The Traveling Beekeeper
The Traveling Beekeeper - September 2010
Colony Needs During Winter
(Full Version)
by Larry Connor
There is an enormous range of recommendations about getting colonies ready for winter. Some beekeepers recommend every colony have 90 to 120 lbs of stored honey and pollen to survive the winter, while others are able to winter colonies on just a fraction of that amount. Parallel to that is the overwintering of huge populations in large brood nests compared to those who winter bees in four and five frame nuclei. Some people winter colonies with no preparations, and others wrap their colonies in thick insulation materials. This contrast list goes on and on.
Part of this just reflects the adaptive nature of honey bee colonies, and their inherited ability to survive under a wide range of environmental conditions. There are variations on how different races and families of bees deal with wintering, with some with many adaptations for survival and others less fit for winter. The other factor, where you winter your bees, makes a big difference, too. If you have bees in an area where winter is only a few weeks long, your focus will be much different than the beekeeper in northern states and Canada who must prepare colonies for months and months of limited flight.
More and more beekeepers accept the reality that preparation for winter must start before the summer is officially over at the autumnal equinox. There are three focus points all beekeepers need to address at this time of the season: 1. The production of healthy ‘winter’ bees with optimal nutrition stored in their bodies, 2. The management or treatment of colonies against pests and diseases, especially varroa and tracheal mites and nosema, and 3. The colony must be provided with enough food to survive until the reappearance of natural food in the spring.
Anticipate
Prior to the appearance of mite parasites in bee colonies in North America, many beekeepers felt that their biggest problems were American foulbrood and pesticide losses. For foulbrood many beekeepers used a calendar antibiotic treatment program to prevent the disease from appearing in their bees. At the same time a number were strongly against this approach, since the colonies were being medicated with an antibiotic that usually was not needed by the bees. That pretty well reflected the attitudes of the medical and veterinary professions before 1980.
With pesticide losses, beekeepers were far more likely to anticipate losses, and most commercial beekeepers either priced pollination rentals to include some bee losses, or they kept their bees away from the fields or orchards being treated with bee-killing insecticides. Small-scale beekeepers often did not know what killed their bees, and were quick to blame disease, swarming or starvation for bee losses rather than consider a pesticide exposure, unless it was so dramatic that it was hard to mistake for something else.
In this post CCD era, more and more beekeepers are PROACTIVE rather than reactive in their bee management. Rather than waiting for problems to develop and for bee colonies to die, more and more are focused on the sampling and testing of colonies for various problems. Last month I discussed Dr. Medhat Nasr’s proactive testing for mites and nosema in Alberta, Canada. The beekeepers there are encouraged to treat only when necessary, and to treat in the correct manner.
All beekeepers should develop the habit of sampling for varroa mite levels. This is the premiere problem facing most beekeepers in North America, but this is often linked to other issues (hive-based pesticides, bee pathogens, and poor nutrition). Sampling methods range from the ether spray method, the double jar method shown in last month’s column, or using a powdered sugar dusting to count the adult mites that are dislodged by the sugar and fall to a greased sampling tray.
Sampling is one thing, but knowing what the numbers mean is another. A beekeeper spoke of a mite drop of 40 mites. He said it was a natural drop (no powdered sugar or anything else was used), over a three-day period. He thought the number was low. I suggested that it seemed high to me, since I like to see less than 10 mites drop in 24 hours with a powdered sugar dusting. This is the challenge, isn’t it? What do these numbers mean? It is frustrating that most of the time it is hard to get good advise on this.
For me, the lower the mite drop, the happier I am. I like to see well-chewed mites, ones with broken shells and torn legs. Get the hand lens out and take a look! Are your bees grooming the mites off themselves?
Here is what we can sample for in a proactive management plan:
Varroa mites – as discussed above, we can use one of the sampling methods and make decisions based on local practices and recommendations.
Tracheal mites — A few dissections under a lower powered microscope will provide evidence of any possible tracheal mite problems. This is useful in the fall and winter, and during spring buildup.
Nosema — A higher powered microscope (compound scope) is needed to check the spore levels in bees, and this is beyond the finances of small beekeepers. But they should put pressure on State officials for testing, if they do not already provide this service.
General beekeeping awareness should dictate elimination of certain colonies with diseases. Colonies with American foulbrood should be quarantined, and local practices followed for treatment or destruction. Colonies with the general symptoms associated with Colony Collapse Disorder are probably not worthy of any effort to save. Colonies with PMS (Parasitic Mite Syndrome, a collection of symptoms that can include European foulbrood-like brood, K-wing, dimunitive wing, and other virus-transmitted diseases) should be destroyed or put into an intensive treatment program with knowledge that few of these colonies can be expected to survive the winter period.
Feeding program
Even before the last of the late summer/early fall nectar is gathered, many beekeepers begin a protein feeding program with the goal of producing a large number of well-fed worker bees that will serve as the Winter Bees. By feeding, it is hoped that they will be ‘Fat Bees’, endowed with extra proteins, enzymes and other nutritional components needed for brood rearing during the winter. We fed protein patties from mid August to December in 2009, and the limited success we had in wintering bees (after an especially poor season) is credited to the feeding program. We fed thick sugar syrup (2 parts sugar to 1 part water) in division board feeders. The frame feeders with that had built-in chimneys to eliminate drowning certainly had an advantage over feeders with smooth or rough interiors. We want the protein to go into the bees, with any natural pollen being stored in the cells. When the nectar flow is over our minimum carbohydrate feeding goals are:
4-frame nucleus 3.5 frames of honey (or stored sugar syrup)
5-frame nucleus 4.5 frames of honey (or stored sugar syrup)
8-frame hive 7 frames of honey (or stored sugar syrup)
10-frame hive 9 frames of honey (or stored sugar syrup)
In late October or early November we re-evaluate the food storage levels of colonies and add extra frames of stored honey to those colonies that require them. We do not feed colonies with poor chances of wintering since there is no point if investing the time, feed and equipment in colonies that are sure to die over winter. A better plan is to combine a marginal hive with a strong hive, and let the bees sort out the best use for these themselves. Don’t combine two weak hives, since they are still unlikely to succeed during the winter.
