Mrs. Root in her teens

Mrs. Susan Hall Root
By: Nina Bagley

Susan Hall was born in 1841 in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. Her parents were Daniel and Mary Hall, both born in England. They had three children: Robert born in 1838, Susan born in 1841 and, after immigrating to America in 1848, Mary born in 1850. During 1815 and 1837, Ely was in general depression, an agricultural community with no work to be found. The townspeople had terrible living conditions and Ely laborers could no longer maintain themselves. The city of Ely’s population was growing more rapidly than it was in the surrounding countryside. Infectious diseases plagued the countryside, then another Cholera outbreak began in England in 1848. There was a heavy death rate, increasing mortality between 1841 and 1848. This might be one of the reasons why Susan’s father decided to embark on a journey to America with his family for better opportunities.

In 1848, Liverpool, England was the most significant immigration port in the world. Traveling from Ely, Cambridgeshire to Liverpool was 250 miles. Once arriving at the port, families waited in lines, sometimes for days just to get on a ship to sail to America. The journey could take forty to ninety days (about three months) with unfavorable winds and harsh weather.

When this occurred, passengers would often run short of food. Bread, biscuits and potatoes were provided by the shipping companies. The food was terrible and, at times, spoiled.

This was not a cruise ship. Passengers had about two square feet of space. It was dirty, with extraordinarily little ventilation, not to mention lice and rodents. It was a long, wearying journey for a young girl of eight, not knowing what the future would bring, leaving her homeland for an unfamiliar land.

Susan’s father decided to farm and raise his family in Medina County, Ohio. In the new homeland, the family prospers and became community members, attending church and farming their land. As a young girl, Susan had no idea that she would grow up to be a driving force in one man’s life or that that man would become a part of history in Medina, Ohio, the place her father would choose to bring his family to have a better life.

As a young girl, Susan had a schoolmate named Sara Root who was very fond of Susan. Sara felt that her friend Susan would make a good wife for her brother. Sara’s brother Amos Ives Root was away for the Winter in Westville, Ohio, on the river, staying with a relative while attending high school. Sara wrote to her brother saying she had found one of the sweetest girls in all the world as a wife for him.

It was a little embarrassing for Amos I. Root when the two first met, knowing that this schoolmate of his sister knew what she had written to him. It was true love at first sight for both.

A.I. Root wrote: “Her honest simplicity and childlike innocence impressed me from the very first; and, as a matter of course, we two proceeded to get acquainted; and I, for my part, I fear, carried out the program so well that the dear sister was a good many times forgotten and ‘left out in the cold’” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1923, pg. 58).

Amos would walk miles to Susan’s family’s farm in unbearable weather to spend a few hours in her company. He called on her once in the middle of the week and every Sunday night! Both Amos and Susan were attending school at the time. When visiting in those early days, staying late was much the fashion. Susan would politely tell Amos that her father went to considerable expense so she could attend a particular school for girls. She could not participate in her studies if he stayed so late, and how important it was for her to get a good night’s sleep. Amos was reluctant to go home at the proper time. Finally, Susan said one evening: “Sir, it is time for you to go home.”

Amos was offended and declared that if he went home, he would go and never return. Susan said, “All right. If you refuse to listen to the dictates of good common sense, it will probably be better for both of us that you should go away and never come back” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1923).

Susan was petite with a kind spirit who knew exactly who she was and what she desired. Having their first lover’s quarrel, Amos left with his head up high and a stern look to teach her that he, Amos I. Root, was not to be dictated to in that manner!

It was a dark night, and he was walking quickly. His temper was getting the best of him and flaring up, which it had done most of his life. Amos started reflecting on how he acted and started to slow down a bit. It was the voice of reason or remembrance of his good mother’s teachings. This is what his mother said: “Old Fellow, is it not possible you are taking offense at the wise words of the best friend you have on earth, and that, instead of being offended, you should recognize her as the one whose price is far above rubies?” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1923.)

Amos crossed the bridge, realizing his mistake. He felt a cold chill all over him, and he turned around, walking calmly back to Mr. Hall’s farm as he hurried up to the house he had just left. Above the front door was Susan’s window to her room. He picked up a pebble and gently tossed it up against her window. And the window went flying up just as he expected! He was always quite sure of himself, so this is what Amos I. Root said: “‘Sue, I humbly beg pardon. You were right, and I was wrong. Will you forgive me?’ Susan responded, ‘All right. Good night.’ And down went the window!” (Gleanings, Jan. 1923).

Amos thought she would come downstairs and give him a kiss of reconciliation; Susan planned nothing of the kind! It was a turning point in his life. Amos finally proposed that the two should be engaged. But Susan insisted that they both were too young to be getting married; Amos was 17 and Susan was 15. Kindly, she told Amos that he did not have the vitality for marriage. A.I. Root was sickly and frail as a child and as a man was not strong. She wanted to postpone marraige for a few years because she was not ready for marriage and wanted to complete her schooling.

A.I. Root would go off and find his way in the big wide world for the next couple of years, making a name for himself, giving lectures and expanding his mind to innovative ideas. He never let the idea go, knowing the two would marry one day. After his lecture tours were over. He returned to his father’s small farm in the woods where he lived as a young man.

Susan’s father feared that Amos could not make a living. Amos would prove him wrong. A.I. Root took a course in watch-repairing and, at twenty-one, started a watch-repairing shop under the pretentious name of A.I. Root & Co. He then proceeded to call on his true love, Miss Susan Hall. Susan’s father was humbled, and he approved them of their marriage.

Mr. and Mrs. Root after they were married.

Three noteworthy events took place in 1861. Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861. The Civil War started on April 9, 1861. And, A.I. Root and Susan Hall were married on September 29, 1861. Amos was twenty-one and Susan was nineteen years old.

As the sun rose that Autumn morning after Mr. and Mrs. Root married, they started with horses and carriage on a honeymoon trip. The two were by themselves. Amos put out his hand to Sue as he called her, and she looked smilingly up into his face while he spoke, “Sue, the agreement between us two that we have just entered into is the most sacred and solemn step in our lives. Let us fully consider the new relations that rest on the shoulders of both of us, and may God help us to bear with each other and to bear with patience the new responsibilities that are going to rest on us two. May we two, through thick and thin, for better or for worse, cling to each other.” It was a boyish speech, but it was honest.

Mrs. Susan Hall Root would become his support, “wise counselor” and confidante throughout their marriage, including her husband’s business affairs. Mrs. Root’s hard work and excellent management of the home helped A.I. Root to meet his obligations when they were starting out as a young couple. They would build a homestead and live in Medina, Ohio.

A.I. Root would become a very influential man in many ways, especially in the world of bees. By 1885, the Root name was recognized around the world. Modest and simple in taste, Mrs. Root always avoided publicity, preferring the background of a beautiful home life she had with her husband and children.

Mrs. Root would spend the next sixty years being there for her husband while being an attentive wife and mother, giving birth to five children in twenty years: Ernest R. Root, 1862; Maud E. Root, 1865; Constance M. Root, 1872; Carrie B. Root, 1878; and, having her youngest child at forty-one, Huber Hall Root, 1883. The two would cling together for better or worse, just as they promised one another.

In August 1865, a swarm of bees passed over the A.I. Root & Co. One of the employees of Mr. Root asked jokingly what would you give me if I caught the swarm? Mr. Root replied, a dollar securely boxed. The young man brought A.I. Root the bees, securely boxed, and collected his dollar; the rest is history.

The Root Factory.

A.I. Root founded his bee company in 1869 in his hometown of Medina, Ohio to manufacture beehives and beekeeping equipment. The company was shipping four railroad freight cars of beekeeping equipment everyday, things were going well! A.I. Root was working sixteen-hour days, which sometimes made it difficult to be around him. He started the magazine Gleanings in Bee Culture on January 1, 1873. The first edition of A.I. Root’s book ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture was published in 1879.

Mr. Root constantly worked and expected everyone around him to work just as hard! But that was impossible because Mr. Root was continually working and doing the work of five men until he would exhaust himself to the point that he made himself ill.

Mr. Root would say: “Had I gone on as an evil and angry spirit prompted me to do and not turn back to apologize to my dear wife, Sue, there would have been no A.I. Root Co. There would have been no five dear children brought up in the fear of the Lord, and there would, in all probability, have been no A.I. Root now dictating these words” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan.1923).

Mrs. Root’s children, at some point, all worked for the family business. She was a devoted mother and the most meticulous housekeeper; dust and dirt were her enemies!

Mrs. Root’s daughter Candice Root Boyden authored an article in Gleanings about her mother. The title was “Mother”: “Sweet and modest as the violet of her nature England. Mother always kept herself in the background; only her husband and children, no matter how much credit they had accomplished, should go to her” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1, 1922).

Candice remembered how, as a small child, her mother spent most of her time in the kitchen preparing delicious, healthy foods for the family. Mrs. Root would spend many hours standing over a walnut table with drop leaves while she prepared the family meals. At the end of the table was a shallow drawer to put spoons, cutlery, and other kitchen items. But Mrs. Root would use the drawer for more important things. Neatly filled with toys, the drawer’s contents revealed her love and understanding of a child’s nature.

Mr. and Mrs. Root having a picnic.

The toys were not store-bought, as her daughter would say they were “Treasures, queer bits of metal and wood, an old steel puzzle made by Father, rubber balls, balls of string, little wooden boxes and a little shallow bowl carved from black walnut. But unselfishness, Mother’s dominant characteristic, is revealed in the fact that the drawer, within my recollection, never held anything to help Mother in her work and save her steps.” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1, 1922).

At the time, kitchens were compact, with all their cooking utensils and drawers close by to save the women steps in the kitchen. Mrs. Root was okay with the drawer, which was full of toys for the children. And she did not mind walking back and forth to the big pantry each time she needed something out of it. Mrs. Root often had very severe attacks of pleurisy throughout her life, weakening her heart. She was not a robust woman and sometimes did not have the energy to run around after the children, so the drawer kept their little hands busy and close to their mother.

Mrs. Root would fill a bowl with water and place it on the floor so the children could sail their boats. In the Winter, she would warm the water so their little hands would not get cold. She loved children and had a nurturing way with them.

Mrs. Root did not have the opportunity to attend college, but she took immense pleasure in her children and grandchildren attending college.

Mr. and Mrs. Root would not accompany their family to hotel dinners. They would not go to formal dinners or parties in their honor, but they loved simple picnics in the parks with family around them.

In 1901, A.I. Root built a cabin in the northern part of the Michigan woods and went there to live with his wife. In the forty years of married life, they would finally work side by side, enjoying each other’s companionship.

A.I. Root did not like wintry weather; the cold bothered him. So, a few years after they built their Michigan cabin, they would make another cabin in Florida, where they spent their Winters. Mrs. Root did not like calling it a cabin, so she called it their cottage.

The Roots in their 70s.

The fare from Cleveland, Ohio to Bradenton, Florida was $57.15 a tourist for a round-trip ticket for the Winter. The Roots loved going to their Florida cottage, but Mrs. Root was always overwhelmed with grief to leave all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren every Winter.

In the early 1900s, they would spend their Summers in Michigan and Winters in Florida.

The Root Men: J.T. Calvert, Huber, Allen and Ernest Root.

Their sons, Ernest and Huber, were involved in the business of the A.I. Root Company along with their daughter Maude’s husband J.T. Calvert who was the bookkeeper. Around 1900, Ernest took over as editor for Gleanings and kept the bee part of the company going while Huber, more of an inventor like his father, experimented with beeswax. Under Huber’s guidance, the Root company started making candles at the request of the Catholic Church. The local priest was looking for better quality beeswax for their candles and a wick that burned longer. A.I. Root’s sons were carrying the torch for their father so he never had to worry about money again and could devote his time to Mrs. Root, the Congregational Church, family, bees and gardening.

Huber started the candles for the Catholic Church.

Mrs. Root, being in her seventies, enjoyed being outdoors, working in her garden in Florida, and enjoyed spending time with her husband. She enjoyed picking vegetables from her garden and sharing them with her family and neighbors.

Her children felt their mother was the most perfect and unselfish of anyone they had ever known. Mrs. Root captured the hearts around her. She had enough love to go around and was happy when she could help those that were needy, lonely, widowed or fatherless.

Her tender heart cared for the neighbor’s chickens, cats and dogs and ensured they were all fed and cared for. And if Mrs. Root felt a horse was being mistreated, she would not stand for it. This most definitely caused her misery.

A.I. Root wrote: “May I be pardoned for saying that the dear little woman has most faithfully kept her part of the pledge year in and year out? Oh! What would I give if I could truthfully say, ‘I have done as well, or even approximately as well?’” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1917, pg. 297).

Mrs. Root suddenly passed away on the evening of Tuesday, November 29, 1921 in Bradenton, Florida, where she and her husband had maintained a cottage for several years. The Roots had just returned to Florida a few weeks before her death. She was feeling exceptionally well and was particularly happy to visit her good friend for many years, Mrs. Ed Nettleton of Medina, who also vacationed in Bradenton, Florida, for the Winter.

Although the family knew it was coming for some time, her life was swiftly ended; the family felt it was due to her arteries being weak from pleurisy attacks over the years.

Mr. and Mrs. Root with a grandchild.

Mrs. Root’s aged husband was too feeble and was advised not to make the long trip back home with the body of his long-time companion.

Mrs. Root’s funeral was held at the home of Ernest Root, her son, on Friday, December 2, 1921, at the old homestead. Mrs. Root was eighty years old. Mr. and Mrs. Root had their sixtieth wedding anniversary a few weeks before her death. She left behind her husband, five children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Mrs. Root was a Medina County, Ohio resident for over seventy years and a friend to all. Mrs. Root is buried in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Medina County, Ohio.

A few years later, Mr. Root caught pneumonia on his way home to Medina, Ohio from Bradenton, Florida. Being feeble, weak and bedridden for several days, the doctor was called, but Mr. Root, knowing it was time, looked at his son Ernest one last time, feeling at peace. He was ready to meet his maker and join his true love, Mrs. Susan Hall Root. A.I. Root took a deep breath and passed away on April 29, 1923, with his children by his side. A.I. Root is buried beside his wife in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Medina County, Ohio.

Ten to twenty percent of the people fleeing Europe in the 1800s did not survive. Not only did Mrs. Root survive, but she survived childbirth, raising five children, cooking and cleaning, washing and ironing in the mid-1800s, and tending to a husband who was constantly inventing and taking chances.

Mrs. Root’s children would have children, and their children would have children, and it has continued for five generations.

The A.I. Root Company is still in business today. The magazine is still being published but instead of Gleanings in Bee Culture it is called Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping. Today, A.I. Root is the largest supplier of liturgical candles for Catholic churches. A hundred and fifty-four years later, Brad Root continues the family tradition like his father and grandfathers before him. He is the fifth generation of the Root family. So, the next time you light a Root Candle, think of Mrs. Susan Hall Root who was a friend to all.

I agree with A.I. Root that there would be no A.I. Root Co. if not for a tenacious young girl, Susan Hall Root!

“There is a great woman behind every great man.”

Nina Bagley
Ohio Queen Bee
Columbus, Ohio

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For the Love of Bees

Some of the ways backyard beekeepers benefit commercial operations and vice-versa
By: Ross Conrad

The beekeeping community is generally divided into two primary categories. There are commercial entrepreneurs and small-scale part-time backyard beekeeping enthusiasts. Commercial operators can be further broken down into full-time and part-time sideliners. It turns out that while all these groups all tend to have very different underlying motivations, they all share many similar types of knowledge and practices, and mutually support one another.

The Australian beekeepers studied rely heavily on meetings, events and conferences to keep up on the latest research. However, while knowledgeable speakers are valued, a lot of information exchanges take place between programs, out in the hallways where beekeepers share ideas and management practices.

The similarities among these different groups and how they interact with each other is the subject of a 2023 paper authored by Kirsten Martinus, associate professor of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. The paper titled, ‘It’s a love interest’—Enthusiasts and regional industry cultures of practice, explores some of the similarities, differences and relationships between commercial and backyard beekeepers. While this study focused on a specific region of beekeepers in Western Australia, the information documented can be of benefit to beekeepers the world over due to the universality of the issues beekeepers face globally.

Dr. Martinus’ work suggests that commercial beekeepers and backyard honey bee enthusiasts both stand to benefit by cooperating and working together to share knowledge and information. As Dr. Martinus notes, “the findings point to the importance of informal non-firm actors in place-specific problem solving through a culture of exchange and mutual endeavor. This suggests that developing a regional industry culture of practice and entrepreneurship may support collaborations between hobbyists or enthusiasts and local business counterparts, which in turn will enhance regional competitiveness, identity and placemaking.” To put it simply, backyard beekeepers and commercial beekeepers can, and often do, support and benefit one another.

The Australian beekeepers studied shared a sense of local beekeeping tradition and long-time commitment, given that the majority use the Langstroth hive as opposed to alternative hive designs. For commercial operators, this was partly because other methods are not seen as commercially viable, due to the large capital investment in equipment required to change. It is also because some hive designs were not seen as authentic, as in the case of the Flow Hive.

Whether it’s a few hives in the backyard or thousands, beekeepers of all sizes love their bees.

Although much of the technology and management used in beekeeping is similar globally, this study acknowledges the importance of generalized regional variations depending on local weather, climate and whether colonies are located in urban, farmland or rural settings. ‘It’s a love interest’ notes that beekeeping “is an activity that requires both scientific and practical knowledge on bee behaviors, husbandry and hive care, as well as knowledge that is deeply embedded in ‘place’ such as weather, flowering times and places, and state and local laws around bee management and ownership.”

