The Classroom April 2012

by Jerry Hayes

Q Formic Acid?

I run nearly 40 hives. Since mid-July, I have had to feed the girls. In the last few weeks the small hive beetle has emerged. I use a top feeder and I noticed that those hives that have dead bees have small hive beetle larvae; those feeders that have dead big black ants have no larvae. This could just be random chance or is this something in the decaying black ants that are repelling the small hive beetle. I am asking if this has been noted by other beekeepers.

Thank you,                                                                        
Howard Thompson                                                                        
Joplin, MO

A
I think it may just be serendipity. We have tested all of the formic acid products (which is the poison that ants emit) and small hive beetles (SHB), at least in Florida, laugh at them. SHB regularly walk all over Mite-Away Quick Strips (active ingredient formic acid) and anything else. I have seen them swim across 75 % formic acid liquid in a Petri dish. They are tough. At those times where we have raised the concentration of formic acid vapor in a colony enough the kill a colony to see what the upper limit was, the SHB simply leave the colony and come back when it airs out a bit to start laying eggs and in a day or so the larvae are eating the dead brood, etc.
Continue to keep your eyes open as there may be a serendipity moment that will be really important.



Q Beauty Is In The Eye...

Somewhere early in our beekeeping careers we all learned to paint our supers and hive bodies white. So every time I get new equipment, it gets painted white and any old equipment that needs touched up gets painted white. But a couple of weeks ago my wife gathered up all of the copies of ABJ and that other magazine that I've got laying around the house and pointed out all of the hives that weren't white and asked why I painted mine white. Like any good husband of 30+ years, I made something up and then I started wondering myself. I started noticing that more of the apiaries from foreign countries are dark in color as is the apiary from Germany on the cover of the January 2012 issue. So, the question is does the color matter as long as it’s not black?

John Wisnewski

A
Any color will do for the most part as any solar gain from the color will be compensated for by the honey bees internally. However, the prevailing thought has always been that you paint hives darker colors in cold northern climates to absorb heat and lighter colors in hotter climates to reflect heat. I saw a guy once who lived in Minnesota who painted his colonies in dark shades of black and brown for solar gain and the heat/warmth that would be absorbed when the colonies weren’t covered in snow in winter and spring. I don’t think it matters as a management issue. I think it is just more creative to have multiple colors on colonies. The best place to get paint is at garage sales-you know those partially filled cans from when the house was painted 5 years ago. You can also often pick up cheap exterior paint at paint stores that have inventories of mismatched paint rejected by the customer, etc.


Q Crystallized Honey Separation

Thank you for your time in the Questions and Answers column in the American Bee Journal. I just have one question today. My honey is crystallized in barrels and I take honey out as I need it. The honey in the barrel has never been heated, but there is some honey on the top of the crystallized honey that is in the liquid form. It looks like some separated.

A
Honey is a supersaturated sugar solution. When it has a certain ratio of some sugars, they start forming sugar crystals. The solids (sugar crystals) link up and move out of the liquid. So, at some point you have the more solid sugar crystal mass and whatever honey, water solution that is left behind. Be careful, since the liquid honey left will now have a tendency to ferment more quickly because it is thinner after some of the sugars have crystallized out.


Q One Step Forward Two Steps Back

I am interested in starting a top rail [bar] bee hive. Any pros or cons would be greatly appreciated. I am new to beekeeping just in the gathering research stage. Our city just passed an ordinance that allows bee hives in city limits! If there is a workshop specific to top rail hives I would be very interested in attending. I live in Hastings, Nebraska, zone 4 to 5. Build your own or purchase one? Thank you for any information.
 
RaQuel

A
RaQuel, it is really important to have hives that have easily movable frames. Part of the collaboration between you the beekeeper and the honey bee colony is for you to be able to identify pests, predators and diseases and if you want the bees to live, provide treatments.

The "Langstroth" style movable frame colony is the standard for efficiency and practicality. It was/is the culmination of many smart beekeeper researchers who were trying to make beekeeping more enjoyable and lucrative in the 1800's.

Top Bar hives are certainly fun and there is nothing wrong with using and experiencing them, but they are a step backwards in many regards. There are plans available online if you are a decent wood worker and can measure twice and cut once:)

As a new beekeeper I would encourage you to use standard movable frame equipment that can be purchased pre-cut and use this as your base to actually learn about honey bees for a few years as the foundation for other fun beekeeping adventures.


Q Reverse or Not?

I thank you for the information that you gave me from the questions I asked. I have 4 hives, two 9 5/8 boxes, I use for the brood boxes. The question I have is: Do I need to switch the bottom box that has brood in it with the top box that has just honey in it for the winter? Thinking this might help protect the brood from the cold. Then, switch them back in the spring? How often do you inspect the hive for mites or disease? Can you open the hive during the summer too much? When you take the honey boxes off in the fall, and the boxes you leave for the winter are full, what do the bees do?

Steven Kinnard


A
Let me give your questions a shot. Remember, warm air rises and this will help the frozen honey get a little warmer as the colony eats and moves up to access the food. Don’t reverse in the fall. Question: If honey bees are living in the wild in a hollow tree, who reverses the colony? And honey bees have been living successfully for millennia without beekeepers. So…..don’t worry about reversing things; they know where stuff in their home is. How would you like to come home and somebody rearranged all of you living room furniture?

You can survey for varroa easily using a “Sticky Board” slid into the entrance for 24-48 hours and count mites. If you are a new beekeeper, opening them up when the temperature is above 60 F to just learn how to manipulate hive parts and assess the situation once a week is a good thing. You can back off to once a month when you get confidence. Beekeeping is a visual sport so get a good book with pest, predator and disease photos to have something to compare to. If you have ‘supers’ on your hive and take them off, the colony adjusts to the new space in the two brood boxes. You have to leave on 60 + lbs. of honey for them to make it through a typical northern winter. Take honey in the brood chamber away and it makes it harder for the bees to survive. You have made it much easier for the cluster to die from starvation.


Q Early Splits

A hobbyist beekeeper in cold, blustery Montana (it's snowing TODAY!), I have a question for you. Several days ago I made up four splits from my over-wintered colonies. In order to conserve heat (it's only 52 F. today), for the first time I decided to place the increase colonies above the parent colonies, with a double screen dividing the two boxes. My question is: How long do you think I should leave them in this configuration? Is this more dependent on day and night-time temperatures than anything else?

Thank you very much for your advice. Have a great day!

Doug Stream

A
97 degrees F here in Florida--snow almost sounds good.
Several options:

1. Wait until day and night time temps are 60 degrees F or above or you have 5 frames of brood & bees.
2. Make a two-queen colony out of them for fun.
3. Make nucs for emergency replacement of queens, bees & brood during the year.
   

Q Dead Bees In The Snow

Here In Maine this winter it has been really mild. We did have a cold snap last weekend."10 below" Right after I noticed around the outside of the hive a lot of dead bees in the snow, and the amount seems to be growing daily. The temp has only been in the 20's and 30's, not warm enough to take a cleansing flight.

When I listen to the hive there is still a lot of buzzing inside. Each of my hives went into the winter with 80+ lbs of honey. I can’t hear anything in my other hive and there are no dead bees on the outside. I am thinking it did not survive for some reason.

This fall I treated for mites and nosema. I wrapped the hives with tar paper and hoped for the best. Are these dead bees on the outside of the hive a bad sign?

Marcia Smith

A
Marcia, in Maine there are a lot of bees lost over a long winter. Remember that the queen shuts down laying relatively early, even with your warm early fall/winter. And with a significant cold snap and cold temperatures following, some of the older bees will continue to die. A brown bee on a white background of snow stands out clearly, but may not be a big concern as this is normal. If you treated for mites and nosema in late August or early September and there was lots of honey and no other disease, then you are 80% there. It is always the other 20% unpredictable wild card of pest, predators and diseases that is the concern. Cross your fingers, this is still agriculture!

Regarding your other colony where you haven’t heard any buzzing, don’t give up on it until you have a nice day and can actually open up the hive and check to see if the colony is actually dead, or the cluster is simply low in the hive and quiet.


Q Old Queen / New Queen

I had decided to combine a weak hive with a failing queen with a package (and new queen) I have coming in about another week. I’ve left the old queen hoping she would start to lay. I checked the hive today and still no brood, eggs or anything…..except one very nice capped queen cell right in the middle of a frame. I didn’t see anything when I checked about 10 days ago. Is it possible the old girl squeezed out one final egg? What now? Do I kill the old girl to be sure she doesn’t do anything foolish?
                                                                         
Richard

A
Life finds a way. It is possible that she was still able to start laying again. It is also possible that the queen cell is not viable. Whatever the case, she probably needs to move on to another existence which doesn't include this colony. I'd wait though until you receive your new queen in hand. When the new queen shows up, check to see if visually she looks okay and if so, then go into the hive, destroy the old queen and introduce the new queen in her introduction cage.


Q Wavy Comb Building

Hello again Jerry, and thank you for your earlier response to my question on wavy foundation. I understand that good parallel frames in the brood nest makes working with the bees most efficient, with less chance of crushing them and also for them to have equally sized brood cells on the same plane. Would these wavy frames (and I have A LOT of them) be okay for the honey frames, since the bees can draw them out, less or more, and at least store honey in them. Or, would they still present a problem? 

And, do you think the waviness could be a result of something other than the heat in the hive (which I would expect to result in a wave sagging downwards and not sideways), or might they be a result of my stretching the imbedded wires to tightly - creating the 'warping' in each row - sideways rather than up and down?

And yes, you can call me a nut, like my husband is doing, and tell me to just forget the cost and cut them out, buy new sheets of foundation, and add the frames slowly, so the damage will be less. Never a dull moment. Thanks again for you advise and help.
                                                                            
Best wishes,
Carol

A
Well, I wouldn't call you a nut, but for pure efficiency, your husband might be someone to listen to. But, part of the beekeeping journey is doing stuff like this just to see what happens. You can use them in honey supers, but I would not recommend it unless you are a very patient person because capped wavy honey combs will make uncapping frames of honey at extracting time a frustrating experience.

I truthfully have never seen wire in wired frames stretched too tightly. They should be like a wire in a piano or violin. And that means they are straight and true. Embed these wires in beeswax foundation and there will be zero waves. How did you embed the wires into the wax? Regardless of what I or your husband says, have fun with your bees. They are forgiving and you will learn a lot.  


Q Comment on "Wax Moths in Colorado"  (February Classroom)

Drawn combs are a great asset to beekeepers. To find whole supers trashed by wax moths while in storage is a harrowing experience. Not only is there the loss of valuable combs, the beekeeper has to spend an enormous amount of time cleaning up the horrendous mess, then spend money on new sheets of foundation and involve himself in fitting the wax into the frames. But that isn`t the end of the story. To convert those sheets of new foundation into good combs, the bees have to use copious amounts of honey or syrup to construct them - and usually at a time when the  drawn combs would have been used to store the incoming nectar.

The destructive potential of wax moths is exacerbated in warmer climates. Living in the southernmost part of Greece where wax moths are active throughout most of the year, I know that boxes of combs can be destroyed within a few days if they are not given the appropriate care. I therefore have a lot of sympathy with Brian Vanlwarden`s problems.

However, I do not altogether agree with Jerry Hayes' answer to his question.

First of all - and most importantly - I strongly disagree with his suggestion that paradichlorobenzine (PDB) be used to control wax moth. The crystals are carcinogenic and hazardous to all people who use them. Not only that, but as the crystals vaporize between the stored supers, the fumes are absorbed by the wax which can then lead to residues of the chemical contaminating honey. In the survey of pollutants in hives a couple of years ago in the US, PDB figured as one of the chemical residues found in honeycombs. In the excellent new book 'Honey Bee Colony Health - Challenges and Sustainable Solutions', edited by Diana Sammataro & Jay A Yoder (which every serious beekeeper should read), in Table 1 Maximum pesticide incidence in apiary samples of wax, pollen, bee, and honey (Chapter 14 Pest and Honey Bee Toxicity in the US, Reed M Johnson, Marion D Ellis, Christopher A Mulin and Marryann Frazier), PDB is listed as one of the highest pollutants of wax – 60,000 parts per billion. Residues were also found in honey - 112 parts per billion. This is not surprising as many beekeepers keep their super combs for many years and with an annual treatment of PDB the level of residues rises. Any amount of airing before putting treated supers on hives will do little to lessen residue levels.

A few years ago in Greece, several packers and distributers of honey had to remove vast quantities of their products from supermarket shelves as the honey was found to have high levels of PDB. Most enlightened beekeepers - especially in Europe - are aware of the problem and don't use PDB, nor will beekeeping suppliers stock the product.

What should Brian Vanlwarden do then?

I would suggest that, if possible, the supers are left in place on strong colonies while ensuring that any cracks or knot holes are sealed with duct tape. Another simple method of control is to stack supers sideways-on, like books on shelves, where there is plenty of light - under a carport or similar shelter would do. A beekeeper I know in Bulgaria successfully stores his honeycombs in a building, the combs being placed in racks made of parallel rows of battens. A light is kept burning as a good deterrent against the moths.

If money isn't too much of a problem, or if only a few hives are kept, I would recommend the use of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) - an organic method of wax moth control. In Europe it is manufactured under the name of B401, or Certan, and contains spores of the bacteria in a suspension. The drug is diluted with water and sprayed on to both sides of each comb and gives effective control against wax moth for a whole year. While Bt doesn't kill either the adult moths or eggs, it targets the grubs which do the damage, the spores germinating in their guts, eventually killing them. I also find that fumigating combs with acetic acid prior to storage will kill the larval and pupal stages of the moth. I usually treat all used combs with acetic acid annually as it destroys the spores of nosema.

If sufficient safe storage space isn't available, it is possible to prioritize so that the most vulnerable combs are protected. In this case, the darker combs should be given preferential treatment as they contain more old cocoons and debris which are particularly attractive to the moths.

With all the problems bees already have because of the use of hazardous chemicals, I cannot see any reason why beekeepers should hang on to outdated treatments like PDB when they are generally considered to be dangerous and when other, safer options are available. Often beekeepers are tempted to take risks when treating pests, sheep dip was used in the past for mite treatment, and moth balls containing naphthalene I know have been used for wax moth control. It is incumbent on all of us to do whatever is safest and best for our bees, for the customers who buy our products and, of course, for our own health too.
                                                                           
John Phipps
Editor
The Beekeepers Quarterly
Greece

JERRY RESPONDS
I have a few comments: 1) John, it looks like you are commenting from a Greek or Mediterranean perspective, which is fine and I agree that fewer chemicals are better than more, but as a last resort PDB is labeled for protection of comb in stored honey bee beeswax comb in the US. 2) There are no BT products registered in the US for hive use currently so that is not an option. When the BT product Certan was sold here years ago, few beekeepers used it because it was labor intensive and sometimes unreliable. 3) The light bulb technique works for as many frames as you can put in a container or room and keep a light bulb on 24/7 for a few frames. 4) Storing comb safely and consistently from destructive wax moth larvae has been a challenge since the beginning of beekeeping and unless one uses freezing, or chambers with inert gas, it is a tradeoff like everything else in beekeeping.

The Classroom - July 2011

by Jerry Hayes

 (excerpt)

Q: AFB Treatment Value . . . Again

My question has to do with chemical suppression of American foulbrood (AFB). It is my understanding that honey bees in the USA long ago developed resistance to the effective ingredient in Terramycin. I know that Tylan has finally been approved for apicultural use in the USA, but for the non-commercial beekeeper, it is so expensive to buy a 100 gram bottle (500 doses!) when you only have 2 or 3 hives to treat.

Two years ago I contacted Elanco about preserving part of the powder by freezing, but that kills the antibiotic. Can you tell me if it would still be okay to treat my colonies with Terramycin or should I stick with the Tylan?
Thanks in advance for your savvy advice.

Best wishes,
Doug Stream
Belgrade, MT

A:

Doug, everything you said above is pretty much true. Mixing Tylan properly, because it is so concentrated, is beyond the scope of most of us. As a result of this, there are indications that there is Tylan AFB resistance beginning from improper dosing.
All that being said, I need to ask my perennial question, "Do you have American foulbrood to treat?" Antibiotics do not eliminate AFB. Spore-forming bacteria cause AFB. Spores are like seeds, long-lived, hard, that can survive as a stored embryo until it germinates. When AFB is exposed to antibiotics, some of the vegetative state is killed and some it form spores in response to this threat. If you don't have AFB, what are you treating? Are you taking antibiotics now because you are afraid of getting Strep Throat next week? Prophylactic AFB treatment is of dubious worth.

Q: Upper Entrances

My name is John Chuey a fourth-year beekeeper in Mahoning County, Ohio. I have read one of your older articles on Beesource regarding upper entrances-a great study that makes a lot of sense. I have a few questions. I have only two hives now, both 3-year established hives with a small upper entrance-only about 2'' wide-and a standard bottom entrance. The bees rarely use the bottom entrance. Within 3 weeks both hives will be relocated. Could I at that time close off the bottom entrance and just go with a larger top entrance? And, what about a drone escape at the bottom; will a 3/8 inch drilled hole be okay?
Within the next two weeks I will be installing two packages and sometime in late May I get two nucs. I would at that time like to start them on upper entrances. I have two more questions: With fewer field force bees depositing nectar below the excluder, will they build up enough honey reserve in the bottom deeps to get them through winter?  On my future packages and nucs I wanted to start a few on all mediums, so how will it affect the bees if I need to keep moving the top entrance? Let's say I start with one medium or a deep with the top entrance on that and then weeks later I add another brood chamber. So should I just keep moving the top entrance up until I have my permanent two deeps or three meds and just leave it there? I know I am a bit confusing and long. Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,
John Chuey

A:

Good morning John. What I have done is  just use an entrance reducer or a purposely-cut piece of wood that closes all but about 3/8ths of the bottom entrance. There is no need to drill holes in anything. You can establish an upper entrance at any time you may want. It is not generally at the very top all the time; it is simply above the brood nest area or brood boxes. You don't have to wait for any particular time or hive arrangement. Just move the entrance; the bees will adjust over a few days time.
Once established, it is always there-whether at the very top of two deeps or after you take off supers or with supers on.  It is in the pretty much the same position right above the brood boxes. It is positioned not at the very top, but always right above the brood boxes. If you take the supers off at some point in late summer/early fall, the bees then have no other place to store nectar/honey in the over-wintering box arrangement that you have chosen, except in the brood boxes. As a result, they fill up the top brood box with late summer/fall honey. If you have no late summer or fall flow, that is a different matter and you would then need to feed or leave some of the spring/summer honey for overwintering. I hope this helps.

