July 2012 Cover Story

Don't Give Up

by Howard Scott 

Of course, it’s frustrating not to have your hive(s) over-winter. But these days, it’s par for the course. For the last several years, our club members have incurred a 40% over-wintering rate. That is, for every 10 hives, only four survived into the spring. Six hives died. That is a hard statistic to take. For novices, the percent must be lower, perhaps 30% or 20%. So, if you have one or two hives, and none makes it through the winter, it’s understandably depressing.

But, look at it this way. You can start over in the spring. It’s as easy as buying and installing a package. I know this personally. After 30 years of keeping bees, the first 10 of having very high over-wintering, the last 20 of having low overwintering, my attitude is, “Hey, what the heck, I can start over again in the spring.” The starting up is always exciting, because I can watch and experience the hive’s development for the next several months. Regardless of whether the hive overwinters or whether I obtain honey or not, it’s a worthwhile experience. That’s my positive spin on a bad ending. And it’s worse for me than for you, because I am an experienced beekeeper, and should do better. Ironically, it was the first half-dozen years wherein I did not understand what I was doing that I never lost a hive. Of course, my first half-dozen years came before the introduction of varroa into this country, and that changed everything. So I should feel sorrier than you. But I don’t.

Others complain about the time commitment. In truth, beekeeping with one or two hives doesn’t take much time. The bees do all of the work. True, you must set up the hives, install the packages, and then periodically—once every ten days—check to see what’s going on, and sometimes take action—feeding, adding supers, medicating. Then there’s the harvest in late summer or early fall, which takes some time, but is an effort of pleasure, because you’re obtaining honey. So, maybe a minimalist beekeeper might spend 20 hours in total per hive per spring and summer. That’s not a lot of time commitment.
I find new beekeepers get caught up in the details, and ....

November 2011 cover story  

Simple Microscopy Nosema for Beekeepers

by Randy Oliver

  In my last articles, I addressed the importance of monitoring infestation levels of the honey bee parasite Varroa. Now I’m going to move on to the next common parasite—nosema—of which similar monitoring allows one to make informed management decisions. It is far better to learn to monitor nosema levels yourself than it is to depend on sending the occasional sample off for testing!
  Checking for nosema infection level does not require laboratory expertise, and the cost of a good microscope can be quickly recouped by not wasting your money on unnecessary treatments, or from avoiding colony loss. Unfortunately, many beekeepers are intimidated by the thought of learning how to use a microscope, get frustrated due to unfamiliarity with the necessary techniques, or have trouble identifying the spores.  I hope in this article to guide you step by step through the entire process of monitoring for nosema.

EQUIPMENT NEEDED
  Fig. 1 shows all the equipment you will need. I highly recommend the Omano OM36L microscope (shown), which has binocular eyepieces, battery power for field use, and a mechanical stage for moving the slide around (Microscope.com offers a “Beekeepers Special” for $349). For some reason, the optics of this particular scope really make nosema spores stand out! My advice is to pay the money for a decent scope, as this is likely the only one that you will ever purchase, and you don’t want to be stuck with one that does not live up to your expectations.
  You can save money by getting a monocular (single eyepiece) scope (the OM136C costs $179 for the basic model). Whatever you buy, I do recommend that you get a scope with an adjustable condenser.

TAKING BEE SAMPLES
    Tips:
  1. It is easiest to collect bees with a vacuum (search “Suckabee” at ScientificBeekeeping.com), but they can also be swept with a brush into an open jar of alcohol. (Fig. 2)
  2. If there are not enough bees, stand in front of the hive for a minute or two, then step aside and allow the rush of returning foragers to land.
  3. Or, block the entrance with screen (not a solid block) and return in a few minutes.
  4. Blow into the entrance to get guard bees to rush out (wear a veil!).
  5. If you can’t take bees from the entrance, then take them from under the lid, but realize that your spore counts will be substantially lower, by about tenfold. However, sampling of bees from inside may give you a better idea as to whether the colony is seriously infected!
  6. Samples can be kept in alcohol or frozen indefinitely until you process them.

PROCESSING THE SAMPLES
  It is far better to view many samples quickly than to spend a lot of time with fewer samples, due to the inherent variation in samples from hive to hive, and week to week. I’ve switched to the really quick and clean “ziplock method,” which I learned from labs in Canada and Australia. (See Figs. 3-8)
  Samples smaller than 50 bees can be badly skewed by one highly-infected bee. A single bee may contain 500 million (500M) spores. That means that it alone will contribute an average spore count of 10M spores per bee to an entire sample of 50 bees, even if not a single other bee is infected! Therefore, the larger the sample size, the more accurate the results. Don’t place too much stock in the count from any single sample!
  At this point, you can if you wish, filter the liquid through cheesecloth or a nylon stocking in order to remove most of the trash, but I generally find this to be unnecessary. If there are any bee parts under the cover slip, use a fresh drop, as the parts will hold the cover slip up and skew your spore count higher. If any water puddles around the cover slip, blot it off with a paper towel so that it doesn’t get on the microscope lens (this is really important—don’t ever shove a wet slide onto the platform, as it will crud up the lens).
  Now here’s the beauty of the ziplock method—once you’ve gotten your spore count done, you can simply zip the bag shut and toss it into the trash—no mess or washing up! It only takes me 2-3 minutes per sample turnaround, and a minute of that is simply waiting for the spores to settle.

BRINGING THE SPORES INTO FOCUS
  The following directions are specifically for the OM36, but will apply to most scopes. (See Fig. 9)
  1. (Applies only to the first slide). Rotate the lens turret so that the 4x lens (the shortest one; with a red ring) clicks into place.  The degree of magnification is the product of the 10x eyepiece (ocular) lens and the 4x objective lens in the nosepiece (turret)—in this case giving a magnification of 40x. At this magnification you can easily view bee body parts, but nosema spores would only be pinpricks.
  2. Place the prepared slide (with a cover slip over the liquid, and any wetness blotted off) onto the stage, clipping it into the spring-loaded holder. Click on the lamp (at back of the scope base), and turn the lamp brightness to about the “4” setting. Adjust the slide location so that the light shines up through the center of the “gunk” on the slide.
  3. Use the coarse focus knob to adjust the lens to about 7/8” above the slide.
  4. Now look through the eyepieces, and turn the coarse focus knob back and forth slowly until the bee debris comes into focus.
  5. Adjust the diaphragm (the size of the hole through which the light passes) lever toward the dark range, so that the debris looks “natural” and has clear texture.
  6. Adjust the distance between the eyepieces until you see only a single, round image.
  7. Looking through your right eye only, use the fine focus to adjust image until it’s sharp.
  8. Now, looking only through your left eye only, turn the knurled ring on the left eyepiece until the image is sharp. You have now customized the scope for your particular eyes and interpupillary distance.
  9. Now rotate the turret to snap the 10x lens (the next longer one; with a yellow ring) into place. Increase the light with the diaphragm lever if necessary. Slowly turn the fine focus knob back and forth a bit until the debris pieces come into focus. Now you are viewing at 100x magnification, at which nosema spores are barely visible. Feel free to explore the slide at any time by using the stage adjustment knobs (note the since a microscope inverts the image, that the image moves “backwards” relative to the movement of the actual slide).
  10. Now rotate the turret to snap the 40x lens (blue ring) into place, and adjust the fine focus slightly —the lens will barely clear the cover slip! Be careful not to focus down too far and crunch into the cover slip! At this magnification (400x) nosema spores are easily visible, but still small.
  11. Use the stage movement knobs to locate a pollen grain or bee hair. Now adjust the diaphragm lever again to the optimal light level so that those objects are clear to see.
  12. Now focus down (top of knob going toward the back of the scope) to the lowest level that objects are in focus and look for nosema spores. You must wait at least 60 seconds from when you first prepared the slide in order to allow the spores to settle—you can watch them as they fall to the bottom and suddenly come into focus!
  13. Once you find spores (you may not find any in your sample), move the fine focus until they “glow.” Then adjust the condenser (this focuses the light beam) to the point where the glowing spores are bright against a relatively dark background. You can now fiddle slightly with the adjustments to get the best possible image in which the nosema spores stand out.
  14. Once you’ve made all the above adjustments, you can leave them set. Subsequent slides can simply be placed on the stage, and the only necessary adjustment will be the fine focus. Whew!

SPORE IDENTIFICATION
  Nosema spores have a few distinctive characteristics that will confirm your identification: (See Figs. 10-12)
  1. Nosema spores are still quite small even at 400x!
  2. The spores are distinctive elongated ellipses—similar in shape to vitamin or fish oil capsules (but variable).
  3.They will all be about the same size (N. ceranae spores are somewhat variable, especially bee to bee).
  4. Most of the spores will settle to rest at the bottom of the liquid, and will thus all come into focus at the same level.
  5. Note: in fresh bee preps (those not preserved in alcohol) the organisms in the gut are still alive, and the nosema spores will often jiggle and move about slightly.
There are two distinctive characteristics that will confirm the identification of nosema spores—these can be best observed by jiggling the fine focus knob back and forth slightly as you view the spores.
  6. The spores will be clearly outlined with a smooth, dark elliptical line,
  7. then the outline will fade, and the centers will glow brightly. A spore must have both of these characteristics, as other objects will also have oval outlines or glow, but won’t do both.
 With practice, your brain develops a “search image” for the spores, and they begin to jump out at you from the background debris.
  8. Nosema ceranae looks somewhat different than N. apis to the experienced eye—apis is a bit larger and broader, and the ends of the spores are “blunter.”

COUNTING THE SPORES
  I’m going to assume here that you‘re going to simply do “field of view” counts on a simple glass slide, as I don’t feel that tedious hemacytometer counts are generally justified unless you are compiling data for research. (See Figs. 13-22)
  Use the stage adjustment knobs to “take a trip” around the slide. Pick an area to view that has a representative spore density.
  If you do decide to get a hemacytometer, I recommend a Reichert Bright Line—order through a lab supply, but make sure that they call the manufacturer directly and ask them to ship one with an extra dark background.
  Note that in Fig. 14, I’ve adjusted the scope such that the spore “outlines” are in focus, but the centers of the spores are not glowing much. Compare it to Fig. 15.
  For Nosema apis, the treatment threshold was considered to be a mean spore count of 1M per bee. On the other hand, there is considerable debate as to what constitutes a worrisome spore count for Nosema ceranae. At the time of this writing (9/16/2011) a few million spores (up to about 25 in a field of view) would be considered by many to be “normal” for field bees for much of the season, perhaps spiking to several million (100 or more spores per field of view) during spring when there are heavy pollen flows, but then dropping to near zero during summer. I cannot make recommendations, but post the latest information at ScientificBeekeeping.com.
  I’ve shown many beekeepers how to quickly process bees for spore counts. I suggest that every bee club purchase a scope, and assign one member to gain proficiency at its use. At the break during your meetings, you can easily process a great number of bee samples in a few minutes (have everyone bring a counted sample in a ziplock bag). Such sampling will allow beekeepers to actually track nosema levels throughout the season, and determine whether it appears to be a problem in your apiaries.
  You can also buy a microscope camera that will transmit the image on the slide to your laptop or to a digital projector for all members to view at the same time (as opposed to having a queue waiting at the scope). I’ve tried several digital cameras-- be forewarned that the image will not be quite as clear as when viewed directly through the microscope lens, but definitely worthwhile as a training aid. Microscope.com offers the OptixCam series, of which I found the OCS-3.0 ($329) easy to use and adjust.

CARE AND FEEDING OF YOUR MICROSCOPE
  Now that you’ve forked over your hard-earned cash for a shiny new microscope, treat it well for a long life. A microscope is a precision tool full of delicate parts. Don’t ever bang or drop a scope—those tubes may contain 15-20 lenses that can be jarred loose! A wise practice is to always carry a scope with both hands. Keep the scope covered or in a case when not in use. Dust, moisture, skin oils, and bee guts are the scope’s enemies! Wipe off any liquids with a soft cloth moistened in isopropyl alcohol. Never touch the lens surfaces with your fingers or regular tissue paper. Use only microscope lens paper or a Q-Tip, moistened in lens cleaner or alcohol. 

September 2011 cover story  

Bitterweed Honey

by Donald Steinkraus 
 
excerpt

Many people are unaware that there are thousands of different kinds of honeys, varying in taste, color, propensity to crystallize, and nutrients. Certainly every beekeeper should be aware of this and explain to the public that honey from sunflowers, tupelo trees, black locust trees, or hundreds of other plant species, will taste and look different from common clover honey. The great variety of honeys is a wonderful thing, similar to the diversity of wines. However, occasionally bees gather nectar from plant species that results in unpalatable honey that should not be sold or given away as food.

Eight years ago a graduate student named Mark Bray took my beekeeping class at the University of Arkansas. He bought some hives and in late July 2003 asked for my help in harvesting his first honey crop. We extracted his honey and eagerly tasted it. To our dismay the honey was so extremely bitter that both of us felt it was inedible. We found that Mark's bees had gathered nectar from a plant called "bitterweed". I put a gallon of this honey in a jug, labeled it, and kept it for use in taste comparisons of various honeys. Occasionally, I have given a jar of bitterweed honey to others who have honey collections for taste comparisons, like Dr. May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois. Recently, I was struck by the fact that eight years have gone by since Mark's bees collected this honey and it has not crystallized and remains as bitter as when we first extracted it. I decided to study bitterweed after finding there were relatively few articles on bitterweed honey.
 
