The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new honey bee research facility at the University of California, Davis.  The new facility is part of the Invasive Species and Pollinator Health Research Unit, which is assigned the task of developing approaches to improve bee health in the face of a myriad of stress factors.

“This research lab will be focusing on looking at the ongoing challenges with honey bee populations,” said Dr. Arathi Seshadri, one of the two USDA-ARS research entomologist who will be working in the new lab.  “And trying to find solutions to some of the challenges that the beekeepers, queen breeders, and the almond industry and most of the fruit and vegetable industry is facing because of the trouble that bees are having in sustaining their populations.”

The research will be done in collaboration with the work already taking place at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility which is across the street from the new ARS facility on the UC Davis campus.  Some of the research will be looking at several questions related to bee nutrition as well as the role that agricultural materials play in the overall health of honeybee populations.

“Are there some important micronutrients and vitamins and amino acids missing in their diet and can we supplement this?” Seshadri noted. “How can we build a strong bee that can actually live in the face of all the environmental stressors that are out there?  So how can we come together on this?”

The research unit will be communicating with industry stakeholders to better understand the concerns to help guide the research work that will be conducted at the facility.  The team at the new honeybee research facility will also be periodically presenting research findings in a variety of ways to keep industry members apprised of relevant developments.

“One of the broader goals for this unit is to also bring together all the research and actually test it out in California to see how well it’s actually addressing the needs of the pollination industry and beekeeper concerns,” said Seshadri. “So, there are a few different ways in which we are going to grow this unit.”

Brian German Multi-media Journalist for AgNet West

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By: New Scientist staff and Press Association

Urgent action is needed to halt a global decline in pollinators which threatens economies and food supplies, a new review says.

The authors of a major United Nations report blame the decline of pollinators on habitat loss, climate change and farming methods.

Possible solutions include building “bee highways” to allow the insects to move freely between foraging locations, reducing “green deserts” – landscapes dominated by a single crop species – and helping farmers work with nature.

“We conducted the most thorough review of the science ever undertaken, sifting through all the available evidence, to provide governments with the best and latest evidence on pollinator decline,” says lead author Simon Potts, from the University of Reading, in the UK.

“The UN report is a good start, but now we need action,” he says. “We need governments, farmers, industry and the public around the world to act to stop further declines in bees and other pollinating animals.”

“It’s not all bad news for bees, and luckily we still have options to help. Doing nothing is a big risk that could endanger the global supply of nutritious foods and the livelihoods of millions of people.”

The report estimates that 1.4 billion jobs worldwide depend on pollinating insects such as bees, beetles and butterflies. Three quarters of the world’s crops, worth $500 billion, rely on nature’s pollinators, say the experts.

In addition, the report highlights how safety procedures for new pesticides and genetically modified crops could be tightened to protect beneficial wild insects.

Currently, regulators only require manufacturers to assess risks to managed honeybees, not wild species.

UN conservation talks

Pollinator decline will be high on the agenda at UN conservation talks taking place in Cancun, Mexico, next month.

Bee expert Norman Carreck, from the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects at the University of Sussex, says the report is “wide-ranging and novel”.

“It has been widely reported in the media that the human population would starve without bees,” Carreck says. “This is not true, because many of the world’s staple food crops are wind pollinated, but this review emphasizes the complexity of the relationship.

“Animal pollinated crops supply many vital micronutrients and a lack of such crops due to pollinator decline could lead to deficiencies and other human disease.”

Lena Wilfert, senior lecturer in molecular evolution at the University of Exeter, in the UK, says the review shows that diverse pollinator populations are crucial for a wide range of factors influencing human well-being, beyond the immediate pollination of crops.

“Importantly, the work shows how ecological intensification of agriculture and ecological infrastructure can tackle the threats to pollinator diversity and abundance.”

Although typically produced in very small quantities, hormones may cause profound changes in their target cells.

Endocrine glands produce hormones that work internally in the honey bee to control bodily functions. Hormones only affect the individual that produces them. They are often regarded as chemical messengers. Although typically produced in very small quantities, hormones may cause profound changes in their target cells. Their effect may be stimulatory or inhibitory. In some cases, a single hormone may have multiple targets and different effects in each target.

Larval honey bees have three important endocrine glands that are involved in their growth and development. The prothoracic gland is a very small leaf-like structure situated between the first two of the three thoracic segments. This gland produces a substance called ecdysone that controls molting in the larva and pupa; this gland is not present in the adult bee.

The other two endocrine glands are the corpora cardiaca and corpora allata that are connected by nerve fibers to each other and to brain neuro-secretory cells. The function of the corpora cardiaca is not completely clear but the corpora allata produces a substance called juvenile hormone (JH). This hormone controls development in the larva and pupa. In the adult, JH is responsible for workers changing from one role to another as they age. The corpora allata glands are two globular organs found on the sides of the esophagus, behind the brain in both larvae and adults. Each corpus cardiacum however, is a loose body of cells attached to the wall of the aorta (heart) (Figure 1). The brain regulates corpora allata activity via neural and neuroendocrine signals. The corpora allata of queen larvae are considerably larger than those of worker larvae.

Figure 1. Diagram showing a slice through the head, seen from behind. In the small space behind the brain and in front of the connection to the neck are the main neurosecretory glands: corpora allata and corpora cardiaca. Stell (2012).

Molting or ecdysis is the process during which the insect casts off its exoskeleton and grows a new larger one to accommodate its increase in size brought about by feeding in the periods between molts. Ecdysis is therefore confined to the larval and pupal stages and does not occur during the adult stage where there is no growth (Morse and Hooper 1985). Developing bees undergo six molts during which the outer skeleton is shed; five of these take place during the larval stage and the last occurs when the bee emerges as an adult. The first four larval molts occur approximately once a day for workers and queens and allow the larva to grow rapidly by shedding the exoskeleton when it has become too small (Winston 1987).

Neurosecretory cells in the brain release brain hormone in response to both internal and external stimuli. Molting is initiated when brain hormone is passed down the nervous connections to the corpus cardiaca, where it is released into the hemolymph (blood) of the bee. This brain hormone causes the prothoracic gland of the larva to produce ecdysone (molting hormone), which initiates the changes in the epidermis and the whole process of molting. This hormone travels in the blood and ends up at the epidermal cells of the exoskeleton. Ecdysone is the message to begin process of molting (Caron and Connor 2013).

The first change to occur in the exoskeleton is the division of the cells of the epidermis, the cells become increasingly closer packed as they multiply in number. The non-living exoskeleton, the cuticle, is freed from the epidermis by molting fluid, secreted by the epidermis, filling the space between the two layers. The molting fluid is at this time inactive. The epidermis secretes a new epicuticle which protects it from the action of the molting fluid which now becomes active. The active molting fluid contains enzymes, both proteinases and a chitinase, which digests the old endocuticle (the innermost layer of the cuticle), the products of the digestion being absorbed by the epidermis and used in the secretion of the new exoskeleton.

“Molting is initiated when brain hormone is passed down the nervous connections to the corpus cardiaca, where it is released into the hemolymph (blood) of the bee.”

At the same time as parts of the old cuticle are being digested, the new cuticle is being secreted by the epidermis. The two processes continue until only the old epicuticle and exocuticle (the very hard tanned parts) remain, and the new cuticle has reached its full depth (Morse and Hooper 1985). Juvenile hormone also travels in the blood to the epidermal cells of the exoskeleton. It suppresses the expression of adult characteristics (Caron and Connor 2013).

Juvenile hormone and ecdysone together control growth and development. Whether the larva molts to a larger larva or proceeds to the pupal stage depends on the balance between ecdysone and juvenile hormone. Prior to the molt to pupa, juvenile hormone production ceases so the level in the hemolymph goes down and the next molt produces the adult stage from the pupa. Juvenile hormone production returns during the adult stage when it serves additional functions such as regulating egg development and worker duties as well as queen aging (Caron and Connor 2013).

Understanding regulatory mechanisms that underlie the fluctuations in the hemolymph juvenile hormone titers is a major issue in understanding honey bee sociality. Such regulation can occur in two different ways in the corpora allata, via modulation of enzyme levels and enzyme activity in the biosynthetic steps of the juvenile hormone molecule, and via degradation and clearance of secreted JH in the hemolymph.

Juvenile hormone-precursor manipulation and pharmacological inhibition experiments have shown that the final steps in JH synthesis are critically regulated in the corpora allata (Rachinsky et al. 2000), with their activity being modulated by biogenic amines (Rachinsky and Feldlaufer 2000) and also by the insulin-signaling pathway (Corona et al. 2007).

Corpora allata activity of queen and worker larvae of the honey bee in late larval development was studied in vitro by a radiochemical assay (Rachinsky and Hartfelder 1990). During larval development, the juvenile hormone titer reaches a peak in the third to fourth larval instar, then drops to low levels at the beginning of the fifth instar in both worker and queen castes. This peak in the early larval stages is particularly pronounced in queens (Rembold 1987; Rachinsky et al. 1990) demonstrating that modulation of juvenile hormone release is of prime importance in regulation of the caste-specific juvenile hormone titer. This queen-specific maximum juvenile hormone titer is an important factor for caste-specific organ differentiation, especially the larval ovaries (Schmidt-Capella and Hartfelder 1998). After a small peak that initiates vitellogenin synthesis and egg formation in the late pharate adult stage of queens (Barchuk et al. 2002), the juvenile hormone titer stays at low levels throughout a queen’s adult life cycle. In both female castes, hormone release is strictly correlated with juvenile hormone synthesis. The conversion of the precursor methyl farnesoate to juvenile hormone may be regulated caste-specifically, since only in queens but not in workers, a linear correlation between intraglandular contents of juvenile hormone and methyl farnesoate was found.

“Understanding regulatory mechanisms that
underlie the fluctuations in the hemolymph juvenile hormone titers is a major issue in understanding honey bee socially.”

In adult workers, the corpora allata show growth periods, increasing in size particularly during the first days after emergence. Under queenright conditions nearly constant growth was measured within the house bees. In queenless workers the initial gland growth is attained much faster, although the corpora allata volume diminished about a week after emergence (Kaatz et al. 1992). Additional studies investigating volume changes of juvenile hormone-producing corpora allata suggest that queen pheromone may affect the endocrine system of the receiver (Gast 1967).

Juvenile hormone synthesis in adult worker honey bees was measured by an in vitro corpora allata bioassay. Adult queenless workers exhibit higher rates of juvenile hormone biosynthesis than queenright workers (Kaatz et al. 1992). Hormone synthesis was not correlated with the volume of the glands. Extract of queen mandibular glands, applied to a dummy, reduces juvenile hormone biosynthesis in caged queenless workers to the level of queenright workers. The same result was obtained with synthetic (E)-9-oxo-2-decenoic acid, the principal component of the queen mandibular gland secretion. This pheromonal primer effect may function as a key regulating element in maintaining eusocial colony homeostasis. The presence of brood does not affect the hormone production of the corpora allata.

A correlation between the volume of the corpora allata and oocyte (egg) formation suggests that oocyte maturation is dependent on the presence of a hormone of the corpora allata (Gast 1967). Besides the hormone of the corpora allata at least one other factor is necessary for oocyte maturation. It is probably contained in the neurosecretory material produced in the neurosecretory cells of the brain. The growth of the nuclei of the neurosecretory cells of the brain is inhibited by the presence of a queen, but it is doubtful whether this is due to the action of queen pheromone (Gast 1967).

“During larval development, the juvenile hormone titer reaches a peak in the third to fourth larval instar, then drops to low levels at the beginning of the fifth instar in both worker and queen castes.”

Effects of biogenic amines on the corpora allata of worker larvae were studied in late larval development (Rachinsky 1994). Under in vitro conditions, octopamine and serotonin caused a dose-dependent stimulation of juvenile hormone release and increased intraglandular contents of juvenile hormone and its precursor methyl farnesoate in prepupal glands.

Juvenile hormone has taken on the role of producing multiple effects on setting the physiological conditions for age-specific tasks in adult workers. In young workers, the hemolymph JH levels are low and these bees carry out tasks within the broodnest, primarily feeding the brood with secretions from their well-developed hypopharyngeal glands (Winston 1987). As the bees grow older, they switch to more hazardous tasks outside of the hive, foraging for nectar, pollen and water, their JH titers are typically increased (Huang et al. 1991).

