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

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

Dog Days of Summer

The hot, droughty mid-summer period is often called the Dog Days of Summer, and a significant dearth of nectar often exists from July through September. At this time, locations that produce spring honey see a dramatic reduction in honey production. Bee hives located near agricultural crops continue to produce honey, especially if the crops are irrigated. Summer’s dearth is a time for harvesting spring and summer honey before fall wildflowers come into bloom. Typically, honey produced from flowers early in the year are mild in flavor and aroma, while honey produced in the fall is          quite more pronounced. Honey bees do not bring into the hives as much nectar and pollen during the summer’s dearth, however, they forage a considerable amount of water. In today’s photo, honey bees are foraging water from moss-covered rocks and duckweed in the bee yard’s water source. A short high speed video shows how the honey bee uses its tongue to take in water either by lapping or by sucking: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/science/honeybees-drink-video.html. Beekeepers should make sure that their hives have a reliable source of water throughout the year, and this is especially important in the heat of summer when bees use water to help cool their hives.

The Dog Days of Summer are a good time to take care of other bee hive issues. Small hive beetle populations often expand during the heat of summer. If unchecked, the beetles can overwhelm bee colonies. Integrated pest management approaches to beetle control include hive placement in the sun, beetle trapping, and minimal hive manipulations. Beekeepers should try to prevent multiple generations of beetles from existing in the hives before wintertime. Late summer is a good time to provide pollen substitute feeding to stimulate the queens to continue to lay eggs. It’s important that beekeepers plan for controlling varroa mites as soon as the honey is harvested and temperatures cool to within treatment limits. Consult the Honey Bee Health Coalition’s Varroa Management Decision Tool: https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/varroa/.

--Richard

Bee Day

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

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

--Richard

Small Hives are Vulnerable

Beekeepers can establish or expand their bee yards by purchasing hives from other beekeepers, purchasing nucleus hives, dividing existing colonies, catching swarms, or raising bees in queen mating nucleus hives. Beekeepers trying to expand their bee yards start with small populations of bees. Often nucleus hives smaller than full-size hives are used for expansion. These hives are especially vulnerable to a number of pests. As each of these new hives builds in population it is subjected to attack from numerous pests. Weak hives are regularly approached by wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, wax moths, small hive beetles, and mammals. However, the most persistent attackers of bee hives are often worker honey bees from other colonies in the area that attempt to rob honey stores. The best defense against bee hive pests is a strong population of honey bees. Bees can drive away intruding wasps, yellow jackets, wax moths, dogs, and other mammals. They remove the larvae of wax moths, and drive adult small hive beetles to the corners of the hive. Guard bees trap small hive beetles in propolis “traps” that the workers build. Small hive beetle traps often line the ends of bee hive frame top bars. Here, many beetles die of starvation. The bee populations of expanding colonies often fare better in small-sized hives because there is less open space for small hive beetles to move freely and lay eggs.

Our experience in rearing queens and expanding colonies at Peace Bee Farm is consistent: We have considerably greater success in rearing bees in nucleus hives than in full-size hives. Today’s photo shows worker bees returning to their small, expanding colony in a queen mating nucleus hive fitted with an entrance reducer and a screen to restrict robber bees. Bees from the colony learn to negotiate the space between the screen and the hive entrance. Robbers are attracted to hive odors and fly directly toward the screen where they are challenged by guard bees poised on their hind legs.

--Richard

Ethiopia's Limich

On the second day of our training sessions in Bonga, Ethiopia, the students arrived with bundles of foliage that they harvested in the surrounding forest. The bundles contained aromatic plants used to make Ethiopia’s traditional honey mead, tej.  In today’s photo, my host, Apinec Agro-Industry’s Managing Director Wubishet Adugna, checks the fragrance of the broad leaves of wild pepper. The center plant in the bundle, with small leaves, is limich; and the plant to the right is gesho. The people of the Ethiopian highlands are adept at finding and harvesting the rich plant life of the forest. The wild pepper will be burned along with Olea africana to produce a sterilizing smoke for the vessels holding the tej. The smoke also imparts some of the distinctive flavor to this traditional mead.