Bitterweed, Helenium amarum, is an attractive, yellow-flowered plant in the daisy or composite family, the Asteraceae (Fig. 1). It is a native annual plant that grows along roadsides and in pastures in Southwestern, Midwestern and Southeastern states. It is particularly abundant in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. While it can range from ½ to 2 ½ feet tall, most plants I observed were about 12 inches tall. It has attractive narrow leaves, is hardy, and makes a pretty plant in a garden. In northwest Arkansas it blooms from June until early November with peak bloom in late summer and early fall. It has several common names, including: bitter sneezeweed, yellowdicks and Spanish daisy. Some references said it was called "sneezeweed" because its dried pulverized flowers, were snorted in order to cause extreme sneezing in humans. However, it was not made clear why anyone would want to sneeze violently! Does violent sneezing have a health benefit? I don't know the answer.

August 2011 cover story  

Reversal of Misforturne

by T'Lee Sollenberger 
 
excerpt

Misfortune has made me a better beekeeper no doubt. I've had more than my share of Mother Nature's lessons learned at considerable cost, including: mis-supering for the honey flow and never catching up; watching my best colony swarm out their front door, (with their honey stomachs full); almost losing my harvest after a storm ripped through my bee yard flipping my three best colonies into the mud; dropping a $25 queen in the grass never to find her again; and my all time favorite, yakking it up in the honey house with my bud while holding tank overflows onto the floor. Yup, these are just a few of the misfortunes favored upon this beekeeper.

Being an eternal optimist has helped or I would have quit this business years ago with all the chaos and mistakes that have landed on my bee hives. So, it's nice to share a story about the reversal of misfortune; the harvesting of a nice sized honey crop that never should have happened during this spring of drought. I suppose, even Mother Nature has a sense of humor.

 It really started in the late summer of 2010. The spring showed great promise in North Central Texas. It looked like it might become another bumper crop year right on the heels of the previous bumper crop in 2009. It didn't happen. Drought hit for six long weeks drying up the wildflowers and squashing the bee's build-up. Then the rains came. Flooding rains. Heavy downpours, gully washers.

 Know what happens when you get rain at the wrong time of the year? Sure you do-nasty-assed things bloom that shouldn't-fall plants that bitterize the honey grow twice as big and give off twice the nectar. The bees went berserk collecting it.
 The end result? A ruined harvest. The honey from my each and
every one of my 25 colonies scattered across a good many counties tasted like a bar of soap. Seriously. Ya know the kind. Your mom probably washed your mouth out with it after catchin' ya sayin' some swear words you were tryin' on for size. This honey was seriously-vile. Never mind harvesting it. I left every bit of it on the bees for their winter chow; twice almost three times the normal amount. Then, I dragged my sorry butt home and cried in my beer.

 Believe it or not, the first part of any palm gilted in gold starts somewhere least expected. The unharvested honey crop was least expected and hurt my bank account somethin' fierce. "So sorry honey customers," I said. You really wouldn't thank me for the likes of this crop.
 The winter of 2010-11 was ugly. Stayed colder than usual, dryer than usual. No typical fall rains. Come January, well, hell froze over and tossed us Texans a few ice storms and dropped us some serious snow. Every once in a while we get a winter, not a question mark of 60°F days with 40°F nights.

 Warm winters make the bees fly. They eat up their surplus in a hurry and find scant little to replenish with. In a cold winter like the one just passed, they stay clustered up and don't eat too much.

 So, by now, you're askin' yourself what does a cold winter and too much honey surplus have to do with misfortune? Sounds ideal, eh? For those of you in colder climes, who already have winter hardy stock, no problem. And by the winter of 2010-11, my half Africanized-Italians were the resulting survivor stock from the equally ugly, very cold, snowy winter of 2009-10.

 For those of you who don't work with partly Africanized honey bee swarms incorporated into their operations, they have definite climatic preferences and extended periods of cold and snow aren't them. By the end of the 2009 winter, Mother Nature had whittled down my colonies by, (seriously), fifty percent. I wasn't alone. I heard the same lament from other local beekeepers.

 So, this past winter's frosty breath didn't faze my semi-wild bloodlines. They acted more like northern bees and huddled up, did a bit of vibrating and stayed warm. (And yes, I was running my colonies with screened bottom boards before you all start e-mailing me). I didn't lose a single colony to the cold. I couldn't believe it! When the spring of 2011 hit, I had strong bees, the kind I could have sold for instant pollination.

 So, where's the misfortune in that, you're still askin'?

 I'm gettin' there.

 The colonies were so strong comin' outta the snow, I made early queen splits around Saint Patrick's Day. I took a five-frame nuc and added a couple of brood frames, plus one each of honey and pollen. I liked these bees well enough temperament and production-wise, so I let them make their own queen cells from the split, (or I could have added a grafted cell at this point). One frame of brood was sealed and ready to hatch, and the other was uncapped with freshly laid eggs and developing larvae. The bees made one or more queen cells on the egg frame.

 I fed the nucs sugar water, (I like to add Honey B Healthy to that mix), and keep them well fed the entire time the nuc was raising the queen cell. As the baby bees matured, they would begin naturally forage and supplement the feed with fresh nectar.

July 2011 cover story  

Where in the World is Nagaland?
(And do they keep bees there?)

by Stephen Petersen 

excerpt

Give me a map of the world, name an obscure place, entice me with BS (bee stories) and throw in a few perceived dangers e.g. headhunters, land mines, insurgents, election upheaval or, on the US State Department's list of places NOT to go, and I'm on the next plane.
So it was with great excitement I made the acquaintance of Mhatung Yanthan in Vietnam at the Participatory Workshop on Beekeeping Development with Apis cerana (the local Asian Hive Bee) sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency and the Vietnamese Bee Research and Development Center in Hanoi. Even his business card was right up my line of work - he's the head of the Nagaland Beekeeping and Honey Mission; it's not just a job, it's a Mission!

A Bit of Geography and History for Nagaland
Whip out your atlases folks and look in the far NE corner of India right up against the Burmese border - the seven NE States, often called the Seven Sisters, are connected to the rest of India by the "chicken neck", a small corridor just north of Bangladesh. Unless you have a regular subscription to Insurgents Weekly or devour the Headhunter's Digest (pun intended) the average couch potato has never even heard of Nagaland (I consider myself fortunate growing up without a TV and having a complete collection of National Geographic magazines back to 1930). Did you know it is the largest Baptist state in the world!?! With a population of some 2 million, 90% of which are Christian and 75% of those Baptist, it out-baptizes the southern Baptist State of Mississippi that struggles to maintain a slight majority of 52%.

It has the dubious distinction of having the longest running insurgency against the Indian Government (since 1956); peace accords were signed a few years back, but at last count there were 15 major groups still operating in the region; 40, if you count the smaller groups. The whole NE region of India is in political turmoil - as is the region just over the border in Burma. The fighting in Nagaland has boiled down to factional in-fighting among the groups with occasional transportation tax (a fee to use the road), sales tax, and kidnapping popular revenue raising venues.

It's been at least since World War II that headhunting has been practiced (however, rumors abound in the hinterlands of activity in the 70's); formerly headhunting was considered a social status symbol, but now it has been replaced by cell phones and flat screen TV's. Bees? But of course! Why else would I want to go there?

Several valid bee items jump to mind - there are no mellifera (European honey bees) present in the area and they want to keep them out (hooray!); they have indigenous Apis laboriosa (the high-altitude, cliff-nesting, rock bees) as well as the standard dorsata bee, both of which are sought out by honey hunters; and they practice cerana beekeeping (Asian hive bee) in hives buried in the ground. Add to that the Nagaland Honey Mission Honey Festival going on in Dimapur from December 15-19 and I'm battling the sari-swathed Indian grandmothers shoving my way to the head of the line at the ticket counter.

Agri-Expo 2010 & the Nagaland Beekeeping and Honey Mission Festival
I wasn't able to make it to Nagaland in time for their famous Hornbill Festival, a fantastic cultural event held the first week of December each year, but I was able to attend the North East Agricultural Fair held every two years right after the Hornbill Festival (next one in 2012).
The Agri-Expo (Agricultural Exposition) offers the "seven sisters" (the seven NE India States) plus now Sikkim (annexed by India in 1975) an opportunity to show off their agricultural, horticultural, apicultural, sericultural (silk production), and just plain cultural achievements. The ultimate in - dare I coin a new word? - Apitourism.

The Nagaland Beekeeping and Honey Mission (NBHM) had a full 100 meter square display with dozen of booths from different districts offering honey from stingless bees (Trigona), Apis cerana, Apis laboriosa, Apis dorsata plus the all-time crowd pleasers such as honey cakes and apitherapy (bee stings to improve what ails you). The NBHM was a big draw - with observation hives, a mock up of the cliffs the honey hunters scamper down on bamboo ladders, and combs of all species of bees found in Nagaland. An excellent video "Honey Hunters of Mimi" played on a flat screen TV and there were plenty of information packets to pass out. As for the beekeepers, they came away smiling after selling every drop of honey they brought to the Fair.

All this paled beside the Nagamaids and the zutho or rice beer that flowed freely in each of the sixteen different indigenous tribal group booths, each with its' own distinctive ethnic dress and architectural style. Here was an opportunity to haul out my photo albums featuring Asian bees and beekeeping in Alaska-a sure conversation starter. What can I say? They are the travelers' equivalent of having a golden retriever puppy in your arms while you tour sorority houses in Berkeley. Within a couple of days and charming young lady professors I'd already learned the words for bee (moo), honey (moo pani), daughter (chookuree), snow (borrup) and ex-wife (purana mayki) in Nagamese, the lingua franca of the area.

There are some 16 major tribes in Nagaland spread out over eleven districts, all speaking mutually unintelligible languages so Nagamese (derived from Assamese - a Tibeto-Burman family language) serves as the common denominator while using Roman script for writing (I even saw the Nagamese Holy Bible for sale in the local market, translated courtesy of the Baptist missionaries).

The Nagas love their meat - pork in particular; whilst eating lunch with a charming Naga girl she took a two inch cube of pure pork fat, spread a little chili sauce on it, and down the hatch! If it was -30°C and I was snow camping - maybe, but at 25°C an involuntary shudder coursed through my hardening arteries. A local specialty is the mithun (Bos frontalis) a species of gaur or wild ox that has been semi-domesticated. In the good old days you could trade two baskets of beeswax across the border with Burma for a mithun - they are big; the one at the Agri-Expo weighed in at 555 kilos (about 1200 lbs)! They serve as a symbol of family wealth as well as produce a rich, high-fat milk which makes great butter.

Naga chilies are rated the most potent in the world - measured in Scoville Units of piquancy a pimento scores 500, Tabasco sauce 2500, hot jalapeños 8000, but Naga chilies take the grand prize at 1,041,427 SU (Scoville units). It almost makes me want to buy some dried ones to pay back all my Thai friends and their "Here, taste this, very sweet" routine; revenge just may be a dish best served spicy.

June 2011 cover story  

Managing Varroa - conclusion  

Chemical-free Beekeeping:

Controlling Varroa with Brood Cycle Disruption 

The Story of Central Pennsylvania Beekeeper Warren Miller

excerpt

To keep bees in the 21st century, you have to be part farmer and part scientist.
Sometimes it seems like you have to be part alchemist as well. I've been keeping bees for about 25 years. For me, it was love at first sight. I can think of few greater pleasures in life than working with bees on a sunny day.

I have a few small bee yards and manage just over 100 hives in central Pennsylvania. In the past several years I've been able to improve the survival rates of my bees by approximately 300%-all without the use of chemicals. I attribute my success to a few related factors. About ten years ago I started raising my own queens and selecting for certain traits that help my colonies thrive. I've been making sure that my hives go into the winter with a young queen that is acclimated to northern conditions. Annual re-queening offers some promising benefits; however, unless you get the timing right, it isn't enough to appreciably increase colony survival rates. Timing is everything.

If you do the math, you realize that I got involved with bees in the mid-1980s-just before the time when all of the trouble with Varroa began. I kept about a half dozen hives for five years before mites hit central Pennyslvania. But, like most beekeepers, I suffered some pretty significant losses in those days. At the time, I tried to combat my losses with chemicals.

Converting From Chemicals to Chemical-Free Beekeeping
For eight years in the 1990s, I used Apistan strips. Chemical treatment was standard protocol in those days. At the time, I thought I was doing my hives a favor. Some of the treated hives lived, and some of them died. I'm a frugal guy, and I started wondering why I was spending money on treatments that didn't give consistent results. I was also getting a little resentful; I realized that I was spending my time managing mites when I really wanted to be managing my bees.

So, in 1999, I stopped using chemicals to treat my hives. My bees and I went cold turkey. My first year, I lost 9 of my 12 hives, which left me with a 25% survival rate. Typically, I'd have 3 to 4 hives make it through the winter without chemical treatment. Usually, one of those hives would stand out as a good producer. I started paying attention to that hive. A lot of bee researchers are paying attention to sick hives, and they're learning a lot from them. I think there's something to be said for taking the approach of paying attention to our healthy hives.

For instance, one of the big discoveries that caught my attention was the fact that Africanized honey bees are not affected by varroa mites in the same way that their European cousins are affected. The reason seems to be that Africanized honey bees constantly swarm or abscond from their hive. This breaks the mites' breeding cycle and keeps the mites from devastating a colony. It occurred to me that there must be a way to mimic this behavior yet maintain the qualities of the European honey bees to which we have grown accustomed.

March 2011 cover story  

Beeswax Primer

by Larry Connor

excerpt

How do bees produce beeswax?
After foragers return to the hive loaded with nectar, enzymes are added and moisture is removed to generate honey. During the process, certain worker bees inside the hive take up the liquid from the nectar processors and work as wax producers or remove it from the honey comb and digest the sugar in their digestive tract to produce a complex set of compounds in the wax glands and mirror plates on the underside of the abdomen of the worker. There are eight of these plates, each generating one thin scale of wax. The wax is secreted as a liquid but hardens immediately. Under the microscope the scales appear in layers, reflecting this secretion process. Once the scale is large enough the workers remove it with a spine on their hind leg and transfer it to their mouthparts where saliva is added and the striated scale is masticated into a pliable form so that it may be applied to the places on the hive where comb construction is active. This may be where honeycomb is being constructed, added to brood comb to cap the cells of larvae ready to pupate, or to construct queen cells.

