeping Scholarship in honor of my late wife, Rita. The scholarship provides hives, bees, equipment, and training for a starting beekeeper. Others beekeepers contributed hives and colonies of bees. It is with great appreciation that I recognize our beekeeper community. In the spirit of the season, I offer to all that peace be with you.

--Richard

Nuc Hives and Packages

How can you get a colony of bees for your new bee hive? You may purchase a complete hive from a beekeeper along with its colony of bees, or you may purchase a nucleus hive, or nuc, which is a small colony taken from a full-size hive. A nuc is a bee colony in equilibrium; it contains an egg-laying queen, brood of all stages, and workers of all ages. A nuc may be a split, or colony division. A split is made by dividing a hive, moving frames of bees to a new hive and introducing a new queen. Alternately, you may purchase a package of bees: bees in a box and not on frames. A package of bees typically contains three pounds of bees, about 12,000 bees, and a mated queen held in a protective cage. The bees in a package are workers gathered from numerous hives, and the queen is reared separately. A package of bees only becomes a colony after a few days when the bees detect and then organize their behavior around the queen’s pheromones.

 

You can gather bees when colonies swarm. Swarming is a natural occurrence; it is reproduction of bees on a colony-wide basis. European honey bee colonies, like those we have in the U.S., typically swarm once a year. If you are able to capture a swarm, it can be moved into a hive. You can put swarm catcher hives, or bait hives, in trees to attract swarming bees. There are two methods of moving bee colonies that are already established in structures like hollow trees or walls of buildings. You can attempt a trap-out, where you build a funnel to allow bees to exit the structure and not reenter. A cut-out involves physically opening the structure and cutting out the combs containing the bees and brood. I’ve bought or sold bees using each of these methods. Today’s photo: nucleus hives awaiting beekeeper pick-up at Bemis Honey Bee Farm in Little Rock.

--Richard

Producing Honey Bee Queens

Twenty-four beekeepers attended my queen rearing class at Bemis Honey Bee Farm as part of our continuing beekeeping educational program. The beekeepers expanded their understanding of honey bee biology and bee colony reproduction. They learned the conditions under which bee colonies produce queens, including preparation for swarming. Before a bee colony divides itself and swarms, it produces a new queen to continue reproducing bees in the original hive. The hive conditions that lead to swarming are the same as beekeepers create to encourage bees to produce queens. The beekeepers learned the importance of record keeping and colony evaluation in producing high quality queens. By carefully observing a bee hive’s characteristics, beekeepers evaluate the queen’s traits. They then select hives with desirable traits to become “drone mother hives” which produce high-quality drones to mate with virgin queens. Hives that the beekeeper determines to be the best-of-the-best are designated as “queen mother hives” producing larvae to develop into high-quality queen bees. The beekeepers learned that to produce these high-quality queens three conditions are necessary: First, we must select from parent queens with good genetic traits; next, the queens must have good nutrition throughout their development; and finally, the virgin queen must successfully mate with a large number of high-quality drones. The beekeepers learned the actions to take to develop a queen-rearing program for continuous stock improvement.

The beekeepers followed the procedures involved in producing queen bees using the Doolittle Method of Queen Production, the method most widely used for producing queens throughout the beekeeping industry. G. M. Doolittle developed the techniques over one hundred years ago. Two beekeeper students employ the Doolittle Method in today’s photo. They are grafting tiny day-old larvae into queen cell cups that they will place into hives filled with workers selected for their ability to produce queens. The beekeepers move the grafted cells from a “cell starter hive” and then to a “cell finisher hive” and finally to a “queen mating nucleus hive.”

--Richard

Arkansas Honey Festival

One thousand people gathered in Little Rock on a delightful early fall day for the third annual Arkansas Honey Festival. Pleasant weather made for enjoyable events both indoors and out. The event, held at Bemis Honey Bee Farm, featured a full day of classroom, honey house, and bee yard presentations. I was invited to make a classroom presentation on the control of parasitic Varroa mites. I took the group of interested beekeepers into the bee yard where we sampled hives for Varroa mites. We used two methods of sampling, a powdered sugar roll and an alcohol wash. The group noted that the alcohol wash was the more accurate method of determining the bees’ mite load when both methods were used on the same hive. Other presenters described how to properly label honey, how to build bee-friendly gardens, the production of bee hive products other than honey, and marketing of bee hive products. The new Veterinary Feed Directive was described to beekeepers and veterinarians present. In the honey house, eager groups attended sessions on making mead, extracting honey, making creamed honey, and cooking with honey. Bee yard events involved demonstrations on handling bee hive pests and diseases, fall bee hive management, and checks made by the state’s apiary inspectors. I gave a presentation on top bar hive beekeeping. In today’s photo, I demonstrate handling a Kenyan top bar hive brood comb.

