Two Bees in a Podcast

My walks with my dog, Hannah, have become more entertaining times because of Jamie Ellis and his sidekick, Amy. The University of Florida beekeeping institute has introduced a podcast titled: "Two Bees in a Podcast." Every episode is delightful as Jamie discusses huge range of topics about honey bees with well-informed guests.

The podcast includes funny interactions between Jamie and Amy who obviously enjoy their back and forth. They have produced at least nineteen episodes at the time of this writing.

And when Jamie has a guest who wanders into language that might be a little on the too-scientific side, Jamie easily and disarmingly makes it understandable for the lay listener. I listened to an episode on invasive species and the honey bee. His guest was discussing ways to intervene to get rid of invasive species in rather scientific terms. Jamie interjected gently that when he teaches he usually says that there are mechanical means, biological means, and chemical means for getting rid of invasive species. That simple clarification made the rest of the conversation flow in a much more user-friendly way.

His episode on the Asian Murder Hornet was fascinating and there is an episode on ants in the hive that is really interesting. Each episode is thoroughly documented with show notes on each topic covered with references galore.

At the end of each episode that I have listened to, there is a Q&A section (which Jamie sometimes calls, "Stump the Chump") in which Jamie addresses questions that have been sent in by listeners in his usual entertaining style.

If you haven't heard Jamie Ellis speak, he will be a featured speaker at the GBA Virtual Fall Conference on September 25 and 26. People love his talks because he is so easily able to connect with his audience. I'm sure there are lots of YouTube videos of his talks as well.

No Weed-Whackers, No Wind, but an Emergency???

During the coronavirus consciousness about social distancing and not gathering in groups, we are not having in-person hive inspections for MABA, my local bee club. I'm the chair of the hive inspection committee and have felt a great responsibility to figure out a way for the newer beekeepers in the club to have the opportunity to see inside a hive.

Zoom call hive inspection

My solution, albeit not at all professional, has been to video my hive inspections with my iPhone. I dutifully bought a light tripod from Amazon which is easily added to my kit that I carry to the hive. I put the phone in the mount on the tripod, push the "video" button, step in front of the camera and start my hive inspection.

I've run into numerous issues. I always seem to go to the hive when someone in the area is weed-whacking - either in the yard next door or Georgia Power has sent their yard guys to weed-whack the community garden. The wind up on the hill is always blowing like it's March every single time, making loud whooshing sounds as it goes over the mic on the phone. And sometimes someone, urging commands, walks their dog right past my hives.

And then there's my iPhone itself. It has a mind of its own.

I'll go through a whole hive and then find that right in the middle of my inspection, the phone simply turns itself off. Once it was because my memory was full, but I've deleted everything so that doesn't happen but even now, it just turns itself off with no obvious cause. Bees often fly into the phone screen while I am filming, but that shouldn't turn off the video unless they perfectly head bump the round circle with the little red square in it. I would think that would knock them unconscious and maybe I am missing their tiny bodies, lying unmoving on the ground at the base of the tripod.

I prefer to blame it on the iPhone having a mind of its own.

So this Thursday, it's a miracle - no wind, no weed-whackers! I set up the iPhone in the tripod and like Santa Claus, checked it twice, and it appeared to be running in video mode. Blissfully chatting about what I am seeing in the hive, suddenly I hear a voice from the phone: "What's the emergency?"

I ran to the tripod to find that the iPhone had called 911 and the operator was patiently waiting for me to describe whatever tragedy I was enduring. "I'm sorry, M'am," I said. "I'm a beekeeper filming a hive I am inspecting with my iPhone. I guess the phone called you by mistake. I'm fine. Please don't send anyone!"

Thankfully, she believed me and the fire truck, the ambulance and the police did not appear at the community garden!



PS: If you push one of the volume buttons and the button on the opposite side of the iPhone at the same time, your phone will call 911. #nowIknow  That's what was happening as the tripod gripped the iPhone horizontally.

Hive Inspection FAQs: Common questions asked during my Coronavirus Inspections

Similar questions come up every time I do a virtual inspection. Since you all are not on my virtual inspections, I thought I'd address some of the FAQs that are asked every time:

1. What are those white cloths and why do you use them?
They are hive drapes. I learned about them from Billy Davis. He used oilcloth. I have used these for years. I use either pillow cases or flour sacking kitchen towels. You need something that the bees won't get tangled in (nothing with a nap) and both pillow cases and flour sacking cloth fits that bill.

