Harvesting Honey at Heifer Ranch

Local beekeeping associations are a community of friends who share a common interest These associations also provide training and experience in the art and science of beekeeping. The Ozark Foothills Beekeepers Association is conducting training in practical beekeeping techniques. Following their beginning beekeeping classes, demonstrations at the bee yard of one of the group’s sponsors, A Bee’s Closet, and presentations at the association’s regular meetings, the association conducted a hands-on training session on harvesting and handling honey at the honey house and bee yard of Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas. One of the Ozark Foothills’ experienced beekeepers, demonstrated methods of handling and marketing honey.

Everyone got a chance to actually handle the honey. Starting with frames of honey that had been previously taken from the hives, beekeepers removed the beeswax cappings to expose the honey using cold serrated knives. Next, frames were spun in extractors to remove the honey. The group got to use both tangential and radial extractors. The honey poured from the extractors through strainers to remove solid impurities, such as chips of beeswax from the cappings. Beekeepers used a refractometer to measure the moisture content of the honey. Beeswax cappings were left in the uncapping tanks to drain, recovering additional honey. The group bottled and labeled honey held in the bottling unit at 100 degrees Fahrenheit for easy pouring. The raw, unfiltered honey had been maintained at hive temperatures below 120 degrees.

After passing through strainers, honey is allowed to settle in stainless steel or food-grade plastic containers. Since honey is heavy, bubbles or any remaining hive debris floats to the top of the honey where they may be skimmed off and discarded. After frames are spun in the extractors, some honey remains on the combs, and these “wet” frames may be returned to the hives for the bees to refill with honey. After the last honey harvest of the season, supers of “wet” frames are stacked outside for the bees to lick the combs clean for winter storage.

--Richard

Inspecting a frame of honey from adjacent to the brood nest.

Bottling honey in Heifer Ranch's honey house.

Lizzy Parker of Heifer Ranch and Heath Thomas of Ozark Foothills Beekeepers Association

Jana Miller (left) of Bemis Honey Bee Farm and Lizzy Parker (right) of Heifer Ranch

Spiderwort in Bloom

Spiderwort, seen in today’s photo, is in bloom now. This perennial native wildflower is a reliable source of pollen for honey bees. The plant blooms in the morning, with blooms usually closing by noon. Foraging bees learn this bloom period pattern and forage early in the day, collecting ample amounts of pollen, which they deposit in cells close to the brood. Pollen grains, a flowering plant’s male reproductive cells, are found on the anthers of flowers, which in spiderwort stand on stalks in the flower. When a honey bee visits a flower, pollen grains attach to the honey bee’s hairy body, and the bee then grooms the pollen into pollen baskets on her hind legs. Some pollen is inadvertently brushed off the bee onto the sticky stigma of the flower, part of its female reproductive system, pollinating the plant. This accidental pollination by the bee is the first stage in the reproduction of the plant, producing seed and fruit.

Honey bee colonies must forage ample amounts of pollen to support their brood, their developing offspring, which the colony’s nurse bees feed in the larval stage of development. Pollen contains protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals. When pollen is added to honey, a carbohydrate, honey bees have a complete diet, entirely derived from flowers. The pollen, mixed with honey and yeast and bacteria from the bee’s gut microbiome is known as “bee bread.” The yeast starts fermentation of the bee bread that serves as preservation. The fermentation also cracks the hard shell of pollen grains releasing the nutrients. Nurse bees consume the bee bread and produce brood food in glands in their bodies. Brood food is fed to the developing brood in its larval stage.

--Richard

Springtime Expansion

Honey bee populations expand rapidly in the spring. Prolific queens are stimulated to lay eggs at their maximum rate in April as flowers come into bloom in abundance. Hives fill with bees, and those colonies that do not have enough capacity make preparations for swarming. The same conditions that lead colonies to reproduce by division and swarming are the conditions that queen producers set up when rearing queens, and these newly produced queens are used to establish new colonies. Beekeepers regularly purchase colonies to expand their apiaries or to replace overwinter colony losses. They may purchase entire hives with their established bees, but more frequently they purchase nucleus colonies, “nucs,” or packaged bees like those awaiting delivery at the recent Bee Day event at Bemis Honey Bee Farm shown in today’s photo. Hundreds of previously ordered packages of bees and nucleus colonies were passed out to beekeepers from across the region.