When I bruised the leaves of the limich plant, Clausenia anisata, I immediately recognized the bright, pleasant odor. It is the odor of honey bee Nasanov pheromone! Worker honey bees raise their abdomens and use their wings to fan air across their Nasanov glands to direct flying bees back to the hive. Nasanov pheromone helps organize bees while they are swarming, and worker bees fan Nasanov pheromone while their virgin queen is making her mating flights. Scout bees use Nasanov pheromone to mark the location of food sources including favorable sources of water. Nasanov pheromone is of great importance for communications within the honey bee colony. A plant-based substitute would be of great use to beekeepers. I quickly learned that limich is well founded in Ethiopian indigenous knowledge of beekeeping, as it is used to attract swarms to traditional bee hives placed high in trees. Limich is commonly used in Ethiopia to bathe mothers after they give birth. Essential oils of the plant are used to treat a number of ailments of humans and cattle. The gesho plant is used to give tej its distinctive flavor. The bitter gesho stems and bark counter the sweetness of the honey.

--Richard

The Honey Bee New Year

Our calendar declares the New Year starts on January 1. We also declare that today, December 21, is the first day of winter. Taking the earth one year to circle the sun, our planet spins on an axis that is slightly tilted. The tilt of the earth’s axis causes the days to lengthen and shorten throughout the year as the sun strikes larger portions of the Southern, and then, Northern Hemispheres. These changes throughout the year give us our seasons. A number of species, including the honey bee, are sensitive to the changes in the length of days. They time life activities, including reproduction, according to changes in daylight. Our seasons change on days we call the solstices and equinoxes. The honey bee colony’s year seems to begin on the winter solstice, the day that marks the shortest amount of daylight and the longest night.

Here in the Mid-South, honey bees are clustered together in their hives for warmth. Worker bees forced their queens to stop laying eggs a number of weeks ago by restricting her food. The winter interruption in reproduction is a survival strategy that allows honey bees to conserve precious food stores over prolonged winters. Honey bee colonies maintain an internal hive temperature around 95 degrees Fahrenheit whenever there is brood in the hive. However, the bees conserve energy by allowing the hive to cool to around 70 degrees if there is no brood present. Just as we can conserve energy required to warm our homes in the winter by turning down the thermostat, bees conserve honey stores by lowering their hive temperature. Queen bees often begin laying a few eggs after the winter solstice. Though winter is just beginning, for the bees, this is the New Year. People throughout history have observed the relative movements of the earth, sun, moon, stars, and planets. Earlier this month, the moon aligned with the earth and sun to provide a colorful lunar eclipse with the moon setting at dawn.

--Richard

Social Behavior

Social creatures, such as honey bees and humans, employ elaborate methods of communication. The honey bee evolved senses and behaviors to help protect the colony from hazards in the environment and to allow the bees to effectively forage for food over great distances. Most of the colony’s communication senses are based upon pheromones, odors that the bees recognize. Other methods of communications involve vibrations, usually detected as movements in the honeycomb of the colony’s hive. These behaviors are used to defend the colony from intruders, protect it from disease, and notify the members of available food sources. We observe the actions of guard bees instantly alerting other worker bees while defending against an intruder attempting to enter the hive. Scout bees convey newly located nectar sources to forager bees by demonstrating with dances and sharing a taste of the nectar.

Humans communicate largely by visual signs, electronic devices, and speech, a form of controlled vibrations. While the craft of beekeeping developed over the years with most of its great innovations developing in the mid-1800s, the science of honey bee biology is being advanced today. The 2006 completion of the honey bee genome project greatly broadened the study of bee disease mechanisms. Human communications, especially via the internet, now allow researchers anywhere in the world to work together and share knowledge. Our ability to communicate will help us solve honey bee problems that we may have created ourselves through the importation of pests, parasites, and pathogens as well as our use of chemicals in bee hives and the environment. I watched an example of mankind’s cooperative efforts in communications and problem solving as the International Space Station made a six-minute pass over Peace Farm at 17 thousand miles per hour. The manned space station appears as a bright, moving star. That’s my camera’s wobble, not the space craft. You may follow orbital tracking at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/, and you may find when the space craft is passing over your location at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/.