Commercial beekeepers are widely understood to be “regional assets” or “resources” that can help local beekeeping groups and shape new industry paths. Meanwhile backyard beekeepers have the luxury of being able to experiment and explore novel beekeeping techniques since their apicultural activities are decoupled from their livelihoods. The lines between commercial and backyard beekeepers often gets blurred however, such as when commercial operators retire and transition to part-time, when professionals mentor backyard beekeepers, and when commercial beekeepers receive fresh insights through informal exchanges with part-time enthusiasts.

A relatively low conversion rate from backyard to commercial beekeeper was observed. A backyard beekeeper’s commercial transition depends not only on “innovation but on willingness to upscale operations after acquiring skills and knowledge.” Some of the greatest barriers to commercializing a backyard operation are related to finances, liability and beekeeping competence. My own observation is that many commercial beekeepers get their start working for a commercial beekeeping operation. This allows them to get paid while they build the skill level they need to be successful on their own.

We beekeepers are free to practice an ever growing array of different types of beekeeping management with hives of various styles, different types of bees, and hard chemical, soft chemical or non-chemical treatment options just to name a few. We also adopt a wide variety of underlying motivations for engaging in beekeeping activities. Backyard beekeepers may enjoy the intellectual, educational and social aspects of beekeeping, while others may simply be looking to provide pollination for their gardens. Commercial beekeepers are primarily concerned with earning a living, managing colonies efficiently and reducing the physicality of their bee work. They were found to primarily work collaboratively on issues that address profitability and business viability.

The study found that the “novel and diverse local and technical know-how, personal experience, scientific and technical skills and occupational backgrounds, and social and work networks” that backyard beekeepers bring to their craft may offer commercial beekeepers an “external and complementary knowledge source”. The value of this contribution to the industry however, is not widely recognized. As one operator is quoted as saying, those in commercial beekeeping “think hobbyists don’t know anything, and hobbyists know they don’t want to do it on a big scale.”

The backyard beekeeping enthusiast plays an important role in improving community and social acceptance of beekeeping and helping to raise awareness of the importance of bee decline. They are more likely to get involved in honey bee related activities within their communities and this improves the industry’s profile overall by increasing social awareness of the industry and the plight of the bees. Their community engagement helps to strengthen society’s connection to beekeeping and the environment. This in turn can also help change local policies and laws that relate to beekeeping activities.

Dr. Martinus found that backyard beekeepers are generally less knowledgeable about bees and beekeeping than commercial operators, which may be why they are more willing to spend more time seeking and sharing knowledge. While backyard beekeepers tend to be quick to share know-how and experiences, commercial operators were found to generally be more protective of industry secrets and information.

Historically, a beekeepers commitment and profitability have been judged by asking questions like “How many hives do you run?” and “How long have you been keeping bees?” In the age of varroa and neonicotinoid pesticides, a new question is often used to quickly evaluate ones seriousness as a beekeeper: “What percentage of your colonies did you lose this Winter/year?”

Enthusiasts viewed the sharing of ideas and experiences as a way to enhance the beekeeping community. This process is facilitated through formal activities such as bee club and association meetings, classes and workshops and informally through mentorships. All this is in addition to more open access forms of accessing information through blogs, extension service and scientific websites, association or government newsletters and beekeeping journals and periodicals.

The primary focus of backyard beekeepers on basic beekeeping information makes sense given the steep learning curve necessary to get up to speed in bee culture. Less experienced beekeepers tend to be highly dependent on the knowledge of seasoned beekeepers and often adopt a “belief in the person”. The study notes that most enthusiasts felt “they received more information than they passed on, and that information was ‘unlocked’ through a gradual process of increased community status and credibility as they gained knowledge, experience and skill.” This process also impacts how a beekeeper is viewed within the wider beekeeping social network ‘because everyone knows everyone’.

All too often we beekeepers can be judgmental and seek to establish an ego driven pecking order and try to improve our status amongst our peers. A quick and dirty method many of the Australian beekeepers studied used to evaluate another’s commitment and profitability as a beekeeper is by assessing the number of years keeping bees (part-time) or the number of hives one manages (commercial). Of course, the use of such proxies to judge another’s seriousness as a beekeeper is fraught with error and can often be wildly mistaken, but they are commonly used nonetheless.

While keeping bees typically is an isolated activity, learning how to keep bees has a strong social component. This study documented the beekeeping community’s openness and willingness to share management techniques and has built into its ecosystem various opportunities for enthusiast-professional interactions at meetings, conferences and events, all of which serve to strengthen the overall beekeeping community. According to Dr. Martinus, “…hobbyists can be conceived as ‘apprentices’ engaged in legitimate peripheral participation where learning and mastery occurs through participation” in beekeeping. Furthermore, “…interactions between individuals produce a shared identity, related to both individual skill acquisition and an individuals’ existence within a certain context of and having competencies within the group.” Additionally, “…learning of practice then does not always occur in the same locality or in organized forms (e.g. work teams), but also informally through shared experience, passion or expertise and can occur across space and may include professionals, semi-professionals and hobbyists.”

The sharing of beekeeping information and techniques is facilitated by the fact that we are all working with the same insects and have a similar base of knowledge. There is a wide network of both formal and informal opportunities where individuals can connect with each other, allowing beekeepers to share and obtain meaning through the active process of learning by tackling similar problems and issues. Knowledge sharing between non-commercial and commercial groups allows for the exchange of perspectives which can be critical to figuring out what will work in one’s specific situation.

Dr. Martinus summarizes her work this way: “This research has found extensive direct and indirect interactions between hobbyists and operators, which have enhanced the value of hobbyist activities and have become channels for industry and community appropriation. As firm external knowledge sources, hobbyists did not fit current understandings of how user innovators might support industry. This finding perhaps reflects the low-tech character of beekeeping, which allows hobbyists to engage in non-profit markets alongside commercial ones. Hobbyists were both market competitors forcing operators into niche markets focused on tourist, mono-floral, high-value honey and collaborators involved in adapting global scientific or practical knowledge to the Western Australian context given the commercial focus on small process or technical/mechanical changes to improve productivity. Hobbyist activities were also of wider societal benefit, lifting community science levels, counteracting climate change, and changing industry’s operational context by changing policy and shifting societal images of bees and beekeeping.”

According to Dr. Martinus, the results of her study can be used to strengthen the beekeeping community in a couple ways: First is through “Better support for interactions between hobbyists and industry … for example funding or in-kind support to grow mentoring or internship schemes. These appear critical in the transfer of practice between the groups; it also provides a source of low cost labor for industry, and encourages responsible beekeeping amongst new hobbyist beekeepers as a means to address biosecurity threats.”

The second way her findings can strengthen the beekeeping industry is through “more appropriate policy in local governments – local laws on domestic keeping of animals particularly in urban areas, does often not adequately address beekeeping. This would recognize the importance of hobbyist beekeepers in the community (and bees in the environment). Related to this – the enactment of laws around urban beekeeping is often ad hoc, as local officials often do not understand bee behaviors and may be inclined to take an overly-cautious approach towards bees in urban areas in dispute resolution.”

Despite the huge diversity in practices and motivations among beekeepers, we all are dealing with many of the same issues from how to handle swarms, deal with foraging dearths, diseases, pests, queen issues, honey harvesting, timing of nectar flows, pesticide poisoning, etc. Ultimately, we are all in the same boat. By valuing and capitalizing on our differences rather than judging or denigrating them, we stand to create a stronger, more resilient beekeeping industry. A valuable lesson that is applicable not only to our industry, but many other areas of our lives as well.

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A Conversation with Kim Flottum, Part 2

Retired, Longtime Bee Culture Magazine Editor
By: James E. Tew

Last Month
Bee Culture readers, last month, Kim told us the story of his early years as editor of this magazine. Editor Jerry, the current manager of Bee Culture, stopped the first interview just after Kim introduced Charlie Gibbons, who was the White House beekeeper during the Obama administration years. This article, A Conversation with Kim Flottum (Part 2) picks up at that point…

Kim: When Michelle Obama said she wanted a garden out back, one of the people that worked there said, “If you’re going to have a garden, you got to have bees and I know a beekeeper who works here.”

They went and tapped on Charlie’s shoulder and said, “We need a beehive for the White House organic garden.” The elected people who lived in the White House had a dog and Charlie put the beehive where you would expect it – on the ground. Every time the dog came out, he would go sniff the entrance. I don’t know if the dog ever got stung, but people thought it was probably not a good idea, so they made an eight foot tower to put the beehive on top of by the organic garden. When Charlie went to work bees, he had to climb a stepladder, but that was okay.

I wasn’t the only person that got invited there to work with the bees. Quite a few of the commercial and business beekeepers in the U.S. also got to come and visit and look and talk. That worked well.

Then not long after I started, three, four, five years, I got an article from a guy in England, and it was, How We Stop Swarms in England. The article was very British, very, very British. I liked it. The information was basic, but the presentation and how he used words wasn’t basic at all. I published it and I got to know the author. The author’s name was Peter. You met Peter when you were there.

Jim: I did. Peter Smith.

Kim: Then I got invited to my first National Honey Show in London. I was the speaker. The way the room was set up, all the chairs in the back, empty space right in front of the stage, the stage up above, and the speaker was over here on the right, a screen, standard lecture hall. I was looking at it because I was going to be next. “Where’s the steps? How steep are they? Where’s my talk? Everything’s set up.” Peter was what? Nine feet tall?

Jim: Yes, he was a tall man.

Kim: This big, tall guy (Peter Smith) comes over there and, in British English, he says, “How do you do?” I looked up at him and he says, “You published an article of mine, thank you very much.” Kathy and I got to know Peter. When the meeting was over, he drove us around a little bit of the part of town we were in. Over the years we got invited to his place and to his meeting several times.

At that meeting, Peter introduced me to Jeremy Burbidge who runs Northern Bee Books. Now, I had an international publisher contact. He published books and he published a bee magazine. We put our heads together and it turns out we were a lot more alike than not – in terms of being a publisher and what people thought. We got along really well. I got to spread Bee Culture’s influence pretty much across England and that worked. He got to spread UK beekeeping across the U.S. and that worked well. I got to go over there a bunch of times.

He lives way north in England, but he has a Summer house as far south as you can get and still be in England and not have wet feet. That’s how far south he lives. He lived less than a couple miles from… who was that monk in England?

Interviewer: Brother Adam?

Kim: Yes, Brother Adam – at Buckfast Abbey. You could almost see it (Buckfast Abbey) from his place. He was a little bit west of there, but it was that close.

Anyway, coming back to the U.S., I still was doing a fair amount of traveling and speaking. Almost all of this is because nobody else wanted it. I’m just one of the available ones to do this, so I guess I had nothing else to do.

Jim: You were the president during some dark times in the Ohio State Beekeepers Association with Africanized bees and predaceous mite introductions.

Kim: Thank you. I was. Africanized bees and mite introductions were bad.

Jim: It was a difficult time to be an officer in a bee group.

Kim: I had a good experience with a reporter asking about Africanized bees. The first Africanized bees in the U.S. were still very new when I got a call from a reporter at the New York Times about Africanized Killer Bees in the U.S. I had talked to this reporter before which is why she called me because I’m the only beekeeper she knew. We talked and I tried to calm her down, and I think I did a little bit. The story that came out wasn’t outright panic, but it was, “Oh my God, are we going to die? Are we going to die?” sort of thing.

A while later, she had a story in the New York Times about Charlie Gibbons, the White House’s beekeeper. By the way, this is how I met Charlie. I said, “I got to get ahold of her (the New York Times reporter).” I called her up and she said, “I can’t tell you that it’s the president.” I said, “You owe me a story,” so, she gave me Charlie’s name. That was it, just his name. No address. No phone number. I went to my subscription person, and I said, “Do we, by any chance, have a subscriber living in the Washington, DC, Maryland area, named Charlie Gibbons?”
She looked and she said, “Yes, we do.” I said, “Do we have a phone number?” My subscription person replied, “Yes, we do.” I called him up. He’d taken the day off to go to the doctor. I called up and suddenly I’m talking to the president’s beekeeper. How cool is that? That’s how I met the White House’s beekeeper who I discussed earlier.

Jim: You did that because of the Bee Culture subscription contact?

Kim: Yes.

Jim: The subscription address and phone number?

Kim: Yes. That got me in a lot of doors over the years. That got me in doors for two reasons. People were scared of what I would say in the magazine. I’m glad they didn’t know that I was more scared than they were. I would never say anything, and that procedure worked fairly well.

Secondly, beekeeping events started to wind down, in terms of the industry settling down over Africanized honey bees and Varroa mites. The conflict over the honey board eased but then adulterated honey became a prominent national issue. To this day, that adulterated honey challenge hasn’t gone away at all. I’m glad I’m not in the middle of that honey war because that’s not going to go away.

I saw an ad just this week selling honey for a dollar per pound in a 50-gallon barrel. I need to say it wasn’t U.S. honey. It was foreign honey. That’s what U.S. honey producers are up against right now and that’s not going to get any better with inflation and all the things being what they’re going to be.

All things considered, I got out of this editor position at just about the right time in terms of domestic problems, and in terms of international problems. Personal problems? I never had any. A couple beekeepers, occasionally, would confront me with an issue, but by the time I wound down at Root, I had things where I wanted the magazine to be. I had the staff and I had the resources. I’ve made a lot of contacts over the years. Jim, I bet you I could go get a bee writer in twenty different countries today to write an article.

If there’s something going on in Bulgaria, I know the guy and I can say, I established those contacts, and that meant, when you want to know something, who do you know, then call Kim. That worked well and still works to a large degree.

Jim: You routinely had large meetings in Medina featuring well-known beekeeping authorities.

Kim: Well, yes, we usually had a good crowd. We did an Ohio state meeting there and we had monthly meetings and we had two beeyards, and we had a lot going on in the Medina yard because John Root (the President of the Root Company then) supported it. John Root was the last beekeeping administrator at the Root Company. Everything that I did bees, he was behind 100%. He would say, “Do you need a little more?”

Yes. We had a lot of club members. They were from not just Medina, they were from Northeast Ohio, the whole corner of Ohio. One of them was a guy named Jeff Ott, who lived up in the Cleveland area or someplace. He got to know me. We talked and then a little bit later he asked, do you need any articles on anything here or maybe someplace else? Pretty soon he was writing routinely for me. He had a day job and a situation where he could take a week off and go to Mexico and see what was going on with the bees there. He went to Colorado. He went to Mexico. He did a lot of traveling that I couldn’t or didn’t want to do.

Then he got a job in Colorado. When he moved there, he still wrote for me but that tapered off because his job got busy. A couple years later, about three or four years ago, he came back to visit his family who still lives here. He came into my office, and he said, “This is what I’m doing. How would you like to do a podcast?” I just looked at him and I said, “Well, what’s a podcast?” Because I had no idea. He took the time and the energy and the resources and taught me the basics of producing a podcast. The podcasts are named Beekeeping Today podcast and Honey Bee Obscura.

We figured it out between the two of us. He knew mostly all the things you can’t see it, the microphones and the headsets and the wires. He knew all the electronic stuff, and what was being recorded, how to get it recorded and transcribed and on the web. He knew all of that. It helped that he is an excellent beekeeper. I knew the beekeepers. I wasn’t sure what a microphone was when I started this project. He got me familiar with that. Now, I’m capable electronically. That’s about it. Capable.

Jim: Yes. I agree with you on that.

Kim: Between the two of us put together, he knew how, and I knew who. This project has been a success. I saw this building and growing. The magazine was doing fine. It was time for me to retire from the Root Company.

At the time, I was over 70 and I needed to sit down. I spent a year looking for someone to replace me. I found three people with whom I was comfortable. They were sharp, intelligent, articulate and nonconfrontational. None of them would have caused a problem. Jerry Hayes was selected. I didn’t even get the offer out of my mouth before he said, “Yes, I want it. When can I start?” He’s the Bee Culture editor now.

He just stepped right in. He came in and spent a year with me at the company. I was able to show him about a third of what I know. Looking back, I missed so much stuff when telling him how to get this job done. He’s had to learn the hard way, but now he’s in charge. Once in a while, I’ll offer an article or a piece of advice or something, but now he’s in charge.

Figure 3. An acknowledgment of Kim’s bee industry successes.

Kim: So, I’m still involved in the podcast, but I no longer travel to meetings. I haven’t been on an airplane in three years, and that’s just fine with me. In fact, I won’t even drive to a meeting. I’ll do Zoom if people want. I’ve got probably 200 talks on the computer behind me, and I pick a subject. I’m good to go in most cases.

Now I’m here at home and I’m going through this lung thing that’s causing me a bunch of problems. The medical theory is that it’s going to go away. They’re going to fix it, and I’m going to be back to normal. I’m not a betting man, but here I am – betting.

Jim: [laughs] I’m sure you are.

Kim: No other choice.

Jim: How old a man are you, Kim?

Kim: 76. Time flies.

Jim: Well, that’s not old.

Kim: Okay? Why doesn’t it feel that way?

Jim: Kim, you’ve given a good overview, but you can’t just list everything that happened. How many years did you work for the Root Company?

Kim: I started in 1986 and I quit in 2020. That would be 34 years.

Jim: You did videos, you taught short courses, you developed a pollinator garden. In fact, you had a dynamic pollinator garden layout. You even developed a second magazine.

Figure 2. Jim Tew and Kim Flottum capturing footage for a video session of the Kim & Jim beekeeping video series.

Kim: Yes. You and I, all things considered, have been so far ahead of the electronic distribution of material in this industry than anybody I can think of. We did the Kim and Jim Show, and we did instructional videos. The one thing you’ve done that I haven’t done is initiate a YouTube channel. That’s the only thing I haven’t done. We’ve done everything else. We’ve written stories and we’ve written books. Kathy, my coworker, and wife, went to a bunch of national meetings doing the – what do you call it?

Jim: “Facebook Live.”

