Plums in Bloom

The plums are the first bright white-blooming trees to appear in the woods early in the spring. These members of the rose family grow in woodlands, fencerows, and old fields. The roses are important bee plants, providing ample amounts of nectar and pollen. There are numerous species of plums in the Mid-South including the wild plum and the Chickasaw plum, thought to have been cultivated by the Chickasaw Indians and early settlers. Many domestic plums have escaped into the woods, often forming thickets of white-blooming, low trees. Many of the domestic plums require bees to cross-pollinate the blossoms. The early bloom of the plums comes at an important time for honey bee colonies rapidly expanding their spring populations. After the bloom of the plums, a series of other fruiting trees in the rose family will come into bloom: pear, apple, cherry, peach, and crabapple. The almond tree, cultivated in California, is also a rose. All except the peach, which is usually self-fruitful, require pollination from bees to produce fruit. If you click on today’s photo, you can see honey bees actively foraging a plum tree. Some bees are collecting nectar, and others are collecting pollen.

A report has been released which indicates that Colony Collapse Disorder still persists after four years of honey bee die-offs in the United States and Canada. The report reveals that continuing CCD losses coupled with a more severe winter than normal may bring record over-winter colony losses this year. The study found bee pollen and hives laden with pesticides. Many of the pesticides are systemic agents which are designed to be taken up by the plants and carried throughout the plant. It is felt that the systemic pesticides are brought back to the hive by honey bees foraging for pollen to feed to the brood. The report can be followed at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100324/ap_on_sc/us_food_and_farm_disappearing_bees. Hopefully, this and similar reports will make more of the public aware of the effect certain pesticides have on the pollinators.
--Richard

Selection

For a species to survive and prosper, it must be adapted to the environment; and the environment is constantly changing. Species of plants and animals that exist today are the ones that have changed to be capable of living in the presence of harsh environmental conditions, pests, and parasites. The mechanism for change is mutation. Mutation of genes means different traits will be passed along to the next generation. If these traits make it more favorable for the offspring to live, there will be more of the offspring in the population. This change in the numbers of individuals with certain traits describes how plants and animals evolve to fit into the changing environment. This population change is the result of natural selection. Humans can artificially select the characteristics that we feel are wanted by picking the individuals that we want to reproduce. Beekeepers are doing this by selecting honey bees that are resistant to parasitic mites and other pests and pathogens. They are also selecting bees that are gentle and are effective pollinators and honey producers.

Horticulturist Paul Little is selecting varieties of the succulent plant, sedum, which are well adapted to the environment in the Southern United States. His method involves attempting to grow large numbers of sedum plants and evaluating how well they perform in the region’s warm, humid temperate climate and varying soil conditions. Of course, many of the varieties that Paul tries simply die. They are not suitable in the region. Paul propagates sedum from the heartiest survivors. His plants are identified as Southern Select Sedum, and may be viewed at http://www.southernselectsedum.com/. The method of improving the survivability of either honey bees or sedum plants is similar. Honey bee producers probably have an advantage over sedum producers because the multiple mating of queen bees results in a numerous traits to select. Sedum plants are propagated by cuttings. The offspring plants from cuttings are clones of the parent plant without genetic differences to select.
--Richard

Minimal Manipulation

Beekeepers must balance the value of opening the bee hive and the damage that opening it causes. One of the decisions we make regarding the care of the bees involves how often we should open the hive and how much manipulation we should make to the bees’ home. In the presence of Small Hive Beetles, an Integrated Pest Management approach to beekeeping would likely involve minimal manipulation of the hive. The reason for this is that the honey bees have learned to defend the hive from the effects of the beetles by trapping the adult beetles and holding them in jails made of propolis or bee glue. The Small Hive Beetle is protected from the bees by a hard covering.

Click on today’s photo to see honey bees building Small Hive Beetle jails in a honey super. The workers are placing propolis along the ends of the frames to hold beetles as prisoners. In the picture a brown-colored adult beetle tries to escape. Its sensitive antennae are tipped with feather-like ends. To prevent breaking the propolis bonds that trap the Small Hive Beetles, we may make regular checks of the hives without opening them. Having large numbers of bees flying in and out of the hive and pollen being brought into the hive usually mean that we have a laying queen and bees are feeding larvae. Small Hive Beetles often hide in burr comb. We can remove hiding places by scraping beeswax from the top bars of frames. Using frames of drone comb foundation encourages the bees to not build burr comb. At times we can inspect a hive by removing a few frames from the upper hive body and look down into the lower box. We should not leave excessive amounts of equipment on the hive, as this provides good hiding places for Small Hive Beetles. We should also avoid hive feeder arrangements that drown bees; Small Hive Beetle larvae thrive on the protein of the dead bees.
--Richard

Dead Nettle in Bloom

Lawns and open fields are covered with a low plant with pale purple flowers. This is dead nettle, a member of the important family of bee plants, the mints. Dead nettle is often found growing in the same fields with its close relative, henbit. Dead nettle has rows of pointed leafs; henbit has a rounded, curly leaf. Henbit has a similar flower with a darker purple color. They can easily be recognized as mints by their square stems. While many of the mints can be identified by distinct aromatic odors when their leaves are crushed, dead nettle merely smells of hay or rich forest soil. Dead nettle is a cool season plant that will disappear with hot weather. If lawns are not sprayed with herbicides, the dead nettles serve as a good source of nectar for honey bee colonies starting their spring build-up. If you click on today’s picture, you can see a tiny solitary bee foraging dead nettle.