The Classroom - June 2011

by Jerry Hayes

 (excerpt)

Lots of comments on the USDA Organic process that is available to "Growers and Packers" Here are a couple:

Hi Jerry, I simply wanted to say that I thought your recent Classroom article in April ABJ on the current status of the so-called USDA organic designation for honey was a much-needed explanation. Thanks for taking the time to follow up on that for the rest of us.

Ever since we've started seeing so-called USDA organic honey show up on market shelves (seems like only over the past few years), a lot of us beekeepers have wondered how such claims could be made...much less verified. I think your questioning and follow-up were right on the mark in terms of what many of us have thought.

Personally, I'd like to see the USDA drop that organic designation as I think it's nearly impossible to substantiate. I feel it also gives an unfair market advantage to non-U.S. beekeepers as well as perpetuates a false perception in the general public's mind about honey in general. I think there is nothing wrong with the newer Certified Natural movement that's been developing which would be much more truthful and honest with respect to honey.

Thanks again,
Allen Summers

Jerry, thank you for all the time and work you expended in all those letters about "organic honey." I have long suspected that there are plenty other things questionable about calling things organic. I like edamame beans. My local grocery sells packages of them in the pod, frozen. The front of the package has that familiar green and white encouragement USDA ORGANIC. One day I looked on the back of the package, and in really tiny letters it said, "Product of China." Wait a minute! Who inspects the various Chinese fields from which these beans come? Does the USDA send inspectors? Or do we (Ha Ha!) take the word of Chinese inspectors there? Is the "night soil" they are probably fertilized with free of contaminants? Gimme a break!
You called the Organic Honey a bogus process. I submit that the major part of the "Organic" certification is bogus.

Allen Cosnow
Glencoe, IL

Another group called "Certified Naturally Grown" (CNG) contacted me. They have a whole list of Best Management Practices available. They also have a list of allowed and prohibited substances found at www.naturallygrown.org/apiaryprogram.

Q  Are Screened Bottom Boards Advisable For My Location?

Hi Jerry, I want to start out with giving you a BIG Thank You and a pat on the back for the excellent job you do with The Classroom! :)

I just read your point of view on "Queen Excluders or Honey Excluders?" posted on Beesource, and have some questions for you. I am constructing 4-way pallets for my bees and have been debating between using screened bottoms or a solid plywood bottom with top entrances like your design of a shim and a queen excluder.

Your comments lead to the brood in lower brood box being more to the back of the box away from the drafty bottom openings. How would a screen bottom work as it lets in lots of cool draft directly onto the brood? (By the way, I am located in the mountains of Northern Idaho and we have cool nights even in the heat of the summer, "good recovery" as they say in firefighter terms)

I realize that in modern beekeeping techniques that wide-open screened bottom boards year around is the "only way to go", and I have read this thousands of times, but it seems to me that in the wet, quick-to-change temperature area of the Pacific Northwest that chilled brood would be an issue, especially in the spring. Your thoughts on this please?
I was also wondering about your recommendations for placement of the shim/excluder top entrance set up when wintering over nucs in a single deep box with a medium honey super for winter food supply. Would you place the shim/excluder entrance between the honey super and the deep brood box or would place it on top of the honey super? If placed on top of the honey super, how would you keep the top cover cleat from blocking the entrance?
I have also experienced bees becoming stuck/wedged in a queen excluder when it was left on for winter ventilation under my migratory covers and the bees died from not being able to release themselves. Would this affect where the shim excluder entrance should be placed during the winter months or should a beekeeper use something else besides an excluder for the top entrance?

Thanks again!
Mike
Hugus Creek Honey Farm

A
Mike, thanks for the compliment. That research/article "Queen Excluder or Honey Excluder" was done a very long time ago before varroa, screened bottoms, small hive beetle, honey bee virus problems, neonicotinoids and before I had so much gray hair:) My goal was simply to make an adjustment in existing equipment to duplicate more closely what was happening in feral colonies way back before varroa eliminated most of them.
All of that to say screened bottoms were not a part of IPM strategy to control varroa back then. But, it shouldn't make any difference on the use of a screen-bottom in relation to the entrance location. It won't be any "draftier". Keeping over-wintered colonies in a southern exposure, out of shade, dampness and wind is the ideal. Even then, data shows colonies with screened bottoms do develop slightly slower than solid bottom colonies in spring. They actually catch up quickly and surpass solid bottom colonies as the season progresses. The varroa control feature of having a screened bottom is a critical feature of colony health related directly to the beekeeper's desire to not use as many chemical products in the hive. I would remove ALL excluders from colonies in the winter. They are not needed and could restrict colony movement to food resources.

The Classroom - May 2011

by Jerry Hayes

 (excerpt)

Q Swarming Behavior

I have often heard speakers say that if a hive is requeened, using swarm cells, that the keeper is selecting for swarming behavior. This usually gets a laugh from the audience. However, if I requeen using either supersedure queens OR swarm cell queens, the genetics would be identical! Wouldn't they? Speakers, and the literature, often seem to imply otherwise. I think it is time to debunk this idea that one queen is preferable to the other.

Bob Dye
Missouri

A
Bob, I am not sure if these situational genetics are the same or not. The stressor to supersede a failing queen, in my mind is different than the "reproduction" urge that facilitates and supports swarming. But, as you say, the process is the same. So many genetic traits are tied to other genetic traits-kind of like a business flow chart or writing computer software. If one thing happens, it triggers another cascade of events. Genes and when and how they kick in are the variables. In the question you asked about queen rearing, yes at the very basic level queen rearing is queen rearing. Why queen rearing takes place is where other genes and other behaviors take place. Some are linked in parallel and some are not.

Bob Replies:

Q
As an afterthought, for someone (an expert?) to imply that requeening from swarm cells increases the swarming tendency would imply that the queen's spermatheca can selectively choose which sperm are more likely to carry swarm traits and/or that her ovarioles can do the same with eggs? This seems highly improbable. I wouldn't rule out, though, unknown environmental influences by the workers who raise those queens for supersedure or for swarming. Until then, I hold with you that queen raising is queen raising is queen raising and I feel that the ‘experts' are wrong about reinforcing swarming traits through requeening from swarm cells. It seems to be a myth which should be retired. On the other hand, if it is a truth, where is the supporting data?

Thanks,
Bob Dye

A
Then, you have to consider Africanized honey bee (AHB) genetics in my part of the world. Data shows that AHB sperm will "swim", " migrate", "relocate", from where they are stored in the spermatheca to its opening so they are used first preferentially to produce more swarming, absconding, and other AHB-like behavior. Honey bees are survivors and have amazing survival schemes.

Q  Too Much Light Discourages Brood Rearing?

Your "Classroom" is very interesting and helpful to me. A situation has been of considerable concern lately. My hives are on stands about one foot high, clean and open underneath. In most of them I notice a tendency for the brood to be in the upper part of the brood chamber and the super above. Is it possible that light from the open bottom is causing the bees to move higher thereby wasting comb space? Should I shield these stands in some manner to make them darker? Thanks for an opinion on this.

George Wheeler

A
George, I suppose that you are using screened bottom boards because it is a great way to let varroa & hive trash fall to the ground and get it out of the colony. Light I think is of minor concern. Honey bees move up or have moved up at this time of year (February) for a variety of reasons: 1. Food reserves may have been eaten over winter and they are accessing food stored in supers above. 2. Warm air rises. It is easier to begin brood rearing that requires warm temperatures if it happens at the top. 3. Colonies with screened or open bottoms in spring do not begin brood rearing in the bottom areas of bottom combs because there is not a critical mass of bees to cover, warm, feed and protect brood in cool weather. Give it a month or two to determine if the top brood rearing is the norm, even during warmer weather. I assume that since you are running two brood chambers that you will reverse them at some point this spring anyway.
In early spring it is a trade off. Remove mites in an Integrated pest management (IPM) strategy with a screened or open bottom in cool/cold weather or have the bees move up into warmer areas if given space to begin brood rearing. If the bees have enough space, this is a good trade off in my mind because nothing is lost and varroa control is gained.

The Classroom - April 2011

by Jerry Hayes

 (full version)

Q      Organic Honey A Fake Standard
Let me set up this story: A beekeeper
 sent me a small jar of honey that had
 a "USDA Organic" label on it plus a statement "100% Organic" and a small sticker that said "Certified Organic by the Organic Crop Improvement Association (O.C.I.A.) International. On the label, on the back, the statement "Product of Brazil and Canada". The beekeeper who sent this had several questions, just like you have. He asked me 1. Since Honey Bees can forage efficiently within several miles of their colony, how can anything be produced that is organic? 2. What are the USDA Organic requirements? 3. How does the USDA quantify "organic" in two different countries Brazil and Canada? Excellent questions and perhaps I was opening up a Pandora's box of stuff I would rather not know. It is a long slog to find answers.

For those interested specifically in the process and the requirements search up the National Organic Program (NOP)/USDA Organic Certification and enjoy the read. I contacted the packer of the honey with all the organic labels and stickers and statements on it and I contacted USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. Let me share the email conversation with the company that packed the honey and then my conversation with USDA/AMS:

Jerry's inquiry to the XYZ Company who shall remain nameless:
I have had a consumer in Florida question the "organic" standard of "Organic Honey" sold under the XYZ label. The consumer sent me an 8 oz container purchased in a local grocery store. The consumer, a beekeeper, questioned how it could be "organic" if it is a blend of products from Brazil and Canada knowing the pest, parasite and disease control measures needed for honey bees. And the consumer does not think the USDA offers an "organic" standard for honey as displayed on the label. If you would be so kind as to answer the questions posed above and any other description of your basis for your "Organic" label, that would be helpful.

XYZ Company response:
Yes this can be and is certified to all standards under the NOP/USDA ruling for organic honey. There cannot be any use of herbicides, pesticides or GMO crops grown for 3 years on the area where the beeyards are. We blend the honey from Canada and Brazil and both have been tested and verified by an independent inspector from O.C.I.A. trained in the NOP rules.

Jerry:
Thank you. How have they been tested? The consumer who sent the product is a well seasoned beekeeper who is aware of the chemicals needed to keep honey bees alive and active. He is also aware that honey bees can forage in a 5-mile radius of their colony, which exposes them to lots of unintended toxins. What chemical residues are tested for? And, do you have batch documentation of these tests?

Thank you,

Jerry
XYZ Company:
Thank you for your inquiry. In order to obtain NOP/USDA organic certification the first step is an organic bee inspector from the organic certifying agency inspects the forage area.
Due to the far range of bee flying distance the vast forage areas must be free of any contaminants. This includes having clean air, soil and water. These requirements make it extremely difficult to find organically approved forage areas and are not available in the U.S. This is a part of the stringent organic certification requirements and these forage areas are only available in remote parts of Canada and Brazil. From the beginning to the end, full inspections are done by the organic certifying agencies in Canada and Brazil-not by us. We have organic certification documents issued by the organic certification agencies from the two countries.

Jerry:
Thank you. It must extremely difficult to find areas that are not impacted by our industrialized society. So, after the area has been approved for organic production, is there subsequent product testing to validate the organic certification of the end product? And, if so, what chemicals and/or their metabolites are looked for?

Thanks,
Jerry

XYZ Company:
We do not do testing; this is not a requirement for organic honey processing.

Now my exchange with the USDA/AMS:

Jerry:
Good Morning,
I was sent a container of a product labeled as "Organic Honey" under the XYZ Company label by a consumer in Florida. The consumer, also a beekeeper, was questioning the label that states that the honey was a blend from Brazil and Canada. Being a beekeeper and knowing the chemical inputs necessary to keep honey bees free of parasites, disease and pests and that honey bees can forage in a 5-mile radius of their colony, the statement made to me was, "That is impossible." I have been asked by the consumer if honey is on the NOP listing, are there certifying organizations in Brazil and Canada that would allow the USDA/AMS Organic label to be used and is there batch testing of honeys for chemical residues? The O.C.I.A. label is also displayed on this product and do their standards conform to NOP/USDA standards?
Thank you in advance for your help.

USDA/AMS Response:
Hello, and thank you for your email. According to the National Organic Program, it is possible to certify organic honey, provided that producers can meet the organic livestock standards. In other words, bees are considered livestock and are currently covered under sections 205.236 through 205.239 of the standards. Honey may be certified to the NOP standards using the livestock and handling standards. Bees must be managed from the second day of life as organic, as with poultry; consume organic feed; and avoid contact with prohibited substances. If certified in accordance with the NOP standards, the honey product may be labeled according to the NOP regulations. In the future the organic standards will be amended to cover any unique production and handling requirements as the NOP is currently working to developing these standards.
Concerning honey from Brazil and Canada, several USDA/AMS accredited certifiers operate in the former, while the USDA has an equivalence arrangement with the latter that would allow honey to be USDA certified organic in both countries.

Jerry:
Thank you so much for your response. "Livestock Standards", that is the rub. One can control what a chicken, cow or pig is exposed to or is fed and watered with as these animals can be contained, corralled and housed in some fashion. Honey bees can forage successfully in a 5-mile radius of their colony. No one can control what a honey bee feeds on, what water it drinks or what it is exposed to in the environment. How does a visual inspection of the beeyard by a NOP inspector address these realities? How does the USDA/AMS reconcile these realities? Thank you in advance for your help in my learning curve.
Jerry

USDA/AMS Response:
Truthfully speaking, these are the types of questions that the NOP is working to address.

So.....folks, You can pay some person, an accredited certifier, (what is that? how are they trained?) $$$ in this country or another country to come out, look around and give you Organic Certification. After that, there is no testing to say what Organic Honey is. The USDA/AMS sanctions this bogus process for bogus Organic Honey. Amazing.

Q Moving Day

Is it true that a colony can be successfully moved a short distance, without confusing or losing the foragers, by screening it closed for 3 days? If the weather is warm or hot should the colony, say a nuc, be placed in a basement (to prevent overheating) for the 3 days and then relocated to its new spot? I would worry about small hive beetles if I were to put it in the shade for 3 days.

Thanks!
Libby Mack

A
It won't work Libby unless you kill off all of the old foragers who are already programmed to the location. Newly emerged workers don't know where they are so can be moved in the way you select. Locking them up for 3 days won't help unless it kills off all of the older foragers. Tough to do.

Q   New York, New York

I am a NYC rooftop beekeeper. I peeked into my hives today just to see if they were alive. Ordinarily, I never open the hives in the winter to avoid chilling them. I noticed that the hives were dead. The bees were in the lower deep and not moving. It appeared that there was still capped honey so I don't think that they starved. I am not sure whether they froze, died of mite infestation or something else. How can I turn this into a learning experience and determine what they died from?

Phillippe Gerschell

A
Philippe, many times determining what an animal, person or especially an insect like the honey bee died of is difficult. Probably varroa and/or a combination of disease and resource issues. In a perfect world you would have been sampling your bees, approximately 100 and using powdered sugar or alcohol or, every month, the soapy water method to get a snap shot in time of varroa levels. Because all colonies have varroa, selecting treatments that are the least stressful when the threshold level is reached is important. Powdered sugar every 3-4 days, Apiguard per label directions, ApiLife Var per label directions and then Apistan/
Checkmite as a last, last, last resort in that order. Having lots of bees in the order of 5 pounds plus is the goal. Without this critical mass of bees they can't efficiently maintain a warm cluster.
Then, having diseases like American foulbrood (AFB), and European foulbrood (EFB) and Nosema as non-issues is the goal. Add plenty of honey, beebread and a mild winter and you will be successful.
If you have met the requirements above and they still are dead, then it needs a closer look. If you haven't, you now have a basic 2011 game plan.

Philippe responds:
Thank you so much for the fast response. I was not adequately paying attention to mites. Is there anything I can do after the fact now that the colony is dead to see what killed them? Also, is it unwise to introduce combs of brood to bees in another colony?

A
There is probably not a lot of investigative work that you can do now other than check for AFB and EFB spores, as well as dead varroa mites on the bottom board. Varroa reproduces on brood so if you put frames of sealed brood in another colony, assuming they haven't frozen to death, they will emerge with possibly lots of varroa mites. I would suggest you take your losses up front and treat surviving colonies with Apiguard when you have a nice break in the weather.

Q   Bee Accurate Books

Have you or your readers found any books that are accurate when it comes to talking about honey bees for younger aged children? I have been asked by our local library to talk about beekeeping, pollination, etc to a group of elementary aged children. Prior to my presentation the librarian wants to read a book. When I asked which book they wanted to read they said, "The Bumblebee Queen." Hmmmm. This doesn't bode well. So I thought I would ask you and maybe your reader base. Any suggestions?

Bruce Vilders
Mount Vernon, WA

A
Bruce, I am out of the office at present, but check our web site: http://www.freshfromflorida.com/pi/plantinsp/apiary/images/Bissy%20Bee%20Lesson%20Plan_web.pdf and I believe we have a K-5 curriculum called "What's the Buzz". Check it out, as it may be what you need. The National Honey Board also has a curriculum for young children that you can access at their web site, www.honey.com.

