Ingredients
□ 1 cup creamy peanut butter (natural will work too)
□ 1 cup honey
□ 1 large egg
□ 1½ teaspoon vanilla extract
□ ½ teaspoon salt
□ ½ teaspoon baking soda
□ 2 cups flour (you can also use whole wheat flour)

Directions

Step 1
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Step 2
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Step 3
In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the peanut butter and honey. Beat until completely incorporated.

Step 4
Stir in egg and vanilla.

Step 5
Add the salt, baking soda and flour. Mix until it comes together to form a dough.

Step 6
Shape dough into small balls (about 1 tablespoon of dough). Place balls on the prepared sheet.

Step 7
Use a fork to lightly press each dough ball down.

Step 8
Bake for 10-12 minutes until cookies become slightly golden brown.

Note:
Be careful to not over-bake! Honey burns much more easily than sugar.

Step 9
Remove from the oven and place cookies on a wire rack to cool.

Every beekeeper has one. Some have two.
An essential piece of equipment for any beekeeper is the smoker. They are available in all sizes with different features, from the ones with heat shields to the old trusty, rusty smoker that your grandfather used. They are basically of the same design and provide the same function of producing smoke to calm the bees or to chase them away. Their smoke can even help you escape when that nasty colony decides it doesn’t like you.

Your choice of this tool is important. After discussing some features and what you need to consider when choosing one, I will provide some information on how to use one.

Selection
The first and major consideration is the size of the smoker you need for your operation. A two-hive hobbyist hasn’t the need for the large smoker that a commercial beekeeper will need. Size is basically a statement of the amount of fuel it will hold. The more fuel, the longer it will produce smoke. Other features make the smoker easier to use or safer. Here are some of the things you need to think about when purchasing your smoker.

Size
Two sizes are commonly available. There are other, less common sizes available from a variety of manufactures. Here are the two common sizes:

• 4” x 7” – 4” diameter and 7” tall
• 4” x 10” – 4” diameter and 10” tall

Obviously the larger the smoker, the more fuel it will hold.

If it is too large, it will get unwieldy to handle and more difficult to store. If it is too small, you will be adding fuel to it more often.

Material

Two metals are used for smokers:

• Galvanized steel
• Stainless steel

Stainless steel is more durable than galvanized steel. Nowadays, most smokers are made of stainless steel. If you have a choice, select the stainless one.

Lid Style

Two common lid shapes are available:

Dome

Cone

• Cone
• Dome

This seems to be a manufacturing or patent decision. I have used both types and either function equally well. It does seem a little easier to direct smoke with the cone-shaped lid, in my experience.

Lid Hinge
The sturdier the better. A weak, floppy hinge makes opening and closing the lid difficult. When you are in a hurry and have creosote buildup on the rim, you don’t need or want the problem of positioning the lid.

Opener Tab
The opener is a small tab used to open the lid. This is an important item when you need to reload a HOT smoker.

Two common opener tabs are available:

• Shaped metal
• Coiled wire

The coiled wire opener seems to be more robust than a shaped opener. It is easier to grip between your fingers with gloves on than the smooth, bent opener. When you are having trouble opening the lid by grabbing the tab, grip the lid in your hand with your thumb under the opener and around the chimney. Then use your whole hand to remove the top.

Heat Shield
A smoker either has a heat shield or it doesn’t.

This is where safety counts. Get a smoker with a heat shield. The first time you bump your new smoker with no heat shield and burn yourself, it will convince you it is important to order a new smoker with a heat shield. In addition, the heat shield often provides a way to hang the smoker.

Bellows
Plastic, wood and probably many other styles are available. All of them work and are usually replaceable.

Usage
After purchasing your smoker, there are some tricks that will help you with its use. I’ll list these items in order of usage, starting with fuel selection, to extinguishing it and finally how to clean it.

• Fuel: You need something to burn. Almost everything that you can light on fire will work, but some items work better and are more convenient than others. Jeans, burlap, pine needles and wood chips are some of the fuels that are cheap and readily available. Whatever you choose needs to be dry enough to burn. When we lived in the country, I used dried cow manure. It was cheap, easy to obtain and burned great. Lately, I have been using landscaping wood chips available at any home improvement store. When you’re desperate, you can always steal wood chips from a flowerbed.
• Loading and Lighting: Lighting the smoker is easiest if you start with a loose wad of newspaper. Remember, it’s that thing you used everyday before all the news was delivered online? After starting it, add your fuel slow enough to get the fuel burning. Pump the bellows to force the rapid burn of the paper and get the fuel on fire. Once it is burning, add enough fuel to keep it burning for the length of time needed. What I really mean is FILL IT UP. You will always think of something additional to do that will take more time.
  Stuff the chimney with some green grass. It will act as a filter and reduce the ashes blown on to your bees.
  Close the lid and allow the fuel to smolder.
  Hint: Use a propane torch with a self-starting handle. Super easy and much easier than matches or a fire starter.
  Hint: If you are having trouble lighting it, use a squirt of hand sanitizer. A good one usually contains 60% or more alcohol and will burn easily.
• Usage: A couple puffs of smoke at the hive entrance and under the cover as you start the inspection helps calm the bees from the start. Rather than smoke the bees directly, allow the smoke to drift over the bees. This just seems to be a little gentler. Do not smoke the bees when flames or high heat is coming out of the smoker. You are using the smoker to calm the bees not barbecue them.
  Warning: The smoker is Hot! Do not put it on dry grass. Do not try and hold it between your knees (this usually only happens one time). Setting it on an adjacent hive makes it handy and less likely to tip over.
• Extinguishing:
  • Cork – Place a cork in the chimney. This works great, except a cork is usually hiding from you when you need it.
  • Lay on its side – Lay the smoker on its side on a non-burnable surface. This was relayed to me by a University of Minnesota bee squad member. It worked, but you need to be careful. Supposedly, the air will flow above the fuel, not through the fuel.
  • Pail – Set it in a metal pail and let it burn out. This is safe, but it is still hot. It is not safe when traveling to another bee yard.
  • Allow it to burn – Allow the fuel to burn until it is used up.

All these methods work. BUT they will cause a problem. To be effective, the smoker produces prodigious amounts of smoke which will collect at the body-lid seam. When cool, this collection (a form of creosote) seals the seam and makes a subsequent opening of the smoker difficult. Bad words, even though they may make you feel better, do not help to open the lid.

I recommend emptying the smoker’s unused fuel into a metal bucket. Then, leave the lid open and hang it on the side of the bucket to cool. It is safe and the lid will not be sealed to the body of the smoker. It will be open and ready for loading the next time you need it.

Warning: Be careful with the smoker’s unburned fuel and ashes. Even when dumping the ashes into a metal bucket, the smoker’s residue will probably be hot and can possibly flair up. Place the bucket in a safe place. Burning your shed down or catching your car on fire makes for a bad day.

• Cleaning: This can be a real hassle. It’s not much of a problem if you follow these simple directions.
  • With your hive tool, scrape as much soot and creosote off the device as you can.
  • Use a propane torch to burn the remaining soot and creosote. Let it burn until it extinguishes itself.
  • After cleaning the big chunks out of the smoker, use a wire brush to remove the remaining ashes.
    Hint: I use a three inch wire brush on an electric drill to remove the remaining ashes. You’ll probably never get it completely clean, but at least you can close the top.

Along with the hive tool, the smoker is the most frequently used tool in your beekeeping work chest. A good, reliable smoker is well worth the extra cost.

Get a copy of Ed Simon’s bee Bee Equipment Essentials with detailed drawings, construction hints and how-to-use instructions for dozens of beekeeping tools and equipment from www.Wicwas.com. Ed can be contacted through SimonEdwin41@gmail.com

Lodemia (Dema) Charlotte Bennett was born in 1845 in Clairidon, Geauga County, Ohio.

Her mother, Charlotte Parantha Humphrey Bennett, died November 23, 1857 – she was thirty-seven years old, leaving Lodemia at only twelve years of age. She had an older brother, Rollen, who was fourteen, another brother Elmer, who was thirteen, and a younger sister, Emma, who was seven years old. Her father, Daniel Bennett, born in New York in 1818, kept and cared for the children the best he could, but when the Civil War started, he had to go to war and could no longer care for them. It was not uncommon for mothers to die young, leaving the husband to care for the children, nor was it unusual for the father to send them away because he couldn’t afford to care for them. Most men were farmers, and Daniel was listed as a carpenter. Men did not seem to be cut out for this sort of work directed for the women to feed, clothe and school the children. When the Civil War called for all men to enlist, life became even more challenging for Lodemia and her siblings. They were sent to live with friends and relatives. Lodemia’s father placed an ad in the Clairidon Newspaper: “Wanted – a place for some respectable family for my daughter, eight years old until she shall become of age. Or, if preferred, I will reward any such family for keeping her for one year only Clairidon, November 23, 1860.” All the children attended school and could read and write.

Daniel served in the Civil War from 1862 to 1865. He was wounded in the left thigh in the battle near Lost Mountain. He was listed as a prisoner in the Cuyahoga County Jail around 1875 (not sure why he was there), and then remarried a woman named Anna. In the Census of 1880, Daniel’s listed as living in a Veterans home in Dayton, Ohio. In 1860, Lodemia was listed as living with a relative, Caroline W. Collins Eames. She was forty-six, and Lodemia was fourteen years old. Caroline’s children had passed away in 1847, and her husband, Marshal Hosmer Eames, had passed away in 1848. He was thirty-six. Her cousin’s two children, a brother and sister with the last name of Taylor, were about the same age as Lodemia. Caroline also had her elderly father living in the home. Caroline is listed as “keeping house.” A lady that managed a home with an elderly parent and three children without the help of servants would need to be fit and energetic and expect a lot of assistance from the children! The children are listed as attending school.

J. B. Hains

Lodemia spent the next seven years living with Caroline. Interestingly, Lodemia moved to Michigan at some point. Her younger sister Emma was married and living in Michigan. This is probably one reason why she left Ohio. I don’t know the connection between how she met and married Andrew Shults (Shultz) in Tuscola, Michigan. Andrew was married before to Lucia Sweat, who shortly died after they were married in 1867. He then married Lodemia in 1868. Andrew was sixty years old, beaten up from life and the war. Lodemia was young – only twenty-two. The marriage didn’t last as Lodemia divorced Andrew and lived with Henry Pentingill’s family in 1870. Henry had a wife and three kids. Lodemia is listed as a domestic servant. Her ex-husband Andrew died in 1872 in Tuscola, Michigan. After his death, she returned to using the name Miss Lodemia Bennett, and it appears she moved back to Ohio and lived with her cousin Harriet Bennett.

Harriet Bennett (Hattie) was born in 1837 and was twelve years older than Lodemia. Hattie married Joseph B. Hains in 1871 when she was 34 years old. They had a daughter who died at birth. He was married before and had a son Edson J. Hains. Joseph was born and lived in the house his father built. It was a 120-year-old home in which five generations had lived all or part of their lives. His father, Nathaniel Hains, was the first Methodist preacher in Ohio. He built the house at 602 Broadway Bedford in Cuyahoga, Ohio. His son Joseph B. Hains occupied the place after the Civil War, where Hattie and her cousin Lodemia learned beekeeping working together as apiarists. And this is how Lodemia’s introduction to beekeeping started.

