MARTINSVILLE, Ind. (September 3, 2020) – Today, Seed Your Future announced the launch of its expanded Horticulture Career Exploration Tool. Much more than a basic alphabetical list of the more than 140 careers working with plants, the resource first asks site visitors to consider what they are interested in, and then profiles careers in horticulture that might match their interests. This tool is the latest resource from Seed Your Future, a coalition of more than 200 partners — including horticulture companies, gardening organizations, schools, colleges, universities, public gardens, youth organizations, nonprofit organizations, and individual advocates — united in their mission to promote horticulture and careers working with plants.

Every career page includes a profile of the job, the level of training and education required, links to where to study in the U.S. and Canada, data about salaries, links to professional organizations supporting that career, and engaging videos of real people in each career. Designed to provide introductory information to each career across the art, science, technology, education, and business of horticulture, this expanded resource will continue to grow as more careers are featured, and more videos selected to help users understand the diverse and rewarding options of a career working with plants.

“Seed Your Future is committed to providing quality, reputable information about green-collar careers working with plants,” said Susan E. Yoder, executive director of Seed Your Future. “A ‘green-lining’ of the recent global pandemic has been the renewed interest in plants, with families growing their own food and flowers, purchasing houseplants, seeds, garden supplies, and spending their time improving the world around them. Showing students, parents, mid-career changers and educators that there are meaningful and rewarding careers working with plants is the next step to building the pipeline of talent in green-collar professions,” said Yoder. “Whether this resource introduces site visitors to a fulfilling career, or a lifelong passion, one thing is clear — the more we know about plants, the more we can make a difference in the world today.”

Research identified the lack of detailed, centrally accessible information about the careers available in horticulture. Parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and youth all expressed the need for online resources to help them find out more about the careers available working with plants. “The site SeedYourFuture.org/careers serves as a digital hub for all horticulture-career information in a concise, easy to read format,” said Yoder. Future resources in development by Seed Your Future include a recruitment toolkit for horticulture and green-collar industry training and education programs, and industry promotional materials to open people’s eyes to the remarkable power of plants and the rewards of careers in the green-collar industry.

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About Seed Your Future

Seed Your Future is a national movement to promote horticulture and inspire people to pursue careers working with plants. Supported by more than 200 partner organizations, we envision a U.S. where everyone understands and values the importance of plants and the people who work in the art, science, technology, education and business of horticulture. For information, visit us at SeedYourFuture.org.

Contact:
Susan E. Yoder
syoder@SeedYourFuture.org
(484) 798-5934

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Photo: Santypan (Shutterstock)

Like butterflies and fireflies, bee populations have been hard-hit by habitat loss. Honeybees are important pollinators for a wide range of plants, and while bee colonies fared a little better over the last year than expected, data show declines of up to 90% in some areas over a 15-year period.

That’s why the American Bee Project is looking for property owners who are willing to lend out their land to commercial beekeepers—and helping them get compensated for it.

Here are a few things you can do to boost bee conservation efforts.

Apply for a beekeeping tax credit

There isn’t technically a credit simply for keeping bees, but if you work with the American Bee Project to place a commercial apiary on your property, you may be eligible for agricultural tax classification and associated credits. The project has a state-by-state guide to beekeeping regulations and tax qualifications, so find your state to see if you qualify, and reach out to the project for more info on how to get set up.

Check your local backyard beekeeping laws

Even if your property doesn’t qualify for the tax credit, you may still be able to maintain your own apiary. You’ll need to check your city’s rules and regulations for beekeeping first, as it’s unlikely you can just buy a hive and plop it in your yard. In Salt Lake City, for example, you have to apply for a permit and meet specific space and construction requirements.

Since there is no single government department that handles citizen beekeeping, the easiest way to track down your local laws is to google some variation of “beekeeping in [your city]”—this search may also bring up local beekeeping organizations you can reach out to for more resources.

If you don’t want to keep bees yourself, there are a lot of other things you can do to support bee conservation. The Honeybee Conservancy has a list of actions for various levels of commitment. These range from planting bee-friendly trees and gardens to setting up bee baths (similar to birdbaths) to sponsoring a hive at a school or community garden.

And, of course, there are easy actions, like signing petitions against pesticides, that you can take right now from the comfort of your couch. The Xerces Society is an excellent resource for all thing’s conservation.

https://lifehacker.com/get-paid-to-be-a-beekeeper-1844545324

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Figure 1. 10kg of honey as 8kg sugar and 2kg water.

By : Derek Mitchell

Honey bees collect flower nectar to make honey, but that is only the beginning. It can be shown that they can need more than 50% of the energy in the nectar they have collected to evaporate the nectar into honey1.

Although the research paper goes into some detailed maths, it was previously a visual presentation to beekeepers, and before that a simple thought experiment in my front room, made real with some props. This was to make sure to myself and the skeptical beekeepers that the very surprising result was genuine.

Let’s do that thought experiment again. Imagine a shallow super of honey: to make the numbers simple yet realistic, let the honey weigh 10 kilograms (kg). If it has a atypical 20% water content that means 8kg of sugar and 2kg of water (figure 1).

Figure 2. At 20% nectar concentration each kg of sugar in nectar has 4kg of water, 5kg. total.

Figure 3. 10kg of honey has the same sugar content as 40kg of nectar at 20% concentration.

The honey bees typically collect nectar at 20% to 40%2 concentration of sugars, so let’s take 20% concentration as our example, again to make calculation simple yet realistic. Then each kg of sugar they collect in nectar, comes with 4kg of water, a total of 5kg (figure 2).

Then we can see, that to get the 8kg of sugar in the 10kg of honey, they need to collect 8×5=40kg of nectar as shown in figure 3.

After the honey bees collect the nectar they convert it into honey. To do this they remove 30kg of water to convert the 40kg of nectar into 10kg of honey.

They use a similar process, evaporation, and it takes a similar amount of energy (slightly larger in fact), as if you tried to do it on your kitchen stove. Anyone who has tried a recipe where it says “add a bottle of wine and reduce by half,” or made jam or marmalade can attest to the amount of gas or electricity and time that takes i.e. a lot of energy. It takes 0.61 kilowatt hours (kWh) to change one kg of liquid water at 100°C into water vapour at 100°C. So it would need 18.3 kWh on the stove to change 30kg of liquid water at 100°C in to vapour. They do not use a stove but lap at it with their tongues for a few minutes, then heat the air gently with their bodies and move that air by fanning their wings for hours to drive off the water content. It takes 0.67kWh per kg to evaporate water at 40°C. That means 20kWh of energy to make 30kg water at 40°C change into vapour. They don’t use electricity or gas as fuel and can’t just pay a big bill to a utility company. They have to go and fetch the fuel themselves in the form of sugar in the nectar they collect. Sugar contains energy at about 4.4kWh per kg so 20kwh is the energy in about 4.5kg of sugar or 22kg of nectar. Including the original 40kg of nectar that constitutes the honey means a total nectar weight of 62kg (figure 4).

Figure 4. 10kg honey needs 62kg of 20% nectar at 100% thermal efficiency of evaporation.

But 62kg is assuming 100% thermal efficiency in the process and therefore no losses of heat. The losses depend on the outside temperature and the design and material of the hive or nest the bees reside in as well as the detailed behavior of the honey bees. So a reasonable value for a wooden hive without many shallows or supers, at an outside temperature of 25°C might be 50%1. This then doubles the 22kg of nectar fuel needed. With 50% thermal efficiency, the 44kg of nectar evaporation fuel plus the original 40kg of nectar means a total of 84kg needs to be collected for the 10kg of honey.

Figure 5 is what 84kg of nectar looks like. You can see why I had to go to these lengths and not just work it out as maths exercise. If a colony produces 100kg of honey per year that’s an energy bill of 400kWh per year or nearly a metric ton of nectar.

Figure 5. 10kg honey needs 84kg of 20% nectar at 50% thermal efficiency of evaporation.

Our thought experiment illustrates just one nectar concentration and one level of thermal efficiency. We can use maths to give values for all reasonable values of nectar concentration and thermal efficiency and draw a graph of the amount of nectar for each unit of honey, figure 6.

The red M line shows the nectar to honey ratio if the conversion from nectar to honey needed no energy. From this graph you can see that improving the thermal efficiency reduces the amount of nectar the honey bees have to fetch for the same nectar concentration, and for the same effort they can collect a weaker nectar if the thermal efficiency is higher.

If we take away the nectar burned up by the bees flying there and back to a nectar patch six kilometers (just under four miles) away, we get the graph in figure 7. This has moved all of the black lines in the graph up and to the right compared to figure 6.

Figure 6. J nectar to honey ratio versus nectar concentration at various thermal efficiency percentages, distance hive to nectar patch zero kilometers.

Figure 7. Nectar to honey ratio versus nectar concentration at various thermal efficiency percentages, distance hive to nectar patch 6 kilometers

Together these graphs show that to fly further, the honey bees have to collect a more concentrated nectar, or have a higher thermal efficiency nest, or collect even more nectar. The vertical distance from the x-axis to the red “M” line compared to the vertical distance from the x-axis to the black efficiency line gives the relative amounts of nectar constituting the honey and the total used making the honey.

What is thermal efficiency

Thermal efficiency is the ratio of the energy that succeeds in evaporating water to the amount of energy the honey bees actually put into the process. This depends on a combination of the outside temperature, the concentration of the nectar and the level of insulation of the nest or hive occupied by the honey bees. Lets look at those factors in more detail: the first factor, temperature, is dependent on the weather; the second factor, nectar concentration; the honey bees try to optimise³; and the third factor, nest selection. Honey bees put a lot of effort into nest selection4 (and arguably less by bee keepers), because in the wild, honey bees have thick walled (average 150mm) tree nests, man made hives on the other hand have thin walls (19mm) (figure 8) and heat losses up to seven times greater⁵.

Figure 8. Tree nest and hive compared

Why is it important?

We have seen how thermal efficiency can change how far honey bees can fly to forage and what flowers they can collect from to make the same amount of honey from the same amount of nectar. In basic survival terms, a high thermal efficiency means in times when the forage is poor they can fly further, find and utilize less rich food. Thermal efficiency impacts the good times as well. Let’s consider that honey bees wings wear out, (we can see that by looking at the bees crawling from the hives with ragged wings, no longer able to fly). So every wingbeat a honey bee takes is a colony resource being used up to collect supplies for the colony⁶. This resource can only be replenished when new honey bees emerge. If we increase thermal efficiency of the nest it takes less nectar to make the same amount of honey, this means less wing beats flying to fetch the nectar. However, an enormous number of wing beats are being expended in the hive to remove the water content. Anyone who has listened to a hive during a nectar flow, knows that level of noise, which can be heard several metres away, involves a lot of wing beats. Those wing beats in the nest may actually wear the wings out faster than flying as it is being done so close to the hive surfaces and other honey bees⁷. Consequently, thermal efficiency changes how many honey bees lives are needed to make jar of honey.

Conclusion

By improving the thermal efficiency of the hives and the bee keeping practices we use, we can make the honey bees job of converting nectar into honey easier. This can mean significant improvements in survival of colonies and greater honey yields as confirmed by one of the largest bee farmers in the UK, who has thousands of expanded polystyrene and wooden hives to compare.

Honey bees exploit thermal physics on a prodigious scale to make honey, by following their lead we can use thermal physics to improve their thermal efficiency and so we help them, to help us.

References

1. Mitchell D. 2019 Thermal efficiency extends distance and variety for honey bee foragers: Analysis of the energetics of nectar collection and dessication by Apis mellifera. J. R. Soc. Interface 16. (doi:10.1098/rsif.2018.0879)
2. Wykes GR. 1953 The Sugar Content of Nectars. Biochem. J. 53, 294–296.
3. Vischer PK, Seeley TD. 1982 Foraging Strategy of Honeybee Colonies in a Temperate Deciduous Forest. Ecology 63, 1790–1801.
4. Seeley TD, Morse RA. 1978 Nest site selection by the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Insectes Soc. 25, 323–337. (doi:10.1007/BF02224297)
5. Mitchell D. 2016 Ratios of colony mass to thermal conductance of tree and man-made nest enclosures of Apis mellifera: implications for survival, clustering, humidity regulation and Varroa destructor. Int. J. Biometeorol. 60, 629–638. (doi:10.1007/s00484- 015-1057-z)
6. Higginson AD, Gilbert F. 2004 Paying for nectar with wingbeats: a new model of honeybee foraging. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 271, 2595–2603. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2866)
7. Peters JM, Gravish N, Combes SA. 2017 Wings as impellers: honey bees co-opt flight system to induce nest ventilation and disperse pheromones. J. Exp. Biol. 220, 2203–2209. (doi:10.1242/ jeb.149476)

Skeptical at first, I’ve seen the light.

When I was new to beekeeping, the first beekeeping course I took was titled, “Natural Beekeeping.”  The course was being held at a biodynamic farm, just a short 20-minute drive from my house.  Because I didn’t know about the great courses offered by the New Jersey Beekeepers Association, at the time, this seemed like the best option.

The course was team-taught by several people, some with more bee knowledge than others. They all had varying interpretations of what “natural” meant and some of these views were, shall we say, bordering on the extreme. Before I continue with my story let me make one thing clear, I believe that everything should be as natural as possible, and that the more natural the environment, the better it is for everyone and everything. However, I also believe that you need science to back-up and support what you do, otherwise it’s just superstitious mumbo-jumbo. Some of the “instructors” at this course seemed to toss science, logic, and common sense out the window. For example, one instructor was explaining that her bees “know” where she needs to be stung, and when the bees sting her, they are sacrificing themselves to help her.  If her back is hurting, BAM! She gets stung in her back. When her knee is sore, BAM! A few stings to her knee. But she said one thing in particular that will stick with me forever: “Every time I have needed to see something, really see something in my life, the bees have stung me in my eyes!” As I processed her words, I realized that “Every time” meant that this had happened to her more than once! MORE THAN ONCE!!! And, “in my eyes” meant, IN-MY-EYES!!!!  I thought, and still think, that if I get stung in my eye, I may give up beekeeping and instead start collecting soft and fuzzy teddy bears. Certainly if it does ever happen, I’m going to take every precaution to make sure that it never, EVER, happens again!

At this point during the course, alarm bells were going off in my head. “Warning, Warning, Warning Will Robinson!” I am skeptical by nature, but now I was on high alert. When the topic of honey bee pests came up, there was a discussion of biodynamic farming principles, which included – and I am not making this up – the following instructions: Collect as many of the dead pests as you can, and during specific full moons throughout the year, you burn them to an ash, then sprinkle the burnt pest ash around your farm or hive so as to frighten, and keep away any remaining pests. The belief is that “no animal wants to cross over its own dead, so when they encounter an ash line made from their own kind, they will not want to cross it.” Now, the last time I checked, not too many pests, insect or mammal, have sat down to watch The Killing Fields, so this seemed to make as much sense as wearing aluminum foil on your head to get a better Wi-Fi signal.  One of the course instructors went on to say that you should collect dead Varroa mites, wait until the biodynamic farming calendar tells you that it is the correct full moon, burn them to an ash and sprinkle their remains around the perimeter of your hives. This is not exactly the type of mite treatment you read about in any of the scientific journals or hear that commercial beekeepers are using.

It was also at this same natural beekeeping course that I first heard about oxalic acid but because it was discussed alongside torching pests by moonlight, I didn’t exactly embrace what was being said. To make matters worse, at that time, oxalic acid was not approved as a treatment for varroa in the U.S., and technically it was illegal to use in your hive. So hearing the words, “illegal” and “don’t worry, it works” didn’t give me the confidence that this was a scientifically proven way to deal with Varroa. Further, when it was explained that you vaporize the oxalic acid with a metal wand powered by a car battery, and you have to wear a respirator because the fumes could melt your lungs, I was thinking the only way this could sound more like Hogwarts was if you also sprinkled in some pixie dust and porcupine quills.

When the course was over, I had learned a few useful things. I knew that I needed to refer to reputable sources if I ever wanted to be a successful beekeeper, and the importance of differentiating fact from fiction when assembling my mite treatment regime.  Throughout my tenure with Apis mellifera, I have read a shelf-full of books, and subscribed to both Bee Culture, and American Bee Journal.  I also have attended as many bee meetings as I can, especially to gain wisdom from a prominent researcher or experienced beekeeper. Throughout the years, I would read or hear about oxalic acid, but every time, I also started thinking about burning Varroa in the moonlight. Eventually, oxalic acid was approved to be used in the U.S., but I was still skeptical, as I could not separate it from those who had first spoken about it and everything else they had said, such as, “works really well, you just have to believe!”