Nucleus colonies are small honey bee colonies derived by separating frames from existing full-size hives. A nuc is a colony in equilibrium. It typically contains five frames of bees on combs with an egg-laying queen, brood, and bees. Since a nuc is an established colony with a queen and combs available for her to continue laying eggs, it is ready to expand in its new hive. A package of bees, on the other hand, is not an established colony when the beekeeper receives it. Typically, it is three pounds of bees measured by weight (approximately 12,000 bees). The bees in the package are not on frames. Included in the package is a queen bee in a cage with the queen separated from the rest of the bees for her protection. She is held in a cage with a candy plug delaying her release into her new hive. Over a few days, workers pass food to the queen and get accustomed to her pheromones while chewing through the candy, releasing her. Then, the bees are a family—a colony.

--Richard

A Winter Hive Loss

While honey bees do not fly in cold weather, they do venture out of their hive on the occasional warm winter day. Bees make cleansing flights and forage for nectar and pollen from early-blooming flowers. Observing the bees’ flight at the hive entrances, one hive showed less flight activity than adjacent hives. The warm day allowed for an inspection of the evidently weaker hive, revealing a small population of bees with brood present. However, all of the brood was drone brood, no worker brood. Drones are produced from infertile eggs, and workers are produced from fertile eggs. And colonies typically don’t produce drones in the winter. It appeared that some of the workers had developed working reproductive systems and had become drone layers. Workers typically don’t lay eggs, however when a hive has been queenless for a period of time, some workers start laying infertile eggs. It appeared that the colony was dwindling in population without a queen producing workers.

Looking deeper into the hive, I found the likely cause of the colony’s population decline and drone laying. I found a queen cell with the side wall chewed out. It appears that the colony attempted to replace its queen during the winter through supersedure. Honey bees in the Mid-South can only produce viable queens from April through August. The queen cell shown here has not been opened at the tip where a queen would emerge. Instead, it was chewed out through the side. A virgin queen emerged in the hive, found this developing queen, and stung her to death through the side of the cell. Workers later chewed through the cell wall and removed the remains. Beekeepers need to be on the lookout for wintertime colony losses and take measures to protect the combs. I stacked the frames of this hive atop the frames of a strong hive. Those bees will protect the combs, and a colony division in the spring, when queens become available, will restore the hive count.

--Richard

Mid-Winter Beekeeping

We cannot go deep into our bee hives in the winter, but it is good advice to make a brief inspection of our hives on warm winter days. Breaking hive boxes apart and removing brood frames in cold temperatures risks chilling and killing brood. On warmer days, we can open the hive covers and quickly look inside, simply looking for evidence that the bee colonies are alive and that they have adequate food to survive the remainder of the winter. We may see live bees in a hive as soon as we remove the covers, however the bees may be clustered lower in the hive and not immediately visible. In this case, we can usually determine that we have living bees by removing a frame from the center of the uppermost box to view below. If the colony is dead, we should protect the precious comb-covered frames by stacking them above the frames of a strong hive or placing them in a freezer. We can estimate the amount of stored honey in a hive by lifting the back of our hives an inch with our fingers. Any hives that feel light in weight are likely lacking in stored honey and in need of emergency feeding. As bees are reluctant to consume liquid sugar syrup in cold weather, we may feed bees dry sugar atop the inner covers of the hives. A shim placed between the inner and outer covers allows us to place plenty of sugar on the inner cover.