The Arkansas Honey Festival was an enjoyable social event on top of being an educational opportunity. Beekeepers and folks simply interested in bees enjoyed themselves at the bee farm. Live music played while people shopped with vendors and at the bee equipment store. I dined at the food truck. Children jumped in a bounce house and visited farm animals in a petting area. Some got their faces painted, and many enjoyed riding about the farm on a tractor-pulled hay wagon. The people’s choice honey show allowed the public to taste honey entries from diverse nectar sources from throughout the state.

--Richard

Pax Vobiscum

A scene in an upcoming motion picture depicts a young man’s chance encounter with a swarm of bees that results in life-changing awareness for himself. The movie, Dayveon, will be aired in Utah on the first day of the renowned Sundance Film Festival in late January 2017. Emily and Jeremy Bemis and I were the film’s bee wranglers, producing an artificial swarm for the camera. The film, directed by Amman Abbasi of Little Rock, tells the story of a 13-year-old who joins a gang in a rural Arkansas town. You can see the bees and read how we created a swarm on a tree limb on my August 18, 2015 posting, “Wrangling Movie Bees.” Throughout history, people have been intrigued by honey bees. Often it is such a chance encounter with swarming bees that excites people to learn how to handle bees.

In the United States, beekeeping is both an important part of our agriculture and an engaging hobby. In the highlands of Ethiopia, beekeeping is a major part of a mixed agriculture, adding significantly to insuring food stability. I am proud to have had the opportunity to train eager beekeepers in the art and science of managing honey bees in both countries. Beekeeping classes, taught by Jeremy Bemis and me, at Bemis Honey Bee Farm in Little Rock attract large numbers of beekeepers, some starting and others expanding their knowledge and skills. Individuals travel great distances to attend my beekeeping classes in Arkansas State University’s Community Education program at three campuses: Heber Springs, Searcy, and Beebe, Arkansas. Today’s photo is Sugar Loaf Mountain, which overlooks the ASU Heber Springs campus. Almost anyone can keep bees. All that is needed is an interest in observing and attending to marvelous, industrious little creatures living harmoniously in wooden boxes. Classes, books, and mentoring teach the art and science of keeping bees. Be forewarned: Beekeeping can become a life-changing endeavor. The Underhill family of Peace Bee Farm offers that peace be with you.

--Richard

Bee Day

Following a week of rain, the sun broke out to provide perfect spring weather in Little Rock for Bee Day. Held at Bemis Honey Bee Farm and Supplies, https://www.facebook.com/bemishoneybeefarm, the day-long event brought beekeepers from around Arkansas and adjacent states. More than two hundred beekeepers gathered to pick up the bees that they had ordered and to attend an assortment of events, both indoors and out. Inside, Rita demonstrated how to make products from the bee hive using honey and beeswax. I gave presentations on queen bee management and top bar hive management. I was surprised at the number of people keeping bees in top bar hives. After I let each person handle top bar combs, they asked questions about methods of managing combs, feeding bees, harvesting honey, and managing hive pests. Top bar hives are favored in some cases by beekeepers in urban settings and by some who prefer to not lift heavy hive bodies and honey supers.

Outdoors, members of the Central Arkansas Beekeepers Association conducted demonstration sessions on how to light a beekeeper’s smoker and how to conduct hive inspections. Throughout the day, smoke drifted from the smoker completion. Bemis family members ferried people around the farm in hay ride fashion on a tractor-pulled wagon. Beekeepers shopped the bee supply store for hive equipment and bee suits. As the bee farm is located on Bemis Tree Farm, some purchased vitex trees and other bee plants. A food truck provided meals throughout the day, and the Central Arkansas Beekeepers brought a frozen honey dessert machine. With beekeepers picking up two hundred packages of bees and individual mated queens, demonstrations on installing packages of bees were well attended. In today’s photo, Jeremy Bemis helps a new beekeeper prepare a hive for a new package of bees. The group even got the opportunity to capture and hive a swarm of feral bees. Some questioned whether the swarm was conveniently planted. No. The swarm was a natural gift for Bee Day!

--Richard