When the hive is covered with a hive drape, it really cuts down the need for smoking the hive. I typically smoke the front door to knock on it (learned that from Michael Bush) and then set my smoker down and rarely pick it back up.

Like a surgeon, you can use two drapes to allow yourself only to expose the one frame you are about to remove from the hive. I keep one of them draped over the frame on my frame rack as well.

Here is an earlier post on hive drapes where you can see them in action.

2. Why don't you use a queen excluder? 
The queen excluder was developed for commercial beekeepers to use when they are harvesting honey. They can drive their trucks through the bee yards and take off the top boxes, blow the bees out of the boxes and load the box on the truck without worrying that they are taking the queen. All harvested honey in a commercial hive is above the queen excluder.

Bees don't want to be separated from their mother and the queen does better when she can lay wherever she wishes, so there is really no reason for a backyard beekeeper to use a queen excluder when there is no good reason to do so.

There are about four good uses for a queen excluder so it isn't really a useless piece of equipment for the backyard beekeeper. Here they are:

---As a drain rack for cut comb honey. The bars on the queen excluder are close enough together to distribute the weight of a square of cut comb honey without causing indentations in the cut comb.

---To prove your theory that there are two queens in a hive. Put the queen excluder between where you think the two queens are living in the hive. In seven days, look at the top box. If there are new eggs and brood, you have a queen in that box. Look below the queen excluder and if there are new eggs and brood, you also have a queen in that box.

---If you want to make a split and are scared you will take the queen. Take an empty box and put into it the frames of brood, eggs, honey and pollen that you want in the split. Shake every single bee off of these frames as you remove them from the hive. Put a queen excluder on the top of the top box and put your box of frames but no bees above the excluder. Put on the inner cover and top. In the morning, nurse bees will be in your new box to take care of the brood. Remove that new box and you have a split without a queen in it but resources to make one.

---As a queen includer when you catch a swarm. To make sure the swarm stays in the box where you hived them, put a queen excluder below the bottom box on top of the entrance. The only bees who can leave the hive are workers. The queen will stay put. After no more than two days, remove the "includer" and the hive will have established itself.

3. How do you make a robber screen?
Billy Davis also taught me this. With his robber screens on your hives all year long, robbery never happens. It's made of #8 hardware cloth and I have also used window screen. The secret is to keep an entrance reducer on your hives all year long. The entrance of the robber screen has to be four inches minimum away from the entrance of the hive.

See photos and more discussion here.

4. Should you start feeding your bees as soon as the nectar flow is over?
The nectar flow is over in Atlanta, but we are not in a dearth yet. Here the nectar flow is defined by the bloom of the tulip poplar. When it is over, the bees no longer stumble over each other in their rush to enter the hive and leave again to get more. But the end of the flow does not mean there is no nectar. Many nectar bearing plants bloom in early summer in Atlanta. As long as there is nectar, there is no reason to feed your bees. Since honey is the bees natural food, why not let them eat what they have brought in? If I see that my bees are eating all of their stores, then I should feed my bees and I will. But then if I have it, I will feed honey and if I don't, I will feed bee tea.

Now is a good time to check your hives for weight so you'll know how heavy your hive is at the height of the season. Then if it is really light in August, you should feed!.

Inspecting the community garden hives on June 4, 2020

In this inspection, my plan was to take a frame of bees from one of the strong hives and give it to the smaller nuc hive to help it build up its numbers. However, we found that the tall hive had a new queen who had not laid in the medium boxes - so we couldn't take a frame. However, we made an entrance reducer for the nuc hive out of wine corks. I'll try to visit that hive and take a frame of brood and eggs from my strongest hive at home to help the nuc hive build up.

Meanwhile, here's the inspection. There are instructions and video on how to make a solar wax melter from a styrofoam beer cooler (I first posted about this in 2006) at the end  of the inspection movie.