Many beekeepers medicate with Fumagillin as indicated by microscopic testing and spore counts. Follow the directions and use commonly accepted practices when using antibiotics in the hives. Keep records of the dosage, time and frequency of treatment.
Relocating hives
Wind can be stressful and deadly to hives in the winter. While a ridgetop may be a great place for bees to gather nectar during the summer, it may be lethal to colonies in winter. Move the bees to a wind shadow, where you and the bees can comfortably stand on a windy day. Avoid low and wet spots along lakes, rivers, streams, since they are likely to flood in winter and spring rains. Ask property owners how high the stream has flooded before you put bees into a winter location.
Some beekeepers group their nucs and single hives into groups of 2, 4, 6 and 8, depending on the design of the boxes and the pallets they are on during the rest of the season. The idea is to let each colony help the others out with some degree of heat sharing. They may wrap colonies, making sure each one has proper ventilation and flight openings.
Wrapping & Insulation
As you move north or into the mountains, wrapping is more common, increasing the percentage of live colonies in the spring. The simplest method is to wrap colonies with roofing paper (a.k.a. ‘tar paper’), cutting upper entrance holes in the paper to insure both ventilation and flight. During my Alberta, Canada visit, Medhat Nasr showed me the wrapped fiberglass insulation that they use at his facility. A four-inch sheet of fiberglass is enclosed in a heavy plastic wrap around the sides of double-deep hives grouped in fours (the pallet system). One sheet of insulation material is placed on the top of the hives, and tied down. A piece of plywood is put on the top of these four hives, and securely tied down to keep the entire wrapping system from flying away as the Alberta clippers move the snow around the hives.
This same method can be used for groups of five-frame nucleus hives as long as insulation does not block the entrance or reduce ventilation. A south-facing location helps the bees to get in cleansing flights when wind protected and the winter sun allows the microclimate around the hive to permit such activity.
The use of the polystyrene five-frame nuc boxes offers small-scale beekeepers an option for wintering with insulation. The boxes can be used all season long, or the bees and frames from wooden hives moved into the polystyrene boxes at the end of the season and fed heavily. Users like the fact that the bottom of the colony doubles as a feeder, that sugar syrup can be placed at the bottom of the feeder and the bees crawl down the frames to clean it up. In winter the syrup can be warm (100 degrees F) and cause the bees to break cluster before the heat dissipates. This might be something to try on a few colonies before jumping in with all colonies.
Economics of Wintering
If you purchase five-frame nucleus boxes or polystyrene hive bodies with frames to fill them (or pull down the strength of larger hives), raise or purchase queens, virgins or queen cells, and make sure each colony has between 20-25 pounds of stored honey or sugar syrup, the cost of each colony should be less than the cost of the average package bee colony or purchased nucleus in the spring. Locally Sun Belt packages sold for $70 or more, and some nucleus colonies were selling for over $100. In 2011 I expect to see these prices to increase again, as there is no apparent decline in the interest in beekeeping or the demand for bees. Further, many of the new crop of beekeepers is expecting to grow their operation.
In certain markets locally adapted queens in over wintered five frame nucleus hives sold for $150 in 2010, and I expect to see these prices increase. This created a double economic incentive. First, each beekeeper needs to evaluate the cost of packages and purchased nuclei against the cost of doing the summer split and over wintered colony on their own, even with a 50 percent success rate. Second, the smart beekeeper can easily sell strong over wintered nuclei colonies at any point in the season. I will repeat my old maxim: The money in beekeeping is in the bees.
Off to Georgia’s state beekeepers meeting in September. If you have not read Dr. Connor’s book Increase Essentials, borrow a copy or go to his website, www.wicwas.com to look at all the goodies listed there.
The Traveling Beekeeper - August 2010
An Interview with Dr. Medhat Nasr About Beekeeing in Alberta, Canada
(excerpt)
by Larry Connor
As the Provincial Apiculturist in Alberta, Dr. Medhat Nasr brings to the province a wide range of professional beekeeping experiences. Born and educated in Cairo, Egypt, Nasr did his graduate work at the University of California at Davis under Dr. Christine Peng, but also worked closely with Drs. Harry Laidlaw Jr., Robert ‘Rob’ Page, Jr. and Robin Thorp. Prior to moving to Alberta eight years ago, he worked in Ontario with the bee breeding program (searching for resistance to both tracheal and varroa mites) and at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.
Describe beekeeping situation in Alberta
The Canadian Province of Alberta ranks second in the size of the beekeeping industry behind California. For the past 10 to 12 years, the number of colonies has increased 5-10% each year; in the past twenty years the colony count has gone from 135,000 to 255,000 in 2006.
During the past three years there has been harsh winter weather, with about 30% of honey bee colonies dying, which coincided with CCD in USA. However, in Alberta the losses were due to three factors—the general failure of chemical controls against varroa mites, the problems of Nosema and very harsh winters. This caused a reduction in colony numbers to 225,000 in 2007, but with various proactive programs, the colony numbers are expected to reach 265,000 in 2010.
There are 700 beekeepers registered in the province, of which 113 are rated as commercial – having 500 hives or more. This makes up 225,000 hives or an average of 2,000 colonies per commercial beekeeper. The remaining beekeepers are rated as sideliners and hobbyists. Hobbyists usually have less than 100 hives. There are fewer than 50 beekeepers operating between 100 to 500 colonies and they are considered sideliners. This distribution gives a bimodal distribution with one peak around 10 colonies, and the other around 2,000. The smaller beekeeping operations are concentrated around the two large cities in the Province, Calgary and Edmonton.
What is the economic value of the industry?
During the past five years the total income from beekeeping has been 50 million Canadian dollars per year. There were and additional 10-15 million Canadian dollars per year paid for pollination services to the beekeeper for rental for hybrid canola certified seed production. Between 65,000 to 75,000 hives are rented for this pollination, and the beekeepers are paid based on colony strength, between $110 to $165 per colony. For the top payment, a beekeeper has to provide a colony with 16 frames of bees and a minimum of 10 frames of brood. The pollination season for canola is from the third week of June to the end of July. It is possible for individual beekeepers to make over a million dollars a year from canola seed pollination.