Measurements of both juvenile hormone and ecdysteroid hemolymph titers were made from the same individuals to explore the possibility that there is also an interaction between these hormones in the regulation of adult honey bee behavior and physiology. Queens, egg-laying workers, and workers engaged in brood care (nurses) had low titers of juvenile hormone whereas foragers had significantly higher titers. In contrast, ecdysteroid titers were undetectably low in both nurses and foragers, higher in laying workers, and higher still in laying queens. Measurements of juvenile hormone titers are consistent with previous findings demonstrating that this hormone regulates worker age polyethism (division of labor) but does not play a typical role in reproduction, as in other insects. Comparison of juvenile hormone and edcysteroid titers suggests that ecdysteroids are not involved in the regulation of age polyethism but may play a role in the regulation of reproduction in honey bees (Robinson et al. 1991).

References
•Barchuk, A.R., M.M.G. Bitondi and Z.L.P. Simões 2002. Effects of juvenile hormone and ecdysone on the timing of vitellogenin appearance in hemolymph of queen and worker pupae of Apis mellifera. J. Insect Sci. 2:1-8.

•Caron, D.M. and L.J. Connor 2013. Honey Bee Biology And Beekeeping. Wicwas Press, Kalamazoo, MI, 368 pp.

•Corona, M., R.A. Velarde, S. Remolina, A. Moran-Lauter, Y. Wang, K.A. Hughes and G.E. Robinson 2007. Vitellogenin, juvenile hormone, insulin signaling, and queen honey bee longevity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104: 7128-7133.

•Gast, R. 1967. Untersuchungen über den Einfluß der Königinnen-substanz auf die Entwicklung der endokrinen Drüsen bei der Arbeiterin der Honigbiene (Apis mellifica). Insectes Soc. 14: 1-12.

•Huang, Z.-Y., G.E. Robinson, S.S. Tobe, K.J. Yagi, C. Strambi, A. Strambi and B. Stay 1991. Hormonal regulation of behavioural development in the honey bee is based on changes in the rate of juvenile hormone biosynthesis. J. Insect Physiol. 37: 733-741.

•Kaatz, H.H., H. Hildebrandt and W. Engels 1992. Primer effect of queen pheromone on juvenile hormone biosynthesis in adult worker honey bees. J. Comp. Physiol. B 162: 588-592.

•Morse, R.A. and T. Hooper 1985. Moulting. In: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Beekeeping. E.P. Dutton, New York, pp. 264-265.

•Rachinsky, A. 1994. Octopamine and serotonin influence on corpora allata activity in honey bee (Apis mellifera) larvae. J. Insect Physiol. 40: 549-554.

•Rachinsky, A. and M. Feldlaufer 2000. Responsiveness of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) corpora allata to allato regulatory peptides from four insect species. J. Insect Physiol. 46: 41-46.

•Rachinsky, A. and K. Hartfelder 1990. Corpora allata activity, a prime regulating element for caste-specific juvenile hormone titre in honey bee larvae (Apis mellifera carnica). J. Insect Physiol. 36: 189-194.

•Rachinsky, A., S. Tobe and M. Feldlaufer 2000. Terminal steps in JH biosynthesis in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.): developmental changes in sensitivity to JH precursor and allatotropin. Insect Biochem. Mol.

•Rachinsky, A., C. Strambi, A. Strambi and K. Hartfelder 1990. Caste and methamorphosis: hemolymph titres of juvenile hormone and ecdysteroids in last instar honeybee larvae. Gen. Comp. Endocrinol. 79: 31-38.

•Rembold, H. 1987. Caste specific modulation of juvenile-hormone titers in Apis mellifera. Insect Biochem. 17: 1003-1006.

•Robinson, G.E., C. Strambi, A. Strambi and M.F. Feldlaufer 1991. Comparison of juvenile hormone and ecdysteroid haemolymph titres in adult worker and queen honey bees (Apis mellifera). J. Insect Physiol. 37: 929-935.

•Schmidt-Capella, I.C. and K. Hartfelder 1998. Juvenile hormone effect on DNA synthesis and apoptosis in caste-specific differentiation of the larval honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) ovary. J. Insect Physiol. 44(5-6): 385-391.

•Stell, I. 2012. Understanding Bee Anatomy: A Full Colour Guide. The Catford Press, Teddington, Middlesex, UK, 203 pp.

•Winston, M.L. 1987. The Biology Of The Honey Bee. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 281 pp.

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

by Larry Connor

Before obtaining the first bee colony, the future sustainable apiculturist must master key aspects of bee biology. Here we look at the activities of the house bees, foragers and drones.

House Bees (Bees Working Inside the Hive But Outside the Brood Area)
At a certain stage, as bees mature, they move away from the brood area to the areas immediately beside the brood. This includes the areas where pollen and nectar are being processed, as well as the area where nectar is being converted into honey. It is useful to call these older bees house bees since they are leaving nurse bee duties but are not yet leaving the hive to collect pollen, nectar, propolis or water.

Pollen Processing – Bees transition to food processing after being the primary consumers of the products. Field bees serving as pollen forgers enter the hive with two pollen pellets on their corbiculae (pollen baskets), and go to the comb near (and sometimes in) the brood area. Once they find an open cell containing other recently collected pollen, they reverse the packing direction and kick off the pollen loads directly into the cells, each pellet in pairs. The house bees then add additional stomach contents (including nectar/honey that contains microbes for conversion to bee bread) and compact the pollen into the cells by pushing with their heads. This increases the efficiency of storage by two and half times. In the fall, the pollen may be coated with a thin layer of honey, but most of the year the house bees keep the pollen cells open and available for consumption.

Packing in Pollen

Nectar processing – When a forager returns to the hive, she seeks a house bee (one that has not flown) to transfer the nectar to her. The forager carries the nectar in a specialized organ called the honey stomach. The forager regurgitates the nectar in droplets and offers them to the waiting house bees for ripening before she returns to the field. If the honey isn’t transferred, the forager must ripen the nectar herself.

To ripen the honey, a bee rests quietly on the honeycomb and produces a bubble of the honey stomach’s contents, exposing it to the warm and dry air inside the hive. She repeats this process over a 20-minute period before placing the nectar into empty cells in the hive. At that time the nectar has been infused with the enzyme invertase and has been reduced in moisture content. Now it needs time to complete the conversion process in the dry air of the hive. The worker puts drops along the ceiling of a drawn-but-empty cell inside the honey chamber to ripen. The availability of ripening space represented by abundant, empty, drawn comb appears to be one reason why bees collect more honey when such comb is present.

Chemical conversion of the honey continues while in these uncapped cells; exposed to the warmed, dry air of the hive as the moisture continues to evaporate.

The house bees are the hive members that normally handle this duty. When the flow is heavy, many bees are required to ripen the nectar crop into honey. One advantage of a large and age-diverse colony of bees is their ability to change duties and be available to support a strong nectar flow. They do this much better than a smaller or less age-diverse colony.

Wax secretion – When house bees consume nectar and honey, it stimulates them to digest the carbohydrates and produce wax scales on eight wax glands on the underside of the abdomen. These bees manipulate the wax scales with their mandibles to build the amazing wax comb. Some of these bees are responsible for keeping the wax production area warm, using their antennae to measure the comb temperature and heat the area by flexing their wing muscles without moving their wings. These bees have been called heater bees.

Guard duty – There are bees that monitor the hive for invaders, including wax moths, small hive beetles and Varroa mites. Their regular duty is to keep bees from other colonies from robbing their hive of the honey and pollen stored there.

Undertaker Bees – A specific group of house bees patrol the hive and remove dead members of the colony, taking them to the hive entrance, and flying away from the entrance for 15 feet or more. They then drop the body of their dead sister into the surrounding environment, making it difficult for the beekeeper to monitor colony losses under normal conditions.

Young worker bees secreting wax from their wax glands (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Other duties – There are other duties of house bees, including general house keeping, queen and drone cell construction and regulation, wash-board activities at the entrance (in kept bees, removing bark from the non-existing bee tree entrance) and much more. Undoubtedly there are duties we have yet to discover.

Foraging Activities
The oldest worker bees in a hive are usually the field bees, or foragers. They search and collect nectar, pollen, water and propolis. Some constantly look for a better supply of food than the one they currently have. Nurse bees require food for brood feeding and beg for food to stimulate foragers to forage for additional food resources. As long as they are able to gather nectar from flowers and unload it at the hive, they will continue to forage. Foragers spend two to four weeks foraging in the Summer. They may be found dead in the field, often in flowers –their bodies worn and wings tattered. From emergence to death, this bee may have lived for just four to six weeks.

Nest Reproduction (Swarming)
Bee colonies are social organisms with complex behaviors. One of these complexities is in the way the colony reproduces. With social wasps, bumble bees, and other social insects, new colonies are established by a single mated female reproductive (queen). For example, bumble bee queens mate in the fall and overwinter in the leaf litter in the ground and search for a new nest in the spring. They do not use the nest they were produced from in the previous year as the hives are often destroyed by small mammals and must build their colony slowly.

Honey bees are unique in reproducing their social unit by swarming. This is an amazing process that involves thousands of worker bees and a queen leaving the hive in a process that stimulates them to find a new home. The rest of the bees and a replacement queen will stay behind and maintain the old home site. Some colonies of bees swarm more than once each year, producing more than one new bee family with each swarm. This is a good thing, since new colonies in nature have a very difficult time living to be one year old.

While clustered in a temporary location, swarms regroup for a few hours to a few days while scout bees leave the colony and search for a good home. Scout bees search for a cavity that is big enough, but not too big. It should be safe from predators and environmental hazards. Empty holes in trees, cavities in rocks and human structures are common sites for bees to select. Once the nest is selected, the bees all fly to it and build beeswax comb and start foraging for food. The queen starts laying eggs, and a new colony is established. Swarming is discussed in detail in Chapter Swarming.

Drones
Drones are the males and have no apparent duty in the hive other than to mate with new queens from area hives. They are genetic envoys that actively seek virgin queens necessary to supply the diversity of sperm healthy colonies need for survival against diseases. Drones die when they mate. It is unusual for drones to mate with queens from the same location – both queens and drones have behaviors that ensure out-crossing and minimize inbreeding. This makes the small-scale beekeeper dependent on the drones produced in colonies within a mile or more radius.

A drone. Note the large eyes that touch at the top.

Drone saturation requires multiple nearby locations for success. Sustainable beekeepers must understand that the drones they produce in one apiary are probably NOT the drones that will mate with their virgin queens. Instead, the queens will mate with drones from neighboring apiaries and bee trees.

Drones have a 24-day development time, the longest of the bees. Drone brood is produced only when the colony is in a growth period, or if the queen has depleted her supply sperm stored in her body.

Healthy and diverse drone populations are necessary for genetically robust, disease resistant colonies. When maintaining a special line of bees like the Russian stock, it is necessary to produce large colony numbers of Russian drones adequate to supply the need for the successful production of Russian queens. This may be a challenge when the nectar flow is over, or when a colony is in stress, as workers expel drones from the hive to save resources (pollen and nectar).

Drone Comb
Drone cells are larger than worker cells, usually about 16 per square inch of comb space compared to 25 worker cells per square inch. Drone cells are used for the production of drone brood, but they are also the most efficient use of wax for honey storage.

Brood
Drone brood is present as part of the total brood population during the Spring and Summer. Drone brood is usually located to the side or below the worker brood on a frame. These eggs, larvae and pupae are kept in a compact region of the hive at 95°F. to ensure rapid and healthy development of the young bees. Drone brood may serve as a heat sink for the worker brood during exposure to cold, but this has not been established.

Adult Drones
Drone bees in the hive develop from unfertilized eggs and are essential for the mating of new queen bees. Drones are a natural part of the hive, but they are normally produced by the colony only during natural mating weather. We do not find new drone production in cold climates during the Winter or when there is no food coming into the hive. Drone populations peak when worker bee populations peak, about the same time as swarming. In strong colonies with abundant food reserves, drones are present for most of the Summer, but their production slowly declines as Summer begins. While Florida hives start drone production in January or early February, any drones in Michigan colonies in January reflect a queen failure the previous season.

