Sad Bee Mother Reports on a Sad Bee Event

Today I had a special time for Mother's Day with one of my daughters getting a manicure and pedicure, something I NEVER do - it was so relaxing and a really lovely experience.  But before the mani-pedi, I was rushing around checking on bees.

I checked on the bees at my house.  The package installed this year was full of honey and needed a new box.  I moved one of their drawn frames up into the new box and was happy about that one.

The drone layer hive was calm.  They had not used the frame of brood and eggs I gave them on Thursday to make queen cells, so I believe they do have a queen, but I didn't go down deep into the box.  I did give them a new box because they were also full in every box with nectar being capped.

The Patty swarm hive had not filled their most recent box, so I didn't change anything in their configuration.

I only had an hour before I needed to be ready to go with Sarah.  Over the weekend, I had heard from the Stonehurst that they had dead bees all over their driveway.  I had to be creative with my path to Stonehurst because with the gorgeous day in Atlanta, everyone was trying to drive to Piedmont Park and the inn is one block away from the park.  But when I finally got there, the bees looked healthy but didn't need another box.  I didn't see that as cause for worry because it has been so rainy - when could they have collected nectar?

So I had about fifteen minutes to stop by the Morningside garden hives on my way home.  I had an extra box with me - it's a fabulous hive and was filling itself up with honey.  I also had a ladder with me which is required for me now to get the seventh box off of the hive.

I got to the top of the hill where the bees are.  Should be a great place for bees.  There are blackberries blooming all the way down the hill and kudzu everywhere.  Not to mention the organic community garden at the foot of the hill.

A terrible smell met me as I approached the hive.  In front of the hive was a dinner plate size round of dead bees in a pile about 2 1/2 inches deep.  Thousands of dead bees rotting in the sun.  What I was smelling was dead bees.

I have corks as hive entry reducers on this hive and one of them was lying at the edge of the pile.  I wanted to throw up, but what I did was cry.

This was my best hive.  And here was a pile of dead bees the size of a swarm.

I got kind of paranoid and with the cork on the ground I thought someone had poisoned the bees - pulled out the cork and sprayed Raid or something into the hive.

But there were still bees flying in and out of the hive, crowding the entrance.

I didn't have time because Sarah was coming to pick me up for our Mother's Day fun, so, sad that I couldn't figure it out right then, I went home and went with Sarah for such a relaxing mani-pedi that I almost forgot about the death on the hill.

I couldn't quit thinking about the hive after I got home, so I called my friend Jerry Wallace who lives near me and is a great beekeeper.  He came with me to open the hive around 7 (I figured with the foragers all home, we could see how bad the damage really was).

We took every box off all the way down to the bottom, figuring that if someone had poisoned the bees, we would be able to smell the Raid in the wood of the slatted rack.  The slatted rack smelled normal, no poison residue, and I have a really good nose.  Jerry nor I could smell anything.  He pointed out that even if someone had sprayed a poison in the hive with the SBB and the slatted rack, the spray would have been deflected by the slats back through the SBB.

The most likely possibility, however, is that the bees have found a nectar source that has poison on it or in it.  They don't know the difference and are taking it in and dying.  So the hive is not out of the woods yet.  I often anthropomorphize my bees, attributing wisdom and emotion to them.  The fact of the matter is that they signal each other about nectar sources but aren't wise enough to notice that each bee who goes to that source comes back and dies in front of the hive.  The bees may not yet stop collecting from the poison source.

Meanwhile there are at least two full boxes of honey in the hive and still thousands of bees - it's like a very strong hive after a swarm when you can hardly tell the hive swarmed because so many bees are still there.

So maybe there's hope for the future.   Maybe they will switch to another nectar source.  Maybe all is not lost and the Mother's Day Event may turn out better than I think.

Noah Macey at 16 is Youngest Master Beekeeper in the state of Georgia

HOORAY!  Noah, one of the best beekeepers I know, passed his qualifications and last night was awarded his Master Beekeeper.  At age 16, he is the youngest person in the state ever to be awarded Master Beekeeper.

I've known Noah since he and his mom, Julia, and I started beekeeping together at the Blue Heron in 2008 or 2009.  He was just 11 or 12 and already a great beekeeper. He has now read many books, read online, gone to and paid attention to conferences, built his own top bar hive, installed and raised many bee hives.  And he got his Master Beekeeper on his first try - unlike lots of people who try for it.  What a great guy!