--Richard

Protecting Pollinators

Honey bees have the same basic needs as people: a safe place to live and raise offspring, an area to collect food and water, and an environment free of toxins. This was the message that I presented to a receptive group of business leaders in Ripley, Tennessee. Beekeepers understand that bees need a dry hive to protect the bees from the weather. The hive should be elevated to prevent it from flooding and to allow for air to flow around the hive. The hive must have provisions for ventilation. The hive’s honeycombs should be free of chemicals and disease spores. Places for honey bees and other pollinators to find food are becoming increasingly less common, especially in areas of industrial agriculture. The soil is often tilled to the edge of the field leaving no unplowed field margins. The result is the loss of bee forage and nesting area. Monocultural plantings of a single crop often reduce the available forage. Monoculture may lead to lower food quality due to a lack of a diversity of nutrients. Insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides in the environment as well as miticides used by beekeepers kill bees outright or build-up in the beeswax honeycomb of the bee hive. Broad-spectrum insecticides kill every insect present, including pollinators and other beneficial insects. Persistent insecticides remain in the soil for a long time and kill and weaken bees well into the future. Mixing together more than one chemical agent or increasing the strength of insecticide sprays are especially damaging to bees. I encouraged the business leaders to use their influence to help control the use of pesticides in agricultural settings, around homes and gardens, and on golf courses. Many attending were surprised that our entire luncheon was dependent upon insect pollinators with the single exception of the dinner roll.

Today’s photo is a speckled kingsnake, a harmless resident of a Peace Bee Farm bee yard. Snakes are welcomed protectors of bee hives and help control rodents during warm weather.

--Richard

Advocate for Pollinators

A story in The New York Times paints a picture of the changing landscape of Appalachia. Not only are the communities gradually disappearing, the silhouettes of the mountains themselves are. The descriptive Times piece, “As the Mountains Fall, a Coal Town Vanishes,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/us/13lindytown.html?) reveals how coal mining is shifting from underground work in mines to mountain top removal. The process involves removing the trees, soil, and rock, what the coal companies call “overburden,” to expose coal. The coal is heavily relied upon to provide energy to power our industrial world. In accessing the coal, large volumes of removed soil and rock are dumped and dozed into ravines to form a shape called an “approximate original contour.” This reclamation process often turns the thin mountainous topsoil under the removed rock and gravel leaving a surface unsuitable for vegetative growth. Even when the rubble is fertilized, mulched, and seeded, plants and trees do not thrive. Valleys and creeks are often filled with rubble as well. Our eastern Kentucky beekeeping friend, Tammy Horn, received the Pollinator Advocate award from the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign for her efforts to encourage and guide the coal companies in changing mountain top removal practices to be more environmentally favorable. New approaches to reclamation include reduced compaction of soils and plantings of bee plants like American chestnut, sourwood, and understory herbs. Tammy is working to establish a cottage industry of beekeeping in the economically depressed coal mining region of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. Tammy has been a true advocate for both the pollinators and the people of Appalachia.

Click on today’s photo of a honey bee heavily laden with pollen from apple blossoms. Apples, members of the important family of bee plants, the roses, rely upon bees for pollination. Without the bees, no fruit is produced. Apples, which contain both soluble and insoluble fibers, are known as a healthy food. Apples are blooming in the Mid-South. The apple bloom is another landmark on the beekeeper’s calendar.