Drone Pupa

Seeley and Morse’s’ work showed that vigorous, healthy colonies produce about five percent of the colony population in drones. By the Summer equinox the key stimulation of increasing day length slowly reverses, but drone rearing continues until September or November (depending on latitude).

A strong incoming food supply prolongs drone production, or it may be done by early June if the pollen and nectar supply has already dried up. This happens in parts of Florida and Texas, as well as other areas of North America.

There may be a second cycle of drone production in the late summer and early fall to coincide with local nectar flows, if they happen. When the incoming food is reduced or stops, worker bees become selective about the number (and age) of the drones they keep, even if they are their brothers. The colony rules!

Successful beekeepers learn to accept normal drone populations in a colony as a reflection of a healthy colony. It indicates that virgin queens in the area will be well served by your healthy, strong and well-fed drones.
Drones are the only bees suitable to give to curious types who want to handle a bee. They are often warm from the heat of the hive and fuzzy to touch. Use drones to practice marking bees with paint. If you mark the drones in one colony, you can watch how they spread to other colonies in the apiary over a period of several days. Who knew you could use drones as both an art project and a science experiment.

Consult www.wicwas.com for the latest quality books on beekeeping.

Canola is a species of rapeseed, developed by Canadian scientists in the 1960s, that is low in harmful (to humans and animals) erucic acid. Much of the oil from rapeseed grown in Europe is used (and was originally intended to be used) as an industrial lubricant but cannot be marketed as a food product if it contains significant amounts of erucic acid. The name Canola Oil is derived from CANada Oil Low Acid. Thus, all canola is rapeseed, but not all rapeseed is canola. Canola meal also is a widely used animal feed.

As the demand for healthy foods increases – witness the upward trend in almond sales and prices in recent years – canola oil is receiving increased publicity. The positive health aspects of non-saturated oils, such as canola, are gaining more attention as more people become aware of the negative effects of saturated oils and trans-fats on our health. Recent trans-fat bans in New York City, Philadelphia and California have already increased sales of canola oil. Canola oil contains no cholesterol and has high levels of both heart-healthy Vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids. In 2006, the FDA, usually strict and very cautious about product labeling, authorized products containing canola oil to bear a qualified health claim stating that “Canola oil has the ability to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease when used in place of saturated fats.”

The health-conscious U.S. with its population of aging baby-boomers, is the big market for canola oil, but U.S. canola producers satisfy only 25% of the demand; the other 75% is supplied by – you guessed it – Canada! China is also a major market for canola, taking about half of Canada’s crop every year. Canadian farmers have jumped into the canola game in a big way, with 20 million acres of canola in western Canada. Drive through Alberta in the Summer and feast your eyes on mile after mile of yellow canola bloom as far as the eye can see. Canadian canola growers have done quite well in recent years and Canadian beekeepers, not coincidently, are also thriving. Canola honey is light-colored with a mild flavor and represents around 80% of Canadian honey sales. Honey from Canola does granulate much more rapidly than honey from other sources, making it important to extract it promptly, but most or all Canadian honey is sold as finely granulated (aka, creamed or spun) honey and finds a ready market. Around 40,000 acres of Canada’s total canola acreage is devoted to hybrid, certified seed production and beekeepers receive a pollination fee ($100 to $150/colony) for the rental of about 80,000 colonies; leaf cutter bees are used on some of this hybrid seed acreage.

Western Canada’s 20 million acres of canola provides ample forage for Canada’s roughly 700,000 bee colonies. At 24% protein, canola pollen is one of the most nutritious of all pollens collected by bees. The excellent overall health of Canadian honey bees can be attributed to the pollen and nectar Canada’s honey bees extract from canola flowers. Canola growers benefit from honey bees with yield increases from 13 to 46% (Sabbani, R., et al., 2012, Influence of honey bee density on the production of canola; J. of Econ. Entom., 98:367-372) – the 46% yield increase was at three colonies/acre; a five to 10% yield increase would be more realistic at normal stocking rates. Canadian canola growers are aware that honey bees will improve their yields and most use caution with pesticides, applying them only if needed, and then only after 8:00 p.m.. Virtually all canola seed, both in Canada and the U.S., is treated with neonicotinoids, with no apparent adverse effect on bees. Before neonic seed treatments, significant bee losses occurred when the potent insecticides Lorsban (chloropyrifos) and Sevin were used. Some of the best bee colonies placed in California’s almond orchards in February, have spent the previous summer near North Dakota canola fields.

Compared to Canada, the U.S. is a minor canola player, but there are signs that this is changing. The current 1.7 million acres of canola in the U.S. is based mainly in the high-plains states, with North Dakota dominating at around a million acres. Canola acreage is now expanding into the southern plains states, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, with strains of canola adapted to the area (canola strains may differ in nectar production, but there is no information on the subject). Oklahoma is already making a splash with 400,000 acres of canola and there are scattered plantings in Kansas and Nebraska. The impetus for this canola expansion (it’s premature to call it an explosion) is a ready market combined with more canola processing facilities in the area (unfortunately, a large processing plant targeted for Enid, OK, was recently put on hold due to a dry 2013-2014 winter followed by 2015 flooding). Trucking canola crops to distant processing plants takes a big bite out of a grower’s bottom line.

The Southern Plains is wheat country and wheat growers there are finding that canola makes a great rotation and will increase wheat yields. Soybean growers have also found increased yields following canola versus winter wheat. The cattle centers close to potential canola areas in the Southern Plains cut shipping costs for canola meal as livestock feed. The comprehensive Great Plains Canola Production Handbook (available online) compiled by Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Nebraska Universities gives farmers in these three states (and other states) a blueprint for successful canola cultivation.

There is limited canola acreage in Oregon, Washington, Montana and California (about 200,000 acres total for these four states). Canola can be and has been banned in areas where vegetable seed crops (broccoli, kale, cabbage) are grown, due to possible contamination with canola pollen, including GM pollen. Such areas include parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and could include parts of California’s Sacramento Valley – a four-mile isolation zone could allow some canola plantings in these areas. Canola could be dry-farmed in parts of California that are isolated from vegetable seed areas. A limited canola planting in the Sacramento Valley a few years ago that used Roundup Ready (RR) seed, resulted in a significant weed problem in subsequent crops as volunteer RR canola plants became hard-to-control weeds, a cautionary note to anyone contemplating canola.

Canola production can also provide significant economic benefits to the areas where it is grown. Canadian canola contributes $19.3 billion to that country’s economy and provides 290,000 jobs that bring in $12.5 billion in wages. Politicians in farm-belt states could do a better job of appeasing their constituents by transferring their current allegiance from corn to canola and to a U.S. honey bee industry that would greatly benefit from the conversion of corn acreage to canola. Another plus for canola is that canola meal is likely superior to corn as a feed for livestock. And, canola is somewhat drought tolerant, requiring significantly less water than corn, an important consideration in areas of declining water tables. The huge increase in corn acreage due to the ethanol craze (a craze that has since died out) reverberates today. Corn for ethanol could always be justified politically, but has always been difficult to justify either economically or environmentally. With two senators allotted to each state, senators from sparsely populated corn belt states have undue influence in passing farm legislation, including crop subsidies. A few presidential elections ago, Steve Forbes made the trenchant comment (paraphrasing): if it wasn’t for the Iowa caucuses, we wouldn’t be talking about corn for ethanol.

Photo by Jeff Scott

The U.S. Canola Association hopes to increase U.S. canola acreage to 3.7 million acres by 2018, more than double current acreage, but still a far cry from the 20 million acres in Canada. Some might think that the market for canola oil will be saturated with increased acreage, but the market for canola should continue to expand with industry promotion on health. Many thought that almond acreage would peak and almond prices drop, several years ago, but almond prices remain high even as acreage increases, due, in good part, to the efforts of the Almond Board of California in correlating almond consumption with health.

Will we ever see U.S. canola blooming from sea to shining sea – picture driving through Alberta farmland in the Summer – and our corn belt and wheat belt converted to canola belts? Probably not, but for U.S. beekeepers it’s a pleasant reverie.

For more on canola, check out the U.S. Canola Association and the Canola Council of Canada, both major sources for this article.

Remember that old movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”? Me either, but it had something to do with Jimmy Stewart going to Congress, fighting corruption and striking a blow for the common man.

Well, this year Mr. Makovec went to Jefferson City, and I’d like to think my colleagues and I struck a blow for the state’s beekeepers. Maybe that’s where the similarity ends. I did not encounter any blatant corruption – well, unless you count a committee chairman asking if we’d brought any honey (we had) – and all of the legislators we met seemed genuinely interested in making their state a better place.

But what I did find was a system mired in futility, where a simple bill with virtually unanimous support can barely make it through the process in over three months’ time. Redundant committees, repetitive votes and unrelated amendments all conspire to slow down or even derail legislation. As someone told me at the outset, “There are 19 ways to kill a bill, and only one way to pass it.”

I’m sure the filibuster was one of those 19 ways, but I doubt that “sex scandal” was on his list. Things were already touch-and-go heading into a congested last week of the session, but it was ultimately a combination of those two scenarios that nearly ended our chances.
The Health Department cracks down
First, a little background: Missouri, up until this year, was one of quite a few states that classify honey as a processed food, and regulate it as such. Little known to most of the state’s beekeepers, we had a law on the books requiring all honey for third-party sale to be extracted and bottled in an “inspected kitchen”. Beekeepers with less than $30,000 in annual sales were exempt from this requirement IF they sold honey only “to the end consumer”. This meant handing the bottle directly to that consumer – not selling via internet, not handing off to a friend for delivery, not taking orders at a market for later shipment. In addition, the container had to be labeled, “This product has not been inspected by the Department of Health and Senior Services.” (When selling at a farmers’ market, craft fair or other such venue, a prominent placard with that warning was also required.)
I learned this the hard way last August when I got a call from my county health inspector, who informed me she had just removed my honey from the shelves of a local market, as she had no record of my company, Sweet Harvest Honey, having an “inspected kitchen”.

The call surprised me for a couple of reasons. First, I’d had honey in that store for most of the previous year without incident. Second, Lincoln County, where I have lived now for about three years, is well-known in eastern Missouri for having few standards for anything. (Your old fridge quit on you? Just drag it to the front lawn until such time as you find another use for it.)

So I told her, “I wasn’t aware that Lincoln County had any rules like that.”
“Oh, it’s not Lincoln County,” she replied, but the state of Missouri. She could not even cite the law in question, but gave me a phone number for the state inspector for the St. Louis region.
I told her that my honey had been in this store for quite some time, and asked if her action was in response to a complaint of some sort. No, she answered, “the state has been training us” on enforcement of their law. She again suggested I call the state inspector.

It took Virginia Phillips about a week to return my calls, and while she was polite, she showed no sympathy for my situation or my arguments. “What’s the difference,” I asked, “between the honey I sell to you directly and what I sell to a store to sell to you?” When you sell directly, she responded, your customer can ask you questions about the product.

I told her that in almost 20 years I have fielded lots of questions about my honey, both directly and through retailers, but they have NEVER been related to health or safety. Rather, they fall into the categories of:
Where are your bees located? (How “local” is this honey?)
Why is this honey a different color than what I bought last Fall?
Why does your honey taste so much better than what I buy in the supermarket?
Can I buy it by the gallon?

We also discussed the language of the law in question, which repeatedly referred to the “processing” and “manufacturing” of honey. “I’m not processing anything,” I said, explaining that honey is a finished product once the bees cap it. “And bacteria cannot even live in honey.” There is no reason for it to be covered under processed food regulations, I argued, which are designed to prevent the growth and spread of bacteria.
“My husband and I used to be beekeepers,” she responded. “I know how proud you are of your product.” She added that she would be happy to explain the law to my local beekeeping club.

“As it happens,” I said, “I am currently the president of Three Rivers Beekeepers, which meets in St. Charles County.” I put her in touch with our program director, who set her up for our November meeting.
Some weeks later, in mid-September, I used my bully pulpit at Three Rivers to rant about this law and its repercussions. After the meeting I heard from a couple of other beekeepers, also in adjoining Lincoln County, who had been affected by the recent crackdown. My companion tirade on the Missouri State Beekeepers Association’s Facebook page prompted the MSBA to schedule Ms. Phillips to speak at its Fall Conference in October.
Her message there was not well-received. Most attendees had not been aware of the regulations, but a handful lived in counties that had recently begun enforcement. Some expressed the same incredulity as I had, asking what the difference was between the honey they sold at their doorstep and what they delivered to the corner market. And like me, they weren’t buying her explanation. When someone asked her to cite health concerns from unregulated honey, the best she could come up with was botulism. Even then, she admitted to a questioner that an inspected kitchen would do nothing to prevent it.