Properties of beeswax
Beeswax is secreted by eight glands arranged in pairs on the ventral (under) side of the worker honey bee on abdominal segments four to seven. The glands are enlarged when the bee secretes wax, but shrink in size when the bee is not. Beeswax is a complex mixture. It is a tough wax, able to withstand great stress and pressure from the weight of honey, pollen, brood and the bees that hang on the honeycomb structure. Heavily loaded wax combs will stretch when exposed to high temperatures. The wax consists of monoesters, hydrocarbons, diesters, free acids, hydroxy polyesters, hydroxy monoesters, trimesters, acid polyesters, acid esters and free alcohols.

Peak wax secretion in bees is at 12 days after emergence, but bees must feed on pollen for the first five to six days of their adult life to be able to produce the fat bodies that are essential to wax production. These bees congregate in areas where wax production is underway, and maintain a temperature of 95 to 97 degrees F. It takes 8.4 pounds of honey to produce one pound of beeswax from 450,000 wax scales. New wax is white, but it quickly takes on the pigments of pollen-the yellows, tans or browns according to pigment color.
Beeswax is valued for its very high melting point range of 144 to 147 degrees F., producing superior burning candles and an excellent resist in both electronics and art production. When exposed to increased heat beeswax bursts into flame at 250 degrees F. Considerable discoloration takes place whenever beeswax is heated over 185 degrees F, an excellent reason to carefully monitor processing equipment to prevent wax overheating and discoloration.

Your Tax Obligation

and Strategies

(excerpt)

   First, I will offer an argument of why you should file your beekeeping-related taxes.  Second, I will suggest several strategies which will reduce your tax liability. So, even though you comply with the IRS requirements, your tax assessment is minimal.

The truth is most beekeepers don't file such taxes. The reasons are various. It's not much money. The activity is off the radar. It's too complicated to use those special self-employed tax forms. Since it's a break-even proposition, why file? The amount of under-the-table business activity that isn't reported is significant. No tax forms are generated in the activity. Beekeeping is a hobby, not a business.

The first argument for filing is that the IRS requires that all worldwide income over $10 be entered into your taxes. The IRS doesn't say $10 in profits; but $10 in sales. So, if you sell $500 worth of honey, you need to enter the sum, in order to comply with the law. Entering the revenue doesn't mean you will have to pay taxes, because you deduct expenses from revenue to arrive at a tax liability.

Beekeepers might argue that the numbers are so small that it doesn't matter. But, the IRS doesn't see it that way. Overstating expense figures is an error, but not disclosing income is fraud. It's a serious crime not to disclose revenues-even small revenues. There have been cases where IRS agents have come down hard on non-filers. I know of an individual in a neighboring town who stopped paying income taxes for his home business. When the IRS caught up with him eight years later (he ignored letters), the agents recomputed what he would have owed and assigned him to pay $1,300 month for twenty years. His choice was accepting this or going to jail. Obviously, he accepted the IRS's judgment, even though they were significantly overstating his liability. The point of this story is not to scare you, but to point out that if the IRS ever found out about your beekeeping activity and wanted to make an issue of it, they have discretion of what they could do. They could make you wish you had complied.

January 2011 cover story  

Winter Chores

Repair Repaint Review

by Howard Scott

excerpt

Fall was a busy time. Between the harvesting and preparing product, you barely had time for anything else. So, you piled your honey supers in rows, and went off to attend to your home chores. That's the way it usually happens. And you won't return to beekeeping until April when you purchase packages. The only thing is, you haven't completed your chores. And late fall through winter is the perfect time to get them done, prepare for the next season, and contemplate what you will do differently. For example, do you need to order, assemble and paint some beekeeping woodenware that has rotted?
Here are seven chores to do during this less active period:

• Scrape and clean all frames. The frames you took off for harvesting honey are not ready to be put away. Propolis, wax accumulations, and bee parts cover the wooden frames. Using your hive tool, frame by frame, scrape every surface so that bare wood shows. One long motion cleans the top bar. But the sides are so gunked up that frames don't sit evenly in the honey super. Scrape propolis and wax from all sides of the sidebar. Get underneath the top bar so that the frame moves smoothly along the ridge. It is equally important to remove debris from the front and rear edges so that 10 frames sit in the honey super without undue strain. What might look like wood is actually propolis. You would be surprised how a little proprolis edging uses up valuable space.

Then, make sure the comb is free from imperfections. Cut out swarm cells, excess wax bridges and that sort of thing. Note broken comb or comb with holes, and consider replacing these frames with fresh foundation. You never know whether the bees will accept these damaged frames, so it is always better to have new foundation. Be sure there no beads of propolis on the inside surface of these frames. A quick sharp downward stroke with your hive tool aimed away from the comb cuts a whole row of these out. By the chore's end, you want to move the palm of your hand over the wooden surfaces and not feel any bumps or irregularities.

• Paint those boxes that need painting. In the spring, everything will be happening at once, and you more than likely won't get to painting. The warmth of your basement or garage will be adequate for applying paint. The general rule is that the air should be 50 degrees. Remember, scrape the loose paint off before you try to paint over. Once the loose parts are removed, you may paint the entire surface, giving an extra heavy coating to the unpainted surface. Do not paint the inside walls or even the edges. Only the outside surface needs painting.

On a warmish day, go out to your bee yard and repaint the eroded surfaces of your brood chambers. If the temperature is at 50 degrees, the bees will not bother you. Furthermore, there is small chance that the bees will get stuck in paint. They're coming out for a winter cleansing and will concentrate on that task. To reduce the chance of the bees breaking cluster, scrape with soft, slow motions. Jarring the hive might provoke more bees to come outside than you would like to see.

• Replace dark foundation. Most of your brood frames will be in the bee yard, but you might have some in the basement due to dead hives or excess equipment. Some beekeepers ignore this task, and in doing so, they are missing an opportunity to maintain healthy, clean, fresh hive bodies. After five, six or seven years of use, brood chamber frames tend to turn dark brown to black. This coloration is from the brood deposits and hardening of food particles. Over time, the cells get smaller and smaller. Moreover, these overused cells are ripe for disease infestations. For healthy hive management, they should be replaced with new foundation.

For many beekeepers, this task is hard to do. Even though the wax is dark, it's a perfectly formed foundation. The bees don't have to build new cells.

The beekeeper thinks: Which is worse, leaving the bees with darkened frames or making them do the work all over to produce comb from foundation? Often, the decision is to leave the old frame. To prevent that bad practice, get in the habit of replacing a certain number of frames each year.

Depending on the age of your hive, you might replace 5% to 10% of the frames. If you have 60 frames-three hives-replace four to six dark frames annually. Always work from the ends of the brood chamber. The wax color of the frames to be discarded should be brownish to black. If the cells have a reddish hue, that's still viable comb. Of course, you won't go in the active brood chambers and replace darkened frames. But you should put the fresh-foundation frames in next spring. And replacing from the outside of brood chambers will give the bees time to build foundation into comb.

Why Supplemental Protein Feeding

Can Help Reduce Colony Losses

(excerpt)

 by Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman and Yanping Chen
Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, USDA-ARS, 2000 East Allen Road, Tucson, Arizona, 85719
* Bee Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS, Beltsville, Maryland 20705

    The interconnectedness of nutrition, worker lifespan, colony growth and survival has never been more evident. While in the past, good nutrition was necessary for colony growth and honey production, today it is essential for preventing colony losses.

We are losing more colonies now than any time in recent history. The colony deaths have been attributed to Varroa mites, diseases (e.g.,nosema), pesticides, and colony collapse disorder (CCD) whose exact cause remains elusive. Perhaps an underlying factor contributing to colony losses is inadequate nutrition. A steady supply of pollen insures the growth of colonies because it provides protein to adult bees and stimulates brood rearing. Adequate amounts of pollen also are needed to optimize worker lifespans. This is because workers in colonies with low pollen reserves transition from nest activities to foraging earlier in their adult life. How long workers live depends upon when they begin foraging.  Workers that become foragers earlier in life die sooner than their nestmates that continue performing tasks in the hive. Thus, colonies with limited protein intake decline from the combination of reduced brood rearing and a shorter lifespan for adult workers. If parasitic mites and pathogens are present, the population decline can be even more severe so that the colony perishes.

In addition to affecting colony growth, nutrition (particularly protein availability) is a key component in mounting immune responses to pathogens. In honey bee colonies, protein deficiencies that affect the immune response might accelerate the spread of disease among the bees and cause pathogen levels to increase so that adult longevity and survival are reduced. Thus, what began as a nutritional deficiency could develop into colony loss from disease.

Honey bees rely on pollen for protein and for other essential nutritional requirements such lipids, sterols, vitamins, minerals and certain carbohydrates. Some digestion of pollen occurs in the midgut of the bee, but the primary means by which the nutrients from pollen are made available to the colony is its conversion to worker jelly. The conversion occurs in the paired food glands called hypopharyngeal glands (HPG) located in the frontal area of the worker's head (Fig.1). The glands are comprised of acini that produce the protein-rich worker jelly that is fed to larvae of all castes and to the adult workers and queen. Through the processing of pollen to worker jelly by nurse bees and their feeding of larvae and adults, the nutrients from the pollen are circulated throughout the colony.

Pollen is not always available to colonies, so protein supplements are fed to bees to stimulate brood rearing and prevent colony populations from declining. The supplements might not contain pollen, but instead have protein derived from sources such as soy or whey. Ideally, feeding protein supplements causes a flow of nutrients through a colony that is similar to pollen because the supplement stimulates the HPG of young bees to produce worker jelly.

Cover Story November 2010

(excerpt)

Sick Bees

Part 4

Immune Response to Viruses

   Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites that infect all organisms, from bacteria to humans. Their evolution represents a constant arms race with the host: Viruses need to reprogram host cells in order to produce progeny virus, but this is often successfully limited by the host antiviral defense, which in turn is frequently targeted by the virus, and so forth (Rehwinkel 2010).

A puzzling aspect of CCD is that when bee samples are analyzed, the "normal" immune mechanisms do not appear to be mobilized, despite the fact that the bees are rife with infectious pathogens (Johnson 2009). What could possibly cause such a suppression of the bee immune system?
If you'll look back at the bee immune system diagram in my last article, you can see that the induced bee immune response-the production of antimicrobial peptides-is dependent upon the upregulation of certain genes. Both this process and the bees' antiviral RNA response take place at the molecular level of gene expression. Certain pathogens, notably viruses, are able to sabotage this pathway.

Bees vs. Viruses
Viruses are the ultimate parasite-stripped to the absolute minimum. They are nothing more than encapsulated strands of genetic instructions. They are incapable of life on their own, being entirely dependent upon somehow getting into a host cell and hijacking the cellular machinery in order to trick it into producing more copies of the virus. They are so insidious that the line between host and parasite becomes blurred (about a twelfth of the human genome is viral in origin).
Surprisingly, this insinuation of viruses into host genomes appears to often confer evolutionary benefits, such as the introduction of new genes, or the acceleration of evolutionary change. Viruses may cause the extirpation (local extinction) of species, but any host that develops resistance to a strain of virus is then endowed with a competitive advantage over others that do not have such resistance (such as in the case of European human invaders to the New World, whose viral diseases decimated the Native Americans).
Bees are host to at least 18 viruses, nearly all being single-stranded RNA viruses. Some, such as Sacbrood virus have been with us for some time. Others are "emerging" pathogens-both Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) and Acute Bee Paralysis Virus (ABPV) were once considered to be "economically irrelevant" (Genersch 2010), then, with the arrival of varroa as a vector, they began to devastate colonies, and are still strongly linked to collapsing colonies today (Highfield 2009, Evans 2010, Hunt 2010).
Each time a virus mutates, or shifts hosts between bee or other insect species, it can suddenly cause epidemics as it spreads through a "naïve" population, just as new strains of flu virus can spread through the human population. For instance, Thai (or "Chinese") Sacbrood Virus has caused massive collapses of colonies of Apis cerana as it spread from Guangdong Province in 1972 to the whole of China and Southeast Asia (Verma 1990). Indeed, as this article goes to press, Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk's team is on the cusp of announcing that they have found strong indications that there may be a novel virus involved in CCD collapses in the U.S.

Back to School
The genetic blueprints for a bee are carried in its DNA, which are essentially sets of coded instructions, coiled into long strands called chromosomes, which reside in the nucleus of every cell. The coding elements are called "genes," of which bees have perhaps 20,000-about the same number as humans! Scientists are working to better understand the bee genome-about 50 laboratories worldwide are currently focused on molecular analyses of honey bees, as bees are a perfect experimental organism, since they are relatively simple, well studied animals, yet exhibit complex behaviors and unusual aging aspects.
The "action" of a virus infection takes place largely in the ribosomes-the organelles in the cytoplasm of each cell that "read" the genetic instructions on messenger RNA, and translate them into actual proteins. I'm introducing these terms because I feel that they are important if you wish to understand what is happening in collapsing colonies. If your eyes are starting to glaze over due to the use of "Big Words," please take a deep breath, and don't let the jargon scare you-it'll be worth the effort to get a grasp of what exactly is failing in the bee immune system. I understand that it's been a while for many of my readers since biology class, so please bear with me, and allow me give you a little refresher. A picture here may be worth a thousand words (Figure 1):

Cover Story October 2010

(excerpt)

Managed Pollinator CAP - Coordinated Agricultural Project

Breeding a Better Bee:
A Promise Unfulfilled--So Far

 by Nick Calderone, Cornell University
Steve Sheppard, Washington State University

The past few years have been difficult for many sectors of the beekeeping industry both in the US and abroad. Many beekeepers have experienced exceptionally high losses, and while Varroa destructor continues to be the number one cause of colony mortality, a substantial proportion of recent losses are suspected of being due to another condition called Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD. To date, many questions about the exact nature and cause or causes of CCD remain unanswered. The CAP project was established to study colony health and to evaluate possible causes for CCD. Regardless of the ultimate findings, the bigger question centers around the remedies that will be employed by beekeepers to ensure colony health in the future.

