Pax Vobiscum

The honey bee’s year begins on December 21, the winter solstice, and the start of our winter. The weather today is seasonal for central Arkansas. Temperatures hover around 45 with a light rain falling through the day, good weather for the bees. Colonies consume the least amount of their winter stores of food while confined in their hives at this temperature. The colony’s winter cluster of bees expands and contracts with the temperature. On warmer days, the cluster expands and consumes honey near the cluster. On colder days, the cluster contracts tightly, consuming honey to generate heat. Over the winter, the cluster eats honey above the cluster and moves slowly upward in the hive. On extended periods of cold weather, the constricted cluster may not move into available stored honey. The cluster remains in place, protecting its brood. Because colonies share their food, bees die at the same time when they run out of food, and a cluster may starve even with ample honey nearby. It is a frustration to find dead bees as shown today with their heads in the empty cells, the tell-tale sign of starvation, when there is plenty of honey only inches away.

On our first brief hive inspection on a warm day in late winter, we merely check for live or dead colonies. If the bees are alive, we estimate if there is enough food remaining in the hives to last until spring flowers bring about a nectar flow. If a hive is short on remaining honey, we apply emergency feeding of dry cane sugar to save the colony from starvation. If the bees have starved, we protect the combs until next spring by stacking the boxes on strong hives and distributing frames of honey to other hives that may need some extra food. The Underhills of Peace Bee Farm encourage you to share your food and warmth. To our friends of the great religions and traditions of the world, we offer: Peace be with you.

--Richard

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

An Ancient Tradition Repeated

The death of Elizabeth II, the Queen of England brings public expressions of sympathy conveyed in traditions dating back hundreds of years. It also brings about a private expression of sympathy that also dates back through the centuries. John Chapple, the queen’s royal beekeeper, quietly notified the bees of the queen’s death, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/world/europe/bees-queen-elizabeth.html. John travelled to Buckingham Palace and Clarence House to notify the bees that their mistress had died and that they would have a new master, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11199259/. Aware of the significance of the loss of a loved one, it was Queen Elizabeth who told us, “Grief is the cost of love.”

 

As summer ends, goldenrod comes into bloom and attracts bees and myriad native pollinators. Today, a honey bee collects pollen: protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals to feed her colony’s brood. Flowers bring rebirth. Reassuring, along with Elizabeth’s words.

--Richard

Can Plants Hear Bees?

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

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

--Richard

The Winter Solstice

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

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

--Richard

Fall Bee Hive Set-Up

Fall bee hive management tasks prepare the hives for the bees’ winter survival. When the beekeeper sets up the hives for winter on a warm fall day, he or she will make a number of observations and hive adjustments. First, the hives must be queen-right. We don’t need to actually locate the queen, just see evidence that the hives have a healthy queen. Finding eggs or larvae tell us that a queen has been laying eggs recently. Queen bees reduce their egg laying in the fall and usually stop laying eggs completely as winter approaches. If a colony is weak, we should combine it with a strong colony. It is best to take our winter losses in the fall and not risk losing valuable honeycombs to wax moths. It is extremely important for beekeepers to manage parasitic Varroa mite levels in the hives. We should sample the bees and measure the mites using an alcohol wash or powdered sugar roll test. If Varroa levels exceed a three percent threshold, then a mite treatment of the hives is needed. Bees in colonies with high mite levels have a shortened life expectancy, and these colonies often perish during cold weather due to a lack of sufficient bees to provide winter cluster warmth.

To successfully over-wintering bees, the hives must have sufficient winter stores of honey, properly placed so that the bees can access it; and the hives must have adequate ventilation, particularly at the top. Arkansas hives require approximately 60 pounds of honey stores. Frames of honey should be on the edges of the fall cluster of bees, and the majority of the honey should be above the bees’ cluster. The beekeeper will likely need to rearrange hive boxes or frames to place the fall cluster low in the hive. As the winter progresses, the bee cluster will slowly move upward, eating through the stored honey. Remove all queen excluders, and reduce hive entrances as in today’s photo.

