To Bee Or Not To Bee?

Tags

beekeeping, seasons

Source:  To Bee Or Not To Bee? — Big Dreams for a Tiny Garden

Alright, so the title is a little cheesy. But the question does remain. Where would we be without bees?

The gardens of my childhood were filled with bees. Hot summer afternoons in gardens buzzing with their industry. Lying on our backs in the clover, we marvelled at their meandering flight paths, little back legs bundled with yellow pollen. Our raids on the strawberry patch were more deliciously dangerous for the possibility of being stung. When the inevitable happened we endured the pain of having the sting carefully scraped from throbbing limb with a knife. A paste of bicarbonate of soda and water slathered on the wound followed, to soothe the sting. After which we suffered a parental lecture about the poor bee losing its life as a consequence of our carelessness, since they die shortly after delivering that venomous barb.

And honey sandwiches! Who could forget the real honey of our childhoods?

Ahh, those idyllic bee-ful days of my childhood!

A dear friend started me on this path down memory lane recently when she suggested I look at the important role bees play in plant fertilisation.

So, where are they now? What’s going on? Even Spring in my tiny garden doesn’t deliver on the childhood promise of swarms of bees, nor butterflies for that matter, but that’s for another post. Why does it matter?

Bees and fertilization 

It matters because bees are prolific pollinators, playing a huge role in the fertilisation of flowers, vegetables and other food crops.  I’m sure I’m not telling you something you don’t already know.

But did you know that European honey bees (Apis mellifera) [introduced to Australia around 1822] are incredibly productive? A single colony can easily contain 10,000-60,000 working bees. Each female worker lives for roughly a month and is so effective at pollination that she may forage more than 500 flowers in a round trip. A single bee may range as far as 10km in the search for pollen and nectar. No wonder they say ‘as busy as a bee!’

Furthermore, the familiar European honey bee is not the only kid on the fertilisation block. More recently, attention is being drawn to our native Australian bees. I discovered to my amazement that in Australia we have over 1,600 species of native bee with endearing names like the Teddy Bear and Blue Banded bee, some of which I’ve seen around our local park Callistemons or Bottlebrush (below). They’re an important pollinator for our unique flora.

Increasingly our native bees, like the stingless varieties (genera Tetragonula – previously called Trigona – and Austroplebeia), are also proving to be valuable pollinators of crops such as macadamias, mangos, watermelons and lychees . Their impressive effectiveness as pollinators has even seen them employed by pollination services for commercial growers of these crops. Some native bees have the added advantage of being ‘buzz pollinators’ whereby the vibration of their wings facilitates fertilisation, a feat almost impossible for honey bees.

What’s the reason for the global bee decline?

It appears there’s not one single factor. Dr Les Davies, Chief Regulatory Scientist from APVMA, suggests ‘mutiple interacting pressures which may include habitat loss and disappearance of floral resources, honeybee nutrition, climate change, bee pests and pathogens [like Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which has wiped out millions of bees in North America], miticides and other chemicals intentionally used in hives and bee husbandry practices, as well as agricultural pesticides,’ are possible factors in the decline of bees. He makes a strong case for being informed about what we spray on our gardens [if this is a path we choose], advocating ‘a need to ensure that a range of regulatory, industry stewardship and educational measures are in place,’ to reduce the risks from pesticides.

My role as a gardener

We all have a stake in maintaining our bio system. When it comes to  ‘bee-ing’ a successful gardener, a bit of research has turned up  a number of ways I can contribute. It makes sense to plant any garden with bees in mind. A mix of flowers among the vegies will ensure bees are attracted to the garden and will do their bit to ensure bountiful fruit and vegetable crops.

I will be even more mindful of using chemicals in the garden after reading up on bees. While I’ve always preferred natural pest control, heeding Dr Davies’ advice of being more informed about the sprays, fungicides and other chemical products for garden use seems crucial. Especially given I consume the crops I grow, along with a variety of other insects and useful micro organisms who dine on my garden.

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
― Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee

References

Healthy Gardens
Read more at http://www.yates.com.au/healthy-gardens-need-healthy-bees/#r6Wma0Yg8TwPdexW.99

The travesty of imported honey  http://www.tastyhoney.com/blog/honey/australian-honey-imports-from-china-hit-new-record-high/

How to attract bees  http://www.yates.com.au/healthy-gardens-need-healthy-bees/#lwW0XsGMCMLsLbz9.97

Honeybee Research http://www.rirdc.gov.au/research-programs/animal-industries/honeybee

Medicinal Benefits of Honey  http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/02/14/3689565.htm

Bee Biology Research 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-secret-life-of-bees-99559587/?no-ist

via To Bee Or Not To Bee? — Big Dreams for a Tiny Garden

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Does Royal Jelly Make Royal Queens?