Now fast-forward to about a year and a half ago. There was talk of something called “mite bombs,” untreated hives that collapsed after being infested with Varroa. The mite bombs would infect other hives in one of two ways: 1) either the foragers would abscond from their hive and drift into healthy hives, bringing their mite infestation with them, or 2) bees from the healthy hives would find and rob out the mite-infested hives, bringing a lot more than honey back with them to their own hives. The biggest issue with the mite bombs was that the infestations would happen AFTER Fall treatments, so many times the beekeepers who thought their hives were mite-free and ready for Winter, actually ended-up with an after-treatment surge of mites. 

Also in the past 18-20 months, there has been some question if Varroa could possibly start to build up a resistance to Apivar, the Varroa-killing silver bullet that most of us use as a treatment. So, the need to use another treatment with which we can rotate into an effective yearly mite treatment plan has become even more important.  It was also reported by Cornell University that when varroa mites were first introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s, colonies could tolerate much higher infestations than they can today. The treatment threshold back then was a lot higher, between 10% and 20%, and mites could be effectively controlled with only one treatment a year.  However, since that time colonies have become less able to tolerate such high infestations, and colonies often require multiple treatments throughout year.  Randy Oliver, the renowned commercial beekeeper and researcher, states that treatment thresholds should now be 1% or less.  It seems that our bees are less able to handle the stresses that varroa puts on them, and responsible beekeepers must do everything they can to actively control the Varroa levels in their colonies.

What I’ve learned is that oxalic acid works because it hurts the mites, but not the bees. While the research is not conclusive on all the ways it impacts the mites, it seems like the acid is absorbed by the mites’ soft footpads, burning the footpads during the process, which also causes the mites to lose their grip on the bees and fall off.  Note that oxalic acid only reaches the Phoretic mites attached to adult bees, it does not reach mites in capped brood cells.

While using oxalic acid as a treatment for varroa is relatively new to the U.S., it has been used for quite awhile in Europe and also in Canada. This past Spring, I was corresponding with a beekeeper in Sweden and I learned two important things: 1) Apivar is NOT approved for use in Sweden; and 2) oxalic acid is Sweden’s #1 choice for treatment. This had a huge impact on me, as I could not imagine successfully treating for mites without Apivar.  Second, if an entire country was relying on oxalic acid to keep their bees alive, then I needed to realize that oxalic acid was a lot less of a magical potion cooked up in the moonlight and actually had some solid science behind it. The more I came across it in my studies, the more I realized that oxalic acid is used throughout the world and scientists have been studying it for years. I also read about the results of the Varrox® vaporizer field trials across seven European countries that compared the various methods of using oxalic acid for their effectiveness and impact on the bees. The study showed that the vaporizing method could be up to 99% effective for killing mites at times when the colony is broodless and vaporizing was the method that was the most gentle on the bees. 

Which brings us up to today.

As I thought about mite bombs, colonies less able to tolerate Varroa, the need to alternate Apivar with other treatments, and that colonies are most at risk post-Fall treatment, plus everything I had been reading, it seemed like all of these things were pointing me in the same direction, and “showing me” what I needed to do. It was time for me to start using oxalic acid. And, I would like to add that I “saw” this without having to get stung in the eye!

It is well over a decade since I first heard about oxalic acid, but I have to admit that I now own, and sitting in my garage is a Varrox® Vaporizer, which is made in Switzerland and has been used throughout Europe for years, an extra car battery, as well as a container of registered and approved oxalic acid for mite treatments.

However, before ever donning my newly acquired respirator and heading to my apiary, I need to do one thing first. I need to apologize to everyone who has long known that oxalic acid is an effective treatment for Varroa. I’m sorry that I doubted you, and I’m sorry that I mocked you and your treatment of choice. You were right and I was wrong. I will join your ranks and as I do, I will chant, “The only good mite is a vaporized mite!” I will become one of you. But, as of this writing, one thing is still for certain and must be said, no matter how big of an oxalic acid apostle I become, I’m not backing down on what I think of moon-soaked Varroa burns at midnight.

Top-bar hive beekeepers need straight interchangeable combs in all hives, so they can manage colonies efficiently.

Figure 1 Assembling combs for top-bar hive mating nucs on the tailgate of my bee truck. These are one-foot long hive bodies partitioned in the middle (arrows). A pair of mating nucs is in each hive body, six total on the tailgate. The efficiency of my nuc assembly depends on combs that fit any
top-bar hive body.

For example in routine colony management, a beekeeper may move capped (pupal) brood combs from a strong colony to a weak colony, providing it with a boost of young bees. To complete the swap, typically the same number of empty combs from the weak colony go back to the strong colony, giving it some growing space. The exchange of top-bar combs requires them to be straight and centered in the top bar (not lopsided). Beekeepers have a similar procedure for equalizing nonsurplus honey. Combs of honey from a heavy hive, a colony with too much honey, can be moved to another colony low on food. Empty combs go from the light-weight hive to the heavy hive, completing the exchange. Again the top-bar combs must be interchangeable.

Even with top-bar hives, specialized jobs can depend quite heavily on straight combs centered on their top bars. For example, the top-bar hive design is ideally suited for queen production by grafting.  To mate the queens, I have special apiaries with a couple dozen small top-bar mating nucs. To start the mating nucs, I move top-bar combs (with brood, honey and bees) from established colonies and assemble them in hive bodies only one foot long (see Figure 1).

In frame hives, bees build straight combs from sheets of comb foundation. Usually comb foundation is not a part of top-bar beekeeping. For a substitute, beekeepers use wooden comb guides under the top bars. The comb guide could be a small strip of wood inserted into the center groove of the top bar. The wood strip projects out at a right angle (like popsicle sticks in the center groove). Another comb guide has the lower side of the top bar cut in a “V” running the length of the bar.

Perhaps it is not well known, but these comb guides are not new (see Figure 2). During past times (ca 1870’s) when comb foundation was not generally accepted, not available, or too expensive, beekeepers used the wooden guides shown in Figure 2, and guess what? They had problems with crooked combs, similar to top-bar hive beekeepers of today. As an apicultural historian hearing about the current frustrations with crooked top-bar combs, I see the difficulty as a replay of the past.   

Of course, comb foundation banished wooden comb guides and eliminated their problems of crooked combs. As Figure 3 reminds us, comb foundation literally dictates to the bees exactly where they must build the comb.  Foundation forces the bees to build the combs straight. All that appears so obvious. Keeping numerous colonies in more than one hive design has helped me see different biological aspects about bees because the hive design itself can restrict some of the bees’ behavior.

Comparing frame hives and top-bar hives, here is something I have observed that is fairly subtle.  First off, comb foundation determines the location of the comb, which is obvious. Comb foundation does something else, which is not obvious. Comb foundation seems to keep the honey bands (at the top of the comb) from bulging out too wide.  That bulge can cause an “abnormal” shift in the placement of subsequent combs. Looking back at Figure 3, on the side of the tilted comb that the bees were building out, the length of the cells, particularly near the top (the future honey band), is influenced by the adjacent foundation sheet. Even if the bees are not building out that foundation sheet yet, it still seems to influence the length of the adjacent growing cells. 

Of course we have a feel for that. Using nine frames versus 10 frames in a super changes the thickness of the honeycombs. With nine frames, the honeycombs can grow thicker, and they are easier to uncap. In a super, the beekeeper has already determined the location of the combs by spacing the nine frames (usually with drawn comb).  The comb thickness has been determined too, provided the bees completely fill the super and the combs bulge out until only a single bee space remains between the capped honeycombs. 

With wooden comb guides, the top-bar hive situation is more complicated. Both variables, the location of the combs and their thickness, can be determined by the bees (not the beekeeper). The wooden comb guides do not prevent the honey band from becoming thick and bulging wide at the top of the comb. The bulge is mostly into the empty space for the next comb. That lopsided bulge of a growing comb affects the placement of that next comb. In turn that comb, shifted over a bit, shifts the placement of subsequent combs as the colony builds the sequential combs filling the hive.  Numerous times, I have heard top-bar beekeepers say their brood combs were fine but the bees crossed up the honeycombs. With this observation in mind, let’s watch how crooked combs can occur with a special top-bar hive; at least this is one way the combs can become crooked.

In my bee house, I study honey bee behavior with various observation top-bar hives. For this comb placement demonstration, I used a four-sided glass top-bar hive. The colony for this hive began as a homemade package (see Figure 4). I shook the bees into the glass hive, and the colony grew as a typical top-bar colony (see Figure 5). Initially, the bees built a few brood-nest combs, roughly at the same time. Later on, the bees constructed a sequence of honeycombs into the remaining volume of the hive from left to right  (see Figure 6).

Figure 6 The growing top-bar colony. The bees appear to follow the lower edge of the “V” comb guides. However, the combs could be lopsided from the older (larger) combs bulging into the space for the newer (smaller) combs.

When the colony constructed the first group of brood combs, the extra thick right-lopsided bulge was present, but slightly.  Obviously for additional honeycombs built sequentially, the bees cannot bulge the newest comb back into the (left) previously built one. So naturally, the bees bulged new combs into the open space on the right. Figure 7 shows that shift with a close-up through the glass at the very top corner of the hive where the “V” comb guides end–a revealing location. Nothing obstructed the bees from bulging the honey band on the right (like a strip of comb foundation hanging from the next top bar). 

As the colony constructed more combs, the lopsided comb distortion tended to increase (see Figure 8 and compare it to Figure 7). Seeing all the combs together, Figure 9 shows the lopsided comb distortion tending to increase as the colony’s combs filled the empty space of the hive to the right.  Moving to the right, the growth direction of the colony, the combs tended to become more lopsided with the thick side on the right.  The center of the comb should have been directly under the tip of the “V,” as indicated by the black arrows in Figure 9. 

Figure 9 Crooked combs: an increasing effect. This view is like we have “zoomed out” from the close ups of Figures 7 and 8. The big green double-headed arrow shows roughly the initial brood nest combs. The large yellow arrow points to the direction of sequential comb growth. The black arrows pointing down from the “V” tips tell where the center of the combs, the mid ribs, should be. The white horizontal arrows measure the comb width. Both sets of arrows indicate the amount of asymmetric comb growth (lopsidedness) from very little on the left to a large distortion on the right.

If the glass hive were longer, the honeycombs would eventually cross between top bars, thus reproducing the observations of top-bar beekeepers, who reported no problem with the brood combs, but their honeycombs were crossed up and connected to more than one top bar. However, now we understand the problem actually began in the brood nest, and increased as the bees built more honeycombs, until the combs became so crooked they crossed between top bars. 

In addition, lopsided combs can be mostly straight on their top bars. Yet the combs may not be interchangeable with combs from other top-bar hives. In fact, the combs may not be interchangeable within its original hive. For a badly lopsided comb, it cannot be turned around and placed next to another lopsided comb, bringing the two thick sides together. They may not fit in the hive because the extra thick lopsided honeycombs crush together. Or if less than one bee space remained between the combs, the bees would not tolerate that gap (too narrow). They would chew the narrow gap wider to at least one bee space. While the bees chewed open the narrow gap, small hive beetles could use the narrow gap as a place to reproduce. (Bees allow a minimum of one bee space between honeycombs. Brood combs have two bee spaces between the combs, allowing the nurse bees to work back-to-back.)

Here is another way, a typical way, for combs to become crooked and connect adjacent top bars. 

Comb construction begins at the middle of the top bar and proceeds to the ends. In the middle of the top bar, bees build comb relatively quickly compared to finishing the comb at the ends of the bar. So for an older longer comb (reaching the ends of the bar) next to a younger shorter comb (not reaching the ends of the bar), the bees can lengthen the honey cells in the corners of the older comb.  Those longer honey cells can crowd into the space for the ends of the younger comb. When the bees lengthen the younger comb towards the ends of the top bar, they must curve the ends of the younger comb to keep a bee space between the two combs (older and younger). Similar to the situation above, near the brood nest the combs curve just a little on their ends. The curving usually increases with successive combs until the attachment of the combs appears as a “C” for difficult cases (but the middle of the “C” could be straighter). The ends of the “C” would be where the honeycombs curved so much they attached to adjacent top bars, a big mess (see Figures 10 and 11).

I have seen two attempts at correcting the above comb misalignments. The first has wider top bars for honeycombs, trying to accommodate its thick honey bands. Other top bars are made narrow for brood combs.  Beekeepers, especially top-bar beekeepers, have all kinds ways to keep bees. No doubt, some beekeepers can make this technique work. With two different top-bar widths, beware of a fundamental violation. 

I have kept bees for over 50 years. In high school, I had 125 frame hives. I made honey by the ton with three different size frames.  At times the different frame sizes restricted colony management.  Critical movements of brood and honey among hives could not occur. Why? Trying to swap frames that would not fit in the other hive body. Having two different widths of top bars feels like the beginning of this old problem again. 

Here is the future problem. Soon or later, during Fall management after a poor honey season, the wider honeycomb top bars will be needed to feed colonies. Wide honeycomb top bars will become mixed up with narrow brood-comb top bars. Different hives would have various mixtures of wide versus narrow top bars. Some hives might contain more combs than others, which would bound to be a problem at some point. I think it would be better to find a way where all the top bars would remain the same width, rather than have different top bar widths.

Another method I have seen has smaller spacer sticks next to the top bars expected to become the honeycombs, which would be ones away from the entrance. This plan has the advantage of keeping the top bars with only one width. Both of the counter measures rely on the hive implement as invoking a solution. Why not let the beekeeper become part of the solution?

Right after the colony finishes its first group of brood combs and begins expanding into the remaining part of the hive, inspect the colony and try turning around the top bars with new combs. The goal here is to cancel out the lopsided comb while the bees are elongating the cells. Open the hive from the rear (away from the entrances) to avoid disturbing the brood nest, unless it needs an inspection. With this method, one has more opportunities to learn about comb construction.

For myself, I use a strip of foundation (1½ inches wide, 3.81cm) securely waxed into the center groove of a top bar. In a top-bar hive, the foundation strips function like the top of the sheets in a frame hive, to prevent the bees from bulging the combs. Typically, I wax strips into some 700 top bars in an afternoon. When the bees build that much comb, I cannot have a crooked comb problem. I need a reliable method for getting straight combs.

As with any method, beekeepers have voiced concerns when I give presentations of top-bar beekeeping. Here are a couple of the most frequent comments. With comb foundation, there could be wax contamination from miticides. True. However, the amount of wax has been greatly reduced. One deep brood frame foundation sheet cuts into seven or eight top-bar strips.). Whenever I cut a honeycomb from its top bar for consumption, I leave the strip of comb that includes the original wax foundation strip. 

Another concern is the foundation strips are subject to breakage. True. However, the strips need not be perfectly straight with no breaks. If a few strips have broken-out places, just put them between other strips in better condition. And do not fret over bent strips. I straighten them out some, and the bees do the rest. Brood foundation (always unwired for cutting) is the strongest, but it has fewer sheets per pound. The thinner, more delicate foundation for cut comb honey or section comb honey (where the comb is consumed) has more sheets per pound, but it is easier to break.  (For more details in the procedure, see my book at TBHSbyWAM.com.)

Understanding why bees build crooked top-bar combs is a step towards finding ways for bees to produce straight combs. With straight combs, top-bar beekeeping is an elegant and thoughtful way to keep bees.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Suzanne Sumner for her comments on the manuscript.

Visit TBHSbyWAM.com

Three separate times during this adventure in the mountains of Tabasco I think well, that’s that. We’re not going to get to do this after all.

Luis Manuel Godinez’s assistant, Miguel Corzo, and the son of the landowner wrestle the wheelbarrow to the site of the bees’ nest.

The first is when we discover we have forgotten the beeswax foundation, left way down the mountain in the little pueblo of Redención del Campesino. But no, says our brujo. It’s only 20 miles. You all just relax here and I’ll be back with the wax shortly.

The sun beats down on this village of 200 souls. For the next two hours we sit in plastic chairs in scant shade, eating juicy mandarins from a tree in the packed-clay yard of a tiny whitewashed adobe house. Chickens, ducks and turkeys forage around us. We walk down to an emerald pond and watch a couple of kids swimming and fishing with a long net strung between two poles. A family of pigs cavorts in the water on the opposite shore. Oropendolas give their musical, loopy, water-drop calls.

Luis Manuel Godínez García – who I am genuinely beginning to think of as a sorcerer of the bees – returns with the wooden frames of foundation wax.  The legendary “killer bees” that we intend to gather from a hole in the ground will need them in order to start their new life in a wooden hive.

Off we drive toward the farm where the nest has been reported. We stop when we see the dueño of the property flagging us down. He stands waiting by a muddy path with his two sons and a rickety wheelbarrow full of excavation equipment: sledge hammers, mallets, shovels, pry bars, machetes, even a chainsaw with gasoline and bar oil. “It’s about two kilometers in,” he explains. I look at the rough, uneven, sodden path, pocked with the prints of cattle. I look at the wheelbarrow full of equipment, contemplate the two kilometers, and think, well that’s that.