In addition, there are also many children's beekeeping books on the market and many of them do a great job of introducing young children to the world of bees and beekeeping. Try Googling this on the Internet or check out the catalogs of the major bee suppliers. They all carry children's beekeeping books.

Q  Nightlight Confusion
In late 2006 or early 2007 I noticed honey bees on the front of our house in Miami Shores at night. The house is white. The coach lamps stay on all night. They were not grouped, just one here and one there totaling 12 to 15. Some were still there in the morning. All were gone by afternoon. I had never seen honey bees out at night before.

The other day I saw a honey bee walking along on the sidewalk. Something about her pace made her look lost. I spend my summers in NC. I'm an agricultural crop consultant working in cotton, etc. I noticed a few more bees this summer and thought maybe things were normalizing with the bees. Can you tell me what's going on?

Thanks,
Toni Wade

A
Toni, honey bees, like many other animals, organize their lives individually and communally by day and night cycles. Not unlike chickens, honey bees use the diurnal cycle of the sun rising and setting to give them biological/physiological cues of what to do and when to do it. Once years ago we lived at a place where we decided to get a few chickens and being novices, we got a rooster as well. The place where we had them was close to a streetlight. The rooster was motivated by this artificial "sun" to crow all night. Our neighbors were not impressed nor were we, so he had to go.

Honey bees can get confused about artificial lights and be attracted to them no differently than moths and hundreds of other insects. Honey bees, especially feral honey bees with some African genetic introgression that is exhibited in your area, are easily attracted to outdoor lighting. They think it is the sun.

Honey bees age, are exposed to toxins, can be physically damaged while foraging and may not be able to fly. If they can't fly, they walk until they get eaten. The bees you saw this past summer may be a healthier feral colony or with the huge growth in hobby beekeeping, these may have been beekeeper-managed honey bees some place close by. I am glad you are noticing. That means you care.

Q Partial Truth

I have a "Classroom" question for you: I've had numerous friends forward me news stories about the EPA allowing clothianidin, which allegedly is provably harmful to honey bees. These news items usually pin the blame for Colony Collapse Disorder on this and a recent documentary (The Vanishing of the Bees) that's making the rounds also firmly blames everything on Bayer chemicals (and more or less dismisses disease vectors as a cause!). Reading these stories it would sound like the chemical in question is indeed quite harmful for bees, but I know all too well how wrong the media can get things, so I've been holding out for an opinion on this from a member of the beekeeping scientific community. What are your thoughts on this?

Kris
California

A
The problem is, primarily, in agricultural settings where honey bees are brought in for fee-based pollination or beekeepers looking for a good free nectar source. Production agriculture requires lots of chemical inputs to make this system work. Fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, surfactants, growth regulators and many other chemicals are used topically and/or systemically. Honey bees are exposed to these chemicals when in these production agriculture systems, sometimes in acute lethal levels and sometimes in sub lethal chronic levels. Being an insect exposed to things that are designed to control bad insects or to chemicals, which synergistically are toxic to honey bees, stresses them. Too much stress in this small insect with limited ability to breakdown these toxins and the honey bee suffers negative health effects.

For instance, we have preliminary data that show that some "chemicals" in the ppm level affect the gut lining of honey bees which makes nosema more aggressive and in turn allows more viruses to infiltrate the gut and affect overall honey bee longevity. As we thought all along, honey bee health is a mixture of many different positive and negative inputs. Can we point our fingers at certain chemical companies for doing bad things? Sure we can, but what we really need to do is to prove honey bees and ourselves valuable, so we are part of the protective labeling process and not an after thought.

Q   Varroacide Brood Rearing Disruption

I have been using Apilife Var for four years with mixed results. I've been inserting it for both spring and fall (early May and late Aug to early Sept.) for the three 7 to 10 day periods. I have been placing the second and third dose with the first dose left in place and all were removed after 30 days. In conversation with another beekeeper, he informed me that when it is used in the fall, it might restrict the queen from laying brood, resulting in fewer young bees to over winter. Do you know if this is possible?

B Graney

A
Anything put into a colony that is a varroacide, antibiotic or essential oil can disrupt the colony, the foragers, nurse bees and queen and this impacts brood production. That is why miticides that use essential oils have specific timing specifications on their labels. As an aside, in its simplest there are two kinds of bees, summer and winter bees. Summer bees are physiologically designed to be lean, fast and live 6-8 weeks after working themselves to death. Winter bees are different in that they have more fat bodies and a metabolism designed so they can live for months during a normal temperate winter as found in many parts of North America. These winter bees start being produced in late summer, early fall (Aug/Sept) in preparation for a long cold winter as these European genetic honey bees are programmed to do.

So, products like Api-life Var need to be used no later than late summer as sometimes the queen shuts down for a few days during treatment. The number of bees lost or not produced is only about 2-3000. But, when bees are coming out of winter in March or April and need every bee they can get to maintain hive warmth and brood production, having them is better than not having them.

Q Beekeeping Isn't Really Easier In The South

I have a question for you. Here in Florida, is it better to have one deep for brood or are two deeps better?
It would seem that there would normally be a lot more bees in a double deep than there would be in a single deep, and that more honey would be produced as an end result. Some beekeepers are of the opinion that a single deep with a queen excluder on top of it is the preferred way to go. However, if an individual wanted to increase his colony count, it would appear that a double deep would be more conducive for splitting into another colony.
I will be looking forward to receiving your opinion on this topic.

Kind regards,
Tim French

A
Having kept bees in the north and in Florida, they are two different worlds because of weather and the bees. We have a hodge podge of honey bee genetics from northern Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa now. We live in a tropical/Subtropical part of the world called Florida. We keep honey bees from Europe because they store enough honey to make it through a long cold northern European winter. What folks forget in Florida is that with our warmer temperatures (generally) in winter this actually means the bees are using MORE resources as brood rearing continues through most of what we call winter. But, there are not the flowering plants to support this continuous growth in our winter.
In Florida we do have things blooming all winter for this temperate insect, but never enough to support the brood rearing triggered by warmer temperatures. The bees are confused. They are supposed to be taking it easy in December, January, February and March, but temperature is telling them it is time to get going. Anyone who can successfully keep honey bees year round in Florida without a lot of artificial inputs is a good beekeeper. Double deeps make more sense to me than pushing the envelope with less room and hoping temperature and blooming plants will appear in parallel in winter in Florida. If you want to feed all winter, then it doesn't matter. Your choice.

Q   Snow Blind Bees
Jerry - Greeting from a New Hampshire Bee Yard (Snow Covered). Although I grew up in Maine farmland surrounded with honey bees most of my young life, I just recently, at age 71, became involved with the amazing insects. I now live in Exeter, New Hampshire, a near coastal New England community. When I attended the local Pawtuckaway Beekeepers Association's Bee School I discovered that I was not "the unique" old duffer. There were many of us in attendance. Nonetheless, my questions:

On sunny days, which we have had few of this year, many of my Italian ladies take flight. I observe them at temperatures as low as 38 degrees. I am aware of "winter cleansing flights." Also, I am not overly surprised at the numbers of dead bees on the snow in front of the hive. I assume these are part of the cleansing process - removing the dead from the colony. However, I observe that dozens of the bees in flight fall to the snow and ultimately die. When I pick them up and try to coax them back into the warmth of the hive, they simply return to their original pursuit. Why is this? Are these old and weak bees? Do I have a disease problem?

Thank you in advance. Your ABJ articles are my bible.

Wayne M. Patten
Exeter, New Hampshire

A
Congratulations on this new amazing relationship with the honey bee. Remember that honey bees orient towards the sun and navigate by it. On a bright sunny warm day with snow on the ground, it gets pretty bright doesn't it? In humans it gets so bright that sunglasses help. In many parts of the world there is a condition called snow blindness where our eyes (retinas) get overwhelmed/over loaded by this reflected light. Honey bees have "eyes" that can get overwhelmed by bright light, UV especially. They simply fly around blind and eventually fly right into the snow....crash. The reflected light is brighter than the sun. The bees fly around; start getting cool and fly into the snow. Some entomologists also believe that these dying bees are old or diseased and that is why they do not make it back to the hive. That is why having many healthy honey bees going into winter is better than less because so many are lost along the way for many different reasons.

The Classroom - March 2011

by Jerry Hayes

 (excerpt)

Q   Alternate Food Source

We enjoy reading your articles in the American Bee Journal. We have a question:
We have a few hives and also feed a few cows. Last fall we were feeding the bees high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), but noticed the bees were drawn to the cattle feed with dextrose and molasses. They really seemed to like this over the corn syrup. Will the dextrose and/or molasses cause any harm to the bees? Will this make the honey darker?

Steve Heston

A
Actually, Steve, honey bees can locate "food" more easily away from the colony rather than if they are near a feeder. The closest a honey bee can direct her sisters to a food source (flower), is just a few meters from a colony. When food such as HFCS is fed in a colony, each individual bee has to find the sources herself as it is too close to dance/vibrate/and squeak to her sisters about. All that said, your cattle sweet feed was easier to locate and tell the whole colony about than your in-hive feeder. The molasses part of this equation would introduce lots of indigestible material to the honey...not good in full winter. But, they  were probably not able to eat, collect and store a lot of this, so I doubt it did any great harm to the bees or any already dark fall honey such as goldenrod or aster.

Q Do Bees Have Mops and Sponges?

Thanks for your classroom. I look forward to reading it with each new issue, and have just ordered your book. This has been my first year in beekeeping. I placed my extracted frames outside to let the bees clean them up, and before I put them away for the winter, it rained (a lot) and filled the cells in the comb with water. I shook the frames out and tried to dry them up, and then stacked the boxes with the frames in them in my barn. I placed a board over the top of the stack to keep the mice out.
It seems there was still some moisture in the boxes, the frames, and the comb. Now I have a  fair amount of mildew growing on the surfaces of the wood and on the wax of the combs. Is it okay to use these frames next year? Will the bees clean out the mildew before storing honey in the comb? Can I do anything now to make it easier later when I want to add these supers?
Thank you,
Jim Dyreby

A
Jim, the bees will clean them out but less stress, cleaning up icky stuff, is always better than more. How about a low pressure spray with a household bleach solution (1 tablespoon per gal of water) to kill the mold and leaving them to air out exposed to the sun before using them successfully in a colony. You should be fine.

The Classroom - February 2011

by Jerry Hayes

 (excerpt)

TED Lecture
Wherever you are, it might be a cold, miserable February Day when not much is going on and spring may still be over the horizon. Or, it could be a really nice spring or fall day, depending on your location relative to the equator. Regardless of where you are or what you are doing, I'd like you to take a look at an online TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) presentation by Chef (yes, a Chef) Dan Barber, titled "How I fell in Love with a Fish" (Yes, I know). Trust me or don't trust me, but take a look: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish.html.
 It is only about 20 minutes, then come back and read this exchange.

Q
This TED lecture was sent to me and after watching it I thought of you. Maybe you have seen it. I would be grateful if some of its wisdom would be reflected in your Classroom pages. It is about farming fish, but it could be about farming honey bees as well.

Frank Bernstein
Pardess Hana  Israel

 A
 Thank you Frank. Tell me how you think that this information, direction, change in direction can be incorporated into the Classroom? Certainly the small footprint of a part-time backyard hobby beekeeper is "ecologically" something valuable and sustainable. Commercial migratory beekeeping with the thousands of colonies owned by one beekeeper/small business person is not "beekeeping" in my mind. The largest beekeeper in Florida has approx. 15,000 colonies, staff, trucks, loaders, buildings and 1,000's of gallons of liquid feed and 1,000's of pounds of pollen substitute, etc. This is not beekeeping, it is production agriculture. No different than 10's of thousands of chickens, hogs, cattle, fish or thousands of acres of a monoculture such as corn and soybeans.

In production agriculture one pushes the unit of production hard in order to gain a monetary reward. Beekeepers are no different than anyone one else in production industrial agriculture. They push a colony of honey bees hard in order to get a reward. Not that these are bad people, but that is the business model and it seems to work within this world. How do you change a small business person's model and still let them pay their mortgage, put the kids through school, buy diesel fuel and more machinery? Everything is a trade-off. Bringing 2 million honey bee colonies to California for almond pollination is just turning diesel fuel into almonds. And this pertains to any other crop involved in fee-based pollination or honey production. Kind of like turning chicken into tuna in the TED piece. Let me know what you think the new model should be?

Q2
Thank you for your response. You've asked a difficult question, but in your mail I believe you have the basis for the answer.  Not the answer, but the basis for it. I remember when I was taking a navigation exam on a boat off the shores of Haifa. The examiner asked us to plot a direction to Akko, which is on the coast and just a bit north of Haifa.  We had three minutes. My compatriots rushed down into the hold, pulled the charts and started making calculations. A few of us stayed on deck because we realized that we could see Akko from where we were standing. So all we had to do was look a the ship's compass for the answer. What I mean is that sometimes the answer is simpler than the question.

What is the model? The model is the way we get there. I remember an exchange you had with someone who was writing about regulatory questions concerning organic honey. It involved, I believe, Q's and A's and then another round. I don't remember the details, but I believe she persisted in championing her sustainable model of beekeeping which she felt was basic for the potential to produce quality honey and her belief in the importance of insisting on consuming quality honey and other quality foods as a basis for human health.
Correct me if I am wrong, and I apologize if I am, but I remember that you felt that we have a world to feed and that her model could not supply the goods. In my opinion, both of you are right and that the model that must come will be a synthesis of both points of view. The way to get there is through discussion, precipitating discussion in the belief that it is essential that these elemental issues be considered.

One way to incorporate the message of the TED lecture into The Classroom is to include your readers in the debates that are ongoing over why bees today are so difficult to manage, work, and keep healthy. They need to know not just what to do when a problem arises, but why the problem has arisen in the first place. Not just what to do to control varroa, but why is varroa so difficult to control. Here you might consider the loss of genetic diversity of queens from the demands of large commercial operations that require uniformity and specific profit-producing traits and the tradeoffs that involves. Raising hundreds and even thousands of queens from one mother. Here you might consider stress factors such as crowding (of bees), mild air pollution that dulls the honey bees' sense of smell and foraging efficacy and other subtle environmental dangers. You know this stuff better than most, so it would be helpful to those of your readers, many of whom do not have a sense of the bigger world of beekeeping that they have entered, when they have only two hives in their back yard.
Before I continue, I'd like to say that I agree with your description of production beekeeping, except for the small business aspect. The large commercial operations are big business. In the end profits might be marginal, but these are big business operations with large payrolls and a lot of money changing hands. Is a production agriculture modeled fish farm, hog farm or a turkey farm a small business because it is owned by one person? Sure, everybody is trying to get their kids through school, pay the mortgage, bring bread to the table, but the ones who do it pushing around a few thousand dollars a month are not the same as the ones who are pushing around tens of thousands a month or more. And, as you say, they both leave an entirely different imprint on the environment and the bees themselves.
After all, if we are turning chickens into fish, what are we eating? And, if we are turning diesel fuel into almonds, what are we doing? We need to produce income, but that a model works to produce income does not logically define its viability. Maybe the model is intention. With intention, anything is possible.

Frank Bernstein

Q How Many Eggs?
Can you provide a ballpark figure regarding how many eggs a queen would lay during the course of a calendar year? Thanks very much.

Joel
Fox Lake, IL

A
I can say with all honesty that I cannot....nor can anyone else. Too much diversity Joel. Here are some things to consider. Our genetically based honey bees of European origin evolved/developed in a part of the world that had distinct seasons-spring, summer, fall and most significantly winter. These honey bees are led by a fertile queen laying up to 2000 eggs per day in summer and potentially none in the dead of winter. Then, egg laying could be up and down in all seasons due to the amount of nectar and pollen coming in that determines how many larvae can be fed. Add in swarming and a break in brood rearing, incomplete matings, diseases and weather influence and who knows. Define the parameters and a calculation can be done. Keep it in a nebulous, ever changing real world and these remarkable insects survive by being ever adaptable and flexible. They have survived for millions of years by being adaptable, which makes management decisions by the beekeeper hard because they really don't need us.

The Classroom - January 2011

by Jerry Hayes

 (excerpt)

Q   Why Aren't Growers Beekeepers?

Thank you for spending your weekend with us at the Cook DuPage Beekeepers Association (IL). We enjoyed your thought-provoking presentation and your sense of humor. I was very touched by your genuine love for the honey bee and concern for its future as well as ours. And, I know that we all left the banquet feeling the importance of what we're doing. And, that we, as part-time beekeepers, have the power to make a difference in how the public views the sweet honey bee. I also feel that we have a responsibility to the honey bee to care for it in the safest, most nurturing way possible.

For the past 10 years that I've been keeping bees, I have been very disturbed by the methods used by commercial beekeepers when transporting, feeding and handling the bees. It seemed to me, and I'm no scientist, that the bees were stressed, ill-fed, and worked beyond their limits. There must be a better way to ensure pollination of orchards and crops without mistreatment of the bees. Given the expense of renting hives, I've often wondered why orchards don't employ their own beekeepers and maintain onsite hives. It could mean less cost to the grower, honey to sell as a sideline and the bonus would be better management for the bees. But what do I know? I just know that for what we reap from the honey bee, we are not very generous to them in return. And they deserve to be treated more kindly. If we would all be more mindful in our beekeeping practices, look beyond the moment, be less greedy and more thankful, the little honey bee would start thriving once again.