Lodemia’s Home, Hains Home

Joseph described his apiary as follows: “Welcome Apiary is located in the village of Bedford, Cuyahoga Co, Ohio, on the Cleveland and Pittsburg and Cleveland and Canton Railroads, both of which run through it, dividing it about equally. It may have been said to be established on July 4, 1844, when a fugitive swarm of bees clustered on a tree where the house apiary now stands. Being eleven years of age, I assisted in hiving and caring for them. From then, they received box hive attention – sometimes numbering a score or more, at others only two or three colonies, but never becoming entirely extinct. In the Spring of 1870, there being but three stocks, I transferred and Italianized them and commenced beekeeping on modern principles.” (April 1886 issue of Gleanings, pages 294-295.)

Joseph continued to tell his story about his apiary locations, overwintering and beekeeping supplies. He then credits the women for their accomplishments in beekeeping. “Although this article is too long, I wish to refer to one feature in our apiary. It is primarily done by women who demonstrate that women can adapt themselves to the business and become successful apiarists—Mrs. Hains and her cousin Miss Bennett, by the way, is a treasurer and secretary for the Progressive Beekeepers Association in Cuyahoga, Ohio. Both women have control of the Queen nursery and other work departments.” (April 1886 issue of Gleanings, pages 294-295.)

Welcome Apiary

The two cousins removed the small and medium queen cells because they believed only the perfect cells deserved the title of royalty. Some beekeepers found this wasteful. In Gleanings in Bee Culture, A. I. Root described Lodemia as “Skillful queen breeder for the A. I. Root Co. and for Mr. Hains as a sample of what she could or did do, she once grafted forty-eight Doolittle cell cups on the frame. They were all accepted without a miss, and everyone hatched a queen. This breaks the record, as far as I know. She was also a successful honey producer who occupied a prominent position in our State Beekeeper Association meetings. She was twice elected secretary for the Ohio State Beekeepers Association and was secretary of the old defunct organization at the time of her death.”

Lodemia’s writings can be found in the American Bee Journal and Gleanings in Bee Culture from 1886-1893. She shortened her name to Dema Bennett instead of Lodemia Bennett.

She was secretary and treasurer twice for the Ohio State Beekeepers Association during this period. She would call to order the readings of the minutes for the meetings. Dema Bennett wrote about the Ohio State Beekeepers Association annual conventions and where they were held in Ohio. For many years she recorded the Ohio State Beekeepers Association’s meetings. She worked on the constitution and was elected to organize the Ohio State Fair honey displays.

The North American Beekeepers Association met on October 2, 1888 at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. Dema Bennett was voted in as a life member. Thirteen ladies were life members, and the organization had thirty-six male members. Lodemia died in 1903 at age fifty-six. She never remarried or had children. She devoted her time to bees and beekeeping organizations. She was a religious woman who was part of the temperance movement. Lodemia’s journey worked out pretty well, considering her hardships. Lodemia is buried in the Bedford, Ohio Cemetery. Her name is listed on the same headstone as Joseph B. Hains 1904, Hattie Hains 1914, and Lodemia Bennett 1903. Lodemia made a mark on bee culture and proved to men and women that women could be good business partners and excellent beekeepers!

Nina Bagley
Ohio Queen Bee
Columbus, Ohio

The art of beekeeping is all about timing, so it may come as no surprise that there is a critical two-week window when splitting a hive. Starting too early – before nectar and pollen is flowing – puts the hive at risk for chilled brood and starvation. Starting too late – when the bees are feeling they have outgrown their home – puts the hive at risk for a swarm. Master beekeepers Earl and Carol Hoffman have the following ideas to consider on your beekeeping quest.

Signs it is Time to Split
You can have your timing down but accomplishing the tasks will depend on the weather. Sometimes, a late frost or weeks of cold rain will delay the opportunity to split your hives. Earl and Carol use the Spring bloom of dandelion flowers as a marker for making splits.

If a hive is strong in the Spring, it is a great candidate for pulling brood frames to help in the splitting process. During a Spring hive inspection, if you see queen cells located on the bottom of the brood frames, it could be an indication the hive is preparing to swarm. Hives that are on the verge of swarming should be split. When bees feel they have outgrown their hive, they will leave in an attempt to establish a new one themselves.

Split Sizes
Splits can be many sizes, from large double-deep supers and five-frame nucleus hives, all the way down to the Summer two-frame deep split. The size of the split will be dependent on the amount of nurse bees in the hive – they are needed to keep the brood warm.

The size of the split will also depend on timing and weather. In Spring, when overnight temperatures are above freezing, splits need to be large and full of bees, pollen and honey. In early Summer, when overnight temperatures remain above 50°F, splits can be as small as two frames of deep comb: one frame of pollen and honey, one frame of capped brood and lots of nurse bees to keep it warm.

The Art of Splitting
Earl and Carol have said before that beekeeping has one thousand inputs and one thousand outputs. When working within the critical two-week window available to split a hive, consider the following practices to increase your chances of success:

• Drawn comb is the beekeeper’s golden treasure. Guard the wax comb and use it to make your splits and nucleus (nuc).
• There needs to be similar amounts of bees, brood and food in each super between the original hive and the split hive.
• Take extra care when moving frames with queen cells so they are not damaged. Queen cells should be used to your advantage – they are a gift from the bees.
• Frames of honey normally would be on the outside positions of the hive, and the pollen frame next to the brood in the center of the super.
• Nucs consist of a smaller size super with five deep or medium frames. Nuc boxes are easy to make. You can use scrap wood to make a bottom, four sides and a lid cut to size, and glue and nails for lap joints. Cut a ¾ inch hole for the hive entrance.
• If you are overwintering double deep supers, the task is simple: separate the two deep supers and install the new queen or queen cell into the queenless split.
• Use entrance reducers with each split and give bees access to a feeder for thin bee syrup, one to one is fine.
• Earl and Carol do not recommend the use of plastic or wax foundation frames with new splits. Let the bees focus on caring for the young and not creating wax comb. These frames are best to be drawn out by a strong hive brimming with bees during a nectar flow.

In Case of Swarm
If you miss the window to split a strong hive and it swarms, you can act fast to bring the bees back. An excellent way to attract swarm scout bees is to place bait comb boxes in trees and other accessible areas. Older dark comb will help most in capturing the swarm. Lemon grass oils or swarm capture attractants can also be effective. If swarms are at the ground level, supers with drawn comb can capture them if access to the comb is given.

Earl and Carol do not recommend using plastic or wax foundation frames to attract a swarm. However, plastic or wax foundation frames are effective with a captured swarm that did not find a bait hive. Place the swarm in the super with foundation. The workers will have no brood to feed, so all the swarm energy will go into comb creation.

Approach hive splitting like everything else in beekeeping. Leverage every tool in your toolbox – from your tried-and-true practices to new ideas. All learnings play a role in helping you achieve your desired results. It is a grand endeavor indeed.

The native range of the honey bee includes the varied habitats of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, where they diverged into 25 morphologically distinguishable subspecies or geographic races. Eight of these subspecies were introduced to North America between the early 1600’s and 1922, at which time the U.S. Bee Act was implemented to restrict new importations that might introduce diseases or debilitating mites (Sheppard, 1989). The first race to be introduced, Apis mellifera mellifera L., the “dark bee” of northern Europe, was the only race present in North America for >200 years. Subsequently, at least seven additional subspecies were imported between 1859 and 1922. Three of these, Apis mellifera ligustica Spinola from Italy (Italians), Apis mellifera carnica Pollman (Carniolans) from “Carniolia” (Dadant [1877]: Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and former Yugoslavia), and Apis mellifera caucasica Gorbatschev (Caucasians) from the Caucasus Mountains region, formed the primary basis of present day commercial honey bee populations. Several additional subspecies from the Middle East and North Africa were tried briefly by beekeepers but lost favor (Sheppard, 1989). In the mid 1950’s a ninth subspecies Apis mellifera scutellata Lepeletier was introduced to Brazil to bolster honey production (Kerr, 1967). Their descendants commonly called Africanized honey bees thrived in Brazil and their range expanded both southward to Argentina and northward to the southern United States (Schiff et al., 1994).

Honey bees are Old World insects that were introduced into North and South America by European settlers. The most well-known races of honey bees in the New World are Italians, Carniolans, Caucasions, Africanized and Black German bees.

Italian Queen

Italian Bees – originally from Italy, this is by far the most popular honey bee. Italian bees are yellow in color, prolific, reasonably gentle and can handle most of the climatic diversity present in the U.S. Brood rearing begins slowly in the Spring, peaks in the Summer and lasts late into the Fall, regardless of nectar flow. Overall, brood rearing is relatively unaffected by a lack of nectar or pollen sources (dearths). Because of the extended brood rearing period, consumption of Winter stores may be increased and supplemental feeding may be necessary in late Winter or early Spring to prevent starvation if there is an extended period of confinement due to bad weather. They are easily provoked to rob weaker neighboring colonies and drifting can be a problem in apiaries where all the hives are the same color. Use of propolis is relatively modest and compared to other races their tendency to swarm is low.

Carniolan Bees – These bees originated in the Austrian Alps, northern Yugoslavia and the Danube valley. Gray/brown in color, they are extremely gentle, conserve Winter food stores well and build up quickly in Spring. Carniolan bees construct new comb slowly and swarm frequently. Carniolans have a somewhat prolonged broodless period, lasting from October to February or March. They Winter well, even in hard Winters. They Winter with a smaller cluster than Italians and consequently tend to use fewer Winter stores. This race tends to produce little in the way of propolis, burr comb or brace comb. They will forage under conditions that will keep other races confined to the hive, including earlier and later in the day, as well as in cool, rainy weather. Carniolans are particularly adept at matching the worker population to the availability of nectar and can rapidly expand or cut off brood production in response to nectar flows.

Caucasian Queen

Caucasian Bees – These bees originated in the Caucasus mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas. This is not a popular race in the United States. They are lead-gray in color, and very gentle. However, when agitated they have a reputation of being quick to sting and slow to settle back down again. They also have an increased tendency to drift and rob. Caucasian bees overwinter poorly, build up slowly in Spring, are susceptible to Nosema disease and gum up their hives with propolis (tree resins and beeswax). Caucasians have a low tendency to swarm, due at least in part to a slow early Spring build-up. The slow build-up minimizes space limitations within the hive that can serve to trigger the swarming impulse. Caucasians have the longest tongue of any of the bee races, allowing them to exploit floral sources other races bypass. They fly in cooler and wetter weather than other bees. Drones are large with dark hair on their thorax, a feature different from all other races.

German Black Bees – Originally from throughout northern Europe, this was the first honey bee brought to the New World. Escaped swarms readily adapted to the North American climate and spread quickly. German black bees are nervous on the comb, defensive and build up slowly in Spring. When disturbed, they would spill out of the hive in large numbers. They were extremely susceptible to European foulbrood. They are brown/black in color and overwinter well. They are judicious in their use of stores, and as a result can produce good surplus crops even in poor years. Despite these positive traits, beginning in the mid 1800’s this race was largely replaced in this country by Italian bees for two main reasons: temperament and disease susceptibility. Although it was the first race of honey bees in the New World, it no longer exists in its pure form in this country.

Africanized Honey Bee (Apis mellifera scutellata and its hybrids) – These honey bees originated throughout east Africa. In the 1950s, this race was imported to Brazil and began migrating northward. Compared to European races, this bee and its hybrids are extremely defensive, have smaller nests and swarm more frequently. Africanized honey bees colonized certain regions of the United States in the 1990s (Delaplane, 2010).

