Clover Honey

Throughout the spring, bees have been visiting flowering trees and plants to collect nectar and pollen to gather food for their colonies. Nectar from spring flowers makes for delightful, mild-flavored honey. Bees, like the one in today’s photo, make a surplus of honey from clover if there is a large population of forager-aged bees in the hive. Clover, the world’s greatest source of nectar for honey, is a legume which secretes nectar freely when temperatures are between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Beekeepers maximize their honey production by encouraging the build-up of the colonies to a maximum six weeks prior to the major nectar flows. Beekeepers are challenged to maintain their hives at such large populations, which are often on the verge of swarming. Once a hive has swarmed, it holds too few bees to make a harvestable surplus of honey. Beekeepers enjoy taking advantage of springtime swarming to add colonies to their bee yards. Captured swarms make up for winter colony losses as well as increasing one’s hive count. This year saw plenty of seasonal springtime swarming; we shook a number of swarms from tree limbs, and we captured several colonies of bees in swarm traps. Swarms captured in Arkansas before the Fourth of July have enough time to build honeycombs in their new hives for the queen to have cells to lay eggs and for the bees to store honey for the upcoming winter if the beekeeper provides the hive with supplemental feeding. However, swarms hived after the Fourth of July do not have enough time to build combs in their hive, and usually perish over winter. It is, therefore, better to combine these late-season swarms with existing colonies.

The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing everyone to make significant changes in their daily activities to protect each other as the virus spreads. The local library is providing online entertainment and information for young children through their Family Nature Club. You may watch Mary Spears Polk interview me at https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=264340481462017.

--Richard

Mid-Winter Hive Check

Local beekeepers took advantage of above-average January temperatures to check their hives. One found his hives full of bees and brood and, fearing swarming, asked me if he should split the colonies. I recommended that he wait while making sure that they have plenty of stored food and hive capacity. February is too early to divide colonies in central Arkansas. The bees, which are now protecting brood, need to have strong winter colonies to provide cluster warmth. Also, commercially produced queens are not available in the winter, and it’s a long time till colonies will be able to make their own queens. I suggested to the beekeeper that if he wants to increase his hive count, he should wait until there are plenty of drones walking on the combs before making splits. I like to see large numbers of adult drones on the combs to tell me when it is time to produce queens. With brood production increasing, colonies will continue to expand, experiencing an increased demand on their dwindling supply of stored honey. The maximum stressful situation will occur in March. As we approach March, colonies have large populations of bees, little natural forage, and no queens available.

With the beekeeper’s concern that his bees were crowding their hives, I suggested that he should try to suppress the bees’ urge to swarm by making sure that the colonies have plenty of hive capacity. He could, on a fairly warm day, add another box of drawn comb atop the existing hive bodies. Frames of capped honey should be placed directly above the brood nest. Since bees move upward in their hives over winter, when spring approaches, he can reverse the hive bodies to expand the available brood area. Warm weather in winter affords bees the opportunity to forage red maple, as in today’s photo. Red maple is a good source of pollen and nectar; however, in many years, cold or rainy weather prohibits bees from foraging this early-blooming tree.

--Richard

Black Willow in Bloom

The beekeeping seasons change rapidly in the Mid-South, and the sight of black willow trees in bloom along sandbars of Arkansas’s Buffalo National River is a milestone in the beekeeper’s year. Willow trees bloom in Arkansas between February and April. Throughout March, the honey bees’ harshest month, beekeeping efforts are largely devoted to trying to keep colonies alive. Rapidly expanding colonies are eating the remainder of last fall’s stored honey. This honey consumption is largely occurring ahead of the spring nectar flow. If the beekeeper was too greedy in robbing the hives last year, starvation during March is likely.  However, April sees a massive increase in available flowering plants, and many of these important bee plants are trees along waterways. Willow trees are an abundant source of both nectar and pollen, and they are highly attractive to honey bees. On warm spring days, large numbers of honey bees may be found foraging willow’s colorful yellow catkins.

Increases in pollen being brought into the hive stimulate queens to increase egg laying. Honey bee colonies never turn away excess nectar being brought into the hive by foragers. As the honey bee foragers bring in greater amounts of nectar, many colonies experience brood nest congestion when the bees store nectar in the brood nest. If there are not enough empty honeycombs outside the brood nest to hold the nectar, the bees will place it in the cells needed for the queen’s egg laying. Brood nest congestion often leads to swarming. Mid-South beekeepers experience many occurrences of swarming in early April. Some see their own hives swarming. If the beekeeper is able to capture his or her own swarm, the bee yard merely receives an unscheduled colony division. Many beekeepers capture swarms to replace colonies lost over winter. In areas where Africanized honey bees are not present, swarms are welcomed as a source of honey bee genetic diversity. Willow honey is light in color and described as having a pleasant aromatic flavor.