Jane Collins - President
Cook-Dupage Beekeepers' Association

A

Thank you Jane for the kind words and insight into honey bee pollination in particular. Let me see if I can give you a poor analogy as to why most growers do not keep honey bees themselves. Remember that they only need them for a few weeks a year at best and that they are not beekeepers but growers and have enough stuff to think about. Let's say you have a lawn maintenance company mow your yard and trim your bushes from June to September. Would you keep them on the payroll paying them the same amount as you pay them weekly or bi-monthly from September through May? Maybe, but probably not. Honey bees are an overhead in the grower's mind not unlike all of the other inputs he/she has to provide to produce a saleable crop. Why worry about the bees and what do I do with any honey production and do I need to do some management techniques and what happens if I lose 30% of the bees right before the trees, bushes or the plants bloom? Isn't it better to just place an order for 100 colonies of a certain strength and have them delivered and leave all the headaches to the beekeeper for the next 50 weeks? For the grower this is not unlike ordering fertilizer, chemicals or pickers.

Q Powdered Sugar Applcation

When you apply powdered sugar, should you apply it over the top bars and let it go between the frames or should you pull the frames and apply it to the bees on the sides of the comb. I don't want to damage the brood. I have seen it done both ways on Youtube. So, I'll turn to the one with the expert advice. Thanks so much for what you do for us new beekeepers who are trying to learn.

Danny
Vansant, VA

A

Danny, the top down method works well without disturbing the colony unnecessarily. Approximately 1 cup per hive body works very well. Screened bottoms or some way of removing the still alive mites as they fall down with the remnants of the powdered sugar is also a necessity. Do this about every 7-10 days. Then, survey so you get accurate estimates of varroa populations and then cross your fingers.You should be pleased.

The Classroom - December 2010

by Jerry Hayes

 (full version)

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Well, 2010 was interesting. I don't quote Scripture often but, "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in diverse places."  Matthew didn't mention the economy in the dumper, but here we are. Be grateful, have gratitude for all you have and all we have in this country and that includes honey bees.  We have that connection to something real and amazing, regardless of what is going on around us in the world. Merry Christmas.

Q Warre (war rey) Hives
As a beekeeper, I am concerned about the health of our industry. I am interested in all methods of helping our industry. I have been hearing and reading about these Warre hives and the way in which they are used. Have you had any experience in seeing or hearing about these hives? If you have, what are your opinions, professional or personal?

Thank you,
Ernie Schmidt

A
First, here is my disclaimer: I have never been a full time manager of a Warre Hive full of honey bees. Here is what I think I know from having seen these in use: 
1) They look like a pain in the neck.
2) Their management is based on "hands-off" beekeeping, which is not good. How does one administer pest, parasite and disease control or anything else efficiently?
3) TBH's (top bar hives) such as the sloped sided Kenyan variety are much better for individual frame manipulation than these things are since TBH's are designed to work with honey comb building biology, not against it. A square box like the Warre hive with only a top bar for the bees to build free form comb on means they attach it to the sides and the top bars of the box below.
4) Under-supering is a pain. With the entire comb attached to something (side, top, bottom), you have to lift up the upper box somehow and use piano wire to separate the comb attached to the top bars from the box above. You kill a lot of bees. Ugh. Plus, when they get tall, the weight is physically tough to deal with. My back is really not getting any stronger.
5) The only possible advantage is that the colony is forced to draw new comb. This is a good thing because it avoids reusing pesticide- or disease-contaminated comb.  On the down side, it lowers your honey production since the extra comb building means less honey production. However, you can compromise by swapping out three or so frames /combs every year from a Langstroth frame style hive and get the same results without forcing ugly words to come out of your mouth when working the Warre hives.
The understanding of "bee space" was the Holy Grail of beekeeping. It allowed beekeeping to become easier, more efficient and enjoyable. It is the basis of all successful beekeeping. Are you sure you want to go back over 150 years into beekeeping history and re-invent the wheel?

Q   Small Hive Beetle Ground Drench

There is a possibility of getting a ground drench registered in Canada for small hive beetle. This would be a Permethrin treatment, GardStar. From what you've seen in Florida, are many beekeepers using ground drenches on apiaries?

Raul Shashinski

A
Florida's soils (sand) are not structured and therefore are conducive to small hive beetle (SHB) larvae pupating in it. In most of Florida we are always just three weeks away from a drought as and rain we get simply runs through the sand and back into the aquifer. SHB larvae have to: 1) burrow 5-6 inches straight down in the sand to get to a location with sufficient moisture and stable temperatures or 2) crawl a distance to get to the margins of woods and thicker vegetation where temperatures are cooler and soil is moister.
All of that to say ground drenches do not do very well because our rains wash and dilute the Permethrin (GardStar) quickly and wash it out of the kill zone. Also, SHB larvae can crawl 100+ yards at times seeking out the cooler moister woods margins. One potentially would have to treat a large area around a colony or an apiary repeatedly to have any effect and it just isn't efficient or cost effective. Plus, most beekeepers consider a treatment like this is after the fact, when their colony has already been compromised. They are usually more interested in killing the reproductive adults in the colony. Unlike you, we have an endemic 24/7/365 population of SHB, so controlling adult infestation pressure is the goal. Winter will be your friend.
We haven't even talked about the environmental concerns, and ground water contamination, etc. My opinion is that this product should not be your first line of
defense or offense Paul.

Q Science Fair Project
My name is Julia Rauchfuss. I am a senior at West Jr/Sr High School and I am doing a Science Fair project on the honey bee's foraging behavior. I have a few questions about my experiment that I was hoping you might be able to help me with. My science project is to determine whether honey bees rely more on their sense of smell or their memory to locate food sources. I am having difficulty isolating the variable in my experiment, which is the method the bees use for finding the sugar water bowl (smell, memory of bowl's previous location, and memory of bowl's appearance) from each other.
My plan for my experiment is to lay out 4 identical bowls equidistant from the beehive, one bowl will contain sugar water and the others will contain plain water. In each test, I will leave the bowls out in this formation long enough for the bees to become accustomed to the location of the sugar bowl. Then, I will switch the location of the sugar bowl with one of the other bowls and
observe which bowl the bees initially go to. If the bees first go to the prior location of the sugar water bowl, then I would hypothesize that they are using some type of memory. If that is the case, I plan to perform further experiments to determine whether they are remembering the previous location of the sugar water bowl or its appearance. I know that was a very brief explanation of my experiment, but are there any apparent problems that you see in it?
Also, I have a few questions about my
experiment that I was hoping you might be able to answer for me. I'm aware of the waggle dance that bees use to tell other bees where to find a food source, and that this could throw off my results if bees are using instructions to find the bowl (instead of smell or memory). But, I'm not sure exactly how to adjust my experiment to prevent the waggle dance from skewing my results or even to take advantage of this behavior. Should I stop recording results after it has become apparent that the bees have been told where to find the sugar water bowl? Will it be apparent when the bees have been told where to find the sugar water bowl?
Thank you for your time.

Julia Rauchfuss

A
Julia, I am glad that you are using the honey bee as your research platform. What I think I know from data about honey bee foraging in a field setting is this. Foraging scouts leave the colony and sample flower nectar to bring back to the colony to share with their forager-age sisters. There is a bit of competition among the returning scouts as they share information about the nectar they have brought back. The nectar will be sampled by other individuals in the colony and assessed for sugar content. More sugar means it is sweeter and may be a better energy exchange for energy expended flying out and energy being returned (sugar) to the colony for use and/or storage. In this nectar sample the nectar will have a flavor and aroma component. Through a variety of "dances", vibrations, angles and speed, which you have already read about, foragers are recruited to go in a certain direction when they leave the colony. After leaving the colony in a certain direction, they also search for aromas associated with the nectar sampled in the colony. At some point the foragers then use their visual field to do a final location and then they taste the nectar to see if it matches up with the flavor they received from the sample in the colony and viola they are there or not. The order may be dances, direction, aroma/scent, visual, flavor and identification. It is a multi-level search mechanism, not just dances.
For instance, if you just put out sugar water that has no "flavor or aroma", then it is difficult for the scouts to go back and "sell" the product. It has no identifying traits that can be used to direct their sisters to a location other than suggested direction and distance. Fewer foragers will go to and ultimately find the site than if there are other identifying components-pretty fascinating for an insect with a brain the size of a period on this page.
Have fun with this. I would run your research design protocol past Dr. Jamie Ellis /University of Florida for fine-tuning and explanation.

Julia Replies
Jerry, thank you! In a simple paragraph, you helped me understand what several books and articles could not. Your breakdown on the waggle dance has really helped me grasp the concept in a way that I can use to plan my experiments. And thank you for telling me about the sugar water. Dr. Ellis recommended that I use water with honey in it.

Q  Beekeeping in Western Australia
Hello Jerry. I never miss an issue and your page. I am confused. Here is my question. There are thousands of beekeeper sites and millions of pages on how to keep bees. They all claim to be experts. Bah humbug! The swarm prevention issue is still the single most important factor. Keeping bees and keeping them balanced and fulfilled is essential.
Just read Kim Flottum's book, which really is very detailed. Unfortunately, he has also missed the whole point as to the center core essentials! People need to read more about animal behaviors. Temple Grandin and Cesar Millan provide such fabulous information.
Having done my reading and research, then following a logical twice-a-month structured management system and inspection routine all through spring and summer for the past 10 years, my bees do not swarm. Raising a new queen during pretty autumn days on top of the hive (above a screen), then easily finding and dispatching the old queen and placing the new queen and her brood box down to the base of the hive, preparatory to winter, is just basic common sense. (I do not have snow where I live.) No STRESS, No SWARMING, No FEAR, No CONFUSION. Lots of honey, happy bees ...and an even happier beekeeper. So many people seem to be doing it wrong. Jerry can we ever agree on a practical beekeeping regime that works for most of the people, most of the time?

Dan
Western Australia

A
Dan, I have thought about your question/observation about how, consistently and successfully, to manage honey bees. So, here goes with my admonition that an opinion is like a nose...everybody has one. I think my opinion is that we are talking about somewhat different beekeeping worlds-Australia and the United States. As such, the basics are the same, but at the same time slightly different due to the changes that have been imposed on U.S. beekeepers generally.
Beekeeping 30+ years ago was one in which the only thing we had to worry about was AFB. Honey bees basically took care of themselves. If one could learn about honey bee biology to a small degree and prevent or discourage swarming, he/she was ahead in the game. Preventing swarming, which is a key reproductive method for honey bee survival, is hard to stop.
Fast forward to tracheal mites, varroa mites, small hive beetles (SHB), honey bee viruses, African honey bees (AHB), Nosema ceranae, systemic agricultural pesticides, sunspots and global warming. All of these, except the last two said somewhat in jest, add in levels of change and concern with their new variables. We lost lots of beekeepers when tracheal mites were introduced. Those who adapted then had to contend with varroa mites and then we lost some more beekeepers who could not adapt. Now slowly mix in SHB, viruses, AHB, etc. and swarming takes on a less important role because if your bees are that healthy to reach swarming stage, that is great!
Most of the time U.S. commercial beekeepers are splitting colonies to make up losses, so swarming is not an issue. Then, with AHB biological introgression and this bee's propensity to send out swarms the size of a grapefruit multiple times (10-20) a year and beekeepers simply can't keep up.
If someone can successfully keep honey bees in the southern tier of states in the United States, they are excellent beekeepers-much better than I am. There are so many negative inputs and one has to know not only the biology of honey bees, but also a whole suite of pests, parasites and pathogens and so only the smartest, most committed and adaptable beekeepers survive. This is Darwinian control of beekeepers, as well as honey bees.
I think at some point in the future we can come up with Best Management Practices for honey bees that will be successful. I just don't think we are there yet.
Thanks for the great question.
Dan Follows Up
Comprehensively answered and very clever as always. We (down under in Western Australia) keep on whacking ourselves and touching as many wooden objects as possible while our luck continues to hold up with our not having to deal with European foulbrood, small hive beetle, Apis cerana honey bees or bee-killers like Varroa and Tracheal mites. We just have light doses of AFB and occasional Chalkbrood outbreaks.
I believe you have answered my query very well.
Recently, I was obliged to participate in a surveillance hive-monitoring program. I had to insert sticky boards and Bayvarol strips in my hives. The state apiary inspector will take out, examine and review all the sticky boards for any signs of a mite problem. I FELT SO BAD on the inside after I had done that to my special friends the bees, felt like I was doing something bad to them, they who have given so much back to me over the years and the queens that have formed great communication connections with me and demonstrated calmness and positive energy to new comers. Such balanced bees and no swarming.
Jerry, please keep up your good work answering all manner of question in the ABJ. You are certainly VERY MUCH APPRECIATED, even 18,000 miles away!
P.S. Western Australia is known as the wildflower state. Average yearly yield from a hive in the suburbs is about 100 kilos (220 pounds). Our casuarinas -paper bark trees flowered three times this past summer, four times in the previous year. Climate change can be weird.

Kind regards,
Dan
Wesern Australia

Q  Temperate Bees In The Tropics
I'm wondering if you could shed some light on how the bees behave here in South Florida during the winter months? Does the queen slow down laying due to the weather and lack of nectar like they do in the north - or because we are tropical, does she keeps up her laying more than the north? My mentor, who has been a Massachusetts beekeeper for 35 years, isn't sure about the winter months here in south Sarasota County and we're wondering if we need to feed the bees all winter? Also, is there a list of plants that provide nectar and pollen during the winter months here in SW Florida since it is sub-tropical? Is there a list of native plants just for our zone 9, 10 that are good for bees? Also, how do you know when to feed them the sugar water mixture? Thanks again for your wonderful help to all of us!

Janice

A
Glad to be able to assist a little, Janice. Sometimes I am a little long-winded, as in my mind answers are seldom neat and tidy in the honey bee world. Bear with me a bit as I weave around your question below.
Genetically based European honey bees developed/evolved in a part of the world that had a significant most challenging season for survival....winter. These are temperate "bees" or bees that have adapted to seasons, temperature swings, daylight length changes and short, intense growing seasons as plants try to reproduce before the next winter. Some flowers produce lots of nectar to encourage quick complete pollination by insects, honey bees included, in temperate northern climates. Honey bees have adapted to collect large amounts of nectar, and have figured out how to preserve it (honey) for use during winter when there is nothing to eat and cold temperatures require more energy to keep from freezing to death. Honey is a high-energy food sought after by animals, including humans, and is the reason humans have had a close relationship to these food-storing insects for thousands of years. The beekeeping industry developed because it was agricultural food production and had individual value and societal cultural value.
European-based honey bees are valuable because they store more honey than they typically need and we can eat it, trade it and sell it. They are seasonally adjusted to respond and survive winter. In tropical/sub-tropical climates European genetically based honey bees do not do well "generally" year round because they have no seasonal cues as they had in temperate climates.
Brazilian beekeepers brought over African Bees in the late 1950's because the European honey bees they had were okay, but not very robust or vital because they didn't know how to biologically respond to few or weak seasonal cues. These beekeepers/
entomologists thought they could breed out the defensive/aggressive characteristics. However, they didn't and we now have the environmental blunder of the 20th Century-and for us the 21st Century. We will have to see how all this works out in the long-term.
So, keeping honey bees successfully in the tropics/subtropics is a bit different. Queens are genetically programmed to take several months off in winter, but now the daylight is shorter in Florida, but not so short as to signal "winter". The temperatures are still warm, so that tells the queen she can lay and there is always something blooming. However, there is not really enough to provide suitable nectar and pollen for significant brood production. There is some of everything, but not enough for large European honey bee populations. Left alone, they are confused and stressed. Beekeepers have to feed liberally to keep the colony alive as they try to raise brood and keep large hungry populations that do not have enough natural resources to access all of the time.
Beekeepers have to monitor colonies continuously as the bees eat up stores quickly in the warm weather. Or, they do as commercial beekeepers do and use this time to split colonies and treat for varroa, waiting for January, February and March when colonies will build up again in the South Florida "spring". You still have to feed and monitor as honey bee populations increase. You have to be a good beekeeper in South Florida, as it will test your management skills. No winter cleansing there.
In the Melitto Files there has been a list of plants blooming in different regions of Florida over the last year or so. Dig out your past issues and you'll find "Management Calendars". Or, take a look at www.
UFhoneybee.com and find past issues of the Melitto Files and in them will be "Management Calendars" listing possible plants in bloom.
If you have made it this far, I hope it made some sense.

Q   Anise Hyssop
I am sure you are familiar with Anise Hyssop. Are there specific varieties that are best for honey bees? Do you know the amount of honey produced with an acre, for example, of hyssop?

A
I have read just like you have that Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) is a great nectar/pollen plant for honey bees-that it can support 100 colonies per acre. If that were really true, then every beekeeper would be tilling up their yards to plant it. And since they aren't, it must be 1) not true or 2) a very well kept secret.  Remember the old saying that if is sounds to good to be true...?
Like all other honey plants, it is not perfect and nectar/ pollen production is variable, affected by climate, soil type, moisture, hours of sunlight, pests, diseases and competition from weeds. Many Anise Hyssop enthusiasts have found out the hard way that the plant requires a great amount of money and time to establish. It is not a matter of going out in the field with a planter and sowing 60 acres and then waiting to harvest the resulting honey. Growing a good stand of Anise Hyssop can be difficult. 
However, I always encourage trying new honey plants if you have the acreage, time and money to do so. Read about the plant first and find out where it grows best and where it seems to produce the best honey crops. A great honey plant in one part of the country may be a flop in a different area.  What some beekeepers do is to first find out which plants/trees grow best in their area and then they pick the best honey plants from this list.  

