Honey Bee Biology  - September 2010

Bees, Cherries, Night Foxes  . . . and Bees Again

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Excerpt

Honey Bee Biology  - August 2010

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Excerpt

As part of my routine seasonal bee management, I put out bait hives. A bait hive is an unoccupied hive that is made attractive to swarms when their scout bees are out searching for nest sites. This past spring, I put out 27 bait hives and caught 14 swarms (52% occupancy).
    The two main goals for the bait hives are first to catch swarms from my apiaries. I also, whenever possible, try to locate them in places with bee activity, but without nearby managed hives, that is, no beekeepers. These are most likely feral colonies that might be genetic stock surviving on their own with varroa mites. When these colonies swarm, I want to catch them. If it is a prime swarm, which has the mother queen, she carries the genetic attributes of the colony.
    When the colony is reestablished, its varroa population can be monitored. This strategy for bait hive use can take months of advance planning to find these locations. While these survivor colonies can be quite valuable, for example to help maintain genetic diversity in a varroa-controlling stock line with unrelated queens, in other situations a swarm caught in a bait hive may not be wanted.
    If a beekeeper lives in an area with Africanized Honey Bees or locations near their invasion front, or in the vicinity of ports where these bees could enter on ships, then getting swarms from bait hives may not be appropriate (because of the defensive behavior of these bees). When an errant swarm enters a bait hive, unless the queen was marked, its genetic origin is unknown, even though it could have been from another beekeeper’s hive with a gentle stock. If in doubt as to your location, contact your state bee inspector, extension personnel, or county agent to determine whether using bait hives is appropriate. What follows is my bait hive method, which other beekeepers can customize to their operations.

Honey Bee Biology  - July 2010

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Excerpt

Remembering the 99 Bee Periodicals that Perished
and the Miracle of the American Bee Journal

The American Bee Journal has reached its 150th anniversary, a pub lication milestone, a miracle that started in 1861. One way to better appreciate this feat is to see it in the big historical picture of all the bee-related journals begun in the United States. This perspective, rarely explored, is quite revealing.

 Many of these periodicals began in response to the initial formation of the beekeeping industry in the late 1800's and into the early part of the 1900's. Periodicals were a way for beginners to learn some basic beekeeping, and for all, even those with much experience, to keep up with current events, and disseminate new ideas. These were times when fundamental aspects of apiculture were being worked out, mostly without scientific methods that would bring more efficient techniques later. For example, various devices were offered for sale, often with poor testing beforehand. Do swarm-catchers that fit over the hive entrance really work? If they did, I dare say today they would grace hive entrances from coast to coast. And the limits of how much one could manipulate the bees were also encountered. Can queen bees be mated in a screen cage, that is, can queens be mated in captivity? Some beekeepers mistakenly claimed they could.

 Monthly beekeeping journals tended to tie these collective discussions together. For progressive beekeepers living isolated on rural farms, where long-distance travel to meetings was terribly limited, when addresses were only a name, town, county, and state, a bee journal's arrival must have been an intellectual breath of fresh air. A beekeeper-writer could see his or her ideas, either on management techniques or a newly devised piece of equipment, published before a community of readers. To some extent the periodicals were their version of the Internet for a loyal following of readers.

 Nevertheless, the birth of a beekeeping periodical did not ensure its survival - oh far from it. A. I. Root started what we know today as Bee Culture. He wrote about the early days of publishing his brainchild, originally known as Novice's Gleanings in Bee Culture, giving us a rare first-hand account of some of the initial logistical difficulties in starting a bee journal. (Novice was Root's pen name. The "Novice" part was dropped after the journal's first year in 1873. The name took its current form in 1993.) The first year was printed at the local newspaper in Medina, Ohio. For the second year, Root had his own foot-powered printing press. To ease the workload he hooked it up to his windmill, another of his fascinations besides bees. Root was quite pleased to see his two hobbies working together. The wind proved quite variable though and occasionally the copy came out crooked on the page. Root asked forgiveness from his readers, and they seemed to take it in good stride. Before the third year ended, he had a steam engine to supplement the foot power1. In my master collection, the year 1874 does have a few pages with crooked copy, now seen as heroic testament to Root's will to get out those early issues.

 The first few years of a bee journal's life with the workload falling on one dedicated person, or perhaps just a few people, would be a fragile time to maintain publication deadlines. A low starting circulation, too few advertisements and mounting expenses could doom a fledgling bee paper to a quick demise. While the American Bee Journal and Bee Culture are well known by today's beekeepers, far less appreciated is an obscure historical fact with important ramifications.

 A total of 99 other periodicals related to bees were started in the United States (and ten in Canada). A nine-page list of them, including short descriptions, appears in an unlikely place, the Report of the State Apiarist of Iowa for 1930, now a remote dusty corner of the beekeeping literature. Most of these publications led brief lives. They surely indicate long life for a bee journal was quite unusual. Overall, a survival rate of less than 2%. A mere two ticks from certain death. On the other hand, so many start-ups suggest a fledgling industry grappling with how to meet its demand for beekeeping information.

 Consider the heart wrenching yet quietly heroic story behind The Beekeepers Review launched in 1888 by W. Z. Hutchinson, a well-known comb-honey producer from Flint, Michigan. The Review was well received with informative articles. From the fifty or so issues I have managed to collect (far from a complete set), Hutchinson's long-standing style was to inform the readers of publication difficulties. So when his health weakened and finances tightened, requiring him to give up the rented space in town, and while watching a sick child and publishing the Review essentially from the living room of his home, the readers knew it was a true family effort. Hutchinson also had a terrible burden of family hardships to endure, threatening to unravel the Review, his main source of income.

