Honey Bee Suite

The birds and the bees

Rusty — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:56:56 +0000

Are birds bugging your bees, swooping down for a meal every chance they get? Several beekeepers have mentioned persistent birds that have moved right into the cafeteria, so to speak, picking bees off the virtual conveyor belt that travels in and out of the hive.

My advice is not to worry. Here in North America, we don’t have birds that make honey bees their primary diet—even if it looks that way sometimes.

Two readers in the last month have described scrub jays hanging about in the trees just above the hive. Apparently they will snatch live bees right out of the air and scavenge dead ones from the ground. But scrub jays, like most of our birds, are omnivores that like a varied diet. They eat bees when it’s convenient but move on to other things such as berries, seeds, worms, or other insects as they become readily available. As the growing season progresses and different food items become plentiful, the birds usually move on, selecting other locations and other morsels to whet their appetites.

Right now your queen is busy laying perhaps 2000 eggs per day. That’s a lot of bees and probably a lot more than your birds are hungry for. And remember, too, that birds that pluck dead bees from the ground are doing you a favor—dead bees attract other predators, including hornets and yellow jackets, that ultimately may do more harm than the birds.

So relax, enjoy watching your birds, and remember that they are all part of the ecosystem, the web of life. Once your birds move on, you will probably miss their crazy antics.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

A western scrub jay with a stinging insect. Flickr photo by Jessi Bryan.

To gleefully bludgeon a beemudgeon

Rusty — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:41:55 +0000

I dearly want to poke this guy in the stomach with his own hive tool, over and over again until light dawns in his pea brain . . .

Yesterday I wrote about the new beekeeper whose rip-roaring hive was throwing swarms like tantrums—one right after another. Using sound beekeeping principles she had raised a boisterous hive that grew too big for its own comfort. After the third swarm, she opened the hive and found both deep brood boxes crammed with honey—something she hadn’t expected.

I explained to her that checkerboarding the brood boxes early in the season would have relieved some of the congestion and broken down the honey barrier. I discussed some other techniques for swarm management as well. But in the meantime, she’s talking to her neighbor:

[A] beekeeper I talked to suggested that I created the hive congestion in the first place by wrapping the hive during the winter. He said it kept the bees too warm which resulted in less honey consumption which then left less space for the queen to start laying in the spring. What do you think?

What I think I cannot publish here. What I will say is this guy is a beemudgeon. A while back I wrote about the Seven types of beekeeping advice to avoid. Number 6 describes this guy to a T:

Be wary of curmudgeons, or let’s call them beemudgeons. These are people who give advice that contradicts whatever you are currently doing. They are know-it-alls who know nothing and get attention by saying the opposite. If you change, they change. They breed faster than mites and hang out in places where they can inflict the most damage.

Can you see why I have periodic falls from civility? This guy is saying it is her fault the bees swarmed because she took good care of them. Reading between the lines, he is saying that if she just starved them half to death they would not be vigorous enough to throw swarms. And if that’s not bad enough, he says that warm bees don’t eat as much as cold bees when we all know the opposite is true—there’s nothing like a warm winter to cause bees to burn through their honey supply faster than the speed of flight.

There’s not a beekeeper on earth who wouldn’t be pleased to have a strong colony with a good supply of honey in the spring—not even this guy. But since he’s a beemudgeon, he has to say the opposite: she is an inept beekeeper because her strong overwintered colony has too much honey. What???

Give me that hive tool!

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

The catch-22 of beekeeping

Rusty — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:35:26 +0000

Hey Rusty,

I started my first hive last year in early May from a swarm given to me by a local beekeeper. I did not harvest any honey, and I had to re-queen in October. Following your advice (quilt box, follower boards, HopGuard, etc.) I successfully overwintered the hive.

We had a warm, early spring and the hive was active. I inspected, reversed the deeps, fed sugar syrup with HBH for a week or two until things started blooming, treated with HopGuard, inspected again, and observed a big increase in population.

The first week in May I added a medium super. The next week they swarmed (size of a basketball). The following week they swarmed again (size of a basketball). Yesterday they swarmed again (size of a football).

There are still bees in the hive, but I haven’t inspected yet—postponing my disappointment, I guess. What should I have done early on? What should I do now?

[name withheld]

Swarming is the perfect catch-22. According to Wikipedia, a catch-22 is a “paradoxical situation in which an individual cannot avoid a problem because of contradictory constraints or rules. Often these situations are such that solving one part of a problem only creates another problem, which ultimately leads back to the original problem.”