Luis just smiles and begins to pile bee boxes and smokers, spray bottles and enough bee veils for a small army on top of all the tools. His team of devoted students and ex-students helps out. For the past 10 days, my wife Maria and I have been accompanying Luis through rural Tabasco, particularly to small villages grandfathered in to the Usumacinta Canyon Ecological Reserve, on a tour of all-things-apicultural. I should know by now that nothing is going to daunt this brujo of the bees.

Miguel Ángel Corzo Romero, Luis’s stout right-hand man, lifts the handles of the wheelbarrow to push it, and one of the dueño’s sons is roped into a harness made from a lariat to pull (yes, pull) it. Our group slogs single-file through the mud. I’m happy that my advanced age and status as “visiting expert” leaves me blithely traipsing the trail, swinging just my insect net and a small mallet, swabbing streams of sweat from my forehead with my baseball cap.

In half an hour we arrive at the site of the bees’ nest, only to find that the bees are ensconced about 10 feet up on the side of an arroyo. They are barely accessible by a tough, vertical, slippery climb. A thick cover of vines and other vegetation conceals a tiny entrance leading deep down into the limestone.

Miguel Ángel Corzo digs away at the cave with a pry bar.

Well, that’s that, I think. No way on earth are we going to be able to remove all that plant cover, open a hole into solid rock large enough for us reach in and pull out five to 10 combs of bees, larvae, pupae, pollen and honey, and escape without a horrible stinging incident. Aren’t these the fabled killer bees?

The people of Tabasco are poor – in money, in land, in a culture hammered by foreign economic interests – says Luis, and a hive of bees costs a thousand pesos. The bees will produce delicious honey that brings another 120 pesos per quart. So it’s well worth the risk, and the hard labor, to pick up a hive free of charge.

Professor Godínez, a 56-year-old biologist at the Universidad Politécnica Mesoamericana in the municipality of Tenosique, smack on the Guatemalan border, has been a bee lover since his childhood. “I think I am an addicted to bees,” he tells me. “I am never as happy as when I am working with them.” He is a master at the manipulation of these Africanized bees. Even in the potentially hazardous situation in which we now find ourselves, he wears only a white tee shirt and blue jeans, no protective suit, veil or gloves. He spritzes the guard bees with lemon-juice-laced water to wet their wings and hinder their flight. From a smoker he puffs dense clouds of smoke to calm them, mask their alarm chemicals, and induce them to engorge on honey, which calms them further. As his students work with him, he is constantly chanting to them “agua y humo, agua y humo.” Water and smoke.

The team uses machetes to hack away the quilt of vegetation, and now sweat-drenched Miguel Corzo wails away at the limestone around the nest entrance with the sledgehammer, exchanging it for a smaller mallet at one point when the head goes flying off the old sledge. “Peligroso,” he murmurs. Students chip away with pry bars, and I find myself dodging big hunks of rock tumbling down into the arroyo. My nostrils and lungs fill with acrid smoke. The air around us buzzes with thousands of alarmed, confused bees.

Assistants press combs cut from the cave into a wired frame.

The students, even the first-year ones, are fearless. Ana Laura Trinidad Sánchez, who has never before this week worked with bees, sits at the cave entrance pawing bare-handed at dirt and limestone fragments and trying to reach in with a knife to cut out the combs. She becomes exasperated with the awkwardness of her veil and asks the brujo, “Me quito esto?” Can I take this off? Of course, says Luis.

Billows of smoke drive the bees completely from the cavity, and the cut combs are placed in wired wooden frames and then into a wooden bee hive. A large swarm of suddenly homeless bees has gathered on a nearby dangling vine. A student uses a machete carefully to sever the vine they have clustered on, and – after agua y humo – shakes and brushes them gently into the box of frames.

And there sits the new hive, loaded with bees and comb, atop the limestone outcrop and just at the entrance of the old nest. During this entire operation, not a soul has received a sting from these so-called killers.

I look back down the long mud path, sweating profusely. I’m thinking of the return journey, which will have to be after dark when all the bees are home, with the hive and its notorious inhabitants clattering and bouncing in the wheelbarrow.

Agua y humo, agua y humo. And the brujo. All will be well.

And that’s that.

W.S. Robinson teaches biology at Casper College in WY. His most recent bee research has been on Apis dorsata and Apis cerana in Thailand. He was in Tenosique, Tabasco, at the Universidad Politécnica Mesoamericana in December and January, 2017-18 as a Fulbright Specialist in apiculture.

Jennifer Berry

By: Jennifer Berry

When You Have To, Be Prepared.

This past October, (and for several years now), it has been unseasonably warm with occasionally temperatures reaching the upper 80s to lower 90s. Not only has it been hot, it has also been exceptionally dry. This type of weather pattern, especially in the Fall, tends to bring out the worst in the insect world. Yep, that’s right, it’s yellow jacket time, and they were flying around in droves. Not sure why, maybe the warmer temperatures trigger the queens to continue laying eggs, thereby creating an overabundance of these lovely hymenopteran relatives? This year I was noticing them everywhere; in the garden, swarming around the compost bin, and whirling about on the back porch. They were also especially annoying while working colonies since they were buzzing around frames or dancing about on hive tools sticky with honey. And then of course, these nasty pests constantly flying around your face and neck while trying to wrap up Fall chores. Very annoying.

We had an apiary around a ½ mile from a farm which offered all sorts of Fall activities geared towards children. Festive games such as a corn maze, corn hole, and pin the corn cob on the stalk. There were also hay and pony rides, pumpkin picking and face painting to mention a few. The kind of events that attracts folks from all ages, groups and walks of life.

On this particular day, I was in my office working on an article for Bee Culture, I’m sure when the phone rang. Answering in my most professional manner of course, I could tell immediately by the tone of the voice on the other end, that the gentleman was not happy. He introduced himself and quickly began to accuse my bees (actually the lab’s bees) of RUINING his livelihood. I didn’t argue or put up a fuss. I just sat back and listened to him rage. According to his story, our bees were chasing his customers away. They were scaring the children because they were swarming around trash barrels, the hand-held soda cans and cotton candy. He knew exactly where our research colonies were located and we better move those bees NOW or he’s going to call the authorities. After he calmed down a bit and took a breath, I volunteered to drive over to his farm and take a look; this seemed to appease him for the moment.

A few minutes later I loaded myself and our graduate student into the truck and off we drove. When we arrived at the farm, we quickly found out that the owner (gentleman on the other end of the phone) was currently out of town but his wife would be with us shortly. I breathed a sigh of relief, since I was not looking forward to meeting him face to face.

After just a few moments, the wife walked up and began to show us around. Right away, she pointed out the trash cans and sure enough, there were swarms of flying insects, but very few honey bees; most the bugs were yellow jackets. Seriously, for every 100 yellow jackets, we would see maybe one honey bee. We explained this to the women, plus advised her that they should invest into getting lids for the cans. It wouldn’t solve the problem but it would cut down on the attractiveness of the sugary sweets laying around inside. I also suggested that we could spray the cans with a concoction that we use to run honey bees out of honey supers. “It may not work”, I explained, “but let’s give it a try”. I told her I’d be by the next day to drop it off. She couldn’t have been nicer. She walked us out of the area and back to our truck, again being extremely pleasant and appreciative for the advice.

The next day I showed up with the liquid but this time was not greeted by the pleasant “wife” but instead by the very annoyed, very tall, very intimidating “husband”. As I walked through the gate, here he came, roaring up on his four-wheeler, dust flying up like a rooster’s tail behind him. Just before knocking me to the ground, he stopped, jumped off the rig and began yelling at me, just inches from my face. As the dust from the road settled around us, he was telling me that “all you snooty university types are all the same, thinking that your research is more important than what the working man was doing to make a living.” I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, so I dropped the container of liquid onto the counter at the ticket office and hurriedly walked toward my truck. Meanwhile, he was still cussing me up one side and down the other. Telling me . . . “if those bees were not gone by tomorrow he was going to poison them.” That’s when I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around, walked calmly back to him, and coolly said, “Sir that would not be a good idea, since it would be against the law to purposefully kill bees, especially ones involved in a USDA/UGA research grant.” I also tried to explain to him that the majority of the “bees” flying around were not honey bees but in fact yellow jackets, and even if we did move the bees, they would still have the same problem. He was not hearing any of this since he kept repeating, “I know the difference between a yellow jacket and a honey bee! I have a degree in agriculture from the University of Florida!!!” Figures! (ok had to make the collegiate jab). Since there was no getting through to him, I just walked away for the second time even as the vocal bombardment continued.

When I got back to the lab, I immediately reported the incident because I could tell this guy was going to be trouble. Even though I normally wouldn’t cower under threats from a bully, I was concerned he would do something harmful to our bees since his farm butted up to the farm where our research colonies were located. We decided to load them up that evening and move them to a different location.

Moving bees is not fun, under any situation, or anytime of the year, however, when temperatures and humidity are high, it can make it hard on the beekeeper but even harder on the bees. Since we weren’t going too far, I wasn’t overly concerned. Most times, when we aren’t under dire conditions, we choose to move bees during the colder months, not the middle of the Summer. Anytime of year, when the day time temperatures are chilly enough to keep the bees in the hive, that’s when we choose to move them. Moving bees in the light of day is far less stressful than stuffing, strapping, loading, traversing roads and fields, unloading, placing, and un-stuffing entrances during the darkness of night. That’s why February is an excellent month to move bees since daytime temperatures are still relatively cool.

For those of you moving bees for the first time, there’s a few pointers that I’ve learned over the years. First and foremost, take your time!!!! Never, never, never get into a hurry while moving bees. Moving bees is not easy and when something goes wrong, it can be bad, really bad, dangerous even. So please, take your time, be prepared and always expect the unexpected. And, bring extra of everything and then some!

Before you ever pick up that first hive, make sure the location you plan to place the bees is ready for their new occupants. Prepare the area where you plan to put the hives by clearing any brush, or tall grass. I always keep several yards around the hive neat and tidy, especially in the front of the hive so it is navigable for the bees returning home. Plus, the apiary must have easy access with a truck and trailer. Once the spot you plan to place your bees is looking like the manor at Downton Abbey, you want to place and level the blocks or stands that the hives will rest upon. Very important that whatever you choose to place the hive(s) onto is sturdy and level! You don’t want the hive(s)to tip over, especially during the winter months when you may not notice them for days to weeks.

Once the location is ready, it’s time to get the moving gear in order. The following list is what we use to move bees. There are many different items you can choose, but this is what has helped us over the years safely move bees: trailer and/or bed of a pickup, smoker, pine straw, lighter, hive tools, moving straps, rope, duct tape, bungee cords, hive lifter, hand truck, material to stuff the entrance (Winter we use foam that completely closes off the entrance: Summer we use screen or wire mesh for ventilation), first aid kit, fire extinguisher, water bucket, tool box, hammer and nails, flashlights, and charged up cell phones. Hopefully, some of these items will never be used but it is always better to be safe than sorry. 

If temperatures are still warm, we suggest you move bees in the evening hours, to make sure all the girls have made it back home. Trust me, you don’t want to leave anyone behind. Not only will the poor little bees die, but they will not be happy that someone took their home away; TRUST ME on the latter. Even though in the above situation (summertime) we had to move bees during the evening hours, I strongly recommend that you move bees during the light of the day and during the colder months of Winter as I mentioned above. One more point here, since bees can be knocked out of the cluster while being moved, you may want to wait to relocate them if it is going to be bitterly cold since they will be unable to crawl back and will die. That is why we try to pick days where night-time temperatures are in the 30s to 40s and day time temps are in the 50s. We get to the apiary early in the morning and close the entrances before the bees are flying. By the time they are loaded and we are driving, the temps have warmed up enough so that if they do hit the bottom board, they will be able to crawl back up. February is a perfect month for us since there are always days that fall into the above temperature ranges.

Now that the apiary is prepared and the gear is loaded, ready, set, go. The first thing we do, whether cold or hot, light or dark, is smoke the entrances. This will cause the bees to go inside if any are lingering on the front porch. Then we close the entrances, paying close attention to any holes or cracks at the ends, so no bees can escape. After the entrances are securely closed, we strap the colonies. I prefer using moving straps as opposed to hive staples. I’ve had issues in the past with hive staples coming loose over time, allowing hive bodies to slip apart, and releasing bees. However, everyone has a method they prefer. For me, strapping colonies is easy and not too expensive. The main issue here is to make sure the straps are cinched down tight and the loose pieces are tied securely so that they’re not flapping around or getting tangled up.

After all the colonies are strapped it’s time to move them into the bed of the truck or onto a trailer. Two person hive lifters work nice for lighter colonies, or adjusting colonies once loaded but for the larger double-deeped, or triple-supered ones, a hand truck comes in “handy”. Word of caution here; if your bottom boards are screened, you need to make sure the tongue of the hand truck is long enough or wide enough to clear them. Otherwise, you may puncture your screen.

Once colonies are loaded it is very important that they are strapped to the trailer or the truck bed. Insert motto again: “Better to be safe than sorry!” Swerving to miss a critter in the middle of the road or having to stop suddenly to avoid crashing into the vehicle that just pulled out in front of you, can wreak havoc on unsecured hives. Sudden changes in direction or speed can result in hives tipping over and breaking apart, which is not a good thing! Now it’s time to take the girls to their new home. Try not to beat any speed records while pretending to be Mario Andretti, just take your time.

Unloading can be hard on the ole back, but I always breathe a sigh of relief once we and the girls have made it unscathed, and safely to our destination. Also, unloading colonies, especially heavy ones, can be tricky, so it’s always a good idea to have at least two people while moving bees. Slowly take bees off the trailer or back of the truck, being careful of top heavy colonies that tend to tip over.

Once the colonies are in place, it’s time to put on a veil, remove the straps and unplug entrances. Even if it is cold outside, I HIGHLY recommend you wear a veil at least. I’ve unstrapped and unscreened plenty of colonies over the years, and have learned to be ready to take off running, if need be. Our girls do not like being screened, loaded, unloaded and bounced down roads, therefore, they will come out and let you know how displeased they are, so be prepared; even a puff of smoke can help. Once they are successfully placed, unstrapped, and unscreened, check to make sure they are stable in their new location. After which, it is time to pack up the equipment, jump in the truck and head home for a warm cup of tea, or in his case a cold iced tea.

Even though the gentleman mentioned earlier was not very kind and very misinformed, it was a good idea to go ahead and remove the girls from potential harm. By the way, his flying hymenopteran problem didn’t go away even after the hives were gone. Hearing through the grape vine, they finally invested in tight fitting lids for the garbage cans and signage asking folks to keep the lids closed. Over the years, we’ve moved bees due to complaints about them landing in swimming pools or annoying guests while soaking in hot tubs. I always want to be mindful of our bees and don’t want them ever to be a problem, even when they’re not. Sometimes to be a good neighbor we have to just grin and bear it, even when we know we are right. Right?

Be good to you and your bees.

Jennifer Berry is the Research Leader at the University of Georgia Honey Bee Lab.

A new method may be better. Time will tell.

Jennifer Berry

Several months ago, Randy Oliver started writing about a new application method for oxalic acid (OA) on his Scientific beekeeping website. This particular method mixes OA with food-grade, vegetable glycerin. It is then applied to some sort of matrix (ie. shop towels, cardboard strips) and placed into colonies. Simple and cheap! He derived his information from a beekeeper in Argentina that had been experimenting with this method for several seasons and was showing promising results. So, Randy took it upon himself to test this latest procedure and write about it. This is what beekeepers do. They hear about something that might be working, and they try it, especially if it’s promising to kill mites (and cheaper than what is currently available). In a short time Randy was reporting success with the OA mixture. That’s when the switch board started lighting up here at the lab. I was getting phone calls and emails asking about how to mix, what to use, when will it be available, where can I get it, why can’t this be approved now???

My initial reaction to these inquiries was, whoa folks, let’s all take a breather. Yes, Randy has been getting some good results (which he continues to report) however, this has not yet been approved for use in the U.S. and has not been tested on a large scale. Also, Randy’s tests were on the West coast (hot and dry). What about our environment, hot and humid? Will it work here on the East coast? Do we need to change the concentration of OA, dosage amounts, delivery methods? Before every beekeeper in the southeast jumped on the OA/glycerin bandwagon (which could have potentially devastating results) I decided we needed to test it on the East coast ASAP. A large field trial to see if 1. Does it kill mites (90%+) in our area, and 2. Is it safe for our bees.