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee biology, queens

Bad Beekeeping Blog

School kids need a new lesson about royal jelly.

The kids in the Grade 5 classroom knew all about royal jelly.

“The bees feed it to their babies and they turn into queens.”

And so it is. We think. Royal jelly – countless journal articles (and Wikipedia) tell us – stimulates the latent she-ness in a female larva. It removes her from a future life of weary drudgery as a worker destined to live six short weeks, then die wedged between some dusty stigma and anther. Royal jelly gives the lucky larva a future life as a queen employed in monotonous drudgery as an egg-laying machine destined to deposit progeny for three years in a crowded dark den, then die in a palace coup.  There’s not much of an advantage in the queen’s life. But it’s longer. And there must be a crown or something that comes with the job.

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Royal Jelly and Queen Bees

Tags

beekeeping, honey bee biology

For decades, scientists thought an excess of something special, a substance called royal jelly, elevated a regular honey bee larva to a queen. New research suggests we had it backward: It’s what future queens aren’t fed that matters.

Royal jelly, which also is called “bee milk,” looks like white snot. More than half of it is water, the rest is a combination of proteins and sugars. Special glands in the heads of worker bees secrete the stuff, which gets fed to babies.

A developing queen bee is fed royal jelly exclusively—not pollen and honey like her proletarian sisters. Some describe withholding royal jelly from worker bees as nutritional castration. These bees don’t get the special Food of the Gods. Or, perhaps, food of genetic monarchies. And so, we thought, their ovaries shrivel, and they don’t become a queen. Read more here.

Source: Gwen Pearson at www.wired.com

Yummy Honey Popcorn Balls!!!

Tags

beekeeping, recipe

Yes, it really is National Popcorn Day!

How to Provide

Honey Popcorn Balls [image source: fischfood-com] All Hallows Eve is upon us. Time to make popcorn balls!

5 cups Popped Popcorn
1/2 cup Honey
1/4 cup Sugar
1/2 tsp Sea Salt
1 tbsp Butter
(plus more butter for your hands)

Directions

1. Place popped popcorn in a large bowl and set aside.
2. In a large sauce pan, combine honey, sugar, salt and butter. Over medium heat, stirring frequently, bring the honey mixture to 275^oF.
3. Pour honey mixture evenly over popcorn and stir to coat with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula then set aside to cool enough to handle but still be pliable.
4. Butter your hands and shape popcorn into 6 balls.  Let them completely cool then eat.  Eat lots and lots of them!

Makes 6 popcorn balls.

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Sugar Syrup

Tags

beekeeping, feeding bees, management

Note: All beekeeping is local. Here in South Carolina we are able to use syrups both longer and sooner than those in more northern climates. Adjust your use of according to your climate.

I had some help stirring some syrup today! This time of year you want to feed close to the cluster yet not introduce too much moisture into the hive. A 2:1 sugar to water mix is best.

To get it close to the colony you an feed above the cluster via a bucket placed overhead on top of the frames or a similar setup with a jar through the inner cover hole.

Two Wonderful Podcasts

Tags

beekeeping

Source: Two Wonderful Podcasts

Winter is a quiet season for beekeepers, so what better time to make yourself a steaming mug of cocoa and settle down to two great podcasts about bees!

The first podcast is a public discussion held at LSE by the Forum for European Philosophy, titled Hive Minds: Collective Intelligence in Humans and Other Animals. The panelists are Christian List (philosopher, LSE), Elli Leadbeater (social insect biologist, Royal Holloway), and Larissa Conradt (evolutionary theorist, Max Planck Institute for Human Development).

A swarm of bees (Image credit: Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Leadbeater opens the discussion brilliantly, asking us to picture a swarm of honey bees who have just left a hive. So now they are clustering on a tree branch, with about three days to find a new home before they run out of food. Scout bees fly off in all directions looking for nesting sites with certain desirable features – large but not too large, protected from the elements, free of ants, and so on. These bees fly back and report their findings through the famous waggle dance, and other scouts fly off to verify their findings. Gradually a consensus emerges. In this way, thousands of bees with no central decision-making authority prove to be surprisingly effective in choosing an optimal nest.

This paves the way to discuss broader questions, such as, is there collective intelligence in bees and other social insects? If so, what is the evidence for it, and what form does it take? Do we also find forms of collective intelligence in humans? And what can humans learn from bees about the best ways to make collective decisions? The discussion encompasses philosophical questions (the nature of intelligence), historical anecdotes (Galton’s ox) and current developments (Brexit, Donald Trump).

