One Hundred Year Flood

The Mississippi River crested today at the highest level since the Great Flood of 1937. Swollen by melting snow in northern regions and heavy spring rains, North America’s largest river rose to within a foot of its all-time record. I took today’s photo from atop Chisca Mound in Memphis, Tennessee, a city built on high ground known as the fourth Chickasaw Bluff. Trunks of massive trees drift in the fast-moving current. The tops of tall cottonwood trees can be seen one mile away, marking the river’s west bank and the Arkansas Delta. Seven miles, straight ahead, beyond the river’s main earthen levee, sits the city of West Memphis, Arkansas; fifteen miles ahead is Peace Bee Farm. This year’s flooding along the Mississippi River has had an effect upon both managed and natural honey bee colonies. The Memphis Area Beekeepers Association lost several hives when its bee yard was flooded by waist-deep waters of the Wolf River, a tributary of the Mississippi. Swarms that I captured this week near the Mississippi River in Arkansas may have been driven from natural nests in the cavities of trees by rising waters. Some of the honey bee colonies clearly perished, but many of the resilient bees seem to have escaped flooded trees and floating hives.

Humans, like honey bees, are social beings. We accomplish more as a community than could be possible as individuals. Designing and building a levee system to protect from powerful forces like a once in a hundred year flood requires the combined efforts of many. Viewing the Mississippi River above flood stage is humbling. Another thing comes to mind: All of this water draining from 31 states was carried by clouds and deposited as rain or snow. As the climate warms, one of the effects will be increases in mighty floods. Native Americans, like the Chisca, moved into the rich river bottom lands to hunt and farm, and then retreated to high ground when the Mississippi floods each spring.

--Richard

Nectaries

Flowering plants attract honey bees and other pollinators as a method of moving pollen within and among flowers to reproduce the plants. To attract the pollinators, plants emit fragrances, display colorful flowers with intricate shapes, and offer tasty and nutritious foods. The foods are carbohydrates from nectar and proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals from pollen. Nectar is usually secreted by the flowers. Honey bees are directed to the nectary, the nectar-bearing part of the flower, by ultraviolet nectar guides. The nectary is usually located in the center of the flower. However, nectar is secreted by some plants in areas outside of the flowers. Among the plants with extra-floral nectaries is the catalpa tree, which is now in bloom. Today, I watched a Baltimore oriole feeding on nectar in catalpa flowers. Honey bees were flying into the large bell-shaped white catalpa flowers, and they were also working extra-floral nectaries on the large catalpa leaves. The leaves secrete sugary nectar to attract pollinators like the bees in today’s photo. Catalpa trees are members of the trumpet creeper family. After pollination, catalpa produces wind-dispersed seeds that hang in long pods.

Cotton is another flowering plant that secretes large amounts of nectar outside of the flower. After the first day’s bloom, which yields nectar from the blossom, cotton secretes nectar from bracts, leaf-like parts outside of the flower, and from leaves. Other plants have flowers that make it difficult for some pollinators to access the nectary. Honeysuckle flowers have a long bell-shaped flower making it difficult for honey bee tongues to reach the nectar. However, honey bees can access honeysuckle nectar after leaf-cutting bees chew through the side of the flower. Honey bees follow leaf-cutting bees to forage on hosta lilies as well. To access the nectar of alfalfa, honey bees must trip a trigger in the flower which delivers an annoying slap in the bee’s face. The foraging techniques used by honey bees to access the nectar of different plants are learned behaviors.

--Richard

The Mating Nucleus Hive

Beekeepers typically produce their queen bees in small hives called queen mating nucleus hives. Nucleus hives are any hives that are smaller than full size bee hives. Honey bees produce queens anytime from spring through fall; however, they produce them in greater numbers in the spring. For the bees, this spring-time queen production matches their tendency to divide the colony and swarm. Beekeepers take advantage of the spring-time tendency to produce queens in order to expand their beekeeping operation or replace colonies lost over the winter. A queen cell is placed in a queen mating nucleus hive by the beekeeper two days before the queen emerges as an adult. Today’s photo shows a queen cell in a plastic protective holder, positioned vertically, pushed into the surface of the comb. The queen cell may have been developed from beekeeper-grafted larvae reared in a cell builder hive or produced by bees in an existing hive as a swarm cell or supersedure cell. Productive queens come from good genetic lines and receive complete nutrition and effective mating to high-quality drones.

The queen mating nucleus hive is a queenless colony set-up to care for a developing queen bee. The nucleus hive contains frames of nurse bees and brood. Capped brood contains pupae that will soon emerge as adults. These young adult workers produce food for the developing queen. Open brood emits strong pheromones to hold nurse bees in the mating nucleus hive. Frames of honey and pollen ensure the new queen receives nutritious food for proper development. After the virgin queen emerges from her cell as an adult, she roams the combs of the mating nucleus hive for five or six days. Then she makes a series of mating flights, mating in flight with 12 to 20 drones. Afterward, she flies back to the same nucleus hive. In five or six days, she begins to lay eggs. The beekeeper can then begin evaluating the quality of the queen in the mating nucleus hives.

--Richard

Installing Packaged Bees

One of the most common ways for beekeepers to establish a honey bee colony is by purchasing a package of bees. Commercial beekeeping operations prepare the packages, which can be delivered by truck or shipped. The package is a wooden box with screened sides for ventilation. The box includes one queen bee housed in a cage, roughly 12 thousand worker bees, and a can of sugar syrup. The queen often shares her cage with five or six attendant bees to feed and care for her. The can of sugar syrup is slightly perforated to allow it to drip to provide food and moisture for the bees while they are housed in the package. Prepared in the Deep South, packaged bees are often shipped across the US in April and May. The packages are made-up of bees shaken from the frames of numerous production hives. The caged queen and her attendant bees are taken from queen mating nucleus colonies after the queen begins to lay eggs, indicating that she is successfully mated. At the time that the package is produced, it cannot be considered a colony. The bees become organized as a colony after they get accustomed to the queen’s pheromones. To prevent the disorganized bees from merely flying away before they become a colony, I like to confine them in the hive.

This week I assisted several beekeepers install packages of bees. In today’s picture Mary Phillips and I block the entrance to three hives with clover to temporarily prevent the bees from leaving the hives. Mary sprays the inside of the hive and the surfaces of the frames with sugar water scented with spearmint and lemongrass essential oils. The can of syrup is removed from a package, and we inspect the queen in her cage. We expose the candy plug that the bees will chew through to release the queen from her cage. Feeders supply the bees with syrup to help them secrete beeswax they use to build honeycomb.

--Richard

A Violent Spring

The mid-section of the United States is the only area in the world that regularly sees tornadoes. Each spring violent thunderstorms develop as warm, damp air rising from the Gulf of Mexico is met by strong cold fronts sweeping down from arctic regions. Atmospheric conditions are made unstable by jet stream currents, high-altitude, high-speed winds that shear the tops off clouds and twist storm cells. The result is violent thunderstorms with torrential rains, numerous lightning strikes, large hail, tornadoes, and strong winds shearing downward at high speed. A series of thunderstorms left a path of death and destruction across the South. Friends from the Birmingham, Alabama region experienced exceptionally large and powerful tornadoes. Many lives were lost in Tuscaloosa, Huntsville, Hueytown, and Concord, Alabama. While communications from the affected areas of Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia have been difficult, it appears that over three hundred deaths resulted from this one series of storms, the latest in four weeks of continuous storms. I encourage anyone who would like to contribute to responsible agencies, such as the American Red Cross, to direct cash gifts to the capable relief workers assisting the affected citizens recovering from the storm damage.

