Organic Gardening Magazine Article

In their October/November issue, Organic Gardening Magazine will include an article by Janet Davis on beekeeping featuring three beekeepers - one in Vancouver, one in Chicago, and me!  Yesterday a photographer for the magazine, Greg Miller and his assistant, Tim, spent about three hours at my house shooting pictures of the bees, me, my house, my bee things.  It was such fun.

Greg has taken a number of beekeeping assignments for various magazines so he was not at all afraid to lie down right next to the hive to get a good shot of the girls as they flew in and out of the hive.



I can't wait to see his shots in the magazine.  If you follow the link to his website, his lead photo is a shoot he did of another beekeeper and his son.




When he finished with this hive, we opened almost every hive in my bee yard to look for various photo ops, but my favorite moment was one when he showed me how he captures a sunbeam…..he had the smoker puffing into the area where sun was shining through the leaves of the trees and the smoke delineated the sunbeam - I could see the sunbeam as if it were a concrete object…..just gorgeous.

Ross Conrad, Organic Beekeeper, at Young Harris

I had the privilege twice today to hear Ross Conrad talk about his methods of beekeeping at the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute today.

First topic: American Foulbrood:

He discussed a way to handle American Foulbrood without burning the hives. He advocates removing the bees from the affected hive, shaking them into new hive boxes with new frames, all new equipment. Then he burns the old frames. He scorches the boxes, covers, bottom boards, etc. like I did for the boxes donated to the Girl Scout troop.

He notes that the above process allows him to save the bees. What is destroyed are the frames of larvae contaminated with AFB, but the bees are not sacrificed. In general each time he was the speaker he clearly communicated that he was oriented to the bees' needs rather than the needs of the beekeeper.

I hope never to encounter AFB, but what I most learned from was the second talk I heard.

Second topic: Addressing the varroa question by making nucs

As I understand it, this is what he advocates:

We want to promote strength in our hives. This often means promoting the growth of local bees. If you order bees from other locales than your own, then you are asking the arriving bees to adapt to your climate, environment, etc., but if you are using your own strongest bees to expand your stock, then the bees have already demonstrated their ability to thrive in your environment.
Taking this further, he also prefers to use queens that his bees make rather than purchasing queens.

Following this logic, if you have a strong hive then that hive should be one that you capitalize on by expanding it through making nucs.

From his strongest hives that he would most like to duplicate, he makes five frame nucs using as the center frame a frame of new eggs and young brood. On either side of the center frame he puts a frame of larvae and capped brood. Then the last two frames are frames of honey to support the new nuc.

It will take the nuc 16 days to make one of the eggs into a queen. Then the queen has to harden, orient and go on a mating flight. This can occupy a number of other days. By the time she starts laying, there has been an approximate 3 week interruption in the life cycle of the varroa mite. Since the adult varroa mite lies in wait for the tiny larvae on which she lays her eggs, the varroa mite stops in her tracks until the new queen starts laying. Without tiny larvae on which to lay her eggs, the varroa mite can't reproduce herself. This is the cycle disruption.

Ross leaves the nuc alone for 30 days and then inspects it. If there is evidence that the new queen is laying, he moves the nuc into its own hive box. Now his apiary has another hive derived from his strongest hive. And the varroa mite has been stymied for three weeks.



One of the best things about listening to Ross is his obvious earnest, genuine interest in the bees. He has thoughtfully come up with a system that supports this caring for the bees and expresses his own organic approach to the world.



Sometimes he puts two nucs into one hive body to get them started. Here is a rather faded picture of a slide he used to show the division of the hive.

He uses a special bottom board with cut out entrances for both nucs, one on one side of the box and the other on the opposite end. the center is barricaded by a division feeder with all space covered, blocking the movement of the bees from one side of the hive box to the other.

In general I enjoyed so much his positive, genuine approach to beekeeping. I bought his book:
Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture and had him autograph it for me!

New York Times Article Today

Today there is a very environmentally oriented article in the New York Times about beekeeping.

The article focuses on the damage all of the chemical elements brings to the beehive. The point is to try to help the bees grow strong in the face of all the chemicals that are currently in use in the hive.

Thankfully, so far, my hives are not subjected to poison.

The pure organic beekeeper will say that I am introducing powdered sugar by sifting it over the bees and that it is not natural. They have a point, but I am not using poison and the powdered sugar does have impact on the Varroa mite.

The pure organic beekeeper will say that I am introducing a chemical element by feeding sugar syrup to my bees in the drought of Georgia. Again, they have a point, but I am not using chemicals in the way of poison or feeding syrup like corn syrup which again introduces poison into the hive. Corn is the second most poisoned crop in the country after cotton. So when beekeepers feed corn syrup to their bees, the bees get the poison which has been sprayed, dusted, etc. onto the corn.

While I am not a pure organic beekeeper yet, keep watching because that is the way I am going. For the first time this year, I have frames of honey frozen in my basement freezer so that I can feed the bees actual honey in the winter this year.

Funny quote from Organicbeekeepers list

There's a listserve on Yahoogroups: Organicbeekeepers. On the email this morning is this funny quote. The question was asked:

"Is one of the benefits to organic beekeeping healthier, more disease resistant bees?"

The person who answered the question said:

"That's the reason for organic anything, methinks. I bee healthy, you bee healthy, they bee healthy. Lotsa healthy bees. :-)"

That certainly is my goal with not using poison and not treating the bees chemically. I can't say that I am an organic beekeeper yet, though, because my bees came in nucs which came from beekeepers who probably treat their bees and even if they don't, use foundation which has chemicals accumulated in the wax from previously chemically treated bees.

In addition, the organic folks think that it is outside of organic methods to use powdered sugar to get the bees to clean the varroa mites off of their bodies and it is outside of organic methods to feed the bees anything but honey. I do powdered sugar shakes and I feed the bees sugar syrup in the winter and early spring.

In psychology, the term successive approximation applies. This means that I am gradually moving to pure organic beekeeping but I am not there yet. To the best of my ability so far, I am practicing my version of organic beekeeping, but obviously have a way to go before I can call myself an organic beekeeper.