The honey bee, Apis mellifera, exists as distinct races occupying habitats as dissimilar as the temperate climates of North America and Europe and tropical Africa (Ruttner, 1988). Temperate and tropical subspecies exhibit numerous behavioral differences, many of which are associated with the duration and predictability of forage abundance in the contrasting environments (Winston et al., 1981, 1983; Schneider and Blyther, 1988). Temperate races experience a brief, predictable foraging season, during which large food stores must be amassed for Winter survival. In contrast, African subspecies do not experience a Winter and may forage virtually all the year round (Schneider and Blyther, 1988; Schneider and McNally, 1992). However, food availability in tropical Africa is often temporally and spatially unpredictable, owing to unpredictable rain patterns. As a result, African races frequently respond to unfavorable periods by undergoing “seasonal absconding” or migration, which consists of a colony abandoning a nest site, presumably to move into an area of greater resource abundance (Fletcher, 1978, 1991; Winston et al., 1979; Schneider, 1990; McNally and Schneider, 1992). Migration is unique to tropical honey bee races (Winston, 1987) (Schneider and McNally, 1992).

Absconding behavior of the Africanized honey bee in French Guiana, South America, is described. Two types of absconding were recognized: disturbance-induced (i.e., predation, manipulation, etc.) and resource-related or seasonal absconding, probably induced by a dearth of resources during the wet season or by overheating during the dry season. In pre-absconding colonies where disturbance was not involved, brood rearing decreased dramatically, with few or no larvae present in colonies about ten days before absconding. Egg-laying continued at a low level until nearly all of the sealed worker brood emerged; colonies absconded within a day of the end of the sealed brood emergence. Patterns of nectar and pollen storage prior to absconding were highly variable. Inspection of colonies immediately after absconding showed that there was little (<100 cm2) or no eggs, larvae, sealed brood or stored pollen, nectar or honey. Comparison of pre-absconding and persisting colonies prior to the absconding season revealed no characteristics useful for predicting absconding, although the distributions of the last swarming dates before the absconding season were different for the two groups of colonies. Colonies that had swarmed just prior to the absconding season and that had low numbers of workers, particularly young workers, had a relatively high probability (0.45) of absconding during the wet season (Winston et al., 1979).

The Caucasian honey bee is one of the important gene resources in Anatolia (also named as Asia Minor) and mountain type is the significant variant. This honey bee race is black colored and similar to the Carniolan bees regarding shape, size and hair cover. Body is moderate structured, slim and long as abdomen is thin. Chitin is dark. Hair cover is black and short (0.335 ± 0.031 mm). Hair color of worker bees is livid gray as chest hair color of drones is black. All abdominal rings are black colored. It also has the longest tongue (7.046 ± 0.189 mm) among all honey bee races. Caucasian bees form strong colonies but their colonial development is slow. They swarm only very little and are good tempered. They are good pollinators for alfalfa, clover and similar plants with deep tube flowers and can work under unfavorable conditions (Kara et al., 2012).

In Europe and North America, honey bees cannot be kept without chemical treatments against Varroa destructor (Varroa Mites). Nevertheless, in Brazil an isolated population of Italian honey bees has been kept on an island since 1984 without treatment against this mite. The infestation rates in these colonies have decreased over the years. The researchers looked for possible varroa-tolerance factors in six Italian honey bee colonies prepared with queens from this Brazilian island population, compared to six Carniolan colonies, both tested at the same site in Germany. One such factor was the percentage of damaged mites in the colony debris, which has been reported as an indicator of colony tolerance to varroa. A mean of 35.8% of the varroa mites collected from the bottoms of the Italian bee colonies were found damaged, among which 19.1% were still alive. A significantly greater proportion of damaged mites were found in the Carniolan bees (42.3%) and 22.5% were collected alive. The most frequent kind of damage found was damaged legs alone, affecting 47.4% of the mites collected from debris in Italian bees, which was similar to the amount found in Carniolan colonies (46%). The mean infestation rate by the varroa mite in the worker brood cells in the Italian bee colonies was 3.9% in June and 3.5% in July, and in drone brood cells it was 19.3% in June. In the Carniolan honey bee colonies the mean infestation rates in worker brood cells were 3.0 and 6.7%, respectively in the months of June and July and 19.7% in drone brood cells in June. In conclusion, the ‘Varroa-tolerant’ Italian honey bees introduced from Brazil produced lower percentages of damaged mites (Varroa destructor) in hive debris and had similar brood infestation rates when compared to ‘susceptible’ Carniolan bees in Germany. In spite of the apparent adaptation of this population of Italian bees in Brazil, they found no indication of superiority of these bees when they examined the proportions of damaged mites and the varroa-infestation rates, compared to Carniolan bees kept in the same apiary in Germany (Corrêa-Marques et al., 2002).

The Carniolan honey bee is an indigenous subspecies of the Western honey bee in Central Europe. Croatia represents a large part of its native range. Hybridization and introgression is a realistic possibility due to unmonitored imports by beekeepers. In this study, they focused on honey bee colonies managed by beekeepers from all over Croatia and Slovenia. The identification of the subspecies was based on wing geometric morphometrics. The similarity of all investigated colonies to A. mellifera carnica was substantial, which indicates that the native subspecies continues to be present in the study area. However, some of the colonies differed markedly from the currently available reference of this subspecies. The low similarity with reference samples can be related both to hybridization with non-native subspecies and to natural geographical variation within A. m. carnica (Puškadija et al., 2021).

Intra-colony demography and life history characteristics of neotropical Africanized and temperate European honey bee races were compared under simulated feral conditions. Major differences in colony demography were found which nevertheless resulted in some similar reproductive characteristics. European colonies were larger than Africanized colonies, had more rapid initial growth rates of worker populations, showed better survivorship of brood and adult workers and differed in patterns of worker age distribution. However, both races were similar in the brood and adult populations when colonies swarmed, the frequency and timing of swarming and the number of workers in prime swarms. The factors most important in determining these colony growth and reproductive patterns were likely worker mortality rates, climate and resource availability (Winston et al., 1981).

References
Corrêa-Marques, M.H., D. De Jong, P. Rosenkranz and L.S. Goncalves 2002. Varroa-tolerant Italian honey bees introduced from Brazil were not more efficient in defending themselves against the mite Varroa destructor than Carniolan bees in Germany. Genet. Mol. Res. 1: 153-158.
Dadant, C. 1877. Cyprian and Carniolan bees. Am Bee J. 13: 27.
Delaplane, K.S. 2010. Honey bees and beekeeping. GA Coop. Ext. Ser. Bull. 1045.
Fletcher, D.J.C. 1978. The African bee, Apis mellifera adansonii, in Africa. Ann. Review Entomol. 23: 151-171.
Fletcher, D.J.C. 1991. Interdependence of genetics and ecology in a solution to the African bee problem. In: The “African” Honey Bee (M. Spivak, D.J.C. Fletcher, and M.D. Breed, Eds.), Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, pp. 77-94.
Kara, M., E. Sezgin and H. Kara 2012. Importance of Caucasian honeybee and its characteristics as a gene resource. J. Agric. Sci. Tech. A2: 1197-1202.
Kerr, W.E. 1967. The history of the introduction of African bees to Brazil. S. Afr. Bee J. 2: 3-5.
McNally, L.C. and S.S. Schneider 1992. Seasonal patterns of growth, development and movement in colonies of the African honey bee, Apis mellifera scutellata, in Africa. Insect. Soc. 39: 167-179.
Puškadija, Z., M. Kovačić, N. Raguž, B. Lukić, J. Prešern and A. Tofilski 2021. Morphological diversity of Carniolan honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica) in Croatia and Slovenia. J. Apic. Res. 60:326-336.
Ruttner, F. 1988. Biogeography and Taxonomy of Honey bees. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Schiff, N.M., W.S. Sheppard, G.M. Loper and H. Shimanuki 1994. Genetic diversity of feral honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) populations in the southern United States. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 87: 842-848.
Schneider, S.S., 1990. Nest characteristics and recruitment behavior of absconding colonies of the African honey bee, Apis mellifera scutellata, in Africa. J. Insect. Behav. 3:225-240.
Schneider, S., and R. Blyther, 1988. The habitat and nesting biology of the African honey bee Apis mellifera scutellata in the Okavango River Delta, Botswana, Africa. Insect. Soc. 35:167-181.
Schneider, S. S., and L. C. McNally, 1992. Seasonal patterns of foraging activity in colonies of the African honey bee, Apis mellifera scutellata, in Africa. Ins. Soc. 39:181-193.
Sheppard, W.S. 1989. A history of the introduction of honey bee races into the United States. Am. Bee J. 129: 617-619, 664-667.
Winston, M.L. 1987. The Biology of the Honey Bee. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Winston, M.L., G.W. Otis and O.R. Taylor 1979. Absconding behaviour of the Africanized honey bee in South America. J. Apic. Res. 18: 85-94.
Winston, M.L., J.A. Dropkin and O.R. Taylor 1981. Demography and life history characteristics of two honey bee races (Apis mellifera). Oecologia 48: 407-413.
Winston, M.L., O.R. Taylor and G.W. Otis 1983. Some differences between temperate European and tropical South American honey bees. Bee Wld. 64: 12-21.

Clarence Collison is an Emeritus Professor of Entomology and Department Head Emeritus of Entomology and Plant Pathology at Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

Click Here if you listened. We’re trying to gauge interest so only one question is required; however, there is a spot for feedback!

Read along below!

The Elusive Varroa Resistant European Honey Bee

What will it take to permanently establish a truly mite tolerant honey bee in the general managed honey bee population?

By: Ross Conrad

Varroa destructor has been parasitizing honey bees throughout the United States for over 35 years and to date, efforts to breed permanent mite resistance into the honey bee have largely failed. The incredibly robust nature of the honey bees mating process helps ensure wide genetic diversity, a diversity that enables the honey bee to survive on six of the seven continents of the globe across the vast majority of latitudinal parallels. So far, the mating process of the European honey bee has precluded the ability for beekeepers to be successful in their attempts to raise, disseminate and maintain a truly mite resistant bee.

An abundance of suitors
Honey bees mate in places where the drones from colonies in the surrounding area congregate and wait for virgin queens to fly by. Mating takes place on the wing approximately 20-80 feet (six to 24 meters) up in the air, and it is the fittest and fastest drones that get to pass on their genes to future generations. Studies suggest that these drone congregation areas (DCA) stay consistent decade after decade unless a building is erected on the site.

DCAs attract male bees from quite a wide area. Researchers in Denmark and the United Kingdom found that while 50% of bees studied mated within about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) of their hive, a full 90% of the bees were observed to mate within a distance of 4.5 miles (7.5 km) (Jensen et. al., 2005). While the maximum distance the European researchers observed matings to occur was 9.3 miles (15 km), other studies have documented matings covering distances between 10.1 and 12.4 miles (16.25-20 km) (Peer, 2012; Szabo, 1986). As a rule, drones tend to seek DCAs near their hives, while queens will seek DCAs farther away. This behavior helps to reduce instances of inbreeding between brothers and sisters.

Queens typically mate within six to 10 days after emergence and on average, most queens will mate with somewhere around 15-20 drones over the course of one or two days (Koeniger et. al., 2014). Drones become sexually mature when they are around 12 days old. Mating flights of the queen and drones is highly dependent upon the weather conditions. Leaving the safety of the hive to participate in the mating process is a dangerous time for both drones and queens. Their relatively large size and slow flight speed make them vulnerable targets for a host of predators from birds to dragonflies.