Q  Varroa Control In New Zealand
Since you worked on the research with Metarhizium, I thought you could answer a question for me. Since this fungus is being marketed for Varroa control in New Zealand, can you tell me how they solved the problems that researchers had with it here? Also, has anything been published regarding efficacy with this fungus in New Zealand?
On a completely different note, I understand that different bee dances are used for food or water sources, depending on distance from the hive. Which of the dances would be used when the hives are placed into an orchard when food is both near and far? Thanking you in advance,

Morris

A
I have heard that Dr. Mark Goodwin in New Zealand found a "different" strain of Metarhizium that was longer lived and functions well within the hive environment. If it was that great and consistent, we may have heard more about it, but I have not. Let me know if you do.
In an orchard environment many times the smell of nectar overwhelms the need for specific direction to go a certain distance since it is completely obvious where food is. It becomes a visual/olfactory exercise. Have you ever been someplace and smelled some great cooking, great perfume or a great flower aroma and can follow it to the source? You didn't need Map Quest or a GPS; you just needed your nose first, then your eyes second? Just like a honey bee.

Q   Winter / Skunks
Hello, I have a question regarding my beehives. I am wondering what is the ratio of sugar to water that I should be giving to my bees for winter-feeding. In addition, I wonder how much I should be giving, if I am taking about 30 lbs. of honey from their hives. What is the sugar to water equivalent?
One more question. I live in the suburbs of Chicago and have noticed some scratch marks at the entrance of my hives. What kind of animal would eat bees?
I appreciate your time in answering my questions. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Stan

A
Stan, for your part of the country having 60+ pounds of sealed honey or stored sugar syrup replacement is the goal. If you are not at this level, a 2 parts sugar/1 part water mixture should be fed now until that minimum amount of 60 pounds is reached. To combine two parts sugar to one part water, you will need to use hot water, but be sure to let it cool before feeding it to your bees. It is getting late, Stan. Get the weight up. This may be all a waste of time, however, if varroa control was not administered in late summer or early fall, so it is your call.
Skunks scratch at the hive entrance, bees get disturbed and because it is night, they don't fly. Instead, they walk out where they are eaten-a bee buffet for the skunks!
You can discourage the skunks by adding a strip of tacks (points up) along the front entrance, some beekeepers build screen wire cages to protect the front entrances.

The Classroom - November 2010

by Jerry Hayes

 (excerpt)

From the "That's Interesting Dept"

I think we are all aware of the USDA Food Pyramid and the recommendations for serving sizes. So, this is kind of interesting. Mr. John Schall, president of American Farmland Trust, says, "For everyone in the United States to eat the minimum daily requirements of fruits and vegetables set by the USDA in 2005 dietary guidelines, an estimated 13 million more acres of farmland are needed." So, that means with the now higher USDA 2010 dietary guidelines of even more fruits and vegetables that even more land is needed if everyone eats the recommended daily allowance. That is a lot of land. How come we do not see more land in production for fruits and vegetables? Check the produce country of origin labels in the grocery store the next time you are there.

Q What Bees Eat and See

I have a question. When honey bees forage for pollen, is it true that they select pollen that is rich in nitrogen? How does the protein/nitrogen content of different plant species relate to the bees' ability to discriminate between these pollens? I remember reading something about this several years ago, but I am unsure if it's correct. I am checking with you because I don't want to give false information.
Also, when bees navigate over flowers, is it true they see ultraviolet light reflecting off the flower and then use this cue as a way to determine which flowers to visit? I would like to share this information with some fellow beekeepers.

Travis

A
Protein contains a lot of nitrogen because it is part of protein. But, honey bees can't discriminate nitrogen (protein) in pollen well. Plus, honey bees do not eat pollen because they cannot digest the robust outer coat. Honey bees eat "bee bread" which is a fermented product, which releases the food material inside that has now been partially digested.
Honey bees are looking for nectar and pollen from entomophilous or insect- friendly flowers. This pollen is sticky and designed for insect transport. These flowers also provide their pollen with higher nutritional levels than wind-blown pollen. Wind-blown pollen has to be produced in extraordinary quantities because the chances of wind haphazardly taking it to the right flower parts are not good. So, not a lot of resources are packed into windblown pollen unlike insect-specific flowers, which do not have this problem. The bees' first choice is entomophilous pollen and if there is a lack of this, then they default to wind-blown pollens like bahia grass, corn or others. They collect not because they like it, but because it is a survival strategy.
Regarding your last second question, Google "honey bee see UV photos". There are lots of choices. Pretty cool.

Q Solar Wax Melter
Can Plexiglas be used instead of regular glass in a solar wax melter?

Thank you,
Joe Schultz
A
It depends. In some situations the temperatures that build up and are retained in a solar wax melter can melt the Plexiglas or warp it, and the heat certainly makes it discolor sooner. It is definitely more breakage-resistant than glass in some of the heavier grades. However, glass can take heat better. Everything is a trade off.

Q "The Classroom" Book

I was reading my September issue of the American Bee Journal and I saw a question about when you were going to write another book. I didn't even know that you had written one, which brings me to my question: How can I get a copy of your book? I would be interested in reading it.
Thank you for your time. I really enjoy your classroom section in the ABJ!

Mark Lawrence

A
Dadant & Sons sells the "Classroom" Book. You can buy it at www.dadant.com. Thanks for the compliment.

Classroom - October 2010
by Jerry Hayes

excerpt

Q Small Hive Beetle Chemical Warfare

Could we use diatomaceous earth (DE) instead of vegetable oil in the trap tray for Small Hive Beetle (SHB)? It would be a lot less messy, but would dust from the DE get up into the hive and hurt the bees? Would the beetles crawl back up into the hive and bring DE with them?

Steven P. Christman

A

DE is not really robust enough for SHB. The SHB larvae cuticle (skin) is way too tough for the DE particle edges to pierce the cuticle and damage them You could try lime that you can get as a soil amendment to put in the tray. Keep the bees out of it, as it will produce chemical burns on them as well as other insects and you. It burns the SHB antennae and makes orientation tough for them. It doesn't kill them, just severely damages them.

Q  Mix Them Up

When making splits, should we be concerned about taking frames loaded with brood nurse bees from different colonies and mixing them into the new box? Normally, when combining colonies we use newspaper to separate them initially. Is it that the nurse bees are not as defensive? Thank for a reply,

Ken Sikora

A

Young bees are more easily mixed than older workers that are transitioning to becoming defensive foragers. Young naïve bees mix well from different colonies and adjust to new conditions readily. What you don't want to swap around are diseases like American foulbrood/European foulbrood/
Chalkbrood, etc. So, be sure you are good at disease ID as you scan the frames of brood to transfer.

Q  Poison By Any Other Name

Hello Jerry. This is Tony from Southern California. I hope you are doing well. I have a little question for you. I have around 15 gallons of sugar water and honey syrup that is beginning to ferment. Will it be okay to feed the bees later on or do I need to do anything with it now? Is it okay the way it is right now? You see, I don't want to bees to "get drunk". I want them working instead of sleeping. Your column is always interesting and useful.

Tony Nizetich
Temecula, CA

Classroom - September 2010
by Jerry Hayes

excerpt

Hygienic Bees

The helpful interconnectedness of the beekeeping world is truly amazing. There are lots of good people out there. Here is one small example. I didn’t know what the photo below was showing, so I asked colleagues. Dr. Medhat Nasr from Canada said that Dr. Jeff Harris, ARS/USDA, Baton Rouge might know and voila! He did!

Q

Jeff, I was sent a photo showing what the beekeeper called “volcanoing”. This is where the bees bring up the edges of the caps on brood and it looks like a volcano. The bees never seem to cap the developing brood; they just do this other partial capping activity. It is seen more in the fall than in spring, but can still be spotted throughout the year. What do you think?

A

Hello Jerry, I added some white lines to highlight the areas that look like hygiene. There are trails and two circles around cells that look like recapped pupae. The raised uncapped pupae appear to be in the process of being recapped. So, what are the bees chasing? The uncapped pupae with the raised edges are the result of hygienic bees enlarging the cell diameter to chase something (wax moth larva) around the bee pupa. When they recap it afterwards, the entire wax moth trail will have a raised and discolored appearance (as you see along the white trail). So, my first thought is that this is a hygienic track from bees chasing a wax moth larvae. I say that because there are so many recapped cells and a few uncapped pupae in a single path that it must be the result of a local phenomenon. It may be a L1 or L2 wax moth larva that can be easily missed with the naked eye. I often see this kind of trail and under a microscope, you can usually find a small wax moth larva. The only other critter that could lead to a localized hygienic response like that would be small hive beetle larvae, but a trail that large would also probably show some slime or soiling (which is not apparent).

Having said that, if this is an extremely hygienic colony, they may be uncapping most or all pupae, inspecting them, and then recapping all of those that they do not remove. The two circled pupae could be recapped—and all around them are other pupae with a similar appearance of the cap (what looks like a sunken hole in the middle). This is often caused when a hygienic bee uncaps to smell or look inside, and other bees recap the pupa and never remove it. Some highly hygienic colonies will do this, and we don’t know why yet.

Q2

Thank you Jeff. Interesting that it may be a seemingly “good trait” like hygienic behavior in response to something else like wax moth or…whatever and then repaired. Question: Can there be too much hygienic behavior?

A2

It is interesting; I have found that many stocks of bees are very sensitive to wax moth larvae. I think that the relationship between that hive pest and bees is older than some of the new problems (e.g. Varroa), and bees in general have developed a very good detection and removal ability using hygiene to remove wax moths. However, colonies good at hygienic removal of wax moths are not necessarily good at removing Varroa, chalkbrood or anything else. This seems a little odd to me EXCEPT that the cues for detection are likely different. In the case of wax moths, the bees need to smell the wax moth larvae and NOT necessarily any odors related to an injured host bee. Detection of disease, dead or sick bee larvae probably involve detection of “sick bee” odors.

Yes, I think there can be too much hygiene. I don’t have hard evidence, just a sense of things after many years of selecting for very high hygienic behavior. It seems that extremely hygienic colonies will actually investigate all or about 90% of the capped pupae in a brood nest—uncapping each one, smelling and looking inside, and if they don’t remove an infested or diseased host pupa, they will reseal or recap the cell. I have seen several cycles of uncapping-recapping for a single pupa.

The problem with this behavior is probably two-fold: 1. The cell cap is there for a reason (e.g. humidity control within the brood cell) and removing it for prolonged periods of time could be detrimental to the developing larva and 2. Certain bacteria can be transmitted in the vegetative stage (e.g. European foulbrood bacterium) by hygienic bees. So, the very act of patrolling and hygienically inspecting too many cells could actually accentuate propagation of a bacterium that causes disease. Again, this is mostly speculation, but there must be some reason that Nature does not allow hygienic behavior to become as high as we can make it with breeding. There must be a cost to resistance with hygiene, and we still do not fully understand what it is.

Classroom - August 2010
by Jerry Hayes

Classroom - July 2010
by Jerry Hayes

excerpt

  . . . . . . .Boy Scouts and the Beekeeping Merit Badge

In the April Classroom I alerted you to the efforts being made to reinstate the Beekeeping merit badge in the Boy Scouts. Many of you sent letters to the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in support of reinstating the Beekeeping Merit Badge. I even received a letter (see letter) from Mr. Robert Mazzuca, the chief scout executive, in response to the "Classroom" call to action a couple months ago-pretty wishy-washy, but a response nonetheless.

Many of you have told me that you received replies also. Some of you have been told by the BSA that the Beekeeping Merit Badge was "too hard" to obtain.

As of April 28th the BSA has offered new merit badges for Cub Scout Webelos for VIDEO GAMES! They can get pins and belt loops for video games! Give me a break! What a sad commentary on where we are as a society. The Scouts have strayed from the original intent of the program. Lord Baden Powell is spinning in his grave. We need more opportunities to raise boys to be real men. Maybe I am just getting too old, but I don't think awards for video games is it.

West Virginia Beekeepers

Back in late spring of this year I had the distinct honor and opportunity to participate in the West Virginia Beekeepers' Association spring meeting. I had worked previously with Wade Stiltner and Paul Poling in the West Virginia Dept. of Agriculture on some joint apiculture training a few years back. The Heartland Apicultural Society (HAS) held their meeting a few summers back in Huntington, WV and life intervened to prevent me from being able to attend that meeting. So, when I was invited to come to the WVBA spring meeting, I jumped at the chance. Other than the good people I already knew in beekeeping from West Virginia, I really didn't know that much about WV beekeeping or West Virginia in general.
The meeting was held at a very cool place outside of Huntington called the Heritage Farm and Museum, http://www.heritagefarmmuseum.com. A tremendous amount of time, energy and resources have been given by the Perry family, who have championed this project to give the rest of us a glimpse of WV History through the farm and museums. It is really a great place for a beekeepers' meeting and a terrific getaway. Dan O'Hanlon, Gabe and Rhonna Blatt and a whole host of other active and engaged WV Beekeepers made this a smooth, enjoyable and information-filled meeting. There were a number of great talks and training sessions, not the least being Dr. Larry Connor conducting his well-known Queen Rearing Workshops.

Attendance records were broken with 207 attendees from West Virginia, as well as Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and Florida. I am flatlander from Florida, so the mountains, hills, ridges, hollows, hardwood trees and fast flowing mountain rivers were very, very beautiful.
There is a push for more internal queen production by the WVBA, so that is the reason the association sponsored Dr. Larry Connor's Queen Rearing Course. With the opportunity to access remote locations in the state that allows control over drone distribution, West Virginia has a large advantage to significantly and positively add to queen production-queens that will be hardy, reliable and lead big healthy colonies.

Keep an eye on West Virginia. They are quietly moving their beekeeping, queen production and specialty honey production forward strongly. I wouldn't be surprised if we were looking to WV queen breeders in a few years to purchase queens.

Q     Washington Requeening
Hi Jerry. I am one of your loyal readers out in Western Washington. I am wondering if you have an opinion whether annually requeening is a good hedge against queen-related problems or is more expense and effort than it is worth? I keep fewer than five hives, depending on winter survival.

If it is a worthwhile endeavor, is it best to do in spring, fall, or some other time? And, what other considerations or recommendations are there for a successful requeening regimen? Thanks for all you do for the beekeeping community.

A
The first question that comes to mind is: What challenges are you experiencing that are causing you to consider this? Are the queens you have purchased less of what you want the second year than the first? Do they lay less? Do you have less worker brood? Do you have more drones? Are you having more swarming the second year?

The quality of commercially produced queens has not been very good the last few years. We have seen lots of "supersedures". The colony is not recognizing the queen as a queen and replacing her-then replacing the replacement. Data shows even in the best circumstances, queens do not last very long, but this is even worse than that.

We, the industry, have been taught that spring requeening is the best. It certainly is easier with lower colony populations. But, probably the best time to requeen for successful overwintering is to do so in late summer or early fall after mite treatments have been completed. You have a new queen that can contribute lots of young "winter bees" and is ready to go in the spring for quick build up with no delays or breaks in the brood cycle that can occur with spring queen replacement. Give it a try.

Q Can I Feed Raw Sugar to Bees?

Dennis from Lonestar Farms referred this question to you; it may be a little early, but I can start planning now. I raise ribbon cane and some sorghum and I usually make some syrup and sugar in the fall. I am new to beekeeping, but I was wondering if the raw sugar I make in the fall would be okay to mix with water to make the sugar syrup for fall feeding?

The Classroom

June 2010

Excerpt

From the Shameless Commerce Division at the Classroom*
 There is a "New" book by Dr. Elizabeth Capaldi Evans titled "Why Do Bees Buzz". This is a fun, very interesting book that answers lots of those fascinating questions we all have about honey bees. Dazzle your friends with your knowledge of honey bees. I found everything from basic honey bee biology, to African "Killer" Bees, Colony Collapse Disorder, Mayan Beekeeping and everything in between. It was a fun read.
 And no, I don't get a commission :)

*Shameless Commerce Div. title taken without permission from the "Car Guys" on NPR.

Q   Confused
 I would like to start by saying I really enjoy your "Classroom" section in the American Bee Journal. As a new subscriber to the magazine, I find it a must read every month.

 I am new to beekeeping this year, and I am finding that I have a lot more questions than answers, as I'm sure it is with most new beekeepers, so I will go ahead and dive in head first with my first question.

 I have read in several articles that it is suggested to feed Fumagilin-B to all newly installed package bees for the control of Nosema, and then on the other hand, I have been told not to feed it until you see signs of Nosema in your hives. So, my first question is: Do I need to feed it or not? I am starting out with 3 lb. packages in brand new 10-frame deep equipment. I am also using wood-bound 10-frame hive-top feeders with two chambers that are divided. If I need to feed Fumagilin-B, do I need to put it in both chambers, or just one? The mixing instructions that came with Nosema say to feed 1 gallon to each packaged colony. If I feed it in both chambers, that will be two gallons for each colony. I would also know how long to feed it to them before I stop.

 The mixing instructions are this... 1/2 gal water + 8 lbs sugar = 1 gal syrup and then add 1 rounded teaspoon of Fumagilin-B. I forgot to mention that my feeders will hold 1 gallon in each chamber.

 I'm sure these are some silly questions, but I really don't know how to proceed. Any help that you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time,

Mark Lawrence

P.S. Are there any ill effects to bees that are fed Fumagilin-B?

A
 These are not silly questions at all Mark. I generally do not like to or suggest the use of "antibiotics" for prophylactic use such as feeding antibiotics to prevent a disease. As an example, are you now taking antibiotics because you are afraid of getting an ear infection? Probably not and it's the same thing with feeding antibiotics to prevent American or European Foulbrood. It doesn't work very well and has negative side effects.
 But, and in this world there are buts, Nosema ceranae, the predominant "Nosema", is almost an endemic 24/7/365 disease pressure. Fumagilin-B still seems to have some activity against Nosema ceranae, which has fundamentally replaced Nosema apis. So, I would suggest following label directions for mixing, dosage and time frame. If you have a partitioned 2-gallon feeder, only use one side to feed the Fumagilin-B to be sure that they get a proper dosage in the proper time interval. After this, you can use the feeder, both sides, to supplementary feed as needed.
 Fumagilin-B, like any other chemical, is a stressor on honey bees. It is tough on them, but not more so than Nosema. Take care and enjoy the learning curve. It will be fun.