 Apparently, it was fairly well known in beekeeping circles that Mrs. Hutchinson was not well. An editorial in the American Beekeeper, a periodical published in Jamestown, New York, reported in September 1897, "As has been generally known Mrs. Hutchinson has, for some time been in ill health, both mentally and physically ...." While that was common knowledge, what was coming sure shocked them and me too. As an apicultural historian, I have known and read about Hutchinson since I was a teenager. He wrote Advanced Bee Culture, a well-known book among bee-book collectors. Only a few months ago did I find the article telling the tragedy, written bravely and eloquently by Hutchinson himself, possibly to prepare his readers in case upcoming issues were late.

Honey Bee Biology  - June 2010

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Full Version

Fourth Annual Report on the Coexistence
of my North Carolina Bees with Varroa

In this article, I report on some of my varroa research for the summer of 2009. This research was supported by a grant from the California State Beekeepers' Association and with funding assistance from the Virginia State Beekeepers Association. As a lead up to that research, here is some background information.

By the 2008 field season, my North Carolina bees had survived untreated for varroa for six years. The data from that season suggested their varroa populations were indeed remarkably small. Using my digital camera technique to record their sealed brood and adult bee populations, along with the appropriate sampling, the average varroa population estimates were 628 in June and 398 in August. For all but one colony the brood infestation rates were well below ten percent1.

These low numbers and other observations suggested the varroa populations remained small. The bees, as the host, may have struck a balance with their varroa, as the parasite, a situation referred to as a host-parasite equilibrium. It is important to know how this host-parasite equilibrium maintains itself, a compelling point since it did not occur from the introduction of a resistant queen stock. Rather it occurred once the more susceptible colonies perished after I stopped applying miticides (although I was taking a sizable chance of losing all my North Carolina colonies).

Ironically while encouraging, these low varroa populations posed a problem for my 2009 field studies. I wanted to know if Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH), a genetic trait, had been selected for, to the extent that it could be playing a role in protecting my colonies. With VSH, bees detect varroa within the sealed brood cells. The bees uncap the cells and remove the infested pupae2. Removing the pupae disrupts the mite's reproduction cycle. (A worker brood cell is capped for about 12 days. Initially the mature larva spins a very thin cocoon. Then, the larva stretches out lengthwise in the cell becoming a propupa, "pro" meaning "before" the pupa. The entire time period, which includes spinning the cocoon, propupa, and pupa duration, is collectively known as the post-capping time, "post" referring to after the brood cap. When removing infested sealed brood, VSH bees tend not remove spinning larvae or propupae, but rather show a preference for removing young pupae 3-5 days post capping2.)

If my North Carolina bees had the VSH trait at high enough frequencies, then they could be removing enough of the infested brood to reduce the overall reproduction rate of the mites. The reduced reproduction rate could then allow the bees and varroa to coexist. The problem was that the brood infestation rates, as indicated from the 2008 data, were already quite low. Therefore, I needed a method to increase the brood infestation, at least initially, and then see if the bees could decrease it. For that I devised the following procedure.

I caged the queens in six colonies. These colonies would donate one brood comb each with elevated infestation levels to six colonies to be tested for VSH. The queens in the donor colonies remained caged until all their remaining brood had emerged. The varroa in their colonies would reside only on the adult bees (as phoretic mites) since no brood was available for their reproduction. Next, each queen was released on one comb of worker cells. With my top-bar hives, I enclosed this comb between two plastic queen excluders cut to the trapezoidal cross section of the hive. The overall set up is shown in Figure 1.

Unlike the ease of placing a queen excluder on a standard hive, installing one in a top-bar hive takes more patience. I use the heavy grade plastic excluder and put wood strips along the edges to block the cut open meshes where a queen could get through. It has just become easier to attach these wood strips to the sides and bottom of the excluder with discarded telephone wire, letting the strips snug up to the sides and floor of the hive. A wood stick, just a top-bar cut short and turned edge-wise, is grooved to accept the upper edge of the excluder. This arrangement helps support the excluder from above as shown in Figure 2. (As a side note to reduce my emails, I also use these top-bar queen excluders in honey production hives. For "all-natural" top-bar beekeeping, a philosophy without plastics in the hive, a position I respect, I would offer an idea from our apicultural past. In my historical hive collection are a few hand-made queen excluders with "bars" made from hardwood strips, probably oak. I do not know how well they worked, but with precision woodworking, the same idea could be applied to top-bar hives for keeping queens out of the rear of the hive where the bees store surplus honey.)

Ideally, a queen would finish laying eggs in this single worker comb in about 24 hours, producing brood of nearly the same age (called a brood cohort). In this situation, however, since the queens were caged, which of course interrupts their egg-laying, they were not initially at full egg production. Nor was the season conducive for maximum egg laying, a hot summer with a weak nectar flow. Five of the queens began laying slowly. (One had to be removed from the experiment.) After three days, the queens produced patches of eggs large enough for data collection, although I left them on the combs for two more days, making sure plenty of brood would be present. With the required amount of brood, I removed each comb from between the queen excluders and placed it near the entrance end of its hive, where the bees typically form the brood nest. At brood-capping time, this comb position would give the maturing larvae maximal exposure to varroa-infested bees. The queens were recaged and placed near their brood combs, insuring that each colony had only one comb of brood.