--Richard

The January Thaw

In the middle of the winter we often experience a short period of warm weather, a “January thaw.” During such a warm spell, bees will break out of their winter cluster to move about the hive and collect stored honey. If outside temperatures are above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, bees will be seen flying from the hive. Some are gathering nectar from skunk cabbage and dandelions; some are collecting water to liquify stored honey; and some are making cleansing flights to eliminate stored body waste. The January thaw is a good time for the beekeeper to make his or her first quick check of the bee hives. Since there is likely to be brood in the hives, they cannot be opened for a thorough inspection. We don’t want to break apart the brood nest or leave the hive open except for a very short time else risk chilling and killing the brood. However, we can determine whether a particular hive is running out of stored food by gently lifting the back of the hive and comparing its weight to other hives. Any light-weight hives likely need some emergency feeding to carry the bees through the winter. Also, any hives that show large numbers of bees located in the upper-most portion of the hive likely need emergency feeding. The bees in these hives have likely consumed the stored honey above their brood nest, or their stored honey is located in a portion of the hive that the bees will not access. In either case, the colonies risk starvation, the greatest killer of honey bees.

Mid-winter feeding of bees is emergency feeding. It can be accomplished by feeding full frames of honey taken from other hives or from the beekeeper’s storage. Gently scratch the capping to expose the honey, and place the frames directly above the brood nest. Dry sugar can be fed above the hive’s inner cover as in today’s photo. A wooden shim lifts the outer cover to accommodate extra sugar.

--Richard

Questions from Switzerland

Alexandra, an interested reader of The Peace Bee Farmer, writes several questions from her home in Switzerland. Here are some of her questions and my attempts at answering: “Foremost, how can a bee colony survive when humans steal their honey?” Alexandra, this question is at the crux of beekeeping. The bees will starve if the beekeeper robs too much of the colony’s stored honey. We can’t judge how severe a winter will be; so, when harvesting, we have to rely on the shared experience of those who have kept bees in this local area. And, most importantly, we must not be too greedy! Next, “I suppose the quality of honey varies. Does this show?” Honey varies throughout the year, and it varies from year to year. The product that we harvest changes according to the flowers that come into bloom. Different times of the year and different weather conditions will dictate which flowers are available for the bees to forage for nectar to make into honey. Typically, spring and summer flowers produce light-colored honeys with mild fragrance and taste. Honey derived from trees are generally darker in color and more robust in flavor. In the Mid-South of the US, fall honeys are much stronger in flavor and aroma.

Alexandra asks how nutrition affects honey bee immune systems. This is a topic of intense study. Honey bee nutrition greatly affects the health of the bees. This topic was discussed by Dr. Dewey Caron at the Arkansas Beekeepers Association’s conference in Little Rock. Dr. Caron explained that optimal nutrition boosts the bees’ immune system and boosts their detoxifying enzymes. Optimal nutrition often results from the bees having access to a great diversity of flowering plants that bloom throughout the spring, summer, and fall months. One of the ways that we can help the bees and the other native pollinators is to provide plants that bloom throughout the seasons. Today’s photo shows a honey bee foraging a late-season rose in Idaho’s Treasure Valley.

--Richard

New Findings on Queen Bees

Queen bees and worker bees develop from fertilized eggs, and drone bees develop from nonfertilized eggs. Queens develop from eggs laid in downward facing queen cell cups similar to the one on the side of a top bar hive comb (photo by Melissa Bridgman). A New York Times piece, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/science/honeybees-queens.html?,  describes recently published research from PLOS Genetics identifying a newly-identified mechanism involved in the development of queen bees. It has long been known that queen bee development is associated with diet. Worker bees feed developing queen bees and worker bees a different diet even though they both develop from the same fertilized eggs. The larvae of both queens and workers are fed an enriched food, royal jelly, in the first day of larval development. Worker larvae are then fed secretions workers produce from “bee bread,” a food consisting of fermenting pollen and honey. Queen larvae, however, continue to receive royal jelly through their larval development and throughout their life.

The new research finds that caste development, the differentiation of queens, which have a complete reproductive system, from workers, that are sterile, uses plant-based small molecules called microRNA. The study’s co-author, Dr. Chen-Yu Zhang explains, “The royal jelly and plant microRNA work together to affect caste formation.” It now appears that the plant-based molecules suppress the workers’ ovary development. This research expands our understanding of queen bee caste differentiation. It also reflects the interdependence of plants and honey bees. Flowering plants and bees have been co-evolving for the past 100 million years. Plants and bees share microRNA, a plant substance that affects bee development and a bee substance that is important in the development of certain flowers. Dr. Zhang explains that microRNA from bees can make flowers larger and more colorful. The authors relate that these microRNA molecules affect species in different kingdoms, such as plants and insects or plants and humans. Other experts reacting to the report expect that microRNA will emerge as a major area of research in human medicine.