Hive Inspection May 29, 2020

Yesterday my main goal in the hive inspection was to see if the pesticide kill hive were surviving OK. I also looked at the taller hive and at the small hive housed in a nuc tower. Please enjoy the inspection and send any questions you have to me.

Pesticide Kill at one of my hives

I knew what had happened as I walked up the hill to the community garden. The smell was overwhelming and meant only one thing. I was going to find a pile of dead bees in front of one or all of my hives.

The UGA extension website has an article on The Effect of Pesticides on Bees.

The article suggests that either the hive will survive on its own without the beekeeper's help, or that I should take out the combs of pollen and wash them all out. I wouldn't begin to attempt that since most of my pollen is on brood frames and the hive is decimated as it is. So I will cross my fingers and hope for the first possibility to happen. If the poison is stored in pollen on the frames, the brood and bees will continue to die.

I videoed a drone, affected by the poison, trying to walk on my hand and trembling and unsure of himself:

The video ends abruptly when one of the men who comes to my virtual hive inspections drove up and we had a six-foot-apart discussion of the hive poisoning.

The article states that bees are affected by pesticides in several ways. If a bee were in the path of the spraying of mosquito poison that occurs all over Atlanta, she would die right there and not return to the hive. If the bee brings the pesticide back in the pollen or nectar she transports, then many, many bees will die. Some will die from contact with the pesticide brought back by the original ill-fated bee. More will die because she (the unintentional poison carrier) will tell her sisters where this marvelous source of nectar or pollen is and they will then go and be affected in the same way.

The effect of taking in all of this poison is seen/smelled by the shocked arriving beekeeper (me) because there will be a pile of thousands of dead bees in front of the hive:

The second photo is around the side of the hive. 

And the stench is unforgettable. It smells like very rotten garbage. I found this on Thursday, one week after my last visit to the garden on the previous Thursday. The only saving grace may have been the weather. The hive was fine at the last visit. We had good weather over some of that weekend. But then on Sunday night, Monday and all day Tuesday we had rain. The way these dead bees smelled meant to me that they had been in front of the hive for a few days. 

I expect that the rain interrupted the visits to the poisoned source and the rain may have also diluted the poison over the several days of it. 

There were still lots of bees in the hive. I barely opened it because they were suffering and I didn't want to make it worse, but in opening the hive, many of the bees were trembling and looking confused. The systemic damage is such that they are disoriented and palsied. I just wanted to cry.

I've only had pesticide kills in two hives - both at the community garden - separated by about four years. I did go back to this hive the next day and bees were still writhing on the ground, but there were lots of bees hanging on the robber screen who didn't appear palsied, and I saw a bee go into the hive with pollen on her legs which may mean the queen is still in there and laying. Cross your fingers! I certainly am.

However the UGA article does say that if the poison is in the pollen, nurse bees and brood will continue to die. This is a wait and see situation.

P.S. Today is Sunday, three days since I found the dead hive. I have just walked up to the hive. The smell is almost gone; the pile of bees does not appear to have grown. There are not as many bees on the front of the hive as in the photo I took (above) on Friday, but there were active bees and they didn't look like they were dying. I forgot my phone so don't have a photo.

At my next inspection of this colony, we will go down into the brood box to see how the growth of the hive is going, given the poison/pesticide event.

May 23 Inspection: A Pesticide Kill and a Tiny Honey Harvest

Here's the video from the latest inspection for the MABA beekeepers in this time of coronavirus. Zoom is helping us to connect and to learn about bees virtually if not in person! In this video, we inspect the three hives at the garden, rob the bees of two frames of capped honey, and I demonstrate how to harvest via crush and strain in the last twenty minutes of the video.


 

Avoiding rookie mistakes

I have written about this before, but I gave a talk on Avoiding Rookie Mistakes and thought I'd post it here.

Another MABA Hive Inspection

I took a week off for Mother's Day and skipped last weekend, but really made up for it this week. On Monday, the 11th, I moved the little queen castle hive that was only four frames in a two-medium box hive into a nuc. We are going to let it grow in the nuc this season.

On Friday, the 15th, I inspected the two established hives at the garden and gave a quick check to the now-nuc hive. To add a little interest to it all, I did an inspection of my top bar hive which is boiling over with happy bees and honey.