While existing beekeepers are checking on their overwintering hives, they are also sharing their experience with individuals preparing to start beekeeping. Local beekeeping associations are offering short courses to introduce people to the art and skill of beekeeping. The Ozark Foothills Beekeepers Association held two sessions of its Beekeeping 101 class, and is preparing for a Beekeeping 201 class to be followed in the summer by a class on harvesting and processing honey. An exceptionally large honey bee visited the class.

--Richard

Pax Vobiscum

 

Heifer Ranch is a working ranch and agricultural demonstration farm at Perryville, Arkansas. This year I witnessed at the ranch how honey bees play a role in restoring and enhancing the environment for both plants and animals. Managed honey bees along with feral colonies and native bees and pollinators play a quiet and barely seen role in the life of the ranch. For instance, bees pollinate legumes, including clover, vetch, lespedeza, alfalfa, partridge peas, and beggar’s lice, as they gather nectar and pollen to feed their colony. Pollination is the first step in the production of seed for these plants growing in pastures. Legumes provide high-value, nitrogen-rich food for livestock and wildlife animals, and legumes are but one family of flowering plants and grasses that feed livestock on the ranch. The livestock, selectively bred to thrive on grasses rather than grain feeds, are managed for sale for human consumption.

As well as producing seed by pollinating plants, bees benefit the environment by enriching the soil. Bacteria dwelling on the roots of legumes convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form suitable for use by plants. Thus, they enrich the soil and promote the growth of pasture grasses and increase the carrying capacity of the land. Regenerative agricultural practices employ measures replicating the natural grazing of wildlife that allows grasses to develop deep roots. Heifer Ranch cattle and sheep, shown here rotating to another of the ranch’s pastures of tall grasses, graze the way bison move across the Great Plains, constantly moving to forage available grasses. The cattle and sheep eat the top growth of the grasses and deposit manure that fertilizes the pastures. Their hooves push nutrients into the soil; the soil improves; grasses develop deeper roots; and the soil retains more water than soil under shallow roots. The honey bee queen ends her short winter break and starts laying eggs on the winter solstice to regenerate the colony. The Underhill family of Peace Bee Farm offer to all: Peace be with you.

--Richard

Bees Need Water

 

Honey bee foragers collect four things to bring into their hives: nectar, pollen, propolis and water. The bee colony is quite adept at controlling the temperature of its hive. Whenever there is brood in the hive, the bees regulate the temperature in the brood area to 95 degrees. With afternoon temperature climbing above 100 degrees in the shade, it is a challenge for bees to cool their hive, especially if it is located in the full sun. To assist in cooling the hive, foragers bring large amounts of water into the hive, and workers fan their wings over droplets of water. It is important that beekeepers supply their bees with a reliable source of water throughout the year. If there is a natural water source, such as a lake or stream within one quarter of a mile, bees will forage from it. In all other cases, beekeepers need to supply water in containers like we see in today’s photo. Useful water containers are typically placed in sunny locations, and they need floats or rocks for the bees to climb upon while foraging. Supplying water for hives in urban and suburban locations is particularly important, else bees will seek neighbors’ swimming pools. Bees love swimming pool water flavored with chlorine and suntan lotion. Foraging water with a flavor is part of the honey bee’s behavior of sharing the taste of food being foraged. When scout bees discover a food or water source, they share its taste with foragers they are recruiting. The scouts also mark the location of the water source with Nasanov gland pheromone.

On hot afternoons and evenings, bees move outside the hive and rest on the hive’s surface or hang in a bearding fashion to assist in cooling the brood area. Beekeepers can assist their colonies in cooling their hives by painting the hives in light colors. Placing hives to the east side of trees that provide afternoon shade helps cool the bees and the beekeepers working the hives.