--Richard

Pollen Bees

Our managed hives are home to honey bees, but some people think that these industrious creatures should be called “pollen bees.” Of course, honey bees produce honey; but they also spend their lives deeply involved in handling pollen. While bees are collecting pollen from flowers and bringing it back to their hive for food, they are also moving pollen among flowers. Pollen is the male reproductive cells of flowering plants. As honey bees fly, their bodies pick up an electrostatic charge. When the foraging workers encounter flowers, fine grains of pollen adhere to their hairy bodies. As bees move around within a flower and as they move from flower to flower, they unknowingly transfer grains of pollen to the sticky female flower organs, the stamens. This begins the reproduction of the flowering plant. Pollen that the bees carry to the hive provides protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals for the bees’ diet. Once pollen has been combined with honey, a carbohydrate, the bees have a complete diet. The mixture of pollen and honey ferments with microorganisms supplied by the bees to become “bee bread,” the source of bee brood food.

Arkansas’s warm weather in January allowed bees to leave their hives to forage for pollen. Several central Arkansas beekeepers noticed bees returning to the hives with green-colored pollen. Pollen occurs in colors from white to black. Much is yellow or orange in color. Dandelion, like the wildflower being foraged for pollen in today’s photo, is the first reliable source of pollen in mid-winter. Skunk cabbage, a plant that sometimes sprouts through snow-covered ground, is another plant to bloom early in the year. The availability of foraged pollen stimulates the queens to lay eggs. Since queens resumed their egg laying on the winter solstice, December 21, many hives now have considerable brood to feed and protect from chilling. Make sure that your bees have plenty of stored honey. There’s still a long time before nectar and pollen are abundant in April.

--Richard

Fall Hive Management

The roadsides are bright yellow with bitterweed; pink-flowered smartweed covers any damp ground; and field margins bloom with goldenrod and various colors of fall asters. It is time to start preparing the hives for winter. The queens have gradually reduced their egg laying through the end of summer. Now, we would like to extend their egg production throughout October so that the colonies will have plenty of longer-lived worker bees going into winter. Unlike the bees that emerge in spring and summer which have a short lifespan, late season bees can survive the winter. These workers will be the ones that produce the food for the first brood reared early next year. We can stimulate the queen to continue to lay eggs by feeding protein to the hives. An easy way to do this is to place pollen substitute inside a weather-protected container outside the hives.

Our bees must have plenty of honey in the hives to eat over winter. If the hives are short on honey stores now, reduce hive entrances and feed sugar syrup to help the bees build up adequate food stores. It is important that the honey is positioned in the hives so that the bees can access it during cold weather. There should be some honey on the sides of the brood nest and plenty of honey above the brood. If one hive has more frames of capped honey than will be needed, the beekeeper may move some of these frames to hives that are short on honey stores. If queen excluders were used, we must remove them from the hives in the fall. Since bee clusters move upward in the hive during the winter, it is possible for a queen to be left trapped below a queen excluder accidentally left in a hive. A final issue in fall hive preparation regards ventilation. We must make sure that there is adequate air flow, especially at the top of the hive. Today’s photo: fall asters.

--Richard

Looking Ahead

Good beekeepers are always thinking six months in advance. When we make our first brief hive inspection in late winter, we check to see if the bees survived the winter. At the same time, we are also checking to see if the colony has the potential to expand into a strong summer colony. If the bees didn’t survive the winter, we protect the combs so that we can fill the hive with a new colony in the spring. When we feed our bees pollen and sugar syrup in the spring, we stimulate the queen to lay eggs and produce a large population of bees to gather an abundance of summer honey or pollinate crops. In the spring, when we reverse our hive bodies and expand the brood nest by rearranging brood frames, not only are we providing space for our queens to lay eggs now, we are also reducing the bees’ desire to swarm later on.

Our bees rely upon us to build their hives. We must plan ahead and build enough hive bodies to accommodate a large colony and enough supers to hold next summer’s honey. Effective beekeepers learn when major nectar flows occur so that they can place the supers on their hives in time to gather a surplus of honey. When we harvest and extract honey, we are also preparing the combs for next year’s honey crop. When we treat our hives for Varroa mites in the fall, we are killing mites at the time and ensuring that we will have a larger population of bees to maintain a warm cluster in the winter. When we provide supplemental feedings in the fall, we are encouraging our queens to extend their egg laying, ensuring that we will have plenty of longer-lived worker bees to produce the brood food for next year’s first brood. Likewise, when we set up our hives for winter, we are actually setting the conditions for finding a healthy colony in the spring.