Background: The negative consequences of the industry's growing dependence on chemical solutions for managing pest problems have become increasingly evident the past few years. AFB has developed resistance to Terramycin, and catastrophic losses to mites have become commonplace as mite populations evolved resistance to pesticides. Not only have chemicals become less effective, research has shown that pollen and beeswax in hives are both contaminated with chemicals applied by beekeepers (coumaphos and fluvalinate) as well as by a broad array of other pesticides applied by growers of a variety of crops. These residues can cause serious damage to colonies in terms of reducing a bee's length of life and increasing its susceptibility to pathogens and parasites. Poor acceptance rates and an increased frequency of non-acceptance, drone layers and supersedure of many commercially available queens may also be caused by or exacerbated by this contamination. Interestingly, the remedy for much of what ails the industry has been available for the past 70 years.
In the 1930's, several individuals (O.W. Park. F.B. Paddock and F.C. Pellett at the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station in Ames, IA) collaborated in the development of American foulbrood (AFB) resistant honey bees. In the 1950's, E.G. Brown of Sioux City, IA developed the ‘Brown' line of AFB resistant honey bees at his wax rendering plant. These bees were used by Prof. W.C. Rothenbuher (first at Iowa State and later at Ohio State) in the early 1960's to develop his AFB resistant line of honey bees - named the Brown line. An AFB susceptible line was obtained from another beekeeper named Van Scoy. With these two lines, Rothenbuhler investigated the genetic basis of AFB resistance.  In 1964, he published what was to become a classic paper in behavioral genetics in which he demonstrated that resistance to AFB could be largely attributed to two independent behavioral traits: uncapping and removal of diseased brood by adult workers. He dubbed this mechanism ‘hygienic behavior'. Subsequently, a number of other traits were identified that also contributed to AFB resistance. The years since that seminal work have seen a genetic (and selectable) basis identified for a number of other important traits including removal of freeze-killed brood (a surrogate for Rothenbuhler's original hygienic behavior), resistance to acute bee paralysis, resistance to tracheal mites, resistance to varroa mites, pollen hoarding and length of life.

Cover Story September 2010

(excerpt)

Geezer Tips

 by Howard Scott

All right, you’re old, but that doesn’t mean you’re through with beekeeping. Or, does it? Sure, your back feels like a dynamite explosion every time you lift a brood chamber, and you can no longer spot the pollen sacks on bees’ legs, and your hand shakes too much to re-wax frames or graft a queen cell efficiently. But there’s still your omnipresent, bubbling over enthusiasm. So while you can continue, perhaps it is prudent to take precautions. If you are one of these geezers/geezeresses with these concerns, read on. Remember, many beekeepers do not even start their hobby or sideline until after they retire from their regular jobs, so you have lots of company.

As an introductory statement, let me state the obvious: you are not the kid you used to be. You have less strength, less endurance, less agility, poorer eyesight, and iffier balance. So why not reduce your hobby to manageable size. If you have several hundred hives, sign up for Social Security (it’s free) and only keep 50 hives. If you have 20 hives, do 7. If you have been tending 5 hives, do 2 or 3. In each instance, the more manageable size will feel like a breeze. You’ll avoid the aches and pains that follow a work session, as well as the sense of frustration at not getting everything done. Yet, you’ll still witness the bees’ enthusiasm, and that in turn will keep your outlook, if not your body, youthful.
Curious? Follow these guides:

*Adopt a ‘we’ll see what happens’ attitude. Every year, the bees surprise you. Whatever they do, they do and you’ve had the privilege of being there, on the edges, watching, helping, but not interfering. If you get a harvest, fine. If you don’t that’s fine, too. If the bees don’t overwinter, no problem. You start anew with a package next spring. There’s no more scorecard, comparing last year’s production to this year’s. I’m basically suggesting a new attitudinal shift, which is the frame of mind of a true hobbyist.

*Reduce the numbers of customers you supply. Since you no longer are counting on a specific production, you must tell people who depend on you to get alternate sources. If you supplied three stores, did three fairs a year, and sold out of your house, you might cut back to one store, one fair, and otherwise concentrate on home sales. Suggest beekeepers who might be willing to sell these stores their honey. At your club meeting, solicit potential vendors and give them store numbers. Do the same with fairs. Continuity of supply is much appreciated by merchants who sell local honey. 

Cover Story July 2010

(excerpt)

American Bee Journal  Editor - C. P. Dadant 

When George W. York, editor of the American Bee Journal from 1892 until his sales announcement in the May 1912 issue,1 was looking for an opportunity to start a new life in the West, he was faced with the problem of disposing of the American Bee Journal. Consequently, his thoughts turned to C. P. Dadant who had been a faithful contributor to the Journal for some 40 years.

 Although York had contributed to the columns of the Journal for a long time, and was the editor and publisher for 20 years, he actually was not a thoroughly experienced beekeeper, being more of a theorist and interested in the development of beekeeping rather than in the actual operation of a beekeeping business.

 With C. P. Dadant, it was a different matter. Coming to America in 1863 at the age of 12 with his father, Charles Dadant, he had to take an active role in providing a living for the family. He actually was doing more in agricultural work-until the opportunity arrived.

 Soon after the family settled near Hamilton, Illinois, Charles Dadant bought two colonies of bees, and he gradually increased the number of colonies. As time passed, the natural resources of flora caused the colonies to prosper and he found it necessary to call on his son to help with the care of the bees. This was to signal a big change in C. P.'s life.

 Camille Pierre (for that is what C. P. stands for) soon became the main operator of the home apiary and gradually expanded to outyards in the search of better locations, moving colonies to harvest honey during the fall flows in the bottom lands along the Mississippi River. These moves were made, of course, with wagons since automobiles were not available yet.

 Although his father was writing extensively for American and especially foreign journals, at first, C. P., of necessity, devoted but a small part of his time to writing. It can be assumed that he helped his father in writing for English publications since Charles found the language difficult, and some of the articles are authored by Chas. Dadant & Son.

 C. P.'s first contribution to the American Bee Journal was entitled "Review of Foreign Bee Journals," and appeared in the May 1872 issue.2 This was followed by an article in the June 1872 issued entitled "Introducing Queens."3 Naturally, in these early years he didn't have too much time to devote to anything but bees in order to earn a livelihood. His records show that, as early as 1882, he had extracted 25,000 pounds of honey, which was an enormous crop for anyone at that time. Nevertheless, his contributions to the Journal amounted to as many as six in 1885, nine in 1890, eleven in 1896, and these increased, as he had more time to devote to writing, to as many as 32 in 1906. The latter was after he had retired in 1904, leaving the bees and the comb foundation business to his three sons, Louis, Henry and Maurice.

 Prior to assuming editorship of the American Bee Journal in 1912, C. P. Dadant is listed as a contributor upwards of 350 times. A concise reporting isn't made here because some of the volumes were not indexed as to contributors and some articles are listed by Chas. Dadant & Son. His contributions in 1906 marked the beginning of his series entitled "Dadant Method of Honey-Production,"4 and ran through 21 issues. The article No. 22 entitled "Dadant Methods of Vinegar-Making with Honey" appeared late in the same year.5

 After assuming the editorship in 1912, C. P. Dadant is listed as a contributor to the Journal some 460 times, before his declining health in 1937 and death in 1938. His largest number of contributions occured in 1927 when 46 articles were listed.

 We might interject here that, after a busy life and after his sons had entered the business during the period from 1900 to 1910, C. P. Dadant decided he would retire and lead a quiet life. So, in 1904, he built a large brick house in Hamilton and retired.

 With C. P., however, the quiet life did not prove entirely satisfying. He found time hung heavy, so he took pleasure in acquiring the American Bee Journal in 1912 and moving it to Hamilton.
 The Journal offices were moved to the floor above the First National Bank in Hamilton. This was quite an undertaking for C. P. and soon he looked around for help. Dr. Miller, as associate editor, answered questions and was of editorial help, but remained at his home in Marengo, Illinois.

Cover Story - June 2010

My Recipe for Successful Beekeeping

Excerpt

After being away from beekeeping over 25 years, I started helping some friends with their hives in 2007. Because of the pest and health issues facing honey bees today, I had to re-learn beekeeping. It was difficult because there was too much information available.

 Many beekeeping authors - even most - hesitate to say, ‘This is how to do it.' And for good reason. There are so many variations in honey bee behavior, weather, diseases, pests, environment and everything else that it's impossible to be definitive. Details and possible variations are usually included to avoid misleading anyone. The unintended consequence is that people with only a few years experience in beekeeping can read stacks of beekeeping literature and still not know what to do in their bee yard. Too many details confuse people. Even with 20+ years of beekeeping experience, it was difficult for me to find a reasonably simply way to deal with today's beekeeping environment. After nearly two years of study, experimentation and hard work, Clyde Hammil (my partner) and I developed a simple procedure for successful beekeeping.

 Instead of trying to cover all the possible variations, I will explain step-by-step what has to be done in the bee yard, why we have to do it and when we have to do it. Honey bees will no longer thrive on neglect. Some actions by the beekeeper are required. Those critical actions will be highlighted in red. I won't nag or call you a ‘bee-haver', but if you do not have the time and discipline to take these few required actions at the right time, your colonies will be weak, will not produce surplus honey and are likely to die out. That's just the facts of today's beekeeping.

Certainly, this procedure is not complete. Read all the books you can, join a beekeeping club and talk to experienced beekeepers. Really good beekeepers want to know all we can about honey bees. But keep this simple guide close at hand. A lot of things can go wrong, but they usually go right!

My experience is in south Arkansas. People farther north will have to adjust the suggested actions to the calendar and conditions in their area. If you have corrections or suggestions, by all means, let me hear them. My email is: jfreeman1944@yahoo.com. My phone number is: 870-853-2412.
JULY - Extract honey and TREAT FOR VARROA MITES
For me, the beekeeping year begins in July. Our honey flow has ended and the VARROA MITE population is beginning to explode. (for beekeepers farther north, you will need to move that month to sometime  in August.) I extract honey the first part of July and treat for Varroa beginning in the middle of July. The chart shows why Varroa mites are such a threat in summer and early fall. I realize some people still have a honey flow in July, Aug and even September, but fall treatment of Varroa is too late. The colony must raise healthy babies in the fall to produce honey next year! If the fall brood has been chewed on by Varroa mites, they will not be healthy enough to build a strong colony for next spring.

Hygienic queens may solve the problem for you, but you need to make sticky board counts to be sure the mites are under control. (I use the oil tray in our beetle trap for a sticky board.)  Randy Oliver's web site, http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com/, provides more details.
Most of my bees are not hygienic enough to deal with Varroa on their own. I make two treatments with Apiguard - the first one in the middle of July and the second one two weeks later. I use Apiguard for two reasons. First, it is effective. Second, it is not a poison. The active ingredient in Apiguard is Thymol - made from the herb, Thyme. This is the only ‘chemical' I use in my colonies. I believe chemicals and poisons are major contributors to the current decline in honey bee health.

Formic acid is also a natural ingredient, but is much more harsh than Apiguard. It kills some brood and may even damage the queen. GOOD NEWS! The makers of Mite-Away-II, formic acid pads, have developed a new product called MAQS - Mite Away Quick Strips. They claim it is so mild it can be used even when honey supers are on the hive. It has not yet been approved, but surely will be by next year. This means that even beekeepers with summer honey flows will be able to treat their colonies when the Varroa mite population is expanding

Cover Story - May 2010

Proceedings of the American Bee Research Conference

Excerpt

1. Afika, O., W.B. Hunterb & K.S. Delaplanea - Effects of varroa mites and bee diseases on pollination efficacy of honey bees - Varroa mites and viral diseases are known to affect the efficiency of crop pollination by honey bees through the elimination of colonies, but only limited information exists on their influence on pollination at sub-lethal levels on the individual bee (Ellis & Delaplane, 2008 Agr. Ecosyst. Environ. 127:201-206). The purpose of this study was to learn about effects that varroa mites and bee diseases may be having on the foraging behavior of adult bees and the consequences of these effects on successful fruit pollination.
For the first season of the experiment, four honey bee colonies of about 4,500 bees each were established. Two of these colonies were each infested with 1,000 varroa mites collected from other hives by sugar powdering. Two other colonies were used as non-infested control colonies. In order to force mites to attach to the adult bees, brood combs from both treatments were replaced with empty combs before brood was sealed. Each colony was caged in a separate enclosure containing one blueberry target plant and two potted pollen source plants. Pollination efficacy was tested by measuring percent of fruit-set and pollen deposition at flowers exposed to a single visit by an individual bee. Each visiting bee was collected at the end of the flower visit and preserved for later pathogen analysis.
The results indicated that bees from mite-infested colonies achieved a lower percent of fruit set and tended to deposit fewer pollen grains on the flower stigma. Bees from infested colonies performed shorter flower visits and a lower percentage of them were pollen foragers. These two behavioral differences may contribute to lower rate of fruit-set since the duration of flower visit was positively correlated with pollen deposition and pollen foragers were found to be more efficient pollinators of blueberry flowers than nectar foragers. More than 75% of the bees from both treatments were determined to be naturally infected with the viruses DWV and BQCV, but no bee was positive for Nosema spp., ABPV, IAPV or KBV. The results suggest that bees from colonies highly infested with mites are less efficient pollinators, possibly due to shorter visits to the flowers and lower tendency to collect pollen. The effects of mite infestation combined with high virus infections have not yet been determined. Further research will focus on how to limit the effects of varroa mites on the foraging behavior and pollination success of honey bees.

