Keith Fielder on Beekeeping more Like Mother Nature

Last night Keith Fielder, Cooperative Extension Agent at UGA, Georgia Master Beekeeper, Welsh Honey judge and all around good guy, talked to the Metro Atlanta Beekeeper's Association on the importance of low impact beekeeping.



As a beekeeper who is trying to stay as natural as possible with my hives, I was thrilled to hear Keith supporting Mother Nature.

By low impact beekeeping he emphasized:

• No chemicals
• A more natural environment both inside and outside the colony
  

He also emphasized the importance of us beekeepers understanding the biology of the honeybee (see my notes from his earlier talk) as well as the biology of the pests that intrude on the bee and the biology of the diseases of the honey bee.

Keith uses no chemicals in his hives - no chemical treatments and no drugs. He discovered that he lost about the same number of colonies each winter with or without chemicals - so why not leave the bees be?

From the outside the hive natural approach, he put up the slide below. The tree in which a bee colony could certainly live stands alone, and thus the bee colony stands alone. We tend to put our colonies side by side (for the convenience of the beekeeper) and that is not natural. Keith is trying to locate his colonies at least 50 yards from each other.



While that is impractical for me in my urban yard, remembering the consequences of unnatural colony location is important. With hives beside each other, drifting between hives may occur and if you have mites in one colony, you will have mites in all the colonies. Just as if you have small hive beetles, you are likely to find them in all hives.

From the inside-the-colony perspective, he encouraged us to keep our equipment clean, to be super cautious about purchasing old equipment from old beekeepers because all of its problems will come with it, and to change out the combs at least every three years.

I asked him about the old comb in a tree (in other words, how does Mother Nature handle old comb) and he said that bees in a tree continually build upward in the tree trunk. When they've gotten as far up as they can go, they abscond and find a new home. The inherent wax moths then take over and destroy the old comb. Then scout bees show up, attracted by the hive smell, find a new home with no old wax, since it has been destroyed by the wax moths, and move a swarm in to start the process all over.

He said that screened bottom boards are essential to a clean hive. Debris, mites, and other detrius fall through the SBB and don't return to the hive. In addition the SBB provides ventilation, essential to a healthy hive.

While he didn't talk about or encourage foundationless beekeeping, he did say that if you use commercial wax, you will have chemicals in your hive introduced by the wax from the commercial companies. He suggested using plastic foundation with no wax coating.

Michael Bush says that the bees don't like plastic and it doesn't work to give them plastic with no wax coating. Cindy Bee who was at the meeting asked about using a strip of paper in the groove, much like I use a wax strip. Popsicle sticks will accomplish the same thing when glued in the frame groove. The goal of all of the aforementioned is to have fresh, uncontaminated wax in the hive.

He talked about bee genetics - using queens from hygienic stock such as the Purvis Brothers' gold line or from survivor stock - like great swarms. If there are enough drones around, he is fine with the bees making their own queens. (Currently my hives at home all have queens that they have made themselves).

When asked about the bad queens many people got in Atlanta in the early nucs this year, he said that buying commercial nucs means that you are getting old queens from last year that the commercial guys don't want any more and that the new queens, with all the rain this spring in Florida, are (and what I heard here was:) shortbread.

As a cook I wondered how the queen bee can be shortbread, but his answer made me understand that what he actually said was, "short-bred," meaning that instead of 17 or 18 drones mating with the queen, she may have only mated with one. (See the story about Julia's drone laying queen at Blue Heron)

He said that nutrition for bees will be the next area of research after colony collapse disorder. Bees have a hard time now getting variety into their diet. We have a "fragmented habitat" and less plant diversity. You should see in a healthy colony all colors of pollen coming in the door in the spring. If you don't see this, then your bees are probably not being fed in a well-rounded way.

He did encourage feeding nucs sugar syrup - not corn syrup. As an Ag agent, he is quite aware of the process sugar goes through from cane to table and feels fine about feeding syrup made from cane sugar to his bees.

A very natural, as in nonchemical, way to control for mites is to do splits. This is because in a split, the old queen stays in one place and the other half of the split has no queen. bees in that half of the split have to make their own queen from an egg, and the process takes about a month from egg to laying queen. This disrupts the varroa mite life cycle because without a laying queen, the mite can't reproduce themselves in a bee egg. Thus the mites die out over this period.

In essence he promoted in every way that a good beekeeper helps the bees have what they need NATURALLY.

What a breath of fresh air!

