CCD: What Now?

Well, we finally have a published report of the current findings in the study of the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder. The report is available online at http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013181. I gave it a quick reading; I’ll give it a much more thorough view. The CCD study is definitely not over. We don’t necessarily know the cause, but a strong association between the collapsed honey bee colonies and two pathogens has been established. In the near future we will be hearing much about strains of DNA Invertebrate Iridescent Viruses. We will speak freely about IIV. Nosema disease will be brought further to the front of discussion. Nosema apis was around throughout beekeeping, but it was usually considered an easily controlled over-winter ailment. Nosema ceranae was only discovered to exist in the US after the CCD investigation opened up a search into all possible pathogens affecting honey bees. It was revealed that the new strain of Nosema was not only in the US before the 2006 CCD outbreak, it had replaced the original strain in many cases.

Many questions remain unanswered. What is the involvement of the numerous viruses that infect honey bees? Do environmental chemicals and pesticides play a role in CCD? How do problems associated with poor nutrition and other stressors affect CCD? How are honey bees’ immune systems affected by the recently identified IIV Virus and Nosema combination? Can we rule out any of the items that have been suspected as being involved in CCD? Further studies involving greater numbers of samples will increase our knowledge of this complex honey bee health disorder. Meanwhile, we need to thank all who worked to get us to this level of understanding. The professional researchers adhered to disciplines to ensure the validity of their studies. Beekeepers gathered samples of honey bees and comb to provide a measure of parasitic Varroa mites, pathogens, and honeycomb chemicals. The media effectively kept the story in the public’s forefront. Today’s photo: honey bee pollination’s gift, Washington peppers.

--Richard

New CCD Findings Reported

There have been die-offs of honey bee colonies periodically reported for many years. The most severe of all such events in the United States started in the fall of 2006 when migratory beekeepers discovered large numbers of their hives mysteriously depleted of honey bees. By the spring of 2007, similar massive losses of honey bees were being detected in numerous locations across the country. As the losses of honey bee colonies rapidly increased, it became apparent that this die-off of honey bees involved certain characteristics that were not common with previously known honey bee diseases. The condition was given the name Colony Collapse Disorder, and a number of carefully planned studies were initiated to identify the causes of the disappearance of the honey bees. While beekeepers were experiencing costly losses of their colonies, many realized that a quick resolution of the problem was not likely. With many hive variables, it would take time to analyze the condition of hives across the country. Different hives are used for different purposes; they are exposed to a variety of pests and parasites; they have different nutritional resources; they are exposed to a wide variety of environmental chemicals inside and outside the hive; and they are managed differently by individual beekeepers.

Over the past four years, preliminary findings eliminated a number of possible causes of CCD and placed others into focus. Now, a report of the likely cause of CCD has been published. News of the report can be read in today’s New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07bees.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage. The researchers found that when a particular honey bee virus is paired with Nosema disease, the combination is almost always lethal. The full report, “Iridovirus and Microsporidian Linked to Honey Bee Colony Decline,” has been published online, and may be viewed at http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013181. Peace Bee Farm has been involved in collecting bee and hive samples for several of the CCD studies. NPR of the Mid-South news director Candice Ludlow interviews me during a recent sampling.

--Richard

Moscow, Idaho Farmers Market

The honey bee is our most important crop pollinator. The honey bee accomplishes about 85 percent of the pollination of our flowering plants. The remaining 15 percent of the work is done by many species of native bees, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, birds, bats, and various other insects. In the absence of these pollinators, humans can move grains of pollen from the anther of one flower to the stigma of a similar flower on another plant. Bees pollinate about 90 of our food crops, one third of our diet. If pollination is not accomplished, there is no fruit or seed produced. However, this is usually not the case in nature. Even where there is a shortage of bees, some flowers are visited. The result of insufficient numbers of bee visits is often seen in misshapen fruit. Cucumbers, watermelons, and pumpkins only fill out in nice, plump shapes when the flowers are visited by plenty of bees.

Rita and I made a visit to the state of Washington to see Wes. The three of us visited the farmers market at Moscow, Idaho. Like farmers markets across the country, the Moscow market was quite popular on a Saturday morning. People gathered to buy fresh farm produce, meet the farmers, and enjoy a sense of community with friends. We found beautiful, fully developed fruit and vegetables from the rich farmland of Washington and Idaho. There were colorful and fragrant apples, pears, and plums as well as bright pumpkins, tomatoes, squash, gourds, and peppers. At the market, we visited with some Washington beekeepers who have a family farm that transports bees for pollination service from California through Oregon and Washington. After trucking their bees for pollination, they bring them home to strengthen the hives on fields of canola. We purchased some of their light and mild knapweed, or star thistle, honey. We also bought some of their buckwheat honey, black and strong with an aftertaste, a honey enjoyed by only a select few.

--Richard

Smartweed in Bloom

Honey can vary widely in color, aroma, and taste depending upon the flowers that the bees are foraging. Flowering plants compete with each other for available insect and animal pollinators. Those that are successful in attracting pollinators are the more likely to reproduce and expand their territory. The plants compete by offering to the pollinators different aromas, flavors, and concentrations of sugars in their nectar. Since honey is made from concentrated flower nectar, the differences in the nectars make for differences in honeys. Flowering plants have evolved to present their blooms to the pollinators at varying times during the year. By staggering the bloom dates, plants are able to lessen the competition for available pollinators. This results in honeys that taste different at different times of the year. Having a continuous series of flowering plants coming into bloom also provides for good honey bee nutrition.