The Traveling Beekeeper - July 2010
A Visist with Joe Latshaw
(excerpt)
by Larry Connor
Every time I visit with Joe Latshaw he surprises me. In a recent visit to his home outside Columbus, Ohio, he was able to share several new items with me.
Latshaw is a low-key sort of person, but one with an enormous interest and intellect into bees and bee breeding. And that is a starter list. He has been around bees and bee breeding most of his life and can claim a quarter century of beekeeping experience, while being only in his early 30s. The son of a poultry nutrition professor at Ohio State University, as a boy Latshaw would shadow the apiary assistant at the OSU Beekeeping Laboratory, and produced his first queens when he was 12. This has provided Latshaw with a range of valuable experiences, contacts, and most recently a doctorate in bee behavior. He does some contract college teaching, but is not associated with Ohio State University. Basically, he is a beekeeper and a bee breeder, working for himself.
From his modest home and farm sandwiched between four-lane highways and suburban condos, Latshaw keeps bees, raises queens and instrumentally inseminates over 900 queens every year for testing and for release to cooperating beekeepers who use the bees as grafting mothers. His program is for beekeepers needing 1000 to 10,000 or more queens a year, and is clearly not for the typical small-scale beekeeper. Instead, the two lines, one yellow and one black, provide a choice for beekeepers who want production queens for an intensive queen rearing season. Many of the users of these queens are large commercial beekeepers who generate thousands of daughter queens for production hives and for nucleus hives for sale.
Latshaw filled a void left with the absence of an American producer of an instrumental insemination device, and has sold one for several years, the type that allows the operator to pull on the sting of the queen in order to eliminate the use of a hook to move the queen's valvefold out of the way for the syringe. In 2009 he released a newer, and much less expensive devise that will be within the range of serious queen breeders everywhere. Both may be examined at his website www.latshawapiaries.com. Joe's wife has organized another instrumental insemination training program for the fall: the Latshaw website indicates the program is filled for 2010.
The Traveling Beekeeper - June 2010
Stock Improvement in West Virginia
(excerpt)
by Larry Connor
In April I was invited to talk on queen rearing and bee management at the West Virginia Queen Producers, a member-based organization that shared meeting facilities in Huntington, WV with the West Virginia State Beekeepers Association. My part of the program ran Friday morning to Saturday afternoon; the State group met on Saturday, with Florida State Apiary Specialist (and The Classroom author) Jerry Hayes serving as the featured speaker. Later on Saturday Jerry and I were able to tour the beekeeping facilities of WV Bee Inspector Wade Stiltner, of Wayne, WV.
For a number of years certain beekeepers in West Virginia have been dedicated to the idea of producing local queens and bees for use within the state. There have been some high and low spots in developing the program, a few setbacks, but with some talented grant-getting, dogged determination and intense dedication, the group has been able to make a significant impact on the production of West Virginia queens for use by West Virginia beekeepers. In 2009, the queen market in the state was estimated at 4,000 queens, and the members of the WV Queen Producers produced and sold nearly one quarter of those queens, providing income for local beekeepers, and more importantly, providing localized, adapted, and hopefully better fit queens for the variable conditions found in that state.
The leadership of the group falls into the hands of Dan O'Hanlon and Gabe Blatt. They steer the group around some dangerous spots while championing West Virginia bees and queens to the elected officials of the state. In fact, the state is the first in the country to pass legislation that indemnifies state beekeepers from lawsuits provided they keep bees using recommended practices. O'Hanlon is chief judge of the Cabell County Circuit Court (Huntington), and is politically connected to a wide range of elected officials, and knows who and when to call in a favor or ask for help from folks in the state. The State's governor sent his regrets that he could not speak at the state meeting because of the mining tragedy that was still unfolding while I was there. He had planned to have a ceremonial signing of the legislation during the beekeepers' meeting.
Any non-Sunbelt state that fills a quarter of its queen market is on the right track toward self-sufficiently and genetic survivor ability. Blatt, O'Hanlon and other beekeepers in the state (and one Ohio beekeeper who lives near the state line), have formed a non-profit corporation to promote and develop a strong queen program. Membership is $100 per year, a fact that selects out the partially committed. The reality is that through grants these beekeepers have received breeder queens, equipment, incubators and training that non-members do not receive. It has been a pretty good deal for these beekeepers. I hope that other states try to duplicate these efforts and reap the rewards of locally produced queens.
The Traveling Beekeeper - May 2010
Catching Swarms and Doing Bee Removals
(excerpt)
by Larry Connor
Lots of new beekeepers and many small-scale beekeepers remove swarms every season as a means of obtaining lower cost bees (they are never ‘free'), and a certain number of them do bee removals, often called ‘cut-outs' of colonies that are established in trees, buildings and other structures.
Swarms
Swarm removal sounds easy. You simply drive up to a newly landed swarm, shake the bees off the branch and into a box, seal up the box, and drive home where you will dump the bees in front of an empty bee hive body.
Swarm removal, in reality, can be much more complicated. You may need to use a ladder or even a cherry picker to reach the swarm. There is a good chance that the swarm may fly to a permanent location between the time you get the call and the time you get into the car or truck and arrive on the site. Sometimes the swarms are really small, and not worth the fuel to drive to pickup the bees. Then, you charge that up to being a good member of the beekeeping community.
If you have never done a swarm removal before, it is not difficult. If you obtain good, secure access to the swarm it is just a matter of shaking (or brushing) the bees AND THE QUEEN(S) into the box or container.