--Richard

Swarm Season

Healthy honey bee colonies swarm. Swarming is the honey bee’s way of reproducing on a colony-wide basis. Honey bees typically swarm in the spring, and this season has been exceptionally “swarmy.” The Mid-South experienced a warm winter, and springtime weather arrived early. Warm weather and frequent rains brought plenty of wildflowers into bloom. Mild weather allowed the bees to take advantage of red maple and other early-blooming plants. Early-season pollen flows stimulated the queens to rapidly increase egg-laying in late winter and spring. Unless beekeepers expand the capacity of their hives in the spring by rearranging hive bodies and adding extra boxes of frames, hives tend to get congested with honey. Brood nest congestion, where the queen doesn’t have adequate numbers of cells to lay eggs, leads to swarming.

Beekeepers don’t like for their hives to swarm. The smaller resulting colonies don’t have enough bees to produce a surplus of honey. The effect of a hive’s swarming is that this year’s honey crop just flew away! However, beekeepers are often able to capture swarms of bees where they rest, often on a tree limb or structure like the wall of a house, before they fly away to a permanent nesting location. These captured bee colonies make for good replacements of winter hive losses. Captured swarms are particularly useful because the bees are especially capable of drawing out beeswax honeycombs. If the beekeeper feeds sugar syrup to a newly hived swarm, it will rapidly fill the hive with honeycombs. Captured bee swarms are a source of genetic diversity, and they may bring in desirable traits. Beekeepers should evaluate their swarm colonies and replace the queen if the bees show undesirable traits, such as excessive defensiveness. Today’s photo: young workers make orientation flights at the entrance to a hive of swarming bees captured in early April. Swarm catching can be quite exciting. A beekeeping friend, an avid outdoorsman, proclaims that he would rather catch a swarm of bees than a five-pound bass!

--Richard

A Dry Swarm

Before honey bees swarm, the workers gorge on stored honey to have energy to survive from the time they leave their old hive until they can forage from their new hive. By gorging on honey they also build up the carbohydrate resources they will need to secrete the beeswax needed to build new combs. In the swarming process, bees usually stop to rest on a tree limb or other structure. Here, they are generally quite gentle because they don’t have a nest with brood and food to defend. However, if the swarm does not find a permanent nesting cavity within a couple of days and remains in its resting place, the bees will consume the honey that they are carrying in their honey guts. This is called a “dry swarm.” The swarm may even start to build comb on their temporary structure. Once they do this, they then have a hive to defend, and they defend their hive by stinging, adding excitement to gathering a swarm!

This year has been an exceptionally “swarmy” spring and summer in the Mid-South. Regular rains brought about good nectar flows which often contribute to brood nest congestion. Having the brood nest cells used by the queen for egg laying filled with nectar stimulates the colony to swarm. Today’s photo shows the comb built by a summertime swarm that settled underneath an urban bee hive. The colony built combs and even raised brood before abandoning the exposed combs. When the entire colony of bees flies away from its nest, accompanied by the queen, we call it “absconding.” The beekeeper was able to capture the absconding colony when it stopped nearby to rest, and he hived the bees in a modern Langstroth hive with plenty of sugar syrup to replenish the bees’ expended food stores. The colony has accepted its new home; and with the help of the beekeeper, who will be supplying supplemental feedings, the bees should be in good condition to survive the winter.

--Richard

Honey Bee Secondary Swarms

A Little Rock beekeeper captured a swarm and hived it in his Kenyan Top Bar Hive. Ten days later he checked on the bees and found the sizeable colony building combs and filling them with pollen and honey. The bees were gentle and their behavior was normal. Carefully inspecting the combs, the beekeeper found no eggs or larvae, however, he located a small queen in the hive. It is likely that the beekeeper captured a secondary or “after swarm,” a swarm emitted after a primary swarm. Beekeepers across the Mid-South have seen many primary and secondary swarms this year. The above normal number of swarms may largely result from this spring’s wet weather that encouraged profuse blooming of plants like the invasive privet shown being visited by a carpenter bee in today’s photo. Privet nectar fills brood nest cells needed for egg laying; this congestion leads to swarming.