Our club did really well.  There were actually 11 Master Beekeeper certifications awarded this year and at least four of them were members or former members of our bee club.

Scotti Bozeman, a former member of MABA who has moved to Alabama, achieved her Journeyman certification and won a number of awards in the honey show.   There were three Journeyman certifications and two of them came from our club - the second one was Jane Lu.

Julia, my beekeeping buddy and Noah's mom, won a blue ribbon for a gorgeous honey bee drawing with beautiful calligraphy labels.

And a member of our club, Ronnie Brannon, won best in show for his amazing close-up photograph of a honey bee on a rosemary blossom.

Metro Atlanta was well-represented in all areas at Young Harris - we had many people reach levels of certification, many honey show award winners, many attendees who came just to learn, and I taught there - low tech beekeeping - which was a lot of fun for me.

What to Study for Journeyman in Georgia

Many apologies to the man who asked me a question at Young Harris today at the lunch break.  We were leaving the cafeteria and this man came up to me and asked me a question that I failed to answer well.  I thought he asked me where on my blog could he read about how to be an advanced beekeeper.

He did ask something about books he could read and I answered that the blog included a bookstore with books that I recommend.  Then I said since I had gone through a lot of changes since I started, I guess he could just read the blog entries.

When we walked away, Noah said what the man was really asking was what books to study for the Journeyman exam.  I feel so bad that I didn't respond to or understand what he was asking.

So if I had a chance to do it over (and if he happens to visit this blog), here's what I would study for Journeyman if I were taking it next year:

• I'd read from cover to cover Mark Winston's The Biology of the Honey Bee
• I'd read Honey Bee Democracy by Tom Seeley - not because swarm behavior is essential to the test but because in the process of explaining swarm behavior, Dr. Seeley covers a lot of the new knowledge about bees today. 
• I'd read Delaplane's First Lessons in Beekeeping since it's the official text 
• I'd go to EAS or another professional bee meeting this year and listen to the featured speakers rather than to what I thought would be fun to hear
• I'd learn everything I could about queens, their biology and behavior
• Even though I'd hate every minute of it, I'd learn everything I could about diseases - causes and treatments
• I'd study the bee catalogs because they always put some weird instrument or another on the practical exam
• And I'd study insects of other species than apis mellifera because I would know I'd have to identify a number of them! (and on that item you have to get 100% right)

Sorry, nice man, that I misunderstood what you were asking.  Hope if you read this, that it helps.

Dave Tarpy on Good Queens

At Young Harris this morning I heard a talk by Dave Tarpy on how good queens = good colonies.  A study by Dennis vonEngelsdorp found that of hive deaths over the winter, 31% of the deaths were attributed to poor queens.

 Dave Tarpy is on the left, Tom Seeley on the right (weren't we lucky to hear both of them!)

Tarpy pointed out that the queen serves many more functions in the hive than simply being a good egg laying machine.  When the queen is a virgin, her QMP (queen mandibular pheromone) is low but after mating her QMP is high and stays high during her lifetime.  Her emission of this pheromone does many things for the hive.

1. The presence of QMP in the hive suppresses laying worker tendencies
2. Workers are instantly attracted to QMP and want to touch the queen and disperse the QMP throughout the hive
3. QMP is a great attractor for drones - drones even have a special segment on their antennae just for smelling QMP
4. QMP includes 9-ODA as well as 9-HDA.  The 9-HDA is needed to encourage the clustering of a swarm when the hive swarms
5. The queen also has a footprint pheromone which is emitted with each footfall.  This pheromone inhibits queen cell production.  The queen spreads this herself as she walks throughout the hive
6. If laying worker eggs are present, QMP influences the workers to cannibalize those worker-laid eggs.

It's crucial in the life of a hive that the hive have a really good queen.  In the hives we run where we let the hives requeen themselves, there is a possibility that the bees will not make a good queen.  I've always heard this but never understood why until today.

If the hive is queenless and desperate for a queen, then the beekeeper gives them a frame of brood and eggs to help them make a queen.  The pheromone emitted by the eggs and young larvae is helpful in making the bees react as if they have a queen.  But they are still desperate for a new queen as quickly as possible.  

