Six Months from Now

Today, I am preparing the frames to hold the honey that the bees will be making six months from now. In the temperate zone, the honey bee colony follows a pattern throughout the year based upon the length of the day, the weather, and the flowering plants. To manage the colonies, beekeepers must be prepared for a series of changing events. There are no bees flying today; they’re clustered together inside the hives for warmth. The winter survival of bees in managed hives is largely dependent upon the actions of their beekeepers in late summer and throughout the fall. If the hives have adequate ventilation and enough food located close to the winter cluster where the bees can access it, then they stand a good chance of living until the weather warms and flowers start blooming. While it is important to always be considering the bees’ future needs and planning for equipping the hives as needed, not all actions are taken so far in advance. There will be plenty of opportunities for the beekeeper to check on the hives and take corrective actions. An occasional warm day later in the winter will allow me to peek briefly inside the hives and see if any of the colonies are running short of food. If so, some emergency feeding can usually carry the bees through the end of winter.

Click on today’s photo of a large flock of snow geese in the Arkansas Delta. These winter-visiting birds employ an effective scheme of surviving the changing seasons by migrating many hundreds of miles from their arctic breeding grounds to feeding grounds beyond the snow-covered regions. For protection from predators, the gregarious birds congregate in large numbers. Half of the birds are white with dark wing tips; the other half is a dark color phase of the same species known as the blue goose. When the birds are feeding in an open Delta field, the ground takes on the appearance of dirty snow.

--Richard

Winter in the Delta

The Arkansas Delta is the winter home of many migratory birds. Located along the central flyway, great numbers of waterfowl from Canada and the northern United States winter in the Delta. The harvested agricultural fields offer the migratory visitors ample high-energy food, and the Mississippi River and its tributaries afford cover and protection. The temperate Arkansas Delta experiences four distinct seasons. As fall turns into winter, ducks and geese arrive in great numbers. The last week of December brought large flocks of pintail ducks, as seen in today’s photo. I encountered these puddle ducks feeding in the wet stubble of a harvested rice field near one of our bee yards. Other fields hold mallards and northern shovelers, both colorful puddle ducks. Wary wood ducks hide in tree-lined corners of lakes on our bird sanctuary. Overhead, large flocks of snow geese can be seen throughout the day. A few dozen Canada geese drop in with our domestic geese at sundown. The birds gain weight in the winter eating high-energy spilled grain, plant material, and invertebrates. The migrants are driven to the South by snow cover preventing them from accessing food. They will remain in the Arkansas Delta throughout the winter unless the surface remains hard-frozen for an extended period. Then, they will move further south. The area’s farmers welcome the migratory waterfowl; many flood fields to provide food for the birds. The birds help control crop weeds, especially red rice, by eating the seed in flooded fields.

The waterfowl evolved a survival strategy based upon migrating with the changing seasons. In the fall and winter, they leave their snow-covered northern range and fly hundreds of miles to suitable grounds in the South. Some, like gadwalls and American wigeons fly early, but most wait until late. Migrating at night, they let the strong North winds of an arctic cold front carry them South, saving a great amount of energy. Meanwhile, honey bees remain inside their hives, generating warmth from high-energy honey.

--Richard

Mobility Means Survival

Of course, wild geese and honey bees can fly. Other than the fact that they both are capable of flight, they have little in common. However, both have evolved a strategy for survival based upon their mobility. The Arkansas Delta sees thousands of migrating snow geese in the winter. The ability to fly many hundreds of miles to their winter feeding grounds allows the birds to survive when their summer home is covered in ice and snow. The geese are able to thrive on the spilled grain from mechanical harvesting of agricultural fields as well as the dormant, green shoots of cool-weather crops, like winter wheat. The abundant winter forage allows the geese to return in the spring to their nesting grounds in a healthy condition. With good nutrition the birds have high survival rates for their offspring. Click on today’s photo to see a flock of snow geese feeding in the stubble of a Delta rice field. The flock includes both the black and white snow geese and the dark gray color phase of the same species, the blue goose. The gregarious birds often cover the ground, giving the appearance of dirty snow.

The honey bee also takes advantage of its mobility to survive by flying to various available flowering plants as they come into bloom throughout the year. A single colony will typically fly two and one half miles in every direction to forage an area of about nine thousand acres. They are able to pass from one species of flowering plant to another as these plants come into bloom throughout the year. It takes quite a large amount of forage to feed a flock of snow geese or a colony of honey bees. Neither would be successful if they were not able to move to the available food. For the honey bees to produce one pound of honey, the bees must fly a combined distance of 55 thousand miles, more than twice the distance around the world.
--Richard