Q    A Smelly Situation
 I have bee frames that were put away in plastic bags for the winter. When I opened the bags, I noticed they had a mouse nest inside. The frames are new and I would like to know how I could clean or disinfect the frames before putting on the beeswax foundation. Thank you and awaiting your reply.

A
 Mouse urine is pretty stinky. Use soap, water and maybe some baking soda and a sponge or brush. Or, take the easier way out and buy some new frames. Even in tough economic times, they are still pretty cheap.

The Classroom - May 2010

(excerpt)

by Jerry Hayes

Q     Should I Buy Queen Cells?

 Since queens seem to be dying shortly after I get them, I am considering ripe queen cells. But, I have read that one has to very careful when handling them. The Postal Service is not designed to be careful. What are the chances of getting them from their breeding places to Illinois alive and well?

A
 Dave Miksa in Florida raises about 100,000 cells each year for sale to mainly commercial beekeepers. They have developed a system to transport hundreds of queen cells by the buyer. It is important to keep queen cells at a certain age in a certain position, warm, humid and not jiggled, bounced or shaken if possible. That leaves the Postal Service, UPS, Fed Ex, DHL or any other commercial delivery service out of the picture. Drive to Florida, pick up your several hundred queen cells and drive back to Illinois with the queen cell transport box securely next to you in the passenger seat.

Q       Politically Touchy

 What do you think about all of the Australian packages of bees coming in for almond pollination?

A
 You are right Jeremy, lots of package bees from Australia have been brought in over the last several years to fill in the gaps caused by shortages of U.S. colonies. Approximately 1.3 million honey-bee colonies participate in almond pollination for this $2 billion dollar crop. California can only provide about 500,000 colonies internally, so the rest have to come from outside the state. Almonds absolutely, positively have to have honey bees to pollinate or their $2 billion value slips and growers obviously do not want it to slip. Can Australian packages come into the United States economically and contribute to almond pollination? The answer seems to be yes, which is a good thing for the almond industry.
 However, some Australian honey-bee import critics speculate that Australian bees are weak genetically because they have not been challenged by varroa and other varroa-implicated health issues. They have not participated in the survival of the fittest scenario. According to some critics, Australian bees seem to succumb to various new parasites and diseases rather quickly in the United States.
 The problem from my perspective is that if they survive long enough to possibly provide virgin queens and drones, these Australian honey bees can mate with our "survivor" bees and, of course, make them weaker genetically, compounding problems we already have. However, the $2 billion dollar almond industry will not be denied. Nevertheless, if Australian honey-bee imports should falter for any reason, and U.S. colony availability continues to worsen, look for the Mexican border to open up to them to bring their AHB colonies to the California almond groves.

Q       Nosema... Fungus or Protozoan?

  Jerry, in a recent communication with a member of the Washington State Beekeepers Association, I was told that Nosema is caused by a "fungus". This was a surprise, as I believed it was caused by a microsporidian. So, my first question: Cause of Nosema...fungus or microsporidian?
Second question: If it is a fungus, why does an antibiotic (Fumagilin-B) work at all, since antibiotics are effective on bacteria, not fungi?

Thank you,
 Morris

A
 Hello Morris. You are correct that the causative organism is a microsporidian, either Nosema apis or Nosema ceranae. Nosema is one of those diseases, which has both protozoan- and fungus-like characteristics. It was classified as a one-celled protozoan before and now with more advanced taxonomic techniques, it is a micro (really small) sporidian (spore-forming) life form.
Fumagilin-B, the commonly recommended antibiotic to control this bee disease, is also used widely for patients with HIV/AIDS because it controls fungus growth in people with compromised immune systems caused by this disease. Remember, antibiotic means anti (against) biotic (life). The term antibiotic is a catchall for bactericides, virocides, fungicides, etc.
 All of that to say-The causative agent for Nosema is now classified as a microsporidian. And, sometimes Fumagilin-B works and sometimes it doesn't. Now that should clear it up :)

Q    Chemical-Free Beekeeping

   Hi Jerry, what I want to know is information you may have on keeping bees free of chemical use. Many Thanks.

Buddy

A
 I think using a variety of integrated pest management (IPM) techniques can get you away from many chemicals generally used in beehives Buddy. Hygienic queens, screened bottom boards, drone removal, powdered sugar dusting every 3-4 days, rotating 3 frames or so of comb out yearly, and continuous surveying will keep you on top of most varroa and disease issues. These techniques are certainly not perfect, but pretty good. You may still have varroa population booms at times that have to be knocked back with Apiguard or Mite Away II.
 Removing the infected comb and destroying it can control bacterial disease like American foulbrood (AFB). Sometimes antibiotics have to be used as a tool. The key point is that you have to know your bees and be a good manager and that requires you to keep tabs on what is going on inside the colonies. This is certainly possible, but proves hard for most people. But, you are not most people, so you can do it!

Q Confused About Sugar Dusting

 I may have missed an episode on sugar dusting bees for varroa. Please, could you explain where you stand on this issue? I refer to the abstract of your paper in the Journal of Apicultural Research, which concludes that powdered sugar dusting did not significantly reduce varroa levels and your continuing advice in this column, which appear to contradict one another. Thank you.

Regards,
Ben Rees
United Kingdom

A
 Ben, I am old enough, and you may be old enough as well, to know that there are vast swatches of gray in this world and relatively few firmly black and white, yes-or-no answers. When you focus on worldly "science", it is a process that is always in flux with new information arising to update previous data, which at one time was thought to be the final answer or at least pretty close. So, I guess you are right that I have seemed to contradict myself.
 Dr. Amanda Ellis, who led on this research in our lab, did great work and gave some insight into powdered sugar dusting within the parameters of the research over a year's time. The data presented in the Journal of Apicultural Research paper was that when you treat every few weeks that it certainly knocks off phoretic mites, but the varroa adjust and increase reproduction. So, over a year's time, even though these treatments remove lots of mites, the mite count has not significantly changed. Would it have grown more if the mites had not been removed? But, the population certainly seemed to hold its own.
 We have done some preliminary trials using powdered sugar dusting every 3-4 days to remove phoretic mites as they continuously emerge from reproducing in cells. This does not give them a chance to re-enter cells and reproduce. They cannot catch up biologically or reproductively. After doing this for 4 -5 weeks, we have covered all brood cycles and mite levels are very, very low. Is this labor-intensive method practical is the question? Probably it is for some, but not for the majority.
 I think removing mites from your colonies of honey bees is a good idea. And, removing mites using powdered sugar is a sane idea that works under application methods as noted above. The more you do it, the better the long-term results are. I would rather someone try using powdered sugar as often as possible to remove mites and hopefully postpone a "chemical" treatment than simply go to "chemicals " first. So, thus arises my apparently contradictory stand. I hope it makes sense!

The Classroom - April 2010

(excerpt)

by Jerry Hayes

Q
Boy Scouts and Beekeeping Jerry back in 1964, when I was in the Boy Scouts, I was flipping through the merit badge book.  I noticed that there was a merit badge offered for beekeeping.  I was so excited that I immediately applied for the merit badge book through my troop master.  From that day on, my life had changed forever.  I have had bees in my life since.  I have had as many as 500 hives.  I have worked for commercial beekeepers in the USA and Germany.

Now that I am in a position in my life to slow down, I decided that I would offer some of my time to the Boy Scouts and help get the young ones interested in receiving their beekeeping merit badge.  I called the "Boy Scouts of America" to inquire about some troops in my local area.  I was totally blown away when I was told that the beekeeping merit badge was no longer offered and hadn't been in a long time.  I thought that the person was joking.  It is no wonder there are fewer hobby and sideline beekeepers.

By the time our youth get to be in their upper teens, they have other interests like video.  I always believed that starting our youth with good things early in their life was the best answer for their success.  Any ideas on how to put a little sting under the "Boy Scouts of America"?  Our youth and our country would be better off if we could offer beekeeping through the Scouting program.

Dennis Bryan, Texas

A
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, Dennis. The louder the squeak (more people), The faster things happen.  How can I help you squeak?  This is not a new occurrence, as you probably know by now.  The Boy Scouts eliminated Beekeeping as a merit badge in 1995.  It was created in 1915. However, with the resurgence of public interest in preserving nature and the environment, as well as producing one's own food, perhaps it's time to bring back the Beekeeping merit badge.  What do you think Boy Scouts?

RESPONSE FROM DENNIS Maybe you could mention this problem in the magazine since that is a pretty big wheel that touches a lot of people, including scoutmasters.  Ask for suggestions from the readers.  Maybe you could find enough driving force to light the fire.  After reading your column every month for as long as I have, I can tell that when you get a passion for something, you don't stop until you have accomplished your goal.

Think of all the young ones who are missing out on the wonderful world of beekeeping and the things it brings to the table!  That special beekeeping knowledge lasts a lifetime and think of all the good it does for Nature.

Because of your current position, you Reach more people than any one of us.  If you could get passionate about this fault in our society, take the reins, and generate the momentum, I and probably thousands of others would help in any way that presents itself.

If we can't encourage our young people to participate in something that is good and wholesome, then what is left?  Thanks for your help.

Dennis
Bryan, Texas

JERRY FOLLOWS UP I took some time to track down the leadership of the Boy Scouts to ask your question "How can the Beekeeping Merit Badge be re-instated?" Man, that wasn't easy!  Unfortunately, they are not a very transparent organization at the top-perhaps because they do not want hard questions?  Because this exercise was so difficult I thought, "Let's go to the top and see what happens?" Chief Scout Executive / CEO Robert Mazzuca, Boy Scouts of America, 1325 West Walnut Hill Lane, P.O. Box 152079, Irving Texas 75015, email Robert.Mazzuca@ scouting.org, 972-580-2000.

Comment: Classroom readers, you are a strong, smart and vocal group.  Ask yourself if you want to do this.  Can we make a difference?

Let's see.  Take a minute to contact Mr. Mazzuca in one or all of the ways above and see if he responds or ducks.  Let me know.

The Classroom - March 2010

Organic and CCD-Comment

I want to thank you for what you said in the Jan. 2010 edition of the ABJ about organic and CCD. On both subjects you said just what I have believed for a long time. We have a small pumpkin farm with about 10 beehives. We will never go through the organic certification process, although we do not use pesticides or herbicides. Our soil amendments are provided by the cover crops, the cattle, donated horse manure we compost and the tons of duck manure in rice hulls we buy. We just tell people the pumpkins and other crops are raised naturally to protect our bees. In other words, we are a bee-friendly farm. People understand that! I also tell them just what you said about the causes of CCD. I remember that talk I heard at Apimondia in Australia where the speaker said it was "death by a thousand cuts". I quote that statement when people ask about it. Keep up the good work educating beekeepers! I learn a lot from your monthly column!

Ettamarie Peterson

Q Cleaning and RewaxingPlastic Foundation

I have a question about cleaning used plastic foundation. I have heard that scraping the old comb off and then power washing it works. Now, specifically, do you try and remove ALL of the wax or do you just scrape it and let the bees clean it up and leave a little "old wax" for them to work?
Next question, I know that bees work better on wax-coated foundation. So, if you suggest removing ALL old wax, how would you go about re-waxing the plastic? Would you melt down your own cappings, dip them in some way and hope the bottom of the cells don't hold too much wax? I'm racking my brain here!

Thanks,
Nick

A
I wouldn't worry about getting 100% of the wax off. Shoot for 85-90%. Yes, bees do better at drawing out comb if they have some in place and don't have to make it all. In some type of double boiler arrangement (beeswax is highly flammable) melt some beeswax and use an old small paint brush and paint the beeswax on. You don't have to be neat. The bees will mold, shape, massage the wax into the proper areas and construct new cells. You are helping your colony by removing old potentially disease-holding brood comb and the negative chemical residues they contain. This will help honey-bee health as much as anything.

Q Which Type of Honey Bee to Use?

I have a small bee yard in mid-Michigan (8 to 12 swarms). I have always kept Italian bees with good success, but have become curious about the Carniolan strain. They seem to be perfect for our climatic conditions in Michigan. I am contemplating trying a couple of swarms this season. However, I am not sure if I should go with Russian honey bees. I have read that the Russians can be "touchy" and require regular requeening to retain their mite resistance and productivity. However, price and availability seem to be on their side. I am just looking for some suggestions.

Thanks,
Tom

A
Tom, I think that purchasing "hygienic" stock from reputable queen producers is the long-term solution to lots of our problems. Hygienic Russians are better than they were a few years ago. There is a list of approved Russian producers on the web. There are legitimate, reputable breeders of hygienic stock and then there are the mass marketers selling junk.

Q Can You Overfeed Honey Bees?

I have a question that has bothered me for some time. Can you overfeed bees? By this I mean, the bees take all the HFCS or sucrose fed to them and store it in cells, which may not be consumed by springtime. This leftover food could be mixed and extracted with honey the following season. We talk so much about contaminated honey. Could it be possible that we ourselves are doing this without being aware of the consequences? Depending on weather conditions and strength of the hive, the bees will consume various amounts of food over the winter. This amount is hard to predict and it's better to be on the plus side than to starve the bees. It still makes sense to over-winter bees with pure honey rather than feed them with other sugars. I know that this is not always possible. Thanks for your help.

Fred

A
Fred, I cannot argue with any of what you have said.

Q  Trouble with the Neighbors

I am writing to you because of a problem that I have. It is not with the bees that I have, it is with the neighbors that I have. I have six or seven hives at my house and six at another location. The neighbors have several teenagers who think they can do anything they want to do in the neighborhood. I have had words with them about the bees in my yard because they trespass using my yard to go to their buddy's house. I have checked with the township where I live and can legally have them, so I don't have any problem with the law. It seems every time they see a honey bee or any other flying insect, they call the police to complain.

This summer we had words about the bees because I caught them killing a swarm of bees that was in their yard. About 5 days later, when I checked on my hives, I noticed a foul smell. When I opened the hives, I found that two of the bee hives were dead. I highly suspect that they had been bug-bombed with insect killer because I recognized the odor in the hive. I have also had several of my hives kicked over. Since there was snow on the ground at the time, it told me the story of what happened because the footprints in the snow lead straight to the neighbor's house.

Just this week the boys were outside and made a comment to me that they knew what happened to my hives and if I did not get rid of the rest them, they would do it for me. Their statements indicate to me that they killed the hives since I did not say anything to anyone else.

What I would like is to get some information as whom to call if and when they try to kill another swarm or hive? I think that if the issue is turned over to the federal government because they were killing this vital insect and let them deal with the boys, then they might get the idea to leave them alone. I do not know whom to contact and was wondering if you knew who to talk to?

Sincerely,
Ken Berg
Flint, MI

A
Ken, if I were you, I would have called the police, sheriff or whomever is supposed to enforce Michigan Law. It sounds like this relationship with your neighbors is out of control and you are losing. If you have checked local law and you can keep honey bees in your community legally, you are in the right. Of course, you must also be sure that you are abiding by any regulations about how many hives you have on your land or how close they are to your neighbor's house.

You have evidence with footprints in the snow. Did you take photos? They admitted they destroyed your colonies to your face because they apparently know that you won't do anything.

You should contact Mike Hansen, who is the Michigan Dept. of Agriculture Apiculture Chief and report a honey-bee kill. They can come out, take samples, and analyze dead bees, comb, etc. You might consider putting up a "motion sensing" camera such as those hunters use to monitor deer movement. Turning the other cheek, giving your enemy your coat and going the extra mile certainly is Biblical, but you must hold those who harm you to a level of Biblical accountability and responsibility or you will actually stunt their growth.
It's too bad this situation could not have been nipped in the bud with amicable give and take between you and your neighbor (perhaps even a few jars of good-will honey). However, it may have gone beyond this stage of reason by now.

Q Raising Queens

Mr. Hayes, I really enjoy your classroom column in the ABJ. This spring is my third year in beekeeping, so I still have lots of questions. I got lucky last fall and found a hive, about a half-mile from my house that was abandoned three years ago, according to the property owner. The hive contains a strong colony of bees. This coming spring, I'd like to make a split out of this hive and install a sister queen from this survivor hive.

Here's where I get lost. I've read several of the most recommended books on queen rearing, also every article I can find. I've also read and am familiar with several of the methods commonly prescribed for rearing queens. I have no desire to learn or perform the grafting method. Most every method seems to me to be geared towards the commercial production of queens, or at least towards raising large numbers of queens. I only need one. Can you suggest an easy method of raising my own queen from this survivor stock? I have two other hives of bees at my home location, plus an empty nuc box. That's the extent of my equipment right now, though I'm not opposed to adding more if necessary.
I helped my nephew do what he called a "dirty split" last year, where we just put a frame of eggs, plus frames of food and bees in a nuc and let them produce their own queen. This seemed to work (if they survive this winter, I'll call it a success), but I've read several times that you shouldn't do this as it results in inferior queens. No explanation why. Thanks for any help you can give.

Gary Blackford
Hebron, Ohio

A
Gary, I lived in Wooster years ago where I went to the Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute specializing in beekeeping. I like Ohio. The queens with the most ovarioles (egg-producing organs) are raised from the youngest larvae, hours old, that are being fed copious amounts of royal jelly, the food that turns a female worker larva into a queen. Commercial queen breeders manipulate situations in order to facilitate these conditions.
If you want to raise one queen or several, then I would simply identify frames with eggs in spring, distribute them equally in two hive bodies, along with a few frames of honey and pollen. Then, take one of the hive bodies and place it next to the other box on a bottom board, etc., making a new hive. In a couple of days, go in and see which one has queen cells. There you go. Not pretty, but effective!