By the way, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports an average of 145 cases of botulism per year in the U.S., two-thirds of which occur in infants. Only about a half-dozen are fatal. Botulism spores are present in dirt and dust, and thus can find their way into any number of natural, uncooked foods. There is no evidence that it is more prevalent in honey than in lettuce or corn syrup. And in virtually everyone over six months of age these natural doses cannot survive our digestive system and so are harmless. Many beekeepers include a warning on their honey to avoid feeding it to infants under one year of age, though curiously there is no mention of this in Missouri’s (or most states’) honey regulations.

As for the kitchen requirements, Virginia couldn’t really define them for us, but after a running game of “20 Questions” we determined that it included three or four sinks, washable walls, a floor drain, covered lights and an adjoining bathroom – all with a plumbing/septic system separate from that of the primary residence. We later learned that this lack of a clear definition made for different rules from county to county.

Ms. Phillips did not show up for her scheduled appearance at Three Rivers in November, explaining a few days later that she’d forgotten due to an illness in the family. But as luck would have it, her predecessor in that position had come to hear what she had to say, and offered to stand up and speak in her stead. (He’d purchased honey at Isabee’s bee supply store, owned by Three Rivers board member Jane Sueme, and she’d had a discussion with him about the regs.)

MO Health
Inspector Virginia Phillips defends the state’s honey sales regulations at the 2014 Fall Conference of the Missouri State Beekeepers
Association. Her presentation was not well-received.
(photo by Eugene Makovec)

He began by citing two incidents: The 9-11 terror attacks and the Tylenol tampering scare of the 1980s.
I raised my hand. “Would either of those incidents have been prevented by an inspected kitchen?”
“No,” he admitted.

We proceeded to educate him on the nature of honey and how it is extracted. He candidly told us that we would get nowhere with the folks at the health department. If you want to change the enforcement, he advised, you’ll need to go the legislature and change the law.

Gaining access
My incoming state senator, Jeanie Riddle, had just been elected two weeks before, and wasn’t taking office till January. I sent a detailed email to the old state rep office she was vacating, but did not get an answer. In the meantime, we formed a committee at Three Rivers to look into our options. We learned that Illinois’s beekeepers had just gotten their law changed in 2010, classifying honey as an agricultural commodity outside the purview of the state’s health department, and thus exempt from its food processing regulations (except for producers of more than 500 gallons per year). So since our current law applied to “jams, jellies and honey”, our goal was to remove honey from that statute and write a new one giving Missouri’s beekeepers a broad exemption similar to that enjoyed by our neighbors to the east. We also mailed a letter to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, asking for a list of cases where honey was linked to food-borne illness. We did not expect to hear back from them, and figured on using that non-response against them down the road.

On January 17th, I took our case to the MSBA Executive Board, of which I am a member as Newsletter Editor. The Missouri legislative session ran this year from January 7th to May 15th. But I was told by a couple of people on the board that if my bill had not already been introduced – just 10 days into the session – I might as well wait until next year!

I’d often read about all the bills that didn’t make the cut at the end of a session, but I always figured these were controversial or just introduced late in the game. Who knew that “late in the game” meant mid-January?

Label Challenge – find room for the statement, “This product has not been inspected by the Department of Health and Senior Services.” (photo by Eugene Makovec)

I learned this year that bills can actually be “pre-filed” as early as December 1, and in fact over 180 Senate bills were filed before the 2015 session even began.

So the MSBA board shelved the issue for the time being, with an eye toward trying to pass something in 2016. I went home discouraged, but two developments quickly got our efforts back on track.
First, I got an email from local beekeeper Kevin Flynn, who informed me that he knew Senator Riddle’s legislative aide, Zach Monroe, and offered to put me in touch. I emailed Zach the particulars, and he responded to say he’d look into the issue. Riddle’s office called in late January and we set up a meeting for February 13th.
The second development was a January 23rd letter from Health and Senior Services informing me that, under the Sunshine Law, they had the right to charge me $21.38 per hour for research and ten cents per page for their findings! I called and said we had no intention of paying for such results, but after being transferred a couple of times I was told that I would first receive a bill and have the option of paying for the results. But just two weeks later came their official response, stating, “After review, it has been determined that the Department has no records showing honey as the cause of any food-borne illness.” Even better, this letter showed up on the morning of my meeting with Senator Riddle!

We met in Kevin Flynn’s office, and I was already thinking in terms of 2016, but the Senator said no, we can get something done this year. In fact, she said, Zach already had a plan of attack: Rather than remove honey from the “jams and jellies law”, it would be simpler to remove jams and jellies from the “honey law”. Jams and jellies were already covered under a “cottage foods law” passed the previous year, so there was no need to cover them here, he said, and it would be an easier task to pass a revision to an existing law than to start over.
So we spent an hour hashing out the details, with Jeanie and Zach speaking in terms of what we could get passed, and me stating what I thought beekeepers could live with. For example, I would have liked to remove the $30,000 threshold altogether, arguing that “it’s the same honey” whether I make 29 grand or 31. Barring that, I suggested changing it to 500 gallons like in Illinois, as that is a constant that will not lose value with inflation.
But Zach asserted, “You’ll never get something passed without a financial cap separating beekeepers like you from the big commercial producers.” The good news, he said, is that the cottage foods law has a threshold of $50,000, so we can increase it to that without raising eyebrows. I went along, as that would raise it to an equivalent of about 800 gallons and allow for a few years of inflation.

The label change was a thornier issue. Both Jeanie and Zach felt that removal of the “not inspected” disclaimer would unduly complicate things and be more difficult to justify. But I wasn’t budging on this one, arguing that not only would this 14-word statement take up valuable real estate on my label (I handed them a 6oz bottle to illustrate my point), but such a warning goes against our basic premise that honey is inherently safe. Finally the Senator suggested we remove the disclaimer and see what happens; we can always put it back in, she said, if that’s what it takes to get the bill passed. I agreed.

“Other than the health department, who do you think will oppose this bill?” I asked them.
“Urban legislators,” responded Senator Riddle without a second thought. She was very surprised when I told her that the majority of the state’s beekeepers now live in urban and suburban neighborhoods.
By my request, Zach wrote up the bill and sent me a draft on February 16th for comment. I wheedled a promise to change the terms “processing” and “manufacturing” to “harvesting” and “bottling”, and forwarded it to the MSBA board, which voted unanimously via email to approve the language. Senator Riddle introduced it as Senate Bill 500 on February 24th.

Zach suggested that I contact House Ag Chairman Jay Houghton and ask him to sponsor an identical bill in the House. As the Chairman would not return my calls or emails (presumably because I’m not in his district), I contacted my own representative, Randy Pietzman, who had just taken office himself but prevailed upon Mr. Houghton to introduce House Bill 1093 on March 3rd.

The gauntlet
Mark Twain famously said, “No man’s life, liberty, and property are safe while the legislature is in session.” And frankly, most of the things our legislators pass are bad laws, so we shouldn’t make it easy for them. Having said that, some of the issues a bill can encounter are well beyond simple checks and balances.

For example, in the Missouri House we have an Agriculture Policy Committee, consisting of 18 members whose job it is to hold hearings and take public testimony on Ag-related bills before sending them on to the full House for debate. But beginning in 2015, we also have a Select Agriculture Committee, whose purpose is ostensibly to provide another layer of “quality control”, thus ensuring that such Ag bills are doubly vetted before taking up valuable time on the House floor. I say “ostensibly” because six of the Select Committee’s 11 members are also on the Policy committee – so they are in effect overseeing themselves! Further, as we learned later in the session, this extra committee affords legislators one more chance to tack on amendments before the bill reaches the floor.
Many readers may remember the old Schoolhouse Rock cartoon, “I’m Just a Bill”, describing how a law is enacted at the federal level. The process is similar in most states. In Missouri, the following steps are needed:
First Reading: The bill is introduced on the floor of the Senate. (The process is the same in the House.)
Second Reading: The bill is assigned to a committee for discussion.

Committee Hearing: A hearing is held where the sponsoring legislator introduces and argues for the bill, and members of the public are allowed to testify for and against. Committee members then hold an “Executive Session” and recommend the bill “Do Pass” or “Do Not Pass”. “Do Pass” sends it to the full Senate for debate.
Perfection: The bill is brought up for debate, possible amendment and a vote. If it passes it is considered “perfected” and is printed for distribution.

Third Reading: The bill is brought up once more for an official roll call vote. If passed it is sent to the House, where the whole process is repeated. If that chamber passes the bill, it is pronounced “Truly Agreed To and Finally Passed” and sent to the governor for his signature or veto. A veto can be overridden by two-thirds votes in both chambers.

If the House amends the bill, the Senate can choose to: Take it back through committee and pass it in its new form; reject the changes and return it to the House; or request a conference committee to hash out the differences. The results of that committee would need to be debated and passed by both chambers.
I’ll bet that if you look carefully your state’s process is as complicated, and frustrating.

The MSBA gets to work
Once the bills were introduced, we assembled a team of five beekeepers from strategic areas of the state to testify in upcoming Ag committee hearings, which were held on March 17th and 18th in the House and Senate respectively. We coordinated our statements, each under three minutes, to hit upon various aspects:
I provided the overview, telling the story of my honey being pulled from store shelves due to a processed foods law that I didn’t even know existed – a law designed for jams and jellies, which, unlike honey, are in fact processed foods and subject to bacterial growth and spoilage if not properly handled. I closed by quoting from the Health Department letter and concluded, “Enforcement of this law solves a problem that does not exist.”
Mike McMillen was next, and talked about the various trials and tribulations that bees and beekeepers face these days, and how difficult it is to keep our heads above water as it is, without the government making things more difficult.

Charlotte Wiggins told them about the enormous contribution that beekeepers make to Missouri’s Ag economy.
Bruce Snavely gave a rundown of the regulations for a commercial kitchen and how it cost one beekeeper in his area over forty thousand dollars to comply.
And Cathy Misko detailed the wide-ranging health benefits of honey – especially local honey – and what an important role it plays in our urban and suburban economy.
We were a bit taken aback by the overwhelming support we received from committee members, in both houses and from both parties. “Isn’t honey, like, the perfect food?” asked one representative. “It’s my understanding that honey never spoils,” remarked another.

We did experience one hiccup on the House side, when a woman rose to speak in opposition. She represented a group of health professionals, and took issue with the labeling change. Her contention echoed that of Virginia Phillips last August: It’s one thing for someone to buy in person from the beekeeper, who they can ask questions about the product, but people assume that food they buy in stores has been inspected by a government agency, and they need to be informed if that is not the case. And unfortunately, since Chairman Houghton had never spoken to us before introducing the bill, he could not answer the question of why we were making the change!
Luckily, the committee allowed me to speak again “for informational purposes”. I argued the same points I’d made to Ms. Phillips, and the committee seemed convinced. In fact, both House and Senate committees voted unanimously “Do Pass” to advance the bills. SB 500 went to the Senate floor calendar, while HB 1093 went to the Select Committee, which also passed it unanimously and sent it to the full House.
Once again, we were amazed by the ease with which both bills sailed through. HB 1093 passed the full House on April 20th by a vote of 150-2. SB 500 passed April 21st by 31-2.

Since the bills were identical, I thought that was the end of it – but discovered to my dismay that, since these were technically separate bills, each was only halfway there; one would need to make it back through the entire process in the opposite house to become law. So with three weeks to go in the session, the calendar became our primary opponent.

Once again each bill passed one committee. But while HB 1093 was placed on the Senate calendar, SB 500 first had to clear the House’s aforementioned oversight committee, and this time its members chose to load it up with a slew of unrelated amendments. With just 10 days to go at that point, it was essentially a death sentence.
I called Jay Houghton’s office and asked his assistant: Is there any way the Chairman can bring this to the House floor, strip the amendments and pass it in its original form? Her response: Work with the Senate to pass HB 1093.
But with one week to go, the Senate effectively shut down due to a fight over Right-to-Work legislation. The Republican leadership had made this anti-union bill its highest remaining priority, while the Democrats’ primary goal was stopping it. The latter party threatened a filibuster, and the GOP used Senate rules to cut off debate and force a vote. So on Tuesday morning, with the session ending on Friday, Democrats announced a rolling filibuster – an end to legislating for the year. When MSBA President Valerie Duever called me that afternoon for an update, I told her it was over.

The author. (photo by Diane Makovec)

But by the time I got home from work that night, I’d decided to keep fighting. I sent email blasts to some 1500 Missouri beekeepers, posted to the MSBA Facebook page, and asked our Regional Directors to contact the local clubs in their areas, all with this final plea: Contact your Democrat senators and ask them to reconsider the filibuster, and contact House members of either party asking that they push to bring SB 500 to the floor, strip the amendments and pass a clean bill.

But the next morning, things took an unbelievable turn for the worse. The Kansas City Star broke a story about the House Speaker’s dalliance with a 19-year-old intern. The House shut down for two days, during which time the Speaker resigned and a new leader was elected. The new boss reconvened Friday afternoon with a vow to get some work done.

Evidently the state’s beekeepers had come through with their calls and emails. With hundreds of bills still in the queue, Senate Bill 500 was the 14th of just 32 to be passed during the session’s final flurry. Rep. Houghton, who we later learned was himself responsible for one of the committee amendments, argued for their removal, and after a lengthy debate on policy and procedure, the bill was passed 141-5 in its original form. We had won!
Governor Jay Nixon signed the bill on July 10th. The new law took effect August 28th.

Lessons learned
As I researched our options and made inquiries of beekeepers in other states, there were several things that surprised me: For one, Missouri is by no means alone in its treatment of honey and beekeepers. In fact, the language of the law we were protesting seems to be pretty standard fare: They are almost universally written as exemptions to strict commercial kitchen requirements – provided that beekeepers:
Sell only direct to consumer
Label their honey with some version of “produced in a kitchen not inspected by the health department”
Remain under some arbitrary annual sales or quantity threshold – commonly 500 gallons or some roughly equivalent dollar amount ($30,000 in Missouri)
The problem is, this direct-to-consumer requirement prohibits the vast majority of a state’s beekeepers from selling their product through their local grocers, health food stores, corner markets, gas stations, feed stores – all the places that consumers go looking for that local, raw honey from local beekeepers. And while the premise for this requirement is to protect the public from “un-inspected” honey, it does not apply to honey brought in from out of state, or even out of the country.
So you end up with a curious situation where, for example, Missouri beekeepers can sell their honey across the border in Oklahoma, and Oklahoma beekeepers can do the same in Missouri, but neither can sell to shops in their own neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Chinese honey, with its sordid history of adulteration and chemical residues, can be sold with impunity in both states. If unregulated honey is in fact a threat to the citizenry, we’re doing a pretty poor job of protecting them!

A bigger surprise was that most of the beekeepers I talked to in states with similar rules seem to accept them without question. A couple even bristled at the idea of “lowering the standards” by reducing our regulatory burden! A Texas beekeeper decried that state’s recent loosening of the law as opening the door for adulteration and other practices that will give the rest of us a bad name. But who is more likely to adulterate honey, I asked him – the local beekeeper who delivers his own product to the corner market, or the guy a thousand miles away who ships it in via distributor and stands no chance of ever meeting the end user?

But what truly amazed me was that, after accounting for the long, drawn-out legislative process and some truly unexpected roadblocks, changing the law was easy! We encountered virtually no opposition from legislators of either party, and the Health Department didn’t even weigh in.

And no wonder: After close to a decade of wall-to-wall media coverage about CCD and such, honey bees and beekeepers are loved and appreciated like never before. There is no reason that other states’ beekeepers should not be able to do what we did in Missouri.

Of course, there’s no guarantee you won’t hit roadblocks of your own. And state officials may take a more active role in opposition. But consider: On one side we have health department bureaucrats, trotting out the usual, tired arguments about public health and safety, but with nothing to back them up. And on the other are the intrepid beekeepers – stalwart friends of the environment and protectors of the food supply – struggling to survive against ever-increasing odds and now being told that they cannot even sell the fruits of their labor.
We’re gonna win that battle every time.

Photos 1-4 by Eugene Makovec. Photo 5 by Diane Makovec.

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2:30-4:30 p.m. – Jim Tew, Winter Where You Are

Tanging
In the article,”Tanging Works Well With A Little Seed,”(Bee Culture, June 2015),the author perpetuates the tanging myth. It is well known that after issuing from their hives, most swarms settle within a few hundred yards of the hives from which they emerged whether or not one tangs. However tangers believe that if one tangs while a swarm is airborne, it will end its flight and form a swarm cluster.
This article adds a new dimension to the effect that can be achieved by tanging namely, the ability to lead an airborne swarm back to its own hive! Upon arriving at its hive, the airborne swarm then clusters on the front of the hive. A plausible alternative explanation for the beekeeper’s “success” may be that the queen of this particular colony failed to emerge with the issuing swarm and when this occurs and no other queens are present in the swarm, the swarm will return to the hive from which it emerged.
With all due respect, to assume that because several events followed one another in time they are therefore causally related is an ancient fallacy. This false premise is often expressed in Latin as Post hoc ergo propter hoc, translated as “After this, therefore because of this.”
Al Avitabile
Bethlehem, CT

Canola vs. Corn
With a protein content of 24% (vs. 15% for sunflowers, 14% for blueberries) canola pollen is one of the most nutritious of all pollens for honey bees (nutritionists recommend a minimum of 20%).
With corn prices dropping from $7/bushel a few years ago to $4 today, corn growers are looking for alternative crops but don’t have a lot of choices. Some are switching to soybeans, not the best plant for bees when pesticide programs are considered. There are about 1.6 million acres of canola in the U.S., mainly in the Dakotas, vs. 90 million acres of corn. Converting 10% of current corn acreage to canola would be a windfall for bees.
Even at current prices, corn is still a more profitable crop than canola for many growers. Perhaps a portion of the government $ targeted for pollinator habitat could be used for subsidies to canola growers (or to corn growers that convert some of their acreage to canola).
Joe Traynor
Bakersfield, CA

Beekeeping Manifesto
We often support the value of bees with economic arguments, neglecting the dimension of values, the principles we hold important and the personal and environmental standards that should be at the heart of beekeeping rather than at its fringes.
The current serious issues facing bees suggest it is time for a new manifesto to guide beekeeping, one that recognizes beekeepers as stewards of both managed and wild bees, promoters of healthy environments, managers of economically sustainable apiaries and paragons of collaboration and cooperation. It’s time for some audacious thinking about the future of beekeeping.
Such a manifesto might look something like this:
Beekeepers are Stewards of their honey bees, lightly managing colonies with minimal chemical and antibiotic input.
Beekeepers are Promoters of healthy environments in which wild and managed bees can thrive, including reduced chemical inputs and mixed cropping systems in agricultural settings and diverse unmanaged natural habitats in urban and rural areas.
Beekeeping is Economically Viable, so that hobbyists can enjoy their bees with some honey to give away, sideliners meet expenses with a bit of profit and commercial beekeepers have a consistent and sustainable income sufficient to support a family without the heavy personal stress associated with contemporary beekeeping.
Beekeeping organizations are Inclusive, Collaborative and Cooperative, encompassing hobbyists with one hive to commercial beekeepers with thousands, wild bees enthusiasts to honey bee keepers, and honey producers to pollinators, under one umbrella organization that puts the health and prosperity of bees and the environment that supports them first.
We need to recognize that the good old days are gone. Bees are no longer able to respond with the resilience that allowed us to manage honeybees intensively and depend on healthy ecosystems for wild and managed bees to thrive. Today, pesticides are ubiquitous, diseases and pests rampant, and the diversity and abundance of bee forage has plummeted.
It’s a new day, and below are just a few suggestions for what a manifesto-driven bee community might look like. Note that every idea goes against conventional wisdom, but keep in mind that these are not conventional times for bees:

Perhaps we can no longer take copious honey harvests from our bees. If so, a good first step would be to take ¼ less honey and feed that much less sugar.
Perhaps we should let colonies swarm every second year, providing a break in the brood cycle that might diminish the impact of Varroa.
Perhaps we should move honey bees no more than once for pollination, recognizing that honey bees are no longer healthy enough to sustain multiple moves.
Perhaps honey bees should no longer be considered our primary agricultural pollinator, but used to supplement wild bee populations whose diversity and abundance we increase by large-scale habitat enhancement in and around farms.
Perhaps we should allow only one Varroa treatment per year to prevent resistance.
Perhaps we should eliminate all antibiotic use, controlling bacterial diseases like American Foulbrood through a rigorous inspection and burning regime, as they do in New Zealand.
Perhaps we should cease the practice of feeding pollen supplements in the Spring, as we now understand such feeding yields higher worker populations but weaker individual bees.
Perhaps research should rigorously analyze these “perhaps” ideas. Our research community has done a fabulous job of elucidating why honeybees and wild bees are doing poorly, but what we need now are bolder research directions towards solutions.

Researchers tend towards the more glamorous high-tech solutions, but those are unlikely to succeed and at best are far down the road. Some old-fashioned, large-scale management research is needed now, coupling studies of hive survival and wild bee abundance and diversity with economic analyses of what works best for beekeepers and crop pollination.
Here’s one example: I have been travelling quite a bit lately promoting my new book “Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive,” and I consistently encounter beekeepers who are not treating for Varroa, but rather breeding from surviving untreated colonies. They report colony survival rates as good or better as those commercial beekeepers who treat heavily, but it’s all anecdotal. Let’s test those claims more rigorously, by organizing national projects to compare untreated surviving colonies to lightly or heavily chemically treated colonies.
Here’s another example: I know of no economic studies that demonstrate moving bees for pollination is economically superior to maintaining stationary apiaries, or that compare moving bees once, twice or more. My own opinion is that the extent of bee movement is a major contributing factor in the poor colony survival we see across North America, with 42% of colonies dying in 2013/2014 in the U.S. But, I know of no data that support or dismiss my hunch.
There is a changed mind-set enveloped in my brief manifesto, one in which we consider the well being of bees as the primary directive rather than economic prosperity or beekeeper convenience. Putting bees first is the only way managed and wild bees will return to health, and beekeepers and farmers with bee-pollinated crops to prosperity.
I don’t know whether this manifesto is the right direction, or the ideas above sound, but I do know that the status quo is unsustainable.
There is a quote attributed to Einstein that is highly relevant for the future of beekeeping: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Perhaps it’s time to challenge everything we have believed about beekeeping with honeybees, and to boldly promote wild bees to become our primary commercial-level pollinators.
Perhaps it’s time to be audacious.
Mark Winston
Vancouver, BC

(Mark Winston is a former Bee Culture colunist, author of Honey Bee Biology and several bee science books, and most recently Bee Time, Lessons Of The Hive. He is Professor and Senior Fellow at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue.