We needed numbers, so I called several Georgia commercial beekeepers that I knew would be willing to help. Our lab had the colonies but they were already involved in other experiments that would not allow any other interference. I also wanted to enlist the help of a neighboring university, since the trial was going to be a HUGE amount of work, and we were already stretched thin. After a few days, Shearer Turton, Dream Haven Farms (Cordele, Georgia), and Bob Binnie, Blue Ridge Honey Company (Lakemont, Georgia) were both willing to be a part of the study. This was perfect, a trial in South Georgia and one to the North. Plus, Dr. Geoff Williams from Auburn University agreed to collaborate on the study to help his beekeepers in Alabama, who were also eager to know whether this new method would work.

But let me back up a bit. For those of you new to the OA scene, let me give a little background information. Oxalic acid is an organic acid found just about everywhere in the environment, including plants and vegetables. It is bitter to the taste and irritating to the eyes, mouth and skin. It is a natural plant defense against herbivores. It is also found in honey. Since it is not fat soluble (a lipid), it doesn’t build up in wax comb. Back in 1957, it was registered as a pesticide (disinfectant/sanitizer), but, by 1994, the renewal of the product registration was cancelled. There are risks involved if you plan to use oxalic acid. Given its caustic effect on the eyes, skin and respiratory system, it’s labeled with the highest degree of toxicity, “Category 1.” So, as with all pesticides, caution must be taken when handling it.

As of right now, there are three application methods approved for use in honey bee colonies: trickle (dribble), vaporization (sublimation) and spraying. It can be used on existing colonies, packages or swarms. The two most popular are the trickle and vaporization method. The trickle method is prepared by mixing the 35g of acid with a warm, 1 liter 1:1 sugar-to-water solution. Next, the solution is drawn into a syringe and 5 ml is trickled (scientific term for “dribbly drop”) down the seam between each frame and directly onto the bees; the maximum dose is 50 ml per colony (5mls per seam). This method only works when little to no brood is present and temperatures are within the range of 35-55°F. The bees must be in a cluster in order for the OA to be distributed properly, otherwise the solution will not reach every bee, and hence be ineffective. This method works great here in the southeast between Christmas and New Year’s, when little to no brood is present. Also, one reason I use this method on my own bees, it works, it is not harmful when used properly and it’s fast to apply; about one or two minutes per colony depending on the number of supers. Also, it doesn’t matter whether it is a nuc or a full-size hive with a single or multiple brood chamber, but reduction in dosage for smaller colonies obviously.

A few words of caution here. First, only use the solution when it’s fresh and more importantly, never use on starving colonies. The bees will consume the mixture since it contains sugar, and this can cause them to die. And of course, you cannot use any of these methods if human consumable honey is present.

Vaporizer.

Next is the vaporization method, which is only to be used on colonies outdoors. And, whatever you do, do not inhale the vapor! Before you begin to VAP, light a smoker and see which direction the smoke is moving and always stay up wind from the colony being treated. Basically, you use a vaporizer, which is a metal wand with a plate at one end and a cord which connects to a battery at the other end. Oxalic acid is placed on the metal plate. The plate is then slid into the entrance of the colony. The entrance opening and any other cracks and crevices are then sealed with the vaporizer in place to avoid the vapor from escaping. Once connected to a battery, the heat from the plate causes the oxalic crystals to melt and turn into a gas (sublime). The vapor will permeate the hive and when it comes in contact with the mites, it kills them. Each vaporizer is different. Some take only a few minutes to activate the acid, while others take a little longer. Since you don’t have to open the colony to treat, this seems to be the easier of the two methods to implement, especially on cold, rainy days. However, more equipment is required (battery, wand, water, towels and respirator), and it does take longer.

You can also spray (mist) packages or swarms. Over the last few years, we’ve followed this protocol to ensure that we’re starting our research projects with mite-free bees. Once the packages arrived, we placed them in a cool, dark location in the lab for 24 hours for the bees to cluster. Several hours prior to applying the oxalic solution, we spray the bees with a 1:1 sugar solution to fill their honey stomachs and reduce ingestion of the upcoming oxalic treatment. Next, we mix the oxalic acid in a 1:1 sugar water solution and evenly apply the solution to the bees.

Why use oxalic? It works. It has been used for years in Europe. According to numerous studies, it’s 90-99% effective at killing the mites with minimal damage to the bees and brood.

Does trickle or vaporization work better? A recent study at Sussex University examined the effectiveness of different doses and application methods on mite and bee mortality. The experiment involved 110 hives. The results showed sublimation (vaporization) was far better at reducing mite populations and showed no increase in bee mortality.

Assessing colonies. Tedious work.

Is Oxalic perfect? No, it only works on phoretic mites, i.e., those mites crawling on the frames or adult bees. The mites breeding under the cappings of the brood cells are unaffected by oxalic administrations, as well as most other miticide products. Therefore, applications are most effective when no brood is present. At beekeeping meetings, when chatting about this product to others, I’ve heard folks say that they are applying oxalic once-a-week for three weeks during the Summer months. This isn’t advisable since it’s not very effective and can be detrimental to the bees. A recent study investigated this approach. Shearer Turton, the beekeeper I mentioned before, did a study where he applied the OA, three times, seven days apart. He had taken alcohol samples prior to the study and then several weeks after the OA sublimation took place. We analyzed the samples at our lab, and at first, this method seemed to be working. Mite loads were down considerably, especially compared to the controls. However, three months later we took alcohol samples again, and the mite populations had rebounded, twice that of their initial numbers. We are hoping to set up another trial next year to test this further, but for now we do not recommend this as a treatment regimen. However, there may be a way to still treat during Summer months.

Several years ago, a group of commercial beekeepers came over from Italy to learn about small hive beetles. The beetles have finally crossed the border and are wreaking havoc, especially in the southern regions. During our discussion, we also talked about Varroa control and what beekeepers do in Italy. They said they treated twice-a-year with oxalic acid vapor. They treat once in the winter when colonies are naturally broodless, and once again in the late Summer after inducing an artificial state of broodlessness by caging their queens for 21 days. At first, I thought this was nuts, but, after we talked a bit more, it made sense.

The Italians explained that by August or September, the nectar flows are over and the colonies are about to start producing winter bees. If mite populations are high, then the related virus loads that cause winter mortality will be high as well. Plus, by caging the queen, the foraging population (no longer needed) drops faster, and more colony resources (needed for Winter survival) are conserved. Why maintain a pipeline of replacement bees to sustain a large foraging force after the nectar flow is over? A hive full of bees eats regardless, whether there is work to be done or not. So, interrupting the brood cycle not only knocks down the mites (and the viruses vectored) prior to the Winter bees being reared, but reduces bee populations as well. Fewer mites equals improved health, and fewer bees equals less food consumed; both circumstances contribute directly to improved winter survival. You can cage the queen for 14 days, release her and then treat on day 21. That way all the mites are now running around without the protection of the wax capping. Yeah, I know that it is work to first cage and later release each queen, but think about the money and work it will save by Winter or next Spring!

Brushy Mountain Bee Farm has been authorized by the EPA to be the sole distributer of OA for use as a miticide on honey bees. What does this mean?  Well, for any application of oxalic (in beehives) to be legal, it must have the EPA approved label on it. Brushy is the only distributor registered to use the EPA label. It may seem silly, but it really is there for a reason. If you start searching the internet for OA application in bees, there’s a whole host of information out there on recipes for taking 100% OA down (wood bleach) to the 2 or 3% recommended application concentrations. Some advice may be sound, but other advice can be reckless and dangerous to you and your bees. Plus, OA purchased at your local hardware store may be only 95% pure. The material sold through Brushy Mountain Bee Farm is 99% pure. Certainly, you don’t want to get hurt or inflict undue stress on your bees. The EPA label assures you of what you are receiving and gives you the applicable instructions to follow so you can safely achieve the results desired without the risks of winging it after watching a YouTube video.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program and the current topic at hand: OA and vegetable glycerin. After much deliberation with EPA (Meredith Laws and Tom Steeger), USDA (David Epstein), USDA-ARS Bee Research Lab (Jay Evans), Randy Oliver, Geoff Williams and myself, we decided on a procedure to test the OA with the food grade vegetable glycerin using shop towels as our delivery matrix. The protocol we used is as follows. There are four treatment groups, each with 50 colonies/group. Two of the groups will receive the shop towels with the OA mixture at different concentrations; one with 12g and the other with 18g. The towels are applied to the top bars in the brood chamber. The other two groups are the controls, one with shop towels and glycerin only and the other with no shop towels at all. Once we were all on the same page it was time to get to work.

UGA and Auburn Crew after two long days in the watermelon patch. From left to right Shearer Turton, Jennifer, Nicholas, Jack, Augusta, Will, Selina, Geoff, and Emily.

Back in June of this year, the UGA Bee Lab crew along with the Auburn University Lab folks took a trip to Cordele, Georgia where Shearer Turton’s colonies were located. He had 200 colonies placed in and around a 200-acre watermelon field. If I may elaborate for just a minute. South Georgia, in June, in an open field, in full sun, can be devastatingly hot. Oh, and don’t forget about the gnats, they have no problem getting into your veil. Anyway, it took us three days to number, weigh, count bees & brood (colony assessments), collect 300 bees and apply the shop towels. Doing colony assessments gives us beginning bees and brood populations (to test if the treatment has any detrimental effects on the bees) and the 300 bees we wash with alcohol to give us beginning mite numbers (to test if the product is actually working). After the fourth of July, we traveled back down to Cordele (where it was still hot) and collected the same data as before, along with % of the towels removed. At this point, we have only finished crunching about a ¼ of the data, but the trend is looking good. Mite loads are reduced in the colonies with the OA towels. But, and this is a big BUT, we still have lots of data to finish analyzing. Plus, we need to get the numbers from our Northern trials as well (which we started up the first week in August) before we can clearly determine if this method is working and not hard on our bees, brood and queens.

UGA lab crew weighing colonies.

Next month, I hope to have the data completed from our Southern trial but we won’t have numbers yet from out Northern trial. Let’s just hope this works, REALLY works, so we the beekeeper, can have a reliable method of mite control that is not harmful to the environment, won’t get absorbed into our wax, is easy on our bees and our pocket books, and can be applied in hot weather when other treatments can’t due temperatures restrictions. Boy wouldn’t this be nice? But before I go, I need to give shout out to Randy Oliver for taking the “OA bull by the horns” and introducing us all to hopefully a whole new way of treating for mites. Because at the end of the day, it is ALL about keeping those mites/viral loads down, if we want to keep our bees alive.

Take care of you and your bees!

Jennifer Berry is the Research Leader at the University of Georgia Honey Bee Lab.

The thought of taking a 12-24 hour old larvae and transforming it into a queen is amazing.

Jennifer Berry

It’s been almost 20 years since I started rearing queens, and, believe it or not, I still find it just as exciting as when I first started. There’s something magical about raising your own queens. Taking an average worker larvae and sending her down the path to queendom and lifting her into a life as a royal instead of just another “one of the girls.” Hmm, this reminds me of something from when I was a little girl. Ahhh yes, Cinderella and the Disney effect, where all little girls want to be converted into the beautiful princess!

You know the story. Once upon a time there was a young girl who was being mistreated, and hence felt downtrodden and unappreciated. Until one day, a magical fairy Godmother fluttered out of nowhere and began to transform the poor soul. She started by flicking her wand and poof, the perfect makeup flawlessly applied. Another swoosh and bam! Her tangled locks swirled into an awesome hairdo. Next, the Fairy Godmother spun her about and the tattered jeans and t-shirt disappeared being replaced with a beautiful gown decked out with all sorts of bling. But the best part, when the magic truly took place, was when she stepped into sparkling, glass slippers and KaBOOM! she was a princess to die for!!! You remember how the rest of the story goes. After this amazing transformation takes place, she soon gets the attention of the handsome prince who sweeps her off her feet, places her atop his steed and gallops off into the sunset to live happily ever after in his awesome palace.

Instead of wishing that I could be the princess, now I relate more to being the fairy Godmother, especially when I raise queens. Ok, there are some slight differences here, I’m not able to change pumpkins into carriages or mice into horses, but, a worker into a queen.

So, why did I start rearing my own queens? Several reasons, actually. First of all, the idea really intrigued me. The thought of taking a 12-24 hour old larvae and transforming it into a functioning, robust queen, sounded amazing. Next, I wanted to start selecting for specific traits, such as hygienic behavior (to combat mites), increased brood production (for better honey production), and gentleness (tired of working bees with an attitude). But the main reason I started to raise my own queens (and the lab’s), I was tired of queens not being accepted or only lasting a few months before being superseded. In other words, I wanted superior, kick-butt queens heading up my colonies that lasted more than a season. This has proven to not be an easy task, but worth it in the long run.

One day, after years of rearing queens, someone asked if I could teach them how to do it. Sure, I thought. This will be fun. Next thing I know, I’m teaching several classes each year. To date I’ve taught queen rearing classes in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ireland, England and at various bee meetings across the U.S. Teaching has always been a highlight for me, especially when I’m teaching about something I LOVE to do: rearing awesome queens.

However, in the last few years I decided to start teaching classes at my farm in Georgia. The decision to stop teaching classes at various meetings and concentrate on having folks come to my farm? Well, it came about due to a few things actually. When I held classes in other locations, there always seemed to be something out of place. It wasn’t a bad experience, not at all. The problem was, I didn’t have complete control over the classrooms, or the bees, or the lunches, or the number of students, or instrument availability, or the equipment, or the lighting, or – I decided to only teach classes at our farm in Comer, Georgia so I could have complete control over everything. When you are teaching about how to rear superior queens, everything must be in order, otherwise the students may miss out on something.

Jennifer and Ricky posing in paradise. Check out the blue water in the distance.

With that said, I still teach queen rearing to folks in other countries and in prisons throughout Georgia since it’s a bit difficult to get either 20 students from Nicaragua or inmates out of prison transported to my farm. In these situations it makes more sense for me to travel to them. Plus, it gives me an excuse to travel to some amazing places. This past February I had the wonderful opportunity to teach the first ever queen rearing class in Exuma, one of the many beautiful islands of the Bahamas. Reason it was the first class, well Exuma did not have bees until just recently.

How did the bees come to be? Let’s start from the beginning. Exuma, like I mentioned, is a small island district, which is part of the Bahamas. The island is fairly isolated and surrounded by water (imagine, it’s an island). Bees would have a hard time traveling there since the island is a good distance from the mainland. It’s also fairly new to tourism. Because of this, years ago, a group of concerned citizens formed the Exuma Foundation. In their own words, “The Mission of The Exuma Foundation is to enhance the quality of life for the people of the island of Exuma in the Bahamas, both now and for future generations to come, by encouraging and managing gifts for operating, capital, and endowment, by addressing community needs through grant making, and by providing philanthropic leadership. The Exuma Foundation (Bahamas) Ltd. seeks to maintain an environmentally sustainable campus that is a catalyst for the educational and community enrichment programs as well as a model of Exuma’s indigenous flora and fauna environment.”

Kevin Brown of Cat Island, Catherine Booker of Exuma Foundation and Dr. Deandra Delancey of the Ministry of Agriculture.

As you can see, there is a good bit of emphasis to preserve the integrity of the island while encouraging education. Since one of the Foundation’s objectives is education and community programs, in 2014, they hired Catherine Booker as their Environmental Educator. For the past several years her objectives have been to help educate folks of all ages about the importance of protecting the environment (land and sea) and encourage small, sustainable agricultural cottage industries, like beekeeping, for instance. She’s also involved with several community initiatives, particularly those that promote marine conservation and national parks, such as the Elizabeth Harbor Conservation Partnership and the Bahamas National Trust. Since she is originally from Savannah and a UGA graduate, she connected with Ted Dennard from Savannah Bee Company and asked for assistance in getting bees to the island. It took a while but they finally managed to bring Apis mellifera to the sapphire blue waters of Exuma.

Months later Ted called me and queried if I’d be interested in helping them out by teaching queen rearing and beekeeping. Hmmmm, so let me get this right, you want me to teach queen rearing, on a beautiful island, with crystal clear waters, in January, in the Bahamas, AND get to work bees and teach about rearing queens? Whoa, I need to think about this, for like two seconds. YES, count me in!

First queen rearing class in Exuma.

So far, the beekeeping venture in Exuma has been a huge success. The bees are extremely gentle, and they’re disease free. That’s right, no American or European Foul Brood. But, best of all, they are mite-free! Whaaaattt??? That’s right, no mites!!! Oh, and no small hive beetles either. They are so healthy, so calm, so sweet, so perfect! I was in heaven working these amazing bees. It brought me back to a time, in the good ole days, before the introduction of mites. Back in the era when bees could be bees! Think about it: mite free, beetle free, disease free, aggression free colonies. It was paradise in so many ways, for the bees and me.

While I was there, I taught two classes: one for advanced students (queen rearing) and a beginning beekeeping course. There were around 15-20 students per section. It couldn’t have been better classes. The students were all so excited to learn everything there was about bees but there were two students in particular that really got my attention.

Charlton Taylor grafting for the first time.

Whenever I begin a queen rearing class, I start off by asking, why are you here? Why do you want to rear your own queens? This gives me some perspective on what the students expect to get out of the class. And this class had many of the same comments that I’ve heard over the years. “I’m here for the learning experience,” or, “I’m here hoping to expand my honey bee operation”. But this time, I heard something that I hadn’t heard before. “I’m here because I want to rear a better Buckfast bee!”. The student’s name was Charlton Taylor, and this was his reason for taking the class. That’s great! A better Buckfast bee. It’s definitely become my favorite answer to date.

Learning how to mark queens isn’t easy, so we start with drones.

Sitting next to him was his younger brother (and the youngest student I’ve ever had the wonderful opportunity to teach), Ceon Taylor. He too had an answer I had not heard before. “I’m here to help my brother, however I’m in charge of all the honey extracting, bottling and labeling. I will be involved with more of the creative side of beekeeping and leave the bees, stings, and heat to my brother.” Perfect. These guys make the perfect team and perfect business partners since both are extremely intelligent, motivated and willing to work. Another thing about these two exceptional students that I really appreciated, they did not falter for one minute during the eight hour-long lectures over two-days! Not once did I see the tired, droopy eye-lid syndrome (the one that usually attacks right after lunch). Nor did I see any restless movements, foot tapping or wondering eyes. No sighs of boredom or head-rolling, and no drowsy head bobs. I tell you what, for two young men, ages 12 and 14, I was very impressed. No way would I have ever been able to sit there for two days and not have even a single eye closure.

Happy colonies.

It’s been five months now since I was there, and, so far, the bees are still doing great. Some students from the classes received a free beehive, complete with bees while other students have helped with extracting and bottling honey. The jars are being sold in souvenir shops around the island to help support the beekeeping program. Something else that came out of the class; several of the students were able to fly to Georgia and attend our Young Harris Beekeeping Institute this past May. They also took the certified exam and did exceptionally well.

There are several challenges for the bees of Exuma. One is the bottlenecking of genetics, since only a few colonies from a single source were initially brought onto the island. But the more severe issue facing them would be the illegal importation of bees, which will bring along the most deadly parasite of all: Varroa. But for now, the bees are happy, disease, beetle and mite free. Yep, they’re all singing away as they’re flying about the island, possibly a song from another Disney film, which I’m sure you’ll remember . . . Be good to you and your bees!

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh, my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin’ my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!

Jennifer Berry is the Research Leader at the University of Georgia Honey Bee Lab.

When bees are being shaken for packages, nurse bees, drones and the queen often end up in the shaking basket. The nurse bees go through to a cage below. The queen and drones are returned to the colony by turning the basket over and dumping it on the top of the hives’s frames. Or the queen may be captured and crushed on the ground, allowing for the colony to be requested the next day.

The young worker looked at the owner, dumbfounded. “You want me to kill all the queens I find in these colonies?”

The owner skillfully and carefully explained his request, “This yard contains mostly two-year old queens. This Spring we have shaken these colonies for mating boxes, pulled out frames of brood for cell builders, and today you are shaking nurse bees for packages. This is the second time we have shaken these colonies for packages. It is time to smash her with your hive tool and I will come through tomorrow to introduce newly mated queens.”

The worker looked at him quizzing, so the owner went on, “This way we will have an entire yard filled with young queens for the almonds and for shaking bees next year. We must constantly plan ahead.”

The queens the worker was asked to crush were beautiful – long and productive egg layers. It takes a strong manager to order the replacement of hundreds of queens like her. “I have learned that the most important queen customer our business has is ourselves,” the beekeeper explained. “Customers may be crying for queens, but If we don’t take queens out of our production and sales cycle and replace our old queens with new, we will be in trouble next season.”

Few of us can even begin to understand the experiences the scale of a large queen rearing and package bee operator. But we should all re-read what the queen producer said about replacing a good-looking queen and planning for next season. We will discuss some of the conditions under which the average beekeeper should replace young queens, or queens that are doing a great job but we expect will reach the end of its productive live in a few months or over the Winter.

Replacing Young Queens in Packages and Nuclei Colonies

More and more beekeepers are replacing queens soon after they received their new package colonies, or even in nucleus colonies. Generally, they let the original queens build the colony to a level they find acceptable, while feeding the bees, monitoring mite loads and searching for brood diseases. They allow one to three months of the original queen’s brood to develop and emerge so they may evaluate the queen’s workers for productivity and defensiveness. 

This is especially true for areas on the fringe of African honey bee occupation. Most northern beekeepers do not want colonies that have queens that have mated with one or more African drones, or drones that are hybrids of European and African races.  Beekeepers must monitor colony behavior, especially in urban and suburban locations, and one to three months is adequate for this monitoring. Commercial beekeepers tolerate a degree of subtle Africanization and will most likely move the bees back to their southern location at the end of the honey season. Most small-scale and semi-professional beekeepers cannot tolerate the risk of stinging attacks to ruin a good location. The other aspect of elimination of African-tainted queens is the potential for decreased wintering success. I am not sure that this is actually happening, but why take the chance? Most beekeepers do not want or need to increase their problems with getting bees through the Winter in good condition.

Two California queen cages, containing one queen and workers in each cage. These are shipped in packages or in battery boxes by overnight delivery.

In a wider evaluation of queens that come in package colonies and nucleus hives, beekeepers are frequently dissatisfied that these queens are suitable for the conditions in their local area. This appears to address a lack of adaptiveness or genetic fit. A queen raised in California or Georgia may have traits for New York or South Dakota, but usually only when the breeder stock that provided larvae for the grafting rooms was selected in these areas on an intentional and rigorous basis. We talk more and more about Localized Queens or Survivor Stocks. A queen found in a swarm or a bee tree may represent most anything genetically, while a line of related queens that has been carefully selected over many years may be ideal for the Sun Belt queen producer to use in packages and nuclei production.

More and more I hear of northern beekeepers and queen rearing cooperatives programs providing key breeder queens to queen and queen cell producers in Sun Belt states to provide stock for their needs.

Large commercial queen producers have other strategies to produce genetically improved queens. In California, the work by Sue Cobey is evident in operations like Valery Strachan’s Strachan Apiaries in Yuba City. Valarie produces 200 instrumentally-inseminated breeder queens every June for her evaluation. Half of the queens are used as grafting mothers in her operation the following year, while the remaining queens are sold. There is apparently a long list of people waiting for these queens. The stock started as New World Carniolian.

Other large queen producers have one or more lines of queens that they develop in isolation in northern locations over the summer, or, in some cases, produce under agreement with the producer of the stock. This was the basis of the old Starline program that I ran from 1976 to 1980.  While that stock is no longer available, Buckfast queens are being produced in Ontario and the Olivarez Honey Bee operation is producing Italian, Carniolian and Saskatraz queens in Hawaii, Northern California and Montana. To do this, separate areas are established to maintained to provide some degree of mating isolation for the production queens.

Requeening to obtain a desired stock

Not all packages and nuclei contain the queens you eventually want to develop new hives. Like the young employee learning how to manage an apiary, you must learn to replace a young or seemingly productive queen with the stock you want. If you are unable to smash the queen with a hive tool, you could use the queen to install into a support nucleus colony (brood factory) or use her to be the star of an observation hive.

Some young queens have problems, such as poor mating (running out of sperm in a month or two after starting to lay), were damaged during shipping by overheating, or were exposed to miticide during development. You cannot and must not continue with these queens.

If you install a queen that came in a package of bees and she dies during introduction or she never starts to lay, or if she disappears, you should contact your package bee supplier for an immediate replacement.

If you have a laying queen, you must find and remove her. In smaller colonies you can go through the combs, frame by frame. Set aside each frame so the queen cannot crawl back to frames you just inspected. Use an empty hive body for that, or set the frames, on their ends, against a hive body or secure structure so the frames cannot crush bees and the queen. Search all frames for a second queen, just in case.

When you find the queen, pinch off her head or crush her with the hive tool. Toss her body some distance away from the hive so the bees are not confused by her body’s presence. Once killed, pheromone production comes to an end.

There is debate about how soon you can introduce the new queen. I do it immediately after the old queen is gone. Once introduced, I delay the release of the new queen for three to seven days, depending on her relatedness to the bees in the colony and cost of the queen. Unrelated and expensive queens are held in the colony for five to seven days so there is plenty of time for the queen’s pheromone to mix with the bees, and for the queen’s ovaries to swell and produce abundant eggs, even in the cage. With three hole and California queen cages, leave the cork in the end of the cage. You may put a piece of duct tape over the end so the bees cannot (or are slowed) chew out the cork. If you use a Jz’s-Bz’s queen cage, use the plastic cap on the nipple of the cage, which is filled with queen candy.

When you return, enter the colony with a minimum of smoke and gently remove the cork or plastic cap and return the queen cage to the same location for emergence. Look at the queen while you do this, as you do not want to release a queen that has been damaged by the bees. After the cap or cork are removed, return the cage and gently close the hive.

In seven to 10 days you can return to check the queen is released and laying. With mated queens this should be around 98% successful. Unfortunately, there is always the risk of losing a few queens during introduction.

Finding the queen in a large hive

If you received your package or nucleus in April, and it is now late June or July, you should have a large colony. You ask, How Do I Requeen That?

This is where many beekeepers give up on requeening, saying that the queen must be great because the colony is so large and producing honey. If this makes sense to leave the queen you have saved some work. But ask yourself – will this colony be alive next March?

If the answer is NO (based on poor experience, perhaps with Italian bees brooding up all Fall and into the Winter), then you need to find and replace the queen.

Taking a method from crews that shake bees for packages, you should shake all the bees in a hive through a queen excluder. With a little smoke, the bees will move through the excluder and leave the drones and the queen above the excluder. Keep the drones, but remove the queen and pinch her.

Reassemble the colony and introduce your new queen (kept in a cool place while all this was going on). Make sure you place her in the middle of the brood nest.

Using queen cells

During the nectar flow, many beekeepers introduce a queen cell to the honey super (no queen excluder on the hive) and let the young queen and old queen determine hive politics.

For the Saskatraz queen program (http://saskatraz.com/pages/articles.htm), an agreement was developed with the Canadian producers of the stock. Here is a section of the report of their 2015 program:

“Every year colonies are selected for honey production, overwintering ability, temperament, mite resistance and brood diseases. Selections are made from at least 1500 colonies per year at Meadow Ridge apiaries [in Saskatchewan]. In addition, selections contributed (exchange of queen cells, etc.) by other Saskatchewan beekeepers are also evaluated. Some of the selected colonies are placed in natural selection apiaries to test for mite resistance (recurrent natural selection), others are placed in separate apiaries to evaluate honey production and other traits. Breeder queens are selected after two to three year evaluations and virgin queens from selected breeders are crossed (close population mated) at natural selection apiaries to improve varroa tolerance, and at apiaries with selections for high honey production to maintain productivity. In the last few years we have set up a natural selection apiary with colonies bred for high VSH activity, and in 2015 an apiary with colonies selected to produce diverse drones from colonies selected for economic traits (honey production, wintering ability, and varroa tolerance) from 7 different Saskatraz families. This should maintain genetic diversity as well as enriching for alleles carrying beneficial traits.

“Saskatraz queens mated at these apiaries undergo preliminary evaluation (brood pattern, temperament, etc.), and are sent to Orland California in late September of each year. The progeny from these queens are screened for viruses (DWV, IAPV, and KBV) and microsporidia (Nosema apis and ceranae). This information is used to make final selections in California. In 2015 we sent 120 queens to be reselected in March 2016. They are established in colonies after dequeening resident California queens. Colonies are treated for varroa about 30 days prior to introducing Saskatraz queens. Treatments in 2015 were in August with Apivar strips.

“Over the last few years the California Tech Transfer Team, Bee informed Partnership has independently evaluated our Saskatraz breeding stock in late February early March. Evaluation included hygienic testing (uncapped, removed), colony strength (frames of brood), brood pattern (1-poor to 5-best), queen status, temperament (1- best to 5- poor), color, varroa infestation (Mites per Hundred Bees) and nosema spore count.

“In mid-March Albert Robertson does the final colony evaluations and selects approximately 10 to 20 of the best queens to graft from. Final selections include evaluations for colony strength, phoretic varroa, varroa in drone and worker brood, brood pattern, brood diseases (chalk brood etc.), and temperament. Saskatraz hybrids are produced from these breeders to distribute to Canadian beekeepers.”

Connor is teaching queen rearing in classes this month in Clarkson, KY and Little Rock, AK. Email him for the latest information regarding class structure and registration at ljconnor@aol.com. Connor plans to be at the HAS meeting in July, EAS in July-August, and WAS in Sepetember. He calls it the trifecta of regional bee meetings.

In Nature

Larry Connor

In Nature, queen replacement is a family event. When a queen is being a replaced, the worker bees recognize the new queen as the daughter of their mother. In other words, the queen is a sister – sharing half of her genetic make-up with the workers. A portion of the workers are full sisters (often called super sisters) of the queen because they also share the same father. They are more closely related than the workers that have different fathers.

The three methods of queen replacement – supersedure, swarming and emergency replacement – use sisters as new queens. While the mechanism or motivation of queen replacement vary with these methods, the result in Nature is the same – the new queen is genetically related to the workers.

Queen Detection

Queen cell cutting.

This all links to the workers’ detection of a new queen, and how they respond to her. Workers respond to their sister queen from the time the queen is deposited in a queen cup (making it a queen cell), and at every stage of the queen’s development. Here is a step-by-step summary of this activity:

Egg in queen cup – Since the egg in the cell is apparently the same as an egg in a worker cell, we conclude that the queen factors attracting bees and causing feeding behavior is triggered by the size, shape and position of the queen cup.

Larva in queen cell – Once the egg hatches, the bees feed her a diet of royal jelly. Wait a minute, during the first 48 to 50 hours of a worker and drone bee’s life, they are also fed royal jelly! Thus the food must not be the initial trigger for queen recognition. It must be the size, shape and position of the queen cup, the same as the egg. There is strong evidence that the queen larva receives more food during the first two days of feeding than the worker. She also is living in a cell that is built into a queen cell. The trigger is there to develop this sister into a queen.

As the cell grows, the worker bees respect it. The cell inserts or hangs in the ‘sacred’ bee space, and if it was anything else it would be torn down, retrofitted or covered with wax and propolis.

As the queen pre-pupae (the last stage of larval development) and the pupae mature, the bees start to detect small amounts of queen pheromone (queen substance).

There is often competition between developing queen cells, especially in emergency response queen cells. A colony may start many queen cells, but will eventually trim (destroy) the numbers to a dozen or more queen cells. Possible explanations for elimination of these developing cells include: genetically defective queen larva/pupa, lack of relatedness to the majority of worker bees, poor feeding, and bad location on the comb. Few beekeepers can predict which cells the bees will destroy and which they will continue with development. Random ‘luck’ or the lack of it may be a larger factor than we realize. Developing queens cannot go back to being worker bees once the process begins.

Virgin queen.

Mature queen cells, a term we use to describe cells within 24 hours of emergence, are very attractive to worker bees. Sometimes they remove the wax covering off the tip of the cell and expose the silk cocoon underneath. It is thought that the workers are making close contact or inspection of the queen’s pheromone production. So, even before a queen emerges, the pupa produces a simple queen pheromone signature that workers use to recognize the cell, and later on, the newly emerged queen.

Newly emerged queen – I enjoy watching queens emerge from their cells. They often crawl out of the cell and walk to an open cell of honey and take a long drink. Or they will be fed by worker bees. They are clearly recognized as a queen but at a lower level than when she is a year old. Young queens immediately start searching the hive for their same-age sister queens and queen cells in order to kill them.

12-hour old queen – Queens seem to experience an increase in pheromone production once they hit the first half day of their life. From this point on, the queen must be handled as a queen, and provided with a proper delay in introduction. We will discuss this below.

Newly mated queen – After successful mating, queens produce egg-laying hormones that correlates with an increase in the production of new queen pheromones. These additional chemicals continue to be added as the queen ages.

Year-old queen – At the one-year mark, queens seem to be at their peak queen pheromone production level. This correlates with their period of maximum output as a queen, laying one to two thousand eggs per day during the peak season.

Failing queens – Along with a reduction in egg-laying rate, failing queens (regardless of age) appear to experience a reduction or change in their queen pheromone production. I suspect the two are related, as anytime we see a colony with about half of the brood of surrounding colonies, we often see, or will see, developing supercedure cells.