Males designed for the job
While workers are extremely attentive to the queen within the hive, drones and queens pay little-to-no attention to each other inside the hive. Outside the hive however, the drone’s keen sensory organs allow them to identify queen bees easily. It is believed that the primary drone attractant that a queen exudes is a mating pheromone known as 9-oxo-2-decenoic acid (9 ODA) (No the x’s and o’s don’t represent hugs and kisses). Male bees are endowed with many more scent receptors on their antennae than workers or queens, and are reportedly able to smell very small quantities of 9 ODA, and detect this queen substance from up to 200 feet (60 m) away (Caron and Connor, 2013).

The drone is also equipped with large compound eyes that contain many more tiny lenses (facets) than the worker and queen. This allows the male bees to easily spot the queen after they have used her scent to navigate near the queen’s vicinity.

Typically, healthy colonies will produce the most drones, and colonies in the process of replacing their queen will tend to exhibit higher drone production than usual. In an apparent last desperate attempt to pass on their genetic heritage, the workers in queen-less colonies will start laying unfertile eggs and raising numerous drones in the hope that some of their sons may successfully mate with a virgin queen.

The genetic make-up of a honey bee colony changes whenever a colony swarms and replaces their old queen with a new one. This is the primary reason efforts to breed resistant bees, or just let bees naturally evolve to become resistant to mites, have failed so far.

The challenge of maintaining genetic traits
As described previously, the honey bees mating process makes it extremely difficult to maintain genetic purity without isolating the queens from the drones of colonies that do not carry the preferred genetic traits. This is why reports of truly mite resistant honey bees primarily come from colonies that have been kept in isolated locations such as on islands. Some queen breeders will flood areas with drones from selected colonies in an effort to overcome the likelihood that their selected stock will mate with local unselected bees. While this often works well for queen breeders, the average beekeeper that purchases these queens typically does not work to maintain the genetic purity of the bee strain, and the beneficial aspects that have been bred into the honey bee tends to get lost quickly through inter-breeding and hybridization of subsequent generations of queens.

This cycle of breeders working hard to improve their stocks and the loss of many, if not most, of the beneficial traits bred into the bees once they are in the general beekeeping community’s care will continue unless beekeepers make serious changes. Beekeepers would have to work to limit the opportunity for hybridization by either isolating their bees, or working to replace all the bees in an area with selected stock. Even then, there is always the significant likelihood that feral colonies in the area will inter-breed with managed colonies and dilute the gene pool with non-selected traits. The difficulty in maintaining specific genetic traits appears to be the reason why after more than three decades, the beekeeping industry is still not able to take full advantage of the mite tolerant and resistant strains of bees that bee breeders have had some measure of success raising to date.

The Africanized solution
I have come to believe a possible solution to this apparently insolvable problem is the Africanized honey bee (AHB). The AHB is a hard working bee with superior competitive foraging behavior and exhibits resistance to mites and many diseases. This bee also has unique mating characteristics that suggest that they may provide the answer to the hybridization challenges that the beekeeping industry faces in its efforts to breed and maintain specific genetic characteristics in the general managed honey bee population.

South America’s experience with direct competition between the European honey bee (EHB) and African bees resulted in the quick elimination of EHB in the tropics. Although a low level of hybridization has occurred, Africanized genetic traits predominate in the South American honey bee population (Schneider et. al., 2004) making them a challenge to work with due to their highly developed defensive behavior. Several factors are suggested to help explain the domination of AHBs over EHBs when it comes to mating.

Working with traditional breeding techniques to try to produce and maintain queens with specific genetic traits has proven elusive, but
perhaps nature can succeed where beekeepers and scientists have mostly failed.

Overwhelming numbers
Africanized bees have an extremely high swarming rate, with colonies being documented to swarm an average of three to four times a year and as much as every 50 days (Michener, 1975; Taylor, 1977; Winston, 1979). This means that under normal circumstances, new AHB queens are produced at a much faster rate than EHB queens. AHB queens also reach sexual maturity faster giving them a biological edge over EHB queens born at the same time. Even in colonies headed by an EHB queen that has mated with both EHB and Africanized drones, faster development of queens with Africanized genetics favor AHB queens. Virgin Africanized queens tend to emerge earlier, pipe more frequently and kill more rival queens than those with EHB genetics (DeGrandi-Hoffman et. al., 1998; Hepburn and Radloff, 1998; Schneider and DeGrandi-Hoffman, 2003; Schneider et al., 2004).

On the other side of the mating equation, AHB drones out compete their EHB counterparts when it comes to the mating process. First, Africanized bees raise proportionally more drones than EHB colonies. They also raise drones earlier in their population buildup cycle, and they have more drones present in their colonies throughout a greater portion of the season (Rinderer et al., 1987). This results in more drones being present in Africanized hives than in European hives. Since AHB drones use the same DCAs that EHBs do, they simply outnumber them and the odds that a virgin queen will mate with an AHB drone rather than an EHB drone increase dramatically.

Parasitism
AHB drones are known to regularly drift into EHB colonies where they are readily accepted in a behavior that is called drone parasitism, but the opposite is not true (Rinderer et al., 1987). Africanized bees rarely allow drones of other races, or of mixed race to enter their hives. Africanized colonies then raise more drones to replace those lost to drifting, while EHB colonies raise fewer drones due to the influx of AHB drones. This significantly decreases EHB drones in an area essentially flooding the area with AHB drones.

Africanized swarms are also known to take over EHB colonies through usurpation (queen parasitism). Swarming AHBs will land near the entrance of an EHB colony and the AHB workers will gradually make their way into the colony, kill off the EHB queen and replace her with their AHB queen. The opposite, usurpation of AHB colonies by EHB colonies is not known to occur.

Unique behaviors
Several special behaviors of the Africanized bee endow it with additional advantages over the European honey bee when it comes to species survival. African bees are more widely adapted to utilize a diversity of cavities for nesting and can successfully nest outside if nesting cavities are sparse. AHBs are known to migrate readily and abscond, abandoning sites with few resources or heavy predator activity in preference of more favorable locations. Africanized bee swarms also combine with each other more readily than EHB swarms, providing a greater chance of swarm survival.

The AHBs biological advantages, ability to parasitize EHB colonies and unique behaviors all appear to contribute to the success of the AHB in displacing the EHB in both tropical and subtropical environments. Under the open mating conditions prevalent through most of the world, the mating characteristics of the AHB suggest that it could succeed in anchoring mite resistant traits into managed bee populations where efforts to do so working with European honey bees alone have largely failed. The key to this approach would be in finding an Africanized bee that is gentle to work with but has retained the majority of its mating characteristics so that eventually most, if not all managed bees would carry the beneficial Africanized genetic traits of resistance to mites and disease.

Ross Conrad is coauthor of the Land of Milk and Honey: A history of beekeeping in Vermont.

References:
Caron, Dewey, Connor, Larry (2013) Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping, Wicwas Press, pg. 128
DeGrandi-Hoffman, G. et al. (1998) Queen development time as a factor in the Africanization of European honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidea) populations, Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 91:52-58
Hepburn, H.R., Radloff, S.E. (1998) Honey bees of Africa, Spring-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, Germany, pg. 371
Jensen, A.B., Palmer, K.A., Chaline, et. al. (2005) Quantifying honey bee mating range and isolation in semi-isolated valleys by DNA microsatellite paternity analysis. Conservation Genetics, 6: 527–537 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-005-9007-7
Koeniger, G, Koeniger N, Ellis, J., Connor, L (2014) Mating biology of honey bees (Apis mellifera), Wicwas Press, pg. 40
Michener, C.D. (1975) The Brazilian bee problem, Annual Review of Entomology, 20: 399-416
Peer, D.G. (2012) Further Studies on the Mating Range of the Honey Bee, Apis mellifera L., Cambridge University Press
Rinderer, T.E., Collins, A.M., Hellmich II, R.L., Danka R.G., (1987) Differential drone production by Africanized and European honey bee colonies, Apidologie, 18: 61-6
Schneider, S. and DeGrandi-Hoffman, G. (2003) The influence of paternity on virgin queen success in hybrid colonies of European and African honey bees, Animal Behavior, 65: 883-892
Schneider S. et al. (2004) The African honey bee: Factors contributing to a successful biological invasion, Annual Review of Entomology, 49: 351-376
Szabo, Tibor I. (1986) Mating Distance of the Honey bee in North-Western Alberta Canada. Journal of Apicultural Research, 25: 227-233
Taylor, O.R. (1977) The past and possible future spread of Africanized honey bees in the Americas, Bee World, 58: 19-30
Winston, M.L. (1979) Intra-colony demography and reproductive rate of the Africanized honey bee in South America, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 4: 279-292

Click Here if you listened. We’re trying to gauge interest so only one question is required; however, there is a spot for feedback!

Read along below!

Dealing with Beekeeper Guilt

Caused by Reduced Beekeeping Practices

By: James E. Tew

This is not a negative article
While it may sound like it is, this is not a negative article; however, it is a realistic piece. Many articles in Bee Culture Magazine present beekeeping management information that help the evolving beekeeper manage their colonies perfectly. Yes, problems and challenges will always arise, but when they do, some of the published articles explain what procedures would be required to get colonies back to high standards. That’s always the goal – perfect colonies in a perfect yard. It’s a lofty aim.

A “beekeeper” is not a standard designation
The ability and energy of individual beekeepers are all over the page. Few things about us, as a group, are standardized. But to many of the population of this country, who do not keep bees and know nearly nothing about them, being a “beekeeper” is a unique designation. When viewed by this large group, all beekeepers are seen as being the same. Cookie-cutter as it were.

Yet, within our group, there are beekeepers who are on the job night and day, and their colonies normally show the positive results of their energy allocation. But there are also beekeepers who are not able, or inclined, to contribute large amounts of their life’s resources to managing their bees. The colonies of this group may, or may not, show the effects of their laissez-faire philosophy of bee colony management. It’s difficult not be judgmental, isn’t it? It would seem that every beekeeper should strive for perfection beekeeping. I sense that is never going to happen.

It’s not just beekeeping
For instance, as you drive down a suburban street, have a look at the variation of the home maintenance and landscape each house has. Some homes are perfectly manicured while others have not been given the same level of attention. Is one homeowner more deserving of respect than another?

It depends, doesn’t it? Are city ordinances being violated? Is clutter excessive? If homeowner basics are being met, do we not expect some homes to be better maintained than others? Common reasons for this variation are simply innumerable. It’s just the way of things. The same is true with beekeepers.

Figure 1. This dog is a perfect example of a pet.

Bees are not pets
Bees are not actually pets, but they have commonality with pets and other domestic livestock. Obviously, pets and livestock must be nurtured and maintained. In fact, they are protected in many legal and moral ways.

Due to challenges like varroa predation, honey bees are similar to pets and domestic animals. Without human assistance, managed honey bees do not normally thrive. Colony decline and death are the frequent outcomes. So, beekeepers, you need to take care of your bees. But the devil is in the details. Exactly how much care is necessary?

It really gets tricky at this point. Bees are wild animals and, as such, should be able to fend for themselves without human assistance. Yes, that’s true, but feral honey bees conduct their natural lives differently in several notable ways. In the wild, colonies do not normally grow nearly as large as managed colonies and they do not produce as much surplus honey. Plus, they swarm more often. A wild colony provides incidental pollination rather than directed pollination. For instance, you can’t move a feral colony to a commercial apple orchard. And finally – and importantly – they frequently die during the Winter.