--Richard

Redbud in Bloom

The sight of purplish-red color splashed through the understory of the woods is a true sign of spring. Redbud trees are in bloom throughout the Mid-South. These small trees covered with pink or rose flowers are easily recognizable from a distance. They grow under the oak and hickory cover of the woods and along ditch banks and forest margins. Redbuds are propagated by seeds that hang in pods, and are distributed by songbirds and the wind. In suburban settings, the colorful redbud is a cultivated favorite for landscape plantings. Honey bees are attracted in great numbers to the bright pink to rose-colored flowers which cover redbud twigs, stems, and even trunks. Honey bees do not make a surplus of redbud honey, but the tree does provide a dependable source of both nectar and pollen at an important time when bees are rapidly expanding their colonies and need all of the food they can gather to feed the brood.

The redbud is a member of the important family of bee plants, the legumes. The legumes, or pea or bean family, includes many of the most prolific producers of nectar for honey. Many of the legumes are forage and food plants. Clover is a legume, as are alfalfa, peanuts, lentils, lespedeza, peas, beans, wisteria, and vetch. Like the redbud, a number of trees are legumes. Among them are the black locust, honey locust, mimosa, and Kentucky coffeetree. By pollinating the flowers of legumes, the honey bees play an important role in producing seed, and help produce food for humans as well as livestock and wildlife. The seeds of the legumes are contained in pods that resemble peas or beans. Many of the legumes also serve the environment by enriching the soil. Bacteria growing in nodules on the roots of legumes take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it in the soil to a usable form for plants to absorb. In this way these plants actually enrich the soil.

--Richard

Maples and Elms

The beekeeper’s year is measured by a number of events of the calendar and nature. The calendar is divided into months and days and the solstices and equinoxes. Natural events are also significant to beekeepers. Among them are the bloom of the red maple, clover, blackberry, apple, tuliptree, and goldenrod. The bloom dates of major nectar producers, like soybeans and cotton in the Arkansas Delta, are also carefully followed. The red maple bloom is one of the first events observed by beekeepers. Maples are often the first major source of nectar and pollen. Red maple trees produce considerable nectar and large amounts of pollen in the late winter. As foraging workers bring the red maple pollen into the hive, it stimulates the queen’s egg production. The pollen also provides necessary protein for the developing brood. In the Arkansas Delta, the red nectar bloom occurs during the rapid expansion of the honey bees' brood nest. The red maple is followed in bloom by the silver maple, sugar maple, and the box elder, which is also a maple. Maple honey is described as having a fine flavor and a white or amber color with a tinge of pink. Rarely is a surplus stored; most is consumed feeding the brood.

Elms are wind-pollinated trees, but honey bees collect pollen from elms during times of pollen scarcity from other sources. The American elm was planted extensively in urban areas; but its numbers were reduced by a fungal condition, Dutch elm disease. Today, the most common elm is a small tree, the winged elm. While the maples and elms bloom at an important time in the early development of the honey bee colony’s spring-time expansion, their bounty is often missed. Cold and rainy days of the late winter and early spring often prevent bees from flying while the trees are in bloom. The weather was warm and pleasant today, and I saw foragers bringing in bright red maple pollen. Today’s photo: red maple in bloom.

--Richard

A Natural Honey Bee Nest

We can learn much about honey bees by observing bees in their natural habitat. Residents of my Arkansas Delta county called today and described a colony of honey bees living in a huge, hollow cottonwood tree at their home. Cottonwoods are among the tallest trees in the Delta, climbing to nearly 150 feet. This gnarled tree had weathered many a season and showed the damage of numerous wind storms and lightning strikes. Hollow cavities in storm-damaged trees provide excellent spaces for honey bees to build their nests.

The colony moved into the ancient tree this past October. Colonies that swarm late in the year often fail to build enough comb and store a sufficient amount of honey to survive the winter. Fortunately, there was a good nectar flow from goldenrod this past fall. If you click on today’s photo, you can see the entrance to the natural honey bee nest about 23 feet above ground on the underside of a large, hollow limb. Four sheets of clean, light-colored beeswax honeycomb hang down from the opening in the tree. The darkened comb previously held brood and pollen. Like a screened bottom board on a modern bee hive, the open bottom of this natural nest allows hive debris and parasitic Varroa mites preened by the bees to fall to the ground. All of the exposed comb is empty; the bees have moved their cluster upward over the winter. The empty cells filled with air make excellent insulation for the colony’s nest. The sheets of comb themselves help calm the winter winds. The homeowner and I watched the honey bees actively flying from their natural nest. An international pilot, he discussed how insecticides are sprayed inside the cargo holds of aircrafts before landing in foreign countries to prevent the unwanted transfer of bees or other insects. This colony should be successful in its new home. It found a suitable tree and a family concerned with protecting the bees and the environment.