Devorah--the Re-Queened Hive and Her Progress

Right before Labor Day I installed a new queen in this queenless hive. There was absolutely no brood in the hive and the cells in the brood box were polished clean. The bees were angry and the hive was not doing well, as would be true of any queenless hive.

I installed the new queen and went out of town. When I returned the queen had been released and the hive seemed to be buzzing along.

Today I inspected to see if she had actually begun laying. My first sight was this wax moth worm being dragged out by a house bee. I took the shot after the house bee had returned to the hive. My heart sank at the idea that wax moths had overtaken the hive.



I also saw small hive beetles, as I did on this inspection in all of my hives. Here's one just hanging out with the bees.


But when I opened the previously empty brood box, I found to my huge relief, there were brood cells, capped and ready to emerge. I saw some larvae but didn't look at more than three frames in the brood box. I just wanted to make sure there was capped brood and I didn't want to take the risk of smushing Her Majesty. So relieved to see capped brood, I closed up the hive and left.

In a couple of weeks, I'll check again. I didn't do a powdered sugar shake on this hive because the varroa cycle was interrupted by the queenless problem. However, I may do a shake on my next inspection of this hive.

Lots of Bad Beeyard News

This was a bad day in the beeyard. Today I found that three of my hives are queenless.

I have known a number of people who "keep" bees - which simply means they have hives and those hives they leave pretty much alone. I have been that sort of beekeeper since the beginning of July. I opened the hives to harvest the honey but I haven't made a deep inspection of any hive in over a month.

I have lots of excuses. This hasn't been a great summer. My dog died unexpectedly at the end of June. My grandson and my daughter and son-in-law moved to Virginia at the end of July. And I've been teaching a 10 week semester at the Emory med school in the physical therapy department - twice as long as my usual summer teaching with them. But actually none of that justifies doing a poor job as a beekeeper and I have not been paying the right kind of attention to my bees.

The combined hive that I was concerned about had no queen. There are bees in the hive but it's really weak - I even saw wax moth worms on some of the frames. I don't know what to do with those bees who represent two poor hives, now without a queen anywhere and absolutely no brood or larvae. I had a baggie of sugar syrup on the hive that I put there last week and it hadn't been touched. I closed that hive up and thought that tomorrow or Sunday I'll shake those bees into another hive.

Then I went to one of my yard hives to check on it and found it completely queenless as well. All of the frames in the brood box looked like the one below. There was honey - about a box - and another box with no honey.

The wax moths had come in and there was wax moth debris all over the inside of the hive. This hive had a lot of bees in it, though, so I did combine it with Aristaeus on my deck.
I took the "brood box" - a misnomer if there ever were one since there wasn't a single capped cell and no larvae or eggs - and put it on top of Persephone with a sheet of newspaper in between.

The remaining two boxes I put on the bottom board and covered them. Tomorrow I'll shake the bees from those two boxes into the top of the combination where their sisters are.

Here's a picture of the combination. I hope this works. The hive below is quite strong.

And then sadly enough, I opened Devorah - my last yard hive. It was boiling over with bees. In addition it had two boxes solidly full of capped honey. I went down into the bottom box and there wasn't a single capped brood cell, no eggs, no larvae, no queen to be seen and certainly no evidence of a queen.

This hive looks so strong that I hate to lose it. I ordered a queen from Rossman that should arrive on Wednesday or Thursday. Meanwhile I will see if I can get a couple of frames of brood from Mellona to add to this hive. If they don't make a queen themselves at least it will give them something to do while we wait for the new queen.

So here's the end of the summer tally:

• I had two hives that survived the winter this year - Bermuda and Mellona and they appear to be doing fine, but I haven't looked into the brood box for them yet. They do have copious numbers of bees and a large beard each every night.
• I bought three nucs - one had no queen at the beginning - it's now the bottom box of the combination I made today. The other two nucs were my yard hives and they are now both queenless and likely not to make it.
• I captured four swarms and kept three swarms - the first swarm was the bottom box of the failed combination. The second swarm is thriving and doing well. The last swarm that I kept is the one my grandson and I captured. It was robbed out and absconded and I combined it in a failed attempt last weekend.
  

So at one point this summer I had eight hives - I'm down to four thriving hives and one bustling but queenless hive that may not make it although I have ordered a queen.

I feel despondent about my bees. I should have been paying better attention so that I could have addressed this problem before it got so bad.

Hive Combination continued

I can't say that there is a good ending. I'm not sure about the hive box that I put on top in the combination. Maybe the queen was in there although I didn't see evidence of her and didn't find her.