Smartweed, also known as pinkweed, is a prolific flowering plant of the damp ground along ditches and waterways throughout the Arkansas Delta. Smartweed is found around the levees of rice fields. Its pink blooms attract great numbers of honey bees in the early fall. After smartweed is pollinated by honey bees, it produces large amounts of seed which propagate the plant and provide food for ducks and other birds. Smartweed, related to buckwheat, is one of the plants that produce robust-flavored honeys, stronger in aroma and flavor than the light honeys of the spring and summer. Other plants adding nectar to the stronger fall honeys are bitterweed, and fall asters. We consider the smartweed quite a beneficial plant for the honey bees. It is almost always a consistent producer of large volumes of nectar at the time of the year when the bees need to be building up stores of honey for winter. Smartweed was used as a medicinal plant by the pioneers who treated the legs of lame horses and mules with a liniment made by boiling the plant’s leaves.

--Richard

Wax Moths

As long as people have been keeping honey bees, they have encountered wax moths. Wax moths are hive scavengers. These common moths constantly attack honey bee hives. The adult moths light on the outside of the hive and lay eggs. The young larvae crawl through the cracks between hive body boxes. Entrance locations are few, because the bees seal the cracks with propolis, or bee glue. Most wax moths that enter are killed by the worker bees. Once inside the hive, the wax moth larvae are voracious eaters. Even though their name is wax moth, they don’t feed on beeswax alone; they primarily feed on protein. Wax moths are attracted to the protein of stored pollen and silk cocoons of old brood comb. The pollen is used by the colony to make food for developing honey bees. When honey bees emerge as adults after passing through the stages of egg, larva, and pupa, they leave behind the woven silk cocoon in which they developed in the pupal stage. Beekeepers over hundreds of years have complained about opening a bee hive only to find a mass of webbing caused by the voracious eating of the comb by wax moth larvae. Many find the population of honey bees depleted and the frames covered in webbing. They often conclude that the wax moths killed the colony. Actually, the wax moths usually take over a hive after it becomes hopelessly queen-less or dies.

Peace Bee Farm uses the efforts of wax moths to clean brood frames of old comb. Frames from winter colony losses can be placed in empty hives and used as bait hives during the spring swarm season. If a swarm is not lured into the bait hive, wax moths will eat the comb and leave plastic foundation clean and exposed, as shown in today’s photo. We then paint the foundation with our own chemical-free cappings wax, saved from the previous year’s honey harvest, as part of our integrated pest management program.

--Richard

Bottling Honey

Honey is truly a unique food. It is the only food that we eat that was produced by an insect. It is also the only food that remains unchanged from that which was gathered by our cave man ancestors thousands of years ago. Honey is concentrated flower nectar mixed with enzymes that the honey bees produce. Honey is the only food that will last indefinitely at room temperatures without spoiling. Bacteria cannot grow in the highly concentrated sugars that make up honey. The honey bees do all of the hard work of turning nectar from flowers into honey. The beekeeper’s task is to take the pure honey from the bee hive and place it into appropriate honey containers without damaging its color, aroma, and taste. It is important for the beekeeper to control the moisture content of the extracted honey. We measure the moisture using an instrument called a refractometer. Bees cap the honey when they have evaporated it to 18 percent moisture content. With excessive moisture, fermentation can occur. Honey readily takes on and gives off moisture from the air, so we carefully control the atmosphere of the honey house. In the humid Arkansas Delta, we often run a dehumidifier and fans when frames of honey are being handled.

After the frames of honey have been removed from the hives, cleared of bees, uncapped, and the honey extracted, the debris, mostly flecks of beeswax, is removed by straining through a fine mesh cloth. The honey is then placed in a bottling unit and allowed to settle for a day or more. Since honey is quite heavy, any residue remaining in the honey will rise to the surface. Pure honey is then be poured from the bottom of the bottling unit. Honey that is to be stored for bottling at a later time is sealed in containers and labeled with the date harvested, location, nectar source, honey color, moisture content, and weight. Rita bottles some light amber Delta wildflower honey.

--Richard

Joe-Pye Weed in Bloom

Joe-Pye weed is a late summer blooming wildflower found in damp ground along the edges of streams, ditches, and forest margins. I came across a patch of Joe-Pye weed in bloom in a marsh adjacent to a pond on our farm while watching a flock of gadwalls, gray, early-migrating ducks. Thin flocks of gadwalls, American wigeons, wood ducks, and green-winged teal can be seen in the Mid-South in September. The colorful Joe-Pye weed, a member of the important family of bee plants, the composites, often stands over eight feet in height. The composites, or sunflowers, are significant producers of nectar and pollen. Legends attribute the name of various species to a New England colonial-era Native American medicinal healer named Joe Pye. It is said that he treated conditions such as diarrhea, typhus, kidney stones, and fevers with the plants which now carry his name. One species of Joe-Pye weed, boneset, is thought to benefit in setting broken bones. This white-flowered plant is a major producer of nectar for late-season honey at times. Another Joe-Pye species with white flowers is white snakeroot, a poisonous plant. The flowering plants benefit from pollination by bees, and many serve as a source of medicine for humans and animals.

Late summer is an important time for beekeepers to observe the condition of their bee hives. In August, Chris Harrell noticed a change in activity in his Eastern North Carolina hive. Brood production had stopped. He found a number of queen cells that had been torn down from the sides. It appeared that the colony had superseded itself, and a virgin queen had killed the other developing queens. In his region, August may be the last month that a queen may successfully mate. Chris found young brood in September; it appears that the colony was successful in replacing its queen. He even found a young queen running rapidly across the surface of the combs. Virgin queens and young queens are often quite shy.

--Richard