At this point, enter the beekeeper and their artificial domiciles. For the bees in managed hives, many things change. Beekeeper care is required to help the colony thrive under these artificial conditions. But again, exactly how much care is necessary?

Figure 2. This animal is not a pet, but it is treated as one.

Everything changes
In life’s big picture, everything changes. As we age, many things about our lives change, too. When change comes our way, we adapt. We reallocate. We improvise. We refurbish ourselves. As life’s “things” morph, we do whatever it takes to embrace and incorporate the changes and push our lives forward. We really have no other choice.

Beekeepers and their relationship with their bees are no different. A dedicated beekeeper may not always be able to commit to all the demands that perfection beekeeping requires. Should they quit the craft? No, but they will need to adapt and reallocate the resources they still have.

Sloppy beekeeping
I am not condoning sloppy beekeeping. I feel that I need to write that again – in this article, I am not condoning sloppy beekeeping. But sometimes, try as we might, things change in our lives and our energy and commitment to our bees can seem to approach something that resembles “sloppy” beekeeping.

Job changes, health changes, monetary changes, marital changes or societal changes are examples that can cause a staid beekeeper to have to consider a restructured management level compared to the level they were previously maintaining. Sometimes these changes are temporary while in other instances, they are permanent.

Blended beekeeping
Is what I am naming “sloppy beekeeping” simply “blended beekeeping?” For instance, let’s say that things have changed and we are forced to back down our commitment and contribution to the bees’ way of hive life. If the bees can’t make up the difference, they will most likely die. In my view, this mix of feral schemes with managed schemes could be named blended beekeeping.

Things changed
Okay, it happened. Big changes have occurred. Let’s say the beekeeper retired and had experienced some health declines, but they still are devoted to beekeeping. What are some ways they can adapt and alter their beekeeping protocols?

Be a hobby beekeeper
Bluntly, if big changes are coming your way and you want to stay in beekeeping, you should most likely consider being a hobby beekeeper. Proficient sideline and commercial beekeepers are already being as cost and labor conscious as possible. They live in a different management world and are answering to different management mandates. It’s the hobby beekeeper who can reduce or alter their standards without serious retribution.

The apiary
There are no lawnmowers, string trimmers, and herbicides in the bees’ natural world. That’s all on us. In perfection beekeeping, the grass and weeds are kept mowed and trimmed. Yes, colonies with artificially low entrances will probably appreciate this work, but will uncut grass be the premier reason that a colony dies during the Winter? Probably not. Will the apiary look scruffy and not be photogenic? Definitely.

But if the weeds and brush are allowed to truly run rampant, the beekeeper will nearly be unable to walk to the colonies – much less remove honey or perform colony manipulations. Maybe the recommendation should be to “cut back” but don’t “cut out” weed maintenance.

Figure 3. Perfectly functional, but minimally maintained hive equipment.

The hive equipment
Even in reduced labor and energy situations, hive equipment should be assembled correctly. When filled with bees or honey, equipment will surely be stressed as it is moved and manipulated. If you are having strength and health issues, heavy hive equipment will sometimes be handled roughly – even dropped.

Either don’t paint or only paint once and forget it. (That comment is a pain for me to write. My Dad had a paint supply business. I spent my early life dealing with all things paint. Now, I am suggesting that you cut out painting.) Yes, thorough paint applications will help wooden equipment 1Plastic hive equipment, made of expanded plastic foam, should be painted. Otherwise, it’s useful life is shortened.)  last a bit longer and it will certainly look better. But really? How much longer will it actually last, or is looking good the primary goal? Maybe the recommendation should be to assemble the equipment soundly but, if necessary, skimp on the protective coatings. Distasteful, isn’t it?

Colony manipulations
Colony opening events can be significantly reduced if labor and energy are to be lessened. After a new beekeeper has acquired the necessary basic skills, whimsically opening a colony is not often necessary. Much can be determined by simply being aware of the season of the year and reading entrance detritus evidence – but make no mistake here. Reducing colony manipulations will limit the beekeeper’s ability to stay intimately aware of the colony’s condition. But the question re-arises at this point – how many colony manipulations are necessary to meet the minimal? That’s an unanswered question. How much are you willing to give up?

Lost swarms
All beekeepers, at all levels, will lose the occasional swarm. Alternatively, sometimes all beekeepers will acquire a swarm that moves into empty equipment or they will acquire a free swarm that they hive. Either way, swarms happen. They come and they go. But reduced colony manipulations will require the beekeeper to be more tolerant of lost swarms.

Figure 4. A good brood frame. When I view this photo in my photo processor, there are visible eggs in the center of comb. I do not need to find the actual queen.

Queen productivity
The more committed a beekeeper is to their colonies’ management, in general, the more anxious they are about the queen stock heading their colonies. Again, being aware of the season, a beekeeper, who has elected to implement “blended beekeeping” concepts should know what a suitable brood pattern would look like during that season. In this way, the investigative beekeeper evaluates the seasonal brood and brood pattern rather than the actual queen. In many instances, no effort, at all, is made to see the queen. Just seeing eggs or seeing the queen’s brood pattern is normally enough for a quick inspection.

I don’t sense a strong argument for the minimalist beekeeper heavily investing in high quality replacement queens. Escaped swarms will most likely be an issue, and they will take costly replacement queens with them. If one is not making splits or is not suppressing swarming and has only a casual interest in surplus honey production, naturally produced queens will meet most needs. For all beekeepers, marked queens are a good idea.

Yes, reducing queen management will greatly reduce time and economic demands. But at the same time, that management pathway will reduce overall colony productivity. Can you – or should you – live with that fact?

Mite management
Like swarm suppression or queen management, Varroa mite control requires time, labor and money. This is a serious aspect of honey bee management. If the beekeeper does not implement a conscientious mite control program, most likely that colony will die and will produce mites that will invade surrounding colonies not yet dead.

Managing mites is one of those instances when the colony should be opened for treatment. There are few ways to cut corners on this issue. If the beekeeper does not implement mite repression programs, then next Spring, to replace dead outs, the beekeeper will be required to purchase bees (packages or splits) from beekeepers who did implement such programs. I can’t see that much money or labor was saved by taking this tact.

Honey processing
Surplus honey removal and processing is a huge labor and energy drain. In past articles, in this magazine, I have written that honey processing is not beekeeping. Indeed, I know a few specialists who only process honey and have few colonies of their own. They contract-process honey for other beekeepers.

In the bright light of reality, capped honey can be taken off at nearly any time of the year – even in the dead of Winter. I don’t know why you would do that since it only makes for a miserably, cold job, but neither do I know your exact situation.

Before extracting, frigid honey would need to be allowed to warm up, but not held too long. Without bees to protect it, that warming interlude gives an opportunity for Small Hive Beetles and Wax Moths to begin damaging the combs. Other than producing comb honey, I cannot think of a way to easily short-circuit the cumbersome process of setting up an extractor and dealing with the folderol that comes from honey processing. I suppose that contract processing would be an alternative.

Dramatically, one could simply leave the surplus honey on the wintering colony. Even for the reduced labor beekeeper, in cold climates, I would suggest wintering the colony in one or two deeps and moving the capped honey supers above the inner cover. In this way, theoretically, the colony could better manage its wintering environment. Honey, held like this, could be used the next Spring as supplemental food for initiating replacement colonies or for giving food to other needy colonies in the apiary.

My point
My point in this piece is there are beekeepers who, for whatever reason, cannot or do not commit to maximally managing their colonies. Representatives from this group are rarely asked to give presentations on their management procedures. There are no articles published in bee magazines for this group, and these beekeepers rarely speak out at meetings. They quietly hang on.

We all have our reasons and procedures that allow us to continue to co-exist with our bees. As I wrote before, “The ability and energy of individual beekeepers are all over the page.” There is no standard beekeeper.

Thank you for reading this piece.

Dr. James E. Tew
Emeritus Faculty, Entomology
The Ohio State Universitytewbee2@gmail.com

Co-Host, Honey Bee Obscura Podcast
www.honeybeeobscura.com

Figure 1. The author (Jamie) and his family.

Figure 2. The University of Florida. Photo: Chris Oster, University of Florida.

Hello everyone. My name is Jamie Ellis (Figure 1) and I work at the University of Florida (UF – Figure 2) Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory (HBREL). I have worked for UF since August 2006. When I was hired, Jerry Hayes (editor of this distinguished journal) was the head of the Apiary Inspection Section for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Plant Industry. He managed Florida’s Apiary Inspection Program at the time. Those were good years. Jerry and I worked on a number of different research and extension initiatives and became quite good friends during the process. In early 2022, Jerry reached out to me to see if I would be willing to write a monthly series in 2023 dedicated to what my team and I do at the HBREL. He was hoping that this would jumpstart a yearly series in which he would be able to highlight different bee labs around the U.S. I was humbled that he would ask us to be first, and I was incredibly excited about the prospect of sharing with Bee Culture’s readers what really happens at honey bee laboratories at a state university. I saw this as a wonderful opportunity to peel back the cover and let beekeepers peek into the everyday work of a bee lab.

I discussed the opportunity with members of my team and everyone jumped at the chance to share what they do in the lab. We instantly started to work trying to develop an outline for the year, i.e. what topics we would discuss and the appropriate order to introduce the topics to you, the reader. You see, honey bee laboratories are complicated places, with diverse teams, target audiences, responsibilities and infrastructure. If my team and I do our job well, you will have a good understanding of how bee labs work, how we measure success and how team members fill their time.

Before getting too far into the process, I stress that no two laboratories are created equally. We all have different infrastructure, expertise, funding streams, team members, responsibilities, etc. Recognizing this, we will do our best to tell you how we do things at UF, while emphasizing that our way is not the only way to manage a bee lab. Now, on to the schedule of articles for 2023…
January: Overview of the HBREL at UF (the current article)
February: Honey bee/beekeeping teaching programs
March: Research on honey bees
April: Apiculture extension (part 1)
May: Apiculture extension (part 2)
June: Roles in a typical honey bee lab
July: How labs are funded
August: The lab’s physical infrastructure
September: What it takes to run a laboratory effectively
October: Professional development in the lab
November: Members of the HBREL team and what they do
December: The HBREL’s most notable successes/contributions to the beekeeping industry

Of course, we are using this series of articles to share a bit about who we are and what we do at the HBREL. More importantly though, we are using this opportunity to demystify how bee labs generally function when striving to provide services to beekeepers everywhere. So, let me start from the top…

What institutions host honey bee laboratories?
Any number of institutions can host honey bee laboratories. The federal government, state governments, private companies and state institutes of higher learning (colleges and universities) can manage these labs. For example, the U.S. government manages honey bee laboratories housed in its United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS). These are the USDA-ARS honey bee research laboratories. They include laboratories in (1) Baton Rouge, LA (Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Laboratory); (2) Stoneville, MS (Pollinator Health in Southern Crop Ecosystems Research Laboratory); (3) Tucson, AZ (Carl Hayden Bee Research Center); (4) Davis, CA (Invasive Species and Pollinator Health Research Laboratory); and (5) Beltsville, MD (Bee Research Laboratory). Staff at each of these laboratories specialize in certain areas of honey bee research. For example, the bee lab in Baton Rouge is known for breeding honey bee stock. The bee lab in Beltsville is the primary laboratory whose members study honey bee pests and pathogens. The research scientists at these labs manage teams of individuals dedicated to honey bee health and the sustainability of beekeeping. The scientists usually have no obligation to teach students or provide extension programming. Instead, they are employed mainly to conduct research on honey bees.

Figure 3. Amy E. Lohman Apiculture Center: home of the Apiary Inspection Section of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Plant Industry. Photo: Chris Oster, University of Florida.

State governments also can manage honey bee laboratories, usually within the auspices of the state’s apiary inspection program (Figure 3). Even still, not many state inspection programs house honey bee research laboratories. If they do, it is usually to provide disease/pest diagnostic services for resident beekeepers of that state.

There are a few commercial entities that manage honey bee laboratories of some sort. Many of these are research and development laboratories for companies that include a focus on honey bee health. The list also includes companies that create and sell pesticides, companies such as Bayer or Syngenta. In this case, the lab’s scientists usually investigate the impact of pesticides on honey bees and other pollinators through ecotoxicology divisions within the companies. There are also private contract laboratories that provide pesticide screening services for the pesticide manufacturers.

The vast majority of honey bee laboratories in the U.S. are housed in the nation’s many state colleges and universities, both private and public. Any college or university throughout the U.S. can host a honey bee laboratory. Prospective faculty who specialize in honey bees can be hired into many types of college and university departments. These include departments of entomology (insect science), biology, neurobiology, zoology, mathematics and agriculture, among many others. These departments will typically advertise for a professor with qualifications in a specific discipline (ecology, physiology, behavior, molecular genetics, etc.) that would permit one to study honey bees in the discipline being advertised. For example, a department may advertise for a molecular geneticist whose job it will be to teach courses and conduct research on topics related to molecular genetics. The department may not care what the study organism of the prospective candidate is; rather, they are hiring a particular discipline specialist. Thus, you can find professors of many disciplines scattered across multiple departments types, all using honey bees as the study model in their discipline. There are probably many more scientists studying honey bees than most beekeepers are aware exist, largely because most of these scientists are not mandated to work with beekeepers directly. Enter the Land Grant University…

What is so special about Land Grant Universities?
As noted, I work for UF. UF is a large university (55,000+ students) with a main campus in Gainesville, Florida and satellite campuses around the state. UF is a special type of university called a Land Grant University (LGU). LGUs differ in function and structure from those of other colleges/universities scattered throughout the U.S. They were created through the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, and additionally through an Act of Congress in 1994. Through these acts, the federal government ceded federally controlled lands to each state to establish public universities. The 1862 LGUs were the first such universities established. The 1890 LGUs are historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), while the 1994 LGUs are Native American tribally controlled colleges and universities.

Why create LGUs at all? Think about the early years they were established. At the time, advanced education was available only to a privileged few. Yes, there were wonderful universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. However, most people could not afford or qualify to attend those universities. Furthermore, folks living in rural areas or from minority backgrounds had little-to-no access to colleges or universities of any type. Thus, the LGU system represented a partnership between the federal and various state governments to provide education to and for the masses.

How can you spot a LGU? Every U.S. state and territory has at least one LGU. Many have more. They are often the universities with the name “University of Something,” “Something State University,” or “Something A&M University.” For example: University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Minnesota, University of Puerto Rico, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M, Florida A&M, Oregon State University, etc. This is not a hard and fast rule as not all LGUs follow this pattern, for example: Auburn University is Alabama’s 1862 LGU, Clemson University is South Carolina’s and Cornell University is New York’s. There are wonderful maps online that show the 1862, 1890 and 1994 LGUs in each state. Just Google “map of U.S. Land Grant Institutions” and you will see the LGUs nearest to you. This is a helpful cheat as university honey bee programs are often nestled in the nation’s LGUs.

What makes LGUs different from other colleges and universities? I do not have enough space in this article to answer that question. Instead, I will provide a general overview of the differences. While what I write is generally true, there will be some exceptions. Generality #1: Most faculty at colleges, both public and private, have teaching responsibilities. This is especially true for faculty at community colleges. These faculty often have 100% teaching appointments, with little or no research expectations. Generality #2: Some faculty at universities will have research responsibilities, in addition to their teaching responsibilities. Most of the faculty in this case will have teaching appointments, but a large percentage of them will also conduct research. Generality #3: Most faculty at LGUs will have responsibilities in one or more of the disciplines of teaching, research and extension. In fact, faculty hired at most LGUs will be assigned what is called a two-way appointment, i.e. they have teaching and research responsibilities. What makes LGUs unique is that extension is mandated at an LGU, and mostly absent at non-LGUs. The practice of extension is one of the key things that separates LGUs from all other institutions of higher education.

Given that LGUs represent a state/federal partnership, their programs, infrastructure, employee salaries, etc. are heavily subsidized by state and federal taxes, this in addition to tuition, grants and endowments. Tax support is why LGUs are among the cheapest educational options for students in a state, and why it is more expensive to attend an LGU in a state that is not your home state (after all, you do not pay taxes in that state). Private colleges/universities, on the other hand, get most of their operational budget through tuition, grants and endowments. They do not get state and federal support. This typically makes them more expensive institutes of higher learning for students to attend than are the LGUs.

Research, teaching and extension?
Folks always ask me what I do for a living when I meet them for the first time. I usually reply that I am a professor at the University of Florida. Guess what question they always ask me when I tell them I am a professor. What question would you ask me? That is right! I am always asked, “What do you teach?” You see, the public thinks that the only thing professors do is teach. They think this because that is how they interacted with professors at one point. They sat in a class and listened to a professor talk about his/her topic of interest. For most people, that is their only point of reference for understanding what professors do; so, they assume that professors teach and teach and teach, for years on end. I only have a 10% teaching appointment at UF and this appointment does not require me to teach in a classroom setting. I always enjoy responding to folks’ question with the answer “nothing” and then watching their head spin as they tried to process that I was a professor who did not teach.

Why relate this story? Because it gets right at the heart of what makes an LGU different from other institutes of higher learning. Faculty at LGUs engage in formal education (teaching students) and informal education (teaching everyone else). The latter is called extension. I teach the concept of extension this way. Faculty with teaching appointments teach credit-paying individuals (students, or folks seeking a degree). Faculty with extension appointments teach everyone else (folks who are not seeking a degree). Teaching is what you think it is. It includes undergraduate courses such as Honey Bee Biology or Beekeeping 101. Undergraduate and graduate (masters and PhD students) students take these courses to satisfy some of the requirements of their degrees. Furthermore, a professor with teaching responsibilities often has to mentor masters and PhD students. These individuals are all seeking a degree, usually in a field related to that in which their professor is engaged.

Most beekeepers will not interact with their local honey bee lab leader through the teaching component of what the leader does. Instead, they will interact with their local honey bee lab leader through the extension component of what they do. Extension is the most difficult of my job responsibilities to explain to individuals outside of the university setting. Fundamentally, extension is a university’s greatest opportunity to make a real, lasting impact in the communities it supports. It is education and support for all in that it is not encumbered by its clients’ financial standing, race, gender, identity, educational background, culture or personal beliefs. Extension is administered through “programs” that are reinforced by “teaching tools or activities.” This includes programs/teaching tools/activities such as Master Beekeeper Programs, training documents/videos posted online, active social media accounts, speaking at local bee clubs, answering email/phone call questions, etc. Extension lies at the core of the LGU mission. Think back to the comment I made about why LGUs were created; they were created to provide education to the citizens of the state. This is not just education in the hallowed halls of the institution, but also in the hay fields, cattle pastures, youth classrooms and even the apiary.

Extension was born during a time that the U.S. was considerably more rural and agriculture-based. Thus, early extension programs were agriculture focused. In fact, you find the state’s main college of agriculture housed in the state’s LGU. Extension education is not education of opinion or experience. It is rooted in science, applied science at that. In fact, extension is the method through which we try to change lives of our target partners/audiences using science-based information. That science-based information has to come from somewhere. Much of it comes from the various states’ LGU research laboratories. Ultimately, the applied research informs the teaching and extension programs managed out of the nation’s LGUs. Applied research is research designed and conducted to solve a specific problem encountered by someone. For example, testing the impact of a new acaricide on Varroa survival is applied research. Deciphering the honey bee dance language is not. Creating and testing a new pollen substitute in honey bee colonies is applied research. Discovering how honey bee hemolymph transports nutrients to other tissues in a bee’s body is not. Essentially, scientists at the nation’s LGUs are challenged to emphasize applied research on behalf of the state’s citizens. This is not a requirement at most private colleges and universities.

Hang around an LGU employee long enough and you will hear them reference the three co-equal missions of the LGU: research, teaching, extension. They often refer to this idea collectively as the three legged stool, with each leg of the stool (research, teaching, extension) being equally important to the success and function of the stool. You will learn a lot more about these three missions in upcoming articles in this series, as my team and I will share with you how they function independently, yet ultimately work together to help the beekeeping industry.

Organizational structure of an LGU, from university to lab
I could write a book on this topic, but I will spare you the details. I will simply tell you how UF is organized so that you can make sense of all of the articles that follow throughout the rest of 2023. Most LGUs are structured similarly, even if they use different names when they refer to different levels in the hierarchy. Regardless, understanding UF’s structure will help you understand the general structure of an LGU and then appreciate how the state’s honey bee lab plays an important role in the LGU mission.

UF is managed by a President, Board of Trustees, Provost and many other administrators in the leadership flowchart. UF is organized into schools or colleges. For example, we have a medical school, a business school, a vet school, a pharmacy school, etc. The HBREL is housed in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS). Though it has “institute” in the name, it is essentially a college/school within UF. Most schools/colleges call their primary leader a “dean”. We call ours a “Senior Vice President” (again, a dean at any other institution). This individual is the college’s chief administrator. We have three deans in IFAS (these might be called associate deans elsewhere). You might guess that we have a dean of research (administers the “agriculture experiment station”), a dean of extension (administers the “cooperative extension service”), and a dean of instruction (administers the “college of agriculture and life sciences”). I will not go much further down the administration tree than this. However, it is important to know that beekeepers often find themselves interacting with the state LGU dean(s) if they are trying to get funding for the honey bee program, hire a new faculty member in the program, etc.

Figure 4. Steinmetz Hall: home of the Entomology and Nematology Department of Florida. Photo: Chris Oster, University of Florida

The “college” (in my example: IFAS) is composed of many departments. The UF HBREL is housed in the Entomology and Nematology Department (Figure 4). We have ~70 professors and over 150 graduate students in our department, making it the largest entomology department in the U.S. IFAS has other departments as well: Animal Science, Food and Resource Economics, etc. The point is that most “colleges of agriculture” will be the home of a department where most of the state’s entomologists reside. Unfortunately, there are not many standalone departments of entomology in the U.S., or not as many as there once was. Most of these departments have been combined with one or more departments in an effort to cut costs. For example, you often seen departments with long names, perhaps like the Department of Horticulture, Fisheries and Entomology. I suspect you can guess which three departments were lost to make that one department. The important point here is that a given state’s bee lab is often housed in the LGUs Department of Entomology, or whatever mega-department includes the entomology faculty.

Figure 5. The University of Florida Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory. The new facility formally opened in August 2018. Photo: Chris Oster, University of Florida.

A department, then, is composed of many labs. The labs are managed by single faculty members. As noted, our Entomology and Nematology Department is home to about 70 faculty. Each (me included) manages his/her own lab (Figures 5 and 6). We have labs that focus on termites, mosquitos, bed bugs, crop pests, insect physiology, etc. I work in the lab that focuses on honey bees. I know that this can get confusing but here is a good way to think about the flowchart from university to bee lab: university > college/school > department > honey bee lab. As noted, there are multiple colleges, multiple departments, and multiple laboratories at UF. It may help to think about it this way. The University is the entire body. The college is an arm (i.e. one among many appendages/colleges). A department is a hand (one part of one appendage/college). A laboratory is a finger, and an important one at that.