2. Alauxc, C., J.-L. Brunetd, C. Dussaubatc, F. Mondetd, S. Tchamitchand, M. Cousind, J. Brillarde, A. Baldyc, L.P. Belzuncesd & Y. Le Contec - INTERACTIONS BETWEEN NOSEMA MICROSPORES AND A NEONICOTINOID IN HONEY BEES - Massive honey bee losses have been reported in the world, but the specific causes are still unknown. Single factors, like pesticide impact, or a disease or parasite have not explained this global decline, leading to the hypothesis of a multifactorial syndrome (van Engelsdorp et al., 2009 PLoS One 4:e6481). Consequently, we tested the integrative effects of an infectious organism (Nosema sp) and an insecticide (imidacloprid) on honeybee health. We demonstrated, for the first time, that a synergistic effect between both agents, at concentrations encountered in nature, significantly weakened honey bees. The combination of Nosema, a pathogen whose importance is emerging, with imidacloprid caused a significantly higher rate of individual mortality and energetic stress in the short term than either agent alone. We then quantified the strength of immunity of honey bees. While the single or combined treatments showed no effect on individual immunity (haemocyte number and phenoloxidase activity), a measure of colony level immunity, glucose oxidase activity, was significantly decreased only by the combined treatments, emphasizing their synergistic effects. Glucose oxidase activity enables bees to secrete antiseptics in honey and brood food. This suggests a higher susceptibility of the hive to pathogens. We, thus, provide evidence for integrative effects of different agents on honey bee health, both in the short and long term. By focusing either on the effects of pesticides or parasites alone, previously established synergy has been ignored, despite clear evidence from integrated pest management that entomogenous fungi act synergistically with sub-lethal doses of pesticides to kill insect pests (Alaux et al., 2009 Environ. Microb. doi:10.1111/j.1462-2920.2009.02123.x).

3. Andinof, G.K. & G.J. Huntf - A NEW ASSAY TO MEASURE MITE GROOMING BEHAVIOR - Grooming behavior is one of the known mechanisms of defense for honey bees against parasitic mites. Varroa destructor is often considered the biggest beekeeping problem within the U.S. and around the world. Mite-grooming behavior has been described as the ability of the adult bees to remove Varroa mites during grooming and has been associated with mites that have been chewed by the bees' mandibles, but the proportion of chewed mites is extremely tedious to measure.
We developed an easier assay to measure mite-grooming behavior that can be used for selection in breeding programs. Wood cages with screened tops and bottoms were used to hold a frame of bees collected from the brood nest. Bees were transferred to comb containing pollen and nectar but without brood. The mites removed during grooming were collected in sticky boards for three days at room temperature (22-25 °C) and then counted. The remaining mites on the adult bees were collected and counted using carbon dioxide (CO2) to anesthetize the bees and powdered sugar to remove the mites. The percentage of the mites removed was calculated.
A significant relationship (p = 0.0285) was found between the proportion of mites removed in the lab assay and the proportion of chewed mites on sticky boards from the source colonies. This relationship indicates that the colonies that removed the highest percentage of mites in the caged adult bees were also the colonies that had the highest percentage of chewed mites (Figure). These results suggest that the method used to measure mite-grooming behavior is effective. In addition, we also found a negative relationship (p = 0.0072) between the percentage of mites removed and mite infestation of adult bees, which indicates that the colonies with the highest percentage of mites removed in the cage assay, had the lowest population of mites on adult bees. These results suggest that the low population of mites present on the adult bees is due to grooming.

4. Bahreinig, R. & R.W. Currieg - INCREASING THE ECONOMIC THRESHOLD FOR FALL TREATMENT OF VARROA MITE (VARROA DESTRUCTOR A.&T.) IN HONEY BEES BY USING MITE-TOLERANT STOCKS IN NORTHERN CLIMATES - The objective of this research was to develop effective and economical methods to reduce the impact of varroa mites on honey bees under winter management systems. Fall economic thresholds for varroa mite control in the prairie region of Canada suggest producers should treat honey bee stock when the mite level is greater than 4 mites per 100 bees (in late August to early September) to prevent fall or winter colony loss (Currie & Gatien, 2006 Can. Entomol. 138:238-252). However, it is not known how the use of mite tolerant stock or late season acaricide application would affect these thresholds. An experiment to assess these factors was carried out at University of Manitoba in fall 2007 to spring 2008. Thirty-nine colonies from mite-susceptible (n=23) and mite-tolerant (n=16) stocks with mite levels (16±3 mites per 100 bees) above the fall economic threshold were chosen and within each type of stock were randomly assigned into two groups that would either receive a late fall (November 2007) treatment with 1 g of oxalic acid crystals or were left untreated. Colonies were randomly arranged in two small rooms in a wintering building maintained at 5°C. Colony worker population and mean abundance of varroa mites were assessed before and after wintering colonies, and varroa mite and worker mortality rates were determined.
As expected, late fall treatment with oxalic acid reduced the mean abundance of varroa mites over winter (to 3.5%), relative to that found in untreated colonies (12%) in both susceptible and tolerant stock as indicated by a significant acaricide treatment × season interaction (P<0.01). However, under high fall mite load, reductions in mite levels associated with late-season oxalic acid treatment did not improve colony survival relative to untreated colonies. The use of mite-tolerant stock improved colony survival. In the mite-tolerant stock winter survival of colonies was much higher (75%) than in mite-susceptible stock (43%). The populations of worker bees in mite-tolerant and mite-susceptible stock were similar in colonies that survived winter. Bee populations in tolerant stock tended to be slightly higher than in susceptible stock, whether colonies were treated with acaricide or not. Untreated colonies with tolerant and susceptible stocks had similar mite mortality rates over winter, but tolerant stock had slightly a lower mean abundance of mites at the end of winter, compared to susceptible stock. Overall, this study demonstrates that when late fall mite levels are well above the fall economic threshold, tolerant stock could be used by beekeepers to help minimize colony loss in the Canadian prairies and under these conditions late fall oxalic treatments may not improve colony survival.

5. Cobeyh, S., J. Pollardi, C. Plantei, M. Flennikenh & W.S. Sheppardj - Development of A PROTOCOL for THE International Exchange OF HONEY BEE GERMPLASM - The development of protocol for the safe, well regulated international exchange of honey bee genetics is needed. The current ban on importation is inconsistent and has failed to prevent the spread of pests, parasites and pathogens. The initial limited gene pool introduced into the U.S. before the 1922 ban and the alarmingly high loss of colonies due to Colony Collapse Disorder is an increasing concern. Genetic diversity has been demonstrated to increase colony fitness and reduce the impact of pests and diseases. Our project is designed to develop technologies to safely import honey bee germplasm, semen and eggs, and to import stocks selected for resistance to enhance our domestic honey bee gene pool.
An improved bee semen extender with an antibiotic mixture, containing gentamicin, amoxicillin, lincomycin and tylosin, specifically designed to control bacterial pathogens was developed and tested to facilitate the transport of semen. Extended semen was examined for viability and motility after storage for 7 days, and inseminated to virgin queens. Results demonstrated high sperm viability, normal spermathecal sperm counts and normal brood patterns of inseminated queens.
USDA-APHIS (Animal Plant Health Inspection Service) permits were obtained and honey bee semen imported. Apis mellifera ligustica from survivor stock in Italy and A. m. carnica from the Germany Carnica Association were imported in 2008 and 2009 and crossed with domestic stocks. The semen was tested for viruses and resulting colonies established in an approved quarantine area at Washington State University. Progeny of these colonies were also examined and tested for pathogens. The 2008 imports released were backcrossed to the 2009 imports to create more pure stocks and also were incorporated into proven commercial U.S. stocks.
The New World Carniolan × German A.m. carnica colonies expressed increased fitness and increased expression of hygienic behavior. The Italian stock is still undergoing testing. Future plans are to import A.m. caucasica, as this subspecies is detectable but largely unrecognizable in the U.S.
Honey bee eggs represent a complete genetic package and are available in large quantities. Therefore, we developed reproductive technologies to manipulate honey bee eggs to allow for their isolation, pathogen testing and transport. A method to manipulate embryos was developed using fine forceps modified by the application of micro-bore tubing. The transferred eggs were hatched in vitro and the larva were grafted into queen cell cups, reared into queens and instrumentally inseminated with a high rate of success.

6. Delaplanea, K.S. & J.A. Berryk - TEST FOR SUB-LETHAL EFFECTS OF SOME COMMONLY USED HIVE CHEMICALS, YEAR Two - We are involved in a two-year, two-state (GA, SC) experiment examining sub-lethal effects of selected bee hive chemicals; the list includes registered products at label rates, as well as two off-label formulations. The reason we are doing this is that there is evidence that some of the chemicals used in beekeeping are hazardous to bees and contribute to bee decline (Frazier et al., 2008 Am. Bee J. 148(6):521-523; Desneux et al., 2007 Ann. Rev. Entomol. 52:81-106). Understanding this piece of the CCD puzzle will help beekeepers move toward more chemical-independent management. Here are results for two years from Georgia. Varroa levels (mites/100 bees) were significantly higher in CheckMite (coumaphos)-treated colonies than in colonies treated with Taktic (amitraz); mite levels were intermediate in all other treatments. Bees in the non-treated control colonies exhibited numerically highest brood viability, homing ability, and foraging rate and numerically lowest incidence of queen supersedure cells. Information like this is important for evaluating the cost:benefit ratio of using exotic chemicals in honey bee management.

7. Desaig, S. & R.W. Currieg - INHIBITION OF DEFORMED WING VIRUS (DWV) MULTIPLICATION IN HONEY BEES BY RNA INTERFERENCE - DWV plays a major role in affecting honey bee health. High proportions of colonies are infected by this virus, and it can be detected in worker honey bees, queens, pupae, larvae, drones and also in varroa mites. DWV and its interactions with the ectoparasitic varroa mite and other diseases have caused significant mortality of honey bee colonies on a world-wide basis (Miranda & Genersch, 2009 J. Invertbre. Pathol.103:S48-S61).
RNAi is a comparatively "simple", rapid and specific method for silencing gene function and can be developed to be specific to an individual virus. RNAi has recently been utilized in a number of species including human beings, plants, animals and insects (Drosophila) and recently in bees to suppress viruses. For example, successful silencing of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) in honey bees by feeding specific dsRNA to bees dramatically improved bee-to-brood ratio and honey yield (Maori et al., 2009 Insect Mol. Biol. 18:55-60).
RNAi reduces virus replication by causing degradation of the target mRNA. In this experiment, we assessed the effects of feeding dsRNA constructs against DWV to larvae that were infected with DWV and the potential lethal and sub-lethal effects on developing worker bees.
In DWV-infected larvae fed dsRNA survival (45%) was greater than the survival of larvae fed unrelated dsRNA (GFP) (31%) or DWV-infected larvae that were not treated with dsRNA. The dsRNA did not affect larval survival as DWV-"free" larvae fed our dsRNA construct had similar survival to that of untreated controls (Figure). Our dsRNA-fed larvae that were infected with DWV had significantly lower levels of wing deformity compared to larvae infected DWV or to larvae infected with DWV and an unspecific form of RNAi (GFP). Our experiment also demonstrated for the first time that feeding DWV orally in the absence of mites causes wing deformity in in-vitro reared larvae. We hypothesize that application of dsRNA into the honeybees fed DWV should result in a reduction in DWV titer over time with no effect on bee longevity. If proven effective, this mechanism can be used to block DWV and could improve winter survival of honeybee colonies.

8. Eischenl, F.A., R.H. Grahaml & R. Riveral - MOUNTAINSIDE WINTERING IMPROVES COLONY STRENGTH AND SURVIVAL OF HONEY BEES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - We examined the interaction of a feeding program and cold-windy conditions on honey bee colonies near Santa Ysabel, California (elev. 914 m). An equal number of colonies located near Fallbrook, California (elev. 219 m) served as controls. The trial began 7 September 2008 near Holtville, California (Imperial Valley). Colonies were randomly assigned to four treatment groups (n = 50), i.e., 1) Highland, fed continuously, 2) Highland, fed discontinuously, 3) Lowland, fed continuously, and 4) Lowland, fed discontinuously. On 20 November, lowland-designated colonies were moved to their normal winter locations near Valley Center, CA, and highland colonies to a mountainside near Santa Ysabel, CA. Groups 1) and 3) were fed continuously throughout the trial. Groups 2) and 4) were not fed during the period 6 Dec. 2008 - 13 Jan. 2009. Colonies were evaluated for strength and broodnest size on 26 January 2009, i.e., near the time of almond pollination evaluation.
Regardless of feeding treatment, highland colonies at the end of the trial were stronger by about 1.5 frames of bees than colonies of either lowland group. Brood nests of highland colonies were smaller, however by about 1.0 frames of brood. Stored pollen declined in the highland colonies, but stayed about the same in the lowland colonies; indicating that pollen foraging occurred in the lowland colonies. Highland colonies had a slight, but significantly higher survival rate than did lowland colonies.
To determine if the highland colonies would lose strength on return to lowland conditions, colonies from each treatment group (n = 25) were moved to an almond orchard near Shafter, CA and examined on February 15. Highland colonies were nominally larger than lowland colonies. Broodnest sizes were about the same for both highland and lowland colonies. Highland colonies had significantly more stored pollen than lowland colonies, indicating that their larger size caused increased pollen foraging. A simplified cost/benefit analysis indicates that it was economical to place colonies in a climate that limits unproductive flight during winter.
9. Eischenl, F.A., R.H. Grahaml & R. Riveral - ALMOND POLLEN COLLECTION BY HONEY BEE COLONIES HEAVILY INFECTED WITH NOSEMA CERANAE - In 2007 apiculturists became aware that the microsporidian, Nosema ceranae, had become established in the United States. A related species, N. apis is a well known honey bee pathogen. There was concern within the beekeeping industry that this "new" pathogen is part of the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) phenomenon.
A commercial beekeeper, based in Louisiana and New York, was found to have high levels of this pathogen in colonies used to pollinate almonds, blueberries and cranberries. We examined the impact of four N. ceranae levels on honey bee colonies including pollen collection during almond bloom in the Central Valley of California during February - March 2009.
N. ceranae levels in October 2008 were on average 1.0 - 2.9 million spores/bee (MSPB). By January 2009, levels increased to, on average, 1.6 MSPB in the lightest infection group to 49.5 MSPB in the heaviest. After transport from Louisiana to California during 31 Jan.-2 Feb, colonies in the two heaviest-infected groups had striking declines in their spore levels. We suspect the rigors of travel caused many severely infected bees to die.
Pollen collection by the lightest-infected colonies (Group I) was about twice that of Group II (159.8 vs. 74.0 g/day). Both Group I (0-4.5 MSPB) and Group II (5-15 MSPB) colonies collected significantly more pollen than Groups III (16-34 MSPB) and IV (35-49 MSPB) 16-34. When pollen collection was based on grams of pollen per frame of adult bees, we found that Group I colonies collected significantly more pollen. This suggests that foragers with heavy infections either make fewer collecting trips or pack smaller loads or both.
Colonies of all four groups lost significant adult bee strength during almond bloom, but losses were more severe in Groups II, III, and IV. At the end of pollination, no significant differences in N. ceranae spore levels were found among treatment groups, but levels rose in Groups I and II, while remaining about the same in Groups III and IV.
We suspect that these colonies, especially those with high spore levels, had large spore reservoirs on their honeycombs. We recommend including this factor when determining economic thresholds.