A colony's varroa population, though low in number and now phoretic, must concentrate themselves on this one brood comb for reproduction. The percent of infested brood should be much higher compared to a normally larger brood nest where reproductive mites are more spread out among the cells (which greatly lowers the percent infestation).

Just after the brood was capped, while the larvae were still spinning their cocoons, I collected the five top-bar combs. For each one, half of it was cut away to record the initial brood infestations. The remaining combs were each placed in five test colonies and removed just before the brood emerged. From these combs, exposed to the test colonies for VSH activity, a final brood infestation was determined. Comparing the initial and final infestation should give an indication of any VSH activity. If considerable VSH activity is present, then the final brood infestation should be substantially lower than the initial infestation, and this effect should be consistent among the test colonies. For example, one colony had an initial brood infestation of 50.3%. The final infestation had dropped to 37.7%, a reduction of 12.6%. Overall the brood infestation decreased in all five colonies with an average reduction of 13.9%. This result does not mean that this bee stock can decrease the brood infestation by 13.9% all the time (for every brood cycle). Rather I would take a more conservative position. It shows that the colonies can consistently decrease the infestation level (a qualitative answer that the study was designed to give).

Interestingly, the elevated brood infestation levels (up to 61%) generated by the study were more like what I saw in the early 1990's, far from the low levels I see today. Also in the study, many cells had more than one invading (mother) mite (found either in initial or final brood samples). Two and three mites in a cell were common; a few had up to eight mites. One cell held the dubious record, far surpassing the rest: 13 mother mites crammed in it (from an initial brood sample). What a long time it has been since I have seen that. A flashback to the tumultuous "old" varroa days, a terrible time when strong colonies died suddenly in the summer. I remember their brood nests seething with thousands of mites. Robber bees plundering unprotected honey, free food for the taking. Or so it seemed. They brought home hitchhiking mites, the seeds to destroy their colonies. More deaths in a long chain of casualties. Not only were colony losses immense, but many people quit beekeeping too. More victims of varroa. Lately things have definitely been looking up, even with setbacks along the way.

While the 2009 field results suggest that these bees are disrupting varroa reproduction by VSH, other factors could be involved to maintain the host-parasite equilibrium. For example, the varroa mites (themselves) may also have lowered their reproduction rates or increased their phoretic (nonreproductive) period, becoming in essence less virulent, helping colonies to survive. These other factors need to be understood to see if and how they contribute to maintaining the equilibrium between these bees and varroa.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks Suzanne Sumner for her comments on the manuscript, and the California State Beekeepers' Association and the Virginia State Beekeepers Association for funding support.

Literature Cited
1Mangum, W. A. (2009). The third annual report on the coexistence of my North Carolina bees with varroa. American Bee Journal. 149: 63-65.
2Harris, J. W. (2007). Bees with varroa sensitive hygiene preferentially remove mite infested pupae aged ≤ five days post capping. Journal of Apicultural Research. 46: 134-139.

Honey Bee Biology  - May 2010

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Full Version

Apicultural History, Top-Bar Hives, and Comb Building Behavior Make an Interesting Mix