--Richard

Double Screen Board

Honey bees produce queens on three occasions: when the colony reproduces through swarming, when the colony replaces its queen through supersedure, and in emergencies when the colony loses its queen. We can make colony divisions and produce queens by setting up hive conditions for a colony to produce an emergency queen. Honey bees detect the presence of their queen by the queen substance pheromone that she secretes. This pheromone is passed through the hive by touch, unlike her other pheromones which are aromas carried in the air. The queen’s retinue of attendant workers constantly stroke the queen, gathering queen substance pheromone and passing it to nearby workers. The pheromone is passed from bee to bee throughout the hive. As long as the bees receive queen substance pheromone, the colony is content. If the queen is not present in the hive, the colony detects her loss within one hour and begins replacing her within four hours.

Beekeepers employ the loss of queen substance pheromone to perform colony divisions known as “walk-away splits.” They can accomplish the production of a new queen and make a colony division using a double screen board. This simple device is a board with two screens separated so that queen substance cannot be passed between hive brood boxes. When placed between the brood boxes of a strong hive with bees and brood on both sides of the screens, one half of the hive is content, and the other half feels that it is queenless and starts producing an emergency queen from a young worker larva. This larva is fed royal jelly throughout its development into a virgin queen. After its emergence as an adult, the virgin queen exits the hive for her mating flights through an entrance in the double screen board. She will begin laying eggs in about one month from the time of starting the procedure. In today’s photo workers return at the double screen board entrance with pollen to feed the new queen’s brood.

--Richard

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

Splitting Honey Bee Colonies

Making colony divisions, also called making splits, follows the natural behavior of honey bees. It is the natural behavior of honey bee colonies to build up rapidly in the spring, outgrow their hive, and then divide the population and swarm. By swarming, bees increase their number of colonies, expand their range, and leave behind old, contaminated hives. When beekeepers make a colony division or split, they are producing an artificial swarm. Splitting hives is useful for creating new hives, for producing nucleus colonies for sale, or for replacing over-winter colony losses. Splitting colonies is an effective method of controlling swarming.

The simplest method of splitting a colony, though not necessarily the best method, is the walk-away split. Here, the beekeeper divides a hive’s frames among two hive boxes. The beekeeper puts frames of bees, brood, pollen, and honey in a new hive box and leaves the bees to rear a new queen. Once the bees have detected that they are queenless, they will produce a new queen if they have the resources. If the split is successful in rearing a new queen, she will be laying eggs in about one month. A more reliable method of making a split is to take the same frames from a strong hive and put them in a new hive along with the colony’s original queen. Then, a new queen is introduced into the original hive. Splitting a colony while adding a new queen allows  both hives to continue growing with little delay in brood production. If a queen cell is used when splitting a hive, we should expect a delay of almost a month before the new queen starts laying eggs. Timing when to start splitting a colony is important. Often, beekeepers start the process too early in the year, resulting in poorly mated queens and weak colonies. We should inspect our hives and observe the drones. Splitting hives should begin when there are plenty of drones walking on the frames.

--Richard Underhill

A January Thaw

 

The bees are flying today. Even though it is the middle of the winter, the weather is warm today, a January thaw. Bees are making foraging and cleansing flights. Warm southern winds often bring a few days that allow the bees to break out of their winter cluster. During these warm periods, beekeepers get an opportunity to briefly open their hives for a quick check. This will not be a thorough hive inspection; we will only check to see that the colonies are alive and that they have enough food to survive until spring flowers bring a nectar flow. The beekeeper gently smokes the hives and opens the covers. Since bees tend to move upward in their hives through the winter, the beekeeper may find the cluster at the very top of the hive. If that is where we find the bees, it is likely that the bees have consumed much of their winter food stores and the colony needs an emergency feeding of dry sugar placed above the inner cover. If the bees are not seen, the colony may be clustered in a lower box underneath a box full of honey. In this case, we may pull a frame to peer into the box below. If we see the cluster of live bees there, all is well; we can close the hive feeling comfortable about the colony’s chance of surviving the remainder of the winter.