Sampling For Varroa
The concepts of monitoring pest population levels, and taking action as such pest levels approach seasonally-adjusted treatment thresholds is integral to integrated pest management, no matter whether we are speaking of Varroa or any other agricultural pest.
When brood is present in a hive, Varroa increase is nearly always exponential from Day 1– in non resistant bees, doubling about once a month. This is for the entire Varroa population in the hive. The illusion of linear increase in the mite population occurs for two reasons: (1) all exponential growth curves appear linear in the early stages, and (2) the bee population in a colony builds along with the mite population for the first part of the season, so the *infestation rate *(number of mites per bee) does not change to any great degree so long as the colony is also growing at the same rate as the mites.
The monitoring of the infestation rate of adult bees does not directly reflect the total mite population in the hive, since a proportion of the mites are typically hidden in the brood (about 50% for much of the broodrearing season). Natural mite fall more accurately reflects the total mite load of the colony, but needs to be considered in the context of the size of the colony, and the amount of brood emerging on that day (natural mite fall is mostly correlated with daily adult bee emergence, and typically varies greatly day to day).
The sudden increase in Varroa level in late Summer, observed when monitored by the sampling of adult bees, gives the illusion that the Varroa infestation of the colony has suddenly begun to “go exponential.” What has actually occurred is that the recruitment rate of bees tends to rapidly drop off after the main flow, due to reduced broodrearing. This results in a greater infestation rate of the remaining brood, and a shift of the mite population from out of the brood, and onto the adult bees, hence the appearance of an “exponential explosion” of the mites.
Note how the mite infestation rate “explodes” in Fall, despite the fact that the total mite population of the hive appears to have only increased relatively slightly. This illusion is due to the scale of the y axis. Allow me to plot out the exact same data for the mite population on a more illustrative scale below:
​This is exactly the same mite data, but plotted on a different scale. The mite growth was exponential at first, but then limited by the reduction in broodrearing by the colony after midsummer.
The other factor that can cause a sudden increase in the mite population is immigration of mites from other collapsing hives, which typically occurs in late Summer and Fall. Robbing and drifting bees can suddenly increase the mite population of surviving hives within flight range.
The proactive beekeeper will monitor mite levels throughout the season, and apply seasonally-adjusted treatment thresholds to keep the mites at acceptable levels. It is far better for the bees to keep mite populations from building, than it is to reduce them *after* they’ve built to damaging levels.
Such seasonal treatment thresholds must take into account a number of factors, such as the point in time of seasonal colony population buildup and decline, the amount of brood present, available windows for treatment (often determined by whether honey supers are present), the method of monitoring, and the expected curve for the mite population in the near future (it declines when there is little broodrearing).
The most important concept to keep in mind is that it is not the mites that kill the colony – it is epidemics of viruses vectored and triggered by a high rate of mite infestation. So long as the infestation rate of the adult bees remains below about the 2% level (assuming complete recovery of mites by your sampling method), viruses are seldom a serious issue. As the level approaches 5%, depending upon the individual colony, in-hive epidemics of either DWV, one of the paralytic viruses, or Lake Sanai Virus begin to occur.
Such virus epidemics, as well as the rate of recruitment of new bees via broodrearing, are highly influenced by the protein intake of the colony, in the form of pollen or pollen sub.
The proactive beekeeper understands pollen, bee, and mite population dynamics, and manages his hives to prevent the *relative *population of the vector (the mite infestation rate) from exceeding the threshold at which viruses are likely to go epidemic.

Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA

Out Of State Beekeepers
Ohio State Beekeepers Association represents the over 4500 beekeepers in our state. Our purpose is to support beekeeping research, education and outreach. We are very concerned about the issues that Kim has raised regarding out of state beekeepers bringing in live bees on comb into Ohio.
The potential to expose Ohio apiaries to increased risks of diseases pests, and Africanized hybrid honey bees snowballs with bees on comb. The resulting incursion of pests and diseases, along with genetics of aggressive honey bees, will have a negative impact on the profitability of farmers, and on beekeepers in our state, now and in the future.
We support the ODA in implementing stronger enforcement of Ohio Revised Code 909.02, “for or upon moving bees into this state from outside the state, file with the director of agriculture an application for registration setting forth the exact location of his apiaries and the number of colonies of bees in each apiary, together with such other information as is required by the director, and accompanied by a registration fee of five dollars for each separate apiary owned or possessed by him at time of registration.” Along with identifying the apiary by posting the identification number in a conspicuous location and having timely inspections to identify issues before they cause problems. This information will then be passed on to county inspectors. Beekeepers in the area have the opportunity to find out if any out-of-state beekeepers have out-yards in the nearby area so they can increase pest monitoring and mitigate breeding with undesirable genetics.
We also support the Ohio Department of Agriculture in implementing 909.09, Permit necessary to transfer. It clearly states that “No person shall sell, offer for sale, give, offer to give, barter, or offer to barter any bees, honeycombs, or used beekeeping equipment without a permit from the director of agriculture.”
Tim Arheit
OSBA President

It is Summer in the city, and local governments have started their mosquito abatement programs. Concerned for public health, municipalities spray insecticides and larvicides through communities to control mosquitoes. While some communities have pro-active programs to alleviate standing water and other breeding areas for mosquitos, the preferred practice is to spray and fog our cities, roadways, ditches, and waterways with pesticides. Of the typical pesticides used for mosquito control, most are applied by trucks spraying the product as it drives down your street, or along the side of the road. A random perusal of various state and city mosquito abatement processes conflict as to the “best time” to apply the pesticides in order to cause the least harm to honey bees and native pollinators. Sadly, far too many of the extension documents and state guidelines claim bees are not active after 3 p.m. which is just blatantly false. Honey bees and native pollinators will forage blooming plants until the sun sets. To fully protect honey bees and native pollinators from mosquito control pesticides, the pesticide should only be applied when it is dark: the sun has set and the street lights are lit. Dark is dark, not twilight, not sunset: dark.

Community Controls

Some cities like Boulder, Colorado, post actions residents can take to protect themselves from mosquitos, and how to reduce the use of pesticides on their person and property. These mitigation measures reduce the habitat for mosquitoes, thereby reducing the exposure to mosquitoes. Personal mitigation measures require individuals to take action to protect themselves. County mosquito control spray programs may expand the prophylactic use of pesticides across more of the ecosystem. Individuals should remove trash and standing water on their own property in order to protect themselves and others from mosquitos, and to protect pollinators from mosquito control products.

Bee kills across the U.S. in agriculture are typically due to tank mixes and prophylactic use of pesticides on plants grown from pesticide coated seeds.  In urban and suburban areas, mosquito abatement practices are causing unnecessary bee kills. Some cities offer beekeepers the opportunity to “opt-out” of mosquito spray applications near their property.  However, the “opt-out” process is sometimes cumbersome. One Massachusetts community went from 400 people opting out, to only 100 opting out the following year due to a change in the application process requiring certified letters to be sent to the local government. Other communities provide a sign to you to post at each end of your property so county workers will not spray between the signs (your property frontage). However, they continue to spray before and after your property signs. Even if a beekeeper opts out of having their property sprayed for mosquitoes, pesticides drift onto water and blooming plants. Not all mosquito control products have a short residual toxicity, and can last more than eight hours on the blooming plants and in water. The next day when bees drink from a puddle or stream, or collect nectar from a bloom containing a mosquito control pesticide, the honey bee or native pollinator may die.

Water for Honey Bees

Many mosquito control products speak to addressing mosquito larvae in water, and then imply the pesticides in the water will not harm bees. Bees do drink water. So, if a pesticide lingers in the water, bees will encounter the pesticide there, as well as on blossoms, and guttation droplets on plants. Far too many mosquito control documents ignore the fact bees drink water, and mislead the pesticide applicator stating bees stay in their hives after 3 p.m.  Those two issues lead to great harm being caused to honey bees and native pollinators. Every living creature needs clean, pesticide free water to drink; and “busy as a bee” means on warm, hot days they work from sunrise to sunset, and they need water to cool the hive, and themselves. 

fromwww.co.jackson.ms.us

The U.S. Geological Survey Water Science School exclaims water plays an important role in the movement of pesticides as “it is one of the main ways that pesticides are transported from the areas where they are applied to other locations, where they may cause health problems.” As many larvicides are applied to water, where mosquitos breed we create a toxic water source for our honey bees and native pollinators. “Pesticides can reach water-bearing aquifers below ground from applications onto crop fields, seepage of contaminated surface water, accidental spills and leaks, improper disposal, and even through injection waste materials into wells.” states the USGS Water Science School. As many bee kills are the result of tank mixes of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides, “Some pesticides have had a designated maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL) in drinking water set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but many have not. Also, the effect of combining more than one pesticide in drinking water might be different than the effects of each individual pesticide alone. It is another situation where we don’t have sufficient scientific data to draw reliable conclusions.”3

Fifty percent of the U.S. population “obtains its drinking water from groundwater sources and as much as 95% of the population in agricultural areas uses groundwater as its source of drinking water.”4 The Safe Drinking Water Act sets standards for drinking water in public water supplies. “Private water supplies are not monitored or regulated by this Act.”5 The consumer or well owner is responsible for monitoring their own water supply for contaminants. We, therefore must be aware of the drinking supply for our honey bees.

Pathways of pesticide movement in the hydrologic cycle from www.pubs.usgs.gov

Mosquito Control Pesticides

Typical mosquito control products listed on local government mosquito control websites are: methoprene, Bti, Bsp, temephos, sumithrin, malathion, permethrin, and chlorpyrifos. Not all of these products are applied individually, and even if they are, they are always mixed with surfactants or oils, and “other ingredients” for which there is little information.

Summary of some mosquito control pesticides:
1. methoprene – (affects the development of egg/larva) moderately to highly toxic to fish and crustaceans; relatively non-toxic to birds; low toxicity to adult bees, but bee larvae may be more sensitive.
2. Bti (Bacillus Thuringiensis) – not toxic to bees, has been used in hives for control of wax moth. However, “very high concentrations of B.t. var. tenebrionis, which is used against beetles such as the Colorado potato beetle, reduced longevity of honey bee adults but did not cause disease.” Initial studies also did not show results of Bti upon native pollinators such as butterflies.
3. Bsp (Bacillus sphaericus) – not toxic to bees
4. temephos – highly toxic to bees, aquatic organisms, and is moderately to highly toxic to birds.
5. sumithrin – extremely toxic to bees, aquatic life, and poisonous to cats and dogs.
6. malathion – highly toxic to bees, and to freshwater and estuarine aquatic organisms, moderately toxic to birds.
7. permethrin –  toxic to fish and bees
8. chlorpyrifos – very highly toxic to bees, birds, freshwater fish and invertebrate

“Insecticide toxicity is generally measured using acute contact toxicity values LD50 – the exposure level that causes 50% of the population exposed to die. Toxicity thresholds are generally set at:

• highly toxic (acute LD50 < 2μg/bee) • moderately toxic (acute LD50 2 - 10.99μg/bee) • slightly toxic (acute LD50 11 - 100μg/bee) • nontoxic (acute LD50 > 100μg/bee) to adult bees.”6

One mosquito control product is a combination of prallethrin, Sumithrin® and piperonyl butoxide.  The label clearly states: “This pesticide is highly toxic to aquatic organisms, including fish and aquatic invertebrates. Runoff from treated areas or deposition of spray droplets into a body of water may be hazardous to fish and aquatic invertebrates. Do not apply over bodies of water (lakes, rivers, permanent streams, natural ponds, commercial fish ponds, swamps, marshes or estuaries), except when necessary to target areas where adult mosquitoes are present, and weather conditions will facilitate movement of applied material beyond the body of water in order to minimize incidental deposition into the water body. Do not contaminate bodies of water when disposing of equipment rinsate or wash waters. This product is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment on blooming crops or weeds. Do not apply to or allow drift onto blooming crops or weeds when bees are visiting the treatment area, except when applications are made to prevent or control a threat to public and/or animal health determined by a state, tribal or local health or vector control agency on the basis of documented evidence of disease causing agents in vector mosquitoes, or the occurrence of mosquito-borne disease in animal or human populations, or if specifically approved by the state or tribe during a natural disaster recovery effort.”7

The Pollinator Stewardship Council has previously pointed out EPA approved labels that start out protecting pollinators, and then include “exceptions” allowing for pollinators to be sacrificed. Even in the above label’s environmental hazard statement the two exceptions: to apply to bloom, and to water, are allowed with full understanding honey bees and native pollinators will be killed. A public health emergency allows for the exceptions to occur and application of the product made against the label protections for pollinators. Communities must ensure they are truly protecting human health. Ask your local Health Board if they are trapping and testing mosquitoes for disease. If diseases are not found in mosquitoes, then tax dollars should not be wasted applying a pesticide when it is not needed. Prophylactic use of pesticides is as problematic as prophylactic use of pharmaceutical drugs. Regular use depletes their ability to work.
We can protect human health, and we can protect honey bees. Beekeepers should be able to protect their honey bees from mosquito control products.  As a community we should protect our native pollinators.  As individuals we can be proactive to protect our property from mosquitoes, and protect our honey bees and pollinators from the adverse impact of mosquito abatements.  If a health risk is established, a short residual toxicity mosquito control product should only be applied after the sun has set, when it is dark. Only then will honey bees and native pollinators have a chance to survive mosquito abatements. 