--Richard

March: The Harshest Month

The calendar tells us that three more weeks of winter remain. We declare that spring begins on the day of the vernal equinox. However the change in seasons progresses at about one week for each 100 miles of latitude. The weather warmed today and allowed the bees to fly. I noticed foragers working the tiny white flowers of sand wort blooming among clover leaves starting to unfold in the winter-bare ground. Other foragers were forcing open a single petal of crabapple flower buds today to access nectar or pollen. Tomorrow the blossoms should be more open. With warm weather forecast for tomorrow, the foragers will return to the same flowers. Red maple flowers are opening, but not yet attracting bees. The trees must not be producing nectar and pollen at this time. Similar flights were made a month ago 400 miles to the south where many of the queen bees are produced. A beekeeping friend in New England now covered in deep snow won’t see flowers for weeks to come.

In the Arkansas Delta, March is the harshest month for the honey bee colony. While a few flowering plants are just starting to bloom, there is no significant nectar flow. Brood production is well underway, and considerable amounts of food are needed for the developing bees. With brood present, the hive’s brood area must be maintained at 95 degrees. The honey and pollen stores are dwindling in the hives. Some of the food for the brood is held in the tissue of fat bodies and glands of the worker bees themselves. The quality of this food follows the health of the bees from the time they emerged as adults last October. Meanwhile, the colonies are growing and consuming increasing amounts of food. March’s rapidly changing weather patterns bring both cold and warm days. The bees consume much energy on warm days like today searching for food; often more energy is spent than is gained in foraging. Most starvation occurs in March.

--Richard

Landmarks

Worker honey bees live for about six weeks. The first three weeks of their life are spent doing tasks inside the hive. The next three weeks are spent doing work that involves flying away from the hive. When the bees begin venturing from the hive at about three weeks of age, they start by making a series of orientation flights in which the bees memorize the appearance of the hive and its surroundings. The young bees start their “flight school” in the afternoon by flying in a small figure-eight pattern inches away from the hive’s entrance. As the bees make their orientation flights, they are looking for colors and patterns of shapes. Honey bees can see all of the colors that humans do with the exception of red. The bees can also see ultraviolet, which is beyond our eyesight. The images that the bees memorize involve shapes and patterns of interruptions. After flying close to the hive’s entrance, the bees expand their flight to learn landmarks surrounding the hive.

Honey bees at the Children’s Museum of Memphis have no problem finding their hives located among the huge building blocks that spell “CMOM.” In today’s picture from the museum’s blog, www.cmom.com, the museum’s CEO, Richard C. Hackett, is high in the air above our bee hives painting the letter C in pink for breast cancer awareness. To learn more, the museum directs us to www.nbcam.org/about_nbcam.cfm and www.cancer.org/. The always personally involved Mr. Hackett, a beekeeper himself, proposed the honey bee exhibit and offered useful suggestions in the development of the observation bee hive project. Mr. Hackett swung in close to the bee hives to paint the iconic blocks that make the museum a landmark in the heart of the city. The honey bee exhibit is designed to fit into the museum’s mission: “We create memorable learning experiences through the joy of play in hands-on exhibits and programs.” The museum helps honey bees as well as children expand their view.

--Richard

Observation Bee Hives

Much of our knowledge of the honey bee colony’s activity and life cycle is learned using observation bee hives having clear windows of glass or plastic providing a view inside the hive. Regardless of the weather, beekeepers cannot keep a bee hive open for an extended observation without disturbing the bees and adversely affecting the colony. Observation hives allow for long-term viewing with a minimum disturbance of the bees. However, observation hives are usually smaller and are more difficult to maintain than regular, full-size hives. Most commercially available observation hives hold from two to six frames. These smaller hives are more prone to starving, swarming, and being overtaken by Small Hive Beetles. Bees in small hives also have more difficulty in maintaining the hive’s temperature.