Kim: Facebook Live. Right. We went to meetings and talked to all the vendors and two years later, the vendors still came up, when they’d see me and say, “When you did that Facebook video at the Federation meeting, people still talk about that, so you made a splash.” It was because I had good people around me that knew more than I do and good people around me who wanted to help. We accomplished a lot in this industry that I say carefully, maybe now some of the people are beginning to catch up with.

Jim: Yes. You don’t stay ahead if you don’t keep racing. Even so, after a while, the race has to end.

Kim: What else did we do?

Jim: Well Kim, you and I had a car wreck on the way to a bee meeting.

Kim: Yes. We did. Almost a really bad one.

Figure 5. Jim Tew and Kim Flottum at one of many, many bee meetings.

Jim: Yes. We were going to an Ohio Farm Bureau Commodity meeting, as I recall and, at 65 mph, we got broadsided, you and me. Kim, we missed that meeting. (It was not our fault. Chuckles.)

Kim: We’ve had a lot of calamities together, but I clearly remember that one.

Jim: There’s just so many things. You’ve mentioned Kathy several times. She’s been an excellent coworker and a supportive wife for a long time for you. She should certainly be acknowledged in your successes. She was an integral part of the evolution of Bee Culture, too. You mentioned earlier that you started a second magazine, Beekeeping, Your First Three Years.

Kim: Yes, Kathy was fundamental to the magazine and to my career. That second magazine lasted, I want to say, five or six years. It hit during an economic downturn period that I had nothing to do with nor the industry had anything to do with. Unfortunately, it had to be dropped. If you have a copy hidden somewhere, keep it because there aren’t any more.

Jim: It was a useful magazine that was enjoyable to read. Kim, you published a lot of books for the Root Company, and you published books that you authored.

Kim: Yes, I have. If you had told me in 1965, I was going to publish a book – any book, it’d take me 20 minutes to get up off the floor from laughing. I began to see the value of having not a permanent voice, but a voice that had almost all the facts in a book. Not everything, because tomorrow something’s going to change, and next week something else’s going to change. Most of what’s in my book was true ten years ago and twenty years ago, and it’ll be true 20 years from now and that’s what I wanted to produce.

One of the times I was with Dr. Morse, (Dr. Roger Morse, Beekeeping Professor, Cornell University) he had a big office with a big desk. He sat on one side of the desk and there was a bookshelf behind him that went almost to the ceiling. We were sitting chatting and he turned around and said, “You need a new one, ABC.” The current edition, at the time, was like 11 years old. It hadn’t been revised in a while.

John Root and his predecessors, his father and his father’s brother had a schedule where they edited about a third of ABC every three years. They picked the oldest stuff and replaced it and left the rest of it alone. Well, I hadn’t been there three years yet, so Roger said, “Let’s do this.” Do what I asked? “Let’s rewrite this book.” He did 75% of it all new. I did maybe 20%. Then he pulled in a lot of people, and I pulled in some people. Roger did a lot, and we came out with a new ABC, that was a hit and a half, but the cover looked just like the old ones.

A few years later, Shim (Dr. H. Shimanuki, USDA ARS bee scientist) came to me and he said, “Are you ever going to do this book again?” I said, “No, you are.” He said, “I’ll be back in a month with a draft.” He was pretty much on time getting it back to me. I looked at the cover and I said, we are never, ever going to put this traditional cover on ABC again. I had a picture of a beekeeper, standing out by a beehive. This new version was to have that color picture, a shiny cover. That’s the only one ever and probably the only one that will ever have a color cover.

Jim: [laughs]

Kim: Dr. Keith Delaplane (bee scientist, the University of Georgia) oversaw the editing of the current ABC, and he got ABC where I wanted it to be. He is a good scientist and a good beekeeper. He has good people working for him. He edited the ABC I wanted. I didn’t want a science textbook and I didn’t want a how-to-stop swarming book. I added a bunch of stuff from people that nobody knows or knew then. I think the last edition of ABC was pretty good.

Jim: Right, that last book was a good publication. It looked good.

Figure 4. The cover of Kim’s popular beekeeping text, The Backyard Beekeeper 4th Edition

Kim: Then among the other books I wrote, was Backyard Beekeeper, modeled after several, but not a lot, like several books already out there. Early this past Summer, I finished the fifth edition of Backyard Beekeeper, that’ll be out in February 2024. Then, there was another one, The Honey Handbook, and that just focused on how to get as much honey out of a bee as you can. The last one I did was, Common Sense Natural Beekeeping, which was taking everything that’s good for the bee and getting rid of everything that wasn’t good for the bee. It turned out to be mostly natural, but not quite common-sense beekeeping.

Jim: I don’t know. There must be one, but I don’t know who else has had five-issue updates of the same beekeeping book. You know, a book that wasn’t like ABC or the Hive and the Honey Bee. That’s impressive, Kim.

Kim: Yes. Now, the Beekeeping Today and Honey Bee Obscura podcast projects have been entertaining for me. We presently have generous sponsors for the productions and Jeff does a great job editing the audio and posting the segments on the web. I’m enjoying working on them.

Jim: Kim, this review has truly been an educational process for me. There’s no practical way to compress all your decades into a couple of simple magazine articles, but we surely tried. I have enjoyed listening to your experiences. Thanks for your time and memories.

Dr. James E. Tew
Emeritus Faculty, Entomology
The Ohio State University
tewbee2@gmail.com

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

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Read along below!

Found in Translation

An Interview with Dr. Hongmei Li-Byarlay
Associate Professor and Project Director for Pollinator Health, Central State University, Ohio
By: Jay Evans, USDA Beltsville Bee Lab

Where are you from originally?
*I was born in Tianjin, China, and came to the U.S. to study for my Ph.D. in 2002.

How did you get interested in science?
*When I was a sixth-grader, I talked to my uncle and told him that I want to be a scientist! Maybe because I had read so many books on the weird creatures in the deep ocean and stories of UFOs.

Where did you go to school and what did you study?
*I went to Tianjin Normal University for my Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Education (dual degree). My senior project was on the effects of metal contamination on bacteria in garlic roots. Then, I went to Nan Kai University for my Master’s degree in Zoology. I studied micro-moths in Northern China and discovered four new species.
In 2002, I went to Purdue University in Indiana for my Ph.D. in Entomology and studied genetics and physiology of fruit flies with Dr. Barry Pittendrigh and Larry Murdock. In 2010, I started my postdoc training with Dr. Gene Robinson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying behavioral genetics of honey bees. In 2013, I studied epigenetics and aging of honey bees with Drs. David Tarpy at NCSU and Olav Rueppell at UNC-Greensboro.

How did you start your career after school?
*In 2017, I got an offer from Central State University as a new Assistant Professor of Entomology. CSU had just gained their new status as a 1890 Land Grant Institution with USDA. I was very excited to start my own lab.

Which hot topics are you studying now?
*I am studying 1) the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying the social behavior and ageing of honey bees, such as grooming behavior, aggression and foraging behavior, 2) active breeding efforts for selection of mite-resistant bees by selecting mite-biting stocks and 3) landscape ecology of pollinators and flowers.

Where have you traveled in your studies of bees and what was most memorable?
*I have traveled to China, Germany, Canada, Puerto Rico and many different states in the U.S. The most striking memories were observing and doing experiments with Apis cerana in China, and my trip to Puerto Rico to see and feel the gentle AHBs in reality. I really enjoyed interacting with all the hives there.

What are the biggest challenges facing beekeepers moving forward?
*The desire to find new solutions for mite management is so high, and there are many new ideas. I just hope we all think of new solutions by integrating the sustainability of our hives and our environment.

What gives you hope? What are the best recent discoveries in bee science?
*The government, bee scientists, beekeepers and non-profit organizations are all working together to find the best ways to help our bees, which showed the most love and funding support from the community.
Three of the most interesting discoveries from our lab are:
1)A new publication on Single-cell dissection of aggression in honey bee colonies. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02090-0. We are all so excited to use a new sequencing technology to help us to understand bees in a deeper way.
2)Our lab’s new pub about RNA methylation and discovery of long non-coding RNAs underlying bee aggression https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-023-09411-4
3)We showed that the mandibles (mouthparts) are different between high mite-biting honey bee workers and current commercial colonies. I am also working on a new manuscript to show the striking comparison of mouthparts between two different species of Apis, in hopes this sheds light on mite defenses. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.638308

Any advice for future scientists?
*Stay curious and ask questions!

What are your hobbies and other interests beyond bees and science?
*I like running, reading with my kids, hiking and camping in national parks, and meditation.

Jerry: Dr. Keith Delaplane, I remember the first time I met you long ago, I was driving with Nick Dadant down to see you. I read about you and had seen your picture. As I was parking the car, I saw you walking across the parking lot. I jumped out and said, “Dr. Delaplane, I presume? Since then, we have worked together many times, experienced many things and it has been good over the years.

K: It has Jerry, and from the years perspective, you and I have seen a lot over the years.

J: For Bee Culture readers, I think about what you have done, how you have conducted yourself and it has been exemplary. We all have to start somewhere, so where did you grow up and how did that land you in entomology and bees?

K: That is a good question and one I think about a lot because I have enjoyed my life and my career. As you go through life and experience things, you learn more and more and are reminded more and more that you didn’t get here on your own merits. You stand on the shoulders of your family, friends, communities and colleagues every step of the way. You become aware and grateful. I am forever grateful for my upbringing in North Central Indiana growing up on a farm. My dad and his dad were row crop farmers – corn, soybeans and hogs. It’s a great way to grow up.

J: So you were outside a lot. Were you naturally interested in insects on a flower or a fly in the hog trough?

K: My ticket into entomology and the whole natural world was through honey bees and beekeeping. So, my dad was a farmer, we weren’t plugged into ecology; the idea of ecology was new in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, wasn’t it? Farming had an uneasy relationship with ecology and the natural world. We thought we were partnering with nature but it was different than ecology with plowing, using synthetic pesticides and incorporating fertilizers and all that stuff that today. We know exacts a toll on the environment. I was not really ecologically minded as a kid growing up. I was agriculturally minded.

J: Its all about production, isn’t it?

K: It is! It’s all about production, profits and maximizing efficiency to extract the most we can out of the acreage that we had. In my career though I have seen that shift, a good and real shift which is still occurring today toward farming with ecological principles.

To answer your original question, I was interested in nature and insects. Honey bees fit right into that ecological paradigm and they are a natural bridge into entomology and biology and that is the path I followed. Beekeeping was in my family, my grandfather had bees. It was not unusual back then; most farming families kept a few bees. My father used to help him, but he never really took to it.

Then, when I was a young teenager, my parents gave me a beginning beekeeping kit. At the time I thought it was pretty random, I mean, beekeeping as a hobby? It was pretty rare and thought of as an oddball hobby.

J: But it wasn’t hogs and cattle, right?

K: No, and in fact it became a source of contention at times when my father and I had different plans on how I should spend my Saturday (chuckles). I wanted to work on my bees while he wanted me to help on the farm. Not to detract from my parents’ support of my beekeeping, they paid for all my beekeeping supplies and let me do it.

J: Did you learn on your own or did you have a mentor? It was easier back then, you could put your bees in a box in the Spring then go fishing the rest of the year.

K: Yes it was so much easier then, you only had to check on them a few times then take the honey off. It was a Golden Age! Well, I read all the books, I read the classics like ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture, Hive and the Honey Bee, First Lessons in Beekeeping by the Dadant Family and all its successive editions. I did have a mentor named Mr. Paul Champ. He had 300 hives and was able to make a living on it. So once in a while, when my family was out and about, we’d bring our empty quart jar and he’d fill it up. I remember he kept this big honey storage tank right in his kitchen next to the refrigerator. So he was a natural choice to answer my questions. He made house calls! He was with me the first time I saw a queen. I remember the thrill of seeing that queen! It was real – not a mystery – and in my box of bees! I will never forget that thrill.

Those memories are ancient to me now but they go back to my childhood. That rich smell, that scent is unmatchable by anything else.

J: That smell of aster and goldenrod in the Fall…

K: Yes, that pungency and the fascination in the apiary. Beekeeping is so remarkable at every level and I was thrilled with that as a young person. I had a grasp on nature that my peers did not, so they tended to gravitate to our farm. Beekeeping was so interesting to them.

J: Were you a member of 4-H or FFA?

K: Strangely, no, my father and his family were rather insular. We were mostly on our own. As I pursued through my life and career and I became involved in agriculture and extension, they didn’t really understand what I was doing but they supported me regardless.

J: What was it that you wanted to learn and discover that took you to Purdue and LSU?

K: It’s a beautiful story, Jerry. I married early; in fact, I was married by my last semester as an undergraduate at Purdue. I didn’t have a firm career path in mind. I majored in Animal Science, which again is an agricultural major. So once again, I didn’t know in which world I belonged. I had some ambitions of Veterinary College, but I didn’t have the grades for it. Then, I took a class from a very kind and insightful professor named Dr. Wallace Denton in my last semester in “Marriage and Family Counseling”. Imagine that, it’s not even an agricultural topic! He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t know, so he made an appointment with me to talk about it. When we met, he asked me what my interests were. I looked down and mumbled, “Well I like keeping honey bees…” I was a little embarrassed because it was an unusual interest. “Well then,” he said, “you should enroll in graduate school and earn a degree in Entomology!”

So, I threw my hat in the ring and lucked out with LSU. My wife and I packed up our things and moved to Baton Rouge, LA. I thought about that story a lot through my career.

Adults don’t think about their influence on kids; it’s a fine line between meddling and giving guidance. I learned as a father that a tension runs, wondering if you are pushing too far. When do you push and when do you hold back? In 20 minutes, he altered the course of my life!

J: You have certainly had good guidance in your life.

K: Yes, I am very grateful, in fact I have an addendum to that story. I knew his daughter. She lived and grew up in West Lafayette. Fast forward a decade later and we ran into her here in Athens, GA. She is the life of the party here, she’s a local musician. Her parents had multiple occasions to visit her, so I have had many opportunities to tell him how important he has been in my life and that I was very grateful.

J: At LSU, is that where the light came on?

K: Yes, once I got to LSU, everything clicked for me. It was a “Eureka” moment for me. I loved my experience at LSU and at the USDA Lab. My major professor, Dr. John Harbo is a well-known researcher in honey bee breeding and genetics. I was in school with Tom Rinderer, Bob Denko, Anita Collins and others. It was a golden time in my career.

The Department of Entomology at LSU was strong and I had great professors. That, Jerry, is when I realized that honey bees are more than just agriculture, and biology is more than agriculture and where honey bees fit into just about everything. If I had to do it all over again, I would still stick with Biology.

J: So from there you went to University of GA?

K: Yes, so it was rather word of mouth, but John Harbo called me and said they had an opening. So, I applied for the job and to my ever-living amazement, they interviewed me and offered me the job.

I may have been the last of the generation in which I moved from earning my Ph.D. straight to a tenure track position in a university. Now, students have to get one or a series of jobs as a post doc before they land a faculty position.

I have a multiple appointment in extension and research. I’ve had some teaching appointments off and on but mostly I have been in the field, the laboratory and in direct contact with beekeepers. It was good.

I have written many times that honey bees are a window to the world and it is a good metaphor. They bridge so many domains of human activity. I can’t think of any animal or any field of agriculture or a hobby that bridges so many separate spheres of human activity. Honey bees are remarkable and I am honored and pleased to work with them.

J: When you received your tenure track position, what went through your mind? What was your goal?

K: I realized that I had been treated well and given special privileges and opportunities, so, “Don’t blow it, Keith!” (chuckles). I have never been one to give myself the benefit of the doubt, and have always had self-doubts, so I was motivated by fear. I applied myself and went through the steps I had been taught to do research and “pretended” to be a good researcher. I figured, if I worked on it, I would eventually become a good researcher. You go through mental gymnastics and after a while it sticks. It’s hard for me to be prideful.

J: That is certainly a motivator! How long were you at UGA and how many students did you have?

K: I was at UGA for 33 years and had seven graduate students under my direction and sat on 15 committees. I also had two post docs. I’m grateful to watch a young mind advance from an elementary mind to one who understand and has skills maybe above your own.

J: But that is the goal, isn’t it?

K: It is the goal! An economy of justice occurs but as you become older, you are happier with that arrangement. I’m happy that they get the glory they deserve, you want to give of yourself to give them that recognition. The saying goes, “youth is wasted on the young”, and while I appreciate the humor it is not exactly true. As you learn life’s lessons and you are managing your own interior life, you become better at contextualizing your own ego. Having an ego is important, but your opinion is not the only one and may not be correct. You rarely know the entire story. That is part of the challenge. This is certainly true with managing honey bees. Beekeeping and beekeepers are interesting because they are so diverse in their understanding.

J: I wish someone would invest say, $50,000 to study the profile of beekeepers. That would be very interesting.

K: I am authentically curious about that. Are goat farmers or gardeners like that or are we a unique creature? Beekeepers are an interesting slice of humanity. We are somewhat self-selecting because we like nature but otherwise we are all over the board with social skills, income level, religious and political views, and education. This makes it difficult to navigate a bee meeting. (laughs)

J: Tell me, what has been your biggest success and a failure that you regret?

K: Well, I was inspired the first few months on the job which is probably typical, but I happened upon the good fortune of serendipity to have a desire to record inspections in the yard for extension purposes. The producer was on staff at UGA and an affiliate with the local public broadcasting station. He saw the value in my recordings and published it for a three year TV show. That really put me on the map and enabled me to travel more for talks and demonstrations. I was invited to speak all over the country, in fact the world. This helped with my early academic promotions.

Next, I teamed up with Dr. Mike Hood at Clemson University. He and I were the closest colleagues with a shared appointment in honey bees in the USA as the two universities are only 60 miles apart. We collaborated a lot. We worked on Varroa mite IPM and published the first economic threshold for Varroa mites which was badly needed. We also ran a series of studies using non-chemical techniques to control Varroa. This occupied about 10 years of the middle of my career.

Unfortunately though, it never became overly successful. This falls in the category of a failure. I think we are overly optimistic to think that bees can develop a true resistance to Varroa mites and the pathogens that result from their damage to the bees. We can produce honey bees with some hygienic traits to remove Varroa mites from the colony, but we are using defense mechanisms that were co-opted to defend the bee from something else, for instance, chalkbrood was the first genetic trait found, in which bees would remove infected mummies from the hive, and the detection and removal of pupae infected with AFB. The overwhelming weight of the data have not come up with a ringing solution for Varroa mite control through genetic resistance.

J: When a queen is mating with 14-20 drones, you don’t know the ancestry of the drones or the queen.

K: True! Traditional animal husbandry doesn’t apply with honey bees; it is much more difficult to think in those terms. Honey bees have multiple mating, how it uses genetics to advance the colony is complicated.

That is why I am so interested in polyandry (multiple mating) which is now the focus of my research. It is successful and provides very basic research. It is going to benefit the fundamentals of science. Also, some of my students and I have conducted a great deal of research on blueberry pollination. It is easy to convert that basic science to deliverables that will help growers. You can use it to adjust the number of colonies needed in the orchard, for example.

Science is self-adjusting, some of it will stand the test of time, while some will fade away.

J: Welcome to life, eh?

K: Yes, science is not a mechanism for finding answers to solve life problems reliably, but it is the best mechanism humanity has and is a necessary part of the process. Some studies fail and are never reported, thus repeated over and over.

J: Would you please provide some advice to BC readers?

K: If you dig into honey bee biology and appreciate the organism, you will enjoy it even more. Reading and finding clues to keep honey bees healthy will give you more pleasure, improve colony health and increase your profit line. Honey bees are a bottomless pit of wonder, curiosity and amazement.

I am working on a book which will be out next year, called Honey Bee Social Evolution, published by John Hopkins Press. I wrote about the similarities between different organisms and the honey bee colony as a unit. They all have the same dynamics. Also read Hilda M. Ransome’s book, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore. It was written in the 1930’s but it is a classic. She wrote about how honey bees have been used worldwide in literature, religion and poetry for centuries. There is no end to this insect and what it can give you.

Friends know James (Jim) Thompson as a beekeeper, EAS Master Beekeeper, Honey Judge, former Apiary Inspector, Chevy SSR (convertible truck with a super charged Corvette engine!), historian, cat lover, philatelist and collector of all things beekeeping, but they may not know his roots and how his star studded journey guided him to the knowledge he enjoys today.

As we sit in his round house for which he designed the basement, he showed me his immense collection of beekeeping equipment – smokers, hive tools, dove tailed hives, belt buckles and honey themed bottle caps, letters, postcards and cartoons. He explained his passion for beekeeping and how he began his sweet life in beekeeping.

Q: How and when did you become interested in beekeeping, Jim?
Jim: I have been interested in beekeeping since I was two years old when I removed the lids of a beehive at my uncle’s farm and stuck my head into it. He lived in Stockport, Iowa, which is very close to Hamilton, IL, where Dadant is headquartered. My uncle had some of Dadant’s early bee hives. I wasn’t afraid of them at all! I was curious to see what they were doing! My uncle taught me about beekeeping, then I acquired his when he passed away. I also liked working on cars. As a young teenager, I bought a Model A car and spent a lot of money putting a V-8 engine in it.

Q: What did you do next?
I joined the Army and was assigned to be an aircraft mechanic in the Transportation Unit. I repaired and restored downed airplanes so that they could be flown again. I was multi-engine rated. A week into the Army my dad was killed. He owned a construction company in Ames, Iowa. I was given a three day pass to visit my family. One of my uncles took over the company and sold my Model A for $100.

For 18 months in 1963, I was stationed in Alaska and in my free time on the Ski Patrol patrolling the slopes. I was rated “Black Diamond” which is the highest grade for skiers. We were at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks where some U-2 Spy planes were stationed.

Q: Where did you go to college?
I grew up in Ames, Iowa so I went to college at Iowa State University and majored in Industrial Arts. The Army paid my tuition, but I had to work to pay for other expenses. I worked in a cafeteria loading dishes in the dishwasher. I knew I was doing okay as it took three people to unload it in the time that it took me to load it (laughs).

Q: What was your first job?
Wooster City Schools recruited me to teach Industrial Arts. Soon, I was assigned to work in OWE (Occupational Work Experience) with students who had problems adhering to the school’s program. They needed a more structured curriculum and a firm hand… I was it! (Chuckles) I trained them to excel in mathematics, English and work related occupations. I had to obtain certifications in the Summers to teach them English, math and history. They had me half day for every subject. It must have worked because the dropout rate was less than 2%.

Q: How long did you teach in Wooster City Schools?
33 years. I taught OWE for 19-20 years. Some students still contact me or remember me when they see me somewhere.

Q: You were in Wooster when all the Greats were here in Ohio. That must have been wonderful to be with them all.
Yes, Dr.’s James Tew, Larry Connor, Tom Sanford, Walter Rothenbuhler as well as Vic Thompson and Tom Ross were here. I became friends with many of them. It was a great time to be in Ohio! I took Larry Connor’s mail order class on beekeeping. He was the Extension Apiarist at OSU at the time.

In 1985, Dr. Rothenbuler invited Eva Crane to visit. What a thrill that was!

Q: You were a County Apiary Inspector too. What was it like being an Inspector back then?
I was the Wayne County Apiary Inspector for 17 years as well as the Holmes County Inspector for two of them. I used to have about 80 colonies. Some of them were infected with AFB so I became an Inspector to figure out where it was coming from. During my inspection years, I met and worked with the people at ATI (Agricultural Technical Institute) and the ones that associated with the beekeeping program, for example: John Chalk, Jim Tew, Mark Headings, Malcolm Tom Sanford, Tom Ross, Sherry Ferrell, Paul Jackson, John Root, David Heilman and others. We had to burn a lot of hives as AFB was everywhere. We were able to get the infection rate down to 2%.

Q: What advice do you have for beekeepers and County Apiary Inspectors regarding the Apiary Program?
You have to keep good records. You have to be able to trace back where the infected hives originated and where they were moved. Know who had problems with it and where the apiaries were located. Treat beekeepers with respect and teach them good beekeeping skills. No one ever refused us because we were helping them control AFB in their areas. We had good rapport with beekeepers.

You have to realize that everyone is going to have AFB in an apiary at one point. You have to know how to diagnose and burn it as soon as possible and you have to be out in the field working. Remember that the bee equipment belongs to the beekeeper.

Q: You were president of OSBA and are still their historian. When were you president?
I was president in 1985-86 for two terms. I was president before John Grafton’s first run as president (he was president two different times).

I still consider myself as OSBA’s Historian. I became an EAS Certified Master Beekeeper in 1994.

OSBA had some strong active members that moved it forward. They started the Ohio Honey Festival which originated in Lebanon then it was moved to Oxford in Hamilton County. The Honeyfest was started by Arnold Crabtree and the Conrads at Lithopolis (outside of Columbus, OH). The Ohio State Fair was the major center to educate people about honey bees, beekeeping and bee products. Half of the hall would house eight exhibits. The major intent was to sell honey at the fair. The Casdorphs (David and Alta) were the main exhibitors and had one entire section. The Conrads (Barry and Carmen) had another huge display further down the hall. It used to take 12 hours to judge all the honey! Florence Beathard would stay and keep me company as I would be there long into the night. At that time, 10 jars had to be judged for each individual display. Finally, Zale Maxwell allowed only three jars to be judged per entry. That really helped!

Q: Who were some of the Beekeepers and Bee Researchers who influenced you?
OH, so many! Arnold Murray, Arthur Korody from the Mansfield area gave me a lead on an old Root foundation Mill, which is in the OARDC Beekeeping Museum. Tom Ross introduced the Ross Rounds – they were tan then brown, but at first they were translucent. Tom was on ATI Advisory Committee at the same as me.

Jim Tew started me on honey judging in 1983 when he had to leave for a trip. He loaned me the equipment. Well, it stuck to me so I am still judging today! We used the Lovibond color grade, polariscope and refractometer. We still enjoy judging today!

Q: Tell me more about honey judging. How do you prefer to judge honey?
Well, in the laboratory we used a pfund color grader. The National Honey Board uses the color of honey to classify the honey, not to grade it. Honey should not be graded on its flavor because everyone has a different sense of taste. Instead, it should be graded on quality. I developed a transparent color grader which I give to those who finish the apprenticeship in Ohio.

Q: You have shown me your marvelous collection of beekeeping equipment. Do you have some that you are still looking for?
I just bought a Serbian hive tool, which I have been looking for five years. I am still looking for an Excaliber hive tool, made by Jim Fisher of Bee Quick, it was made of stainless steel and has a beveled type handle. People don’t keep things anymore; non-beekeepers don’t realize the value of these old tools and the history behind them.

Q: How long have you been collecting beekeeping equipment and memorabilia?
Well at least since the 1990’s.

Q: What advice can you offer to new beekeepers?

• Find a beekeeping club, or several that you like which provides good education and experience. That is so important to understand what we need to do to keep our bees healthy. Keep going to the meetings because you will never stop learning.
• Register your apiaries and go through the hives with the Inspector. You will learn a lot from them.
• Look for evidence of a queen.
• Know your diseases (and pests), symptoms and how to manage them.
• For Varroa mites, sample and test!
• Open your hives when needed to check on the health of the colonies. The frequency varies upon the season, location of colonies, amount of sun they are receiving and the reason for wanting to inspect them. About every three weeks is a good rule of thumb.

Figure 1. Erin Rupp of Pollinate Minnesota, Anne Turnham (center) and Ana Heck, formerly of University of Minnesota Bee Squad, now Michigan State University Extension educator for Apiculture ready for a day of honey bee outreach.

This year we decided to interview beekeeper Anne Turnham. Even though she doesn’t like to talk about herself and would have rather been on a walk with her best friend and golden retriever Birdie, we figured we’d get her out of her comfort zone because we think that you all will find her story interesting. It’s hard to make a living with bees, but Anne has found really creative ways to center her love for bees in her life and career. Besides keeping her own colonies, she started and runs her own honey label business and works for the UMN Bee Lab’s Bee Squad doing graphics, visual outreach and educational videos.

Q: What first got you hooked on honey bees?
A(nswer/nne): It was when CCD was making the news. I wanted to find out more and just understand what was going on. I took a class, which was mostly inside, but we did get to go outside into an apiary and stand next to the bees. I found it so fascinating that I decided to become a beekeeper by the end of the weekend.

Q: Were you afraid of bees at all when you first started?
A: No. I’d worked with cockroaches in a past job, so bees were less scary. I have a background in Biology and Chemistry and have always loved nature and understanding nature. So, once I decided to get into beekeeping, I devoured every book and class about bees that I could get my hands on. If I was going to do it, I wanted to do right by my bees. Then, in return, my honey bees became this way for me to connect with nature while being at home with my three kids.

Q: What have you learned from the bees over your years of beekeeping?
A: How connected we are to the health of habitat. Bees are such a direct window into what is happening in the environment. They tell you if the environment is healthy. With hive loss, I could directly trace that onto the landscape. Through bees, I learned how closely we are connected to habitat, and how important it is to plant for bees.

Q: Okay so you run your own honey label business and you do the graphics for all the Bee Lab’s educational materials. How did you go from biology to design?
A: I’m self-taught. Learning graphic design was a means to do what I wanted to do. And what I wanted to do was to help bees and beekeepers. After I fell in love with bees, I fell in love with the beekeeper community. They care about insects, these tiny little insects, which just is a testament to how much they care about the world and all living things.

Q: Tell us a bit more about your honey label business*.
A: I started making honey labels for my own honey that I produced along with two of my friends with whom I shared an apiary. I learned Photoshop. Then I put a little blog out with some designs for my friends, but I did not anticipate that it would turn into a business. But there was a need, and people found out. Honey producers are really proud of their honey and they were looking for labels that reflected their pride and their unique businesses. My first order was actually from California. Someone put my designs on a bigger blog, and then suddenly I was getting a ton of customers!

Q: You work for the UMN Bee Lab doing visual education and science communication. What’s your philosophy or goal with this type of work?
A: I tried to volunteer for the squad because I thought they were the coolest. But instead they hired me as a beekeeper. As time went on I started doing more and more graphics work for the team. My first project was designing the labels and instructions for our Varroa Mite Testing Kit.

As to what my goal is, my goal is to help scientists and pollinator educators put content out in the world that will help bees and in turn help the health of the planet.

Q: You have a special talent for turning complex information into very accessible visual descriptions. What happens in your head when you start thinking about how to communicate a given topic visually?
A: I listen a lot and let things percolate before jumping in. My husband David calls it “cluing it.” I always win at the game Clue because I take copious notes and never miss a detail. It’s not that I’m competitive. It’s more like I want to fix a puzzle. I use my “cluing it” energy to puzzle out how to visualize a concept. I ask a million questions because I want to hear the way [other people] understand things. Another important part of my process is going for long walks. My mind needs to wander.

Q: What are infographics and why are they an important communication tool?
A: Infographics are basically simple illustrations, typically one or two colors paired with text to give you a snapshot of what a longer text is about. They support neurodiverse learners because they cue into what the content is going to be about, giving you a way to digest information or even decide if you want to dig in further. It’s a different way of skimming information you want to learn.

Q: Do you think of yourself as an artist?
A: More like a translator.

Q: Thanks Anne! We’re going to go ahead and call you an artist anyway! We appreciate your sharing the ways in which you support honey bees and the ways in which they support you back!

For more information:
https://beelab.umn.edu/manuals
https://anneturnham.myportfolio.com/work

*A note from the authors: Anne is currently not taking new honey label customers in order to meet the needs of her current clients!

(Below) Figure 2. A graphic imagined and designed by Anne Turnham for the University of Minnesota Beekeeping in Northern Climates manual.

Click Here if you listened. We’d love to know what you think. There is even a spot for feedback!

Read along below!

James E. Tew & Kim Flottum. Photo Credit: Honey Bee Obscura podcast (https://www.honeybeeobscura.com/)

A Conversation with Kim Flottum, Part 1

Retired, Longtime Bee Culture Magazine Editor
By: James E. Tew

We’ve grown old together
Readers, I’ve been friends and have worked with Kim Flottum, former Bee Culture editor for nearly forty years. He began his responsibilities at Bee Culture Magazine in 1986. I was still a kid of 38 when Kim took the job in Medina, Ohio. Over the many ensuing years, for better or worse, Kim accepted more than 300 of my articles. We attended innumerable bee meetings and we produced electronic projects. We put together slide-deck programs and now, with the help of Jeff Ott, Kim and I present podcasts on various topics every week. I could not think of anyone more appropriate for an in-depth conversation. Ours has been a long, long trek. What follows is Kim’s view of that historical pathway.

Kim: I grew up in Central Wisconsin in the 1950’s. I played some high school football and I worked in a grocery store. I had a good childhood with many memories. College became an option so I attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire for a while and then I transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Madison where I studied horticulture and entomology. I landed a contract job working for an entomologist there. After a few years, the funding for that assistant position ran out and I had to find another job. The USDA Agricultural Research Service, Honey Bee Research Lab headed by Dr. Eric Erickson was on the fourth floor of the building where I had been working.
Dr. Erickson and I were talking in the break room one day, and he said, “Do you know anybody that can do this, this, and this?” I said, “Yes – me.” He said, “Well I need somebody that can grow soybeans, and look at pollination, and look at bees and work bees,” and do all this crazy stuff. “Yes, me.” I needed a job, he needed an employee, so I just moved two floors up and I was there for four years. Go figure.

Jim: Were you going to school all this time? Were you taking other classes?

Kim: Yes, I graduated before I finished working for Eric. I worked for Erickson for four years, doing things I would’ve never imagined doing, and at the end of four years I was funded by a grant. I was totally supported by that grant; Eric needed a grad student.

At the end of four years the grant ended, and Dr. Erickson said, “Well folks we’re packing up. We’re moving the lab to Arizona. Been fun working here, bye.” “Well okay.” I moved to Connecticut, where I knew some people, and I got a job working in a greenhouse, and then I got a job working on a farm. I was raising a couple hundred acres of vegetables, and fruit, and the like. I had apple orchards and sweet corn – all sorts of things.

While I was there, I decided to get involved with the Connecticut State Beekeepers Association. Suddenly I was a Connecticut beekeeper, and I went to my first bee meeting. Soon thereafter, the group needed a president, and I took on the job.

Jim: My goodness – that was fast.

Kim: They had taken the Penwalt Chemical Company to court, and they had won the case. Connecticut took the controversial pesticide Penncap-M off the market. Legal fees, for the court case, were $40,000. I was the president of the beekeeping group, and if you know how a business is run, the president ultimately is responsible for the bill unless there’s something set up to protect him. I turned around and there was nobody there to protect me.

For about a year I campaigned across New England, from Maine to Florida, and to Illinois, telling our story. “We got Penncap-M off the market, you can, too. Here’s how you do it. Form a coalition, pay one lawyer.” In less than a year, I raised the $40,000.

When I was the president of Connecticut Beekeepers, the president is also the EAS (Eastern Apiculture Society) delegate. Suddenly I was on the board of EAS, I went to the first EAS meeting and John Root, from Bee Culture, was there. He was on the EAS board, too. I had never even seen the magazine Bee Culture. I didn’t know about The A.I. Root Company. I had never bought a piece of beekeeping equipment in my life.

We got to talking a little bit, and he said, “I’ll send you a copy of our magazine.” He sent me a magazine, and I looked at it. I talked to bee people in Connecticut. As far as they were concerned, this magazine was the cream of the crop in beekeeping literature. The next time I went back to an EAS board meeting, John said, “What’d you think of the magazine?” I said, “I can see some things that I would probably alter a little bit, maybe change, whatever, but it’s got good information and it’s got good people reading it and writing for it.”

He said, “How’d you like to run it?” I said, “Let me think about that.” Three months later I took the job, and I moved to Ohio. Here I am, all these years later.

Jim: That’s a lot of information in a hurry, Kim. Good heavens. I thought that you worked for Erickson for four years.

Kim: I did.

Jim: During that time, you didn’t buy bee equipment or get involved with the equipment?

Kim: I didn’t have to. I was living in an apartment in downtown Madison, Wisconsin and I went to work every day and there were 300 or 400 beehives right in the middle of the city of Madison on a university experimental farm. I had all the bees I wanted, all the equipment I wanted, all the honey I wanted, I had everything I wanted. At the end of the day, I left it all there, and went home.

Jim: How did you learn beekeeping, from Erickson or from the staff there?

Kim: I had a guy named Dave Severson who was a graduate student in honey bee management. He taught me the craft. There was a guy there whose name I can’t remember at the moment, who did nothing his whole life except instrumentally inseminate queens. I learned that technique from him.

Then I had a guy there who could fix anything that could break – absolutely anything that could break. When I broke something, I took it to him, and he showed me how to fix it. Then I had another guy there who knew every plant that bees visited on every continent on earth.

I got to know a lot of the plant stuff on pollination and then we started planting pollinator gardens and we started looking at soil amendments for pollinator gardens and all the things that can affect a pollinator plant. We did that work for four years.

Another big project I accomplished was Penncap-M. It was still killing bees almost everywhere, but nobody had any really good numbers. For an entire Summer I owned a sweetcorn field, and I would be out there at 5:30 in the morning.

I had this specific path; it was a four-acre field, and I had this path walking through the cornfield. Every 40 feet or so, there was a stick in the ground. That was a plant that I looked at. How many bees are on this plant? What time was it? I did that all until the end of pollen shed. I did that for two years. By the end of two years, I could tell you how many bees would be on how many plants at what time of day. That caught a lot of attention. Then Eric had this thing about pollinating soybeans, and he said, “Can bees pollinate soybeans?” I said, “Why wouldn’t they?”

I found out why they would, and again, it was the same thing. It had to do with soil amendments, time of day, variety of soybean and the size of the bee population. We nailed that right down. The paper’s still out there. I’m still cited for that paper, believe it or not. We didn’t solve that problem, but we gave it a lot of ammunition. He said two things. He said, “This isn’t going to get me anywhere with USDA, but it’s been fun.” When I finished that corn experiment, that pretty much proved that spraying – What’s that chemical?

Jim: Penncap-M.

Kim: Yes, that’s it. Spraying Penncap-M at a certain time of day would kill every bee within 20 miles. If you waited three or four hours, it was all gone, and the bees visited and almost none of them died. The first talk I ever gave to a group of growers was how to use Penncap-M. I went in there with bulletproof armor on.

Jim: That was a gutsy move, Kim, though. Those were contentious times. Encapsulation was thought to be a safe way to use methyl parathion, encapsulated. It was driving bees crazy.

Kim: I gave a couple talks and nobody threw anything at me, interestingly. So, I was in Connecticut and participating in EAS, but I had to move to Ohio. I was here at Root, I don’t know, maybe an hour and a half and the Medina Beekeepers Association basically stole me and said, “You get to be on our board of directors.” Mark Bruner, the guy who had been editor before me, had gone to a couple of their meetings. I don’t know if you remember Larry Goltz, who was Bee Culture editor before Bruner.

Jim: I do.

Kim: Then there was Larry Goltz for 10 years before Bruner. For ten years, Larry Goltz edited the magazine.

Jim: How many editors have there been at Bee Culture?

Kim: I must give you a fuzzy answer because A.I. Root was the first one. Then it was A.I. and his son, and they were doing it together and then it was his son and his brother, and they were doing it together. Then they got a couple people who were working on the magazine just day-to-day on stuff and they’re all working together. Who’s the editor? There’s a name there, but there’s five names under it. I can say there’s been several, but many of them have been family.

Kim: Often it was the BC secretary who answered the phone. Often it was the lady who took the photographs and answered the phone. Sometimes it was the advertising manager who took the call. It wasn’t that there was somebody way up here, there was a whole bunch of people right in here. Depending on who it was, some of them would never take a call and some of them would take every call they could get.

Jim: This editorship history is overwhelming. All things considered up to this point, no doubt about it, you’re the longest serving editor.

Kim: Correct.

Jim: We can say that for sure. Then of course, after you, just to mention it in this article, Jerry Hayes is now the editor.

Figure 1. Peter Kim Flottum, former editor of Bee Culture beekeeping magazine and longtime friend.

Kim: All right, when all is said and done in Connecticut and John had hired me, I’d been to Medina to interview, he hired me, and he said, “Go.” We moved to Medina and rented an apartment for a little bit and then bought a house. The first day on the job, all the people at the work company came in and looked at me the way they do with new people. I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me, but it worked out all right.

I was in my chair, I don’t know, maybe a minute and a half, and the phone rang. It was one of the writers for the magazine that I didn’t know because I hadn’t read the magazine yet, who wanted to know when his article was due and thinking fast on my feet, I said, “The same day as last month.” He said, “Okay.” So, I got away with it. [laughter]

It took a while to get used to how the beekeeping industry and the Root Company interacted, and by then the Root Company was phasing way down in beekeeping supplies. They were still making some equipment, but production was headed in one downward direction. I took a look at that, and I took a look at the other manufacturers in the industry. I said, “Okay, I can see my future is not selling equipment from the Root Company. It is selling other people’s equipment to beekeepers.” That was the way I started.

When I moved there, the magazine didn’t have data at the time, the magazine didn’t have a person handling advertising. Somebody would call up and say, “I have an ad for the next month’s issue,” and the person who answered the phone says, “Okay, I’ll give the message to what’s her name and she’ll call you back.” That’s not service with a smile in my opinion. I hired a person to sell advertising due to people who were selling to beekeepers.

That turned out to be a very good choice to make because I got, “Oh, good.” I found a person who didn’t know anything about beekeeping, which was actually good because she had to ask what things were when an advertiser took something for granted. She didn’t know beekeeping specifics so she asked specific questions and it worked out well. We got advertising going and I took a look at the writers and the second big thing I did was do a reader survey.

Kim: We had about 9,000 subscribers at the time, and I picked out a third of them, 3,000. I put together a two-page survey of, “Who are you, how many bees, how long keeping bees, how old are you, where do you live, what do you like, what don’t you like? Reader survey.” I got replies back, and I took about a month to collate it. I found out that we were doing a lot of things that people couldn’t care less about, and we weren’t doing some things that people really wanted to know more about.

Once I gathered all the data and had some ideas of things to leave, things to change and things to get rid of, I summarized it for the writers. I told them, “These are the directions I think we should be going because this is what the readers want. Less here, more there, new here. Get rid of the old there.” The writers began to slowly change. Some, of course, would never change. Richard Taylor, a popular writer at the time, would never change, and I’m really glad he didn’t.

I’ll tell you a quick story about Richard Taylor. I went to his house several times because he lived in Ithaca, New York, where Roger Morris lived. Roger Morris, at Cornell, was my scientific stalwart in beekeeping information. He was the scientist that I had on call any time I wanted. I would go see Roger or some such trip, and then I would go to Richard’s.

I went to Richard’s house one day and he said, “You’re just in time. We’re going to go look at a beeyard.” I loaded into his model “T” Jeep, something really old, headed out to the beeyard, went down a highway, went down a dirt road, went down a track in the woods, went down so you could almost see through the trees, and came to the beeyard. It was out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

There were about eight or nine colonies sitting in a semi-circle right in front of us, maybe 20 yards. He said, “Look at that yard.” He said, “I’ve died and gone to heaven.” This is where heaven is and he started to get out of the vehicle and he said, “Oh, look!” One of the colonies was starting to swarm and it was pouring out swarming bees. By the time he got close, the swarm was outside the hive and he did this – “I got the queen.” With his fingers, he pulled her right out of the air. Can you believe it?

Jim: Oh wow. He captured her out of the air?

Kim: I just sat there, and my mouth opened and I said, “How the hell do you do that?” He said, “Not most of the time.” [laughs]

Jim: Oh my.

Jim: As the years have passed, you have grown to look like Richard Taylor more and more.

Kim: Kind of, yes. Anyway, I got two, and then after four or five issues, maybe six issues had been out. I started in March. My first issue was May 1986.

Jim: So, your introductory period was March to May of ‘86.

Kim: By then, people were calling me up, “We’ve got a meeting coming up, would you like to speak?” My first thought was, “What do I speak about? I don’t know anything.” I knew research from the USDA bee lab, I could draw on that. I also had good information from the reader’s survey so I could share that with the people that were listening and that worked pretty well. People liked the reader survey information. Where did they fit in with all the rest of the people that were reading the magazine? Of course, when I was done, I would do a real quick reader survey up there.

“Okay, what do you want more or less of?” I got some really good firsthand information from people sitting right in front of me, that took me into Winter. The first year I went to the American Honey Producers Association because I don’t think I was quite in Ohio yet, Richard Adee knocked on my door. He wanted a piece of this magazine because, he had some – or the American Honey Producers had – I say this carefully – political agendas that they wanted to work with and yes, of course, I was the voice. I was one of the big voices. They had several, maybe a thousand members, something like that. I had several thousand subscribers. Pretty soon I got to know Richard and his son. What’s his name, oh yes, – Bret?

Kim: I went to the Adee’s out in North Dakota a couple times. There’s a lot of bees and beekeepers. I got to know more of the big commercial guys. I was probably overly influenced with commercial beekeeping agendas more than sideliner hobbyists and not long after I was there, the noise on the National Honey Board started, a lot of people wanted it and the people that wanted it were mostly commercial retail and packers.

The people that didn’t want it were most commercial, wholesale bulk, and the way they looked at it, I’m not going to say all of them or any of them, but the way they looked at it was: the way the honey board was set up was to market honey to people, not barrels of honey to other beekeepers. That rift lasted quite a while in the beekeeping world, but they got the Honey Board passed and funded and all those things. The issues moved into the magazine by the new year, I think right around the new year, then the magazine had been taking on some, what do you call it? Some changes in terms of stuff it was made of. The name of the magazine changed from “Gleanings in Bee Culture” to a simpler “Bee Culture.” The magazine paper changed to better quality, color print and photos were added, the total number of pages increased – those sorts of things.

It stepped up to – I say this carefully – it was about the same quality in terms of looking at it and reading it as the American Bee Journal (ABJ) and that turned a page in my book. I’d caught up to the industry leader because when I came, ABJ was top of the heap and data was top of the heap.

Then I started doing some things. I don’t know if it was the second, maybe it was the third year I was there, the Root Company went through a major digital birth. They brought in a company from I don’t know where. Forty people descended on my office one day and when I was done, I had Catch The Buzz and I had email and I had more emails. I had everything digital you could possibly imagine.

We were first by a long shot with Catch The Buzz, and that caught a lot of attention. Every day you’d get an email from Kim Flottum of Bee Culture Magazine telling you something you needed to know to be a better beekeeper. That was a hit. Then it dawned on me after some amount of time, “I bet you, we could sell advertising on that”, and sure enough you could. That increased our income. By the second or third year of Catch The Buzz, our subscriber base was about equal to ABJ’s.

Jim: That’s interesting.

Kim: Then, I was still on the board of EAS when I came from Connecticut. Dr. Dewey Caron was chairman. He had been chairman for 10 years. Dewey was chairman when I left Connecticut. Since I was now located in Ohio, my status as a director from Connecticut ended but he appointed me to stay on for about three years as membership chairman. My job was to use the magazine to encourage people to join EAS, come to the meetings, those sorts of things.

After his 10th year – the EAS board liked Dewey a lot – after ten years, he said, “I think I’m done.” They needed a new chairman, and everybody just looked at me. “You know everybody, you know everything, you go everywhere, we pick you.” Suddenly, I was chairman of The Eastern Apicultural Society.

Jim: Chairman of EAS, a major beekeeping organization. That was impressive growth, Kim.

Kim: I’d been going to EAS meetings probably five or six years. Four or five. Anyway, so I was really familiar with how meetings were set up, how chair people were picked, electing officers. I had two jobs. One of them was to get new members but the other one was to figure out how – EAS was confused. There were a lot of people trying to help run it and not having monumental success. Dewey and I cleaned house and reduced the confusion, more or less. Then, Dewey and Anne Harmon and I put our heads together and we came up with a permanent way to run a meeting, from picking the president two years down the road, to the closing words at the end of the meeting. We made a, what do you call it? A schedule, whatever.

Jim: Kim, do you mean a “template”?

Kim: Yes. A template – that people could use. These templates could vary. Sometimes the meeting location caused a concern, whatever, but it worked out well and EAS really prospered. That’s about when you and I got involved, in ‘95.

Jim: The Year of the Hive, 1995. Wooster, Ohio.

Kim: We had that adventure. I’ll tell you, basically for two years, you and your staff, Sherry Ferrell and Dave Heilman and I lived together in a lot of ways.

Jim: Yes, getting ready for that huge event.

Kim: For me, it was a really good two years. It still is a good two years for me. I enjoyed the meeting, I enjoyed the company, everything. The only thing I wish I had was an air conditioner. [laughs]

Jim: Yes, it was hot, that late Summer. That was the Eastern Apicultural Society meeting in 1995 to Wooster, Ohio. It was Summer and it was hot.

Kim: We got that taken care of. I stayed on as chairman, people moved on. Then other people started listening to what we were saying in the magazine. I was getting people who had not written for the beekeeping industry, government people and industry people in terms of manufacturers. Some of my writers moved up in notch rather than just how to stop a swarm. We got some of that going in there. That got some of the commercial people going in terms of what can we do bigger with the feds, with all of that. Things started to build that way.

At the same time, because of that input and because our circulation was growing and our advertisers were being successful in the magazine, suddenly I was invited to lots of places, lots and lots of places. I was going to little town halls in wherever Michigan and I was going to the capital of the United States. I got to go to the White House a bunch of times.

Jim: Oh wow!

Kim: The White House beekeeper invited me there several times. I didn’t get to visit with the people who lived there but I got to visit with all the people who worked there. The cooks and the gardeners and the people who took care of the organic garden. The DC beekeepers had a couple of meetings right on the White House lawn, and I got to speak there. Can you imagine that? Speaking on the White House lawn.

Jim: No, I cannot imagine that Kim.

Kim: I got to do it. Those sorts of things came. Then I brought Charlie Gibbons, the White House beekeeper, to Medina. Participants were standing out on the sidewalk at the Root Company, with the doors open, to listen to him. The room was packed. It was probably the biggest bee meeting ever in Medina, Ohio. Charlie was happy and I was happy, and it worked out really well. He stuck around until the bees left the White House and then he retired. In addition, he worked at the White House. He was a carpenter.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview in the January 2024 issue of Bee Culture Magazine.

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Found in Translation

An Egg-Level View of Drone Production
By: Jay Evans, USDA Beltsville Bee Lab

Honey bee males, or drones, are belittled but key members of the colony. They also form a test case for one of the most fundamental questions in animals and plants. When there is a distinction between males and females, how does that come about? In bees, as in many other species, development into males or females is not black and white. There are proteins (or in cases like our own species, entire chromosomes) that help set the stage for a cascade of events that determines sex. Most of the time, a single trigger, or ‘sex-determining factor’, starts the male and female cascades, and these cascades generally result in physically different males and females. Both that trigger and the resulting cascade differ across the tree of life, and it is hard to point to common sex-determining factors across the insects, let alone the cascades that generate distinct males and females more generally. Thus, it was a really big deal 20 years ago when a research group in Germany led by Martin Beye won the race to find a plausible sex-determining factor for honey bees (M. Beye, M. Hasselmann, M. K. Fondrk, R. E. Page, S.W. Omholt, 2003. The gene csd is the primary signal for sexual development in the honey bee and encodes an SR-type protein Cell 114, 419–429, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-8674(03)00606-8). Just this month, that same group closed the circle by demonstrating the key mechanisms by which this factor kicks off drone versus female production in bees… but first some background.

It is staggering to realize that a European priest, Johann Dzierzon, accurately described the process that leads to male honey bees 180 years ago. He was able to show, experimentally, that queens which had been prevented from mating were exclusively drone layers. Genes were not a thing then, let alone sex-determining genes, but genetics was soon to be a field, and there is evidence that Dzierzon’s insights and experiments helped trigger the appreciation for how genetic variation leads to the diversity we see within species. Dzierzon’s passions included how worker bee body colors reflected both queens and their mates and his careful work likely planted seeds in the mind of fellow priest and apiarist Gregor Mendel, who was starting to conduct the pea breeding experiments that defined his own legacy. A nice recent review by Gene Kritsky builds the case for Mendel’s likely exposure to Dzierzon’s thinking in science circles of the 1850’s and 60’s (Kritsky, G. Bees and Peas: How apiology influenced Gregor Mendel’s research. 2023. American Entomologist, 69, 40-45, doi:10.1093/ae/tmad025). Mendel did not formally acknowledge the assist, and it is unclear whether he would have reached the same conclusions and experiments solo. What is certain is that Dzierzon got pretty much everything correct about honey bee reproduction, marveling at queen nuptial flights and the abilities of queens to take or leave sperm from those flights as they nurtured their developing eggs, “The power of the fertile queen, accordingly, to lay worker or drone eggs at pleasure is rendered very easy of explanation by the fact that the drone eggs require no impregnation, but bring the germ of life with them out of the ovary; whilst otherwise it would be inexplicable and incredible. Thus the queen has it in her power to deposit an egg just as it comes from the ovary, and as the unfecundated mothers lay it; or by the action of the seminal receptacle, past which it must glide, to invest it with a higher degree, a higher potency, of fertility and awaken in it the germ of a more perfect being, namely a queen or a worker bee.”