As beekeepers, we do everything possible to make our colonies strong, robust, and healthy. If we succeed at that, if we do everything right from a colony-health perspective, the colony will be ripe for swarming. Colony reproduction (swarming) is something that healthy colonies do—it is not the province of the weak or struggling.

The logical thing to tell the writer is, “Sweet! You did everything right!” But of course that is not what she wants to hear. As a matter of fact, she is probably feeling like a failure, which makes no sense whatsoever if you look at it from the bee’s—or nature’s—point of view.

It is hard for us to think of swarming as a victory because what we want is different from what bees want. We want them to stay put so they don’t bug the neighbors. We want them to stay put so we can harvest lots of honey. We want them to stay put so we can start new colonies and raise more colonies that will also stay put.

Of all the strange ideas that exist among beekeepers, the most perplexing is the notion that “if your bees are happy, they will not swarm.” That is nonsense. A happy, healthy, robust colony is going to want to do what every other happy, healthy, robust organism wants to do—reproduce. If bees didn’t swarm throughout the millennia, bees would no longer exist. Why is that so hard to understand?

But back to our writer . . . You have to hand it to her—she raised an awesome batch of bees. To prevent, or at least limit swarming, the standard recommendations include reversing (which she did), checkerboarding, pyramiding, splitting, and re-catching. Also, good hive ventilation—screened bottoms, ventilated covers, and slatted racks—seems to be of some help.

As for what to do now, my recommendation is to wait a week or two and then check for eggs and larvae. Sometimes, especially after multiple swarms, the original colony is left without a viable queen and with little brood. If there is no fertile, egg-laying queen after two weeks, she should probably introduce one or risk losing the colony.

In this case, I think the beekeeper was unprepared for her own success. She came into spring with a stronger-than-expected colony and didn’t realize the bees would run out of room so quickly. But that is okay; it’s all part of the learning curve. Beekeeping cannot be mastered in a season or two; it takes more like years. And even then, there is always something new, something unexpected, something catch-22 ready to catch you.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Honey bee forage: Pacific waterleaf

Rusty — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:50:27 +0000

The Pacific waterleaf, Hydrophyllum tenuipes, is a northwest native plant that grows in shaded, moist forestland. Spreading by underground rhizomes, it often covers large areas and gives the ground a soft and undulating appearance. The flowers appear in April and May and are usually white with pink filaments, but in certain areas such as the Hoh Rainforest, the flowers may be purple or blue. The plants grow to about two-and-a-half feet tall at most.

Both bumble bees and honey bees are attracted to the blooms, so a patch of waterleaf makes a great place to take photos. According to Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast by Pojar and Mackinnon (1994), the roots of the Pacific waterleaf were eaten by the Cowlitz tribes of western Washington. I took the photos below on May 19, at the height of this year’s bloom.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Honey bee nectaring on a Pacific waterleaf flower.

Bumble bee on Pacific waterleaf. Note characteristic leaf shape.

Extracting Australian watermelon honey

Rusty — Sun, 20 May 2012 08:00:26 +0000

Supers blown free of bees.

It is 45°C (113°F) outside, so we wax-dip foundation in the shed until 11:00 and then take our places alongside the 72-frame radial extractor. We move honey supers to the warming room to prepare them for extraction (warm honey runs faster), but that hardly seems necessary when the heat’s on high outside.

It’s a three-person assembly line. Junior loads the supers onto a metal rack, where a mechanical arm punches up from below. The laden frames are caught on a conveyor belt that runs like a Ferris wheel. This pushes them towards a vibrating knife that peels caps from comb. Farther down the line, I scrape wax from top bars (it feels like flipping pancakes) while John uses a wide-comb wool shearer to open the caps the knife missed. The honey is bright and warm, and it pours like money down the slick steel slide.

Frames dripping with honey.

It’s efficient, but it’s also a mess. By lunchtime, I’m delighted to find watermelon honey dripping out my armpits. This isn’t specialty honey; it’s the by-product of a pollination contract with a watermelon grower. After extraction, we’ll blend it with other light-colored honeys. That’s a shame, I think, because this honey is bizarre. It has a light pink taste . . . something a little like water and melons. John doesn’t like it and says that coolabah (Eucalyptus coolabah) trees yield the best kind of honey. “Next to coolabah,” he says, “all the rest of your honey is mouthwash.” But I think it’s alright.

After lunch, I try to trade places on the assembly line. I move to lift a honey super onto the conveyor belt, but when I wrap my arms around the 35-kg (77 lb) deep, the best I can manage is a strained and sticky hug. Junior tells me I’m too little to be a beekeeper, but I would do well as an assistant. John says forget about my height. He’s just five-foot-seven, and the tall guys have back problems. I go back to flipping pancakes.