What this means to the beekeeper

Unrelated stocks are hard to requeen while genetically related stocks are easier to requeen. Unrelated bee stocks will experience a lower queen introduction rate, lower longevity of the queens (as seen in early supersedure) and other problems. When I ran the Starline program in the 1970s, one of the inbred lines – the F line – was of a Carniolan origin while the other three inbred lines used in the four-way hybrid were developed from Italian colonies. When we raised drones from the F line, we had to introduce new queens into colonies that carried that F line in their pedigree. Otherwise we experienced poor queen acceptance and early queen replacement.

Today we have heard stories about beekeepers experiencing difficulty introducing certain queen lines into their hives or nuclei. One that receives a great deal of attention is the Russian strain released by USDA and maintained by a bee breeder cooperative.

Queen in cage with workers.

Time – Regardless of the age of the queen, take your time during queen introduction. For same-race queens you can easily use a three to five day delay in the introduction process, while for different-race queens you should use a five to seven day delay before the new queen is allowed to emerge from a queen cage. This often means you, as beekeeper, need to make a return visit to remove the cork or plug from the candy end of the queen cage.

Young workers – As you set up colonies for queen introduction, make sure they are filled with emerging worker bees, so the new queen has a large number of ‘naive’ workers – those that have never been adult bees in the presence of another queen – to care for the new queen and help her grow the colony. This is especially true when you are building nuclei or increase colonies. Use the Doolittle method or another method to ensure that you have plenty of young bees in your new colony.

Incoming food – Make sure that colonies being requeened (or packages with a new queen being released) are well fed and are receiving supplemental sugar syrup to increase the acceptability of the queen. Why is this important? We know that bees share a community stomach, sharing food with one another. During this feeding process they are also sharing the odor of the queen. When you put a new queen into a cage and leave her between two frames of brood, do not expect all the worker bees to walk over to the queen cage and get their allotment of queen pheromone. The bees use a smaller number of worker bees to serve as the queen’s retinue (attendants), and the identity of these bees continually changes. After a worker has fed or groomed the queen, she will walk out onto the comb and spread the odor of the queen, not unlike the human who has been exposed to high levels of radiation and exposes others as she walks away from the location of exposure. Queen pheromones are not radioactive, thankfully, but the impact on the colony is highly significant to colony success and queen acceptance. The presence of a jar/can/feeder of syrup will greatly increase queen introduction success. Yes, even during a nectar flow.

This is why it is so hard to introduce queens during a dearth, a period when there is no food for the bees to gather. Most experts recommend that you not introduce queens during a dearth, and if you must, feed the colonies starting a week in advance so they are strong and well fed. More important, they are sharing food and will quickly share the new queen’s pheromone.

Why queens in package colonies often fail

Queen cage with cap removed.

If you must purchase package bees (and this is often the only option for new beekeepers), keep in mind a few facts about the queen in the package you purchase:

The queen is not related to the bees. This is not the mother of these bees. At best, she has been a queen of a small mating nucleus for the matter of a few days before she was removed and added to a two to four-pound box-o-bees shaken from colonies located miles away.

The queen is young, and has not developed her full set of pheromones. She has produced a few hundred to a few thousand eggs before she was picked out of a mating nucleus and sent to you.

The queen introduction cage has a candy plug that may be removed to liberate the queen. Keep the candy plug or cork in place for three to five days after you set up the colony. This allows the bees time to spread her pheromone throughout the colony. Yes, I know the colony is small. Delay her release.

Feed the colony. As we just discussed, feeding increases pheromone communication between the queen and her new bees.

Why purchased queens often fail

Virgins in cages.

Many beekeepers use queen cells, virgin queens and mated queens with tremendous success, between 95 and 99% acceptance. At other times, beekeepers experience a very low acceptance rate. Here are a few factors that may contribute to queen introduction failure:

The queen may be very different from the bees in the hive, and they may be difficult to requeen. Increase the time the queen is in the cage and make sure the colony is well fed during the requeening process.

The queen has been in-transit, either in a queen cage with a few workers or in a battery box with a larger number of bees. When a queen is surrounded by four to six worker bees, she is not being well fed because the workers are not being well fed. The cage probably has a small amount of queen candy (sugar and water) and is designed to keep the bees alive. Once you receive your queens, give them all the honey they can consume (in small amounts, not a bath) and water. These bees are dehydrated.

Queens in transit are sometimes subjected to hot, dry conditions and will never recover. This is a risk of shipping queens.

Off season queens are often stored and then removed from queen banks, and have lost a great deal of weight. Their ovaries are shrunken and they are not producing much pheromone. Feed and hold for a full week before releasing.

Read more about queen handling and requeening in the following publications:

Flottum: The Backyard Beekeeper, 3^rd Edition

Connor: Queen Rearing Essentials, 2^nd Edition

Connor: Increase Essentials, 2^nd Edition, Using the Doolittle Concept and Chapter 9 Queen Care

Dr. Connor is teaching queen rearing classes in several locations this season. Check it out in www.wicwas.com.

Keeping Records

Beekeeping is a multisensory experience. 

You don’t just see the bees, you listen to them, you breathe in the scent of the hive: a mix of honey, propolis, and wood so strong you can taste it. You feel a bee walking on you or the sharp burn of a sting. It’s hot in a bee suit and veil, hair tickles your nose when you already need to sneeze, and sneezing inside the veil is a special experience. Beekeeping is so glamorous.

This is part of why keeping bees is wonderful and why it’s easy to resent anything that gets in the way of that experience. Like record keeping.

Everyone talks about the importance of records, and we all know we’re supposed to do it. But record keeping is a challenge. It’s not clear what to track, how, or when. There’s a lot of possible data to gather, and it’s a pain to gather quickly, especially when you’re wearing a bee suit and gloves. And because it’s a pain and a nuisance, many people just don’t bother to do it.

But keeping records is a concrete way of tracking what you’ve done and what you’ve tried. It gives you a picture of your hives at a specific time as well as helps you see long-term patterns in queen productivity, disease outbreaks, and treatment effectiveness. Keeping records also allows you to be directed in your tasks. We all need to get into and out of the hive as quickly as possible. A quick review of your notes from a previous visit helps you get what you need to get done with minimal disruption.

Let’s say you’re committed to keeping records and you have the best of intentions. But how do you tackle this beast? As with most things, start by figuring out what your goals are. What information you track, how, and how often are all determined by what you need to help you achieve your goals. Perhaps this season you want to

• Test a new hive configuration or a new piece of equipment
• Produce more honey, beeswax, pollen, or nucs and queens
• Try a new location
• Expand your apiary

Whatever your goals are, ask yourself what you need to know to see if you’re getting there.

It’s easy to make grand plans to keep highly detailed, high-tech records when it’s winter and you’re sitting in a comfy chair, sipping cocoa and wearing bunny slippers. It’s a different story when it’s 94° in the beeyard and you’re sweating like people you read about in books. So as you think about what you absolutely need to know, also think about when you need to know it. For example, do you need weather data? Possibly yes, if you’re trying to figure out why a queen is underperforming and want to know if it was raining when she was ready for her mating flight, but you can get that from numerous websites when necessary. So do you need to record that info during every routine hive inspection? Probably not.

The idea here is to separate the data you could capture from the data you need to capture to get information that will help you help your bees.

Designing your plan of attack

Your approach to tracking hive activities doesn’t have to be complicated. Perhaps you just need a memory aid to help you remember what you have to do after an inspection. One beekeeper we know changes the positions of the bricks atop his hives to cue him about what’s going on inside. Another makes notes on duct tape on the top cover with a Sharpie.

While these methods are easy and don’t require expensive equipment – and some record keeping is better than none – they don’t give you much information over time. For example, how do these beekeepers prepare for the next hive inspection if the information about the last visit is in the beeyard? How do they compare what happened last season with this season? How do they track where they got their queens or when they treated for Varroa and with what? How do they remember which hive is the one with the frame that needs to be replaced?

The two biggest record-keeping issues are accuracy and timeliness. The information needs to be complete and recorded as close to real time as is practicable. (“Principles of Record-Keeping Practices” from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website has many helpful suggestions.) “Real-time” and “accurate” are closely related. To keep real-time records requires tools that are easy to use, inexpensive, robust, and flexible enough to use on-site and that yield the results accurate enough to be useful.

We use a simple worksheet that we fill out during hive inspections. This is the information that helps us remember the status and day-to-day needs of a specific hive and helps us see patterns and changes over time. We keep a tight lid on what we track because anything that isn’t useful just gets in the way.

There are other worksheets available that you can find online (some are free and some you have to pay for). If they work for you, great. If not, figure out why not. Maybe a slight change would make them useful. Again, keep your goals in mind. The point is to gather what you need to know, when you need to know it, so you can see if you’re meeting your goals. See the sidebar, “Information is power,” for more.

Taking it high-tech

Some people swear that the best way to manage your record keeping is with an app. There are several available, with some by paid subscription. Many use cloud services to retain your data, so you can access the app and your data through any Internet-enabled device, which could be handy if you want to use such a device while working your bees.

A few things about these tools give us pause. First, if you can’t access the Internet or don’t have a cell signal in the yard, you may be out of luck. Several apps allow for offline use, but not all, so if your yard is out of range, the app won’t work. Also, some of these apps upload to the cloud whether you want to or not, and if you have limited data, you may incur fees.

Second, using apps in the field is messy. Literally. Take out a cell phone or other touch-enabled device and watch as it’s splattered with beeswax, pollen, nectar, and propolis. Trying to use a cell phone, much less a tablet, while working bees is clumsy. You’re holding a frame with a hive tool in one hand while the other hand is trying to thumb-tap notes on a sticky screen. Of course, you can wait until after you’ve finished your inspection to enter the data while still in the yard, but while nitrile gloves work fine on a Samsung Galaxy’s touch screen, crud-covered leather gloves don’t. You’d have to take them off to get the app in the beeyard to work and who has time for that?

And when you inevitably drop the device, better hope it doesn’t land in the middle of a full-to-bursting honey frame. (On the other hand, while you may have to deal with a record-setting level of stickiness, your phone will taste better than any cell phone on the planet. Just don’t be licking it in public because people will take video and post it on YouTube. While Internet fame sounds fun, do you really want to be known internationally as the Phone Licker?)

That said, apps could be useful in our apiary in the future, with a little further refinement and the ability to customize easily. One feature we’ll suggest to developers now is support for speech-to-text conversion with audio prompts. That way, you could keep your phone in your pocket and hear reminders about the tasks you need to do for a specific hive on that day, and be asked a set of questions, to which you reply from a set of given values, such as yes or no, or a number. That data could be dropped into a spreadsheet or other tool automatically for further analysis out of the hot sun.

Getting down to business

Regardless of the tools you use or the data you want to capture, you start by labeling each yard and hive, using a unique identifier for each. This can be as complex as you want.

If you want to use an app, you can use a Quick Response (QR) code or other barcode affixed to each hive. During hive inspections, you would take your cell phone or tablet out to the beeyard and scan the QR code, and the software will fetch the correct record. That’s pretty neat. You then complete the hive inspection tasks, make notes, add images, video, or audio, and the data is uploaded to the cloud for your later use.

If you use a QR code, we recommend you use another, human-friendly label as well. It’s easier to refer to hives by a name or number than by a barcode.

Use a naming scheme that makes sense to you and allows for expansion (through splits, packages, or captured swarms) and contraction (because of die-outs, combination, or sales). Back when we started beekeeping, we used to name our hives after TV characters. Interestingly, one of our most productive hives ever had a TV villain name and a personality to go along with it. Those bees were Hall-of-Fame level mean. But if you want to live on the edge and name a hive Voldemort, knock yourself out.

Our naming scheme is a lot less colorful now. Each yard is given a letter (A, B, or C). Each hive is given a number, which we print, laminate, and staple to the bottom super. (If your yards aren’t on your property, you may want to keep the address, directions, or GPS coordinates in an accessible place should someone else need them. Follow the “hit by a bus” rule: in case you get hit by a bus, be sure to leave information about important stuff so someone else can take over.)

Next, equip yourself with whatever you’ll use for data capture during hive inspections or other beeyard visits. And if you use one of the pencil-and-paper worksheets, figure out what you’ll do with the information you gather so you can refer to it easily later. Again, this doesn’t have to be complicated. You could just collect the sheets into a notebook or binder. If the information you’re collecting is structured – mostly numbers and dates, rather than free-form notes – you can enter it into a spreadsheet program like Excel.

We use a combination of different but complementary tools. We use Excel spreadsheets to track the data we collect from our paper worksheet and to record the results of mite-monitoring tests. Some information collected from hive inspections goes into Microsoft OneNote, which is free-form, like a notebook, so we can record observations, hunches, questions, or even images or audio that might be interesting. (The Evernote app works in the same way.) We use a calendar app to schedule and remind us about hive inspection dates, mite-monitoring tests, supplemental feeding, and so on.

Of course, if you choose one of the beekeeping apps, it might be able to handle some or all your information and scheduling. Just be sure to have the app set up and ready to go before the information starts pouring in. And remember: you may need to change your record-keeping process as your needs change.

The fruits of your record-keeping labor

One of the immediate benefits of record keeping is that you’re more prepared every time you step into the beeyard. You can review the latest notes ahead of time to see what tasks need to be accomplished and if there are any areas of concern. Right before heading out to the beeyard, we jot down reminders on scrap paper, and then tuck them under the rock sitting atop the cover of the pertinent hive. This is a low-tech but timely way to remember anything beyond routine inspection tasks.

Over the course of a season, you’ll refer to your notes to track queen health, mite loads, temperament, whether a hive has adequate honey stores for winter, and so on.

Best of all, in the dead of winter, as you settle in your comfy chair with your bunny slippers and cocoa, you can review your records and find the scent and sounds of summer in your records.

Information is power

Just to get you started, here’s a list of things to include in your record keeping. You may want to track all of these things or just some, and you’ll probably have your own additions to the list.

• The data from routine hive inspections (the condition of the queen, does the hive have adequate stores for the time of year, any signs of swarming or supersedure, any evidence of disease)
• The results of mite monitoring (when you tested, with what method, and what were the results)
• Queen health and requeening activities (age of the queens, where the queens came from, results of requeening, and so on)
• Treatment activities (when you treated, which hives, and with what)

A few (not exhaustive) list of beekeeping apps

ApiTrack https://hikurangienterprises.files.wordpress.com

/2016/09/apitrack-summary-v1-2.pdf

BeeCloud http://beecloud.co/en/

Beehive Tracker https://play.google.com/store/apps/details

?id=appinventor.ai_aesrabingol.bee

Beetight https://www.beetight.com/

Hive Tracks https://hivetracks.com/

My Beekeeper https://www.mybeekeeper.com/

Worksheets

You can download our worksheet from the Bee Culture website www.BeeCulture.com.

Dadant Hive Inspection Sheet Notepad. https://www.dadant.com/catalog/m01940-hive-inspection-sheet-notepad.

Puget Sound Beekeepers Association worksheet. http://www.pugetsoundbees.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Hive-Inspection-Sheet_PSBA.pdf.

Talking with Bees. www.talkingwithbees.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/BBKA-record-keeping.pdf.

University of Florida, IFAS Extension. http://osceola.ifas.ufl.edu/pdfs/CSA/KVBA_Hive_Inspection_Sheet.pdf.

References

Pollinator Network @ Cornell, https://pollinator.cals.cornell.edu/.

Principles of Record-Keeping Practices. http://www.inspection.gc.ca/animals/terrestrial-animals/biosecurity/standards-and-principles/honey-bee-producer-guide/eng/1378390483360/1378390541968?chap=12.

Steinhauer, Nathalie 2013. Keeping records. Bee Informed Partnership. https://beeinformed.org/2013/07/12/keeping-records/.

By: Patrick Dwyer

Making increase is a fundamental activity of beekeeping whether one is a beginner beekeeper who purchases her first bees, a more experienced beekeeper who wants to replace lost colonies, or an established commercial beekeeper who proactively expands the number of colonies.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this end and this article will discuss six of these methods that are utilized to support successful beekeeping.

The methods to be discussed include purchasing package bees, nucleus colonies, or established colonies as well as creating splits, performing swarm capture, or doing removals. For each method we will briefly define it and explain how it is performed and then focus on a systematic comparison with the other methods. Comparisons will include weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each including each method’s “fun factor,” difficulty, cost, as well as the contribution of other factors such as queen quality, local adaptability, transmission of diseases and pests, Africanized genetics, feeding requirement, possibility of surplus honey production, and others. I hope that this comparative analysis of increase methods will be of interest to both beginner and experienced beekeepers.

Package Bees

Two recently installed bee packages.