In the general development of a queen, the bees feed the egg and larvae only royal jelly until the cell is capped.  If the egg is to be a worker, then after the third day, the bees feed the larvae bee bread and other things - not just royal jelly.  With their goal being to replace the queen as quickly as possible, they may very well pick an egg or larvae that is older than 3 days and start feeding it royal jelly.  In the interim, it may have had a couple of days of being fed like a worker, meaning that it has a lesser quality developmental start and will be less of a great queen.

Not only that, but a queen cell made from a four or five day larvae is going to emerge in 11 or 12 days rather than 16 (as in a one day egg).  The bees may pick for speed of emergence rather than quality so that they get the new queen sooner than later. The newly emerged less-than queen will then kill the other queens in their cells and you the beekeeper are stuck with a less than wonderful queen.

To prevent this Dave says to check the hive five days after installing the brood and egg frame.  If you find any capped queen cell at that time, remove that cell, leaving any still uncapped queen cells which were of course started with younger larvae and thus more likely to be successful queens.

That last paragraph was worth going to the conference to learn - thanks, Dave Tarpy.

Tom Seeley Speaking at MABA on Wednesday Night

Tom Seeley is coming to town.  (Author, scientist, and probably the world authority on how/why honey bees swarm)  Really he's coming to Georgia to teach at the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute on Friday and Saturday.   He agreed to stop and speak to our bee club on Wednesday night before driving up to Young Harris.

Unfortunately our bee club has this awful policy of just one person hosting the guest speaker for dinner.  I wish we shared the policy of some other clubs such as the Macon County Beekeepers in Franklin, NC.  When I went to speak to that club, they invited any club member who wished to join us to come to the restaurant with the speaker so I got to eat with ten wonderful beekeepers before going to give my talk.

The person who invited Tom Seeley to speak to our club literally said she was going to be selfish and not allow anyone else to join her in having dinner with him.  I have to work right up until fifteen minutes before the meeting, so I wouldn't have been able to eat with him, even if anyone else were invited to go along.  But think how inspiring it would be to new beekeepers to get a chance to sit and have a casual dinner conversation with him!  Oh, well.

We have great speakers at Metro - Juliana Rangel who was Seeley's assistant in the Honey Bee Democracy study, Billy Davis, Keith Delaplane (comes every year) have all spoken to our club, for example.  They each get taken out to dinner by a host before the meeting.  I wish the policy would be changed to include anyone who would like to go and is willing to pay for their own dinner.

I am so excited because I will get to hear him speak on Wednesday night and then he is giving three talks at Young Harris.  Luckily I'm not scheduled to teach in conflict with him so I'll be able to hear him give all three talks.  I'll take notes and share them with all of you.  Young Harris is usually sold out by now but they've increased registration to 150 this year, so there still may be some openings.

But, if you are in Atlanta and would like to hear Tom Seeley talk about bees, the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association meets at the Atlanta Botanical Garden in midtown at 7 PM on Wednesday night.  He will be speaking in Day Hall - it's the first large building you come to after leaving the entry building.  You don't have to be a member to come to the meeting and there's not a charge to attend.  You can either park in the parking garage (there's a fee) or in the neighborhoods across Piedmont Road and walk over.

It's a great beekeeper opportunity!  Join us.

There's a fabulous exhibit at the Garden right now of large creatures made of plants.  Day Hall where Seeley will be speaking is just past the two cobra plant sculptures.

Here, for example, are the fish sculptures that both spew water and spin around, much to my granddaughter's delight:

And here is the monster - we call him the Gruffalo because he looks like the Gruffalo in a book Lark (my three year old granddaughter) likes:

Drone Layer Hive

Yesterday we had about a 2 hour break of sunshine and blue sky - followed, of course, by grey sky, clouds and, you guessed it, more rain.  It's raining now.

It was like the eye of the storm that I remember from hurricanes, growing up on the Mississippi river.  We would take a breath during the eye as it passed over, but the hurricane would start again.  I know it dates me, but the one I really remember was Hurricane Audrey in 1957.  I remember the eye because of the startling contrast to what was going on just minutes before - I was little and this fierce weather really scared me.  Hurricanes would devastate south Louisiana and then would come up the river to Natchez, MS where I lived.  By then they would be weakened and still wreaked havoc.