I put the two boxes together with slit newspaper in between and left them for a week. All of the Internet forums said that within that time the bees would chew through the newspaper and join each other. I should see a pile of chewed newspaper in front of the hive. Well, that never happened.

Instead I saw the bees carrying out larvae (see picture below) and saw a lot of conflict in front of the hive. I had been feeding both of these hives before the one was robbed out. I didn't feed them during the combination week and instead supplied the top box with two frames of honey on either side of the box. The lower hive had stored honey.


I opened the hives on Saturday to see what had happened. Evidence of the mayhem abounded. There were dead bees all over the newspaper and detritus from wax moths that had inhabited the top hive. I pulled off the newspaper, killed some wax moths and put the hive back together.

This coming weekend, I'll probably take off the top box and leave Hyron as a one-box hive. The combination was not a success. I'll have another opportunity to try to do it better in the future, I'm sure.

There's always a silver lining....

The wax moth isn't a creature you want to find in your bee hive. Usually the wax moth takes advantage of a weak hive and suddenly the frames are a mess of yuck. I never have thought of the wax moth as having positive properties.



I'm training for the Breast Cancer 3 Day Walk in Atlanta in October. The walk itself includes three consecutive days in October, walking 20 miles each day. The training is vigorous, with the mileage increasing each weekend as we are now 15 weeks from the event. Today I had to walk 8 miles.

To make the miles less boring, I bought an IPod and download NPR podcasts and audio books to keep my mind off of the long distance. One of the podcasts I listened to today was NPR's Hearing Voices.

Imagine my surprise when one of the topics in a feature called Bugs and Birds was about the music made by wax moths!

A man actually cultivated the wax moths because of the high-pitched music they make after dark and he figured out how to record this. It is, I must say, quite beautiful. Who knew there was value to such a messy creature?

So now if I find a wax moth infestation in any of my hives, I'm going to try to remember their musical talent!

What Kind of a Place is This?

When I got the swarm yesterday, I didn't have much preparation time for housing them. I already had a swarm lure hive set up on my deck and given the press of time, I decided as I drove home with the bees in the car that the swarm lure hive would be their new home.

I confess, I didn't give them the best room in the house. I had not much hope for the swarm lure, so the hive was set up with a solid bottom board and old frames from the last two years. A few of the frames had comb with wax moth damage. A few of the frames had remnant of comb left from my cutting out wax moth damage. A few frames were completely empty. The last time I opened the swarm lure hive, three huge palmetto roaches ran out - you know the kind - about 2 inches long and fierce looking remnants of the stone age. (They've been around for 300 million years - who is going to argue with them?)

So today the swarm has been cleaning house. They were up and out before either of my established hives to get a jump on the day. You can see the busy housekeeper bees, carrying out all kinds of refuse.


The two bees below are probably saying, "What kind of a place is this?" I'm sure if they could complain, they would report me to the bee landlord association or the board of health.



Tonight I got home after dark and went outside to take a picture of the hive. Look at the housekeeping progress that has been made! They have swept the landing deck almost completely clean and made neat piles of trash on the deck below the hive.



They are probably making wax - the Boardman feeder was completely full yesterday so they are sucking down the sugar water - a good sign of wax production.



I have a good screened bottom board for this hive - I'll put it on when I open up the hive on Sunday or so. It's a Country Rubes Board and may make up for my giving them a less than decent place to live at the beginning!

Nastiness in the dead hives

Amazing that I am in Canada on a 10 day hiking trip and can still post to the blog. This is thanks to the Internet and wireless service at my hotel.

Before I left I opened the dead hives to clean them up. In the first hive Proteus, I found wax moth mess throughout. I scraped moth cocoons and killed larvae by smashing it with my feet and with my hive tool. I threw most of the wax mess over the deck to the ground below and then left the frames leaning against an oak tree for the chipmunk to snack on as they are prone to do.

Then I opened Proteus Bee - roaches ran out of the hive and there was wax moth damage throughout. I took the hive apart and when I got to the solid part of the slatted rack just above the SBB, there were these nasty larvae. I think they must be roach larvae since they are not cocooned and were in this pile in the corner. I dumped them on the deck and smashed and stomped on all of them.

Amazing what housekeepers a good beehive contains. This damage is the result of creatures taking over when there are no bees to maintain the cleanliness of the hive.

Yuck!