A package is a collection of several pounds of honey bees from multiple donor colonies shaken into a screened box without associated frames, combs, or brood but with an unrelated queen in a separate cage. Packages are generally produced in warm climates in the spring and can be shipped through the U.S. Postal Service or picked up at regional locations. Packages were a major method for increase in the 19th and 20th centuries including for Canadian beekeepers before the honey bee importation ban.

Installing package bees involves preparing a single story hive generally containing foundation, shaking the bees into the hive with a feeder, and allowing for the release of the queen after a brief period of introduction.

Advantages include a high fun factor as a beekeeper is able to observe all new colony activities including comb building, egg-laying, brood development, and the storing of nectar and pollen. At the outset this is a small colony that is easy to manage and ideally suited to beginners. The difficulty of installation is actually quite low, queen quality is generally quite good with a young, prolific queen, and transmission of brood disease is not seen.

Disadvantages include a significant cost (generally $90-140) and the fact that local adaptability is absent unless one’s apiary is in a region producing packages and this contributes to a reputation of variable Winter survival. Transmission of pests might include small hive beetles and Varroa, Africanized genetics may be carried by these bees when shipped from certain regions, and these colonies generally have a feeding requirement for sugar syrup when installed. Production of surplus honey is uncommon during the first year unless packages are installed on drawn comb. Other factors include a significant risk of supercedure during the first year, infrequent problems with acceptance of the introduced queen, and the requirement to learn how to install the package but this is relatively easy for even beginners to perform.

Package bees always come from warm climates but beekeeping vendors and bee clubs are a source of these bees or they may be directly purchased through the mailfrom sellers.

Nucleus Colony

Transferring frames from a nucleus colony into a hive.

A nucleus colony (“nuc”) is a small established colony generally with four to five frames of drawn comb containing brood, honey, pollen, and empty space for egg-laying, worker bees, and a queen. Nucs were an important in-apiary resource for Langstroth and Brother Adam and have become an important method of increase during the past quarter century.

Installation of a nuc into a standard hive is straightforward only requiring the transfer of combs and bees from the nucleus colony to the recipient hive generally with a feeder and frames of foundation.

Advantages include that the difficulty of installation is extremely low, queen quality should be good with a young prolific queen or an overwintered “tested” queen, and local adaptability could be a plus with locally sourced queens. A nucleus colony might produce surplus honey in the first season if it is installed in a standard hive early in the season particularly with drawn comb. As a nuc is already an established colony there are no problems with queen acceptance with this method.

Disadvantages include that the fun factor of installation is low, the cost is high to very high ($125 to over $200 for a “tested” nuc), and local adaptability may be unexpectedly absent even when purchasing from local beekeepers as nucleus queens are commonly reared in regions remote from where local nucleus colony sellers are located. Whenever used bee equipment is sold (such as with frames in a nucleus colony) there is a risk of transmission of brood disease, nucs also have a risk of transmission of pests including Varroa and small hive beetles, and nucleus queens from regions with Africanized genetics can also carry these. Surplus honey will not be obtained with small nucs and those installed late in the beekeeping season or on frames without drawn comb. Other disadvantages include that nucs are frequently a variable product that may contain old and damaged frames, new foundation, an old queen, a queen introduced just prior to sale, or no queen at all and nucs have a reputation as a method for unscrupulous sellers to unload unwanted combs from their operation.

Nucleus colonies can be obtained from many regional beekeepers and one should always ask about the quality of the product from trusted beekeeping contacts and consider asking an apiary inspector about disease issues.

Full-sized Colony

Moving full-size colonies.

A full-sized colony is generally a single or double deep established colony containing drawn comb, brood, honey, pollen, bees, and a queen with complete hive equipment including bottom board, hive bodies, and top cover.

Installation of a full-sized colony involves moving it to a desired permanent location and in the absence of heavy equipment requires some heavy lifting.

Advantages include that a locally sourced product could have local adaptability with a regionally reared queen, a low risk of Africanized genetics if located outside of a region with such genetics, generally the absence of a feeding requirement, a colony that is ready for surplus honey production in its first season, and other factors such as a ready pollination resource and the provision of full hive equipment.

Disadvantages include a low fun factor and a moderately high difficulty because of problems inherent in moving a large and heavy colony as well as issues for beginners such as difficulty finding the queen and the intimidation of learning from a large colony. The cost is higher than that of a nucleus colony, queen quality is commonly suspect with an older, less prolific queen, and local adaptability may be lacking depending on the source of the seller’s queens. There is also a real risk of transmission of diseases and pests including brood disease, Varroa, and small hive beetles. Other factors could include poor condition of hive equipment.

Full-sized colonies may be obtained from retiring beekeepers whose reputation for disease management is known with certainty and can also be obtained from almond pollinators after almond pollination is completed.

Split (Divide)

Placing a queen into a split.

Splits, or divides, are the product of splitting or dividing an established colony into several colonies. Although such daughter colonies can make their own queen splits generally use a queen cell or mated queen. Splits have been an important in-apiary method of increase for established beekeepers for more than 150 years.

There are many procedures for performing splits including a “walk-away” split by dividing a populous colony with ample resources into two with eggs and larvae in both parts or more generally using a new queen in splits containing two to four frames of brood of all ages with covering nurse bees from a strong colony or several colonies.

Advantages of splits include a moderately high fun factor and low cost ($0 to $50). Queen quality can be a focus of this method with a young, prolific queen, associated expected good winter survival, and the option of using hygienic or other pest-resistant queens or with queens with demonstrated local adaptability from regional queen breeders or one’s own apiary. When using one’s own frames for split creation the risk of transmission of diseases and pests is exceedingly low, in fact with predictable reduction in Varroa by dilution, out-competition by the explosive brood-rearing that follows splitting, and interruption of the brood cycle particularly when using queen cells. One might produce surplus honey in the first season if splits are well-provisioned (including with drawn comb) and created early in the season. Other favorable factors include decreased incidence of swarming in colonies donating combs to splits, probably fewer Winter losses, and the development of a self-sufficient sustainable apiary.

Disadvantages include that the difficulty of making splits is moderate for beginners and if using grafted queens from one’s own apiary can be technically challenging even for experienced beekeepers. Queen quality issues include that an introduced queen might not be accepted, a potential for poor queen-rearing conditions particularly for “walk-away” splits, and questions about possible lower Winter survival if using one’s own queens. Local adaptability might be an issue if purchased queens are not regionally derived, Africanized genetics could be introduced if queens are obtained from regions with those genetics, there is generally a feeding requirement for producing splits, surplus honey would not be expected unless an early-created split is well provisioned, and an other factor is that one should already have strong colonies to create splits limiting the application of this method to established beekeepers.

The source of inputs for splits generally include one’s own bees and brood either with queen cells (including those produced by the beekeeper) or mated queens the latter of which are shipped from many suppliers or may be available locally.

Swarm Capture

A swarm trap (bait hive) in a tree.

Swarm capture as an increase method consists of capturing a swarm of bees when they first alight at their bivouac site or by placing a “swarm trap” (“bait hive”) most commonly near one’s own apiary or a source of feral survivor bees. Swarm capture is the oldest method of increase with skep and gum beekeeping dependent upon it.

If obtaining a swarm from a bivouac site where a swarm has temporarily landed, the swarm is generally shaken into a container and then poured into the new hive or on a bedsheet surrounding the hive and then fed with sugar syrup. If using a swarm trap a box is placed in an area near managed or feral colonies. Generally the beekeeper assures that the box has a size, location, orientation, odor, and other qualities that are attractive to bees as a nest site.

Advantages of swarm capture include an extremely high fun factor with gentle bees and the observation of all colony activities. The cost is free, the bees might have local adaptability if they are cast off of locally adapted bees, and there is no risk of transmission of brood diseases. An other favorable factor is that these bees are generally productive builders of new comb on provided foundation.

Disadvantages include moderate difficulty for beginners in hiving a swarm, the possibility of poor queen quality with an older, less prolific queen in primary swarms, and the possibility of poor local adaptability if the swarm is obtained near a commercial apiary or beeyards with queens imported from other areas of the country. A feeding requirement is expected for these excellent comb builders and surplus honey production cannot be relied upon in a swarm’s first season. Other unfavorable factors include the possibility of selecting for “swarmy” bees, the difficulty of predicting when swarms will occur, poor Winter survival with late season swarms, and the risk of injury when retrieving swarms from sites not near the ground.

Swarms can be the products of one’s own or others’ apiaries, locations near feral survivor colonies, or beekeepers can publicize their willingness to serve as a community resource to retrieve swarms.

Removal (Cut-out)

An exposed colony during a cut-out.

Removals (cut-outs) of bees from a cavity in structures such as a house or barn or from a bee tree are also a method to obtain bees.

The procedure of doing a “removal” involves exposing the colony nest, removing the bees (sometimes with a bee vacuum) and the comb, attaching the broken comb into foundationless frames, and placing them into a recipient hive.

Advantages include low cost with free bees and the possible expense of a new replacement queen ($5 to $30), a possibility of local adaptability of bees that might be considered “survivor stock”, and an other factor that beekeepers can charge for such removals and develop a potentially profitable business in doing so.

Disadvantages include that the fun factor is quite low (unless doing “bee lining”), the difficulty is quite high with significant time and labor involved, unanticipated carpentry challenges, and the potential for falls and power tool injuries. Queen quality may be poor with a generally older, less prolific queen and a significant possibility of requiring queen replacement. There is a significant risk of transmission of diseases and pests particularly for brood disease and Varroa and for this reason quarantine is considered important by many who perform cut-outs. Generally there is a feeding requirement for removals after being placed in new equipment, surplus honey is uncommonly obtained during the first season, and other potential problems include dealing with crazy comb, increased defensiveness, and liability issues when working on someone else’s property.

Referrals for removals are commonly obtained by word of mouth and by publicizing one’s willingness to do these with fire departments, contractors, foresters, and tree surgeons.

Summary

There are a number of ways of either obtaining one’s first bees or making increase in a beeyard including purchasing package bees, nucleus colonies, or established colonies as well as creating splits, performing swarm capture, or doing removals. Except for the creation of splits by those who do not currently have any bees any of these methods may be used depending on the assessment of the method’s relative merits by the beekeeper.

While I believe that the fun factor and low risk of transmission of brood disease should always be emphasized, for beginners I prioritize a low level of difficulty while for beekeepers with established colonies I prioritize low cost. Thus, I recommend beginners purchase package bees from a region without Africanized genetics or small hive beetles and learn from these colonies. Nucleus colonies would also be very attractive for beginners if they were assembled by providers who are known to produce a high quality product, with locally adapted queens, and a high level of assurance that they are free of disease and pests. For beekeepers with established colonies splits are an ideal skill to make increase with one’s own or locally adapted queens or with queens imported for desirable hygienic or genetic traits. Swarm capture, particularly from one’s own apiary is also a cost effective way to make increase.

Patrick Dwyer is an EAS Certified Master Beekeeper who enjoys beekeeping in Otsego County, New York.

It’s amazing how many meetings and workshops one could attend around the county, state, or country. This week alone at only one of the two convention centers in Athens, Georgia, you could attend the Georgia Landfill Operator Certification Training, peek into the 33^rd annual Marriage and Family Therapy Institute, or hang out with a bunch of Optometrists. Now, for beekeepers, you could venture to Galveston and spend four days at the North American Beekeeping Conference. This Summer you could hang for a week at either the Eastern, Western, or Heartland Apicultural meetings. In one month, I could attend 39 local club meetings here in my state of Georgia. We also have two Georgia Beekeepers Association state meetings (one in Spring and one in Fall), plus at least six bee schools. Combined, that makes a yearly grand total of 478 bee meetings in the state of Georgia alone. WHAAATTTT!!!! Now add up all the thousands of clubs and their meetings across the U.S. – that makes for a LOT of gatherings about bees! Guess we humans love to be together, but more importantly, we love to get together and discuss what we are most passionate about: our bees. 

Over the years I’ve been to a few meetings, from the local clubs with maybe 15 folk to the larger conferences with 1000s. The one thing that all these groups have in common is they want to learn more about bees, mingle with other beekeepers, see or hear about the newest gadget, and talk about their experiences. Exciting, right? And probably a lot more exciting than hanging with a bunch of Optometrists (just kidding – love y’all). Some of these meetings are fantastic, and some not so much. I think what makes a meeting stand out, percolate to the surface, rise to the top – it’s the energy in the room. It can be with five people or 5,000 people. It’s not the size of the crowd that matters; again, it’s the energy in the room. And that energy usually stems from those putting on the show. And a show it is, whether a one-nighter or a week-long event, you’re experiencing a show. 

UGA/Young Harris Bee Institute founder, Dr. Keith Delaplane, left and Dr. Paul Arnold.

Each year we put on a show. For the past 25 years, the University of Georgia Honey Bee Lab along with Young Harris College has been putting on the Beekeeping Institute, a show that I am partial to and one that has proven to be one of the best bee events for years in the Southeast. So, how did it all begin?

Twenty-seven years ago Dr. Keith Delaplane (my boss) was giving a lecture on tracheal mites at a county agent meeting in North Georgia when he met Dr. Paul Arnold. Keith, fairly

fresh to the Georgia scene, and Paul, a new faculty member at Young Harris College, both hit it off immediately. They started communicating about putting together a “beekeeping short course”. Delaplane’s predecessor, Dr. Al Dietz, had presented a short course for years at the UGA Bee Lab, located south of Athens. The short course was great, but the bee lab facility was small. It did not allow room for growth, and it was not as picturesque as the North Georgia Mountains. So, without much thought, they both decided to have the bee school on campus at Young Harris College. Shortly thereafter, Robert Brewer, Towns County Agent (since retired) was brought in to lend a hand. Now with a location and plenty of hands on deck, it was just a matter of putting together a curriculum. In 1992, Keith went to work. 

Apparently, the trio had the right recipe for success because 26 years later the UGA/Young Harris Beekeeping Institute is still going strong. It has become one of the most comprehensive and educational beekeeping events in the country. Why do I proudly say that it’s one of the best bee meetings? 

To begin with, it’s location, location, location. Our meeting is held in the small, not-tiny town of Young Harris, on a campus tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Northern Georgia. The facilities are conveniently located, modern with room for vendors and their very own cafeteria stocked with a soft-serve ice cream machine, with sprinkles, hello!!! The area has great food venues, lodging and scenic views. 

Next we invite only top notched researchers and beekeepers who are not only good on their feet but have interesting and important information to share. For instance in 2014 Dr. Marla Spivak, a MacArthur Fellow and distinguished McKnight Professor from the University of Minnesota, gave amazing lectures about honey bee social immunity and predictors for colony survivorship. Two years prior Dr. Tom Seeley, Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University and award-winning author, talked about his amazing research and experiences with honey bees in the wild. Dr. Mark Winston, Maryann Frazier, Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp and Dr. Jim Tew are just a few more examples of the stellar presenters that have graced us with their marvelous research and beekeeping knowledge. 

Juliana Rangel and Gary Reuter taking a break.

We also bring folks occasionally from across the pond, which have been a huge hit. Dr. Yves Le Conte director of the Research Unit for Bees and the Environment, in Avignon, France, Dr. Giles Budge research coordinator for the National Bee Unit at the Food and Environment Research Agency in York, England and Michael Young founder of the Institute of Northern Ireland Beekeeping, Senior British Honey Judge, international chef and inspiration for our own Welsh Honey Certification program.   

Mark Winston and Jennifer Berry take a break.

Then we have the local favorites, which over the years have been very instrumental in making the bee institute world class. There’s Keith Fielder (who has taken over Robert Brewer’s duties), Carl & Virginia Webb, PN & Evelyn Williams, Bill Owens, Bob Binnie, Dan Harris, Will Montgomery, Cindy Bee, Lonnie Funderburg, Jim Quick, Cindy Hodges, Phillip Quinn, Nicholas Weaver, Brett Nolan, Damon Wallace, Cyndi Ball, Will Dix, Amy Weeks, Michael Steinkamp, Tom Rearick, Kim Bailey, and Mary Cahill-Roberts.  

With nationally known speakers and these locally talented beekeepers, the institute offers an array of interesting topics and expertise. Our programs are always geared to bring to the students not only the cutting edge research, but practical beekeeping information that they can take home and apply in their own apiary. 

Dewey Caron enjoying a cold beer after a long day of lecturing.