In our small calm of sunny weather, I opened the split to see if the new queen were laying and I opened the drone layer hive to see if their new queen had succeeded.  The split was doing great and had wall to wall cells of eggs and tiny c-shaped larvae.

The split was made on April 13, so the queen should have emerged around the 29th.  So checking on the 5th might have been pushing it.  We've had bad weather and I was concerned she might not have been able to go on a mating flight but she had and was working hard.

In the drone layer colony, I didn't find a laying queen.  I did find a queen cell on the frame I had given them that had been ripped open from the side, indicating that a queen had emerged, and I found a queen cell opened appropriately at the tip.  The last frame of brood and eggs I gave them was on April 15.  Doing the math, at the longest, the queen should have emerged on May 1 and this was just May 5.  We've had terrible weather for most of those days.  So either she hasn't mated; she was lost in a storm; she has mated but hadn't started laying.

So as a panacea, as per Michael Bush, I took a frame of brood and eggs out of the Patty swarm hive and gave it to the drone layers.

I'm leaving for Young Harris on Thursday and this way they'll have a chance if they need it.

I'm stopping by Chastain tomorrow and taking a frame of brood and eggs out of our nuc there to put in the Don Kuchenmeister drone laying hive tomorrow if I have enough time.

It's a Rainout in Georgia

It's not just a rainy night in Georgia - we have flood warnings for the next several days and the promise of three to four inches of rain as a possibility.

And we haven't even completed the fifth inning....so the game doesn't really count,

There's no re-play in the nectar flow like there might be in baseball.

It's also COLD to add insult to bee and beekeeper injury.

Jerry Wallace posted on the MABA Facebook page a couple of days ago a photo of blown down tulip poplar blossoms.  Here's one blown down (among many, many, many) in my backyard right in front of my hives.

The blown down blossoms are multitudinous and are no longer blossoms from which the bees can draw nectar.  The tulip poplar is only one of the spring flowers currently in bloom now.

All of our bees are being affected by the weather.  Both they can't fly and when it's raining, blossoms are destroyed and the nectar available that particular rainy day is not reachable for the bees.

Also virgin queens can't mate in these conditions, so people who made splits in the last three weeks are not going to get well-mated queens, if the queen can mate at all - can you imagine being a drone trying to aim for the queen in rainy, windy conditions?

So time will tell sooner than later what the impact of our very wet and cold spring will have on the honey production for my area.

PS.  I just heard on the news that the Atlanta Braves are rained out tonight for only the 17th rainout in the 16 year history of the Braves at Turner Stadium in Atlanta.  So the bees and the Braves are suffering.

A Strange Find in SHB Trap

Today I went to check on Sebastian's hives.  We had put a new SHB trap on one of those hives on April 21.  I wanted to see if the trap were working and I wanted to see if either hive needed a new box.

 We are in the middle of the Atlanta nectar flow but the weather has beaten the tulip poplar blossoms off of the trees and hasn't really been conducive to nectar collection - cold nights, drippy days.


















I pulled out the oil trap in the new SHB trap first and this is what I saw:

In case you are confused, those are NOT small hive beetles - those are earwigs drowned in oil.  I didn't see a single small hive beetle either in the hive or in the trap!

The hive was doing fine but did not need a new box.

The second hive - the survivor there from last year - was doing great.  There was lots of brood.  As is true in hives with slatted racks, the queen had laid the frames from end to end.   What I mean by that is that she had brood from the end bar on one end to the end bar on the other end!

Not only that, the frame below with solid brood on both sides was the last frame in the box, right by the side of the box.  

The frame on the far side of the box was solid honey.  I moved it out and replaced it with a foundationless frame. I then moved that honey filled frame into the middle of a new box fitted with foundationless frames.  We'll see if they fill it up.

I then went to Stonehurst to see how the hive there was doing.  Here's what the top box looked like:

I moved one of these up into an empty box and added a box to this hive.  I also met the very nice new innkeepers, Paul and Lorrie.  Caroline and Gary have retired so I'll get to know this new couple as I work the bees over there.  

I also made a quick stop at Morningside to add a box to that fantastic hive.  Here's how it looks now: