Early Summer Hive Inspection

It is important to have a large population of honey bees in place to take advantage of a major nectar flow. An early summer inspection of the bee hives found most strong and ready for collecting nectar from the blooms of the Arkansas Delta’s flowering row crops. The primary two crops for honey bees to use to make honey are soybeans and cotton.

When inspecting the bees, we expect to find hives that are full of healthy bees. We can assume that we have a good queen by examining the frames in the brood area. We should find brood of all stages: eggs, larvae, and pupae. Under normal conditions, there will be roughly twice as many larvae as eggs and twice as many pupae as larvae. This distribution of brood stages results from the time that the brood exists in each stage of development: three days for eggs, six days for larvae, and 12 days for pupae. The pattern of the capped brood, which contains the pupae, tells us much about the queen and the health and condition of the hive. Click on the picture to see a healthy frame of capped brood from a strong colony. The light brown colored cappings extend across the entire frame in a continuous pattern with very few empty cells. Those empty cells probably indicate that we have a colony that has the ability to detect and remove parasitic mites growing in the brood cells with the developing larvae. The bees uncap the affected cell, remove the larva and the mites, and carry them out of the hive. This genetically-passed trait is called hygienic behavior. Using genetically mite-resistant bees with hygienic behavior is one of the key components of our integrated pest management program.
--Richard

Summer Wildflowers Add Color

With the change of seasons we find a change in the wildflowers coloring the undisturbed margins of fields and woodlots. The yellow, white, and purple flowers of spring have been replaced by different yellow flowers plus reds and whites. Among coffee weed and spires of Johnson grass, an overgrown ditch bank reveals several bright and colorful varieties of coreopsis plus white and yellow summer asters. Here at Peace Bee Farm, we collect and freeze pollen in the summer to feed to the bees next spring to ensure a good variety of nutrients at queen-raising time. We can tell that there are numerous pollen sources available just by observing the collected pollen. The color and taste of the pollen pellets changes almost daily. This summer diversity of proteins, lipids, vitamins, and minerals will be most valuable in the early spring when pollen is not abundant.

A group of home school students from northern Mississippi visited the bee farm today. The students have been studying entomology along with their parents. Again and again I am impressed by the understanding that young children have of their natural world. They ask the most pertinent questions. They came to the bee farm with considerable knowledge of insect and honey bee biology. They asked how bees find flowers, how they know when they need a new queen, and how they go about raising a new queen. Both the children and their parents were eager to discuss ways of introducing a new queen to a colony. They could foresee many of the problems of queen acceptance. Honey bees fascinate people of all ages and open their imaginations.
--Richard

A New Queen Bee Emerges

While examining bee hives, I found one colony in need of a new queen. Every hive needs a healthy and productive queen. Without a highly productive queen a colony cannot grow to the size necessary to produce a surplus of honey or effectively pollinate crops. Honey bees never help out other colonies that are in trouble, but beekeepers regularly do. I looked in a nearby hive for a frame of young brood to borrow and add to the weak hive. I hoped to find brood at the youngest larval stage that the bees could use to raise a new queen. On day four of development, honey bees can create a queen bee by feeding the larva a diet of royal jelly. However, I couldn’t find any brood of the proper age.

With a strong nectar flow, the hive had become honey-bound; all available cells were filled with honey. The bees filled cells that the queen would normally use for egg laying with incoming nectar, a common occurrence this year. I did find a fully developed queen cell on a frame, which I decided to move to the colony in need of a new queen. A colony will usually accept any queen that emerges in its hive. After carrying the frame by hand a short distance to the new hive, I gave the queen cell a final inspection. The cell was empty; the queen had emerged while I held the frame in my hands. Click on the picture to see a new queen, one minute old. The hair on her body still appears wet. On the frame from the honey-bound hive she walks past cells of capped brood on the left. The cells of recently emerged bees have been immediately filled with honey. The darker area to the right of the queen is fully-ripened honey in cells capped with beeswax.
--Richard

Sumac in Bloom

Smooth sumac is the only tree or shrub which can be found in each of America’s 48 contiguous states. This important bee plant is in bloom now. Its blooms will be followed shortly by winged sumac. Both can be found in stands along roadsides or along the undisturbed margins of woodlots. Sumac’s small, open clusters of flowers are completely exposed, making them accessible to a number of different insect species. I often find honey bees sharing the same clusters of sumac blossoms with solitary bees and soldier beetles. Sumac produces large amounts of both pollen and nectar. The bees gather sumac pollen early in the morning before the sun has stimulated the plant’s nectaries. Later in the day little pollen is gathered. Sumac flowers secrete nectar freely on hot, clear days; but on cloudy or cool days the flow ceases almost entirely. Click on the picture to see a honey bee poised on a sumac flower with her proboscis, or tongue, extended to collect nectar