In the previous article, we examined a brief history of the modifications to the Langstroth frame. For efficient colony inspection, self-spacing frames are essential.  We saw an original Hoffman frame, a real rarity, that led to the simplified self-spacing frame of today. Having combs built straight in the frames is also a necessity. Before foundation was widely available, we learned last time that beekeepers of the late 1800's provided bees with a comb starting edge to work from either as a wood strip or a "V" under the top bar.  Building upon the previous article, this one combines apicultural history and bee behavior during comb construction that I have observed from keeping bees in 200 top-bar hives for well over 20 years. Hopefully this interdisciplinary approach will be illuminating. 
 Once I met a commercial beekeeper in Virginia who made comb honey by the ton from several hundred hives. He had the most unusual brood frame. Immediately upon seeing them, I knew their origins - Van Deusen Reversible Frames. The beehive version of taking a giant leap back in time a century or more. These frames have little cast iron corners with protruding "ears," as they were called, that spaced the frames (see Figure 1). These are also free-standing frames. The lower ears of the frames rest on two thin strips of tin nailed under the bottom ends of the brood chamber.  The brood chamber requires no frame rest (rabbet), which of course simplifies its construction or frames can be used in a standard brood chamber (with the tin strips). 
 Ponder this immortal and elegant aspect of the Van Deusen frame: the wooden part of the frame, like any other in a beekeeping operation, weakens over time from general wear and gnawing wax moth larvae.  Eventually the frame becomes too rickety and is discarded.  The wood part - not the ears. Cast iron ears had not been made since probably some time in the 1890's. So the precious ears, saved like a treasure, were nailed into the next batch of frames (see Figure 2). Over the decades, they passed through at least three beekeeping families, originating in New York, as the hives in this operation were bought and sold.  No telling though how many bee generations scurried over those ears. Digging deeper revealed some curious history about the Van Deusen frame and little-known behaviors about bees building comb.
 Since the frame is not suspended, but rather stands, and with all corners the same, the frame is symmetric. A beekeeper can remove a Van Deusen frame, turn it upside-down and put it back into the hive. Try that with a modern frame.  But why would you?  That is, why would a beekeeper want to replace brood frames upside-down?  Granted it's hard to conjure up one reason for such a strange maneuver. Would you believe beekeepers from more than a century ago had two good reasons for this? Originally, the Van Deusen frame was designed for producing comb honey. A problem with comb honey production was having too many unfinished sections. To help the bees finish them, the accepted old practice was to "reverse" the frames (particularly I think towards the end of the nectar flow). The band of honey, normally at the top of the brood comb, would be switched to the bottom.  Bees will not maintain that arrangement (unless the colony has no empty comb above, that is, conditions are excessively crowded). The bees will move the honey upwards, and into the comb honey sections and hopefully finish filling them. (These sections were directly above the brood nest in a single super.)
 The other reason for reversing frames probably resulted from not using complete sheets of foundation. Even if the bees built the comb straight in the frame, upon finishing it, the bees rarely attached the comb to the bottom bar. Instead, they left a gap between the lower edge of the comb and the bottom bar, a gap of about three-eighths of an inch wide1. This bottom gap made the combs weaker. Most likely it led to more breakage during colony inspections or when moving hives over rough dirt roads with horse and wagon. (This chronic bottom gap problem is not observed when foundation extends through the bottom bar, another reason for using complete sheets, though that reason is seldom acknowledged. I did see commercial bee operations in India with truckloads of hives moved over rough roads.  The broken combs mostly had the bottom gaps. The starting foundation had not extended all the way to the bottom bar.  From horse and wagon to the truck, history repeats itself.)
 The gap between finished comb and the bottom bar becomes essentially a bee space.  In my top-bar hives (Figure 3), the bees do the same thing. They build comb from just foundation strips (see below), my version of a comb starter, a situation very similar to that in the hives of the late 1800's. Upon completing the combs, the bees rarely, if ever, attach them to the hive floor. Rather they just leave a bee space under them, which is their passageway (Figure 4).  Therefore, back in the historical hives, the bees were most likely treating the bottom bars like the floor of the hive. (Also for this time period, 1880's and into the 1890's, beekeepers did not use double brood chamber hives, particularly for comb honey production.  So for the brood frames, all their bottom bars are next to the hive floor.)
 To strengthen the comb, the beekeeper from a century ago needed a way to make the bees fill in this troublesome gap. The trick was to move the gap to the top of comb - by reversing the frame. While it might seem unlikely, it's claimed the bees would fill in the gap when it's above the comb.  When I first read about this technique, I figured it would work. Here's why. First assume there is no super, then the reversed frame would have the gap near the very top of the hive. Now this situation is similar to an experience with my top-bar hives. 
 A very windy spring caught a few of my hives light on stores and flipped them over.  The hives, located a three-hour drive away, remained upside-down for several weeks.  To put it in our historical context, the wind "reversed" all the combs. The gaps the bees left at the bottom of the combs and floor had become gaps between the top of the combs and ceiling. I learned the hard way that bees would not tolerate long thin gaps up there.  They may leave a few holes for walkways, but mostly the little welders fill in the gap, making hive and combs all one. I had to cut out the combs to fix them, a long miserable job. Likewise it seems reversing a Van Deusen frame would have fixed their bottom gap problem.
 The comb-starting techniques we examined in the previous article do not lie dead in the past, forgotten on the yellowing pages of old bee journals. Rather they have returned to the present, reincarnated in another hive, the top-bar hive. One technique I have heard of is to cut a center groove down the middle of the top bar. Then, for the wood strip (a comb starting edge), a beekeeper fills the groove with popsicle sticks (inserting them parallel to the bar). This avoids having to rip numerous thin strips on a table saw. This modern method is essentially the same as having the frame with the wood strip (comb guide) under the top bar. In addition, somewhere I saw a booklet or article on top-bar hives where the underside of the top bar was cut as a "V," complicating the simplicity of the hive. This method uses the old frame idea with the V-shaped top bar.
 A typical top-bar hive question I get is how to make the bees build straight combs from the bars. The wood strip is not always satisfactory (which probably goes for the "V" strips too). Furthermore, my suspicion from "reading between the lines" of the old bee literature was that beekeepers of the past were not generally satisfied with these designs either. Here is one way comb construction can deviate from the comb guides. As mentioned in the previous article, bees elongate honey cells. When bees build a set of combs, they sometimes bulge the honey cells, particularly toward the upper corners, on one comb before they lengthen the adjacent comb. When the bees extend that next comb, it must curve to avoid the bulging ends of the preceding comb (see Figure 5).  As this problem repeats, the set of combs begins to curve. If the curvature is severe, combs become attached to multiple top bars.
 What will deter excessive comb bulging (and just a general curvature of the comb) is an adjacent sheet of foundation. When foundation first became readily available, it could be expensive for beekeepers. Not surprisingly, they sometimes cut foundation sheets into strips, and attached them to the top bars with melted wax, using the strips more like comb starter. That works unless the strips are too narrow. To keep my top-bar combs straight, I mimic the top of a full sheet of foundation by providing a wide foundation strip (about an inch an a half).  Figure 6 shows my setup for attaching the foundation strips with molten wax to a big batch of top bars.
 Standard equipment has made the beekeeping industry more efficient and profitable. Nonstandard operations, now so exotic, are reminders of past historical diversity. Some of those old designs had their illuminating points, perhaps in unexpected ways that are even relevant to research today. One should keep in mind that in subtle ways the hive design itself limits the manipulations on the bees (say with suspended frames) and may narrow our observations on them (as with complete foundation sheets) and cause us to miss some of their interesting behaviors.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks Suzanne Sumner for her comments on the manuscript.