The whole pieced-together inspection (it starts on Monday and ends on Friday!) is below:

Checkerboarding a hive during honey production

While I was checking on my own hives, I discovered that one needed a new box. I decided to video the process of checkerboarding.

There are two ways to employ checkerboarding to open up space in your hive. First is in the early spring when you checkerboard an overwintered hive to fool the bees into thinking they don't need to swarm because there is plenty of space. In this instance, you move every other frame in the top box of the hive into an empty box and replace their previous space in the old box with empty frames. You do this with the honey box that is typically above the brood nest. This gives the bees more space to use and may interrupt their desire to swarm for more space.

Michael Bush wrote this on Beemaster to explain the basics of checkerboarding:
"For a bee colony:
o  Survival is the primary motivation
  - Survival of the existing colony takes priority.
  -  Bees will not do a reproductive swarm if they perceive it to jeopardize survival of the existing colony.
o  Survival of the species runs a close second.
  -  Generation of a reproductive swarm is the secondary objective of every over-wintered colony.
  -  The over-wintered colony expands the brood volume during the build-up by consumption of honey.
  -  When the colony has expanded the brood nest to the amount of reserve that they consider appropriate, they are now able to move into the swarm preparation phase.
  -  The first activity of swarm preparation is to reduce the brood volume by providing additional stores. As brood emerges, selected cells are filled with nectar or pollen.
  -  Alternating empty drawn combs above the brood nest "fools" the bees into thinking they don't have enough stores yet for swarming and causes them to expand the brood nest, giving both a bigger field force and avoiding reproductive swarming.

During honey production, checkerboarding can help open up room for honey production. In fact the bees will not draw wax or store nectar when there is no nectar flow. I've found during the nectar flow, though, that employing checkerboarding in honey boxes increases the storage of honey. I did this in my hive today (we are still in an ongoing nectar flow).

I use foundationless frames and it is essential to provide checkerboarding when you add a box of foundationless frames. The full frames moved up to a new box provide a "ladder" for the bees to get to the tops of the frames to draw wax.

Here is a video of how to do it:

Hive Inspection during the coronavirus - Inspection on May 1, 2020

We can't gather in groups and I continue to offer virtual hive inspections to members of my local bee club, including the people who took our short course this year. Every virtual inspection has about 15 people in attendance and while some people come more than once, I also have new people each time.

In this inspection one of the key things was to notice the difference in honey production between the over-wintered nuc, the swarm I installed on March 11, and the tiny new hive from a three frame nuc in a queen castle. My biggest conclusion after I made this video is that the three frame nuc hive needs to be in a nuc and not in a hive. The space is just too big for them. I will move the hive into a stacked nuc hive before the next inspection.

MapMyDCA.com and my friend Julia

My friend and beekeeping buddy, Julia Mahood, is a multi-talented woman. Among other things, she designed the license plate now sported by lots of Georgia cars; she was beekeeper of the year for GBA in 2018; and she is a Master Beekeeper. She, her son Noah, and I went together to Lithuania on a beekeeping tour back in 2013.

Always up for becoming an even better beekeeper, she is working on her Master Craftsman level of certification. The focus of her research for this is the drone bee. She has developed a citizen science website for mapping where the drone congregation areas are throughout the world. If you know where one is or are just interested in drones and their behavior, you'd enjoy her website.

So imagine my delight when wallowing in the middle of the depression of social isolation and never seeing anyone I care about in person, Julia suggested that I meet her in a field where she is catching and marking drones. It would be easy to do that and stay six feet apart!

I believe the way it works is she is interested in how often drones who don't "get lucky" return to the same DCA. She catches drones, marks them in a color representing this DCA, releases them and returns another day to see how many of her painted drones she catches a second time.

On this day, she was using a helium weather balloon for catching the drones.

The helium weather balloon is about a yard in diameter if not a little larger and flies high above the trees. If you look at the photo of Julia holding the balloon down at a lower height, you can see the trap hanging about ten feet below the balloon. The trap has a velcro part at the top where the drones can't escape.

Julia told me that drones only have enough fuel to fly for thirty minutes before they need to be back in the hive for more honey (fuel). So she flies her balloon for about five minutes at a time and takes three minutes or so to mark the drones before releasing them and sending them on their way.