10. Eitzerm, B., F. Drummondn, J.D. Elliso, N. Ostiguyp, M. Spivakq, K. Aronsteinl, W.S. Sheppardj, K. Visscherr, D. Cox-Fosters & A. Averillt - PESTICIDE ANALYSIS AT THE STATIONARY APIARIES - One facet of the stationary apiary project within the "Sustainable Solutions to Problems Affecting the Health of Managed Bees Coordinated Agricultural Program" is a monitoring of the honey bee's exposure to pesticides. This is being done by determining pesticide residues in the pollen that is brought back to the hive by foraging honey bees. At five hives from each of the stationary apiaries, pollen is sampled with traps one day per week. Pollen samples are frozen after collection. Aliquots from all samples taken from an apiary during a calendar month are combined to generate a monthly composite sample for each apiary. Five grams of this composite sample are analyzed by a multi-pesticide residue procedure. In brief, the samples are extracted with acetonitrile using a dispersive solid phase technique known as QuEChERS (for Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe) and analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry. Using this technique allows over 140 different pesticides to be analyzed in the parts per billion (PPB) concentration range.
To date 29 of the monthly composite samples have been analyzed. Within these 29 samples, residues of 32 different pesticides or pesticide metabolites have been observed including: 14 insecticides plus one insecticide metabolite, 9 fungicides and 8 herbicides. The average composite pollen sample had an average of 4.1 pesticide residues detected. The concentration of residues when detected are mostly in the low PPB range (1< to 30 ppb), but some residues were substantially higher. The results indicate that honey bees at the stationary apiaries are being exposed to varying amounts of pesticides. As might be expected, this exposure amount varies with the location of the apiary (i.e. honey bees in Washington are exposed to different pesticides than those in Florida) and time of year. In addition, analysis of non-composited samples taken from five different hives within the same apiary on the same day also shows different pesticide amounts. This indicates that the honey bees from these hives are clearly foraging from different fields that have had different amounts of pesticides applied. This variability of pesticide exposure will be further examined as we continue to monitor these hives over the next several years.

11. Esaiasu, W. - RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN VEGETATION COVER, NECTAR AVAILABILITY, AND THE AFRICANIZED HONEY BEE - Collections of scale hive records of the Honey Bee Nectar Flow reveal dramatic regional variations related to honey bee forage and its phenology, and are used to quantify inter-annual variations that are related to changes in land cover type (nectar sources) and natural climate change. Temporal trends in the nectar flow dates correlate well with trends in vegetation parameters observed with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on the Terra and Aqua satellites. Nectar flows are generally occurring earlier in the Northeast U.S., and later in the Southeast U.S., in conjunction with regional increases in winter minimum temperatures. Numbers of volunteer beekeepers who provide records of daily weight changes has been doubling for the past several years and is now approaching 100 locations throughout the U.S. Further insight into climate and land cover change impacts on the timing of nectar flows will be possible as the number of volunteer locations increases, especially in the central and western U.S. Maps of site locations coverage, and scale hive data itself, are available at http://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov. Research programs establishing longer term monitoring apiaries are encouraged to consider monitoring hive weight changes to evaluate the impact of inter-annual nectar flow variations on colony health and behavior.
Jointly with the USGS National Institute of Invasive Species at Ft. Collins (C. Jarnevich, J. Morisette, T. Stohgren), climate and satellite vegetation data and species distribution models (SDMs) are used to better understand the areas at risk from further advance of the Africanized Honey Bee, and to shed light on why its movement into eastern Gulf of Mexico states has been slow compared to movement to the north and west. A key limitation to these studies, based on presence of an invasion still in progress, is the relatively poor knowledge of exact AHB locations throughout the range, although some states are very well sampled. Additionally, the sampling is biased spatially, makes no distinction between overwintered versus incidental/transient transport, and sampling effort is not uniform or recurrent over time. With 1-5 km scale resolution, model depictions of areas having similar climate and vegetation to the AHB presence locations appear to be very robust in the Southwest U.S. (west of 190 W) using the Maxent model. Winter and summer temperatures and vegetation parameters were critical variables. Maxent does not give satisfactory results for the Southeast U.S. yet. There, sampling biases are extreme due to presence data only in the western portion and extreme southeastern (S. FL) portion of the region. However, initial software test runs using an ensemble approach with 5 different SDMs appear to provide very useful maps of suitable AHB regions for the U.S., with further refinement required. Based on those very preliminary results and the small number of historic and current nectar flow records available, there is complete correspondence between areas of AHB presence/absence and abundance/dearth of nectar in the late summer and fall. This suggests that the combination of physical climate and the bulk vegetation phenology data from satellite observations can provide useful insight into local nectar flow phenology, at national scales.
Contributors to this project are R. Wolfe, P. Ma, J. Nightingale, and J. Nickeson at GSFC, C. Jarnevich, T. Stohlgren, J. Morisette at USGS Ft. Collins, J. Pettis at ARS/USDA Beltsville, J. Harrison at Arizona State Univ, J. Hayes at FL DACS, D. Downey at UT DAF, and the HoneyBeeNet Volunteers. Funding is from the NASA Earth Sciences Applications - Decisions Program.

12. Fellv, R., C. Brewsterv, & A. Mullinsv - The Spatial Distribution of Varroa Mites in Honey Bee Hives - Studies on the intra-hive distribution of Varroa mites were designed to obtain a better understanding of the spatial distribution of mites, how these patterns change over time, and how this information might be used to improve sampling and treatment decisions. Mite populations were sampled in a group of eight experimental hives (consisting of 1 full-depth hive body or 1 full-depth and 1 medium depth) three times at two-week intervals from mid-August to early October. PSU/IPM sticky boards were used for sampling, but were modified to cover the entire bottom board of a hive. Sticky boards were left in hives for 3 days. After removal, mite numbers were counted in each grid square (1.8 x 1.8 cm) and used to establish a distribution matrix. A geostatistical approach utilizing GS+ and Matlab® (MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA) software was used to analyze the mite sampling data and to build spatial models of mite distributions that can be displayed as surface density maps (Figure). Brood distribution in each hive was also measured after mite sampling using digital images. Frames were removed and photographed on each side with respect to their position in the hive and then divided into a set of data cells that corresponded with the sticky board grid. Frame contents were categorized as brood (worker, drone, capped, uncapped) or non-brood. Mite and brood sample distributions were further analyzed using spatial analysis by distance indices (SADIE).
The results show mite distributions were aggregated or clumped, and significantly associated with brood distributions (Index of association [Im] values varied from 0.23 - 0.58, Pm < 0.0001). Surface density maps indicate that bee collection for mite sampling using techniques such as the powdered sugar roll should be made in or near the brood nest. The results of this study also indicate that mite-sampling data can be highly variable. Mite numbers from sticky board samples were found to vary by as much as 250% in as little as two weeks. These data make it difficult to set mite number thresholds for beekeepers to use when making management decisions for colony treatment. Colonies deemed below a treatment threshold may show mite populations significantly above the threshold two weeks later when sampled in late summer and early fall. The association between brood and mite distribution also suggests that brood frame manipulation might provide an effective management tool for altering mite distributions for targeted treatment approaches.

13. Frostw, E.H., D. Shutlerw & K. Hillierw - EFFECTS OF A MITICIDE ON HONEYBEE MEMORY: IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE? - Significant mortality from Varroa destructor has occurred in wild and managed honeybee populations. Although mortality is the clearest indicator of negative consequences, Varroa may have other subtle effects. For example, chemical treatments used to eliminate Varroa may interfere with the honey bees' ability to properly integrate stimuli that elicit feeding, mating, colony defense, and communication behaviors.
We assessed learning and memory of honey bees exposed to tau-fluvalinate, the active ingredient in Apistan®, using a standardized Pavlovian insect-learning paradigm (proboscis extension reflex [PER]), that mimics learning in the natural environment. Honey bees are presented with a neutral stimulus, usually an odor, followed by a positive reward such as sugar water. Honey bees learn to extend their proboscis when exposed to the odor, in the absence of a reward, because the odor predicts the presence of food. Stressors, such as pesticides may reduce the frequency of PER, suggesting impaired learning (e.g., Abramson et al., 2004 Environ. Entomol. 33:378-388; Decourtye et al., 2005 Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 48:242-250).
Forager honey bees were collected in Nova Scotia, Canada in August/September 2009 and immobilized with only their antennae and mouthparts free. Tau-fluvalinate, dissolved in 1.25 µL of acetone, was applied dermally (thorax) or orally (proboscis) at concentrations of 0.125 µg (estimated to be daily exposure per bee in treated hives [Johnson et al., 2009 J. Econ. Entomol. 102:474-479]) or 1.25 µg. Controls were treated with 1.25 µL of acetone. Bees were trained to perform PER (training trials), and then tested for retention of odor memory 24 hours later (extinction trials).
Lower dose treatments had no significant effect on mortality or PER during training or extinction. At the 1.25 µg dermal dose, mortality was significantly higher in treated honey bees than controls at both 3 and 24 hours post treatment (p = 0.001 and p < 0.0001, respectively). Controls had a significantly higher average number of PER responses to odor cues during training (p = 0.05); there was no significant effect during extinction trials (p = 0.08).
We are also quantifying how tau-fluvalinate is partitioned within the honey bee body, and the relative concentrations. Chemical residues are evaluated using gas chromatography mass spectrophotometry by isolating the head and thorax and placing them in hexane to extract tau-fluvalinate. Quantities of tau-fluvalinate are measured by the size of the peaks on the chromatography output relative to a standard curve. Preliminary results suggest tau-fluvalinate enters the honey bee circulatory system after dermal contact. Honey bees with a dermal application (thorax) of tau-fluvalinate also have traces of the chemical in their head. Detoxification may also occur over time, with decreasing levels of tau-fluvalinate present in honey bee tissues over a 24 hour period.
Ultimately, this research will lead to standardized methods to evaluate suitability of mite treatment programs and potential sublethal effects of chemicals on honey bee

Cover Story - March 2010

An Adaptable Work Force

Excerpt

by Randy Oliver

I'd like to return to the analogy of the honey bee colony as being similar to a medium-sized mammal. The combs are analogous to the skeleton, the queen to the ovary, drones to sperm, honey to body fat, and the workers to the individual cells that make up organs.

The honey bee superorganism has one up on a mammal, though-a mammal can't "dissolve" unneeded or overrepresented organs, and shift those cells to augment other organs. A colony of bees can-by shifting workers from one task to another. This plasticity in worker task specialization allows the colony to quickly respond to changes in the environment-such as a sudden bonanza of nectar, or the need to shift from broodrearing to winter cluster formation. However, in order to undergo such transformations at maximum efficiency, the individual bees of the colony must be able to share information. Such sharing is done via the commerce of foods (analogous to the mammal's circulatory system), and through the bees' pheromonal language (analogous to a colony nervous system).

Allow me to return to the concept of the hive economy, which is driven by floral resources, and to the female labor pool that processes them. (Drones do not participate in within-colony labor other than in heat production. That leaves the two castes of females-the queen or queens, whose only labor is to lay eggs, and the omnicompetent and versatile worker.) By having only one sort of generic yet adaptable worker, that can specialize in short order to fill any task, the colony's workforce can rapidly shift from one job to another, as opportunities or challenges arise, so as to ensure that the economy of the hive functions most efficiently.

Seeley (1995) points out that much "communication" within the hive is by cues, rather than actual communicative signals. This is especially true with communicating the status of the state of nutrition within the hive. The feedback of cues (such as amount of jelly, or the ease of unloading nectar) forms the bulk of communication from the colony to the individual. Only a few signals (the dances, alarm and orientation pheromones, etc.) allow the individual to directly communicate to the colony as a whole.

Human economies respond to the dynamics of price-the more valuable goods get more economic attention. The same occurs in the hive-and foragers respond to cues that tell them how valuable certain commodities (rich or dilute nectar, water, or pollen) are at the moment. In response, the individual foragers invest work effort proportionally to the current value of each commodity, not for individual gain, but rather for the maximum gain of the colony as a whole.