I got a message today from an Arkansas beekeeper who discovered that she lost the queen for one of her colonies. It is fortunate that she has more than one colony to work with, because honey bees are not producing queens and drones in this region now. The colonies will be producing both in a few weeks, though. I found the first drone brood today that I have seen this year. Drones emerge as adults in 24 days, but they are not sexually-mature for about another 20 days. This beekeeper may need to combine her queen-less colony with a queen-right colony to protect the honeycomb until the bees are ready to produce queens and drones. If she lets the colony collapse from lack of a queen, hive scavengers will likely destroy the combs. Small Hive Beetles and wax moths eat the combs and contents of abandoned hives. Once the bees start producing queens and drones in a few weeks, she can divide her hive into two colonies.
--Richard

Searching for Pollen

The end of winter and the beginning of spring find the honey bees eagerly searching for food for their expanding populations on any occasion that allows the bees to fly. The bees are in a period of population growth which demands considerable amounts of food; however, there are not yet ample amounts of food available from flowering plants. Adult bees can live on the high-energy carbohydrates in stored honey, but developing bees must have a complete diet. For good nutrition, the bees must have both honey and pollen. The pollen completes the honey bee diet by supplying protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals. The colonies are now consuming the last of their honey stores from last fall. Most of their pollen is being brought into the hive by foragers who seek out any flowers in bloom. The first warm days of spring bring foraging honey bees to plants that may not regularly attract bees. The bright yellow blooms of forsythia at times attract pollen foragers. Daffodils are early-blooming perennial flowers that do not often attract honey bees. However, this week I found large numbers of bees foraging for pollen in daffodils. These flowers marked the location of a long-abandoned home site in the margin of the woods. The bees would fly directly into the large bell of the flowers’ coronas and emerge with pollen.

While inspecting bees, I found the colony that held two queens on January 24 had died of starvation. I gave all of the colonies in that bee yard supplemental feeding at that time, and they consumed all of the syrup. It is likely that the colony with two queens laying eggs simply produced a population that could not be sustained by the available food. Beekeepers who want to produce a honey crop face a balancing act during the early spring. They must encourage the bees to build a large population to be able to exploit the large nectar flows while trying to avoid starvation and swarming.
--Richard

Late Winter Hive Inspection

As a long winter comes to an end, opportunities arise for the beekeepers to open the hives for a closer inspection than has been possible so far this year. The frames can only be removed from the hive when the air temperature is warm enough to keep from chilling the brood. An inspection of a number of hives found the bees with strong, expanding colonies. Many of the colonies had consumed much of their honey stores. I feel that a number of the most populous colonies would have starved had it not been for late winter supplemental feedings.

Many of the hives were also ready for a rearrangement of the order of the brood boxes. It is the natural tendency of the honey bee cluster to move upward in the brood nest over winter. The bees eat the honey from the cells above their cluster, and then they move into the empty area and use it for brood production. In cases where the brood was found to be in the very upper-most part of the hive, the lowest hive body was usually found to be completely empty of brood and honey stores. Often the bees will not move downward by themselves; the beekeeper must step in to rearrange the hive to provide brood space. If the bees can’t find adequate numbers of empty cells for the queen to use to lay eggs, they colony will begin a month-long set of preparations for swarming. Moving the lowest hive body to the upper position effectively moves the cluster of bees downward in the hive. The empty cells above the brood nest can now be used for brood nest expansion or storage of nectar being brought into the hive. For some of the colonies, this week brought the second rearrangement of the brood nest this year. Each rearrangement opens brood space and stimulates brood production. Click on today’s picture of nurse bees tending brood of mixed ages, including eggs, larvae, and pupae.
--Richard

The Honey Super

The modern bee hive is a functional replica of the honey bee’s natural home, a cavity in a hollow tree. The typical honey bee nest has brood comb in the lower portion of the cavity. Layers of pollen and honey surround the brood, like the layers of an onion. Each sheet of comb in the brood nest is trimmed to the same thickness. Surplus honey is stored in the upper part of the cavity, above the brood nest. Stored honey is held in cells which may be drawn out considerably longer than those in the brood nest. This makes for some sheets of honeycomb that are thicker than those below.

In the modern Langstroth bee hive, the surplus honey is stored above the brood nest in boxes called honey supers. They get the name, “super” from the fact that the boxes are “superimposed” or stacked upon one another. The beekeeper places frames of foundation in the supers for the bees to produce the honeycomb to hold the hive’s surplus honey. In keeping with the honey bee’s tendency to draw out more lengthy cells for honey storage, we often remove a frame to give the bees room to extend the comb. This allows each frame to hold more honey, and the beeswax cappings are exposed for greater ease of cutting the cappings and removing the honey at harvest time. The bees’ tendency is to build comb and store honey in the center of the hive. We can encourage the bees to use the entire honey super by placing frames of drawn comb in the outside positions and frames of foundation in the center. In the photo, I am spacing nine frames in a super capable of holding ten. Empty frames of honeycomb above the brood nest stimulate the bees to collect nectar and hoard honey. During strong nectar flows, the bees draw out the foundation in the center frames and fill it with honey. Additional supers are added as needed.
--Richard