Literature Cited

1Alley, H. (1885). The bee-keepers handy book: Or twenty-two years' experience in queen rearing. Published by the Author. Wenham, Massachusetts.

Honey Bee Biology  - April 2010

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Excerpt

Innovations That Led the Langstroth Frame to Its Full Potential

   Profound innovations often need refinements and modifications to become truly useful. That's what happened to the movable frame, a momentous revolution in apiculture.

In October of 1851, the Rev. L. L.  Langstroth struck upon the fundamental idea. Enclose a comb in a wooden frame leaving a three-eighths inch gap between it and the sides, floor and top of the hive. The bees would leave this passageway open, neither filling it with propolis for being too narrow nor comb for being too wide. The bee space, as it came to be known, allowed inspection of individual combs, forever divorcing beekeepers from the drudgery of cutting combs from the hive. Centuries of that collective misery were banished from most parts of the beekeeping world by his careful observation, insight, and practical problem solving.
 Langstroth secured a patent by the following October of a hive with movable frames (patent number 9,300). Even though the bee space idea was an exceedingly simple idea, compared to the typical beehive patent, Langstroth's was about twice as long. There were other components besides the movable frame included in his patent: double glass hive walls, a device to trap wax moths, and honey receptacles (see Figure 1). In 1853, the first edition of Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee, a Beekeeper's Manual was published. In this now rare edition, Langstroth described the bee management benefits of his hive with movable frames. He also offered to sell individual or farm rights for others to build his hive. Or assembled hives could be ordered from him directly.
 Unfortunately, the movable frame hive did not bring Langstroth the financial reward it should have. Others violated the patent by making their own frames. In addition, the Langstroth frame needed modifications. As originally conceived, the Langstroth frame was not self-spacing. The beekeeper had to manually space out the frames. No doubt, a time consuming task.

Honey Bee Biology  - March 2010

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Excerpt

Using Old Bee Supply Catalogs to Reconstruct the

Histories of Beekeeping Equipment

In my studies of beekeeping history in the United States, I have been collecting and preserving old beekeeping equipment since the 1970's. Driving around the country, thousands of miles, whatever it takes, to get old rare hives, extractors and numerous other things beekeepers of the past used. If the equipment was manufactured in a big factory or a small shop, then somewhere there was literature on it in an advertisement, sales catalog, booklet, or perhaps some obscure pamphlet. Then, my job is to reconstruct the history of the equipment, which admittedly may take years.

Looking back into the late 1800's and past the turn of that century, numerous bee supply companies dotted the populated areas of our country. Bee suppliers promoted their particular hive styles, while others acted as hive distributors. Some of the hive designs were quite exotic; other designs were simple and more practical. Besides hives, other implements used by beekeepers also have lost histories: bee smokers and all kinds of unusual equipment for producing comb honey sections (in the wooden boxes). I have even tracked down the histories of queen cages from the 1880's.

Most of these pieces are quite rare. When found, they should be preserved and their history reconstructed. If the piece was manufactured, quite often the maker is unknown, unless the item was marked. To figure out who made it and when, one must resort to the old beekeeping literature - usually books and journals. Other fruitful identification sources are supply catalogs, part of the subject of this article. Included in my collecting has been building a reference collection of them, some several hundreds dating back to the 1870's.
 
Consider a hive purchased from an elderly commercial beekeeper in New York years ago (see Figure 1). He had retired and none of his family was interested in beekeeping. Nevertheless, he wanted to find a home for the clever old hive design lest it get thrown out someday. From the outside the hive looks fairly typical. The difference is on the inside. The frames are suspended from pins near the upper corners. The manner to space the frames is also different. The end-bars are straight and wide all the way down, instead of being wide just near the top as with a standard frame (see Figure 2).

Honey Bee Biology  - February 2010

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Excerpt

The Bingham Bee Smoker: Marketing Lessons from the Master

In the previous article, we learned how Tracy F. Bingham improved Quinby's original invention, the bee smoker, increasing its practical value to beekeepers. Bingham's contributions were leaving a gap between the bellows and firebox to keep it lit, a wire handle for refueling a hot smoker, and a smoke deflector to keep sparks from falling on the bees. These improvements helped make the smoker a more reliable beekeeping tool. And demand for bee smokers increased. But with demand came competition. Other manufacturers popped up, advertising their smokers in the bee journals, finding distributors, and cutting into the market. Bingham had to compete with them. Or get pushed out.
 One competitive advantage was to offer smokers in different sizes, letting beekeepers choose the one best suiting their needs. At first Bingham gave his smokers rather dull, drab, amorphous names like "extra large" and "plain." Later the names changed. The new names were a stroke of marketing flair. They showed an empathic understanding of what a stung-up beekeeper endured with defensive bees and little means to control them.
 In 1885, a Bingham advertisement caught the reader's eye with a smoker named "THE CONQUEROR," emblazoned across the page, boldly in banner headline style, as if some glorious battle had ended in a victory - this time for the beekeeper. Another Bingham smoker carried a less audacious name, the "Doctor." Nevertheless, it suggested a certain amount of corrective medicine for irritable bees.
 The Conqueror and Doctor were fairly large smokers with barrel diameters (the fireboxes) of three inches, and three and a half inches, respectively. Later on an even larger smoker size was offered with, by their old standards, a whopping four-inch diameter barrel. It was aptly named the "Smoke Engine." For beekeepers of the 1800's, that name probably conjured up images of a giant rugged railroad steam engine belching out huge columns of dark smoke into the sky, a mighty source of strength, power, and awe. What a perfect image for a bee smoker.
 At the opposite end of the size spectrum, a small petite smoker, with only a one-and-three-quarter inch diameter barrel, carried the do-not-underestimate-me name of "Little Wonder." In later years, its size slowly increased with diameters of up to two and a half inches. Although lower in price, smaller smokers were generally harder to keep lit, which most likely accounted for the size increase. Small smokers could have appealed to beekeepers with a few hives who perhaps only needed smoke for short periods of time. On the other hand, large smokers, smoldering all day, would be favored by beekeepers with many colonies. So to some degree, each smoker size probably found its own niche market among a range of beekeepers maintaining different size operations. Still, each smoker size had to compete with the other sizes or face the possibility of being discontinued. Figure 1 dramatizes the competition aspect with the dwarf-like Little Wonder squared off against a giant Smoke Engine, a kind of David and Goliath scene from a long forgotten bee-smoker world. 

Honey Bee Biology  - January 2010

The Bingham Bee Smoker:
Innovations Were Key to Success

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department, University of Mary Washington, 1301 College AvenueFredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

Today kids grow up never knowing a world without the Internet, digital cameras, cell phones, and that most momentous decision of all - what ring tone to choose. Well, I submit a bit of historical perspective is in order. What about today's beekeeper? For well over a century, we have "grown up" in a beekeeping world never knowing it without our trusty protector - the bee smoker.

Once, before the standard bee smoker became so iconic, smudge pots or other creative contraptions were supposed to waft smoke upon irritable bees. More often the beekeeper disappeared within an eye-blinding cloud of smoke, doubling the pain of opening the hive. Corncobs aplenty littered the old country farms of the 1800's. Many a beekeeper-farmer made use of their smoldering properties trying to subdue their bees - powered by human breath until dizzy. But away the world spun, they were helpless to run, and again the bees won.
 
These painful tribulations, now mostly forgotten, are scattered through the yellowing pages of the old beekeeping literature. In this article and the next, I will show what made them so obscure - the development of the modern bee smoker. I trace out one historical bee smoker lineage, starting in the late 1800's. That path will eventually lead to the modern smoker for sale today in the catalog of the Dadant and Sons Company. It's a kind of bee smoker genealogy, except we start from the beginning and go forward.

The pivotal year in the development of the bee smoker occurred in 1873, when Moses Quinby of St. Johnsville, New York produced a bellows smoker1. His smoker began to resemble the modern form, though the funnel pointed straight up (see Figure 1). His lightweight smoker could be operated with one hand, the funnel directing smoke right to where it was needed. Yet particularly among Quinby's earliest smokers, the fire went out prematurely. Quinby may have corrected this flaw, but in 1875, he died suddenly. Nevertheless, he purposefully did not patent his crucial invention, and instead he gave it freely to the beekeeping community.
 
Other beekeeper-inventors made improvements on Quinby's breakthrough design. The lineage we will follow is from Tracy F. Bingham of Abronia, Michigan. We will see that he was not only a clever inventor, but a master at marketing smokers too. A patent issued to him in 1878 marked the beginning of a smoker allowing a passive airflow to maintain the fire so it would not go out leaving the beekeeper unprotected. Interestingly, back then there was no patent classification for "bee smoker." Ironically Bingham's invention was classified as a "Device for Destroying Insects by Fumigation." Instead of a solid connecting pipe between the firebox and bellows, as in the original Quinby design, Bingham left a small, but critical, gap between them. This arrangement allowed air to draft upwards from the bottom of the firebox, through the fire, and flow out from the funnel when the bellows were not pumped. In the patent, Bingham explained,

It will be observed that an open space is left between the bellows and the opening of the stove [firebox]; the object of which is to allow the air to pass freely to both the stove and the bellows, and at the same time to enable the air to be forced into the stove to project the smoke in the direction desired.

With this patent description in mind, Figure 2 shows a comparison at the base of the smokers between an original Quinby smoker of the early 1870's and a Bingham smoker. This Quinby smoker was made by Quinby himself. It is not the style of Quinby smoker manufactured by Quinby's son-in-law L. C. Root after Quinby's death in 1875. The large prominent connecting pipe on the original Quinby smoker would definitely help inject air into the bellows. This solid connection would not, of course, allow a passive air draft to keep the fire lit when the smoker was not in use. In contrast, the Bingham design left a gap allowing a passive flow of air through the bellows.

On your modern smoker, that humble but decisive gap is still there - a silent testimony to Bingham's lasting innovation. It continues to make our beekeeping lives infinitely easier. In use for well over a century, who knows how many millions of stings we have been spared due to this simple and immensely effective idea.