As a honey bee colony prepares to swarm, it typically produces a number of queen cells. Then, when the colony divides and swarms, the old queen leaves with roughly half of the bees. The original hive is usually left with a sealed queen cell for a queen to emerge, mate, and remain in the hive. If the hive emits one or more secondary swarms, they will contain virgin queens. All virgin queens need five or six days to mature after emerging as adults before their mating flights and another five or six days of further ovary development afterward before they begin laying eggs. A secondary swarm’s virgin queen will not be able to lay eggs as quickly as a primary swarm’s queen. After a secondary swarm moves into its new hive, its virgin queen must make mating flights before she can begin laying eggs. Thus, there will be a couple of weeks delay before egg laying begins in the new hive. Throughout this time the virgin queen emits pheromones that organize the colony in a similar fashion to mature, mated queens.

--Richard

Swarm Season

Honey bees and beekeepers are at cross purposes when it comes to swarming. Bees readily swarm when conditions are right. For them, swarming is reproduction on a colony-wide basis. It means expanding their range, increasing their number of colonies, finding suitable new nesting sites, and eventually abandoning old nests and combs in decaying tree cavities. Swarming also breaks the brood cycle, helping to reduce the growth of Varroa mites in both old and new colonies. Beekeepers, on the other hand, usually try to reduce swarming, which often means the loss of a year’s honey production or pollination service. Honey bee colonies in the temperate zone typically expand their population in the spring and then divide their colony to form a second colony which flies away as a swarm. The act of swarming is risky for the bees; only a few swarms, maybe one in five, find a suitable permanent nest and survive for several years after leaving the parent colony’s nest cavity. Also, since the old colony must produce a new queen, there is the possibility that the requeening of the original hive may not succeed. If the old colony is not successful in requeening, it will rapidly die.

Collecting honey bee swarms is an exciting activity for many beekeepers. I assisted beekeeper Claranne Farris capture and hive a swarm that she encountered on an afternoon walk. The swarm hung on a pecan tree limb 10 feet in the air. Spraying a little sugar water on the swarm calmed the bees while I snipped the branch upon which they clung. After moving the swarm to a new hive, we noticed fanning by half a dozen workers, a good indication that the hive held the queen. Blocking the hive entrance with grass to slow the bees’ escape and adding one frame of open brood borrowed from another managed hive helps hold the swarm in place until they accept their new hive. Today’s photo: Claranne’s swarm resting on a pecan tree limb.

--Richard

Gathering the Swarm

Strong and healthy honey bee colonies divide to create new colonies, find new homes, and expand their range in a process that we call swarming. The spring of the year is the time when swarming occurs most often. When a swarm of bees leaves its hive, it is the result of about a month of preparation. The actual timing of the swarming event often follows a period of rainy days. Wet springs, like the Mid-South is experiencing this year, seem to produce more swarms than dryer seasons. One reason for the increase in swarming may be the abundance of available nectar from certain plants during rainy seasons. If the bees have plenty of nectar to forage, they may fill their hive’s brood nest with honey leaving the queen few cells to lay eggs. The resulting brood nest congestion is the principal trigger to swarm.

Typically, when a honey bee colony swarms, about half of the bees rapidly exit the hive along with the old queen. The individual bees fly in circles for a few minutes, and then they gather in a resting place on a tree limb or structure. The swarm remains in this location for a few hours or, sometimes, a few days. During this waiting period, scout bees leave the clustered swarm and search for a suitable cavity to serve as the colony’s new hive. The entire swarming event is controlled by the combined pheromones of the queen and worker bees. These pheromones are used to gather the swarm together at a resting point, and they also help the swarm of bees fly together to their new hive. Once the swarm arrives at their new hive, workers raise their abdomens and fan their wings to emit a plume of Nasanov gland pheromone to direct bees to their new home. In today’s photo, Jeremy Bemis and I capture a swarm. With the queen inside, workers are fanning Nasanov gland pheromone to call bees into the hive.

--Richard

Springtime Build-up

Black locust trees in full bloom are a milestone in the beekeeping year. Flowering plants are in bloom in abundance, providing plenty of nectar and pollen for rapidly growing bee colonies. A mid-spring hive inspection of bee hives finds the colonies in full expansion with bees bringing in lots of nectar and pollen to feed the brood of developing workers and drones. Honey bees produce drones only when they are needed, and in the spring there are plenty of drones in the hives. When we find significant numbers of drones walking about the combs on the edge of the brood nest, it is time to raise queens and make colony divisions. Employing a technique called grafting, beekeepers can readily produce extra queens at this time of the year by carefully moving the youngest larvae to queen cell cups and then moving these to queen-less starter hives. Colony divisions to increase hive numbers are easily created by moving excess queen cells that the bees produce naturally. Making colony divisions by moving bees and brood from crowded hives to new hives also serves as a method of artificially swarming the parent colony. These divisions are an effective method of reducing the colonies’ tendency to swarm.