 

If a colony is found to have died, usually by starvation, its remaining honey stores can be distributed to other hives. The combs of dead-out hives need to be protected from hive scavengers. The equipment can be brought to an indoor storage facility or the frames can be protected by the bees of strong living colonies. Stacking hive bodies or honey supers on strong hives protects the combs from wax moths and small hive beetles. This equipment can be used in the spring to make colony divisions. Today’s photo: winter foraging flights.

--Richard

Bee Day

 

Following two days of rain, the sun broke out on a crisp and cool April morning. My first presentation was scheduled to be conducted in the bee yard. As a videographer was connecting my microphone and focusing the cameras on the line of bee hives stretching into the distance, one hundred beekeepers gathered. Thus began Bee Day at Bemis Honey Bee Farm in Little Rock, Arkansas, a day when people came to receive hundreds of packaged colonies and nucleus colonies of honey bees. They also came for speaking presentations and bee yard demonstrations held throughout the day. I was honored to share speaking sessions with Dr. Dewey M. Caron, the person who literally wrote the book on the topic, Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping. Since Bee Day coincided with Earth Day, Dr. Caron led off with a discussion of the importance of trees and their condition in a world being altered by global warming. He spoke on the biology of honey bee colony reproduction through swarming, and he explained how to read the activity inside bee hives. Alternating with Dr. Caron, I made presentations on the beekeeping year, illustrating how we manage bees that can produce queens in five months but cannot produce them in seven months. I made a presentation on potential pests of bee hives, which include people, pets, livestock, raccoons, possums, skunks, bears, wasps, hornets, ants, and parasitic mites. Dr. Caron concluded our classroom presentations by covering measures to control colony-killing varroa mites. We both emphasized the use of the resources available in the Tools for Varroa Management guide, much of which was written by Dr. Caron. The guide is available through the Honey Bee Health Coalition, honeybeehealthcoalition.org

 

Throughout the day, beekeepers attended demonstrations conducted in the bee yard. A state apiary inspector demonstrated hive inspections, and Jody Carter discussed queen rearing and making colony divisions. Jeremy Bemis demonstrated how to install packaged bees and nucleus colonies in bee hives. Today’s photo: Dr. Dewey M. Caron.

--Richard

Pax Vobiscum

 

The sun is setting across the snow-covered rolling hills of the PalouIse of eastern Washington State . This is the region where I am spending  the winter months with family members. Much of the country is experiencing an exceptionally strong winter storm, and beekeepers’ efforts to protect their colonies are being severely tested. Only in the spring will we find how effectively we prepared our hives for winter. The colonies relatively free of parasitic mites will survive if their hives are adequately ventilated, and the colonies have enough stored food that the bees can readily access. Healthy colonies generate heat by eating honey, the high-energy food that they make themselves, and vibrating their flight muscles. Bees can generate a temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit in their flight muscles. While I visit the frigid Pacific Northwest, I am confident that my colonies in Arkansas are faring well in their stormy weather. Before leaving Arkansas, I measured their mite loads and ensured that they had plenty of stored food supplies. The bees are clustered in dry hives.

 

I am most grateful for the kind sentiments and words of support provided to me by beekeepers and acquaintances from around the country and even around the world following the death of Rita, one of the founders of Peace Bee Farm. As well as being a cheerful and devoted life partner, she was an integral part of the bee business. Now, other family members are learning the art and craft of beekeeping. In this cold, wintery holiday season observed by many of the world’s great religions and traditions, I offer warm wishes that peace be with you.

--Richard

Pax Vobiscum

Beekeepers are science people. Everyday, they practice applied honey bee biology. Successful beekeepers apply both the craft of beekeeping passed down for generations by those who handled bees and the science of honey bee health. The science is our understanding of the life cycle and nature of honey bees and their pests and pathogens based upon observations and experiments. Our understanding of the science is not fixed; it changes as more observations are made and new experiments are designed, conducted, and repeated. Successful American beekeepers adjust their beekeeping practices to help their bees survive the adverse effects of viruses vectored by two invasive parasitic mite species that arrived in the mid-1980s and an invasive hive-scavenger beetle introduced in the late-1990s. Those who do not take measures to combat these invasive species see their bee colonies die. As colonies decline before dying, they spread pests and pathogens to other hives.