Pure sumac honey has a golden color. When it is fresh it has a bitter taste. However the bitterness disappears by winter. The mixing of various nectar sources in a hive’s honey stores makes for distinctive flavors. As is the case with sumac honey, the taste of the honey may change over time as well as from season to season. There is very little single-source honey; most honey comes from dozens of different nectar sources. Sumac is a major honey plant. It is, by the way, in the same family as poison ivy and poison oak, two lesser honey plants, which do make good, edible honey.
--Richard

Building Honey Comb

The honey bee builds its own nest out of beeswax that the young bees secrete from glands on the lower side of their abdomen. Flakes of beeswax are secreted after the bees eat honey. For the bees to produce an ounce of beeswax, they must consume one pound of honey. For the bees to produce that pound of honey they must fly a combined distance of 55 thousand miles and visit two million flowers. That distance is more than twice the distance around the world at the equator. To accomplish the building of the brood nest, it is necessary to have a significant nectar flow from the flowering plants surrounding the bee hive.

Some of the honey bee colonies that we started in the spring have expanded their brood nest to fill two medium-size hive boxes and are now building the honey comb to occupy a third box. If you click on the picture, you can see the bees in the process of drawing out the beeswax to make the six-sided honey comb cells. The bees work together to fashion the flakes of beeswax into cells by starting at the top frame bar and working their way downward. In the picture, you can see bees in the lower half of the frame manipulating beeswax to draw out the comb. The beeswax of new honey comb is bright and white. The bees in the upper half of the frame are filling the newly completed cells with honey. Here, we see a strong colony drawing out perfect frames of honey comb during a good nectar flow.
--Richard

Coreopsis in Bloom

Throughout the spring, summer, and fall there is a progression of yellow wildflowers. Coming into bloom now is tickseed coreopsis, a member of the important bee plant family, the composites. Tickseed coreopsis has bright yellow petals surrounding a reddish-brown center. The composites are the sunflowers. The composites are among the largest families of flowering plants, making up one tenth of the world’s plant species. There are 25 thousand composites, including dandelion, chicory, lettuce, and chrysanthemum. They contribute both nectar and pollen to the honey bees. It seems that the honey bees in the Arkansas Delta use coreopsis primarily as a source of pollen. A diverse number of pollen sources are important for good honey bee nutrition. Click on the photo to see the honey bee with pollen covering its legs and hairy body. The bee will rake the pollen from its body, mix it with some honey from her honey gut, and pack it on her pollen baskets on her hind legs. She will then be ready to fly back to her hive.

There will not be another yellow flower in place in great numbers until the coreopsis has completed its colorful showing. Not only have the flowering plants evolved with attracting schemes of color, shape, infrared nectar guides, fragrance, and taste for the pollinators, they also have a time-sharing scheme to help insure their pollination. By not competing with other yellow flowers at this time of year, the coreopsis helps insure its pollination and seed production for next year’s plants. The honey bees and flowering plants have always benefited each other.
--Richard

Honey Bees Collect Propolis

Honey bees bring four things into the hive: nectar, pollen, water, and propolis. Propolis is sometimes called bee glue. Honey bees collect the saps and gums of trees to make propolis. Propolis is a sticky substance with the texture of chewing gum found on the sole of your shoe. The bees use it to glue together everything in the bee hive. It is the reason that beekeepers use a hive tool to open the hive and remove the frames. The bees use propolis to seal every crack in the hive. When they first move into a hive or cavity, they varnish the inside surfaces with propolis, which has antibacterial and antifungal properties. As well as sealing cracks, the bees build structures with propolis to direct the flow of air through their nest. If a mouse gets into the bee hive, the bees will often sting it to death and then encase the dead body in propolis, thus protecting the hive from bacteria and odor.

Propolis has a number of human uses as well. A number of medications are made from propolis. It is also applied to the surface of certain musical instruments. It is thought that Antonio Stradivari used propolis in making his violins in the late 1600s. Click on the photo to see the honey bee collecting propolis. It is a difficult task, taking considerable time. The bee gnaws at the sticky tree sap with her mandibles to free flakes which she carries in her pollen baskets. The propolis is the yellow flakes on the bee’s hind legs. Once she returns to the hive, she will need the assistance of another bee to remove the sticky propolis from her pollen baskets. Even for the bees, propolis is almost as sticky as chewing gum.
--Richard