If you experience a bee kill due to a mosquito abatement program in your community: report it! Refer to the Quick Guide for Reporting A Pesticide-related Bee Kill

1 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “NOAA scientists find mosquito control pesticide use in coastal areas poses low risk to juvenile oyster, hard clams, Climate stressors, however, increase risk to shellfish,” June 9, 2014,
2 Ibid
3 Pesticide in Groundwater, The USGS Water Science School,
4 Pesticide Residues in Drinking Water, Extoxnet FAQs
5 Ibid
6 Pollinator protection requirements for Section 18 Emergency Exemptions and Section 24(c) special local need registration in Washington State; Registration Services Program Pesticide Management Division Washington State Dept. of Agriculture, Dec 2006;  Hunt, G.J.; Using honey bees in pollination Purdue University, May 2000
7 Sample Label for Duel action adulticide

Other resources:
Pesticides Used in Mosquito Control from the National Pesticide Information Center
Water Quality Assessment and Total Maximum Daily Loads Information

Individual honey bees of all ages and castes have developed mechanisms to limit the impacts of their pathogens.

Insect social life is generally associated with increased exposure to pathogens and the risk of disease transmission, due to factors such as high population density, frequent physical contact and reduced genetic variability (Baracchi et al. 2012). The stable, high levels of humidity and temperature of their brood nests, result in suitable environments for the development of microorganisms including pathogens (Baracchi et al. 2011). Honey bees are attacked by numerous parasites and pathogens toward which they present a variety of individual and group-level defenses (Evans and Spivak 2010). Behaviors that reduce colony-level parasite and disease loads are termed “social immunity.”

Individual honey bees of all ages and castes have developed mechanisms to limit the impacts of their pathogens. These mechanisms involve resisting pathogens, by building barriers to infection or mounting defense responses once infection has occurred or tolerating pathogens, by compensating for the energetic costs or tissue damage caused by either these pathogens or the bee’s own immune responses. Mechanical, physiological, and immune defenses provide the classic route for resisting pathogens (Evans and Spivak 2010). Mechanical barriers include the insect cuticle and epithelial layers, which in many cases prevent microbes from adhering to or entering the body. Physiological inhibitors to microbial invasion can include changes in the pH and other chemical conditions of the insect gut (Crailsheim and Riessberger-Galle 2001). Honey bees are known to mount an induced immune response to wounding or pathogen exposure (Evans et al. 2006).

Most physiological immune responses are internal and targeted at organisms that have invaded the body. Responses to the pathogen may include producing antimicrobial peptides and lysozymes that either inhibit the growth of microorganisms or kill them. Similarly, their blood cells phagocytose single-celled parasites, whereas larger invaders are encapsulated in a layer of blood cells that are melanized, sealing off the invader from the host’s body. These are examples of personal immunity in which the challenged individual is the main beneficiary of the immune response (Cotter and Kilner 2011).

“Social immunity,” describes how individual behaviors of colony members effectively reduce disease and parasite transmission at the colony level (Cremer et al. 2007; Simone-Finstrom and Spivak 2010). These behaviors range from more common acts like grooming of nestmates and removal of dead material from the main nest area (undertaking behavior) to “social fever” in honey bees that is used to kill pathogens (Starks et al. 2000) and the detection and removal of pre-infectious diseased or parasitized brood (hygienic behavior). Hygienic behavior is an antiseptic behavior and differs from undertaking (the removal of dead adult nestmates) and grooming (the removal of foreign objects and pathogens from oneself (autogrooming) or from another adult in the nest (allogrooming) (Wilson-Rich et al. 2009).
In contrast to individual immunity, social immunity describes colony-level anti-parasite/pathogen protection, achieved by the cooperation of all colony members, collectively avoiding, controlling or eliminating infections and reducing parasite load. The nature of these defenses are that they cannot be performed efficiently by single individuals but depend strictly on the cooperation of multiple individuals (Cremer and Sixt 2009).
The most virulent, colony killing, bacterial agents are Paenibacillus larvae causing American foulbrood (AFB) and European foulbrood (EFB) associated bacteria. Besides the innate immune defense mechanisms, honey bees have developed behavioral defenses to combat these infections. Foraging for antimicrobial plant compounds plays a key role for this “social immunity” behavior. Secondary plant metabolites in floral nectar are known for their antimicrobial effects. Yet these compounds are highly plant specific, and the effects on bee health will depend on the floral origin of the honey produced. As worker bees not only feed themselves, but also larvae and other colony members, honey is a prime candidate acting as self-medication agent in honey bee colonies to prevent or decrease infections. Erler et al. (2014) tested eight AFB and EFB bacterial strains and the growth inhibitory activity of three honey types. Using a high-throughput cell growth assay, they showed that all honeys have high growth inhibitory activity and the two monofloral honeys appeared to be strain specific. The specificity of the monofloral honeys and the strong antimicrobial potential of the polyfloral honey suggest that the diversity of honeys in the honey stores of a colony may be highly adaptive for its “social immunity” against the highly diverse suite of pathogens encountered in nature.

Another example of a behavioral disease resistance mechanism is the collection and use of plant resins. Honey bees forage for plant-produced resins with antimicrobial properties and incorporate them into their nest architecture. These resins are brought back to the colony where they are mixed with varying amounts of wax and utilized as propolis (Simone et al. 2009; Simone-Finstrom and Spivak 2010). This use of resins can reduce chronic elevation of an individual bee’s immune response. Since high activation of individual immunity can impose colony-level fitness costs, collection of resins may benefit both the individual and colony fitness. Simone-Finstrom and Spivak (2012) presented evidence that honey bee colonies may self-medicate with plant resins in response to a fungal infection. Self-medication is generally defined as an individual responding to infection by ingesting or harvesting non-nutritive compounds or plant materials. They showed that colonies increase resin foraging rates after a challenge with a fungal parasite (Ascophaera apis which causes chalkbrood). Additionally, colonies experimentally enriched with resin had decreased infection intensities of this fungal parasite. If considered self-medication, this is a particularly unique example because it operates at the colony level. Most instances of self-medication involve pharmacophagy, whereby individuals change their diet in response to direct infection with a parasite. In this case with honey bees, resins are not ingested but used within the hive by adult bees exposed to fungal spores. Thus the colony, as the unit of selection, may be responding to infection through self-medication by increasing the number of individuals that forage for resin.

As the antimicrobial venom peptides of Apis mellifera are present both on the cuticle of adult bees and on the nest wax it has recently been suggested that these substances act as a social antiseptic device. Baracchi et al. (2011) confirmed the idea that the venom functions are well beyond the classical sterotype of defence against predators. The presence of antimicrobial peptides on the comb wax and on the cuticle of workers represents a good example of “collective immunity” and a component of the “social immunity,” respectively.
Several bee pathogens are sensitive to temperature, and the individual bee or the colony may create a “fever” to kill nosema (Martín-Hernández 2009; Campbell et al. 2010) and chalkbrood (Starks et al. 2000). Behavioral fever is a common response to an infection in many animals. Honey bees maintain elevated temperatures in the brood nest (Seeley 1985) to accelerate brood development and to facilitate defense against predators. Honey bees engulf invading hornets in defensive balls, which they heat to lethal temperatures (Ono et al. 1995). Starks et al. (2000) also identified an additional defensive function of elevating nest temperature: honey bees generate a brood comb fever in response to colonial infection by the heat-sensitive pathogen Ascosphaera apis (causative agent of chalkbrood). This response occurs before larvae are killed, suggesting that either honey bee workers detect the infection before symptoms are visible, or that larvae communicate the ingestion of the pathogen.

Social life is generally associated with an increased risk of disease transmission, but at the same time it allows behavioral defense at both the individual and collective level. Bees infected with deformed-wing virus were introduced into observation hives; through behavioral observations and chemical analysis of cuticular hydrocarbons from healthy and infected bees, Baracchi et al. 2012 offers the first evidence that colonies can detect and remove infected adult bees, probably by recognizing the cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of sick individuals. They also found that health-compromised colonies were less efficient at defending themselves against infected bees, thus facing an ever increasing risk of epidemics. This new antiseptic behavior was interpreted as an adaptation at the colony level and one which should be considered as an element of the social immunity system of the bee hive.

Rueppell et al. (2010) challenged honey bee foragers with prolonged CO2 narcosis or by feeding with the cytostatic drug hydroxyurea. Both treatments resulted in increased mortality but also caused the surviving foragers to abandon their social function and remove themselves from their colony, resulting in altruistic suicide. A simple model suggests that altruistic self removal by sick social insect workers to prevent disease transmission is expected under most biologically plausible conditions. Altruistic self-removal appears to be a potentially widespread mechanism of social immunity.

Le Conte et al. (2011) identified a set of genes involved in social immunity by analyzing the brain transcriptome of highly Varroa-hygienic bees, who efficiently detect and remove brood infected with Varroa mites. The function of these candidate genes does not seem to support a higher olfactory sensitivity in hygienic bees, as previously hypothesized. However, comparing their genomic profile with those from other behaviors suggests a link with brood care and the highly Varroa-hygienic Africanized honey bees. These results represent a first step toward the identification of genes involved in social immunity.

References
Baracchi, D., S. Francese and S. Turillazzi 2011. Beyond the antipredatory defence: Honey bee venom functions as a component of social immunity. Toxicon 58: 550-557.
Baracchi, D., A. Fadda and S. Turillazzi 2012. Evidence for antiseptic behaviour towards sick adult bees in honey bee colonies. J. Insect Physiol. 58: 1589-1596.
Campbell, J., B. Kessler, C. Mayack and D. Naug 2010. Behavioural fever in infected honeybees: parasitic manipulation or coincidental benefit? Parasitology 137: 1487-1491.
Cotter, S.C. and R.M. Kilner 2011. Personal immunity versus social immunity. Behav. Ecol. 20: 1274-1281.
Crailsheim, K. and U. Riessberger-Galle 2001. Honey bee age-dependent resistance against American foulbrood. Apidologie 32: 91-103.
Cremer, S., S. Armitage and P. Schmid-Hempel 2007. Social immunity. Curr. Biol. 17: R693-R702.
Cremer, S. and M. Sixt 2009. Analogies in the evolution of individual and social immunity. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364: 129-142.
Erler, S., A. Denner, O. Bobis, E. Forsgren and R.F.A. Moritz 2014. Diversity of honey stores and their impact on pathogenic bacteria of the honeybee, Apis mellifera. Ecol. Evol. 20: 3960-3967.
Evans, J.D. and M. Spivak 2010. Socialized medicine: individual and communal disease barriers in honey bees. J. Invertbr. Pathol. 103: S62-S72.
Evans, J.D., K. Aronstein, Y.P. Chen, C. Hetru, J.-L. Imler, H. Jiang, M. Kanost, G.J. Thompson, Z. Zou and D. Hultmark 2006. Immune pathways and defence mechanisms in honey bees Apis mellifera. Insect Mol. Biol. 15: 645-656.
Le Conte, Y., C. Alaux, J-F. Martin, J.R. Harbo, J.W. Harris, C. Dantec, D. Sėverac, S. Cros-Arteil and M. Navajas 2011. Social immunity in honeybees (Apis mellifera): transcriptome analysis of Varroa-hygienic behaviour. Insect Mol. Biol. 20: 399-408.
Martín-Hernández, R., A. Meana, P. García-Palencia, P. Marín, C. Botías, E. Garrido-Bailón, L. Barrios and M. Higes 2009. Effect of temperature on the biotic potential of honeybee microsporidia. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 75(8): 2554-2557.
Ono, M., T. Igarashi, E. Ohno and M. Sasaki 1995. Unusual thermal defense by a honeybee against mass attack by hornets. Nature 377: 334-336.
Rueppell, O., M.K. Hayworth and N.P. Ross 2010. Altruistic self-removal of health-compromised honey bee workers from their hive. J. Evol. Biol. 23: 1538-1546.
Seeley, T.D. 1985. Honeybee Ecology: A Study Of Adaptation In Social Life. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Simone, M., J. Evans and M. Spivak 2009. Resin collection and social immunity in honey bees. Evolution 63: 3016-3022.
Simone-Finstrom, M.D. and M. Spivak 2010. Propolis and bee health: The natural history and significance of resin use by honey bees. Apidologie 41: 295-311.
Simone-Finstrom, M.D. and M. Spivak 2012. Increased resin collection after parasite challenge: A case of self-medication in honey bees? PLoS ONE 7(3):e34601. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034601
Starks, P.T., C.A. Blackie and T.D. Seeley 2000. Fever in honeybee colonies. Naturwissenschaften 87: 229-231.
Wilson-Rich, N., M. Spivak, N.H. Fefferman and P.T. Starks 2009. Genetic, individual, and group facilitation of disease resistance in insect societies. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 54: 405-423.