The Columbia University Beekeeping Club is considering placing a hive outside a campus building. I offered them the details of modified Langstroth hives I maintain at the Children’s Museum of Memphis. Windows in the side of one hive expose frames of comb, and windows in the rear of another allow viewing between the frames. The hives are placed outside the building as opposed to inside arrangements that use a tube for the bees to enter and exit. With any observation hive it is most important that proper bee space is maintained. In my modified hives, Lexan windows fit flush with the inside surface of the hive bodies. Quite often I see observation hives with windows covered with comb or propolis. Maintain clean windows by providing 3/8 inch spacing between the inside surface of the window and the adjacent frame. Choosing a location for placing the hive is most important. Consider the direction of the sun in relation to the hive. If the sun strikes the observation hive’s glass, the hive will likely become a solar beeswax melter, and the bees will die. I placed my Children’s Museum hives in a North-facing alcove which blocks the afternoon sun. You may view the exhibit at http://www.cmom.com/?q=honeybees.

--Richard

Abandon the Old Nest

Honey bee colonies typically swarm once a year in the temperate regions. This method of reproduction on the colony-wide basis expands the number of colonies and moves bees into new areas. However, swarming is quite risky. Only about one in five swarms is successful in moving into a new cavity and establishing a colony that lives for several years. Why would a creature adopt a behavior unless it is beneficial in the long term? Perhaps swarming serves an important purpose other than colony increase and range expansion. Moving the colony to a new location, even if only occasionally successful, allows the bees to leave behind old nests. The old nests, built of beeswax honeycomb, are reservoirs of pesticides, chemicals, and toxins found in the environment. The old honeycombs may also hold the reproductive spores of a number of honey bee diseases, namely American foulbrood, Nosema, and chalkbrood. Another purpose is served by swarming and moving into a new cavity. Trees with cavities are often in decline and fall due to structural damage and decay.

When the honey bee colony divides itself and swarms, it takes along the old queen. A new queen, or more often a queen cell with a potential queen, is left behind with the remnant of the original colony. While this new queen may successfully mate and serve to provide reproduction in the original hive, this too is not always successful. Still, it appears that the swarming process serves as an effective reproductive strategy. Swarming is another behavior that the honey bee evolved to help ensure the survival of the colony. Other behaviors that the bees use to protect the colony include defending the hive with guard bees and removing dead bees from the hive. Unhealthy bees fly or crawl from the hive to die. At Peace Bee Farm, we regularly remove old honeycomb from our hives to reduce the build-up of environmental chemicals and eliminate spores of pathogens. Today’s photo: burning old brood nest honeycombs.

--Richard

GMOs and Neonicotinoids

Corn, or maize, is the most widely grown crop in the Americas. A beekeeper asked me if Bt corn and Roundup-Ready corn are dangerous to honey bees. This is among the commonly asked questions as beekeepers are facing annual colony losses of 30 percent. Beekeepers question the safety of chemicals used in the environment and changes in agricultural practices. Bt corn and Roundup-Ready corn are both Genetically Modified Organisms. In Bt corn, a gene is borrowed from the Bacillus thuringiensus bacteria. This modification allows the corn plant to produce its own Bt insecticidal protein. This technology allows for corn production with lesser application of insecticides, as the plant is producing its own insect killer. The effect of Bt corn on honey bees was tested in Germany from 2001 through 2004. Michael Schacker reports in A Spring Without Bees: How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply, 2008, that Bt crops and GMOs are not correlated with Colony Collapse Disorder. There may possibly be some benefits for bees and other pollinators from the use of Bt technology in corn, as this may lead to a reduction in the use of crop insecticides. Roundup-Ready corn can withstand the herbicide glyphosate. Herbicides, like Roundup, are being tested now; however, results have not been published.