--Richard

A Warm Winter

We are continuously reminded that the climate is in change. Measurements made by NASA and NOAA revealed that the earth warmed to record levels this past year (www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/01/20/its-official-2015-smashed-2014s-global-temperature-record-it-wasnt-even-close/?wpisrc=nl_rainbow). Following this warm year, our Mid-South winter has been so mild that it seems more like an extended fall season. While warm winter weather makes for comfortable days for humans, it potentially leads to starvation of honey bee colonies. Normally, in the winter honey bees remain clustered together for warmth inside their hive and only fly when the outside temperature rises above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This year’s warm temperatures have been the trend through this mild winter. Flying bees search for flowers in bloom to forage for nectar and pollen. Unfortunately, few blooms are available at this time of the year. Flying expends more energy than the bees would require if they remained clustered inside their hives. The result is the bees consume their honey stores faster than in cooler winters. Several area beekeepers have already experienced losing colonies to starvation, which usually peaks in March in the Mid-South. It is a good idea for beekeepers to supply some emergency feeding of sugar to hives that are light in weight at this time.

Today’s photo reveals a colony of bees that died of starvation. You can see that the queen has been laying eggs by the fact that the cluster of bees is gathered around capped cells of pupae. The bees must maintain a 95 degree temperature in the brood area. The bees consume plenty of honey to generate the heat to warm the brood. The fact that the colony died of starvation is readily revealed by the dead bees with their heads downward in the cells. Due to the honey bees’ food-sharing behavior, the entire colony dies at one time as the honey stores in the hive are depleted. Beekeepers need to watch their hives carefully for a few more weeks until flowers spring into bloom.

--Richard

The Honey Harvest

Harvesting honey has always been known as “robbing.” Bees make honey and people take it from them. Honey bees are unique creatures. They are the only insects in the temperate zone that stay alive and active throughout the year. They do this by making and storing a high-energy food for the winter: honey. The industrious honey bee makes honey from the nectar of flowering plants through the spring, summer, and fall. They continue to collect nectar as long as flowers are blooming. Then, during the dead of winter, bees cluster inside their hive and eat their stored honey for nutrition and to generate heat. A healthy bee hive produces about 500 pounds of honey per year, and it eats at least 90 percent of that honey. Prudent beekeepers can rob the excess 10 percent. However, if they get too greedy, the colony will die from starvation. Beekeepers share the experience of those who have kept bees in the past to learn how much honey they can safely rob. The honey harvest is a rewarding time for the beekeeper. Harvesting a surplus of honey means that the beekeeper has been successful in managing a large colony for the year. Some individuals have been tempted by the promise of a bee hive that automatically serves honey without the work of beekeeping. However, much of the joy of beekeeping results from actually opening the hive and interacting with the bees on their terms. Further, a bee hive with an automatic honey harvesting feature would likely rob too much of the colony’s necessary winter food, leading to colony starvation.

In today’s photo, taken in Larry Kichler’s honey house, a freshly harvested frame of honey sits in the mechanical uncapper that will make a series of thin slices through the beeswax cappings to expose the honey for extraction. Larry expresses the joy of managing hives, handling bees, and harvesting honey. He has 50 years of experience keeping bees and producing honey in Kansas and Arkansas.

--Richard

January Thaw

Honey bees in the temperate region spend the majority of the winter inside the hive, clustered together for warmth. The colder the temperature, the tighter the bees cluster together. On warmer days, the bees expand their cluster and move around inside the hive. On these warm days, the bees uncap cells of stored honey and share the honey among the clustered colony. When the hive cools at night, the bees constrict to a tight cluster, pulling away from the available stored honey. The cluster always covers hive frames that contain brood, warming and protecting the fragile developing bees. If the temperature remains cold for an extended period of time, the tightly clustered bees are left at a distance from their stored honey. This can easily lead to starvation; the bees run out of food while there may be ample food merely inches away.