Wax Moth Worms, SHBs, Pests everywhere

We are in the middle of a drought and a heat wave. All the insects are thriving. When I opened the small swarm hive to combine it with Proteus Bee, I found it full of wax moth worms. I took out the damaged frames and leaned them against a tree so the sun (and the squirrels) could do their best. In the second picture in the upper left you can see a nasty wax moth worm. On the slatted rack below, you can see a wax worm cocoon with a bee beside it.

The third picture is a view of many of the wax worms who showed up when I scraped the cocoons off the insides of the hive. GROSS.

In Bermuda, the lure was working well. Instead of a club meeting of SHBs in the corner of the upper box, there were dead ones in the trap. I renewed the lure in all three traps, although Bermuda was the only one with dead (HA, HA) beetles in it.

Wax moth damage in the small swarm hive

Today I checked the small swarm hive and found to my dismay that the #8 frame as well as the #7 frame was full of wax moth damage. When I first opened the hive, a fat juicy wax moth crawled right out onto the hive box - YUCK. I smashed several wax moths with my hive tool and then tried to remove the damaged comb. In the end I took it out of the hive altogether and replaced the frames with frames of young brood from Mellona. I leaned the frames against the deck to see if bees wanted anything that was still there - pollen and such - but later I'll put them in one of my strong hives to get cleaned up.

The poor small swarm continues to struggle. I think today I'm going to call about ordering a new queen for them since they didn't make a queen cell from the frames I gave them on Sunday last week.

Small Swarm Gets its Own Hive Box

Last night I painted the hive box for the small swarm that invited itself to my deck. My plan was to move them out of the deep nuc where they have been living to a medium 8-frame box.

I moved each frame from the nuc, orienting it exactly as it had been in the original nuc. When I first put the swarm in the nuc, the bees were living on deep frames since that is the box they had claimed for themselves when they arrived on my deck.

I have gradually moved out the deep frames and replaced them with medium ones. One I moved because it had wax moths. Several others I moved when I added frames of brood and bees from other hives. So I thought they were living on all medium frames in a deep nuc.

Imagine my surprise when I found that the last frame was still a deep - oh, dear. I examined the frame carefully and found that there were a few capped brood cells but the queen was not recently laying there.

What should I do?

I went to another hive and got a frame of capped brood that was a medium frame and substituted it for the deep. I made sure I didn't get the queen from the hive where I stole the frame. To do that I shook most of the bees on the frame back into their original hive before moving the frame. I needed to get dressed and go to work so I couldn't pick over the frames as I might under different time stress. So the frame I moved also had a lot of drone cells. I hope that won't be a problem for this new hive.

I put it all together, stood the nuc box and the deep frame outside the entry to the hive, put the top on and added the mint plant which has been on top of the nuc.

So now the small swarm has its own home. I hope they will thrive there.

When I pulled the frame from Bermuda, I saw lots of open swarm cells and one supercedure cell - and I only looked at three frames. They are packed into that hive, although I've given them lots of room to grow that they are barely using. I'll need to think about how I might open up the brood box even more.

Ongoing Tale of the Small Swarm

A few days ago I opened the nuc where the small swarm is housed to see how things were going. I pulled out one of the old frames on the edge of the nuc and found happy wax moths having a field day. The photo shows the damage and some of the wax moth worms. I gouged out the wax moth area from the frame, crushed it with my hive tool and threw the mess over the deck railing. I left the frame in the sun to do the rest. I then put in a deep frame with a SC starter strip.

I wanted to make sure this little nuc is OK in terms of food, so I made a baggie feeder with a quart sandwich bag filled with sugar syrup and snipped an X in the top of it. With it on top of the frames the nuc top wouldn't fit on the nuc, so I took two bottom bars from unbuilt frames and laid them on each long side of the nuc. Raised up just that 1/4 inch or so, the nuc top went on. I would rather, however, be feeding them with honey in a frame so I decided to work toward that.

This morning I went out and took a full frame of honey (see it leaning against a tree) from Mellona and replaced the empty frame with that. The bees were already festooning and drawing wax on the empty deep frame - that seemed hopeful to me. They were preparing for the mated queen, I hope.

They had only drawn about a jelly jar lid sized area of wax so I hope it didn't harm the process of the hive/nuc for me to take it out. I have added to that nuc now three frames of brood and eggs and as the brood has emerged, there are empty spaces for the newly mated queen to lay on at least three frames.

There were many more bees apparent today. If you'll look at the picture, you'll see some bees who are black - those are the original swarm bees. The orange bees came from the brood frames I added to the hives.

I hope the queen makes it back from the drone congregation area, wherever that is, and begins laying well in this hive. I believe the numbers would say that she should be laying about the end of the first week of June, if all goes well.