Bees From Bill

I know it's not the right time of year to start bees, because there's no flow and the bees are hunkering down for the winter.  But this year at our annual bee auction for my home bee club, Bill Owens offered ten hives of feral bees that he had removed as auction items.

Bill Owens is the best beekeeper in the state of Georgia with a certificate to prove it.  He is Georgia's ONLY certified Master Craftsman Beekeeper.  I enjoy Bill - he's a great teacher, has an always pleasant approach to things, and started me on the certification road myself.

He gave me the practical test at Young Harris for the Certified Beekeeper level, the first qualification level in Georgia.  (I almost failed it, not because I couldn't light the smoker - which is the first thing that one has to do - but because I couldn't light his cigarette lighter TO light the smoker.)

Bill has appeared a number of times in this blog - for example, here, here, and here.  He has a business (one of his many jobs - he teaches, he's a firefighter, he's a beekeeper, he owns a farm, he's an author) doing bee removals.  In addition, he doesn't treat his bees and approaches them with the idea that if they can survive, then they are strong enough to tolerate the varroa mite.

So of course, I decided to bid on two of Bill's feral hives in our silent auction.  Others were also bidding on these hives, but I was determined to get them so I was one of those lurkers who hung around the bidding table, waiting to pounce if someone stepped in to overbid me at the last minute!

I won the two hives, so Jeff and I went to Bill's house in Monroe, Georgia, to pick them up on Thursday night.  I use eight frame boxes, but he had requested 10 frame boxes into which to transfer the bees.  I unearthed a couple of ten frame deeps (the only two I still own) and Jeff and I headed for Monroe.

We got there just at dark at 7:30 and Bill donned his veil, lit his smoker and transferred the bees into my boxes.  First he shook the bees off of the cover into the box.

You can see our strap under the box in preparation for the move.

He then added the frames, one at a time, until the box was full.  These bees had no stores to speak of and Bill advising feeding them "heavily."  He did say he could smell some goldenrod honey in the hives, but didn't see anything.

Jeff manned the staple gun (which I am terrified of using - I do use it, but if someone else is around to do it, I happily hand it over to them) and we closed up the hives with screened wire.

It was quite dark and Jeff shone a flashlight onto the hive so in this photo it looks as if the bees are in some weird circle pattern, but that's the light of the flashlight - made my camera think it didn't need to employ the flash.

I am now convinced that my yard can't handle more than four hives.  My friend Tom has wanted hives in his backyard so ahead of the auction, I asked him if he still wanted hives in his yard and he said yes.  Jeff's office is just down the street so he can oversee the "heavy feeding" of these hives as we go into winter.






So around 9:15 on Thursday night we delivered my Owens' hives to Tom's house where Jeff and I will keep them.

Leveling the hive was a challenge but my smart phone has a level on it and we managed to get both hives pretty level.

I returned the next day to check on the bees and to give them their first round of "bee tea." 

We'll continue feeding them this as winter approaches.  I wish I had honey to feed them but due to the rain, I do not.

We are using rapid feeders for these hive - they hold about 1/2 gallon of bee tea.

So here are the hives, hopefully adjusting to the new location.  The branches on the front of the hive are to help the bees realize that they are in a new place and need to reorient.

We'll see how this works - starting a new hive in the fall.  Bill loved that he had given the hives for auction and was talking about doing it again next year - if these work, I'll probably bid, lurk, and maybe win again!

Tom Seeley on Bees and Mites in the Forest

At Young Harris, Dr. Tom Seeley gave a fascinating talk on bees and mites in the forest.

The first part of his talk was about how he finds bee trees in the forest.  He risks life and limb to find these bees with only his dog to rescue him should he fall in the woods or off of a tree!  He learned how to beeline with Edgell's book, The Bee Hunter.

He built a small box for putting a bee in and giving her sugar syrup.  After the bee has recognized the box as a source of food, she returns to her hive and recruits her sisters to come join her at the nectar source.  When a number of bees are feeding at the box, he closes the box up and moves it along the direction of the flight path they take when they leave.  Then he stops and opens the box and keeps on in this manner until he is really close to the bee tree.  Then his job is to look around and find where they are flying to.

He found wild bee trees in the Arnot Forest, owned by Cornell where he works.  He had found 11 colonies in 1978.  In 2002 there were 8 bee trees.  In 2003 he put up bait hives (this is where he climbs trees with no spotter other than his dog) to catch swarms thrown by the eight bee trees.  These bait hives had low mite counts.

He began to theorize about the low mite counts - what was it due to?

• The bee trees were much farther apart than we typically keep hives in apiaries
• This should cut down on drifting (one way to convey diseases between hives)
• This should cut down on robbing
• Hives not contaminated by other hives might develop Varroa mites that were not virulent

With our hive boxes, close together in apiaries, we subject our bees to drifting.  We also have low and large entrances, promoting more robbing.  We don't allow swarming, if we can help it.  More Varroa may be directly due to large brood nests and less swarming. 

In trees, bees coat the inside of the hollow tree with propolis.  With our smooth sided hives, there isn't a need for propolizing the walls.  Propolis may protect the health of the bees in trees.

Since honey bees live differently, Seeley concluded that increasing colony spacing might reduce horizontal disease transmission.  Smaller hives and smaller colonies might result in less honey and more swarming but the pay-off would be better health.  If tall hives are used this will increase winter survival in cold areas.  Perhaps we should leave the inside walls of our hives rough to encourage the use of propolis to coat the hive interior, promoting better colony health.  Finally more drone comb (in the wild bees build 15% of their comb for the raising of drone) might result in better queen mating although might increase the Varroa.

There is more Varroa in crowded colonies because the drift of bees helps spread the mites from colonies that have fast-reproducing mites.  

His take-home messages were:

As beekeepers we help the survival of the Varroa mite by:

• Sustaining susceptible bees by using miticides (stop using miticides!)
• Fostering virulent mites by having apiaries (have colonies in isolation)
• Fostering mites by preventing swarming (let colonies swarm)

There are feral bees and they are good for pollination, good for drone production, and through natural selection, resistance will arise in bees in the wild.

It was a great talk and I loved seeing photos of Seeley and his dog standing next to very tall bee trees.  Wish you were there!