We define a swarm by the queen that goes with it. If a colony leaves with the mother queen (the one that went through the winter), we call it a Prime Swarm (usually just the old queen, but sometimes daughter queens fly when Mother cannot join them due to injury or some other factor). It is often the largest and will range from 8,000 to 20,000 or more bees, the equivalent of one or three packages of bees. The parent colony has sealed swarm queen cells that will produce unmated queens that will not fight until the decision is made to produce an After Swarm. Colonies average about one and a half swarms per year, so there is a pretty good chance that an after swarm will be issued and will carry many virgin queens with it. These queens fight to determine the winner only after the swarm has entered its final nesting spot. After swarms are smaller, 4,000 to 10,000 bees and often have multiple queens. When I captured a swarm at the Farm, I got one or more queens, but left some behind. It was a large swarm and what I got was a good colony. But part of the swarm reformed on the tree with an uncaptured virgin and flew away after a few days and is established within the neighborhood. The swarm was at the top of an old apple tree and we could get the bed of the truck into the maze of brush to work, but not comfortably.
Container used for swarm catching
If you can lift a nucleus box, cardboard nucleus box, or an empty box of most any sort, this is fine for shaking/brushing bees into. Many of us have left the office after getting a swarm call, grabbing a copy paper box from the copy room with a sliding lid. These are great for catching swarms-in a pinch-since the lid can be gently slid back onto the box and air holes punched with a hive tool to provide air until the bees can be installed back in the apiary.
There are amazingly elaborate boxes in the literature and on the market for catching swarms. Some incorporate vacuum cleaner devices to suck the bees out of the trees and into the box. You certainly can have a lot of fun with these devices, and may become quite proficient at swarm catching by using one, especially swarms high off the ground.
Cost of swarm removal
If the swarms are free, how can they have a cost associated with them? If I drive an hour to get a swarm in a work truck, take off time from work, buy special equipment, and bring a buddy along who needs to stop for food and drink-these are costs. So swarm bees are not really free, but you know they are less expensive than other methods of starting new hives. Finally, you can charge for swarm removal and learn that PEOPLE WILL PAY TO GET RID OF FLYING STINGING INSECTS. Current rates seem to be in the $50 to $100 range. If people do not want to pay, you can give them the name of a new beekeeper, a teenager perhaps, who will do this for nothing and for the experience.
Care of swarms
I use the biological method of introducing swarms into a new home. I shake the bees at the entrance, perhaps on an old bed sheet, so all the bees, including the queens, walk into the cavity. I place frames of drawn comb, a frame of food (pollen and honey) and foundation in the hive so the bees will like what the find when they crawl inside. The bees seem to like being shaken at the entrance better than dumped into the hive and sealed up. Often swarms on foundation fly away because they don't approve of the new home you picked for them. The behavior of walking into the hive is an important piece of biology, as it seems to complete the swarming instinct behavior.
Feed swarms with one to one sugar syrup for several weeks to a month. This will continue their instinctive urge of build beeswax comb. They will start foraging for pollen and nectar almost as soon as they arrive in the box, so a source of carbohydrate is excellent and will stimulate more pollen foragers and rapid brood buildup.
Once the colony is established, examine it carefully for any problems and then put it into your production cycle within the apiary.
Advantages of swarms
Swarms carry honey in the stomachs of the bees. This is digested to produce beeswax. A strong swarm can produce a full box of comb in a few days, more if fed sugar syrup. Swarms usually come from vigorous hives, and can be and real asset.
The Traveling Beekeeper - April 2010
Biology of Cell Production & Cell Starting
(full version)
by Larry Connor
In spite of some beekeeper's best hopes, queen bees have finite lives, although they are the longest lived of any individual in the superorganism we call the bee colony. As a result of their evolutionary history, honey bees have developed several strategies for queen replacement. Before we discuss queen cell production methods, we will review the conditions under which queen cells are produced in nature.
When a queen fails, the bees notice. There is considerable beekeeper and bee scientist debate about the reasons for failure and the mechanisms the bees use to detect it. The most widely accepted theory is linked to a reduction in pheromone production by the queen-when a vigorous queen starts to produce fewer chemicals that are part of queen pheromone, or queen substance. The bees stimulate the queen to start new queen cells. The most common reason for failure is due to the queen's increasing age and reduced egg laying. If a queen has been producing as many as 1,300-1,500 eggs per day and suddenly produces only 600, we would agree with the bees that it is time for the old queen to be replaced by supersedure. If a bee colony had an infinite life (even superorganisms eventually die), they would still need to systematically replace the old queen with a new queen in order to maintain colony population.
The second queen production strategy occurs when a colony grows strong enough to reproduce itself. Bee colonies, as superorganisms, reproduce the social unit by swarming, when part of the colony leaves with one queen and part stays behind with another.
At times it is difficult to sort out supersedure queens from swarm queens because both are triggered by a reduction in the concentration of queen pheromone per bee. The colonies with a vigorous queen and many bees-conditions we associate with swarming-predictably have brood areas filled with eggs, larvae and pupae. Queen cell cups are often on the edge of the brood area, and for that reason the swarm cells are located on the edge or fringe of the brood nest. We find queen cups at the bottom and sides of the brood combs, and also where there has been a break in the comb (and between hive bodies) or constructed on a piece of burr comb.
If we follow the theory that reduced queen pheromone is responsible for new cell initiation, then the supersedure process is explained in the very same way, only now the colony is often weaker and has a reduced brood area. The queen lays eggs into those queen cups located within the brood nest resulting in supersedure on the face of the comb. There may be empty queens cups outside the brood area that are not used.
The third queen cell production mechanism results when a queen is accidentally killed or removed, and the bees use the emergency response to build cells. Over time colonies have been subjected to extensive predation by mammals, birds, other insects and humans. During these attacks the queen may be killed. When the queen is killed or removed, the queen pheromone drops dramatically, so the cell production response is strong and immediate. Some estimate that colonies know that their queen is missing in as little as 15 minutes. Without the queen the worker bees select a large number of worker larvae and convert their worker cells into a queen cells. They feed the larvae with royal jelly throughout development. The chemical nature of royal jelly changes as the new queen larva matures and is fed by worker bees. This diet provides the biochemical triggers for development as a queen rather than a worker.
The emergency response gives each colony a survival strategy to keep itself alive by producing cells from suitably aged larvae remaining in the comb. In this behavior, many cells may be started, but relatively few are completed.
Cell Starting
When large numbers of young nurse bees are confined in a queenless state with abundant food and water, they will start a large number of queen cells and initially feed them very well. Because they are confined, they cannot sustain this intensity of feeding, so after the second day the number of viable cells drops. In this emergency environment, starter colonies are an excellent way to start a large number of cells, but not to finish them.