But wait; there’s more! We also offer training and certification for the Georgia Master Beekeeping Program, which launched in 2002, an intensive program designed to provide participants the opportunity to increase their knowledge about all things dealing with bees and beekeeping. There are four levels to the program beginning with the Certified, next Journeyman, then Master and finally Master Craftsman. We have passed three Master Craftsman, 50 Master Beekeepers, 30 Journeyman and 620 certified beekeepers over the 14 years the program has been in existence. It takes students years of hard work and dedication to persevere through each stage. Plus, it’s more than just memorization for a written exam; there’s a

practical portion for the Certified and Journeyman as well. This program not only offers the students the training but also the confidence and material to teach others about bees and beekeeping. As my boss puts it, “The Georgia Master Beekeeper Program gives its participants not only the opportunity to learn, but also a sense of responsibility to teach others about the miraculous honey bee, the enjoyment of beekeeping, our shared dependence on pollination, a concern for the overuse of pesticides & shrinking forage-habitat in our environment, and the techniques of honey production & distribution.” As a side note, we have also passed 47 inmates at the level of Certified Beekeepers in three of our state’s maximum-security prisons. The Georgia Master Beekeeping Program is a win:win for all involved, especially the bees. 

Keith Fielder (left) and Robert Brewer welcoming Melissa
Bondurant as a new Welsh Honey Judge.

We also offer the Welsh Honey Judge Licensing program which originated at the UGA/Young Harris Beekeeping Institute in 2001 when Michael Young, Welsh Honey Judge, visited from the UK. He was instrumental in partnering the Welsh Honey Judging system with the US. The program offers training and certification for honey show judges at the highest standard. The Welsh training is the most stringent of its kind for aspiring honey judges in the world. UGA and the University of Florida have the only two partnerships of their kind between the US and the UK. 

For our 25^th anniversary, we expanded the Institute to four days with training for the Master Beekeeping Program and Welsh Honey Judge training on Wednesday and the institute proper Thursday thru Saturday. Plus we’ve increased the number of attendees, without sacrificing quality. We did this for two reasons. One we moved across the street to the newly built Rollins Campus Center, which offered plenty more space. And two, we wanted to offer more seats for eager participants since each year we were selling out within weeks of registration opening. 

Blue grass musicians entertaining the crowd.

And if you order in the next few minutes – our Institute is also known for its comradery and socials. It’s important for participants to not only have full days of “schooling” but also have time to talk with folks and to make new friends. Friday nights we set aside for a traditional low country boil where we stuff ourselves with shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes, and wash it down with a local variety of beer. We also like to include some of Georgia’s finest musicians to play during the event. Like my grandfather used to say while organizing our annual family reunion, “To have a good show, you must have good food, good booze, and good music.” And I will say, my grandfather knew how to put on an excellent reunion. 

We consider our beekeeping institute to be the Harvard of Bee Schools and we will continue, hopefully, for years down the road to provide excellent education and fun to beekeepers from all ages, all walks of life and all areas around the world. If you are interested in attending our event, or want more information, please go to our website http://www.ent.uga.edu/bees and click on the Young Harris Beekeeping tab. This year registration opens the first week of March. Hope to see you there. Take care of you and your bees!

Jennifer Berry

Jennifer Berry is the Research Leader at the UGA Bee Lab and beekeeper and queen producer.

Not how big, but how small can a cell building colony be and still do a good job?

Queen rearing is my favorite part of beekeeping and always has been. It does not require all of the heavy boxes and equipment associated with producing honey, but I am still able to see all of the intricacies of the entire bee hive at work. There are perhaps as many queen rearing and cell builder systems as there are commercial queen producers. It has been my good fortune to visit with many queen producers and have the opportunity to speak with them about their systems. It is interesting to learn the details, the how’s and why’s of their systems.  From those encounters I have developed a system that suits my operation.  

Producing queen bees is resource intensive, especially the larger the operation becomes. A surplus of young bees and brood, or bulk bees and brood as they are called in the commercial setting, are collected from donor colonies.  Such resources are a valuable necessity to any queen producer.  The bulk bees and brood are used to stock cell starters, cell builders, bank colonies and mating nucs.  All can place a great strain on the support system for resources. I think this hunger for resources stems from the belief that colonies need to be big, strong and populous to produce queen bees, especially the queen cells. For many years I subscribed to this train of thought, but quickly found I was too lazy to be a “good” queen producer with such a system. I did not enjoy managing 10-frame, three story deep cell builders or shaking bulk bees and collecting brood to boost them. So like any lazy beekeeper, I began looking for an easier method – without sacrificing quality.

Admittedly, good quality queen cells can be produced by brute force methods utilizing lots of bees.  It has been successfully demonstrated many times over and it certainly works. Many large queen rearing operations rely on such systems, and they certainly work but devour resources. But if you look a little more closely at the entire process, there is a subtle beauty to the honey bees’ methodology. A little finesse opens up many possibilities. I prefer to use queen right cell builders as I think they do a nice job of producing quality cells, but the challenge for me has been getting them “just right” to produce quality cells over a longer period of time.  The queens I produce are destined to become instrumentally inseminated breeder queens, so I need a system that churns out good quality queens over a 10-week period. My Ah-Ha moment for such a system came when I realized that a steadily growing average colony was a very good colony for producing cells. This point is important. The stage in a colony’s physiological development a couple of weeks or so prior to when they would naturally start producing cells on their own for swarming is an ideal colony for producing quality cells. Consequently, my next question was how big, or rather, how small could such a cell builder colony be and still do a good job?

More specifically, as the ratio of older adult foragers increases relative to the number of young nurse bees, the colony progresses more towards swarming.

A slight modification in the cell starter. Using a polystyrene nuc and a feeder rim, the newly grafted cells can be elevated slightly above the top bars. This works best when temperatures are warmer. During the cool Spring, put the cells down in the brood nest.

I decided to try five frame deep nuc boxes since I enjoy managing the lighter weight nucleus colonies that seem to grow quickly. I had plenty of boxes on hand and just needed to work out the details of managing them as cell starters and cell builders.

Before I get into the details, I should be clear that I still need some bees and brood for this system, but far less than traditional systems. My basic system uses a queenless deep, five frame starter hive. It is free flying which means the nuc is open and the bees are allowed to forage naturally. Some starter systems use “closed starter boxes” where the bees are confined while the cells are started. In my experience, a closed starter system requires more hands-on maintenance and attention. Therefore, I prefer to use a free flying queenless starter because I consistently get a high percentage of cells started in a queenless nuc. However, any queenless nuc is unstable and ultimately a drain on resources as there is no laying queen to regenerate the brood in the box.  Once the cells are started for 24-48 hours, they are transferred into a queen right cell builder, the deep, five frame cell builders. Up to this point, my system is not all that different from traditional systems.

A top view of three newly grafted cell bars placed above the frames in the cell starter. After approximately 24 hours in the cell starter, I can pick up the three bars of started cells and transfer them to a cell builder or wait another 24 hours to transfer them.

Keep in mind, I am located in central Ohio and our optimal cell building period is May thru June.  Cells can be produced on either side of this window, but that is the optimal time for producing high quality cells without a lot of difficulty. Starting in April, I carry extra nuc boxes on the truck with four drawn combs in them. While making the inspection rounds in the bee yards, I am looking for overly populous colonies that need some thinning down. When I find an overly populous colony, I go through it to locate the queen to set her aside and then pull three frames of younger brood and a frame of honey/ pollen. I put these frames in the nuc. The fifth spot in the nuc is left open for a grafting frame that I will add later. I then shake in another two to four frames of bees, depending on how many bees are on the frames. I want enough bees in the box to fill the empty space where the grafting frame will go. The bottom of the nuc is screened, so I put the top on and in the truck it goes. This point is important. Moving the cell starter to another yard ensures that all of the bees I put in the starter will stay.  

At this time if you simply want to raise 20-40 cells once, maybe twice, you are ready to graft. You can use this cell starter to start and finish a batch or two of cells for you. The queenless cell starter is ready to accept cells as soon as I get home. It may only be an hour or two later, but the bees quickly realize they are queenless. By giving the cell starter cells soon after they are set up, it diminishes their tendency to start emergency cells on the comb.  

Cell builder nucs ready to make cells, bees, brood and honey. Note the cell builders are not heavily “bearded” with excess bees.

A slight modification on this system, again for the “lazy beekeeper” in me, is to fill the five frame nuc with frames, place a shim or feeder rim on top of the nuc, and then place the newly grafted cells on the top bars as shown in the pictures. This is only possible when the temperatures are warmer, and to facilitate this method I use polystyrene nucs that provide added insulation. By placing the cells on the top bars, I can quickly inspect and remove cell bars without much disturbance to the colony. For me, it is more about speed and efficiency.   

If your objective is to raise successive batches of cells on a consistent basis then there are some additional steps to the system and this is ultimately where the concept of the “net gain” comes into play. Prior to the start of queen rearing season, I build up my

A queen excluder is placed between the second and third story to keep the cells safe in the top box. Screened bottoms are used to help with temperature control and vent holes are placed in each box to allow drones to move freely, especially out of the top box.

nucleus cell builder colonies to the point where they are three-story, five frame nucs nicely filled with bees. The system I use was developed over many years to accommodate my need for a steady weekly supply of queen cells. I typically run six cell builders and this will easily provide me with 150 or so cells per week. I can adjust the number of cell builders up or down, but generally work in multiples of “3”. Three cell bars fit on a grafting frame in the cell starter. One started bar of cells is then given to each cell builder. My goal is quality because in all of the years I have been raising queens, my records show that quality starts in the cell builder and pays dividends the rest of the queen’s life. The cells I produce are then destined to become instrumentally inseminated queens. Again, quality is important and the number of cells I produce each week is later tied to the number of queens I will have to sit down and inseminate a couple of weeks later. Once the system is up and running, it just keeps plugging along with a little time and management on my part.  

Growing the nucs early in the season, in order to take advantage of some early queens, also requires a little care and attention on my part. The nucleus cell builders are fed and equalized in order to keep them all in a similar state of growth so that they can be managed collectively as a unit. In my case, all six cell builders should be at the same physiological state of growth.  Colonies progress through the season at different rates, but with a little management they can be held in sort of a suspended state of constant growth. The target point I aim for is a young populous colony a couple of weeks before the initiation of swarming preparation.  Once a colony initiates its own swarming development, it is not of much use to me as a cell builder.  It is as if they have gone too far.  Even if I allow them to swarm or even split them and rebuild them with brood and bees from another colony, the remaining bees still have a greater propensity to swarm again and will often do so. It is as if they have made up their mind and there is little I can do to distract them from the urge to swarm. In my experience such colonies are less than ideal cell builders.

The population or density of the bees inside the cell builder is comfortable, but not overwhelming. This picture shows the top box where the started cells will be placed.

Keeping the cell builder from crossing over into that swarming impulse is key. Each season is different and each cell builder is different. There are a couple of primary factors that seem to “send them over the edge” so to speak.  In the early Spring, temperature and incoming nectar appear to be the two main factors I contend with. The past couple of Springs we have had some cool wet periods punctuated by temperature spikes up near 90 degrees. This seems to drive me and the cell builders nuts! The best I can do is watch the forecast and make sure the cell builders have adequate room to expand on those warm/hot days. The warm days sometimes coincide with a spike in nectar availability if it is late enough that plants are blooming abundantly. It really is a balancing act to get the “goldilocks” scenario of just right. Screened  bottom boards certainly help as I can close them if it is cold and open them when it is warm.

As the cell builder colonies begin to fill out their space, this is where the management and “net gain” starts to add up. It took me many years of trying to figure out how to keep a colony just right for building cells over the course of our spring season. Rather than adding bees and brood as is common practice with other queen rearing systems, I need to remove bees, brood and honey with my system. But what bees, brood and honey need to be removed in order to keep a colony in a constant state of growth to maintain that sweet spot for producing cells? From my experience, the field bees are the so called “trouble makers” that cause the colony to age. More specifically, as the ratio of older adult foragers increases relative to the number of young nurse bees, the colony progresses more towards swarming. Therefore, my goal is to maintain a nice balance of foragers and younger nurse bees weighted towards the younger side.  

In order to accomplish this delicate balance, my nucleus colonies are put to work raising cells just as soon as they are physiologically mature enough to do so, which appears to be when they fill 80-90% of their space in the colony. They are not packed or crowded but comfortable. They have the bees and the resources to care for their brood as well as some excess cells. To keep them at this point I begin managing the cell builders on a weekly basis. I want them to direct extra resources towards the cells on the cell bar and not their own cells on the combs.  

One would initially think that a good nectar flow would be great for producing cells, but the opposite is true. 

Again the cell builders are growing colonies, and as they grow they are managed according to their needs and growth. Some will grow faster than others and resources may initially be swapped back and forth between cell builders, but soon they will all be producing excess brood, bees and honey. To effectively remove the troublesome foragers, I visit the cell builders as early as possible in the morning to ensure that most of the field force is still at home so that I can accurately judge the population density inside the colony.  Equipped with extra nuc boxes and drawn comb, I start at one end of the cell builder yard and work my way through the six cell builders, re-working them for another seven days of service. As I work through the cell builders, I remove extra frames of brood and honey, preferably from the bottom box or the outside frames of the second story. These areas are abundant with older foragers that are awaiting their foraging duties for the day. When the weather is warm and resources are abundant, the cell builders grow rapidly. Many weeks, the cell builders can spare two frames of brood and two frames of honey. This is approximate and subject to the condition of each cell builder.  Early in the season, I use the excess brood and bees to start new nucs with a frame of brood and a frame of honey, so this effectively produces two new nucs per cell builder per week. If resources are light, I stimulate the cell builders with a light syrup and pollen patties in an effort to keep them growing and moving forward.

I

Three days after grafting, it looks like the cell builder is doing a nice job with the cells.

n our area of the country, black locust trees generally bloom the middle of May. One would initially think that a good nectar flow would be great for producing cells, but the opposite is true. A strong honey flow wreaks havoc on the cell builders. The bees are all consumed with hauling in their bounty, and rightfully so. The cell builders are overrun with nectar and cell quality suffers. At this point I find it is best to suspend cell building for a week or at least accept that I will have to work harder. I do my best to provide extra room for the deluge of nectar and maintain some sense of sanity in the cell builders. It is a great time to give them an extra honey super with drawn comb and maybe a little bit of foundation. I am just trying to appease their need for space until the nectar deluge subsides. A mild nectar flow is great for building cells as it has a stimulatory effect, but a flow such as the black locust flow can be counterproductive.

Five and a half to six days after grafting the cells are finished. Note the royal jelly fills the entire based of the plastic cell cup. These are well fed cells.

As I work through the cell builders, I rearrange brood and resources. Full frames of honey are moved to the bottom box on the outside, and sealed frames of brood are also moved down to the bottom box. They will then be in the proper place and covered with older foragers the following week.  Drawn empty comb is then placed in the second story where the queen spends a good deal of her time.  Foundation will not work at this point, most years. Drawn empty comb will keep things moving along more smoothly.

Since the cell builders are three deep nuc boxes tall, the middle box is well insulated from temperature extremes and the queen quickly fills the empty combs. Perhaps the most important part of this inspection is to remove any unwanted queen cells and to rearrange the third story where the cells are produced.  The top box is separated from the queen right portion below through the use of a queen excluder. The top box is provisioned with a frame of honey on each outside wall followed by a frame of young open brood on each side and an open spot in the middle for the grafting frame. There is some debate as to whether open brood detracts from the quality of the cells, but in my opinion it is highly beneficial.  Young open brood not only attracts nurse bees, but it also serves to encourage closer regulation of the temperature in that nurse bees attracted to the young brood help to maintain a more constant temperature and humidity level surrounding the cells. 

Finished cells.

Frederich Ruttner explained it best when establishing queen rearing colonies. He stated that the bees needed to “learn” to build cells. Perhaps “conditioned” would be a better term, but in my experience, some colonies need to be transitioned into raising cells, but once they get in the correct mood or mindset, keep them working! Provided the cell builders have a continuous supply of grafted cells to work on, their rogue cell production should be minimal. If not, something is wrong and they may be too far gone with the idea of swarming. Once I get into the weekly routine of working the cell builders I can give them started cells about every four days. In my experience, cells are sealed approximately 5.5 days post grafting. This varies slightly depending on colony conditions and between cell builders, but the idea is to keep the cell builders doing what they are designed to do, build cells. In addition, by confining the cell builders to a relatively small space with vigorous queens, you are effectively generating excess brood, bees and honey from the system to establish additional nucleus colonies throughout the queen rearing season. Happy grafting this season!

If you would like to see how the quality of your queens compares to other queen rearing operations, NC State Apiculture Program and their Queen Quality Clinic offer some great services to beekeepers! Above is a comparison for a group of “banked” Inseminated Queens (from later in the season) I submitted for analysis. The weight was relatively low due to banking the queens, but their thorax and head width, which do not change with egg laying status, were great. At the time when these queens were submitted, the “global averages” of 682 queens sampled by the Queen Clinic were Weight = 195.9mg, Thorax width = 4.47mm, and Head width = 3.55mm. These queens surpassed all of the global averages.

Joe Latshaw is a commercial queen breeder and producer living in Central Ohio.