In the photo below, if you look closely, you can see lots of little black dots, all of which are the comet of drones trailing the trap. The trap is baited with queen lure hanging in it (which entices the drones). I am sure the little black dots are all drones - Atlanta air in the pandemic is remarkably clean because there are no cars on the road since everyone is staying home!

Once back on the ground, Julia takes the drones out of the trap one at a time; marks their backs with a permanent red marker and releases them. At another nearby DCA, she uses a yellow marker. So if she sees her red-marked drones in the yellow district, she knows that the red-painted drone frequents more than one DCA.

It was interesting to look closely at the netting of the trap - it's a wide netting and very soft, unlike what I have seen in fabric stores. 

At the end of the whole process (Julia has found that she catches the most drones in the 4PM - 5PM time slot), she puts the balloon in her car and drives home very carefully because the balloon is so BIG that the hatchback will not fully close!

Julia's project has made me much more interested in the drones in my hive and more curious about their behavior in general.

Inspection of the Community Garden Hives April 24, 2020

On April 24, I videoed an inspection of the three hives at the community garden. In this time of COVID-19, we can't do gathering around the hives to inspect and this is a way to share how an inspection might go with new and old beekeepers.

I have bad timing for these videos. Most of the time, it's windy on the hill, but this time we were plagued with yard guys - incredibly noisy yard guys! First Jeff and I went to the garden to put on the robber screens and the Georgia Power people were weed whacking the garden. They stood to get their photos with us doing our bee work in the background.

Then several days later, I went to the garden to video the actual inspection. This time the yard guys from the house next door began loud leaf blowers or weed whackers as soon as I opened the hive. ARGHHH.

When I show these videos to the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers, we do it in a Zoom meeting with lots of questions and interaction. So far I haven't recorded the meetings. Maybe I should but for now,
here's the video:

Attention: The Queen has Arrived

For four years, I have been the beekeeper at SPARK Elementary School in Atlanta. It's a public school with an amazing para-pro, Meghan M, who has a beautiful organic garden and teaches the children all about nature. She helps them grow plants, teaches them about the bees, and is very creative in the ways she explains nature to them in active, hands-on ways.

Over the past winter, we lost both beehives and I was really upset because the bees had survived treatment free for so long and the hives were about seven years old. We set the hives up with swarm lure and crossed our fingers while we waited for two nucs that we ordered.

Then before time to pick up the nucs, the coronavirus arrived. Luckily our swarm lure worked and a swarm moved into one of the hives. We were ecstatic. But then the schools closed for the year and we couldn't access the building to check on the swarm. On the first Monday after the schools closed, a day when the teachers were allowed in, we met in the morning and checked on the hive, which looked good. We set it up with an extra box, just in case, and barely looked at it because of time constraints, planning to come back the next week.

As the nation became aware of the severity of the virus, access to the school was no longer allowed. I was worried about the hive and didn't feel like it would be OK without our getting to look at it and add a nectar/honey box. But last week, the principal was going to be there and we could go check on our hive!

Meghan and I opened the hive and pulled out frame after frame of honey and nectar. There was no brood anywhere, not anywhere. The hive would have died in a matter of a couple of weeks without a queen.

"I have to go pull a frame of brood and eggs from one of my hives," I told Meghan. "I can be back in 30 minutes." With a frame of brood and eggs, the bees in the hive could make a new queen.

 I rushed home, opened one of my hives and pulled a frame of brood and eggs. "HURRY," Meghan texted me. The security guard had announced that only the principal and the cleaning staff could be in the building, but since we were saving the life of the hive (Meghan must have been really convincing), we could stay only long enough to insert the frame of brood and eggs.

Back up to the rooftop garden we rushed, and I took off the top and inserted the frame of brood and eggs into the middle box. I removed a frame of honey to make room for the frame and gave it to Meghan to take home and harvest. With the top back on the hive, I looked down at the entry to see how things looked and something amazing happened.

The bees were standing at attention, frozen and all facing the same way. I'm almost 100% sure I saw a queen bee enter the hive. I thought of how we rise for royalty and this must be the bees' version!

