First 4 Stings

One of the local plant that yields surplus honey is blooming. I've heard it called Autumn olive or Russian olive. It's probably an invasive species and considered a pest. I didn't see any bees on these when I looked.

Saturday, May 15th: cool and breezy. Not an ideal bee day but I'm not keeping up with them very well. I opened the first colony. A couple bees seemed annoyed. The phone rang and as I talked for the next 20 or 30 minutes, a lone bee kept batting at my head, until I walked away into the woods.

That colony looked good—lots of brood, nectar, and pollen.

After the phone call I opened the 2nd hive. Suddenly I had a cloud of bees around my hands. I backed away, but too late. Later I counted 4 stings. I closed up that hive but a cloud of bees followed me around the yard so I gave up for another day.

Sometimes "hot" hives return to normal. Sometimes "hot" is a reaction to some sort of stress. I'll use gloves when I work that hive. Some experts say there's no correlation, but in my experience, aggressive hives often produce lots of honey.

2008-9 honey bee losses

I got an e-mail from Dennis VanEnglesdorp with the results of the latest bee loss survey:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2010/100429.2.htm

Just over one third of bees died last winter: 33.8%. The year before that was 29% and three years ago 35.8% of colonies died.

These are managed colonies and many or most are probably treated for various diseases. If you lose a third of your colonies after treating them, you waste the treatment cost as well as the value of the bees.

How serious are these statistics?

1. Some mortality is normal and acceptable. I don't know what's acceptable, but despite a beekeeper's best efforts, most hives will swarm at least once a year. (My hives swarm somewhere between 1.5 and 2 times a year.) If all colonies survived the winter, we'd be over run with bees in ten years.

2. The survey includes people with 5+ hives. The number of beekeepers with less than 5 has increased in all three years.

3. This number doesn't count wild colonies.

4. These losses aren't cumulative. The losses are replaced every spring and summer through swarming and swarm preventive splits.

The total number of colonies every year may be somewhere in this article and I missed it. That's probably an important number.

Anyways, I lost 1/6 of my colonies, or 16.7%, about half the national average and I didn't waste time and money on medications.

I expect more summer deaths and unless I have time to make splits and add supers, I'll probably have lots of swarms to catch again this spring and summer.

Beekeeping class

It's snowing now at 9 PM, May 8. Seven hours ago I hosted a "Bee Yard Etiquette" class during a high wind advisory. 5 attended and we broke my first two rules of Bee Yard Etiquette:

1. Don't open a hive when it's cold.

2. Don't open a hive when it's windy.

We broke rule 3 after about twenty minutes:

3. Don't open a hive in the rain.

The first hive was a drone layer.

The second hive was a double nuc—it survived the winter with only 8 frames. I wanted to check the condition but the frames were pretty tight and then it started to rain.

I shortened the class.

The power was gone when we returned home.

Noah's Ark Preschool lecture

How do you scoop bees out of a hive when it's snowing? I tried putting the jar over the inner cover hole, then tapping on the hive, thinking they might crawl up. They didn't, but the inside of the jar fogged up. You forget how warm it is inside a hive.

There were 20 or so bees on the inner cover and I had a large funnel. Once the bees cool down they don't fly so by the time I thought of it, it was easy to brush them into the funnel and into the jar.

The next morning I took my little pets to preschool to teach the children about honey and bees. There were 10 just over knee high children there and they put them in a semi circle on the floor. I put my stuff on a flannel sheet I use for swarms. I put on my veil and gloves, opened the hive and lifted out the jar of bees. The kids inched closer as I talked until they were all over me and the hive, spreading deadly preschool germs. Could this be how Nosema ceranae spreads?

I passed out crackers with a glop of bamboo honey. Both women later bought some of my bamboo honey at the local bulk food store.

Formic Acid Mite treatments

At our April meeting of SCHBA, we invited Earl Villecco to speak on treating for mites with formic acid. Earl is a member of the Southern Tier Honey Bee Association, Empire State Honey Producer's Association and the at least temporarily defunct AIAC, or Apicultural Industry Association Commission.

That last group advises NY state on beekeeping issues. According to Earl, it sounds pretty official—the NYS inspection program has been de-funded for this year. I guess I won't have to put my apiary number under my hive cover after all (I was going to wait till the inspector actually came, then slip it in when he wasn't looking.

Earl talked about how he uses formic acid.

The advantages:

It's inexpensive, around $1/hive

It's quick, 24 hours and it's done

Thorough, killing mites outside cells and up to 90% of mites inside cells.

Formic acid occurs naturally in colonies.

Disadvantages:

You have to buy wholesale quantities of formic acid

It's not approved in NYS

It's corrosive and dangerous in the wrong hands

Several club members expressed an interest in buying formic acid and distributing it to others. If you are one of them, here are two links you should check:

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/varroa/FAFumigat.pdf

This site provides results from a test using an applicator that is more complicated than Earl described at the last meeting but the other numbers and quantities look the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODTNVGH5SFQ

youtube video lecture on pros and cons of formic acid and different application methods.

I'm going to continue not treating bees with anything. Earl commented on non-treatment, saying that some people do that and after several years, appear to have colonies that tolerate mites. He didn't feel he could afford that. On the other hand, I couldn't afford the time to treat and monitor mite levels (lazy and cheap might be a better description), so I did lose bees for a few years. I'm waiting for the colony loss numbers to appear so I'll know if I'm still above average.

First Bee Removal Job

It took about 4 hours to gather all the equipment from the outbuildings. The woman who called said there were thousands of bees everywhere, probably several colonies. They had started to remove the siding in the winter and the comb went from the ground to the rafters.

I drove sixty-five miles. The woman showed me the colony on the back of the barn.

No bees. Not even one.

No comb.

No $$ for removing bees. She grudgingly gave a little gas money when I asked.

Three things happened since three days ago when she saw all the bees and honeycomb. 1. The colony died in the winter when they removed the siding and exposed the colony to the weather(actual colony size was about 2'x3'x 6"). 2. Neighbor bees came to harvest the rest of the honey by the thousands until a 3. bear or other large mammal consumed the rest of the hive contents, leaving nothing but a pleasant beeswax smell and wax residue.

On the good side, none of my potential assistants could accompany me to the job, so I didn't have to share the money.

Next removal job is next week. This time I'll charge $1.00/mile to get there, which ends up being included in the removal job if there are bees to remove.

Important note to beekeepers talking to non-beekeepers:

Don't forget the principle called the "coefficient of exaggeration". Non-beekeepers usually don't look directly at a colony or swarm so they have only a vague impression of what they saw. It's nearly always smaller than a non-beekeeper's estimate. The coefficient varies by individual, but a good rule of thumb is to divide their estimate by 2—10 depending on the degree of panic in their voice.

Removing bees from a barn

The Bee-Team got our first bee removal call of the year. The woman said they started removing siding from a barn and it contained floor to ceiling bees. Her son-in-law is allergic so they have to go.

I got the impression there may be multiple colonies (we've removed as many as 4 colonies from one barn). The problem is that a non professional bee person often sees more bees than there really are. I'll try to remove them the first good week in April and plan for more than one colony but expect just one.

These bees are approximately 50 miles away so I'll take every tool I can think of ever possibly needing to do the job in one trip.

Sorry my daughter can't come to video the job. My partner can't help either-he's working on the census.