Today the empress tree is in bloom. Whenever I see the large pink to violet bells of the empress tree, I remember seeing them covering Red Mountain in Birmingham, Alabama. These trees, imported from China, as ornamentals escaped into the countryside. Tiny seeds of the empress tree are blown by the winds to propagate this woody member of the important family of bee plants, the figworts. Honey bees can be seen moving about the clusters of large empress tree flowers on the limb tips high in the treetops. Today’s picture is an empress tree blooming in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. The tree, purported to be a gift to Jefferson Davis’ wife, came from the Forbidden City of China. Hopefully, the seeds of empress trees will be distributed by more gently winds.

--Richard

Buttercups in Bloom

From spring through fall there are yellow wildflowers in bloom along forest margins, roadsides, and unplowed farm fields. The flowers are actually a sequence of species that bloom at different times. These plants are able to secure insect pollination by not competing with but a few species in attracting the available insects. Buttercups are the first yellow wildflowers to carpet the ground in the Arkansas Delta. They will be followed by groundsel, tickseed coreopsis, golden asters, bitterweed, and goldenrod. Pollinators like the honey bee and moth shown in today’s photo are attracted to the bright, yellow buttercup flowers, which have a waxy surface giving the flower the appearance of being wet with dew.

In the Mid-South, the spring of the year always sees the clash of warm, damp air rising from the Gulf of Mexico meeting the year’s final arctic cold fronts. The result is predictable rainfall to support ample flowering plants for the honey bees and other pollinators. Strong cold fronts bring violent thunderstorms and tornadoes to the region. Peace Bee Farm and the surrounding area were struck by a series of severe storms over the past three weeks. Blown from a barn, broken lumber and sheets of steel roofing struck queen mating nucleus hives, scattering hives and bees. Small clusters of bees sheltered young queens in nucleus hives exposed to the weather. I added nurse bees to boost the population of these hives. Roofers placed temporary coverings over our house’s damaged roof. Lighting struck the honey house, and damaged some honey-handling equipment. An electrician rapidly repaired the wiring; burned fans and lighting fixtures were replaced. The electrical power lines were damaged as well. A lineman in a tall bucket truck repaired wind-strained wiring and replaced fuses. All of these workers efforts are especially appreciated after such storms. Each worked cheerfully conducting important, tiresome, and sometimes dangerous repair tasks. After a short upheaval, our bees remain in dry hives, and honey flows from the honey house. Thanks to all.

--Richard

Black Locust in Bloom

The beekeeper’s calendar follows the honey bee’s life cycle more closely than our calendar on the wall which is based on dates of the year. Activity in Peace Bee Farm’s hives in the Arkansas Delta leads those of our beekeeping friends in New England by about seven weeks, and it lags behind our New Zealand friends’ hives by about six months. Since honey bee activities are timed differently in various areas, beekeepers watch the bloom of certain flowering plants to help predict events in the bee hive. One of the significant observations for many is the bloom of the black locust tree. To them, the black locust tells when to expect the queen to be at her maximum egg laying production. This can mean that the beekeeper can rear new queen bees in cell builder hives. It can also mean that swarm season is rapidly approaching. At this time, colonies often replace their queen through supersedure or create a new queen and divide the colony through swarming.

When in bloom, the black locust is easily recognizable along the margins of woodlots or suburban landscapes by its large clusters of fragrant, bright white blossoms. These trees, which reach 80 feet, may attract large numbers of honey bees as well as other bees; however, the black locust nectar flow is not consistent from year to year. In some years the relatively weak black locust nectar is not as attractive as other plants blooming at the same time, and few honey bees are seen working the locust flowers. In other years an abundant surplus of tasteful, light-colored black locust honey may be harvested. The black locust is a member of the legume family. The legumes are important bee plants because they produce ample amounts of nectar and pollen. The honey locust, another legume, is similar in appearance, and it produces flowers with the fragrance of honey. However, the honey locust, which sports eight-inch thorns, usually does not produce a surplus of honey.

--Richard