There are many ways to make cells in a beekeeping operation. For small quantities, beekeepers can remove the queen from a quality colony, and let the bees raise emergency cells in her absence. A modification of this method is to move open brood and bees above a screen or board with a new, rear entrance placed on the hive to let the queenless bees produce natural queen cells. Charles Mraz of Vermont used this method throughout his lifetime and felt it maintained genetic diversity. If a queen is a good brood producer and the colony is strong and healthy, move her with a frame or two of brood and worker bees to a new hive and let her establish a new colony. The queenless hive can then produce a new queen.
A Simple Starter Colony
To start queen cells we use the emergency response by removing the bees from the queen. In our system, we rely on the colony's biological urge to produce queens from the right-aged larvae we give the hive after the queen is removed. We introduce these suitable larvae to produce a new queen.
My most successful method of starting queen cells has been with a closed cell starter containing the following:
1. The young nurse bees shaken from one colony,
2. A frame of pollen and one of honey,
3. One or two drawn frames for cluster space, and
4. A sponge or towel soaked with water.
The easiest container for this starter box is a five-frame nucleus box with a screen on the bottom, and perhaps on the sides. It should be bee-tight and filled with nurse bees.
The Setup Process
This system was developed by Steve Taber and promoted by Marla Spivak and Gary Reuter in Minnesota. I have used it for over 25 years as a simple method to teach beekeepers how to raise queens. Are there other methods that work? Yes there are, and I have used many of them. However, this method is the most reliable I have found to teach others to produce cells.
The starter box is a four- or five-frame nucleus hive with window screen or hardware cloth fastened to the bottom and/or sides. This is placed on the rim of a bottom board, or two small boards, to provide ventilation. If the weather is below 45 degrees F. place it in a barn, garage or outside room to keep the bees from going into cluster. If the weather is hot, find a cool place to store the starter so the bees are not stressed.
Starter boxes can be made from a hive body you already own. I have used half of a double nuc box to establish a starter. One starter uses a cardboard nucleus box with window screen cut and taped to the sides. An eight- or ten-frame hive body (deep or medium) will work if a follower board (dummy frame), is used to confine the bees into a small area to maintain crowding and the temperature needed for cell production.
After the Graft
We will discuss the transfer (grafting) process later, but the starter colony is most often set up in the afternoon or evening, and the cell cups are placed into the starter colony following an hour or more of queenless confinement. One worker larva is moved-transferred or grafted-into each cell cup. The larvae were removed from a frame of worker brood produced by a breeder queen. The number of cells given to each starter colony will vary, according to the time of the year and the number of nurse bees. As you use this method, you will learn to estimate the ideal number of cells each starter can receive.
Because starters do a terrible job of finishing queen cells, move the started cells into a cell finisher the day after you graft. The starter is only used for 18 to 24 hours. If it has done its job, a large percentage of the cells you placed inside will have an expanded pool of royal jelly with the larvae floating on that jelly. In addition, the bees will have added beeswax to the edge of the grafting cell (either plastic or beeswax), creating a small cone of delicate beeswax.
If you use plastic cell cups, you will be able to look through them and see that there is a layer of royal jelly at the bottom of the accepted cells. Cells may be combined before being placed into the cell finisher.
Adapted from Dr. Connor's newest book Queen Rearing Essentials, which may be ordered at www.wicwas.com or at your bee supply dealer. He will be teaching three-day queen rearing programs in several locations this summer, including Connecticut and Michigan. Email him for details at LJConnor@aol.com or check the website.
The Traveling Beekeeper - March 2010
Excerpt
Ways Bees Are Bred
I am writing this from a campground in South-Central Florida, the week after the ABF meeting in Orlando. This is an area south of Lake Placid described by ecologists as ‘wet prairie' meaning that when the wet season arrives in the summer, it is quite possible to be standing in water. Think of it as a transition area to the Everglades. Don't walk your little yippy dog too close to the pond where the ‘gater feeds. The campground is set up in an oak hammock, with towering water oaks festooned with Spanish moss providing a respite from the hot Florida sun. This month has not been that, quite the opposite actually, with a prolonged cold spell that turned much of the landscape into a shade of brown or grey.
A great horned owl woke me in the night as I slept. Or perhaps it was answering my undirected snore. The sound echoed around the trees and the strong single ‘whos' were followed by a more rapid call, answered by another owl, some distance away. There are bears in this area, and panther too. I was lucky enough to see one years ago when I ran the Genetic Systems, Inc., bee breeding program in LaBelle, about 30 miles away, and we had apiary sites just a few miles from here. It was a young male with spotting, and a long, long tail.
The bee-breeding program is the one started by Dadant & Sons, Inc., with Dr. Bud Cale Jr. They produced two breeding stocks, the Starline and Midnite hybrids. In LaBelle we produced two others, the Cale 876 and the Cale 235, both produced by instrumental insemination. That part of the program ended in 1980.
The Traveling Beekeeper - February 2010
Excerpt
Time for Resitant Bees--Developing A Club or Bee Association Plan
A Model Agreement
The Beeville County beekeepers, seeking to reduce and ultimately eliminate the need for chemical treatments on our colonies and to improve the overall health of all honey bees in our area, agree to the following plan:
Year one
We encourage all beekeepers in Beeville County, the adjacent town of Pollenville, and an area delineated by a perimeter of six miles around this area (the estimated combined mating distance of queens and drones) to install queens of the following types in their colonies:
1.Queens resulting from the work of bee-breeding programs that have documented reduced mite levels (by known or yet unknown mechanisms of resistance, including hygienic behavior, grooming or physiological reproductive reduction).
2.Local survivor stock that is documented to have been kept without chemical treatment for five or more years.
3.Any colony that shows a low mite level when tested using a standard method.
4.The club will sponsor and promote classes and field days where general beekeeping techniques will be taught, involving queen finding, requeening, queen cell use, and use of swarm and supersedure queens from selected colonies.
Year two
We continue to encourage all beekeepers in the defined area to maintain bee colonies with the above characteristics. In addition we encourage the formation of-
1.Queen rearing classes
2.General instruction on evaluating swarm, supersedure and other replacement queens in an effort to obtain colonies with reduced mite loads.
3.A simple method of evaluating colonies for their mite load, using a standardized test to check for mite levels that does not negatively impact the productivity of the colony being tested.
? ? ?
If you look over the above plan, it should strike you that this is simple and direct. If any bee club seeks to develop a low or zero level of chemical control in its hives and still have highly productive colonies, it is going to take a great deal of work. It also must have a near perfect level of participation by beekeepers in the area, whether they are members of the club or not. Simplicity is needed to make the program understandable and within the range of beekeeper skills for the area. This may include some over-reaching for many new and under-motivated beekeepers, as such the plan should have a high level of teachability to make it work.
This plan is just a starting point. Each of you will build on this plan. In three or four years you should expect to see a definite change in the colonies, with both lower mite counts and lower levels of American foulbrood, European foulbrood, Sacbrood and Chalkbrood.
In March Larry Connor and Dewey Caron will conduct a four-evening Advanced Beekeeping Course in Comstock, Michigan, (near Kalamazoo). For information go to www.wicwas.com or
LJConnor@aol.com. Use those contacts for information about Dr. Connor's three books in the Essentials Series: Queen Rearing Essentials, Increase Essentials and Bee Sex Essentials.
The Traveling Beekeeper - January 2010
- Time for Resistant Bees --A Plan for the Individual Beekeeper
Excerpt
Every beekeeper must take on the responsibility of intentionally contributing to the level of resistance to mites and diseases in all colonies. They need to start it this year if they have not already done so, since the sooner we all start this process, the sooner we will be finished. This is not a function of operational size, since a single-colony beekeeper can keep resistant bees just as well, if not easier, than a thousand-colony operator. The change that must occur is in the mind of the beekeeper, with each one of us making the decision to keep bees that do not succumb to varroa mites, American foulbrood, chalkbrood, sacbrood, other viral diseases, Nosema (both species) and more. Like any trip to a new destination, we first must decide what we want to take with us, and for all of us, we must find queens that already possesses some level of natural resistance, and/or we must set up a selection program to develop such resistance.
Finding resistant queens
Many large-scale queen producers and package bee providers do not select for resistance. Period. They make no effort to work toward a resistant stock. The selection criteria they use are the same as those used in pre-mite selection: productivity, fast buildup, wintering ability (maybe) and low stinging behavior (also maybe). There are many breeder queens selected by large producers who select on just two criteria and two criteria only: brood production and honey yields. Sometimes the system involves the placement of a pushpin on the landing board following colony inspection or honey harvest-at a point where the colony impresses the beekeeper.
The Traveling Beekeeper - December 2009
Time for Resistant Bees--A Plan for Clubs
by Larry Connor
Wicwas Press
1620 Miller Road, Kalamazoo, MI 49001
LJConnor@aol.com
www.wicwas.press
You have just had a meeting of your local beekeepers club where the members voted to develop a program to put varroa and disease resistant queens (and eventually their worker bees) into every colony in the club's geographical area. That is great news. Like deciding to write a book, you are off to a good start when you decide to get down to
business. Now the work begins.
There are a number of mechanisms of varroa resistance that have been documented or implied like hygienic behavior, grooming and physiological resistance. There are undoubtedly many more forms of mite resistance-the challenge is to find stocks that are able to resist mite development and disease infections BY ANY METHOD. There does not need to be a great deal of concern about what form of resistance you bring into your colonies, since it is a very good idea to have as many types of resistance in your area colonies as you can find. In fact, there are stocks that are resistant to mites and we do not know the resistance mechanism. Let me put it this way: I do not need to know how the Internet works to read my email! But where will you find these stocks?
1. Locally adapted resistant stock
Many beekeepers figure that they can cut out the bees from a bee tree or the side of a building and obtain varroa and disease resistant genetic stock. Not to discourage anyone from doing this, but the critical question is this: Where did those bees come from? Is this a newly established colony that came from a swarm from a Sun Belt package that was installed a few months ago? Time is the test here-at least as a starting point. You will need to find colonies that have survived for five or more seasons without being restocked by another incoming swarm. Bee tree nests are extraordinarily attractive to new swarms, since the empty comb offers a fully build and architecturally perfect home for a new swarm, with a huge savings in the colony's energy output, since the bees will have less comb to build and more resources to be stored for winter.
So, to be somewhat confident about the survivor status of a feral swarm, you need to have some history about the activity of that colony. Did it die out every winter only to be repopulated each spring by non-resistant swarms from beekeeper hives? Or did the bees keep it together for five or more years, issuing swarms and undergoing routine supersedures of queens? We want the latter.
One valid approach is to collect the colonies that are alive after a head-on attack with varroa mites. Dr. Yves Le Conte, a bee researcher at Avignon, France, collected and compared such colonies to control stock and obtained lower mite loads. American-born Dr. John Kefuss did the same sort of thing with his entire beekeeping operation outside Toulouse, France. In his "007, Live or Let Die" breeding strategy, he let the mites work through his colonies for four years before the stock turned around and has been relatively mite free now for over ten years. In the United States Danny Weaver did the same in Texas, letting the mites run their course so the colonies can be productive and free of chemicals. When Drs. John Harbo (USDA, Baton Rouge) and Roger Hoopingarner (Michigan State University) put out a call for survivor stock, they collected queens from colonies that survived the head-on mite attacks. That stock is now called the VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygienic) stock and in my opinion is one of the least appreciated and most underutilized of the resistant lines of bees available to beekeepers. Why? That is a darn good question.
So it goes. There are a number of sources advertising in the journals, and even more that do not advertise (or do not need to advertise). Your club officers and members are wise to review the articles by M.E.A. McNeil in the March and April 2009 issues of the American Bee Journal for a detailed discussion of the various resistance programs that have had their origins in survivor stocks. We need to stop producing queens from non-resistant stock: All colonies should demonstrate some type of mite and/or disease resistance or be put into a 007 program so that resistance can develop naturally.