It is common in the Mid-South to have a brief period of warm weather in the middle of the winter. During this “January thaw,” the bees are able to fly from the hive to make cleansing flights in which they defecate. Bees eliminate their body waste in flights outside the hive. This winter has seen somewhat erratic weather. This warm weather has given beekeepers an opportunity to make brief examinations of their hives. Quite a few beekeepers are finding larger than normal numbers of colonies have died as a result of starvation. Bee hive starvation is easily identified by finding a considerable number of dead bees with their bodies located inside the cells, head first as in today’s photo. The queen can be seen in the center. A number of Mid-South beekeepers found similar starvation situations. Each beekeeper distributed the surplus honey from the dead hives to living hives. There is still a considerable amount of winter awaiting the bees before spring flowers supply the bees with food. In the meantime, beekeepers can supply emergency feeding by pouring dry sugar onto the hives’ inner covers.

--Richard

Integrated Stress Management

When Colony Collapse Disorder was first detected in the U.S. in 2007, many factors were investigated as possible causes. No single cause arose, but colony stress was found to be a common denominator in all losses. Stress appears to come from three broad areas: increasingly virulent honey bee pathogens, neonicotinoid insecticides, and nutritional issues. The combined effect of these stressors weakens the bees’ immune system and leads to colony collapse. Honey bee pathogens are spread by parasitic Varroa mites. Tracheal mites still afflict bees, along with Nosema disease and Small Hive Beetles. Neonicotinoid insecticides are in wide-spread use throughout agriculture and lawns. Nutritional problems for bees often result from monocultural crop plantings and the loss of weedy flowering plants after the conversion of natural areas for industrial agriculture, pavement, and lawns

European researchers, writing in the journal Trends in Parasitology, http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-11/cp-csm111814.php, call for beekeepers to employ new schemes of “Integrated Stress Management” to help combat the effects of external stresses on bee immune systems. The researchers explain that honey bees “evolved unique mechanisms for interacting with pathogens.” Reducing stress may help the resilient bees survive. Often, this simply means examining our beekeeping practices. As we plan an integrated stress management plan, we may consider: Ensure that winter hives are dry and well ventilated. Every hive should have adequate stores of food—both honey and pollen—throughout the year. Don’t excessively rob the hives of their honey stores expecting to replace honey with sugar syrup or high fructose corn syrup, sources of carbohydrate lacking honey’s other nutrients. Don’t excessively split hives or shake bees to produce packages. Small colony size leads to problems like diminished foraging capacity, difficulty regulating hive temperature, either warming the winter cluster or cooling the hive in summer. Small colonies have difficulty defending the hive from intruders. Control parasites—especially Varroa mites—using the least toxic measures available. Breed bees for mite resistance. Avoid moving bees excessively for pollination service. Ask yourself, “Are we stressing our bees?”

--Richard

The Bee Hive in Fall

The success of the colony to survive the winter is largely dependent upon the health of the bees in the fall and the beekeeper’s efforts in setting up the hive for winter. Fall is a time of transition in the bee hive. The bee colony’s population is changing from the short-lived bees of summer to the longer-lived bees that live through the winter. Bees born in the early fall are the ones that will produce the brood food for the first bees the colony rears the following year. Food stores are important. Bees must be able to sustain themselves until flowers bloom again in the spring. The bees store food of both honey and pollen in cells in the bee hive. Other necessary nutrients for the colony’s survival are stored in fat bodies in the individual bees’ abdomens. The more food that bees have available in the fall, the more nutrients they store in these fat bodies. These bees with well-filled fat bodies are best able to produce brood food for bees reared before flowers start blooming in the spring.

The health of the bees is important for the survival of the colony through the winter. If a large number of the colony’s bees are afflicted by viruses spread by parasitic mites or by Nosema disease, many bees will likely die over winter. Hives losing excessive bees often do not have enough bees to maintain a warm environment in the winter cluster. In preparing the hive in the fall, the beekeeper needs to check for the presence of bee parasites. If Varroa mite loads are high, the colony will not survive for very long. Reducing Small Hive Beetle levels to a minimum in the fall helps control these pests in the following year. The winter bee hive must also be provided with adequate ventilation to prevent the warm, moist air from condensing inside the hive and dripping water on the clustered bees. Today’s photo: Jeremy Bemis prepares hives for winter.