So, how does recent research close the deal for honey bee sex determination? It was evident that the complementary sex determination (csd) gene identified by Beye and colleagues had a highly variable stretch that shows maybe 20 sequence variants in a given population and 100 overall in the species. If diploid female bees are many hundred-fold more frequent than diploid males (which are generally removed by their sisters during development), a gene with this amount of variation fits the bill as the trigger for sex, but how does it all work? Marianne Otte and colleagues from the Beye lab used several genetic tricks to show that a mismatch for this one gene between two chromosomes is both necessary and sufficient to generate female bees. They used ‘CRISPR’ gene editing of fertilized eggs to nullify sections of that variable region. When this happened, bees that would have developed into females were male. They also inserted a polymorphism into drone-layer queens and those queens then produced viable females. Basically, matches for a tiny region of this one protein were sufficient to bind the protein in ways that changed its effects on the next proteins in the cascade and altered the sex of these bees (see graphic). If one of those amino acids was mismatched between the two gene copies, the resulting poor binding led to a female cascade. That’s a simple mechanism for letting a single gene impact sex determination.

While csd appears to be unique to certain insects with haploid males (bees, wasps, ants in particular), it shows a historical similarity to ‘transformer’ proteins, which are known as key actors in insects with diploid males and females and sex chromosomes (i.e., with sex determination that is more like our own). How the leap was made from traditional sex chromosomes to species with haploid males is another mystery. In a practical sense, researchers are rapidly determining variation at csd across populations at all sizes. There is a cost to colonies when queens are mated to males with matching csd alleles. Even though many such ‘diploid males’ are purged early in development the initial effort to raise them, and patchy brood patterns, can both weigh colonies down. Knowing the exact mechanism by which variation works at this locus allows for accurate screens of breeding stock and larger commercial apiaries to see where adding fresh genes might improve productivity. It’s also really neat to think that every cell of a worker bee (or queen) in your colony carries a tiny genetic difference at one of the thousands of her proteins that defines her life.

Queen banking is the storage of queens individually in cages and placed in a colony to be cared for by worker bees. Northern California queen producers bank excess queens as seasonal demand subsides in the Summer to provide an on-demand supply to beekeepers. This study investigated the potential to bank honey bee queens indoors as an effective system during the Summer. This research compared current Summer outdoor queen banking practices in northern California with banking in indoor temperature-controlled storage facilities. Treatments were separated into three groups: indoor queen banks, outdoor queen banks and a set of unbanked control queens. Three different stocking rates were tested (50, 100 and 198 queens per bank). Queen quality parameters and survival data were assessed using laboratory and field assessment methods. There was no significant difference in queen quality parameters apart from the weight of indoor queens banked at the rate of 100, which were significantly lower than the other banking rates. There was a significant difference in the survival of different stocking rates. Queens banked indoors at a rate of 100 were more likely to survive than other stocking rates, both indoor and outdoor. Queens banked outdoors at the rate of 198 were more likely to survive than other outdoor banking rates. Queens stored indoors had a significantly higher survival of 78 ± 1% than queens stored outdoors with a survival of 62 ± 3%. Indoor banking performed better in quality and survival as compared to outdoor queen banking. Therefore, indoor queen banking has the potential to mitigate increased risk to the valuable Fall queen supply caused by rising, hot, Summer temperatures (Onayemi, 2021; Webb et al., 2023).

The mass storage of mated honey bee queens in reservoir colonies over the Winter was investigated under continental climatic conditions. The mated queens were stored in (a) queenright reservoir (QRR) colonies on a frame with partitioned honeycomb, (b) QRR colonies on frame holding wire screen cages, (c) queenless reservoir (QLR) colonies on frame with partitioned honeycomb and (d) QLR colonies on frame holding wire screen cages. In addition to mass storage, the queens were individually wintered in colonies held in Kirchainer mating hives and in five frame nucleus hives with standard combs as the control group. The queen survival in reservoir colonies was observed from October 2000 to March 2001. No queen survived the Winter in QRR colonies, whereas 16.7% of the queens stored in screen cages and 40.5% of the queens on honeycomb in QLR colonies survived for five months. The queen survival in mating hives and in five frame nucleus hives was 80.0% and 83.3%, respectively. Reproductive performances of surviving queens overwintered in reservoir colonies, mating hives and five frame nucleus hives were evaluated by comparing brood areas and adult bee populations produced in test colonies. There were no differences in numbers of frames of bees and in brood production of queens in test colonies. Thus, mass storage of queens over the Winter did not impair their reproductive performance (Gencer, 2003).

Productivity of honey bee queens in Canada, as measured by area of sealed worker brood and net weight of colonies, was generally higher with queens overwintered in two frame nuclei, than with queens overwintered in a group. Poor acceptance and supersedure of group overwintered queens suggest that this method of storage is not yet acceptable for commercial use. Survival of the nucleus queens was low in outdoor two frame units during the Winter but improved with an indoor system. Overwintering queens indoors in two frame nuclei and outdoors in three to five frame nuclei with supplemental feeding of carbohydrate in late Winter should provide a source of queens which could partially fulfill market demands in the Spring (Mitchell et al., 1985).

Queen cages arranged in a holding frame side to side with wire netting opening for nurse bees to feed queens. Photo from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2023.2165747, used with permission.

Spring imports of queen honey bees are essential to replace Winter colony losses in Canada, but contribute to the spread of treatment-resistant strains of pathogens and undesirable genetic traits. A possible alternative to these imports is the mass storage of queens during Winter. By overwintering a strong colony (queen bank) containing large numbers of mated queens isolated in cages, beekeepers could acquire local queens early in the Spring. In this study, the efficacy of overwintering queen banks at two different queen densities (40 and 80) was tested. In the 40-queen banks (40 QB), 74.2% of queens survived the six month overwintering period, while 42.1% of queens survived in the 80-queen banks (80 QB). When compared to queens overwintered free in their colony, queens from bank colonies were smaller and lighter in early Spring but had similar sperm viability and sperm count. Overwintering queens in banks did not have an impact on their acceptance in a nucleus colony but reduced their oviposition in the initial weeks following their introduction. After several days in nucleus colonies, queens from banks had regained a size and weight similar to that of queens overwintered normally, suggesting that they could perform well over a complete beekeeping season (Levesque et al., 2023).

The production of young, mated queens is essential to replace dead queens or to start new colonies after wintering. Mass storage of mated queens during Winter and their use the following Spring is an interesting strategy that could help fulfill this need. In this study, the survival, fertility and fecundity of young, mated queens stored massively in queenless colonies from September to April (eight months) was investigated. The queens were kept in environmentally controlled rooms at temperatures above and below cluster formation. The results show that indoor mass storage of mated queens can be achieved with success when queen banks are stored above cluster temperature. A significantly higher survival of queens was measured when wintering queen banks at 16°C (60.8°F). Surviving queens wintered at different temperatures above or below cluster formation had similar fertility (sperm viability) and fecundity (egg laying and viable worker population). This study shows the potential of indoor overwintering of honey bee queen banks. This technique could be applied on a commercial scale by beekeepers and queen breeders (Rousseau and Giovenazzo, 2021).

The effect of storage cage level (upper or lower) and its position (peripheral or middle positions) on weight, survival rate and egg laying capacity of queens stored in queenright colonies for various storage periods was studied. Storing mated queens in this way had a significant effect on their weight after 75 days of storage. The means of queen weight were 174.9 and 167.4mg for the upper and lower strips, respectively showing the superiority of the upper one. A significant increase in the mean weight of queens stored in the middle position (172.5mg) was noticed comparing to peripheral ones (169.8mg). All the stored queens had significantly greater weight than their original weight before storage during the different periods of experiment. There were significant differences in the survival rate of mated queens stored in different levels, as the mean survival rate of queens stored in the upper strip (69.3%) was higher than the survival rate of mated queens stored in the lower one (60.1%). The queens stored in middle position attained a significantly higher survival rate (70.7%), than those stored in peripheral ones (58.7%). The overall survival rate was negatively influenced with the increase of storage period. In respect of egg laying capacity measured as sealed worker brood area, queens stored for 45 days produced a significantly larger sealed brood area (875.5cm2) than that produced by queens stored for 75 days (843.2cm2) (Al-Fattah et al., 2016).

Mass storage of queens over the Winter was investigated in colony banks, with each queen held in her own cage within a colony. The major treatments included: (I) a single queen wintered in a small nucleus colony (control); and colony banks with 24 or 48 queens, each held individually in (II) screen cages that prevented workers from entering the cage, but allowed access for queen tending, (III) queen-excluder cages (queen-excluder material has openings of about 55mm that prevent the larger queen but not the smaller workers from passing through the material), or (IV) screen cages until January and subsequent transfer to mini-nuclei until late March. Queens held in excluder cages showed poor survival in all three years of testing, and this system was not viable for commercial use; survival for any one year, or any excluder treatment, was never greater than 25%. In contrast, a two year average of 60% queen survival was found for queens that were stored in individual screened wooden cages within queenless colony banks. No differences in survival of banked queens that were moved between colonies monthly and those that remained in the same colony for six months was found. The success of these systems required the (a) preparation of colony banks that contained large numbers of adult workers produced by maintaining colonies with two queens during the previous Summer, (b) removal of laying queen(s) during the storage period, (c) feeding of colonies well and (d) insulation of colonies in groups of four, to preserve heat and reduce worker clustering in the Winter. Surviving queens from Winter storage systems were virtually identical in quality and colony performance to control queens the subsequent season (Wyborn et al., 1993).

This Egyptian study aimed to investigate some factors affecting stored mated queens’ weight and survival rate as well as post storage performance of these queens after 75 days of storage within queenright colonies. Storing queens in numbers of 20, 30 and 40 had no significant effect on their weight. Mean weight of queen stored in excluder cages (EC) was significantly higher than those stored in screen mesh ones (SC). The mean weight of stored queens in the upper strip was higher than the mean of the lower one. Queens stored in peripheral and middle of a holding frame did not differ significantly from each other. Concerning the queens’ survival rate, the mean survival rate of 20 stored mated queens was the superior rank, while the survival rate of 30 and 40 stored mated queens came next with no significant differences between them. Queens stored in SC had more significant survival rate than those stored in EC. The upper strip had a higher survival rate than the lower one. Queens stored in the middle of a holding frame showed significantly higher survival rate than those in the peripheral. Regarding post storage performance, no significant differences were detected between the brood areas produced by queens stored for 45 or 75 days in the three densities. Queens stored for 45 days and those in the upper level had a significantly higher brood production than those stored for 75 days and those stored in the lower level. Queens stored for 45 and 75 days had no significant differences in supersedure percentages either stored in the three densities, in two levels or in the two positions. The second part of the study involved the storing of virgin queens. This work was aimed to investigate the effect of colony and storage cage type on queens’ survival rate, orphan period on attracted workers as well as storage period and colony strength on queens attractiveness and acceptance. Queens stored in Benton cages (BC) had a higher insignificant survival rate than those stored in emerging ones (EMC). Storing queens in queenless colonies resulted in a more significant survival rate than those stored in queenright ones. Increasing the colonies orphan period attracted more significant workers to old queens. This attractiveness increased significantly with the increase of queen age from three to 30 days old. The younger and older virgin queens were significantly more accepted than the intermediate ones. The average number of attracted workers in nuclei was significantly greater than those recorded in strong colonies and so as the acceptance percentages (El-Din, 2016).

The survival of caged newly-emerged virgin queens every day for seven days in an experiment that simultaneously investigated three factors: queen cage type (wooden three-hole or plastic), attendant workers (present or absent) and food type (sugar candy, honey or both) was studied. Ten queens were tested in each of the 12 combinations. Queens were reared using standard beekeeping methods (Doolittle/grafting) and emerged from their cells into vials held in an incubator at 34°C (93.2°F). All 12 combinations gave high survival (90 or 100%) for three days but only one method (wooden cage, with attendants, honey) gave 100% survival to day seven. Factors affecting queen survival were analyzed. Across all combinations, attendant bees significantly increased survival (18% vs. 53%, p<0.001). In addition, there was an interaction between food type and cage type (p<0.001) with the honey and plastic cage combination giving reduced survival. An additional group of queens was reared and held for seven days using the best method, and then directly introduced using smoke into queenless nucleus colonies that had been dequeened five days previously. Acceptance was high (80%, 8/10) showing that this combination is also suitable for preparing queens for introduction into colonies. Having a simple method for keeping newly-emerged virgin queens alive in cages for one week and acceptable for introduction into queenless colonies will be useful in honey bee breeding. In particular, it facilitates the screening of many queens for genetic or phenotypic characteristics when only a small proportion meets the desired criteria. These can then be introduced into queenless hives for natural mating or insemination, both of which take place when queens are one week old (Bigio et al., 2012).

Even though there are some beneficial aspects of banking queens, there can also be some negative effects on the stored queens. Most of the queen banking techniques involve caging queens in various types of cages. Zajdel et al. (2020) reported that queens stored in “queen banks” suffer primarily from leg injuries after they reviewed numerous studies. Queen injuries associated with caging include: 1) changes in the color of the arolia (pad-like lobes projecting between the tarsal claws), 2) missing leg segments or missing whole legs, 3) arolium deformation and partial or complete loss of arolia and claws and 4) frayed wings and loss of antennae or antennal segments. Leg paralysis, probably resulting from stings, has also been reported. These injuries influence the queen’s motor and sensory abilities and disqualify them as high-quality queens. Even a small number of queens stored in one colony are exposed to injuries from worker bees. Injuries to queens were observed regardless of the age of the workers attending to them and the presence of brood in the bee colony.

References
Al-Fattah, M.A.A.W. Abd, H. A. Sharaf El-Din and Y. Y. Ibrahim 2016. Factors affecting the quality of mated honey bee queens stored for different periods in queen-right bank colonies. Effect of cage level and position on holding frame. J. Apic. Res. 55: 284-291.
Bigio, G., C. Grüter and F.L.W. Ratnieks 2012. Comparing alternative methods for holding virgin honey bee queens for one week in mailing cages before mating. PLoS ONE 7(11) e50150. https//doi.org/10.1371/journal pone 0050160
El-Din, H.A.S. 2016. Honey bee Queens Performance In Relation To Their Long Period Storage In Queenright Colonies. PhD Dissertation, Cairo University, 158 pp.
Gencer, H.V. 2003. Overwintering of honey bee queens en mass in reservoir colonies in a temperate climate and its effect on queen performance. J. Apic. Res. 42: 61-64.
Levesque, M., A. Rousseau and P. Giovenazzo 2023. Impacts of indoor mass storage of two densities of honey bee queens (Apis mellifera) during Winter on queen survival, reproductive quality and colony performance. J. Apic. Res. 62: 274-286.
Mitchell, S.R., D. Bates, M.L. Winston and D.M. McCutcheon 1985. Comparison of honey bee queens overwintered individually and in groups. J. Entomol. Soc. Of British Columbia. 82: 35-39.
Onayemi, S.O. 2021. Indoor Queen Banking As An Alternative To Outdoor Banking, M.S. Thesis, Washington State University, 35 pp.
Rousseau, A. and P. Giovenazzo 2021. Successful indoor mass storage of honey bee queens (Apis mellifera) during Winter. Agriculture 11: 402.
Webb, A., S.O. Onayemi, R.L. Olsson, K. Kulhanek, and B.K. Hopkins 2023. Summer indoor queen banking as an alternative to outdoor queen banking practices. J. Apic. Res. 62: 471-477.
Wyborn, M.H., M.L. Winston and P.H. Laflamme 1993. Mass storage of honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) queens during the Winter. Can. Entomol. 125: 113-128.
Zajdel, B., Z. Jasinski, and K. Kucharska 2020. Are drones injured during storage in own and stranger queenright colonies (Apis mellifera carnica)? J. Agr. Sci. Tech. 22: 453-463.

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

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Chemical-Free Yellow Jacket Removal

A Valuable Service Beekeepers Are Uniquely Suited to Perform
By: Ross Conrad

Beekeepers have a tendency to be honey bee centric. Have a swarm hanging from a tree in your yard? We’ll be right over. But call a beekeeper to remove a yellow jacket nest and we’re typically not interested. This leaves the person calling for help in a conundrum: do they call a professional exterminator or save money and pick up a can of toxic pesticide bug spray at the hardware store and attempt to do the job themselves? I would suggest that when we pass up the opportunity to help a member of our community with a yellow jacket problem, we fail to show that we beekeepers are more than a one-trick pony and demonstrate the varied benefits beekeepers can bring to the community. We also forfeit the chance to help prevent the introduction of additional toxic pesticides into the environment, and we give up on a potentially profitable service that can help diversify our income.

As beekeepers, we are already conditioned and equipped to deal with stinging insects. While different in many ways, yellow jackets are surprisingly similar to honey bees. While yellow jackets are carnivorous and will eat insects both dead and alive, they also feed on fruit, nectar and honeydew. Their stingers are barbed like a honey bee’s, but the barbs are so small that they can typically sting repeatedly, and only occasionally does a stinger become lodged and pull free of the wasp’s body. Yellow jacket venom, like most bee and wasp venoms, is primarily dangerous only to those who are hyper-allergic. Thankfully, the protective clothing that protects you from bee stings will also protect you from yellow jackets.

Face of a southern yellow jacket queen (Vespula squamosa)

Yellow jackets are social wasps and participate in cooperative brood care. The yellow jacket queen is larger than the workers and is tasked with doing all the work to build and provision a nest on their own in Spring. Once the first litter of worker wasps reach maturity, they take over the nest building and food gathering duties. Like honey bees, male yellow jackets are haploid and females are diploid allowing female worker yellow jackets to lay eggs that develop into males.