If during the spring hive inspection, the beekeeper finds a colony excessively crowded in its hive, the beekeeper may choose to reverse the hive bodies to relieve brood nest congestion. If the cells in the lowest brood nest hive body are empty, this hive body may be moved to the top of the brood nest to provide space for the queen to lay eggs. This action rapidly relieves brood nest congestion, the greatest cause of swarming. Today’s photo shows a healthy frame of capped worker brood holding pupae, the third stage of bee development. Continuous expanses of capped brood indicate a prolific queen. Excessive holes in the pattern may indicate brood nest congestion, brood disease, inbreeding, or hygienic behavior employed by the bees to remove parasitic mites.

--Richard

Reproductive Swarming

Honey bees reproduce on a colony-wide basis by swarming. Strong, healthy colonies divide to increase the number of colonies and expand into new territory. Swarming is not a safe move for honey bee colonies; it is often not successful. Swarms resting on an exposed tree limb while scout bees search for a suitable permanent nesting cavity may perish in a springtime thunderstorm. The cavity that the bees choose may prove to be unsuitable. However, reproduction on a colony-wide basis must be worth the cost. One benefit is surely the bees’ abandoning old nests and their combs that hold disease spores and environmental chemical toxins. Swarming keeps bees from being completely dependent upon cavities of old, rotting trees for testing places. While reproductive swarming is risky, honey bee colonies stand a chance of effectively doubling their numbers with each swarm. Before swarming, colonies produce a new queen to lay eggs in the old nest, giving the existing colony a fresh start with a productive egg layer to produce young. Beekeepers attempt to reduce swarming because it usually means a loss of honey production for the year or insufficient numbers of bees for pollination service rental fees. Most swarm reduction measures change the conditions that cause swarming or give the bees the impression that the colony has already swarmed.

Today’s photo shows a swarm emitting from a Peace Bee Farm hive. The queen with her wasp-like abdomen is in the center of the mass of bees. If the swarm lights on a tree limb where I am able to catch it, I will have a tidy, though unscheduled, colony expansion. If it flies away, I will have increased the drones with good genetics in surrounding drone concentration areas. My beekeeping friend, The Luddite, caught a large swarm of over-wintered Russian bees from her Maine bee yard, effectively increasing her colony of winter-hearty bees. For honey bees, swarming may be their purpose in life; for the beekeeper, swarming should be a welcomed event.

--Richard

Survival Strategies

Six inches of rain fell during two days of steady showers leaving considerable surface flooding across the flat Arkansas Delta. Broad fields, harvested recently, became shallow lakes. The North wind blew crop debris of twigs, stems, and leaves to form long bands of floating vegetative matter. Numerous dinner plate sized masses of fire ants floated on these rafts of ground-up soybean plants shown in today’s photo. Fire ant colonies, which live underground, were being transported to dry ground on floating crop debris. Not only were the fire ants being saved from drowning by their huddling on floating matter, they were also expanding their range across open fields.

Honey bees expand their range through swarming, usually in the spring but to a lesser extent in the summer and fall. When the bees swarm, the colony divides; half of the bees stay behind, and half of the bees fly away. Sometimes all of the bees in a colony abandon their hive and fly away in a move called “absconding.” Bees will abandon their hive if the nest gets badly damaged, as when flooded or overrun and “slimed” by small hive beetles. At times, bees abscond during times of extreme dearth. Honey bees in the tropics tend to abscond more often than bees in more temperate areas. Tropical bees don’t have the need to store great amounts of honey to survive the winter. Seasonal changes in tropical nectar and pollen flows vary with rain and drought. During a dearth of nectar, tropical bees will abscond and move to areas where flowers are blooming. Honey bees in temperate areas survive by hoarding honey to provide food and energy for the winter. Each of these behaviors by ants or bees illustrates a heritable survival strategy which allows the insects to survive in a changing environment. Two studies hint at the mechanisms for the inheritance of survival traits: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205102713.htm#.Tt7BaeNFBZY.email looks at methods of fighting viruses, and http://www.livescience.com/7655-lizards-dance-avoids-deadly-ants.html reveals how lizards learn to avoid fire ants.

--Richard