Figure 6. One of the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory’s research apiaries. Photo: Chris Oster, University of Florida.

The UF HBREL
When hired, I was assigned appointment percentages in research (20%), teaching (10%) and extension (70%), given I work at an LGU. Most of my colleagues (in fact, most faculty at UF) only have a two-way appointment (i.e. two-way appointments are far more common than three-way appointments), usually in teaching and research. Because of my appointment, my team and I are required to conduct research on honey bees, teach students about honey bees and conduct extension programs on beekeeping. We actually weave all three appointments into our lab’s mission statement:

“The mission of the [HBREL] is to advance our understanding of managed honey bees in Florida, the U.S. and globally, with a goal of improving the health and productivity of honey bees everywhere. We address this goal by conducting basic and applied research projects on honey bees, communicating our findings to assorted clientele groups through diverse extension programming, and training future generations of bee educators, researchers, conservationists and more.”

In the articles that follow, we will share our strategy for accomplishing our mission. We will introduce you to the types of jobs in the lab. We will tell you how bee research labs are funded, how we decide what to study, and how we educate the world about honey bees.

Figure 7. Current and former members of the Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory. Photo: University of Florida

When hired, I was the sole manager of the HBREL. Then, something amazing happened. The Florida State Beekeepers Association led a charge to acquire funding to build a new research, teaching and extension facility dedicated to honey bees at UF. That allowed my program to grow immensely. As a result, UF invested in two additional faculty positions at the HBREL. We hired Dr. Cameron Jack (Assistant Professor, 30% research, 70% teaching) and Amy Vu (100% extension) in the last two years. Together, Amy, Cameron and I administer the lab’s research, teaching and extension programs focused on honey bee health and beekeeping sustainability. We get along fabulously and are fortunate to work with amazing staff, students, postdocs and volunteers (Figure 7).

I know that this article may not have taught you much about how to manage bees. However, I hope it laid the groundwork for the next 11 articles in the series. I really cannot wait to share with you how it all works (in the words of Ronald Reagan: “How the sausage is made.”), and make you an honorary member of the HBREL in the process. Thanks for being willing to take the journey with us, as we work to improve the health and productivity of honey bees everywhere.

Jamie Ellis
Gahan Endowed Professor
Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory
Entomology and Nematology Department
University of Florida
jdellis@ufl.edu
www.ufhoneybee.com

It was like coming home when acclaimed honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr. stepped forward to accept the Exceptional Emeriti Faculty Award from Helene Dillard, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CA&ES) at the University of California, Davis.

The occasion: the college’s Award of Distinction dinner and ceremony, held November 3, 2022 in the Activities and Recreation Center Ballroom.

Page, considered by his peers as the world’s leading honey bee geneticist, traces his “bee biology roots” to UC Davis. He drew a standing ovation

Page received his doctorate in entomology in 1980 from UC Davis, studying with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., and went on to join the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty in 1989 and chair the department from 1999 to 2004. He then transitioned to emeritus and was recruited by Arizona State University (ASU) to be the founding director of its School of Life Sciences. His career at ASU led to a series of top-level administrative roles: from founding director of the School of Life Sciences (2004-2010) to vice provost and dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013) and then to university provost, 2014-2015.

Robert E. Page Jr., as a doctoral student at UC Davis, worked closely with his major professor and mentor Harry H. Laidlaw Jr.

“Rob is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

Helene Dillard, dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Davis, hands the Exceptional Emeriti Faculty Award to Robert E. Page Jr. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

“One of Dr. Page’s most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large,” Nadler pointed out. “It was the first genetic map of any social insect. He was the first to demonstrate that a significant amount of observed behavioral variation among honey bee workers is due to genotypic variation. In the 1990s, he and his students and colleagues isolated, characterized and validated the complementary sex determination gene of the honey bee; considered the most important paper yet published about the genetics of Hymenoptera. The journal Cell featured their work on its cover. In subsequent studies, he and his team published further research into the regulation of honey bee foraging, defensive and alarm behavior.”

While at UC Davis, Page worked closely with Laidlaw, “the father of honey bee genetics.” Together they published many significant research papers and the landmark book, Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding (Wicwas Press, 1998), considered the most important resource book for honey bee genetics, breeding and queen rearing.

Robert E. Page Jr. thanks the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences for his award and talks about his bee research. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a UC Davis honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.

Since his retirement from UC Davis, Page has published 65 research papers, eight major reviews and two scholarly books, many using his UC Davis affiliation. He authored The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution (Harvard University Press, 2013) and the Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies (Oxford University Press, 2020).

From left are Helene Dilard, dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; Exceptional Emeriti Faculty Award recipient Robert E. Page Jr. and his wife Michelle; and their great-niece Emily Redmond, a UC Davis Student, and their niece Suzi Redman. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Now residing near Davis, Page continues to focus his research on honey bee behavior and population genetics, particularly the evolution of complex social behavior. His continuing academic activities bring credit to bee biology and UC Davis. Nadler said, “His large number of publications and citations continue to be an important component of the high national rating of our entomology department.”

To date, Page has published more than 250 research papers and articles, edited or authored five books and is listed as a “highly-cited author” by the ISI Web of Knowledge, representing the top ½ of one percent of publishing scientists.

Page continues to work closely with UC Davis professors and students, offering advice, helping them with grants and editing manuscripts. A few years ago, he held an international workshop at the Laidlaw facility. He teaches courses (including “The Social Contract: from Rousseau to the Honey Bee,” and “The Song of the Queen: Thrilling Tales of Honey Bee Mating Behavior”) for the UC Davis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).

Honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr. with swarm.

“Not surprisingly, Dr. Page humbly considers his most far-reaching and important accomplishment, the success of his mentees, including at least 25 graduate students and postdocs who are now faculty members at leading research institutions around the world,” Nadler wrote. “He also built two modern apicultural labs (in Ohio and Arizona), major legacies that are centers of honey bee research and training. He has trained many hundreds of beekeepers. His public service now extends to working as a Fellow with the California Academy of Sciences.”

Among Page’s many honors:

• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize – the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists)
• Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected to the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences (the longest continuing academy in the world)
• Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
• Fellow of the Entomological Society of America
• Awardee of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship
• Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences
• Fellow, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany, September 2017-August 2018
• Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
• James Creasman Award of Excellence (ASU Alumni Association)
• Regents Professor, Arizona State University
• UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor

I’ve been a scientist my entire adult life, which means I always experiment. The question that interests me the most is “how”. How does it work AND how do I make it work? So, it makes sense that I am trying to figure out the “hows” of beekeeping. This Winter is no different. How do I successfully Winter MY bees. I know the answer… plenty of healthy bees with plenty of Winter stores. Lately, I haven’t been very good at achieving that.

Before I expanded my operation, my track record was pretty good. My overwintering success rate was 15/30, 33/35, and 84/89. Then I doubled my size again and it all fell apart. The next year, I blamed COVID and the sugar shortage. I needed thousands of pounds of sugar and was limited to a single bag. That didn’t work and experienced >30% losses that I attributed mainly to starvation. The following year, it was laziness on my part. I couldn’t fit enough sugar in my truck so I fed less than I needed to and again experienced >30% losses. This year, my wife had major surgery so I couldn’t feed as much as I needed to (though better than last year). It seems like there is always an excuse, though I needn’t look any further than the mirror when assigning blame. The point is, we as beekeepers are not perfect and we always make mistakes. Are there things that we can do to minimize the impact of our mistakes?

I’m going to talk about two strategies that I am trying this year to help my bees get through the Winter. The first one will relate to my colonies that are in 10 frame boxes. I will refer to these as my production hives. The second one will relate to my over wintering nucs. These are in four frame boxes stacked two high (eight frames total). You may be asking why I am writing this now, and not this Spring when I know if any of the strategies work. Scientists know that only a small percentage of their experiments “work”. We fail more often than not. Usually, no one hears about the failures, making it likely that someone else will make the same mistake. So, I am putting it out there. My actions and the logic behind my actions, forcing me to report later on how my bees fared. This gives you time to think about my logic and take bets on whether I am an idiot or a genius.

My production hives
What I am doing to my production hives is pretty straightforward, but there are a few lessons to be learned. My first change relates to Winter feeding. For years, I have been putting dry sugar on top of my hives as an “insurance” policy. Typically, half the colonies eat the sugar. The set-up is simple. A sheet of newspaper, a spacer and several pounds of sugar. The sugar absorbs excess moisture and acts as insulation. The problem is this can be messy. The newspaper breaks, the sugar falls to the bottom and you have a mess to clean up in the Spring. So a couple years ago, I found pre-cut parchment paper to use instead of newspaper. It made the set up simple and the bees don’t chew through parchment paper so there is no mess in the Spring.

Ahh, but here lies the rub. Is it coincidence that I experienced my first heavy losses the same year I switched to parchment paper? I still had colonies eating the sugar. Here’s my thinking. When bees chew through the newspaper, the sugar is directly above the cluster. They have easy access to the sugar as they need it. With parchment paper, the bees must go around the paper to reach the sugar. That limits their access. During cold spells, when the bees are clustered, they have a pile of food right above their heads but can’t get to it. Hence, the strong colonies survived because they could wait for some warmer weather, but the weaker colonies starved. I am going back to newspaper. I have a pile of newspapers and I bought some precut newsprint. I will see if one works better than the other.

The second “experiment” on my production hives is to add some reflective insulation above the hive. I have argued for years that strong colonies don’t need extra insulation, especially in Missouri. I know beekeepers in Northern climates wrap their hives, and that makes sense. But I’m not in a northern climate. Besides, I have successfully overwintered 84/89 colonies, right? I already had starvation on my mind when I heard a first-year beekeeper speak at our club. She had an internal hive thermometer in her hive and showed what happened when she put two inches of foam insulation inside the outer cover of her hive. The internal temperature rose 20 degrees! If you think about the energy required for the bees to heat that space, imagine the Winter stores saved by raising the inside of the box 20 degrees. Being on our clubs program committee, I found Ashley St Clair from U of I to talk about her experiments with insulating hives. Same thing, insulated hives used less honey stores. If I am worried about my bees starving, then I should insulate my hives.

Image 1: This reflective insulation is only ⅛ inch thick and has an R-value of 3.7. It’s easy to cut to size and should help keep heat within the hive. To the right is how it looks when insulated.

I make my own hives. My inner covers are made of ⅜ inch plywood and my outer covers are either ⅜ or ½ inch plywood. Pine has an R-value of one per inch thickness which means my hives have very little insulation on them. Even with a ¾ inch lid, you have an R value of less than one. Strong, well-fed hives can deal with this. But less than perfect hives struggle. Ian Steppler, out of Manitoba, uses some reflective bubble wrap insulation on his hives. I found some at the local building supply store (see image 1). It has an R-value of 3.7. This is the equivalent of a 3.7 inch lid yet is only ⅛ of an inch thick. All my hives now have this insulation on them. Hopefully, between the newsprint and the insulation, I will see a better outcome this Spring.