But wait! The Bingham innovation story is still far from complete. Notice that with a hot smoker, having a simple cone-style funnel makes refueling it easy to burn one's fingers. So, in addition to stings, one can get nasty finger burns. Bingham wanted his smokers refueled without that danger. His 1892 patent announced the solution - a wire-handle. Although the smoker gets hot, the slender wire efficiently radiates heat and remains cool. The wire loops on the earlier funnels tended to be elaborate while the loops on the later funnels became simpler, apparently making them easier to mass-produce with less material (see Figure 3). Today it's hard to imagine how we could get along so easily without the coil wire handle on the top of our smoker, letting us refuel it quickly and burn-free.

Another of Bingham's smoker designs really baffled me for a few years, mainly because it did not stand the test of time. It started in earnest when I acquired a Bingham smoker in mint condition, still factory shiny inside, never touched by a fire's black soot. The smoker though was built in a weird way. The funnel fit on the inside of the cylindrical barrel forming the firebox (see Figure 4). Usually the funnel fits on the outside like the modern version. I thought perhaps this might be a defect, thus accounting for the lack of use. However, the cylindrical barrel was rolled with an inward projecting rim just below where the funnel fit into it. This internal rim stopped the funnel from going too deep where it could not be removed. So it seemed all this was done for some purpose, a reason buried in the past. Why?

The answer to my micro-mystery came in Bingham's 1903 patent, and is reminiscent of an annoying problem we still see today. With repeated use, soot and tar accumulate in a smoker. Black tar condenses in the funnel (because it's cooler) and runs downward. If the cap fits on the outside of the rim, the tar leaks out and runs down the outside of the smoker. These tar streaks are commonly seen on the outside of modern smokers. Bingham wanted a smoker without these tar streaks. Furthermore, he wanted to prevent the smoker from blowing bits of condensed tar and ash onto newly built white comb-honey sections, where its removal was exceedingly difficult. His solution: make the funnel fit on the inside of the rim, forcing the tar to run down the inside where it would be burned again. Hence advertisements sometimes called these smokers soot-burning or self-cleaning smokers.

This design was also supposed to keep the joint between the funnel and rim clear of tar deposits that harden when cooled. As those deposits accumulate, fitting the funnel to the outside rim becomes awkward when the smoker is closed. Again, my workhorse modern smoker would be a good example of this condition. Occasionally, I must scrape away those hard deposits so the smoker will close properly.

Along with this soot-burning feature, Bingham also claimed in the same patent a way of keeping the inside of the funnel so hot that burned materials would not condense within it. He lined the outside of the funnel with asbestos (which is a hazardous material), felt, or some other nonconductive material to insulate the heat. In addition this lining was to keep the funnel cool to the outside touch. However in all my years of collecting bee smokers, I have never seen any Bingham funnels lined in this manner. I wonder if this design was ever put into production, although I have been able to find soot-burning Bingham smokers in different sizes (see Figure 5).

The funnel on the original Bingham, like the Quinby before it, pointed straight up. To use either, the smoker must be inverted, pointing the funnel downward to direct the smoke on the bees. This position created an annoying problem. Burning embers could fall on the bees and get between the frames, a condition sometimes called "fire dropping" in the old bee literature. Bingham's simple solution was to deflect the smoke to the side with a small piece of metal attached around the opening of the funnel (see Figure 3 again). This improvement avoided having to redesign the shape of the funnel (like we see today). With the deflector, the smoker could be used upright, making it easier to handle. In later production, the smoke deflector was simplified to just a curved piece of metal, instead of the more elaborate folded piece used earlier.

Having innovative ideas is only part of surviving in the bee supply trade, beset with intense competition and copycats. To keep selling smokers through the years, one must be innovative at marketing too. Next time we will see how Bingham mastered the marketing game. As a mark of that success, the only thing that would drive him out of the bee smoker business was - old age.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Suzanne Sumner for her comments on the manuscript.

Literature Cited
1Root, L. C. (1883). Quinby's new bee-keeping. The mysteries of beekeeping explained. Orange Judd Company. New York.

Honey Bee Biology - December 2009

Watching Winter Clusters

(excerpt)

by Dr. Wyatt A. Mangum
Mathematics Department; University of Mary Washington, 1301 College Avenue
Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401-5358
e-mail:  wmangum@umw.edu

A major event in the beekeeping season is the first spring inspection - and sadly counting up the colonies that did not survive the winter. What happens to them during the winter locked away from the beekeeper's watchful eye? I had wanted to study winter clusters in distress from pathogens and figured my bee house might be an acceptable place to begin.
 My bee house holds 30 single-comb observation hives. In the active season, these hives can be used for all sorts of experiments and observations. I have used them for studying queen introduction, comb construction, and swarming, just to name a few. I have even let some small colonies attempt to over winter in these single-comb hives. While our winters are generally mild in eastern Virginia, we do get bouts of near zero temperatures. Small clusters with already limited heat production and retention have difficulty surviving such cold. And there's another problem. The cluster is in contact with the glass panes. Glass is a poor insulator and drains their heat away. (Generally, those are the reasons why it's not worth over wintering observation hives. Even if the bees survive, for public showing, the hives would probably need to be disassembled and cleaned anyway, especially the glass. It would be easier and more attractive to start the hives over in the spring.)
 For another line of research, I want to observe large winter clusters under more realistic conditions. That would require a different observation hive design. Readers following my articles know that I keep my bees in top-bar hives not frame hives. Years ago I did build a multiple comb observation top-bar hive, which I could have used (see Figure 1). It was a terror to construct. The worst part - getting the angles of the sloping sides correct to be "close" to my other hives. And the glass! Each piece turned out to be a different size. I just took the hive to an "old time" hardware store, and a glasscutter custom fit each piece.
 The next multiple-comb observation hive needed a much simpler construction since I wanted to build ten of them. In addition, I wanted to open the hives quickly and with a minimum of vibration. That would be needed for removing fallen bees over time to check them for mites or various internal pathogens (viruses, Nosema, etc.). Figure 2 shows one of the two prototype hives I built and tested last winter. The hive holds up to 14 combs. Converting that comb area to a standard hive, it would be equivalent to a ten-frame deep super (brood chamber) and about half of a shallow super.
 To use this observation hive, the colony is installed in late summer. While the combs have a sloping shape from the top-bar hive, this observation hive has vertical glass walls. The bees may extend the combs somewhat towards the glass, but our marginal fall flow does not stimulate much comb construction. What little construction does occur results from fall feeding and is mainly from recycled brownish wax (not newly secreted white wax). The hive is not designed for a strong colony to stay in it all year because the combs could not be removed easily. Thus this hive design is specialized mostly for winter observations.
 