Q  Treating with Antibiotics

I enjoyed your presentations at the Louisiana Beekeepers Convention earlier this month. I am a new beekeeper who is blessed with a beekeeping club close to me. However, there exists a large experience and age gap within our club. We are told to give antibiotics twice and year, Fumidil in the fall, etc.
I've been in the medical field for 16 years. I have seen that the abuse of antibiotics in people contribute to some of the worst resistant bacteria imaginable. I believe this was through indiscretion and ignorance. I believe this could happen with honey bees also. The reason I'm writing you is because your presentation Saturday at the convention was the first time someone had suggested that bees should only be treated when symptomatic.

I have no real resource within my club and want your input or perhaps some study or publication that could clarify this "medication" dilemma for me. Any help you can spare would be great. Also, thank you for your presence here at our conference. I appreciated your work.

Brent Ingvardsen
Stonewall, Louisiana

A
Good Morning Brent. Thank you for the compliment. I am glad that you are a new beekeeper and it is good that you have the expertise of members of a beekeeping club close to you. Like many organisms, honey bees can take a lot of stress and abuse that does not kill them, similar to humans and our livestock that are exposed to lots of chemicals that are purposely ingested, applied or inhaled. As you know in the medical field, antibiotics are prescribed freely and taken freely and many times incorrectly which has led to MRSA and other really scary stuff. This will only get worse as time passes and practices do not change dramatically from either the medical practitioner side or the patient side.
Production livestock are fed a diet that routinely contains antibiotics to lower infection levels in these animals that are crowded together in stressful and unhealthy conditions. None of this will change soon since food production for the lowest cost per unit output is the goal. E. coli and other organisms' resistance to antibiotics have been documented. As long as the ultimate product does not immediately kill the consumer or make him/her sick, it is considered to be all right.

Honey bees are just as tough as a cow or a chicken. However, the real question should be: Are they healthy and thriving or are they just OK? We have antibiotic resistance in bacterial diseases in honey bees. The most significant and prominent is Paenibacillus larvae, the causative organism of American Foulbrood (AFB). A couple of reasons for this are: 1) Feeding antibiotics inappropriately and 2) applying them inappropriately. To highlight, (1) why feed antibiotics when there is not a disease? My example at the meeting was when I asked, "Is anyone taking antibiotics now because they are afraid of getting strep throat in the future." No hands went up from the audience. And in regards to: 2) Not following label directions as a factor in antibiotic resistance, I believe antibiotics are designed to kill all sensitive organisms, both good and bad, if applied properly in multiple doses over X period of time.
This is similar to when your doctor prescribes antibiotics for you to take over a 10- to 14-day period so all the bad organisms are killed. If you don't follow the instructions, then you are promoting bacterial resistance because some of the bad organisms are genetically hardier and they stay alive after the first or second exposure to the antibiotic. If you quit taking the antibiotic after a few days because you are feeling better, you have then become an evolutionary selective agent who has selected for organisms that are somewhat immune to a partial treatment. When this happens over a large population, over and over again, then at some point in time you have selected for organisms that are entirely resistant to this antibiotic and the disease cannot be controlled easily, i.e. MRSA or flesh-eating bacteria found in all hospitals now.
The same thing happens with honey-bee diseases such as AFB. The beekeeper may not complete treatments using labeled products or he may use antibiotics in "food patties" for disease prevention when there is no active disease, thereby selecting for those organisms that have some natural resistance. These resistant bacteria breed and then you develop an organism over time that requires a different stronger antibiotic. In the beekeeping industry we have gone from Terramycin to now Tylosin and already there is some noted AFB resistance to Tylosin because of the reasons cited above.
Now let's take a quick look at what honey bees eat for protein, lipids, vitamins and minerals. It is not pollen. It is beebread, which is a fermented product that is created by honey bees adding bacteria, yeasts etc., to pollen to break apart the pollen grains sealed in silica (glass) to release and pre-digest this vital nutrition enclosed. If you have an agricultural background, stored bee pollen is kind of like pollen silage. Or, for you or I, it might be compared to a fermented food like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, sour cream, etc. Adding antibiotics kills both good and bad bacteria in a honey-bee diet. Antibiotics even kill the good bacteria that honey bees need to make beebread in order to obtain full nutrition. Thus, unknowingly, the beekeeper may have further stressed and compromised the health of the colony.
Antibiotics are extremely valuable tools for human and animal health. However, any tool is not the right tool. A hammer is not a screwdriver. A crescent wrench is not socket wrench. We have been abusing antibiotics and are now suffering the consequences personally and in our animals. We are relying on our advancements in technology to step up and save us. I hope that they can continue to do so. Sorry to drone on so long.

Q Colonies in the Winter

Thank you once again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to drive all that way to speak to our group. Everyone enjoyed it and I am hoping that we will have more of our members getting registered and involved in the Best Management Practices (BMPs) about which you spoke.

And, since I have your reading eye, instead of your listening ear, I have a question. What are eight-frame brood boxes supposed to look like at this time of the year in this area? I checked mine today and there were only about two or three frames that had any eggs, larvae, and capped brood on them. There was plenty of honey and pollen stores. The frames that do have the eggs and such on them are not very consistent either. I did see fresh eggs, still standing up, just not a lot. When I had bees before, I didn't look into them at this time of year. I am trying to be a good bee mommy, but I just don't know what I am supposed to be seeing at this time of year. Thanks for your help,

Debbie Bohannon
Florida

A
I enjoyed being able to address your group. They will all be good beekeepers with all the support and mentors available. I am all eyes. The European honey bees we have are varieties with a biology/physiology that is attuned to always preparing for winter-a season that has harsh temperatures and is food resource barren. In temperate climates, honey bee colonies and their reproductive queens respond to the shortening day length, downward temperature changes and lack of nectar and pollen availability by slowing down and eventually stopping brood rearing to save food resources in this energy-dependent activity.

In Florida, it is a bit confusing for European temperately evolved honey bees since the days are shortening and the temperature is dropping (but not by a lot). However, a few flowers are still blooming. If your colonies have brood in all stages, lots of stored food and parasites, pests and diseases are at nonexistent or controllable levels at this time of the year in Florida, I would say you are in good shape.

Q Medications and Ventilation Questions

First, I really enjoy your column, "The Classroom". There are always great questions asked by fellow beekeepers who have run into problems and need your help with fixing them. This might be a problem someone else is having also or may just help them to prevent a future problem with their bees. Great job!
Jerry, here is my first question. When hives are medicated in the fall and early spring with medicated syrup, there is a time limit on when it must be removed before a honey flow and supers can be put on. Later, there comes a time to put the queen excluders on and then supers, whether above a single deep, double deep, one and half, or three mediums as the brood boxes. These colonies are still expanding the brood nest and making room for more brood. Do they move the medicated nectar or honey from the brood area up into the supers as they are making room?

My second question, if you have time to answer, is: What is the best cover to use on your hives? Beekeepers talk about hives needing ventilation and to keep the hives cooler in the summer, so the bees don't have to work as hard to cool the hive. The telescoping cover and inner cover create a dead air space, plus you can put a hole in the rim of the inner cover to create a upper entrance and to let the hive vent out some of the moisture. But in the South, it seems that most of the hives I had seen pictures of in the magazines use migratory covers. It seems to me that being in the South where they would get a lot more humid temps, the colonies wouldn't cool the hives much with that solid migratory cover on them.

There seems to be so many different opinions on what is best, but as beginners in this area of beekeeping, which one do you choose! I wish there was a standard to go by, depending on the area in which you live. Which is the best brood box set up, cover, entrance, reduced entrance, vented top, etc.? Can you help me out with some answers? Thanks Jerry. Keep up the great job!

Robert Warnick, Jr.

A
Robert, Thank you for the "Classroom" compliment. I learn things all the time from the excellent questions that are central to an understanding of beekeeping. I'll try to answer your questions.

I guess my first question is why are you medicating in fall and spring? Do you have a disease? If you have a disease such as American foulbrood or European foulbrood, antibiotics can be a valuable tool. If there is no disease to treat, then why treat?

Always follow label directions for antibiotics labeled for honey bees. The directions will indicate how far in advance of the nectar flow the antibiotics should be withdrawn in order to prevent contamination of stored honey.
Honey bees are successful insects because they have the genetics which require diversity. With certain exceptions, Apis mellifera can live in most locations-at high altitudes, at low altitudes, in deserts, in jungles, in cities, in the suburbs, in hollow trees, rock cavities or the attic of your house. They survive because of genetic diversity contributed by multiple matings from multiple drones. Instead of putting their survival into the genetics of mating with one drone, honey bees spread the risk around by mating with many drones. If one drone's sperm carries weak genetics for over wintering, then only those workers produced by that sperm are at risk, not the whole colony. Honey bees go for the averages not a homerun every time at bat. That is why there are only generalities for hive dimensions, covers, bottoms, etc. Honey bees don't care. They adapt because they can.

Use whatever kind of cover you want; it really doesn't matter. Upper ventilation in the hive is something to consider. Honey bees, in the process of eating and processing stored honey, release excess water in the form of water vapor/humidity as respiration takes place. Now, think of putting your warm, moist breathe on a cold windowpane in winter in your house in Farmersville, Ohio. Water droplets form from the condensation of the water vapor in your warm breath. The same thing happens in a beehive in winter. Water condensation can freeze on the top of the hive (inside). It can build up and freeze layer upon layer over weeks of subfreezing temperatures. It can freeze inside the hive because the cluster does not heat the entire hive like your central heating in your home.

The cluster, for efficiency reasons, just heats itself so not a lot of extra heat is produced to keep the condensation from freezing inside the hive. When there is a break in the outside weather, the hive warms up. The frozen condensation melts and the bees have a cold rain on them that compromises their ability to stay warm. Cracking the top to let water vapor out before it condenses and freezes is a reasonable management practice. Too much insulation applied by the beekeeper keeps too much water vapor inside the hive, which like your house, encourages mold and fungus to grow. This is not a healthy situation. Cold does not kill honey bees. In healthy honey bees with adequate winter stores, the honey-bee cluster easily deals with the temperature extremes.

The Classroom - January 2010

Excerpt

Q
IS IT VSH or VHS or DVD?

Dear Mr. Hayes,
Please give us some detailed information about the Minnesota Hygienic stock and the VSH (Varroa-selective Hygienic) stock developed at the USDA lab.

Thanks,
Marcel LeBlanc
 Houston, TX

A
The difference is VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene) is a genetic trait of the honey bee that allows it to recognize capped cells with mite-infested pupae. The bees in a communal way get together and cut through the cap, drag out the infested pupa and the mites and dump them outside as trash.
Minnesota Hygienic Bees have the genetic trait that is one of a high degree of hygienic behavior that targets diseases like American foulbrood and chalkbrood. So, VSH targets "varroa mites" and Minnesota Hygienic target "diseases". Theoretically, one could have both traits simultaneously from 1% to 100% and everything in between. Honey bees have survived for millions of years by having a wide selection of genes for different situations and scenarios. Having a hyper-trait may adversely affect other traits, so everything is a trade off.

Marcel answers:
Jerry, thanks for the reply, but that is not what I have heard. You haven't helped me!

Classroom Readers: I do not know everything, but I generally do know who knows, so I handed this one off to Dr. Jeff Harris at the USDA/ARS Bee Breeding Lab in Baton Rouge to see if he could help me out.

Thanks Jeff

Reply from Jeff Harris
Hello Jerry, I can understand the reader's problem with accepting that there are differences because we are not really sure ourselves as to how or why these two types of honey bees are different. So, I'll try to say what we know as briefly as possible:
It seems likely that hygienic removal of varroa-infested pupae (or Varroa-Sensitive Hygiene) is really the same behavior or a subset of general hygienic behavior that is found in the Minnesota Hygienics. The difference is in selective breeding methods that were used to obtain the two types of bees. Marla Spivak selected for improved performance in removal of freeze-killed brood. The VSH team selected initially for bees that reduced the reproductive abilities of mites. It was only later that we discovered that this disruption of mite reproduction was caused by VSH activity.
As with MN Hygienics, bees with high levels of the VSH trait are also very hygienic towards freeze-killed brood, and our experience suggests that they are also good at controlling chalkbrood, American foulbrood, small hive beetles and wax moths (we just have not published these kinds of data). So, what are the differences between MN Hygienics and VSH bees? The biggest difference is that the VSH bees remove many more mite-infested pupae per unit time. They can uncap and identify 100s of mite-infested pupae in just a few hours. The MN hygienic bees find varroa-infested pupae at a much lower rate. In pure VSH colonies, varroa mite populations decline. In pure MN Hygienics, mite populations continue to grow, but at a rate slower that is significantly slower than in non-hygienic controls. So, it is quite possible that both bees are utilizing the same mechanisms to find mite-infested pupae (in fact, it seems likely), the difference may only be in degree. However, there is also evidence that the genetics controlling general hygiene is different than the genetics controlling VSH behavior. I'll just leave it at that for now. I hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Dr. Jeff Harris
USDA/ARS Bee Breeding Lab 
Baton Rouge, LA

Classroom - December 2009

by Jerry Hayes

(excerpt)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Fact: Everyone in the world shares the same mtDNA. There is nuclear DNA or the genetic code, the blueprint for that individual cell and you. Cells have separate structures in them that make energy for the cell; they are called mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own DNA separate from cellular DNA. This DNA in the mitochondria comes from and is passed down generation to generation from the Mother. Guess what, whether you are big, little, black, brown, yellow, white, beige, big nose, thin lips, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Eskimo, Mongol, French, Cherokee or whatever, science has proven what the major religions teach that we all came from the same mother. So, if we are really all brothers and sisters and therefore family, why are we so mean to each other? Let's make this season meaningful and not mean. There is a reason for the Season!

WORD OF THE DAY!
The word for today is GUTTATION (gu-ta-shun). This was a new word for me too. Let me tell you about the guttation process. First let me tell you what it isn't. As always, for some of you the caveat is that this might not seem as interesting now as it may at the end. Hang in there deep thinkers!
Plants have to have water for a variety of reasons and water has to be balanced within certain limits so the plant doesn't wilt or the cells explode from lots of water. Either extreme does not help photosynthesis and growth. During the day, when the sun is shining, plants regulate water concentration through a process called transpiration. Plants have structures on their leaves (mostly) called stoma or stomata that are valves that open in the day for CO2/O2 exchange. This CO2/O2 exchange carries along water vapor, just like when we breathe in and out. Think of your breath on a cold day. The roots take up the water and it is transported with nutrients up through the plant and through the leaves with this transpiration process and exits the plant.
Remember, transpiration is a daytime process. What happens at night? Plants don't sleep. Roots don't stop taking up water and nutrients. Plants have a process for balancing water needs in this situation too. It is called, you guessed it, guttation. At night water is still coming in (roots suck it up) and it can't get out through stomata because the daytime transpiration process is over and they are closed. Many plants have other special organs called Hydathodes that are located at the tips of some seedlings like corn or on the margins of the leaf like strawberries. (See photos)
These hydathodes allow liquid to exude. When evaporation is limited by high humidity such as at night when transpiration does not occur, it collects on the leaf tips or margins. Unlike transpiration, where water leaves as a vapor (like your breath), in guttation the liquid is exuded (pushed out) from the plant and can collect as droplets on the plant, sometimes confused with early morning dew.
So, why is this important to beekeepers? Well, one of the proven concerns of beekeepers and researchers is the data that shows some pesticides, fungicides and herbicides can be transported through a plant systemically and appear in the nectar of a flower. These amounts are relatively low, in sublethal doses because it has been filtered through nectaries. Guttation is a straight shot process from roots and out. Because it is a straight shot, the guttation water drops can contain concentrated chemicals. So, any chemical used as seed coatings or applied to the soil or in irrigation water like chemigation, can be transported out with the guttation water. It has been reported to me that a large chemical company in Germany has admitted that their neonicotinoid corn seed coatings can be transported through the small corn seedling hydathode and the water droplet can contain a lethal dose of the pesticide to adult worker honey bees that drink this toxic water droplet.
I get many calls from beekeepers who say their bees have done poorly in or around watermelons, squash, pumpkins, strawberries, corn and flowers in the understory of apples, cherries, citrus, etc. Data shows that pollen and nectar from these plants' flowers can contain pesticides, but in low amounts. Now we know about guttation and all of the short list of plants above freely practice guttation. If bees collect this water directly to drink, share with their sisters, or use it to cool the nest or for any other uses, it can be toxic.
 Take a look at the You Tube video from an Italian researcher found at: www.youtube.
com/watch?v=e8Nsn4KvjM

Q Sanitized For Your Safety

Jerry, what is the practice of sanitization when the backyard sideliner and the commercial beekeeper find hives with CCD?

John McQuown

A
What is CCD? If I can answer my own question, the "symptoms" are a dramatic loss of worker population, the queen is left, and there are no dead bees in or about the colony or apiary, lots of brood and resources are still in the colony recently abandoned. You have probably read all of the possible causes of CCD-varroa, viruses, bacteria, Nosema ceranae, fungi, mold, pesticides, nutrition, queens, sperm, eggs, genetics, development temperature and many other things, along with all of the gazillions of combinations and permutations of all of the variables.
Your choice of the word sanitize is better than sterilize for most beekeepers. Radiation facilities can neutralize most pathogens with the proper rate and exposure. Ozone (O3) seems to neutralize/change some pesticides. Organic acids-acetic, formic, oxalic will kill/disable some pathogens. Air drying/UV will kill some pathogens, etc. So, your question is an excellent one: What can a "normal" beekeeper do to not sterilize but simply wipe the surface clean and knock back the many bad things, negative inputs both intentional and accidental introductions from this environmental sampler, the honey bee?
I think the easiest and most logical choice is to replace comb every 2-3 years-comb rotation. Clean comb is the key. Being exposed to "stuff' 24/7/365, if eliminated, can reduce stress and premature colony failure.