It is true that some hives may have been isolated from a high level of mite attack because of geography and low numbers of other colonies. Bottom line-any colony selected as ‘local' must be challenged to see its level of mite resistance. If a colony or its daughter colonies die overwinter they flunked the test. If a colony collapses in the fall months after demonstrating a full range of disease and viral symptoms associated with Parasitic Mite Syndrome, that colony flunked there. You want to obtain queens from a source that maintains low mite levels at all times, based on some standardized testing method. I like the powdered sugar/screened bottom board method of testing. This past season I have seen the ease of getting quick mite counts using the powdered sugar method. From the time you remove the lid of the hive to the final mite count, it only takes my students and I a few minutes (2-4) per hive to apply the powdered sugar and return to count the mites.
2. Stocks adapted for somewhere else
No matter how resistant they might be to varroa mites (and I am not saying that they are), I would not ask my buddy Jimmy in South Texas to send me some of his naturally mated queens. Why? Because he keeps colonies in an area where there are lots of African colonies, feral colonies in the brush and buildings, and I do not want to bring in stock that I know will cause some problems in a urban and suburban beekeeping territory and might require me to put on a bee veil. I do not know what the fitness of African bees would be in the North, but in my opinion, it not worth finding out.
But if someone in South Florida, South Texas or Arizona has developed a gentler strain of African bees that is both mite resistant and socially acceptable (easily managed without as much concern about stinging behavior), I would encourage Jimmy to get a few breeder queens and produce daughters and evaluate them. It is time we start doing some serious stock improvement with African bees in the United States. What are we waiting for? In Brazil and Mexico breeding programs have significantly improved the manageability of African bees AND made them less defensive.
3. Documented resistance (of any type)
With the well-documented biological advantages of multiple mating of queen bees with a diverse drone population, we benefit by having as many documented varroa resistant lines as we can get within the mating area of our queens. I wrote about this in the last chapter of my book Bee Sex Essentials. Borrow a copy if you must, but you need to be familiar with the concept of multiple drone lines for healthy, disease and pest resistant colonies. Go to the website of Dr. David Tarpy at North Carolina State University and read some of his research papers on this subject.
Developing a Club Plan
Every bee club concerned about improving the stock in its area should form a small group (committee, task force or coffee bunch) that gets together and weighs the information and stock available for their area and have a plan written out they shared with the members of the organization. The plan should be pretty darn simple, but direct. I would like to include these points:
We will evaluate queen stocks by using a simple standardized testing method to evaluate mite loads. I personally think the ether roll kills too many bees, that soapy water technique is too time consuming, and the powdered sugar roll takes more time than it does to test an entire colony equipped with a greased tray in a screened bottom board. My experience with fifteen first-year beekeepers this past season has convinced me that the screened bottom board and powdered sugar method is not only doable, but the beekeepers like doing it (rather than using chemicals) and benefit by doing something proactive for their bees that gives them a numerical comparison of each colony. The bees we used were a generation removed from the Purdue stock that Greg Hunt and Krispn Given developed in Indiana. Our mite counts were variable from colony to colony because these queens were open mated to non-resistant stock. Yet the counts were always much lower than old-style susceptible bees. I noted in last month's article that these were not necessarily hygienic bees (we had a problem with chalk brood in some colonies, and you cannot have hygienic bees and chalk brood). I suspect the Purdue stock possess some other methods of mite resistance. Fantastic. We need to keep up these strategies for resistance at all levels. Queens that produce daughter colonies with extremely high mite loads when other queens have low counts-those queens should be eliminated from our hives. Pinch their heads and throw them into the underbrush with a proper good riddance. We are way past the point of sentimentality.
Every beekeeper in the club should obtain queens from an improved stock using one of a number of methods: direct purchase or gifts of splits from resistant colonies, 48 hr queen cells, ripe queen cells, virgin queens or mated queens. It does not matter what age or form that queen is in as long as she carries the genes we seek for resistance.
In the first year (2010) every beekeeper should be encouraged to put these queens into their colonies. Some clubs may have members who are resistant to this concept and in the first year the peer pressure should be turned down. The point of convincing will come from the reports from members. Every beekeeper should report the stock they are using and the mite count (how it was collected if it they used a method different from the club's standardized testing method). In the second season (2011) the club should show the entire membership its collective success, and failures, at obtaining low mite counts. As the second spring arrives, members may report great success in wintering or tremendous losses. Mentors will be needed to coach the new members (and maybe a few old ones) on the practices of swarm control, bee feeding and other basic beekeeping 101 concepts.
Ultimately beekeepers successful with this system should be encouraged to share their bee stock with others, either as a gift to club members or for commercial trade. In a local club there may be 1 to 10 members who are in a position to share resistant stock. But if 10,000 beekeepers nationwide start developing this program in 2010 and their resistant queens are moved around the country, we would take a huge step toward eliminating the genetic diversity gap that has developed since varroa mites appeared 25 years ago.
I would like larger clubs to be somewhat systematic about getting members to obtain queens from every resistant line they can find, putting together a full line of alphabet soup stocks with geographic stocks (foreign and domestic), as well as some cutout queens with remarkable behavior. While I was feeding colonies this fall with my helper Cathy King, we noticed that some colonies were vastly superior to others, even though the queens should be sisters and of similar genetics. On one colony lid she had written "PET ME." These bees were amazingly quiet on the combs and were responding nicely to the feed we had given them. Our season on the Farm outside Kalamazoo was far from wonderful, and we had had more than a few problems and challenges in the hives we set up this spring from Purdue stock nucs. It is nice to enter the winter months with some hope that the bees you have may actually survive the winter, and will be able to produce resistant daughters in the next season. That is the fun part of beekeeping, isn't it?
Dr. Connor finished his latest book, Queen Rearing Essentials, and it should be available for shipping in December or January. With 100 pages and 167 color photos, it will help the members of local bee clubs learn all about starter and finisher colonies. Check for the ship date and place your order at www.wicwas.com, or contact your local bee supply branch for a copy.