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

With Kelly Registration Systems, once beekeepers, farmers and pesticide applicators share their information, the program matches hive locations with areas that will receive pesticide applications. And using alerts, it lets applicators know which areas to avoid and helps beekeepers prevent or mitigate potential exposure.

The program is currently being used by The Clemson University Department of Plant Industry and The Clemson University Extension Service to map as many of the estimated 25,000-30,000 hives in South Carolina as possible. It has been designed and developed with the ability to map bee hives, hive registrations, organic farms and vineyards, as well as other sensitive and protected areas. Beekeepers are able to update GPS locations and submit online applications, while pesticide applicators are able to map multiple layers of data and save field coordinates for re-mapping. “The challenge of developing pesticides that are not toxic to honey bees is difficult, however, we have the ability to limit the exposure of honey bees to pesticides through education and communication. This program creates an interface between the beekeepers and pesticide applicators and the communication between these groups is key for protecting our honey bees,” says Dr. Jennifer Tsuruda, Apiculture Specialist at Clemson University.

Stuart Edmondson, Chief Technology Officer at Kelly Registration Systems, says “Clemson started using one of our hosted solutions last year to file mobile reports on plant nursery inspections, and we were able to leverage the development of that program to build this application.” He adds, “We have included a lot of new functionality and hope other states will benefit from the application as well.”

The program features email and text notifications to beekeepers and applicators, and it can even keep track of beekeepers’ license fees and payments to the state. The system is secure and keeps hive ownership and location information confidential because of their sensitive nature. This information is only made available to the state and to authorized pesticide applicators.

Says Edmondson, “From what we have heard in industry meetings and the feedback we’ve received on the program, we feel this offers a solution for states with voluntary as well as required programs.”

About Kelly Registration Systems

Kelly Registration Systems provides software solutions that leverage pesticide data for the benefit of state departments of agriculture, manufacturers, businesses, and individuals. For more information about Kelly Registration Systems and the pollinator mapping program, contact Laura Rotroff, marketing & communications manager, at 770-788-4530 or laura@kellyreg.com.

Find the latest beekeeping News at www.BeeCulture.com

by Carmine DeStefano

The practice and art of beekeeping is a tremendously rewarding experience that straddles natural history and ecosystem modeling activities. In the northeast part of the country beekeeping takes on several dimensions and the use of hive monitoring protocols is useful in understanding the health of bee colonies. Hive monitoring programs have exploded in recent years. For example, the Sentinel Hive project, the CSI monitoring project in the UK and Hivetool in North Carolina are some of these initiatives. These technology transfers give us important information, but relationships remain unexplored regarding the floral environment and a colony of honey bees. Expanding our knowledge base about these relationships can occur without implementing fancy and expensive equipment. Keen observation skills and phenological data tracking can tell us a lot about our world.

Many of the current monitoring programs are looking at weight changes and many internal factors that occur in the colony and this I think is useful information, but why stop there? The pre-eminent Eva Crane tells us that only about 16% of the plant life on the planet produces nectar and pollen resources that pollinators can exploit (Crane, 1990). But only about 1.6% is of keen interest to honeybees (Crane, 1990). This 1.6% of the floral environment produces the bulk of the world’s honey crop. Environmental monitoring that is referenced with honey yields is one way to understand and explore the impacts our environment has on the floral opportunities that bees find important.

Nectar concentrations are very sensitive to ambient conditions. Heavy rains for example can wash nectar from many plant flowers. High humidity can easily evaporate water from the sucrose nectar solution and change the concentration of the nectar making it less available to pollinators (Nicholson, 2007). High doses of UV light can disrupt the protein development in pollen granules. Elevated CO2 concentrations can change the general morphology of floral resources and also alter the concentration of particular amino acids in the nectar (Huang, 2010). Nectar and pollen resources are the fundamental building blocks for a healthy pollinator population, considering that pollinators are in decline worldwide looking more closely at the basic building blocks seems reasonable.

To illustrate how this complexity can shape pollinator syndromes lets look at two amino acids. Proline and Phenylalanine represent two amino acids that are of great importance to honey bee fitness. Proline is quickly metabolized by honey bees to produce accessible energy for flight and this amino acid can be more effective in producing short term energy burst than the normal glucose/ATP mechanism (Nicholson, 2007).

Phenylalanine is another amino acid and is ubiquitous in the bee-pollinated flora. We have known since Baker’s work in the 1970s that environmental factors influence proline, phenylalanine and many other attributes of nectar chemistry. These particular amino acids most likely hold a high level of importance to bees, considering that these two amino acids are constituents of the honey bee hemolymph.

Floral environments are very complex places for bees to navigate. Flowers present nectar and pollen opportunities to pollinators at particular times during the flowers anthesis cycle. Anthesis cycles are greatly impacted by the ambient environment too. Sunny warm days support greater nectar secretions than dark cool days. For example, squash plants and almond flowers make their best nectar opportunities available early in their anthesis cycle, i.e., when the flower opens and is accessible for pollinators to exploit. Although the flower may be available and open all day on the trees or plant its nectar reward is highest for the first two or three hours after opening. The ambient conditions during this time affect the quality of that reward.

Many more research dollars should be allocated to study this topic further but in the meantime beekeepers have a wonderful opportunity to collect data so an educated conversation can begin about this topic.

I have started a very small program in the Northeast where I keep bees that is collecting hive weight and assembling satellite vegetation profiles of the hive location while collecting ambient temperature, humidity CO2 and UV data.

Nectar composition and concentration is a complex topic and understanding how the features of our ambient environment impact nectar and pollen is vital to our understanding of the plant pollinator relationship. The predominate factors that influence nectar/pollen development and quality is: CO2, UV-B light, water and temperature. These environmental factors effect among other things the development of plant nectaries, anther development and pollen generation in many plants.

Many experiments that were conducted in the 1970s looked at the impacts that climate variables had on various plant species. Many of these experiments showed that CO2, UV, temp and humidity affected the floral environment in ways that compromised the plant pollinator relationship. Expanding our monitoring envelope to include important floral development variables is an important first step in understanding the dynamic nature of honey bees in their environment.

MODIS Vegetation pixel.

I have designed a rudimentary protocol that beekeepers can implement in their apiaries that is cost effective and incredibility interesting. By setting one of your hives on a scale, this can be an electronic datalogger type of device or an old fashioned iron feed scale. Then taking weekly or daily weight measurements you can determine many qualities of your colony. Certainly swarms, forager dispatches, but one important feature in terms of this protocol is precise honey yield at the end of the season.

Next understanding the vegetation of the hive location is important in determining the presence of forage, satellite vegetation profiles generated by the MODIS instrument that flies aboard the Aqua and Landsat 7 satellites is a great tool for this. The following link allows you to put in your hives (lat/long) information and will generate a data product for you. This product can take a few days to receive and is good for about 30 days.

This satellite data is housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory DACC in Tennessee and is a free service.

You will need general CO2 data information and many options are available for this on the internet, however, the NOAA-ESRL site is a valuable resource for this.

Many places in the country have remote automated CO2 sites located on towers. This site information is a bit more cumbersome to work with so it is best to first determine if a remote CO2 tower exists near your, otherwise implementing the following site which is easier and has the Mauna Loa data which will work too. Both of these sites are free.

Keep in mind that CO2 data is usually collected weekly and if you do have a local tower near you that data can be delayed for up to two years for processing. Carbon dioxide data is also highly variable depending on your location and the weather of the day, so this is just baseline data that can later show correlations but is not fine enough to really rest a thesis on.

UV data can be found at TEMIS. Stations are located worldwide which makes this aspect of the data collection a bit easier, you can use the EPA SunWise site too. Just keep in mind the scales are slightly different so pick one service for the sake of consistency. Like CO2 data UV data is highly variable, cloud cover, elevation and the like all affect UV at the surface.

6.25 x 6.25 vegetation pixel and pixel key

Lastly, temperature and humidity data are easy to collect from your local weather service or regional airport. The closer the sensors are to your hive location the better of course.

By implementing this protocol and collecting weight, temp, humidity, UV and CO2 data research hive sites can generate a nice Excel spreadsheet. This data set can then be used and referenced for policies and scientific inquiry. Any beekeeper can participate and implement this protocol in their beekeeping activities. It provides a wonderful educational tool for understanding the complex dynamics and environmental feedbacks that honey bees reside in. Local bee clubs and university extension programs can utilize this protocol and develop their own databases. Additionally, this data can be shared or integrated into the larger monitoring programs that already exist.

The application of modern technology to monitor our world has grown exponentially. We have satellite technology that can monitor vegetation profiles and sensors placed over the globe that monitor CO2 and UV and a host of other variables. It would be nice if the beekeeping community began tracking these variables and correlated them to honey production.

This data will support a fundamental thesis of this project, that environmental variable such as: CO2, temperature, humidity and UV-B impact plant nectar and protein profiles. Compromised food sources contribute to honey bee mortality by supporting general nutritional duress for the bee population. Understanding how environmental parameters degrade or otherwise compromise the nutritional attributes of common bee forage has useful implications for the agricultural community and beekeepers alike.

To visualize the essence of this project think of a plot one meter squared. If you were to stand in the middle of this square and extend your arms your fingertips would be outside this hypothetical plot. Now, lets broadcast a variety of seed and wait. In our hypothetical plot let’s assume one thousand plants sprouted and grew to maturity. Of the one thousand plants only one-hundred-sixty if them will be entomophillic plants, or plants that are pollinated by insects. The remainder will be anemophilous, or wind pollinated plants such as grasses. Honey bees exhibit preferences when foraging, only 1.6% of nectar producing plants are of interest to honey bees as referenced by honey yield. Thus, our hypothetical meter squared plot of 1,000 plants contains 16 plants that honey bees rely on for most of their dietary needs; they will visit other plants because they are opportunist by nature but 16 plants they really prefer. Now if we were to enclose this plot and increase the temperature, humidity or CO2, what do you think the response would be? What if we changed UV light or any combination of these variables? Could we accomplish this without incident to the floral environment? Is it possible to change the variables without impacting those sixteen flowering plants? The literature on the matter indicates we cannot!

It seems easy to become bewildered in the honey bee decline debate but without some comprehensive data it is difficult to determine if pesticides, habitat loss or nutritional duress are to blame for this. Wonderful monitoring programs already are producing data and my hope here is not to further fragment the data horizon but to broaden its scope to capture data points that really influence the floral environment that bees are sensitive to.

Carmine DeStefano is a graduate student at Harvard Univ, an avid beekeeper of 10 hives located on the coast of ME and can be reached at carmine.destefano@gmail.com.

REFERENCES

Crane, E. 1990. Bees and Beekeeping Science, Practice and World Resources. Comstock Publishing Associates division of Cornell University Press

Nicholson, S., Nepi, M., Pacini, E. 2007. Nectaries and Nectar. Springer Publishing. Chapter 5 215-250
Huang, Z. 2010. Honey Bee Nutrition. Bee Culture Magazine/ CAP extension project www.beeccdcap.uga.edu/documents/caparticle10.html (retrieved May 2014)

Baker, H.G., Baker, I. 1977. Non- Sugar Chemical Constituents of Nectar. Springer Verlag Germany Apidologie pp.349-356

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USDA Sites

Beltsville Bee Lab — Bee Research Laboratory Home Page

Baton Rouge Bee Lab — Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research Unit

Weslaco Bee Lab — Research Center

Tucson Bee Lab — Bee Research Center

Utah Bee Lab — Bee Biology & Systematics Laboratory

International Sites

International Bee Research Association

Apimondia. International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations

Apimondia 2005 In Ireland

Other Sites

The Biology of the Honeybee

Mid – Atlantic Apiculture (MAAREC)

Welcome to the National Honey Board

Alabama Department of Agriculture

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