While yellow jackets build nests of hexagon shaped combs similar to honey bees, they construct their nests by chewing naturally occurring wood fibers that when mixed with their saliva becomes a pulpy substance they are able to form into comb. A grey paper envelope surrounds the combs that make up their brood nest. Like honey bees, yellow jackets produce warning pheromones which suggest that smoke can aid in dealing with them.

There are several types of yellow jackets and they are all black with either white or yellow markings. The most common have yellow markings on their face, thorax and abdomens and they make their nests either in the ground or up in trees, under the eaves of roofs, or other above ground structures they deem suitable. The yellow jackets with white markings on their face, thorax and abdomens are often called bald-faced hornets. This is a misnomer since all yellow jackets (whether they have yellow or white markings) are technically wasps identified by the fact that they have narrow waists connecting their thorax to their abdomen.

Of all the stinging insects normally found in North America, the bald-faced hornet’s sting seems to hurt the most. This is perhaps because the bald-faced hornet is larger and therefore has a larger stinger and venom sack. The bald-faced hornet also has a unique defense in that it can squirt or spray venom from the stinger into the eyes of nest intruders causing immediate watering of the eyes and temporary blindness.

Yellow jackets tend to be more defensive than honey bees especially in late Summer/early Autumn when their food sources are becoming scarce and their nest size is at its maximum. Beekeepers often will see yellow jackets attempting to access honey bee hives at this time of year. While strong colonies are able to resist the advances of yellow jackets effectively, the size of the entrance of a hive can be reduced to help weaker colonies defend themselves. Since late Summer and early Autumn is the time of year when yellow jackets become more noticeable, it is when they are more likely to cause problems for people and elicit complaints from the public who then may look for a local beekeeper to deal with them.

When removing a yellow jacket nest, it is best to do the job at night. Most of the time, just like honey bees, yellow jackets will all have returned to their nest for the evening since they are unable to navigate safe flight activity without the aid of light. As a result, a yellow jacket nest that is disturbed at night will trigger the guard wasps to crawl out of the nest to defend the colony. Like ants, bees and yellow jackets will crawl all over the place, but they will not fly unless there is visible light to guide them. Also like honey bees, yellow jackets are unable to see the color red, so a red light will provide the wasp remover with a critical advantage permitting them enough light to see and work without allowing the yellow jackets enough light to take to the air.

Two-year yellow jacket nest, with a one-gallon (3.8 liter) container for size reference. Collected by Alabama, USA, 2007. Dimensions are approximately 18 inches by 24 inches by 12 inches (46 cm by 61 cm by 30 cm). Source: Wikipedia

For those with patience, a commercially available yellow jacket trap can be deployed. For those who prefer a faster method, an easy way to remove small, above ground nests is to place a bag around the nest and pull the nest away from its anchoring point on whatever structure it is attached to. For larger nests, a hive tool or for really big nests, a spatula can be used to sever the connection between the nest and the structure while holding the bag directly under it so the nest will fall to the bottom of the bag. Since the yellow jackets are restricted to crawling, you will have three to four seconds to quickly close the bag and seal the opening by tying it off if it is plastic, or folding it down if made of paper in order to seal the wasps inside. The bag containing the wasps should then be placed inside another container, such as a garbage can with a lid, since they can potentially chew through the bag during the night.

For ground nesting wasps, the easiest approach is to smother the colony. A large sheet of plywood can be placed on the ground over the entrance area at night when all the wasps are in the nest. For uneven ground, a sheet or blanket with the edges rolled up or folded a bit, can be placed down first to act like a gasket and seal gaps along the ground preventing any wasps from finding a way out from under the plywood. It is a good idea to weigh down the plywood with a rock or cement block to help ensure a good seal with the ground surrounding the colony’s entrance and to prevent a strong breeze from moving the plywood. The plywood should be left in place for at least a couple weeks to ensure all the wasps are dead before removal.

For the entrepreneurially inclined, there are pharmaceutical companies that will pay for wasps gathered in a manner that preserves the integrity of the wasp venom, so they can be used to manufacture allergy medications. One company, Jubilant HollisterStier, will pay $800-$1,000 per pound for yellow jackets, and up to $1,400 per pound for rarer wasps and hornets (and you thought that a three pound package of honey bees for between $125-$200 was expensive!). Rather than remove the yellow jackets at night, this work should take place during the day so that primarily female worker wasps are collected since the males do not have stingers. A bee vacuum that collects the wasps uninjured is the perfect tool for the job, since the wasps must be flash frozen alive in order to preserve the integrity of the venom for pharmaceutical use. Since the frozen insects can be stored for up to 24 months, collections obtained from numerous nests can provide a potentially lucrative sideline. Be sure to contact the company you choose to work with ahead of time since they have specific protocols and instructions for wasp collection, storage, documentation and shipping.

It is unfortunate that yellow jackets are widely considered a nuisance. Without them, we would be overrun with harmful insect pests since to feed their young, the wasps kill large numbers of caterpillars and other insects that harm cultivated and ornamental plants. By including wasp and hornet removal services to their skills, beekeepers can add to the industry’s social value and provide a valuable community service, while developing the potential for additional income streams all at the same time.

Ross Conrad is author of Natural Beekeeping and The Land of Milk and Honey: A history of beekeeping in Vermont. He will be speaking for the Western New York Honey Producers, Inc. in an event open to the public on November 18. Check out the calendar for details: https://www.beeculture.com/calendar-of-events/

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The Honey Bee’s Winter Nest

Necessary for Surviving the Big Dearth
By: James E. Tew

But first, these thoughts
Over time, beekeepers change their ways, but bees always stay the same. During the past few years some novel issues, that are new to beekeepers, have been suggested and discussed in the media. Whether or not bees sleep has been addressed and then re-addressed. Apparently, they do. If bees feel pain or have other sentient qualities have been topics of other discussions. These unclear bee qualities are still being explored. Even honey is in the bright light of the popular media. Some postulate that bees are not the only animal able to make a honey-like product. Somewhat like lab-grown protein, a sweet product, having chemistry akin to that of honey, has been blended with nary a bee in sight. Is it honey or not? Topics like this help keep beekeeping interesting and keep bee knowledge evolving.

These are not the bees’ problems
All these current discussion topics are beekeeper related. While we humans gnash and pontificate, the bees plod along in their own world doing their own thing. Their biology is consistently their business and honey bees seemingly worry not one whit about their human counterparts. It appears that the beekeeper/bee relationship is totally one-sided one.

Figure 1. The moment of interaction between two distinct species – humans and bees.

Bees’ complex and mysterious biology
Though topics abound, it seems to me that our most recent significant advances in understanding our bees has been in the areas of bee biology and related pathogenic subjects. While we know much more about our bees today, we still are far from understanding everything.

Preparing for foodless times
In a real way, much of what bees do in the Springtime is in preparation for the next Winter season. To survive Winter’s coldness, bees must find a suitable nest site and construct combs, which are their only nest furnishings. They must gather food and store it. They must maintain a queen presence, maintain worker populations and swarm to procreate their species. They must defend their nest from interlopers and even defend against their own marauding bee neighbors. Without a protected nest site and suitable stocks of food, a honey bee nest will surely die in the Winter season. Bees clearly understand this harsh fact. Their base of operations – the nest – is critical to withstanding the Winter season.

Figure 2. What a honey bee nest looks like without beekeeper involvement. Note the propolis band around the combs.

The natural nest – an absolute necessity
When searching for a home, bee scouts usually look for a surprisingly small cavity – maybe as small as one cubic foot (.023 cubic meter). Finer features of a future home are that it should: be dark, have a defendable entrance, be dry and not have anything else living there such as birds, squirrels or ants. Ideally, it should not be on or at ground level.

When tearing into trees, early beekeepers were confronted with a morass of bees, comb, brood and dripping honey. How could any rational organization be seen in such chaos? As we now partially understand, the bee nest is a highly structured living environment. Understanding that fundamental structure – so much as is currently possible – can help make all of us better beekeepers.

The size of the nest
Feral nest sizes seem to vary significantly. How quickly, if ever, a colony can fill a cavity varies greatly; therefore, some nests are large while others stay relatively small. Reasons for size variations could be genetics, diseases, pests and water. The availability of nectar and pollen resources is critical. Simple, blind luck is also a helpful characteristic to a feral colony.

In fact, as humans have altered the general environment, suitable nesting sites have become much dearer to scouting bees forcing them to accept sites not perfect for their needs. Occasionally, a swarm is forced to build in the open, a fatal decision for most nests within the temperate parts of the U.S.

The nest fixtures
The natural bee nest is plainly furnished with wax combs only. Though bees can diligently modify the nest cavity to a degree, for the most part they must accept the space as it is. Along the top and sides of the nest, surveyor bees will lay out the beginning midrib of combs and other bees will begin to construct comb along those lines. We don’t know how these bees measure the spacing needed when establishing dimensions for future comb. Keenly observant beekeepers long ago discovered that bees require a specific living and working space – or the famous bee space concept. That understanding allowed the subsequent development of artificial domiciles that we have used for more than one-hundred years.

When bees first occupy a new nest cavity, the first matter of business is to construct worker combs. Besides being an area to nurse developing worker bees, worker-sized comb can also be used to store nectar, pollen and occasionally water.

Comb construction
To us, new combs seem to be produced almost mystically. The bees will mass together into a group that we have called a cluster. The cluster is not a rigid structure but is fragile and temporary. As bees hang together in such a cluster, gravitational forces will cause it to hang perpendicular with that influence. In essence, combs are built at right angles with gravity’s pull. Later, within the dark hive, this gravitational orientation becomes important in the dance language communication procedure.

Four pairs of wax glands on the ventral surface of the bees’ abdomen produce snow white wax flakes. Comb constructing bees pass a newly produced wax flake forward to their mouths where the wax is chewed and pulverized. After a short time, the wax particle is molded, using the bees’ trowel-shaped mandibles, into a cylindrical developing cell. It’s a communal effort. Other bees may reshape previous efforts before adding their own contribution of wax to the new cell, but finally a new cell is produced. No single bee actually constructs a single cell.

Experienced beekeepers have seen the completed cells in use near the top of a new frame while lower on the comb, shallower cells will still be under construction. Bees build comb as needed. New wax melts down to canary yellow and is valuable for candles and other wax-produced products. It’s a beautiful product.

The importance of a nectar flow
Inexperienced beekeepers are frequently disappointed that all brood chamber space and super space is not used by the bees during a particular season. Indeed, beekeeper-supplied foundation may even be chewed and mangled by bees, and not building comb on it (though it will probably be successfully used during subsequent seasons).

Bees will only construct comb on the impetus of a nectar flow and a comb space shortage. Simply stated, bees must have construction material (nectar) before they can build. Nectar provides that building material, but an unusual building material it is for it can also be stored as honey rather than restructured into wax. Bees will not use stored honey to construct significant amounts of new comb. The experienced beekeeper will provide previously drawn comb for the bees to store the honey crop rather than requiring bees to rebuild comb each year.

Comb is costly for the bees to build. It has been found that bees must metabolize about seven to eight pounds of honey to produce one pound of wax. But with that one pound of building material, bees can build 35,000 cells in which they can store 22 pounds of honey. Consequently, their approximate net gain after consuming eight pounds of honey is 14 pounds of stored honey plus reusable comb.

It takes about 10,000 bees, over a three-day period to produce one pound of wax. That one pound will be made up of about 500,000 scales. Comb construction for the bee hive is clearly an investment. Inexplicably, cappings and other wax particles are not reused to any degree but are allowed to drop to the bottom board where they either accumulate or are discarded in front of the colony. New wax is soft and pliable and will break easily, but as the comb ages, it becomes reinforced with cocoons and propolis. Whereas new comb is snow white, old comb is nearly jet black.

Figure 3. New and old comb comparison.

Types of comb cells within the beehive
Worker comb is, by far, the most abundant comb size within the colony. As mentioned previously, worker sized comb (about five cells per inch) can be used by bees to house developing worker bees or to store honey and pollen. Larger cells, about four per inch, are used to produce drone larvae or to store honey and pollen.

Distorted cells or cells of intermediate size can occur that are used by bees to splice comb cells together. In other words, worker comb will be filled with patches of drone comb with small amounts of transitional comb wherever needed in order to make a piece of solid comb. Some cells may either be drastically modified or built purposefully for raising queens. As you would expect, this type of comb cell, though distinctive is not very common within the combs. A precursor to queen cells are queen cups which are simply queen cells that are not in use. Worker cells, drone cells, queen cells and transitional make up the types of comb cells within the colony.

Figure 4. Common burr combs on top of frames. This is a common sight for beekeepers. Note bee space separating frames.

Brace comb, burr comb or ladder comb
Bees will frequently build brace comb between frames, above or below frames, or on the bottom board – especially after a colony has been recently moved. Anywhere bee space is violated, additional comb may be built that is a nuisance to beekeepers in commercially manufactured hives. Normally, in managed hives, it is scraped off and melted as high-quality wax. Within wild nests, it remains in place and helps give rigidity to the overall nest.

Bee space
The concept of bee space has been mentioned several times. Within both wild and managed hives, bee spacing must be respected. Bee space is generally considered to be anything between ¼” and ⅜”. Space less than ¼” will be filled with propolis while anything greater than ⅜” will have either comb or brace comb built within the space depending on its size. In our beekeeping literature, the Reverend L.L. Langstroth is generally given credit for conceptualizing the notion of bee space.

Propolis – the colony’s caulking compound
Propolis is little known outside of the inner circles of beekeeping. Produced from resinous materials collected from the buds of trees or from resins from softwoods, propolis is used to caulk the hive tight. Though stringy and sticky when fresh, propolis dries hard and brittle. It is soluble in alcohol and has a pleasant weedy odor.

Since there is no real difference between the two, both wild and managed bees produce propolis. Caucasian bees are renowned for collecting copious amounts of propolis and will occasionally nearly close an entire colony entrance if left to their own schemes.

Propolis is the material that causes the hive to crack sharply when opened. Propolis was the primary demon that relegated so many hive designs to beekeeping’s junk heap. If colonies are not opened for several years, propolis will make the hive very nearly impenetrable. Propolis, along with pollen, darken white wax over a period of just a few years. Additionally, in addition to being used to polish cells, propolis is added to the wax that covers cappings; therefore, giving them a different appearance than honey cappings.

Propolis is bacterially active and will restrict bacterial growth. Probably due to this antimicrobial characteristic, propolis is used to entomb anything the bees can’t move – such as a dead mouse or a small tree twig.

There it is – the dark nest
Inside this dark maze of twisted, bee-spaced combs the bees live in hot, humid darkness during warm months and cold darkness during Winter months. Through the beekeeping years, innovative beekeepers have learned how to take the bees’ penchant for building natural comb and have enticed them to build comb within wooden frames – mainly for our human convenience. It’s too difficult to remove cross-combed frames for honey removal, disease inspection or colony manipulations.

Inside the warm, dark nest
Inside the warm, dark nest, bees probably communicate by pheromone perception (crudely described as a type of odor), touch and other sensory perceptions such as gravitational sensitivity and electro-magnetism.

The nest is incredibly crowded. Bees are literally shoulder to shoulder. Yet, all these characteristics vanish when the beekeeper removes the outer cover from the hive. All becomes visible and the normal way of the colony, with the application of smoke to mask the effective communicative odors, is disrupted.

Within the undisturbed dark hive, everything has a unique odor: workers, the queen, drones, nectar, wax moths, brood, pollen, the hunger of larvae, danger, whether larvae are in the correct cell – everything seems to have an odor cue (or some other kind of indicator) within the dark hive. As beekeepers, we crudely use smoke to mask this elegant chemical communication.

Temperature must be regulated to about 95°F in the brood nest, nectar must be enzymatically reduced and excess water removed to form honey, brood must be fed freshly collected pollen and this hive-city must be defended from intruders and pests.

This society must be kept in balance. In a full-strength colony, there are about 60,000 reproductively sterile workers, one fertile queen and about 400-600 drones. Developing brood must be produced in anticipation of upcoming nectar flows or Winter seasons. All these individuals come together to form the super-organism – the bee nest. Even under ideal conditions, individual bees are incapable of supporting themselves for more than a few weeks. The total bee nest is the animal – not the individual bee. Such is life in the bee’s nest – so much as we can understand.

Dr. James E. Tew
Emeritus Faculty, Entomology
The Ohio State University
tewbee2@gmail.com

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

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Found in Translation

Dog v. Machine: Identifying the Foul in Foulbrood
By: Jay Evans, USDA Beltsville Bee Lab

American foulbrood has been a consistent, if fortunately rare, curse of beekeepers for centuries. The bacterial agent behind AFB, Paenibacillus larvae, is widespread in managed colonies and yet only rarely triggers symptoms in the form of decayed and highly contagious infected brood. Catching those symptomatic cases early remains a critical goal of bee health management. Many U.S. states benefit from a cadre of bee inspectors who work with beekeepers to identify and act upon AFB infections (e.g., the Apiary Inspectors of America, https://apiaryinspectors.org/). Our own USDA Bee Disease Diagnostics Service, led by Samuel Abban (https://www.ars.usda.gov/northeast-area/beltsville-md-barc/beltsville-agricultural-research-center/bee-research-laboratory/docs/bee-disease-diagnosis-service/), works collaboratively with these inspectors and individual beekeepers to pounce on suspected AFB cases before their damaging shadow increases. While the visual and culturing tools for confirming AFB infections are robust, and that smell is hard to forget, there remains a huge need to rapidly screen apiaries for early signs of infection. The frontiers for this screening are marked by an unlikely pairing of furred partners and incredibly complex machines, and it is worthwhile to see which of these tools will be the most helpful for inspectors and beekeepers.