My Overwintering Nuc Facility
Each year, I overwinter several smaller colonies in four frame boxes stacked two high. This set-up is more robust than you might expect, especially when the colonies are side by side. These colonies are typically left over mating nucs or splits that I made after running out of 10 frame equipment. My business model is evolving to sell more overwintered nucs in the Spring and I’m trying to do that without selling off my production colonies. How can I efficiently overwinter more nucs?

Several years ago, I built a six frame observation hive that I had in my spare bedroom. I never failed to overwinter a colony in that hive, regardless of size. I learned a lot from that hive. The bees would loosely cluster all Winter long even though it was 68°F in the bedroom. I couldn’t feed them when it was cold outside. But, when they were flying, I could. My thinking is the warm surroundings made the Winter less stressful for the bees. They behaved as they should during Winter, conserving energy, but didn’t need large amounts of stored honey because they didn’t have to struggle to keep warm.

Image 2: My overwintering nuc facility. An 8×16 shed that holds 20 nucs per row, two rows per side. I used 1¼ inch holes as entrances to each hive and painted patterns on the side to allow the bees to orient to their home.

Enter the idea of my overwintering nuc facility. When I visited Germany for work a few years ago, I got to see a working bee house. The colonies are kept indoors, with holes cut into the side of the building allowing bees free flight. The beekeeper worked the bees indoors and had overlapping window panes to allow bees that flew out of the hive to escape the building. This set-up mimicked my observation hive. My idea was to build a shed that allowed bees free flight to the outdoors, allowed me to work and feed the bees indoors and allowed me to “control” the temperature throughout the Winter. Before I invested in such a shed, I contacted both John Miller, a commercial beekeeper out of North Dakota, and Brandon Hopkins at Washington State University. Both thought it was worth trying.

Image 3: The overwintering nuc facility has two rows of hives on each side allowing room for 80 nucs. There is sufficient space between the bottom and top hives for me to remove frames if necessary. Holes in the lids allow easy feeding as seen by the quart-sized food containers on each colony. The picture on the right shows the house after insulating. Reflective insulation was used on the walls and traditional fiberglass insulation was used on the roof.

The shed is 8×16 with eight foot walls and can hold 80 nucs (see image 2). The studs are at 18-inch centers so there is 16.5 inches between them. That is enough for one 10 frame box or two four frame boxes. There are two rows per side (see image 3). I set the floors up as commercial beekeepers set up pallets. Permanent spacers and a permanent opening that leads to the outside (see image 4). I had to place a spacer on the wall of the shed to allow room for the handles I have on my nuc boxes. To add a colony to the shed, I just remove it from the bottom board and slide it against the wall into its space. There are holes cut into the lids so I can easily feed using plastic quart containers (see image 3). For lighting, I have both white light and red light. The idea behind the red light is so I can work the bees without having them attracted to the light. Unfortunately, I must have the wrong type of red light because they still fly to it. I also found it necessary to “plug” all the holes except the escape route. I found many dead bees near the door, until I went in and saw all the light coming through the edges of the door. After weather stripping all the cracks, that problem went away.

Image 4: Spacers act as bottom boards. By simply placing the boxes on the spacers, they have instant access to the outside. The 2×4 spacers on the wall allow for room for the
handles I have on my nuc boxes. I use corks to plug any holes that aren’t being used.

The big question for me was temperature. The controlled environment facilities commercial beekeepers use to overwinter thousands of colonies would overheat if they didn’t have a means to lower the temperature. Each hive produces the equivalent heat of a 60-watt light bulb. In my bee house, though, the bees have access to the outside. They should be able to control temperatures using their own air circulation. This has the added benefit of controlling CO2 levels as well. I put the bees in the shed without insulating to see what would happen. After having the bees in the shed for a few weeks the highest temperature I recorded was 78°F (it was 80°F outside) and the low temperatures were typically 10 degrees higher than the low outside. My plan is to keep the internal temperature around 45-50 degrees, and it can get below zero here in the Winter. So, I decided to insulate. I had some left over R13 insulation from my honey house project that I used to insulate the roof. And I used the reflective bubble wrap R=3.7 (image 1, previous page) on the walls (see image 3). I couldn’t use thicker insulation on the walls because the hives needed to butt up against the spacers. The insulation helped. But it was clear the bees weren’t putting out a lot of heat.

In addition to the insulation, I purchased a small baseboard heater that I could set to 50°F as a source of supplemental heat. We had our first cold spell of the season and the low got down to 25 degrees. The temperature in the bee house was 42 degrees (my unheated honey house was 32). On normal nights, I can maintain about 20 above the outside temperature. Not bad, but I still worried about our zero-degree weather that is coming. I purchased an oil-filled radiant heater that has a thermostat and also made the decision to insulate the tops of my nucs. In this case, I used Styrofoam insulation (R-4) with a small hole cut into it to allow feeding (Missouri gets warm spells where it is feasible to feed). The morning I put the insulation on was 15 degrees and the baseboard heater said 32 degrees on the floor. I hooked up the new heater and within a couple hours, the baseboard heater said 50 degrees. It was actually too warm and I had to adjust the thermostats. I found my set-up.

I currently have 70 colonies in the bee house. Their sizes range from two to six frames of bees. I don’t have a lot of hope for smallest ones, but I am hopeful for most of the colonies in there. Between the warmer ambient temperatures and the insulated tops, they should have an easier time surviving. Similarly, I have close to 200 “production” colonies outside that now have insulated tops and will soon have a supply of dry sugar. Hopefully, these steps make up for any mistakes that I made preparing them for Winter. We will know in the Spring.

Click Here if you listened. We’re trying to gauge interest so only one question is required; however, there is a spot for feedback!

Read along below!

Found in Translation

Save the Males

By: Jay Evans, USDA Beltsville Bee Lab

Male honey bees are not afforded much respect. If a male bee had the mojo to write a memoir it would be entitled “Eat, Mate, Die: One bee’s journey toward the audible pop”. No movie options there, despite the sadists just waiting for the dramatic ending. Nevertheless, these droning lives are critical for the generational success of honey bee colonies. Recent research has explored how male bees, fragile though they might be, contribute to colony health and the longevity of laying queens. There are also new insights into how biological and environmental threats impact males and thereby colony success.

First, male bees truly do have a smaller behavioral repertoire than females. Males are also sheltered from many of the stresses faced by worker bees and long-lived queens. The typical male bee, following a leisurely 24-day development time, emerges from his roomy honeycomb cell and simply ‘lives’ for more than a week before taking his first flight from the colony. No glands to produce wax, no glands to provide buttery food for developing bees, no grooming, no feeding of others, no defending the colony. During this time, the male’s energy is funneled into massive flight muscles and impressively large testes. When scientists look at male performance, they look at these two factors; can the boys fly and can they make viable sperm?

For the first question, it is important to determine if stressed males even live long enough to fly. Recent work by Alison McAfee and colleagues from the University of British Columbia and North Carolina State University showed that drones are more sensitive than worker bees to both cold temperatures and one pesticide (imidacloprid) under high lab exposure rates (Drone honey bees are disproportionately sensitive to abiotic stressors despite expressing high levels of stress response proteins. 2021. Communications biology 5,141, https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03092-7). Specifically, most drones simply can’t endure four hours at temperatures just above freezing, while their female counterparts survive fine. In this same study, drones died at two-fold higher rates than their sisters after exposure to 100 ppm imidacloprid. When exposed to a cocktail of field-expected pesticide doses, both drones and worker bees survived fine in these trials, but the evidence that drones were disproportionately sensitive overall prevailed.

Collecting semen from a drone honey bee that will be used to artificially inseminate a queen bee.

What about sperm? Much has been written about the impacts of drone sperm quality on colony health, using techniques mastered by retired USDA scientist Anita Collins (i.e., Collins, A.M. Relationship between semen quality and performance of instrumentally inseminated honey bee queens. 2000. Apidologie, 31, 421–429, https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/abs/2000/03/m0307/m0307.html). But what is it, outside of the lab, that leads to inviable drone sperm? Like most traits, both genes and the environment play a role. In a recent colony-level study, Lars Straub and colleagues measured the impacts of pesticide stress on “all the things drones are asked to do” (Negative effects of neonicotinoids on male honey bee survival, behaviour and physiology in the field. 2021. Journal of Applied Ecology, 58, 2515–2528. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14000). Drones exposed to field-realistic chemical doses via pollen patties fed to their colonies died at twice the rate of controls. When they survived, exposed drones took longer than controls to take their first flight, drifted more often to the wrong colony and produced a higher ratio of defective sperm.

Does that defective sperm translate into poor colony health? Jeffery Pettis and co-authors showed that queens heading failing colonies in commercial beekeeping operations carry a higher proportion of damaged sperm (Pettis JS, Rice N, Joselow K, vanEngelsdorp D, Chaimanee V. Colony failure linked to low sperm viability in honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens and an exploration of potential causative factors. 2016. PLOS ONE 11(5): 0155833. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147220). Sixty percent of the sperm stored by queens in failing colonies was dead, while only 30 percent was dead in healthy colonies. This need not reflect a history of dysfunctional dads in that poor sperm health might reflect the abilities of queens to keep sperm viable rather than damaged goods from the start. In fact, the researchers found higher levels of dead sperm after queens were subjected to temperature stress, passing the blame for sperm health to queens or (more likely) queen transport and management. While it is tough to measure the longterm effects of inadequate males on colony health, headway was made with data and a model generated by Bradley Metz and David Tarpy from North Carolina State University (Reproductive and morphological quality of commercial honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) drones in the United States. 2021. Journal of Insect Science, 21: 2, https://doi.org/10.1093/jisesa/ieab048). Observationally, colonies produce a range of smaller and larger drones, with six to 10% of drones being below a threshold size mimicking that seen when drones are raised mistakenly in worker cells. These smaller drones differed in their abilities to pass on adequate sperm in both quantity and quality (sperm viability), and the authors use that fact to argue that less fit males can have a strong impact on queen longevity and the health of managed bee colonies.

Weirdness in male bee genetics play some role in their fragility. Male bees, like male ants and wasps, and males found in a handful of less prosperous insect groups, are generally ‘haploid’ from birth to death. They are born of unfertilized eggs that simply start dividing into tissues and eventually organs, forming a viable insect that has no genetic father. Being haploid comes with its own set of challenges. Most life forms outside of the bacteria and ‘archaea’ have a genetic father and mother. This means we have two copies of genes that encode most of the proteins in our bodies. This redundancy can be good as organisms develop, behave and prosper. For example, many survivable genetic diseases in humans and other organisms are survivable simply because one of two viable proteins in such cases can suffice for a critical life task. As scientists have noted, honey bee drones are thus uniquely vulnerable to dysfunctional proteins encoded by their exposed genomes. The work previously mentioned, by Dr. McAfee and colleagues, for example, contrasted males and their sisters specifically to see if males were the weaker sex because they are haploid or because of other biological differences. Their study suggests the latter. Nevertheless, there are surely impacts from having half a set of chromosomes in terms of breeding and bee evolution. Garett Slater and colleagues, in Haploid and sexual selection shape the rate of evolution of genes across the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) genome (2022. Genome Biology and Evolution. 14(6) https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac063) showed that genes that were especially active in male bees were evolving differently than genes equally active in both sexes, although it is not clear that this reflects playing with half a deck. The genetic impacts of being haploid, and the potential for this phenomenon to be exploited in bee breeding, are good topics for next month. Thanks to a handful of female and male scientists who have looked past the limited behavioral range of male bees, we now have critical information on the colony and environmental factors that conspire against drones, and the impacts of drone health on colony offspring borne from their brief and dramatic lives.