Thus, a web of information sharing within the hive allows it to function without a central brain or government. Rather, the myriad feedback loops based upon food cues and pheromones allow the entire colony to act as a "mind" that allocates the labor pool to efficiently exploit the ever changing market of available resources upon which the hive economy is based-the pollen and nectar of the flowering plants that have coevolved in a mutually beneficial symbiosis with the bees. (Bees are the "shoppers" in the pollen market; plants advertise with bright petals and fragrant scent for bees to "buy" their product, and reward the shoppers with energy-rich nectar to fuel their shopping sprees.)

The godmother of hive dynamics was Dr. Anna Maurizio (1950), who found that workers in queenright colonies starved for pollen would transform into long-lived "winter" (diutinus) bees, even in summer. In the past several years the combined research of others has culminated in a considerable understanding of how nutrition and pheromonal feedback regulate colony economics and population dynamics.

Cover Story - February 2010

Strategies to Lower Your Tax Liability

Excerpt

by Howard Scott

    As beekeepers, we all have the obligation to file all honey sales. For most of us, it's a sideline income. But that still doesn't exempt you from listing beekeeping revenue. The IRS states that all worldwide income must be entered on the tax return, whether $10 or $10,000. Furthermore, non-compliance can be fraud, which could result in serious penalty. 

But, at the same time, the IRS allows us to subtract all expenses from the inflow, to arrive at a net profit. It is the net profit which is taxed. Whether you file a Schedule C (self-employment) or Schedule F (farming) or hobby income (revenue on line 21 of the 1040 and expenses on Schedule A), we file these expenses associated with our beekeeping activity.
 In this article, I will offer five strategies to lower net profit, which in turn will minimize your beekeeping-activity tax liability (the amount of taxes you pay on your return).
? Home office deduction. Home office deduction can be used when the beekeeper uses a portion of the house regularly and exclusively to do bee work. An example would be if if there is a honey house on the property, that conforms to the regularly and exclusively standards. However, if the beekeeper has a corner downstairs where operates his beekeeping activity, whether extracting, bottling, or maintaining hives, and doesn't do much else in this spot, that qualifies as a home office. If a beekeeper has a place where he does all his administrative work (orders supplies, keeps product, figures out prices, pays bills) and doesn't do much else, that too qualifies. The new home office rules state that if that exclusive place exists, one can add other space in the basement or garage, where product is stored, where supplies are kept, or where experimenting and tinkering is done, even if this space isn't exclusively used for beekeeping activities.

The Story of the American Bee Journal--
The Beekeeper's Companion for 150 Years

Excerpt

The story of the American Bee Journal, its origin, and Samuel Wagner, the first editor, must be closely associated with the Rev. L.L. Langstroth. In 1851, Langstroth had invented his movable-frame hive. In September 1851, a few weeks after a call on Langstroth, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Frederick Berg, pastor of a church in Philadelphia, visited Wagner and told him about this extraordinary beekeeper, his movable-frame hive and his beekeeping methods. They agreed that Wagner should go and see for himself, but it was not until August 1852, almost a year later, that he was able to do so.
After visiting Langstroth's apiary and seeing his hive, Wagner made a decision at a personal sacrifice to himself. He had corresponded with Dzierzon, discoverer of parthenogenesis, proponent of a practical system of beekeeping and author of a book entitled Rational Beekeeping. He had received permission to translate the book into English to be published for the improvement of American beekeeping. Wagner had made the translation, but it was never published. Recognizing the Langstroth movable frame hive as superior, he decided to encourage Langstroth to write a book instead; for his part, he would place all his store of information at Langstroth's service.
Langstroth quickly prepared the copy for the first edition of his book with the assistance of his wife, and Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee, A Bee-Keeper's Manual appeared in May of 1853.
Inasmuch as there were already two bee journals published in Germany, Langstroth made this prediction: "There is now a prospect that a Bee Journal will before long be established in this country. Such a publication has long been needed. Properly conducted, it will have a most powerful influence in disseminating information, awakening enthusiasm, and guarding the public against the miserable impositions to which it has so long been subjected."
Wagner established the American Bee Journal and its first issue appeared in January 1861, and from the start he had Langstroth as a contributor as well as an advisor. But after one year of publication, the Civil War resulted in the suspension of its publication until July 1866, when it was resumed.
To quote from Pellett's History of American Beekeeping, "The history of the American Bee Journal has been the history of the rise of beekeeping, and the one is inseparably linked to that of the other. Before this first copy of the first bee magazine in the English language appeared, there were few of the implements now in common use among beekeepers. Conventions of beemen had not been held, a practical smoker had not yet been invented, queen excluders were unknown, comb foundation was still to be perfected, the extractor had not come into use, nor had commercial queen rearing been suggested.

Cover Story December 2009

The Future: Pesticides and Fungicides

by RANDY OLIVER

Scientificbeekeeping.com

 Dave Hackenberg once quipped that, "Beekeepers have become the ugly stepchild of agriculture." Despite their general disregard for us, perhaps there are lessons that we can learn from our agricultural stepparents.

Pest Resistance Management
Beekeepers worldwide, in their exuberant use of every miticide available, have accelerated the development of mites resistant to (surprise) every synthetic miticide to hit the market. Luckily, U.S. beekeepers have been thrown a lifeline at the last moment in the form of the latest "silver bullet"- Hivastan®. However, lest I sound critical, I'm not blaming them-varroa has been the worst thing ever to hit beekeepers-it just won't go away! To their credit, every commercial beekeeper I've spoken to is concerned about the sublethal effects of miticides upon his bees, and most have experimented with alternative treatments.
The problem of varroa resistance to targeted poisons is hardly unique to beekeepers-this is a common phenomenon in modern agriculture. Allow me to quote from the pesticide industry's own pest resistance management website (IRAC 2009):
"General insecticide use is no longer the answer to pest control. Insects have developed widespread, insecticide-defeating resistance to many traditional treatments, and the industry may not have enough resources to continually develop and supply the market with new products precisely when needed to replace old ones. Growers with resistance problems do not have enough time to wait for new chemistry. It is imperative that the effectiveness of available insecticides be conserved by growers through adoption of these management principles. By working together, insecticide resistance can be managed!" [emphasis mine]
Folks, the above statement comes from the very companies that sell pesticides! They are telling us that we'd better learn to use Pesticide Resistance Management (PRM) for our own bee pests-mites, bacteria, and fungi. PRM strategy uses three main tactics of pest control-cultural, biological, and as a last resort, chemical. In the case of varroa management, "cultural" would include such techniques as the making of splits and other biotechnical methods. "Biological" would involve mite-resistant bees or biocontrols such as fungi or viruses specific to mites (unfortunately, we don't yet have the latter at our disposal). We should no longer consider miticides to be the first mode of defense.
A key aspect of pesticide resistance management to extend the effective life of a pesticide is the concept of "refuge strategy"-that is, to make sure that a large "refuge" of untreated pests remains outside of the managed fields. These untreated (and therefore susceptible) pests are expected to move in after treatment, and to outbreed the few resistant pests that survive the treatment, thereby delaying the development of pesticide resistance.
Unfortunately, the refuge strategy is problematic with varroa for two main reasons: (1) varroa normally mate brother to sister, so resistance alleles are difficult to breed out (shy of completely exterminating any colonies with resistant mites), and (2) because any miticide with a long residual life in the combs will maintain a constant selective pressure against "wild type" susceptible mites.
These facts suggest that long-term control of varroa with miticides will become more and more difficult with time (in case you hadn't noticed).

The "New" Antibiotic
Since I'm on the subject of resistance management, let's talk about tylosin. This antibiotic was registered for use against active cases of AFB. It was registered only after the AFB bacterium evolved resistance to the long-successful antibiotic Terramycin (oxytetracycline, or OTC). OTC has the desirable characteristic of degrading fairly rapidly in moist environments (as in a bee hive). Therefore, it fit the bill of allowing refuges of susceptible bacteria (and beneficial competing bacteria) to survive.
Tylosin, on the other hand, has a very long life in the hive-on the order of several months. That is why it is currently such an effective antibiotic against AFB-it just keeps killing and killing the bacteria. This persistence was noted in the process of its registration for bee hive use, so the label specifically prohibits its use as a prophylactic measure, or its application in sugar syrup.
Of course, many commercial beekeepers now routinely (and illegally, at least in my state) feed tylosin in sugar syrup as a prophylactic measure against AFB! It is a "box movers'" dream-no need to inspect for foulbrood, nor loss of AFB-tainted equipment-just treat ‘em all with tylosin. I strongly question this practice! We do not know the long-term effects of a persistent antibiotic upon symbiotic honey bee gut flora or those in the bee bread. Of even more concern is the imprudence of such practice-tylosin is an incredibly effective tool for the control of AFB. The routine use of it will predictably soon render it ineffective as tylosin-resistant bacteria evolve. Those misusing the product will ruin it for the rest of us! This is not a matter of "laughing with the sinners or crying with the saints"-it is rather a shortsighted folly.
First-World agriculture has reveled in the achievements of the Green Revolution and factory farms, the success of which unfortunately depend upon energy-gulping fertilizer and transportation, massive pesticide and herbicide use, dousing animals in "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations" with antibiotics, and government subsidies. We've become infatuated with the beauty of our weapons* against pests, weeds, and diseases. Although this system has been highly effective for the short term, there are good arguments that it is unsustainable in the long run.
*Apologies to Leonard Cohen
Commercial beekeeping has become a microcosm of the larger agricultural system. Let me note that I make my living as part of that system-renting bees for pollination, and selling honey by the drum. I enjoy as well plentiful, and what appears to be "cheap," food (if one ignores the hidden costs). Be assured that I'm not criticizing the system nor the farmers or beekeepers who feed the nation. Neither am I disparaging the use of miticides and antibiotics-they are valuable and necessary tools. However, I feel that it may be wise to pay attention to the evolution of the larger system, as beekeeping will likely reflect similar changes and challenges.
Big Agriculture is moving toward fewer (and safer) pesticides and antibiotics, more biotechnical methods of pest control, such as crop rotation and interplanting, better breeding for pest and disease resistance, and better animal nutrition. The parallels with beekeeping are hard to ignore.

New Pesticides
The market for agricultural pesticides is huge, so there is a constantly evolving arsenal of new pest control products-this year look for imaginative new names like Belay, Endigo, Zeal, Movento, Synapse, and Coragen (all ®) (Roberson 2009). The good news is that the newer classes of insecticides are generally designed to be more environmentally friendly, which is good news for bees.
However, with the release of each new pesticide, beekeepers wonder if there will be unforeseen ill effects upon their bees. When colonies die for no apparent reason, it is easy to blame said losses on the unfamiliar new product.
This has certainly been the case for the neonicotinoids. The good news is that the systemic neonics are replacing the nasty organochlorines and organophosphates (WHO Class 1-"extremely hazardous"), and can be used in much smaller amounts, since they are applied directly to the seed prior to planting, rather than spread or sprayed over the soil or crops.
However, many beekeepers in Europe, and some in the U.S., feel strongly that neonics can cause detrimental effects to their colonies. Numerous field trials (by Bayer, government labs, and independent researchers) generally fail to support this supposition (the continuing reports in the press are generally recycled old research). There is no doubt that some bees are harmed by some neonic applications, but in general, monitored test colonies appear to thrive when placed adjacent to neonic-treated crops in which the chemical has been properly applied. Indeed, I've spoken to some large commercial beekeepers who profess their love for the neonics, as their use has reduced the typical historical kills by the older generation of pesticides.
This is certainly not the final word on the neonics-I'm sure that the labels will need to be modified as we find specific cases where their use (such as in potatoes followed by clover, in melons, when applied by chemigation, etc.) appears to be harming bees and other nontarget organisms.
Guttation "water"
O.K., by the time you read this article, you may have heard the buzz about "guttation droplets" and neonicotinoids in young corn (maize) plants. Dr. Vincenzo Girolami in Italy released a video last year of bees dying rapidly after drinking droplets of sap exuded by clothianidin-treated corn seedlings. The twitching deaths were gruesome to watch, and fired up justifiable emotional outrage in beekeepers. Had the culprit for colony losses finally been pegged?
Well, there's a bit more to the story. In the first place, the knowledge about systemic pesticides in guttation fluid (a natural phenomenon in young plants in the grass family) was well known. The whole reason for seed treatment is to make the sap of seedlings toxic to root- and leaf-eating insects. Then as the plant matures, the concentration of pesticide naturally decreases, plus guttation normally ceases.
Beekeepers have complained about bee losses at the time of sunflower or corn flowering-but this occurs months after guttation in the seedlings. But some beekeepers also complained about losses just after planting. These losses could be explained by contaminated dust from the seeds as they are planted (as in the well-publicized clothianidin kill in Germany last year, in which the pesticide was not glued properly to the seed). Or, as Dr. Girolami (2009) points out in his recent paper, perhaps bees might be poisoned by drinking guttation droplets. His laboratory studies indicate that the droplets can indeed be toxic, but alas, he did not perform any "real-life" field tests, and stated "it is still not possible to draw a judgment on a possible correlation between neonicotinoid translocation into guttation drops and CCD."
Luckily, others have performed such field tests. I've been able to preview Bayer-funded studies that were performed in corn fields this spring at six sites in Austria and France, under different climatic conditions (some specifically chosen to have access to water restricted, and little alternative attractive flora), and involving 38 fields and about 100 colonies. Guttation on the corn seedlings was commonly present during foraging hours.
The results were that bees were observed foraging only at the field margins, and "only very occasionally" were individual bees observed exhibiting symptoms of intoxication. I've looked at the graphs of the numbers of dead bees caught in hive traps or fallen on linen sheets placed before the hives-there didn't appear to be any significant effect of seed treatment compared to control colonies on untreated fields.
The researchers found that the placement of gravel-filled watering trays decreased bee foraging for guttation water. However, colony development for three months appeared to be identical (and normal) whether alternate water was provided or not.
Aha, you say, that research was funded by Bayer! I also found that the Swiss government independently performed their own tests (BLW 2008), in which they found that clothianidin indeed occurred at toxic levels in the droplets for about a month after sowing. Again, the toxic droplets appeared to be repellent to bees. The independent Swiss researchers found no mortality due to clothianidin of bees in colonies placed next to the fields during and after sowing, and observed no deterioration of the health of the colonies. They did suggest that it would be good beekeeping practice to provide clean water if such was not naturally available.
The above findings will likely apply to the U.S. However, we plant corn in huge expanses, and I wouldn't be the least surprised if bees in such areas might be poisoned if drought occurs during the first month of seedling growth, should no clean alternative water sources be available. Again, please note that potential poisoning from guttation droplets would be an entirely different phenomenon from poisoning from the much later tasseling of corn.
In any case, I hope that the neonicotinoid question is resolved soon. Meanwhile, there is another class of plant protection products that keeps coming up on my radar...