The work is loud and long, monotonous in a wonderful way. Once in a while, a stray bee lands on my sweaty honey neck, softly deciding not to sting. When we stop for a cuppa, John digs up the record player from a garage sale box. The extractor drowns out the music, but I feel like dancing anyway.

Honey frame assembly line.

We work all afternoon. Then it’s watermelon and beer for tea, and Dr. Who has just encountered the Dalek Emperor. During commercial breaks, John begins to explain his complicated relationship with the honey packers who have recently begun to mix Australian honey with Chinese and Argentine imports, which are cheap and of questionable content.

It’s more politics than I expected from this sort of occupation and only the first of several lessons regarding the business of beekeeping, but our conversation is cut short. The Dalek Emperor looks like a giant squid, and he means to destroy planet earth.

Maggie
HoneyBeeSuite

Editor’s note: If you don’t remember hearing of a coolibah tree, think back to the lyrics of “Walzing Maltila.” The first verse goes like this:

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
“You’ll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me.”

Honey house music.

Update on ants

Rusty — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:40:51 +0000

The post titled “Bad-ant ant advice and the ascension of bees” coaxed readers out of the woodwork. Some agreed with me that the ants were not the problem, some thought they were definitely the problem, and others thought there wasn’t enough information. I have to say that I learned a lot from the discussion. As with all beekeeping issues, the ant problem seems to hinge on the local environment: some places have troublesome ants and some don’t.

The reader who posed the original question has shared more information. It turns out I was right about new wood and no starters. He says, “I built a Warré hive . . . of new wood without foundation nor starter strips, just bare top bars.” He goes on to defend his decision to go with Warré, but I don’t consider that a problem. The shape and design of Warré hives is just fine and I have stolen a lot of good ideas from Warré beekeepers.

However, he goes on to describe the ants, “The ants are tiny and black, and I assume they are Argentine ants (I live in California).” Based on reader comments, it seems that California is one of the places where ants can definitely be a problem and Argentine ants can cause bees to flee.

The good news is we haven’t lost the beekeeper. He says, “I am okay with waiting until next year to try again.” He doesn’t want to buy a nuc because it won’t fit in his Warré, which is a good point. He adds, “After reading your posting (and reader comments) I accept that even without ants, my bees may still have left. But I will try and figure out a way of keeping ants out of my next hive.”

So for next year, I recommend the following:

Use starter strips or a bead of wax on the top bars (same as in a top-bar hive)

Keep the queen caged until the bees begin to build comb

In addition, you could place a pheromone lure inside the hive for a few days to give it a good homey smell before dumping the package

Use one or more of the reader-suggested ways to control Argentine ants

That’s where we stand at the moment. Besides being a bit wiser about ants, I’m ecstatic about having a new word in my bee vocabulary. But the thought of having to wait a whole year to hear how it all works out is nearly unbearable.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Great expectations

Rusty — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:17:13 +0000

My daughter sent me a news article about bees on a rooftop restaurant in Kirkland, Washington. For those of you from elsewhere, Kirkland is an urban/suburban city outside of Seattle. If the name sounds oddly familiar, it’s because the city is home to Costco and its Kirkland Signature brand of products.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Now, as part of the Woodmark Hotel, Yacht Club & Spa’s latest program, “Bee on the Lake,” Seattle-area residents will have the chance to taste a buzz-worthy batch of golden honey produced by 180,000 Italian honeybees and six queen bees housed just steps from the property.

Once settled in, it is expected that the six hives of bees, which are located on top of a Carillon Point rooftop near the Woodmark, will begin producing honey around mid-July. At the end of production in September, the Woodmark will have approximately 1,200 pounds of honey to work with, and with that impressive number in mind, has already begun planning how to best use the locally-produced product.

Did you catch that? These six colonies, during a span of ten weeks, are going to produce 1200 pounds of honey for the restaurant. That’s 200 pounds per hive or 20 lbs per hive per week. And that’s just the amount the restaurant will have “to work with.” One has to assume they will leave some for the bees.

Maybe all those folks in Kirkland have Costco-size expectations, but that is nuts. According to a report by the USDA, the average honey production in Washington was 37 pounds per colony in 2010 and 38 pounds per colony in 2011. And that’s for the whole season, not a ten week period spanning the July and August nectar dearth. It makes you wonder where they get their information.

Impressive numbers like that are certainly attainable in some places—but not in western Washington in the middle of the summer. No way. I hope they have some other sources of local honey lined up. Maybe some of you Seattle beekeepers have a new market . . . just keep those prices high as the rooftops.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Managing packages and swarms

Rusty — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:22:59 +0000

Sometimes little gems of wisdom get hidden within the comments section. In this tip, Jim of Withers Mountain Honey Farm in Flint, Michigan, describes how he bolsters new bee packages with brood from strong hives that might swarm. It is a way to equalize the strength of his hives while boosting packages and reducing swarming. It also increases his chances of getting a honey crop from first-year colonies.