Traveling Beekeeper - November 2009
A Call to Action for All Bee Clubs: Time for Resistant Bees
(excerpt)
by LARRY CONNOR
Wicwas Press, 1620 Miller Road, Kalamazoo, MI 49001
LJConnor@aol.com www.wicwas.com
In the last issue I described some of my visit to California. From there I met with folks in Challis, Idaho about getting started with bees. My brother Jim has lived in Idaho for decades and he arranged a few folks to get together and talk bees. It is an interesting contrast to go from a highly organized beekeeping area like San Francisco to one with just one professional beekeeper with permanent locations and no local beekeepers' organization. The rest of the folks at the meeting are interested in bees because they are involved in a local farmer's market. Human population density certainly makes a difference.
It is time to issue a challenge to bee clubs everywhere. Now is the time to develop a program to convert the entire county or club service area of the organization into a zone where only varroa-resistant queen bees are installed in hives. This may seem to be downright militant or socialist or way too nosey, but there are strong reasons why the local bee clubs in North America (and elsewhere, for that matter), may be the best organizations to develop programs that promote resistant stock.
Why this? Why now? Simply put: We need to work together on varroa resistance. Bluntly put: We are stupid if we don't convert our colonies to mite-resistant stocks, and we could have done this years ago.
So, let me argue my case:
First, we have abundant supplies of tested, some well researched, and quality bee stocks that carry genes for varroa resistance. The USDA has developed two quality stocks: The Russian lines and the VSH lines, both from the Baton Rouge ARS Bee Lab, under the leadership of Dr. Tom Rinderer. I have known Tom since his grad school days at The Ohio State, and I also know he takes a lot of heat for bringing these stocks to the industry (most of the heat is because the bees are not Italian-type bees and are different. Beekeepers don't like different.)
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Traveling Beekeeper - October 2009
Micro-Beekeeping: Diversity in San Francisco
(excerpt)
by LARRY CONNOR
Wicwas Press, 1620 Miller Road, Kalamazoo, MI 49001
LJConnor@aol.com www.wicwas.com
Travel in the summer 2009 took me to the three regional apicultural society meetings: the Heartland Apicultural Society in Oberlin, OH the weekend after the 4th of July, the grand dame of summer conferences at the Eastern Apicultural Society in Ellicottsville, NY the first week of August, and the Western Apicultural Society (WAS) meeting in Healdsburg, CA the third week of August. A number of folks were in attendance at two of these meetings, but I think I was the only person who was registered at all three. It was a first for me, and while I had a huge amount of fun, I was both physically drained but mentally exhilarated by the time WAS was finished.
It was a summer of firsts for me. I gave the opening talk at HAS in a huge and historic UCC Church in Oberlin and was then invited to end the week with a Sunday Sermon in that same space with a discussion on the Sacred Bee. At EAS I gave three official microscopy classes (plus one unofficial gathering needed to get the scopes all set up and the lab tested), along with three field sessions and a workshop. This freely strates EAS's propensity towards speaker abuse, at least this one. Finally, at WAS, I conducted a special workshop for local Northern California beekeepers while the other WAS participants were off to wine country to test their enological skills.
Another high point was conducting a workshop the Saturday before WAS for the San Francisco Beekeepers Association. This was a special program introducing introductory queen rearing-not a full queen rearing course (we did not have time or hives available for that). It was not a huge crowd but more an ideally sized group considering the subject matter. This was a group filled with questions, all of them seem to be having a great time grilling the instructor.
San Francisco is an amazing and fun place because of its diversity of microclimates, neighborhoods and people. This is a huge melting pot of ethnic groups and a pretty accepting area for differing life styles and ual orientations. The president of the SFBA is Karen Peteros, a part-time lawyer and part-time beekeeper who is partnered with Janice, a physician assistant in heart transplant. They reflect the focus of the beekeepers I met in the Bay area-they live there by choice, and sometimes have to make compromises and sacrifice to afford to live in such an expensive city.
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HMS Beekeeper
Also that Sunday I was taken to a new store, Her Majesty's Secret Beekeeper, a retail bee supply and honey store in the city, claiming to be the first bee supply store in the city (in recent memory at least). It is a trendy, well designed store with the clutter in the back, and eye-catching displays in the front. Honey from San Francisco beekeepers is sold, often with a map of the neighborhood on the label, so locals buy from locals. A one pound jar of Karen's honey was being sold for $24, and the demand had been extremely high. When you consider the income demographics of the people entering their store (often with a dog on leash, and there is a bowl of water for thirsty canine visitors), you realize that presentation, marketing and local production create a unique demand for high-end products.
Cameo Wood, the owner of the store, is a skilled marketer, and she has relied on the talents of beekeepers like Karen to provide advise on what equipment to stock (they selected medium-depth frames for brood and supers both), and to provide classes at the store. Over 400 people have signed up for classes since the store opened in June. If even a quarter of them take a bee class, it will be a huge educational effort.
Karen took me into her back yard and said it was "Larry's Nuc Yard". She explained that she had read my book on Increase Essentials and also attended my lecture on the subject at the January 2008 joint ABF/AHPA meeting held in Sacramento. "I remember what you said, that the money in beekeeping is in the bees, not the honey." She proudly showed me a yard filled with nucleus hives she had made from colonies and had plans to sell them to students at Cameo's store. With strong five-frame nucleus hives getting as much as $150 in this market, Karen was looking at return on her investment in beekeeping she had made over the past few years. She claims to be a student of Nuc-ology, one of several unique terms I heard during the visit (Another is the renaming of the Brushy Mountain 4-way Queen Castle to the "San Francisco Love Shack".
Sunday night SFBA treasurer Steven Cameron and I went bar-hopping in the Castro area of San Francisco's. It was a fitting end to a visit to an amazing and diverse city.
Dr. Connor will host ‘Fun with Bees: A program on Value-Added beekeeping' on October 10 in Comstock, Michigan. Check out http://www.wicwas.com/ for information. Then in November he will be in Texas and Connecticut. The same website has information on these meetings. You can also check out Increase Essentials (not yet renamed "The Complete Guide to Beekeeping Nuc-ology) and his new book, not yet released, on Queen Rearing Essentials.