Fungicides
Although beekeepers have long cursed pesticides, fungicides have generally been assumed to be safe for bees. We've recently learned otherwise. Some fungicides are demonstrably toxic to bee larvae. Exposure of larvae to pollen containing Captan®, Ziram®, or iprodione led to 100 percent mortality (Alarcón 2009).
Fungicides may also have synergistic effects when combined with other pesticides, or miticides applied by the beekeeper, making either more toxic to the bees. This is a problem that we experience when our colonies are pollinating almond orchards-where fungicides are often sprayed on the bloom. Many almond pollinators (myself included) have had serious issues after certain fungicides (e.g., Rovral® or Pristine®) were sprayed, sometimes in the short term, sometimes killing brood weeks later (Mussen 2008). This is a serious concern to those producing queens from colonies returning from almond pollination.
A scary thing about fungicide contamination is that there may be a delayed effect-one may not notice problems until the bees dig back into stored pollen months after exposure! VanEngelsdorp (2009) coined the term "entombed pollen" to describe brick-red beebread sealed by the bees with a black capping, and often associated with the fungicide chlorothalonil (Bravo®). The authors state: "These results provide compelling evidence that entombed pollen indicates exposure to a risk factor that is detrimental to honey bee colony survival." However, they did not find it to be directly responsible for either significant brood mortality or CCD.
In a recent series in this Journal, Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, et al (2009) reviewed the literature on beneficial microbes in bee hives. These microbes are mainly bacteria and fungi. Bees gather pollen, add nectar, saliva, and microbe inoculant from their mouths, and pack it into cells to undergo a lactic acid fermentation, similar to the making of silage, sauerkraut, or yogurt. After the initial fermentation, which preserves the beebread with acid, beneficial fungi then continue to digest the pollen, apparently making it more nutritious to the bees.
So let's say that you were about to make cheese out of milk at home. Unless you take special care to make sure that the culture is properly inoculated with beneficial bacteria and fungi, you will end up with a putrid, and possibly toxic, product (due to the bacterial and fungal toxins produced by unwanted microbes).
When bees ferment pollen into beebread, they count on the right microbes to do the job. Honey bees have a long evolutionary involvement with beneficial symbiotic bacteria and fungi, and several of them appear to be associated with the health and nutrition of colonies. When a fungicide (or possibly an antibiotic) is inadvertently added to the pollen, we simply do not know whether the "normal" fermentation process will take place, or whether the chemicals will allow toxin-producing microbes to thrive. The entombment of pollen may simply be the way that bees deal with beebread "gone bad" so that the nurse bees don't suffer from "food poisoning."
Now I've saved what most interests me for last. Honey bees require sterols as essential dietary nutrients (meaning that they can't create them themselves, similar to vitamins). The critical bee sterol is 24-methylenecholesterol (I'll abbreviate it as 24-mCh). Luckily, this is often the main sterol found in pollen (Svoboda 1983). There is also a sterol precursor to 24-mCh called sitosterol, but Herbert ( 1980), in feeding trials of synthetic diets, found that bees were apparently unable to convert sitosterol (or other sterols) to 24-mCh.
Without 24-mCh in the diet, nurse bees apparently "steal" it from their own body reserves to produce the jelly which they then feed to the queen and larvae. Herbert (1980) found that in diets lacking 24-mCh, broodrearing is restricted, and drops off precipitously after two brood cycles (although they can use plain cholesterol in the short term).
Note that this drop off after two brood cycles is typical of pollen "substitutes," including that used in a recent greenhouse trial at the Tucson lab. The colonies in that trial quickly recovered when they were given a small amount of beebread scraped from combs of free-flying colonies. No one has determined what the critical ingredient supplied by the beebread was.
Note also that due to bee colony population dynamics, a major drop in brood rearing wouldn't be noticed by the beekeeper (unless he's inspecting the broodnest) until about six weeks later, when the missing brood would have become foragers. A colony can quickly recover the field force if there is a lot of sealed brood, but not if there was a break in brood rearing several weeks previously.
Now here's the part that catches my attention. Loper (1980) found that almond pollen, hand brushed from the blossoms, contains both sitosterol and 24-mCh, but that in the same pollen, trapped from bees' legs in pollen traps that were emptied hourly, the sitosterol content dropped sharply (154 to 38 mg/kg), whereas the 24-mCh content rose substantially (428 to 544 mg/kg)!
So here's my question: If bees are unable to convert dietary sitosterol into 24-mCh in cage trials lasting weeks, how the heck do they manage to do it in an hour in the pollen loads on their legs?
The answer may come from Gilliam (1997): "Our studies of floral and corbicular [collected on bees' legs] pollen ...demonstrated that pollen from a flower changes microbiologically and biochemically as soon as the honey bee collects it." She found that bacteria and yeasts were very quickly replaced by molds (fungi). Certain fungi (such as Mortierella) are notable for producing 24-mCh (although Gilliam did not identify this genus in bees).
So, questions that I have for researchers are, (1) what is the mechanism for the conversion of sterols in the corbicular pollen, (2) do agricultural fungicides stop the process, and (3) since 24-mCh is critical in the royal jelly to produce queens, how are fungicides used in almonds affecting the queens produced afterwards? I'm very curious as to how fungicides, even those that aren't overtly toxic to bees, are affecting the nutrition, health, and development of queens in our colonies.

Wrap Up
Modern agriculture has become heavily dependent upon pesticide use. Unfortunately, the pests are catching up. All forms of agriculture, including beekeeping, will be forced to move to smarter management, with fewer, and less hazardous, pest control products. Proactive beekeepers are currently shifting to such practices as IPM and natural treatments.
The incredibly effective antibiotic tylosin is unfortunately being misused, which will likely lead to resistant AFB bacteria, and possibly to unexpected problems with colony biotic balance.
Agriculture is generally moving toward more environmentally-friendly pesticides. The neonicotinoids appear to be one of these. However, some beekeepers feel that the neonics are causing serious problems. There is currently a lack of supporting scientific evidence in most cases (with noted exceptions), but research continues.
Fungicides, which have been generally considered to be harmless to bees, are being found to be anything but! Researchers are reinvigorating investigation of the roles that microflora play in colony health and nutrition, and the effects that fungicides and antibiotics may have when the microfloral "balance" is disrupted

Acknowledgements
As always, I am deeply indebted to my collaborator Peter Loring Borst, without whom I could not conduct the research necessary to document these articles.

References
Alarcón, R and G DeGrandi-Hoffman (2009) Fungicides can reduce, hinder pollination potential of honey bees. Western Farm Press March 7, 2009.
BLW (2008) Bienen Monitoring in der Schweiz (available as pdf by Googling the title)
DeGrandi-Hoffman, G, et al (2009) The importance of microbes in nutrition and health of honey bee colonies. American Bee Journal 149(6, 7, and 8).
Gilliam, M (1997) Identification and roles of non-pathogenic microflora associated with honey bees. FEMS Microbiology Letters 155: 1-10.
Girolami, V, et al (2009) Translocation of Neonicotinoid Insecticides From Coated Seeds to Seedling Guttation Drops: A Novel Way of Intoxication for Bees. J. Econ. Entomology 102(5): 1808-1815.
Herbert, EW Jr, et al (1980) Sterol utilization in honey bees fed a synthetic diet: effects on brood rearing. J. Insect Physiol. 26 287-289.
IRAC (2009) IRM The Facts. http://www.irac-online.org
Loper, GM, et al (1980) Biochemistry and microbiology of bee-collected almond (Prunus dulcis) pollen and bee bread. Apidologie 11(1): 63-73.
Mussen, E (2008) Fungicides toxic to bees? Apiculture Newsletter Nov/Dec 2008.
Roberson, R (2009) Vegetable insecticide arsenal expanding. Southeast Farm Press. March 26, 2009. http://southeastfarmpress.com/vegetables-tobacco/vegetable-production-0326/
Svoboda, J, et al (1983) Comparison of sterols of pollens, honeybee workers, and prepupae from field sites. Arch. Insect Biochem and Physiology 1983, pp. 25-31.
VanEngelsdorp, D, et al (2009) "Entombed Pollen": A new condition in honey bee colonies associated with increased risk of colony mortality. Journal of Invertebrate Pathology 101: 147-149.

Cover Story November 2009

(excerpt)

Apicultural Research--"Nozevit patties" Treatment of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) for the Control of Nosema ceranae Disease

ABSTRACT
 Nosema disease affects adult honey bees and due to its mostly inconspicuous signs and the need for eradication by exchange of frames with brood from a disinfected hive and often use of new wax, beekeepers devote insufficient attention or often neglect the disease. Also, there is a problem of controlling nosemosis, especially caused with N. ceranae because of its asymptomatic duration and prohibition of using antibiotics in the treatment of apian diseases in the European Union, as well as in Croatian regulations. We have predicted great results for use of protein pollen patties with "Nozevit" herbal preparation, as a feed supplement for bee colonies, where it can have an effect on brood rearing (colony strength) and at the same time reduce the number of Nosema ceranae spores. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the "Nozevit" phyto-pharmacological preparation in protein/pollen substitute patties for treatment of nosema disease in comparison with patties without "Nozevit" and sugar solution in a similar control group.

INTRODUCTION
Nosema disease is a parasitic disease of adult honey bees (Apis mellifera) caused by two described species of microsporidia, Nosema apis (Zander, 1909) and Nosema ceranae (Fries et al., 1996), which in adverse living conditions forms spores. This disease affects adult bees and due to its inconspicuous signs and the need for eradication by exchange of frames with brood from a disinfected hive and often use of new wax, beekeepers devote insufficient attention or often neglect the disease. Honey bees afflicted with nosemosis start to forage earlier (Fries, 1995), while pathological changes of their mid-gut epithelial cells, as well as digestive and metabolic disorders (Hassanein, 1951), cause malnutrition (Muresan et al., 1975), lack of population build up and consequentially decrease of population size of honey bee colonies (Malone et al., 1995) leading to premature deaths (Morse and Shimanuki, 1990).
 New Nosema ceranae is highly pathogenic and there are usually no visible symptoms of diarrhea or adult bee deaths and there is total lack of seasonality in the diagnosis (Martin - Hernandez et al., 2007), and little is known about pathogenicity (Oldroyd, 2007). Infections with N. ceranae induce a nutritional stress, suppression of the bee's immune functions and cause changes in behavior where infected bees tend to forage at cooler temperatures (Mayak, 2009). Bees infected with new parasitic pathogen starve to death due to lack of digestive function and this leads to increased number of honey bee colony losses, destruction of plant communities and low production in the same areas which consequently cause significant loss of beekeeper's income (Stefanidou et al., 2003).
 There is a problem of controlling nosemosis, especially caused with N. ceranae because of its asymptomatic duration (Martin - Hernandez, 2007) and prohibition of using antibiotics in the treatment of apian diseases in EU, as well as in Croatian regulations. Recently, we have published results of experimental nosema disease treatment with the natural phyto-pharmacological preparation "Nozevit" in sugar solution (Tlak Gajger et al., 2009) which shows that a large number of spores were considerably reduced upon preventive (70.91%) and curative (78.37%) treatment. But, bees need more than just carbohydrates from honey or sugar syrup to survive, especially proteins. The most significant source of proteins in nutrition of honey bee colonies is pollen or pollen substitutes. Proteins are mainly needed for reproduction and brood rearing (Herbert, 1999); to produce protein-rich brood food to feed larvae, but also the queen needs a steady supply with protein-rich royal jelly, to have enough protein to lay up to 2000+ eggs a day. Also, there are a lot of reasons for additionally feeding bees with pollen substitutes like: early spring build up before appearance of first vegetation; build up in preparation for pollination; to force building in preparation for a strong nectar flow, to encourage early drone rearing; to maintain drone and brood rearing through a strong dearth (Day et al., 1990), and ensure wintering survival. Less brood rearing eventually reduces the number of adult bees, including foragers, and may consequently affect pollination efficiency and honey yields (Herbert, 1999) and if we draw a comparison with nosemosis, it has the same consequences. So, the pollen patties composition is important both for its nutritional value and for its effect on how readily bees consume it (Keller et al., 2005a). Because of that we have predicted great results for use of pollen patties with "Nozevit" as a feed supplement for bee colonies in early spring and in autumn, where it can have an effect on brood rearing (colony strength) and at the same time reduce the number of Nosema spores, thereby preventing the spread of disease inside the colony. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the "Nozevit" phyto-pharmacological preparation added to "Brood Builder" - protein/pollen substitute patties for treatment of nosema disease in comparison with patties without "Nozevit", and sugar solution in a similar control group. Also, we have checked the strength (number of populated and brood frames) of treated and untreated honey bee colonies during the clinical examination in the field conditions.