 

Beekeepers, and the public at large, are continuing to cope with Covid-19 virus, which continues to mutate into new variants. Now, within two years of Covid’s introduction into the human population, the U.S. has confirmed over 800,000 deaths. Individuals who do not take precautions to avoid the virus are likely to acquire a deadly disease. Fortunately, we have learned much about the nature of the novel Covid-19 virus and how it is passed between people via aerosol droplets. We have effective vaccinations, and we know that we can greatly limit the spread of Covid by wearing masks, sanitizing hands, and keeping a distance between people. Just as we can protect our bee colonies by controlling the parasitic mites and their vectored viruses, we can protect ourselves, our families, and our community by taking measures to prevent the spread of the Covid virus. Almost everyone knows someone who has been affected by the Covid virus. I look forward to meeting beekeepers at our training events in the coming year. The Underhill family of Peace Bee Farm wish everyone: Peace be with you.

--Richard

Winter Solstice

People become beekeepers for a number of reasons. Some are interested in producing honey; some want to increase the number of pollinators available for their gardens; and some are simply interested in learning the craft of keeping such interesting social insects. Many new beekeepers are already aware of the environmental conditions affecting bees and people. Almost all beekeepers rapidly become environmentally conscious. They see that honey bees have the same requirements as those other social creatures—humans: food, water, a dry place to live, and an environment free of toxins. Until parasitic mites of honey bees arrived in the mid-1980s, a person could order a bee hive and a colony of live bees from a mail-order catalogue and expect that they would have live bees and honey for years to come. However, with invasive pest species, changing agricultural practices, and the ever-increasing use of pesticides, keeping honey bees alive has become much more challenging. Well-informed beekeepers have taken the challenge seriously. Individuals who keep a few hives in their backyards, those who keep dozens of hives as a part-time business, and commercial beekeepers each study the biology of the honey bee and the pests and the pathogens that affect bees. They learn the science of bee health and the behavior of honey bees from text books and training classes. They learn the craft of beekeeping from the generous sharing of knowledge by experienced beekeepers via local, state, and national organizations.

 

A number of urban beekeepers experienced the loss of colonies as the result of environmental poisoning in 2021. Since healthy colonies have enough bees to withstand the loss of a sizable number of worker bees, some colonies survived. Other colonies died. Some of the affected beekeepers were able to politely inform their neighbors of the importance of the bees and the need to handle pesticides prudently. Beekeepers are environmental stewards. Today, the winter solstice, marks the beginning of the honey bee year with queens starting to lay eggs again.

--Richard

The Bee Hive in Fall

 

As the seasons change from summer to fall, conditions in the bee hive and tasks for the beekeeper change as well. Summer flowers that produce light flavored honeys become replaced by fall flowers that produce more robust honeys. Beekeepers typically finish their summer honey harvests and begin ensuring that hives have enough honey stores for entering the winter months when flowers are not blooming and bees rely upon stored food. Bee hive pests take an increased toll on hives in late summer and early fall. Small hive beetle populations often explode in weak or queenless hives. Small hive beetles begin laying eggs in great numbers when they detect a hive is under stress. Within a few days, thousands of ravenous small hive beetle larvae begin consuming a hive’s pollen stores, combs, and brood. Yeast, spread by the beetles, ferments honey in the hive; fermented honey is unacceptable to the bees and useless to the beekeeper. With the start of the fall season, queen bees naturally reduce their egg laying, and bee populations gradually decrease. At the same time, parasitic varroa mite populations typically reach their annual peak. As soon as the honey harvest is completed, hives need to be checked for varroa mite loads. The Honey Bee Health Coalition offers useful information for treating varroa mites at https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/varroa/. If mite populations exceed thresholds, treatments need to be applied. Harsh chemicals should be avoided. Persistent chemicals remain in the beeswax combs and lead to resistant strains of parasitic mites.