Acknowledgments
The author thanks Suzanne Sumner for her comments on the manuscript.

Literature Cited
1Seeley, T. D. (1985). Honey Bee Ecology. Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey.

_____________________________________________

Honey Bee Biology - November 2009

Trapping Bees: A Visual Demonstration From
Outside and Inside the Hive

(excerpt)

Long before varroa mites came to the United States, killing most of the feral bees, I used these bees to help build up my honey production operation while still in high school. I had about 125 hives (back then in frame hives), producing honey by the ton. For some of the bees, I trapped them out of houses - for free - just to get the bees! Hey, it was the 1970's. I was naïve and had a thermometer-popping case of bee fever. It was, nevertheless, exceptionally good practice to accumulate a wealth of bee removal experience. Each job called for a customized strategy, which like any battle plan, was subject to change at a moment's notice. One needed to be innovative, sometimes working quickly with limited materials right on the spot. Those were good beekeeping and life skills to develop when things did not go as planned.

_____________________________________________

Honey Bee Biology - October 2009 

Catching Flying Queens Bare-Handed and a Teenaged-Girl:
How One Got a Second Chance From the Other

(excerpt)

Here's something not in a typical bee book - how to catch a flying queen out of the air - bare handed. It's a handy skill to have in that critical micro-second when your $20 queen has just escaped from her shipping cage. And there she goes flying off to oblivion.

When giving my queen introduction presentation, which is quite detailed, I include some advice on catching flying . They might get away when releasing the attendant bees from the shipping cage. This past April, I gave that talk at the meeting of the Virginia State Beekeepers Association. Many new members had recently joined and their President had wisely said it was time to present this important information again. When we got to removing the attendant bees, I explained a couple of "safe" options. Then, because I do not want my bee talks to be merely "play-it-again-reruns," I mentioned something I just seen for sale on the internet (not mind you, as any kind of product endorsement). It was a queen bee muff (Figure 1). As the name implies, it is shaped like a cylinder, made of screen with cloth-pleated ends. Though I have never used one (soon you will see why), here's my take on how to use it. Holding it like a hand muff with the cage inside, one can release the attendant bees. If the queen escapes the cage, she cannot fly away. With some patience and gentle handling, she can be caught and be returned to the cage.

Next came some real firepower. I believe people should know what is possible with handling bees, so I told the audience how I release attendant bees - standing right in the apiary (not in the bee truck) - the ultimate high-wire act with no net. Holding a standard three-hole shipping cage vertically with the candy end down, I pop the (upper) releasing cork. In the typical scenario, the safest plan is to keep the queen in the cage and let out the attendants. The procedure does work, but usually the last one or two workers are slow to come out. And if one needs to install a dozen , the down time really adds up.

Over the years, I have gotten to the point where I do not care which bee comes out of the cage first - queen or attendant. In fact if the queen comes out first, everything goes quickly. In the moment just before she takes flight, I gently catch her, remove the attendant bees by shaking the cage like a thermometer, and put the queen back in the cage. Being able to tell the face of a queen from a worker lets me know who's next out of the hole. How to distinguish their faces seems like a trivial bee fact - now turned into a critical piece of information.

If a queen (rarely) gets the jump on me and becomes airborne, I instantly drop everything and go to catch her. For that, two opposite ingredients are needed - speed and gentleness. I "aim" or in a sense imagine the palm of my hand intersecting her in space. ally catching her between the fingers is dangerous because she could be crushed, particularly her soft abdomen. (It's best to keep all fingers together.) When I catch an errant queen, it's an ecstatic feeling. Upon missing, which has happened, well it crushes the pleasure out of the rest of the day.

As I finished telling this rather exotic bit of bee handling skill to the Virginia beekeepers, there was a pause, I suppose, for everyone to absorb it. Then, with perfect comedic timing, a beekeeper in the back blurted out - "How much for that bee muff?" The whole crowd roared with laughter, including me. We do have a good time at these meetings.

If time permits in these talks, here are some other points I include. Sometimes in a few minutes a queen will return to the place from where she escaped, so keep a watch for her. I have heard other beekeepers say to put the cage at a conspicuous place close to where she left, and step back and wait. She might return and land on the cage.

Acknowledgments
The author thanks Suzanne Sumner for her comments on the manuscript.

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