Following the appearance of Colony Collapse Disorder in 2007, the effect on honey bee health is questioned for all chemicals used around bee hives. A relatively new class of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, is highly suspected by many beekeepers as being involved in CCD and honey bee health problems. Among these systemic insecticides are imidacloprid and clothianidin. Of particular concern is the effect upon the bees of a less than lethal dose of a neonicotinoid insecticide when combined with certain honey bee viruses or the newly detected strain of Nosema disease. Honey bee colony collapses often occur in the winter. This winter has seen greater than normal snowfalls in the Arkansas Delta. Today’s photo: common starlings weather the snow.

--Richard

Short Course Forty-Six

Much of the practical training of beekeepers is provided by local beekeeping associations. These groups provide initial introductory courses in beekeeping as well as ongoing training and mentoring of beekeepers. The Memphis Area Beekeepers Association serves beekeepers across West Tennessee, North Mississippi, and East Arkansas. On Saturday, the association will conduct its forty-sixth annual Short Course in Beekeeping. The short course serves as an overview of a broad range of beekeeping topics. The program starts with a description of the equipment and protective clothing used by beekeepers. New beekeepers get to assemble bee hives to get an idea of how to put together these puzzles. Folks are introduced to the honey bee’s life cycle. We discuss where to locate the bee hives and carefully cover how to install the bees in the new hive. The course briefly mentions how we harvest and extract honey. Like other timely topics, this will be covered in greater depth during a monthly meeting prior to harvest.

I will address the new beekeepers on honey bee health issues. Since honey bees may be attacked by pests from bears to other insects as well as from bacteria, viruses, and fungi, it is important for new beekeepers to be aware of what the hives face. I will mention the pests introduced into our hives, mostly through world trade, since the mid-1980s: tracheal mites, Varroa mites, small hive beetles, and a new strain of Nosema. I’ll briefly describe Africanized honey bees and Colony Collapse Disorder. The majority of the presentation will be a suggestion for the beekeepers to adopt an integrated pest management approach to beekeeping, relying first on biological, cultural, and mechanical controls of pests. Chemical control measures will be held as last resorts. I will encourage everyone to avoid using insecticides and nerve toxins in the hives and to treat American foulbrood with the only sure cure: burning the hives. Peace Farm lakes are frozen now; wild ducks circle to maintain small areas of open water.

--Richard

Honey Bee Evolution

A report published in The New York Times relates that only 28 percent of public high school biology teachers are following teaching recommendations to “describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology.” Thirteen percent of the biology teachers explicitly advocate creationism, and 60 percent avoid the subject altogether. The Times report: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08creationism.html?hpw.

A beekeeper tries to explain the complexity of the honey bee’s social behavior in a colony that appears to be as organized as a city full of people. He says that such a well-organized colony can only be the result of creation by a higher being of great intelligence, and he struggles to find bee hive examples of what he calls “intelligent design.” There is wondrous activity among these social insects, but the honey bee colony is certainly not perfect. The colony gathers and produces its own food, increases its numbers and expands its territory. It regulates the temperature and atmosphere of its hive. It can even produce a new queen when one is need. However, there are times when the life cycle of the honey bee colony becomes dead-ended. When dealing with a poorly mated queen, an egg-laying worker, or a queen failing to lay fertile eggs, a colony often becomes hopelessly queenless and then dwindles and dies. Rather than the product of an “intelligent design,” today’s honey bee colony can be better understood as the result of millions of years of evolution in a changing environment. Those colonies that inherited traits, altered by mutations, that make them more survivable in the present environment pass along those traits to their offspring. They replace other less suited colonies that either die or are less successful in reproducing. The replacement of less suited species has been seen recently in the evolution of antibiotic-resistant strains of tuberculosis, insecticide-resistant bed bugs, herbicide-resistant Palmer pigweed, and Varroa mites resistant to the miticides used by beekeepers. Today’s photo: beekeeper Richard Underhill.

--Richard