 

Honey bees that emerge as adults in the spring and summer typically live about six weeks. However, honey bees that emerge in the fall may live for six months. This is important because the long-lived fall bees that survive the winter feed the first bee brood of the following year. Beekeepers can extend their queens’ egg laying through October by feeding pollen substitute which stimulates queens to lay eggs. Today’s photo: bumblebees and native pollinators are attracted to houseleek in our pollinator garden.

--Richard

Small Hive Beetles

 

The worker bees in a strong colony protect the fragile beeswax combs that hold honey, pollen, bee bread, and brood required to sustain the colony. However, whenever a colony is weakened, either by becoming queenless or through disease, hive scavengers rapidly move in and destroy the combs. The principal hive scavengers are wax moths and small hive beetles, and it is the larval stage of both of these insects that destroys the combs of unprotected hives. Wax moths have been a part of American beekeeping since the bees were brought to the New World in colonial times. However, the small hive beetle is a much more recently introduced invasive pest, having arrived from Africa in 1998. It spread across the country in just four years.

 

Strong honey bee colonies have plenty of workers to drive adult beetles to the far edges of the hive where the bees build “jails” of propolis to trap and hold beetles. If a hive loses its queen or is stressed by disease or environmental damages, the opportunistic beetles rapidly expand their reproduction, and small hive beetle populations explode exponentially. Beetle reproduction is especially rapid in hot weather. Today’s photo shows beetle larvae in a hive that lost its queen in a late summer supersedure attempt. The voracious larvae are attracted to the protein of stored pollen. As beetle larvae devour the hive’s pollen, honey, brood, and beeswax combs, they leave behind a “slime” of their waste. Yeast grows on the slime which has the odor of fermenting oranges. The odor repels honey bees and attracts small hive beetles from great distances. The beetles’ highly sensitive antennae detect honey bee alarm pheromone from distressed colonies small hive beetle slime odor. It often takes the bees a full year to build their combs, and they can be destroyed quickly by small hive beetle larvae. Scavenging beetle larvae destroy natural beeswax hive foundation, but plastic foundation can be reused after washing away the slime with water.

--Richard

Insecticides Kill Bees

 

Honey bee foragers bring flower nectar and pollen into the hive as food. The nectar is carbohydrate that the bees convert into honey. Pollen is primarily protein; it also contains fats, vitamins, and minerals. When honey and pollen are combined in the hive, the food is called “bee bread.” Yeast and bacteria from the bees’ gut microflora cause fermentation of bee bread, breaking down the hard shell around pollen grains and exposing the proteins. Fermentation also preserves bee bread. Young worker bees consume bee bread, and glands in the workers’ head produce brood food that nurse bees feed to developing bee larvae. Bee bread is also used to produce royal jelly, a high-energy food fed to all brood in its first day and fed to the queen bee throughout her life.

When honey bee foragers visit flowers, pollen grains adhere to the bees’ hairy bodies. The bees groom the dusty pollen into pellets that they carry on “pollen baskets” on their hind legs. Honey bees at times pick up environmental dusts that adhere to their bodies similarly to pollen. Grain dust from poultry feed is commonly collected by honey bees. Chemical pesticides in dust form are also accidentally collected by bees and brought back to the hives. Carbaryl, an insecticide sold under the name “Sevin,” is particularly deadly to honey bees when applied to flowers in dust form. Insecticides may kill honey bees rapidly on contact or ingestion. However, they may kill bees more slowly if the poison is stored as pollen and later converted into bee bread. When the bees feed their brood secretions from poisoned bee bread, they kill the developing bees. Likewise, they can kill the queen by feeding her poisoned royal jelly. Beekeepers look for larger numbers of dead bees on the ground near the hive entrances, seen in today’s photo. I, and other area beekeepers, lost brood and queens in a number of hives. Those using insecticides should use caution and be prudent applying chemicals.

--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