Q Alcohol Isn't For The Bees Either

Hi Jerry, I would like to know if fermented sugar syrup affects bees? The reason for asking is that when I feed bees sugar syrup, after about three days, I notice that the sugar syrup starts to ferment. Does this have any negative effects on the bees? Thanks much.
Regards,
Patroy Foster

A
Patroy, does fermented sugar have an effect on you? Sugar fermented by yeast collects a by-product of the yeast, a waste, called alcohol. This alcohol (ethanol) is a neurotoxin. In people it poisons the brain and central nervous system causing people to lose their balance, equilibrium, speech is slurred, they have difficulty walking and goodness knows, driving. Thousands are killed each year from "drunk" drivers. At high concentrations the bees simply won't consume it. At small concentrations it acts as a toxin on honey bees as well and they become inefficient.
By the way, your syrup should not be fermenting that quickly. Most of the time the bees consume it in just a few days. You may be making your syrup too thin; try increasing the concentration of sugar you are using. You will have to heat your water to do this, so be sure to let the syrup cool before giving it to your bees as feed.

Classroom - November 2009

by Jerry Hayes

Q Sometimes Size Does Matter...

Hi Jerry, I would like to know why some naturally raised and fully mated queens are large, and some are small? Recently, one of my hives swarmed, and the new queen is larger than any I have seen in my three years of beekeeping. This queen is over an inch long and as big around as a pencil and is laying a good pattern. It makes me wish that the queens that I pay good money for could look like this one. Thank you for taking time to answer.

David J. Flaugher

A
David, all things being equal, raising queens naturally or with beekeeper intent is a variable process. As a review, all the workers in a colony are sexually undeveloped females. Sexual development or not is based on the diet fed these young female larvae. The optimum age of a worker larva is three days old or less to develop into a premium queen. The younger the larva is, when selected for being a queen, the more ovarioles or egg-producing organs the queen will have and the supporting body structures to allow optimum egg production. The diet fed by nurse bees is called royal jelly. It is produced in the same hypopharyngeal glands of the nurse bees to feed "worker larvae", but is much higher in protein. This diet is fed in large amounts and actually floats the larva out of its cell, out over the front of the cell, so that the colony builds a larger vertical cell that is characteristic of "queen cells".
Let's say that your colony knew it was going to reproduce asexually-swarm. As a result, they started preparing potential replacement queens by feeding young larvae "royal jelly". The planets were aligned and they selected the perfect age larva and there were lots and lots of young nurse bees to feed the larva more than enough royal jelly. As a result, you got a whopper, beautiful queen. This is hard to duplicate, but when it happens it is pretty cool. Enjoy.


Q No Recipe

What is the best mixture for thymol crystals to treat varroa mites?
W. Martin

A
The best mixture is found in two tested, approved and labeled products called Apiguard and Api Life Var. No other thymol preparation is approved for use on beehives in the United States. Garage chemistry is not a good long-term solution or plan.

Q Sweat Lickers

Morning Jerry, I was mowing the grass and worked up a pretty good sweat. I decided to take a breather and sit down in the backyard. Soon my bees were on me like honey, licking up the sweat. What is with this?
John McQuown

A
John, you may have noticed directly or heard about honey bees visiting swimming pools and causing a nuisance, visiting muddy ditch water or even livestock feed lots.
Honey bees are attracted to and need minerals in their diet. If their diet does not contain the small minute amounts that they need, they go and look for them. If you add salt to your food or pepper, then you know what I mean.
Your sweat has an odor profile, which is easily identified and honey bee investigators, if not threatened, will collect your sweat for its minerals and oils. How many people would have been afraid in this situation where honey bees landed on their arms to collect sweat? Obviously, most nonbeekeepers would have been threatened and repelled such advances, but as a beekeeper you were wise enough to not feel threatened and let Nature take its course. Pretty interesting.

Q Use Of Honey-B-Healthy

I feed my bees essential oils (Honey B Healthy) in sugar syrup at certain times of the year. I ran across an article that mentioned bees move honey from one place to another in the hive. I just assumed the bees put nectar (or syrup) in an open area of the hive and that is where it stayed while they process and cap it. Guess I assumed wrong!
The label on the Honey B Healthy clearly states the contents is NOT for human consumption, so the article on honey movement concerns me and raised this question:
Are the bees likely to move any honey made from the sugar syrup containing the essential oils from the brood boxes up to the honey super when placed on the hive?

Deborah Rankin J Bar D Ranch

A
I wouldn't feed anything while nectar is being brought in for honey conversion and you have surplus honey supers on your hives. Hopefully, anything you fed before will have been consumed mostly for early brood production. Uncapped honey can be moved if the bees are so inclined, so if nothing artificial is fed during nectar collection, you are better off.

More From Deborah
I live in a very rural area, mostly pine forests and pasture land. We have had severe droughts ever since I installed my first hive in 2005. Our nectar flows pretty much end around early-May; the next thing that blooms of any significance is goldenrod in the fall, and even it is sparse. Nectar flows here are not very strong any time of year.
I do not use any hard chemicals. I use screened bottom boards year round, grease patties with wintergreen during the winter, and when I feed in the early spring and in August, I give the bees at least one gallon of syrup with Honey B Healthy, sometimes two if the weather has placed a lot of stress on the bees.
What does it do? Well, it makes those girls feel good - and they love it. Honey B Healthy contains spearmint and lemongrass - analgesics and carminatives. They relieve headaches, indigestion and heartburn in humans; they must have some similar effect on the bees. I also have planted several different herbs in my garden - lavender, rosemary, thyme, etc. for forage for the bees.
I monitor mite loads with sugar shakes and if necessary I use Apiguard before summer's end to keep the Varroa within manageable levels for the bees. I don't have any commercial beekeeping operations near me, and the only farming operation of any size is many miles away, so no pollination hives are nearby. You could say I am blessed - or "in the ditch" depending on how you look at it. Love "The Classroom" - I have learned many great tips from it.
Take care,
Deborah


A
You are probably blessed-blessed to be in an isolated place with no commercial beekeepers or production agriculture. And, blessed to care about your stewardship with your bees. What you are doing is probably not going to cause any problem, so keep doing what works for you and bees. Also, keep monitoring varroa mite levels and using Apiguard after honey flows as necessary to control your mite levels.


Q Thunder and Lightning

Hi Jerry, I have recently read that Florida is the thunder and lightning capital of the USA. Over here, across the pond in the UK, it is a widely held belief that thunder and lightning make bees very bad tempered. Is this the case over there and, if so, how do you deal with it?

Best wishes,
Peter Smith

A
Peter, being in a sub-tropical/tropical part of the world, we have a fair amount of heat and humidity that increases during the day and results in afternoon thundershowers. This is a bit different than weather patterns that are associated with "frontal" systems. These "fronts", high or low fronts, have a change in pressure associated with them. This change in barometric pressure is what generally alerts and disturbs honey bees, possibly affecting their disposition.
The thunder and lightning found in the weather, usually after a low-pressure front moves through, happens before and after the frontal boundary has passed and is not really what causes the bees to become disquieted. Florida thunder and lightning are daily isolated events that pop up, then disappear and re-appear elsewhere. These don't have a major behavioral effect on our honey bees.
If you like heat and humidity, Florida and the whole Southeast US were the places to be this summer!

Peter Follows Up
Thanks for the prompt and very knowledgeable reply. I didn't know that you were a meteorologist as well! I have read all sorts of things about this: Some say or write that the increase in electrical fields, as well as the vibrations from some thunderclaps can cause the little devils to become agitated. The pressure theory you expound seems a little more reasonable. Thanks for your time. Peter

Q Where Did The Egg Come From?

Hi Jerry, I inspected my hive today as usual. The bees that I have are of the Russian variety, so I knew that I would have queen cups on some of the frames. This is my first year keeping bees and I know some of the things that need to be known. I had the state apiary inspector inspect last Tuesday and we were able to find the queen.
Today, while doing the inspection, I found a queen cup that had an egg in it. I know that in previous articles you have stated that most hives have a few laying workers, so I am not ruling this out completely. My question is: Do the house bees move eggs to and from these queen cups and if there is an egg in this cup, will it be removed by the house bees or if the egg is in the queen cup, is it set in stone that the bees want a new queen?
This is the only queen cell of the four that I found today that has an egg in it. Also, do queens actually lay an egg in a queen cup knowingly as a precursor to swarm? Thank you in advance for you help.

Daniel H. Burk

A
Daniel, workers do not arbitrarily move around eggs. There are some "old beekeeper tales" that workers do this, but I am not at this time a believer. If laying workers did lay in a queen cup, their unfertilized egg and the drone larva resulting from it would be removed (eaten) by the nurse bees, as it is the wrong gender in a wrong location.
Queens lay eggs in queen cell cups to start the development of a new queen to replace the old one that leaves with the swarm or to replace herself because she is failing, sick, old or all of these. At times, the workers will also "rebuild" a worker cell containing an egg into an emergency queen cell. The best way to handle this is to check the queen cell in another few days. If the egg hatches into a larva and the workers start feeding it, then you are probably safe in assuming that a new queen is being raised for queen supersedure or swarming.
You are witnessing the variability, flexibility and capability of a colony of honey bees. Remember, most of the time, they are smarter than we are!

Q Herbicide, Garlon 3 A

Hi Jerry, my utility company sprays the herbicide Garlon 3A along the right-of-way, under the power lines to control unwanted vegetation. Unfortunately, our ditches are home to many bee friendly plants and provide lots of nectar. How concerned should I be with this chemical treatment?

Thanks,
Eddie Mac


A
Eddie, I didn't know what Garlon 3A was, so I appreciate you asking. I learned something and that is always fun. The active ingredient is TRICLOPYR, which was registered in 1979. It is used to control unwanted woody and herbaceous weeds. There are two forms, triclopyr triethylamine salt (TEA) or, and this is interesting, triclopyr butoxyethyl ester or BEE. According to the label and toxicity from the EPA registration documents, this material is non-toxic to honey bees. It does funky things to rats, rabbits and rhesus monkeys, but not honey bees, according to research conducted thus far.

Q African Bee Traits
Hi Jerry, my husband and I are fairly new beekeepers and have truly enjoyed and learned a lot from your Classroom series - thank you! Now it is time for us to ask you a question. Just this morning, when checking this year's new hive, we removed 13 swarm cells from the bottoms of three different frames. This is the second time we have removed these cells - last time was 23 days ago when we removed eight. It is apparent from all of the larvae and capped brood that our existing queen is doing quite well and there are still empty frames, so they should not be inclined to swarm. Can you tell us why they might be building so many queen cells?
There were some queens still in the cells and two emerged after we harvested them and I did not see any indication of varroa mites. We look forward to hearing back from you.
Sincerely,
Cyndee and Tony Blenkush

A
Swarming, asexual reproduction, is based on congestion in what is the brood area. Empty frames just mean a smaller brood area and easier congestion. These bees want desperately to follow their genetic predisposition to swarm. This behavior is genetically programmed in these bees. Where did you get them? In Africanized honey bee (AHB) areas, this is not unusual or queens purchased from Southwest AHB strongholds. It would be unusual to find varroa in a queen cell. Let me know.

Cyndee and Tony Respond
Thank you for the quick reply Jerry. We do appreciate it. Yes, because we live in Southern Colorado at an elevation of 8,400 ft, we purchased our queen (and colony) from a southwestern U.S. package bee and queen company. Last year's queen and colony came from there too, but we did not encounter this behavior with them. They are very gentle small bees and we are told that they are a Carniolan and Buckfast hybrid.
Would you recommend we move in an empty frame or two toward the middle of the brood area? We look forward to hearing back from you.
Thanks again,
Cyndee and Tony

A
You may have some degree of Africanization from where you purchased your queens in the Southwest. The production queens there are open-mated and will probably pick up African drone genes from the surrounding feral population. You certainly could keep the brood nest open by continuously moving filled brood frames out and empty comb (not foundation) in. However, it may be easier in the long run to replace the queens with something more manageable from another source and get rid of these genetics. Caveat emptor (buyer beware).

Q Drones and Buckwheat
First, I want to thank you and the Journal for the lessons.
Question 1: Because mites favor the drone cells, would it be to my advantage if I destroyed some of the cells when I am in the hive anyway? I know I need a few drone cells, but how many because the queen has already mated?
Question 2: Buckwheat blooms in the morning and clover in the afternoon, but I like the clover better. What can I plant that the bees (for a July/August bloom time) will work in the mornings that will produce a light honey?
I am new at beekeeping and appreciate your answers. Also, what can I plant that will help me remember what I have read? (Joke) Thank you from northeast Oklahoma.
A
Thank you for the Classroom compliment. Drones are a breeding reservoir for female varroa. As a varroa control, removing a few scattered drone brood cells while routinely checking your colonies probably won't help much, but it is a good varroa sampling tool. On the other hand, an organized and dedicated program of regular drone comb insertion and removal would help since it is a recognized varroa control method.
Are you or a neighbor actually growing buckwheat? If so, how many acres? If you are, I am impressed as hardly anyone grows buckwheat in the U.S. anymore. I would take advantage of the buckwheat since many people want the darker honeys for the health value. Since you already have acreages of clover, I cannot think of anything that you could plant in enough acres in northeastern Oklahoma for white honey production in July/August other than alfalfa that you could let go to bloom. Maybe someone else out there has a suggestion? Sunflowers and cotton come to mind, but their honeys are often in the light to medium amber color range.
In answer to your last question about what to plant to help you remember what you have read? How about some forget-me-nots!

Q Brood  Cannibalism
My 9-year-old daughter was going through her hive today, and said, "There is a lot of dead brood." I was alarmed and checked it for her. I found that the queen was gone and the remaining workers were cannibalizing the pupae-three partial frames of them (probably over 1,000 half eaten pupae)! There were no eggs or larvae and no indication of any kind of brood disease. I observed one bee hatch out, but many more died of apparent neglect from the workers. Its like every nurse bee suddenly forgot her job and turned on the brood. Other colonies in the small apiary were putting up honey. I have never seen anything like it (I have been keeping bees for about nine years and have 60+ colonies).
The colony was split in June (it's winter here until late May) with six frames of healthy bees. On July 7th, I checked them and all seemed to be A-ok. I have had no instances of CCD, so far, and these colonies are well away from commercial crops. I promised my daughter I would consult you for advice.
Thanks for your input. I love the classroom in the Bee Journal.

Boyd Taylor
Alturas, CA


A
Boyd, if the field force dies out in the field from pesticides or dwindles due to queenlessness, disease, mites, etc., then the nurse bees will automatically advance to the next role of forager to fill in the gap or loss. With no foragers returning with resources, pollen (protein) in particular, there is no food. If there are few nurse bees to produce liquid larval food, then brood cannot be fed and it dies. There is still a protein need, so the nurse bees start eating the brood and recycle protein already fed to them that is now in their sisters. Why only this particular colony is in this condition I have no idea.

Boyd Replies
Thanks Jerry, that makes sense. I was pretty focused on the pupae, but now that you mention it, I don't recall any honey, either. I will get them straightened out.

Boyd

Q Queens From South Africa

Jerry, we first corresponded in January of 2006 about some aggressive bees from Texas, but I will be surprised if you recall me from that - anyway, thanks for your
"Classroom" in the ABJ.
What do you think of Dr. David Fletcher's recommendation (September, 2009 ABJ) that we bring in queens from South Africa, which have docile characteristics? I have had contact with Africanized honey bees (AHB) since 2000 and can attest to their vigor! In the past year I have requeened at least 11 AHB swarms. AHB swarms do work for raising queen cells. I make sure these units are small and isolated. If a colony does not accept the new queen, it gets "depopulated" by soapy water or a shop vacuum.
My present project is to get mite-resistant gentle productive bees. I have been doing instrumental insemination of queens under the guidance of Sue Cobey at UC-Davis. I am working with about 50 colonies that have not been treated for mites and are still looking healthy.

Bill Weinerth
Ventura, CA


A
Hello Bill, I just read the article by Dr. Fletcher in the September American Bee Journal. It seemed to cover the accurate and anecdotal history of African honey bees (AHB) in Africa and what we are learning about the population we have in the U.S. It was an interesting article. I would challenge his reports and his opinion on some points, but it really doesn't matter because what we have now is what we have and we can‘t go back.
Sure we could scratch our heads about Dr. Kerr's less-than-perfect scientific decision more than 50 years ago in Brazil, but to be perfectly selfish, I have to deal with the results of this decision for the public and beekeepers every day and it is a scary pain in the neck!
Dr. Fletcher is recommending finding manageable African bees (scutellata), importing them to the U.S. to competent "bee scientists" as he says. So my question is: "And then what?" The USDA has had an ongoing project in trying to distribute the hygienic "Russian" honey bee genetics for over a decade now. Getting the beekeepers in the U.S. to accept and vigorously purchase these has not met with universal success. Sue Cobey, Marla Spivak, Joe Latshaw and a host of other very smart people have also developed lines of genetically improved honey bees. Have all 2.4 million U.S. colonies been requeened with these easily available better queens? No. Will they? Probably not.
The AHB we have in the U. S. is under selection pressure from the environment and from beekeepers who cannot tolerate defensive/aggressive honey bees in the least, especially in close proximity to people, pets and livestock. Zoning restrictions are already causing beekeepers problems, insurance companies are dropping beekeepers who are not participating in a Best Management Program (BMP) such as in Florida and lawyers are getting paid for what lawyers do. This is current reality.
In a perfect world, Dr. Fletcher would be right in suggesting that a breeding program is needed to modify the behavior of AHB. In our imperfect world, he is still right, but the mechanics of this happening are slim to none. Reality will win over the best intentions every time.