Starting with the more charismatic tools, trained dogs are sporadically used to help inspectors pin down cases of AFB. The state of Maryland has two such trained dogs, led by Chief Apiary Inspector Cybil Preston (https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/detective-dog-sniffs-out-devastating-honeybee-disease/). These companions certainly have the sensitivity to identify signals given off by diseased brood, but how accurate are dogs with the critical early-stage cases of AFB? A study by Neroli Thomson and colleagues in New Zealand aimed to push the limits of training and detection by dog detectives (Thomson, N.; Taylor, M.; Gifford, P.; Sainsbury, J.; Cross, S. (2023) Recognition of an Odour Pattern from Paenibacillus larvae Spore Samples by Trained Detection Dogs. Animals: 13, 154. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13010154). Two out of three trained dogs did great, consistently and quickly responding to AFB cues placed in one spot within a twirling carousel of dog dishes (Figure). These dogs were trained using purified spores, so would presumably do great even with empty boxes containing post-AFB scale. Their sensitivity in the indoor arena was at the level of spores found in a fraction of a single infected bee. What needs to be tested is the ability of these dogs to ignore the many other smells coming from a beehive, not to mention the environmental distractions (from stinging bees to nervous beekeepers) they would experience when truly on the job.

Since it is hard to interview a dog to find out the cues they use to detect AFB, I decided to explore the most recent work involving chemical sniffers that separate AFB smells from the large and shifting bouquet that is a beehive. Jessica Bikraun from the University of Western Australia devoted her PhD thesis to this question and already has one peer-reviewed paper showing the power of a machine detective approach (Bikaun, J.M.; Bates, T.; Bollen, M.; Flematti, G.R.; Melonek, J.; Praveen, P.; Grassl, J. (2022) Volatile biomarkers for non-invasive detection of American foulbrood, a threat to honey bee pollination services. Science of The Total Environment, 845, 157123, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157123). Using readily available Solid phase microextraction (SPME) ‘wands’ as noses, she and colleagues collected air samples wafting from infected larvae in a lab-rearing setup and from larvae embedded in living colonies. Larvae sampled in the lab released 102 identifiable chemicals in the air around them. Of these, 17 were found only in larvae infected with the AFB bacterium, others were common to all bees (they also tested bees with sacbrood and bees that had been killed by freezing, along with healthy controls). How do smells in the pristine lab setting compare to those in actual colonies? The SPME technique, while inexpensive and widely available, is compromised somewhat by the greediness of the SPME noses. If there are overwhelming smells coming from a hive, those molecules might edge out rare diagnostic signals. Field trials identified 116 volatile chemicals from beehives, 17 of which were tied to disease. In the end, only four molecules (2,5-dimethylpyrazine, acetamide, isobutyramide, and methyl 3-methyl-2-oxopentanoate) were indicative of AFB both in lab-cultured bees and in-hive air samples. These four chemicals might form the basis for an accurate and simple test. They are also themselves interesting for possible insights into the disease itself. 2,5-dimethylpyrazine is tagged an agent used by bacteria for inhibiting the growth of other microbes, something P. larvae does exceedingly well. While the research was focused on cues that machines can identify, the team also found candidates for smells that hygienic bees pick up on when scanning for diseased brood. Lactones, for example, are natural compounds found in fruits and elsewhere that are often used as components for food additives. In the airspace of beehives, lactones increased substantially with almost any form of brood stress, from AFB to sacbrood and freeze-killed brood, and the authors suggest these compounds might be another trigger for hygienic responses by nest bees. Sujin Lee and colleagues used a lab-based assay to identify and reconfirm volatile chemicals emitted by larvae suffering from AFB (Lee, S.; Lim, S.; Choi, Y.-S.; Lee, M.-l.; Kwon, H.W. (2022) Volatile disease markers of American foulbrood-infected larvae in Apis mellifera. Journal of Insect Physiology, 122, 104040, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinsphys.2020.104040. They then purchased those same chemicals to test for responsiveness by worker bees. Bees reacted to several of the candidates but the authors feel that propionic acid, valeric acid, and 2-nonanone were the cleanest signals of AFB infection. Younger bees reacted more strongly to these smells than did foragers, arguably reflecting the tendency of these younger bees (middle-aged actually) to act as hygienic helpers in the colony.

Both dog noses and artificial noses were shown to be capable of identifying even low levels of AFB in field colonies. The SPME chemical nose seems to have more promise as a consistent service (inspectors could readily collect smells from hives with a SPME wand and then send that wand to an analytical lab) but it would not give the in-the-moment diagnostic provided by dogs and good inspectors. For now, those live inspectors are earning their kibble by advising beekeepers when a problem is likely.

In my years as a beekeeper, I’ve attended quite a few conferences. But there’s one that has always managed to stand out in a special way. It was back in 2009 that I attended my first EAS conference in pursuit of becoming an EAS certified master beekeeper, and I’ve been going back for more ever since. I’ve often found myself pondering what exactly makes EAS such a draw for me and other beekeepers. This year, over 500 beekeepers attended the conference. Why is it that so many of us are drawn to the EAS conferences year after year?

This year, I flew out to the university of Massachusetts in Amherst to attend the 68th EAS conference. Eastern Apicultural Society of North America, Inc. (EAS) stands as a beacon of education and research. Established in 1955, EAS has grown into the largest, noncommercial beekeeping organization in the United States and a global hub for beekeeping enthusiasts. With a commitment to excellence in bee research and the education of beekeepers, EAS continues to hold an annual conference that serves as a cornerstone event for beekeepers from around the world.

This year’s theme was, “The Past, Present and Beeyond.” It was remarkable how the campus architect reflected this same “journey through time” theme with its brutalist and dystopian architectural design in many buildings.

Field Test

Master Beekeeper Certification: Nurturing Expertise
What originally drew me to attend my first EAS conference was my desire to become an EAS certified master beekeeper. In addition to education and research, EAS is renowned for its master beekeeper certification program. The EAS Master Beekeeper Program stands as a testament to EAS’s commitment to excellence and is the grandfather of all master beekeeper programs. The MB program was started by Dr. Roger Morse at Cornell in 1981 and now EAS oversees the testing of all EAS master beekeeper candidates. It is a rigorous two days of testing. Candidates must attain a minimum score of 85 to pass the lab, written, oral and field tests. Once certified, EAS MBs become pillars of support for the educational arm of EAS, contributing to the growth and enrichment of the beekeeping community.

What’s the draw for beekeepers? For me, it’s more than the informative lectures and workshops. It’s the unique opportunities for beekeepers to dive deeper into demonstrations, hands-on experiences and evening social events with friends. In fact, at my first EAS in New York, I was in a microscopy workshop examining Nosema spores and met for the first time, Dr. Jon Zawislak. We’ve become lifelong friends, having met at EAS. I’ve also made so many other lifelong friends from EAS. Every year I attend, I make more friends and connections with beekeepers around the country, even around the world.

Paul Kelly Drone Spitting

Another reason I keep going back is because once you become an EAS MB, they put you to work teaching. The Short Course, Monday through Tuesday, is a key component of the conference designed for beginners and intermediate beekeepers. This year, I spoke several times during the short course, as MBs are asked to conduct these workshops. Here, beekeepers can explore topics ranging from fundamental beekeeping techniques to specialized skills like queen grafting, disease detection and more.

The Main Conference, extending from Wednesday to Friday, features keynote presentations that set the tone for each day’s proceedings. This year’s keynote speakers were Dr. Tammy Horn-Potter, Dr. Samuel Ramsey and Dr. Judy-Wu Smart. Multiple tracks of presentations ensure that attendees can delve into their areas of interest, whether that’s the latest in honey bee research, innovative beekeeping practices, or the art of apitherapy, candle making and more.

Paul Kelly and Ken Warchol discussing pans for the smoker contest (one of the five contests in the Beekeeper Olympics)

Cultivating Creativity: Beyond the Hive
The EAS conference goes beyond the confines of traditional beekeeping to explore the creative and diverse aspects of the craft. Workshops on honey show judging, honey bee photography and cooking with honey celebrate the artistry and flavors of beekeeping.

A unique and whimsical highlight of the conference is the Bee Olympics, where beekeepers showcase their skills in unconventional contests. One standout challenge involves spitting a drone from one’s mouth to measure how far it can travel – a playful yet engaging way to test participants’ bee-related talents. So, start practicing now for 2024! By the way, you can’t kill a drone during the contest.

A Revered Guest: Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth
At an evening barbeque event, there was a special appearance by Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth as played by Marc Hoffman, adding a special historical touch. Reverend Langstroth, often hailed as the “Father of American Beekeeping,” revolutionized beekeeping with his invention of the movable frame hive. His presence serves as a reminder of the rich legacy and innovation that continues to shape modern beekeeping practices.

Frame Building Olympics

Scholarship and Success: Celebrating Achievement
EAS’s dedication to cultivating talent extends beyond certification of MBs to awards and scholarships. Yearly awards include the James I. Hambleton Memorial Award, the Roger A. Morse Outstanding Teaching Award, the Divelbliss Award, the EAS Student Apiculture Award and the Mann Lake EAS Master Beekeeper Scholarship Award. EAS desires to celebrate achievements by supporting those who are sure to enhance beekeeping in the future.

I had an opportunity to have lunch with the 2023 recipient of the Mann Lake EAS Master Beekeeper Scholarship award, Kyle Day from Missouri. For such a young man, Kyle has it all together in beekeeping. Kyle’s participation in workshops, events, and networking opportunities at the conference embodies the true spirit of EAS.

Drone Spitting

Additionally, the recognition of Ayeah Gideon Gobti from Cameroon, the international winner of the 2017 scholarship, highlights the global reach and impact of EAS’s initiatives. Gobti was unable to travel to the U.S. until this year and his attendance showcases the enduring influence of EAS’s support, fostering connections and growth that transcends borders.

A Beacon for Beekeeping: EAS’s Lasting Impact
As the annual conference at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst came to a close, the legacy of the Eastern Apicultural Society continues to reverberate. The event not only celebrates the intricate world of bees but also champions the spirit of learning, collaboration and community.

With its unwavering dedication to education, research and excellence, EAS stands as a beacon, illuminating the path forward for beekeepers, researchers and enthusiasts alike. As beekeeping evolves, EAS remains at the forefront, nurturing the passion and knowledge that sustain both the bees and those who care for them.

Feeling nostalgic for the days when the word “vaccination” was ubiquitous in casual conversation, we decided to explore honey bee vaccinations by interviewing Annette Kleiser, Ph.D., CEO for the biotech company Dalan Animal Health, which has been granted a conditional license by the USDA for their honey bee vaccine.

If you thought creating a vaccination for a regular body was complicated, try making one for a superorganism! In the case of the vaccine Dalan is developing, every mated adult queen would need to be vaccinated. And right now, they are just working on American Foulbrood (AFB), which, while an outbreak can devastate, remains a less-common concern than other diseases like European Foulbrood (EFB), deformed wing virus, chalkbrood and others. How many beekeepers would think it worth preventively vaccinating against this awful but less common disease, especially if they requeen – and would therefore need to revaccinate – yearly?

Figure 1. The field diagnostic test for AFB is to measure the ropiness of the diseased brood. Photo credit: Heather Chapman

We reached out to Annette to find out more. And she assured us that they were truly in the proof-of-concept phase, with the primary goal of garnering support and interest in the beekeeping world. But we had to wonder, why start with a disease so virulent that challenging bees with it to see if the vaccine worked would be… problematic?

Beekeepers are used to industry pressing technology on them, and most of us have developed a somewhat skeptical stance towards the myriad of supplements, gadgets, and flow hives that are foisted upon us, so we brought that attitude to Annette right away. What was her investment in the beekeeping industry?

First of all, we thought Annette was very cool. She is a biologist by training, then moved to helping researchers to develop products and take their work beyond publications. Annette had done her homework and shared a sentiment that spoke to us: “Honey bees… play a vital role in our food security, mitigating climate concerns and supporting biodiversity. ⅓ of our foods depend on pollination, and honey and other products are critical in our food and pharma industries. Despite this fact, beekeeping has been overlooked too long by traditional animal health to provide modern tools for disease prevention and management. Dalan’s goal is to change this.”

We were on board with their goal of finding solutions to bee diseases that don’t rely on antibiotics or equipment-fed bonfires. As you’ll see in the Q&A, Dalan, like beekeepers, doesn’t believe in silver bullets and instead sees their vaccine as a tool in the larger toolkit of good management, good hygiene, good genetics and good nutrition. After we share her answers to our nosy questions, we will end with some further thoughts and questions that were left pondering…

Q: Talk about honey bee immune response and how it relates to the vaccine.
A: Transgenerational immune priming (TGIP) is a natural process whereby maternal insects protect the next generation of offspring from diseases. Nurse bees will encounter a pathogen in the hive, by let’s say cleaning out larvae that have come down with AFB. The nurse bee will take up some of the bacteria that cause the disease, and some bacteria may end up in the royal jelly that is fed to the queen. When that happens, pieces of the dead bug will end up in the ovaries and stimulate an immune response in the developing larvae making them more resistant to infection once they hatch. Our vaccine builds on this natural process. During the vaccination process, we expose the nurse bees and the queen in a very controlled way to a high dose of dead bacteria to ensure that the correct amount is transported to the eggs.

Q: Currently beekeepers are warned about potential AFB transmission from used equipment or feeding their bees honey from unknown sources. Do you see this vaccine as a game changer for the need of those practices?
A: AFB is so problematic because spores can live in the environment for decades, but other bacteria and diseases can be contracted from the use of honey and other sources. I think caution and good hygienic practices should always be part of the routine to keep colonies safe. However, we see this vaccine as a critical part of an integrated control program for sustainable beekeeping that for too long has relied solely on antibiotics to fend off bacterial diseases.

Q: Hygienic behavior has been helpful to remove AFB infected brood from the colony nest prior to it becoming infectious. Has anybody investigated or discussed the potential efficacy of the vaccine and hygienic behavior in protecting bees from AFB?
A: Honey bees are often called a superorganism where the colony has mechanisms for dealing with diseases and infection on an individual level, and on a colony level. Individually bees neutralize disease-causing agents, through a variety of mechanisms like the cutis, grooming, saliva, antimicrobial peptides and other components of the bee immune system. On the colony level, the disease is eliminated though hygienic behavior, removing sick larvae, food sterilization, propolis, but also increasing the colony temperature and creating a fever or sharing antimicrobial peptides with each other. Our vaccine has to be seen in this context. Vaccination is supercharging TGIP and will be supported by all other superorganism mechanisms of disease prevention. Dalan is currently conducting a multi-year, large scale pilot field trial to study the effect of vaccination in the field, where all is coming together.

Q: Does the current research support the possibility that one vaccine might be able to protect bees from multiple pathogens?
A: Our researchers started looking into this for bacterial brood diseases. We have encouraging early results but that is as much as I can say at this time.

Q: The idea of a bee vaccine is exciting, but beekeepers know to be suspect of things that look like silver bullets. What warnings do you have about the capacities and efficacy of this vaccine?
A: I don’t think there is such a thing as a silver bullet. We still need to provide skilled care for these precious animals. Our vaccine was tested and licensed for one disease. It is the first step towards a new era of disease prevention in honey bees. One day we want these tools to become part of the routine measures to protect honey bees, just like taking our pets to the vet to make sure they are protected and kept safe and ensure that they don’t spread diseases to others.

Q: Are there common misconceptions you would like to address?
A: One of the most common misconceptions is around efficacy. When we develop animal vaccines, and in particular, when working with highly contagious diseases, we had to conduct lab efficacy tests rather than infecting animals in the field. That requires establishing laboratory models that use an extremely high infection pressure forcing a high number of animals to die. This is important to arrive at a statistically significant efficacy result. We infect larvae with 5,000-10,000 spores, while typically less than 200 spores are sufficient to kill larvae in a hive. However, we achieved up to 50% survival in these extreme situations in the lab. If you now think of the field situation where you have a much lower infection pressure in the early stages, plus you add in the superorganism ability for disease mitigation, the assumption is that efficacy of the vaccine to protect from disease will be a lot higher.

Q: The Dalan pipeline has AFB, EFB and chalkbrood. Are the viruses transmitted by V. destructor on your radar?
A: Yes, viruses are very important and tools to protect from them need to be a key part of mite management. Viral vaccines are more difficult to manufacture but now that we know how to develop bee vaccines in general, we are ready to tackle viruses as well.

Q: What else do you want to share with us?
A: We realize that our product is just the start. We must be mindful that modern agriculture must also act responsibly in the use of insecticides and herbicides, and that we are at a tipping point. Our product has to be a part of a concerted/integrated effort to provide bees the best possible environment for them to do their job. This may require not only voluntary reductions in some of the damaging chemical practices, but also potential legislation.

Becky Masterman led the UMN Bee Squad from 2013-2019. Bridget Mendel joined the Bee Squad in 2013 and has led the program since 2020. Photos of Becky (left) and Bridget (right) looking for their respective hives. If you would like to contact the authors with your bee vaccine thoughts, please send an email to mindingyourbeesandcues@gmail.com.

Concluding thoughts:
We felt that Dalan’s desire to gather feedback from experts – beekeepers – was sincere: because vaccinating individual bees seems time consuming, the product would need to be excellent enough to actually save the beekeeper money and labor towards honey bee disease management.

While efficient and effective vaccination still seems a long way off after this interview, we like the mindset that we need to prevent disease as much for our bees as for our neighbor’s bees. If varroa and their virus complex has taught us anything, it is the imperative for this community-minded approach. We like Dalan Animal Health’s investment in the vaccine technology, though beekeeper investment is also needed to move this solution forward. Meanwhile, we can dream of a double disease vaccination that protects against the less common AFB and currently too common and menacing EFB. We would give it a shot!

Resources
Dalan Animal Health https://www.dalan.com/
About American and European Foulbrood https://bee-health.extension.org/american-and-european-foulbrood/