--Richard

Vanishing Monarchs

Animals that consume a narrow diet are much more vulnerable than those eat a varied diet. While the honey bee derives its nutrition from many flower sources, the larvae of another insect, the monarch butterfly, relies solely upon one, the milkweed plant. Recent years have seen dramatic declines in the number of monarch butterflies. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in the Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-monarch-butterfly-herbicide-kennedy-perspec-102-20141021-story.html, that this past summer he saw no monarch butterflies in an area where he saw hundreds per day in previous years. Kennedy explains that scientists blame the loss of monarch butterflies in part on deforestation in Mexico, drought, climate change. However, the greatest cause of this migrating butterfly’s disappearance is the widespread use of the herbicide glyphosate, first marketed by Monsanto as Roundup. When Monsanto introduced “Roundup Ready” corn and soybeans in the late 1990s, farmers started spraying agricultural fields with the herbicide to kill everything except the desired crop. As a result of this change in farming practice, milkweed has been largely eliminated from much of America’s crop lands. To combat the loss of the monarch’s food, Kennedy suggests that we plant milkweed to create a “butterfly highway” along the monarch’s migratory route from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico. These plantings fit in nicely with efforts to help save bees, butterflies, and other at-risk pollinators.

The monarch’s treacherous migration of 2500 miles involves several generations. Butterflies east of the Rockies fly to Mexico to spend the winter, and monarchs west of the Rockies winter in California. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette illustrates their migration route through Arkansas at http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2014/oct/25/milkweed-and-monarchs-20141025/. Those wanting to provide milkweed for the passing butterflies can find sources of seed from the Xerces Society at http://www.xerces.org/milkweed-seed-finder/.  The monarch, considered by some as the most beautiful insect may respond to plantings of its required food in pollinator gardens. With flowers added, these gardens are important food plots for honey bees and native pollinators as well.

--Richard

Changing Seasons

We have endured a colder than normal winter in much of the United States. Beekeeping friends in Minnesota, Michigan, and Maine reported to me that their hives were in deep snow during much of the winter. Arkansas saw little snow, but received several significant ice storms. Speaking at a business luncheon today, I was questioned by many in the audience about how the honey bees fared over our colder than normal winter. I explained to the business leaders, who are truly concerned about the condition of bees, that it appears that our Arkansas Delta bees survived quite well. The cold weather kept the bees clustered in the hives, expending only enough energy to warm the cluster. Warmer winter weather often allows the bees more flying opportunities. Foragers searching in the winter for blooming flowers expend energy and consume greater amounts of stored honey. Fortunately, I set up my hives for the winter with plenty of honey stores. Still, they consumed large amounts of dry sugar that I placed atop the hives’ inner covers as a precaution against starvation.

March is the harshest month of the year for honey bees. After surviving a cold winter honey bee colonies often starve during the month of March. At this time of the year, colony populations are growing rapidly with nurse bees feeding large amounts of brood. Warming days allow bees to fly and forage, however, flowering plants are not yet blooming in abundance. When checking on the bees in March, even on cool, blustery days when it is not safe to open the hives, it is a good idea to gently lift the rear of the hives and estimate their weight. Light hives may be depleted of honey stores. Since honey bees share their food, starvation of the colony occurs at once. Some emergency feeding may save a strong colony from starvation. Today’s photo shows bees eagerly dusting in pollen substitute offered to the bees in a bucket for protection from the weather.

--Richard

Harsh March

A Minnesota beekeeper checks his hive and finds plenty of bees and ample stored honey. Shortly afterward, cold weather set in for several days. Two weeks later, he finds the bees in the hive are dead even though the hive still holds plenty of honey. March is often the harshest month for honey bees. Bee populations are growing; the increasing population of bees requires a lot of food; the hive's food stores are rapidly diminishing; and there are not many flowers blooming for bees to forage. On warm days, worker bees may expend more energy searching for food than they would consume if they remained in the hive. Also, when there is brood in the hive, the bees must warm the brood nest to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, requiring the consumption of honey to generate heat. The most likely cause of the death of the Minnesota bees is starvation. Starvation is easy to identify; the beekeeper finds the dead bees clustered with dead bees head-first inside empty cells as in today’s photo. Often, ample stores of honey surround the dead, starved bees.

In starvation, here's what typically happens: The bees expand their winter cluster on warm days and contract the cluster on cold nights. On warm days the bees eat the stored honey surrounding the cluster. Then, when outside temperatures fall, the cluster contracts leaving a ring of emptied cells surrounding the bees. If the winter colony has no brood, the cluster may move about the hive. However, if there is brood present, the clustered bees will not move away from the brood. During a prolonged period of cold weather the bees remain tightly clustered, and they can't move the few inches to the stored honey. Because the colony shares food, all of the bees die when the colony runs out of food that they can access. If beekeepers detect a hive is short of food stores in late winter, they can provide emergency feeding of dry sugar or fondant candy.

--Richard