Then Meghan told me and I read in Mark Winston that the bees often freeze on the front landing and emit nasonov to help a queen on her mating flight find her way home.

Sometimes swarms, once they are settled, get rid of the old queen who came with them to get them started and make a new queen. This must be what had happened in the six weeks since the school closed. Meghan grabbed her phone and made a wonderful movie to share with the school students, now studying at home, on this Earth Day. And she gave me permission to share it with you. Video made by Meghan McCloskey for SPARK Elementary and shared here with permission. Watch to see the bees standing at attention.

Today is Earth Day - love the Google logo for today - featuring honeybees.

Inspection of Community Garden Hives on April 17, 2020

Today we had a virtual hive inspection since we can't gather in groups to do an in-person hive inspection in Atlanta for quite some time to come. Here is the video of the inspection. I didn't know that my iPhone can film video on landscape because my old iPhone couldn't, so going forward I will put the phone in landscape orientation which should be better!

This inspection includes the installation of a nuc as well as the usual inspection of the two community garden bee hives.

Here it is, FWIW:

Fourth MABA hive inspection

This is the fourth hive inspection (third video) done virtually to help those beekeepers who want to be a part of a group hive inspection and are staying at home because of the coronavirus. I am posting a video after each virtual hive inspection. I offer these inspections in my role as hive inspection chair for 2020 for MABA. The advantage of being a MABA member is that you can come to the virtual inspections and be a part of the QandA as well as the discussion, but even without belonging to MABA (MetroAtlanta Beekeepers Association), you can see these videos after the fact.

I thought my video was recording when I opened the first hive and didn't discover that it was not until halfway through the inspection. To make up for it, I added a short inspection of my top bar hive to the end of this video. My hands shake all the time, but they were really shaky during this video because I was so stressed that the video had not been running.




In the middle of the video I put in a slide about how to checkerboard and at the end of one section some photos illustrating how you rubberband crooked comb since you can't see me do the repair in the video.

This one wasn't my best, but I am putting it up for continuity of the record.

Review of Installing a Package

Back in May, 2007 when I was first learning about beekeeping (I started in 2006), I watched Bill Owens install a package at Young Harris and took photos (didn't have movie capability back then on my camera). Since people are receiving packages now and needing to install them, I thought it might be helpful to see this demo. Now Blogger won't let me edit a post that old, and the slides/photos from that post have disappeared (along with Picasa). If you want to read the post, click here.

The photos are resurrected here:

Learning to inspect your beehive in the time of the coronavirus

Since we are supposed to stay at home, it's difficult for new beekeepers to learn what to do in a hive inspection and how to inspect your beehives. I am the chair of the hive inspection program for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers and have now done two inspections by video to show to the inspection groups in a Zoom meeting.

It's not as good as the hands-on, in-person version of our hive inspection program, but it's better than not getting to go. I had the first of my three inspections in person. The hives being used for this program are in a community garden in Atlanta. One hive is a swarm that I caught in Inman Park on March 11.

The swarm was on a hurricane fence and very challenging to capture since on the other side of the fence was a dense hedge of azaleas and neglect. Here's the swarm:

I put it into a hive at the community garden.

The other hive at the community garden is a nuc hive that was installed on March 21.

I did not film the March 21 inspection. We were still allowed to gather in person, but twelve people were signed up for the inspection. I asked them to divide and come one week apart. So six people came in person to this inspection. For the sake of social distancing and protection, I also asked them to put on their jackets and veils at their cars and come to the inspection with gloves and protective gear already on.

So the second inspection was on March 29 with the other six people and by then we were unable to gather in any size group in the city of Atlanta. So we had that one virtually. When I filmed at the community garden, the wind was blowing and it was hard to hear. But I will post it here anyway. I plan to post my inspections every week to help new beekeepers unable to attend inspections in person.

Then I did a second inspection on April 3, 2020. This time the wind was less bad but in the noonday sun, I couldn't see through my veil to see what was being seen by the camera on the individual frames. So this one you can hear but can't see the detail as well. I urge you to pause the video in both to see the frames better. Maybe for my next video, I can combine what I have learned from the first two and do a better job! 

It's hard to be the camera person AND the hive inspector, but that's what we do in the time of the coronavirus!