Jim is a beekeeper I trust because his management ideas are always based on a solid knowledge of honey bee biology and colony life cycle, which he then combines with a good dose of economic sense. Although he has many hives, these steps would work for anyone who has both a strong overwintered colony and at least one new package. Below is the entire message:

I installed 20 packages this year and and bought 35 queens for splits bringing my hive count up to 150 . . . I know, crazy! One of the things I like to do to boost my packages and, at the same time, reduce swarming is to steal about 5 frames of bees and brood from my strong hives to combine with the package.

The procedure works like this:

First, I give the package time to release the queen and for her to start laying. Indeed, I wait until there is capped brood a couple of days from emerging. By this time the bees that came with the package are only a couple of weeks from expiring at best. This typically occurs around the end of April. This is also when the bees around these parts begin having visions of swarming.
I go through those strong hives and do a little thinning of their population by stealing about 4 frames with capped brood with the attendant bees and a nice frame of honey. Obviously, you must be certain not to take the queen when you do this. I checkerboard either empty drawn comb or new foundation in the place of those frames. In most cases, this slows the swarming instinct.
The bees I took are combined with the package bees by placing a sheet of newspaper over the box with the package and placing the box with the stolen brood and bees over top of that. It takes the bees a day or two to chew their way through the newspaper and, in the process, become accustomed to their new queen’s pheromone. I would guess the success rate of the combined bees accepting this new queen to be in the high 90′s percentile. I have seen times when the new bees, apparently, killed the queen and made an emergency queen cell but this is rare, likely because I make a point of taking only capped brood and larvae too old for them to make a queen out of.

This procedure super charges the new hive so that I can expect a honey crop from it and, perhaps, prevent an overwintered hive from swarming. It has worked well for me the last couple of years.

Jim
HoneyBeeSuite

And I thought bumbles were big

Rusty — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:06:46 +0000

What looks like a combination of a bumble bee and a hummingbird and a skipper? I certainly didn’t know as I began taking photos of this creature in the ligustrum bush.

At first I thought it was an oversized bumble. But I soon realized that it never held still. Rather than folding its wings while nectaring, it hovered like a hummingbird. Then I saw its tongue, which unwrapped like a roll of toilet paper and reminded me of a skipper. Then I saw the antennae, which were straight and looked nothing like those on a bee.

A name came to me before I looked it up: hawk moth. I had seen pictures of these before, but never saw one in person. So I looked up hawk moth and there is was! And no wonder I was confused, these behemoths are often called “bumble bee moths” because they look like what?

The hawk moths are in the Sphingidae family and are listed as important pollinators. The one I photographed was probably Hemaris diffinis—common throughout our region according to Insects of the Pacific Northwest by Haggard and Haggard (2006).

The honey bees working the ligustrum had been chasing off other pollinators, but not this one. They give it first dibs on everything it touched. Sort of like a bank, this moth is just too big to fail.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Hawk moth hovering while drinking nectar.

Uncoiling its very long tongue.

The little bee on the right is about honey bee size.

Honey bee forage: vine maple

Rusty — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:57:55 +0000

We have a lot of different maples here in the Pacific Northwest, but by far the most inconspicuous in the summer is the vine maple, Acer cincinatum. Not very imposing, it grows to the size of a large shrub or a small tree. It often lives in the shady understory of a conifer forest, although it also pops up in lowlands, clearcuts, and on steep slopes. It has long and skinny branched trunks that root when they touch the soil, so the tree gets a tangled and viney appearance, often forming graceful arches over trails and small streams.

In contrast to its modest summer appearance, it is the most showy of the Pacific Northwest maples in the fall when its leave turn bright red or dayglo orange. What was almost invisible during the summer evolves into an autumn masterpiece.

John Lovell in Honey Plants of North America (1926) says the vine maple is a more important honey plant than the broadleaf (bigleaf) maple, Acer macrophyllum, probably because it blooms a little later. He says, “The honey has a fine flavor and is white or amber-colored with a faint pinkish tinge.” According to Nectar and Pollen Plants of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest (1989), the nectar is 27-58% sugar and some years the trees produce large amounts. Honey bees collect pollen as well as nectar when the trees bloom in late April to early May.

I got the photo last week. The blooms were mostly over, but a few bees were searching for those last delicious drops.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Sipping vine maple nectar.