Source: Two Wonderful Podcasts

Patience

Tags

beekeeping

Source: Patience

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Emma Maund

The queen cells had been torn down. A worker crawled out of a gaping hole in the side of a cell as I wondered who had given the order – a new queen or rebel workers? The old queen, Melissa, had disappeared in early June. Her last public appearance (to my mother) had been just before the May bank holiday. A week later she was mysteriously gone and a single, small queen cell on the middle of the frame – most likely an emergency cell or supersedure – had been left in her place.

It wouldn’t have been a surprise if the workers had decided to supersede the queen. She was going into her third year and had been struggling to build up the colony after winter. This may have been because the spring was wet and cold, although I had constantly fed and kept the hive clean and warm, or it may have been due to nosema, because both hives had some spotting on the entrance coming out of winter. However, both hives had been treated accordingly with good husbandry and any sign of disease had been very brief and long since passed.

All that being said, the fate of mine and Emily’s longest-standing colony had rested in a single, rather stunted, queen cell. It was like living on a knife edge for the next three weeks as I visited the apiary daily to feed the hives during a month of unsettled weather and patiently waited for the new queen to emerge and mate.

The June gap was very poor this year, in our area at least, and the feeders were drained dry of syrup each day with desperate tongues poking out below the rim at the bottom. On the last Monday in June the weather was fair for an inspection. Peppermint’s colony had been growing steadily stronger and the queen had been spotted and laying well. As all seemed fine in our larger hive, I decided to check the nuc colony first and find out whether Melissa’s heir had emerged.

The bees were content inside the nuc. They were purring. Kitten bees. I went forwards and backwards through the nuc to inspect each frame twice. The queen cell was gone, but there was no sign of a new queen or brood. Every frame was packed full of honey on both sides. If a new queen was present and if she had mated successfully, she had nowhere to lay. Frame by frame, I carefully moved the nuc colony into a full-sized hive then closed up and fed syrup to help the bees draw out fresh comb on the rest of the frames.

Peppermint’s colony was starting work on a super and I was proud of their progress after a slow start in spring. Going through the frames forwards and backwards, I couldn’t find the queen. The bees were as good as gold and shiny eggs at the bottom of cells suggested the presence of a queen at least three days ago. However, I did find four queen cells across two frames and one was still unsealed. A rainy Saturday had delayed an inspection till Monday – had I just missed Peppermint flying off in a swarm by a couple of days? I went forwards and backwards again through the frames in the hope of finding her and making an artificial swarm in the nuc that was now conveniently empty. The queen was nowhere to be found, although I could see the nest had doubled in size since my last visit a week ago. Perhaps it was supersedure despite Peppermint being a young queen in her second year? She too had been quite slow to build up the nest in spring.

Swarm or supersedure: there was little point in worrying about it as it wouldn’t change anything. I decided to take out a frame with two of the queen cells and put it into my other hive. This might help prevent further swarming, if this was the case, in Peppermint’s colony and it might possibly help Melissa’s colony, if queenless, to requeen.

The next day I went back to the apiary to see whether Melissa’s workers had accepted the queen cells. If Emily and I were to lose our longest line of queens then I wanted to know for sure. The cells had been torn down suggesting that Melissa had left an heir or that the workers hadn’t been queenless for long enough to accept the new queens. It can sometimes take a new queen almost a month or more to get into her stride. This had certainly been the case with Melissa after she emerged in summer of 2014. I had been patient with both hives since March and with the colonies only now getting on their feet, I could be patient a little longer.

It was a happy day in early July when I finally saw Melissa’s heir. A healthy patch of brood and eggs heralded her appearance when I saw her climbing across the comb. A long dark abdomen sprinkled in light gingery stars, she was very pretty. I couldn’t get a picture while holding the frame and so I put her carefully back inside the hive and closed up. After discussing with Emily, we decided to break the tradition of names inspired by essential oils and call the queen Patience because the bees had needed a lot of patience this year. And it seemed they would need to be patient a while longer.

The following Saturday my mum, Ronnie, came to help with the inspection and to take a picture of the new queen. I went slowly through the small hive – it wasn’t difficult as the nest was still only five to six frames strong – and couldn’t find the queen, which was disappointing with my mum poised to take a photo. We smoked and cleared the bees from each frame looking through the hive again, and still no Patience although I did see eggs, larvae and sealed brood. I closed up the hive.

Seven days later, yesterday in fact, I opened the hive again and this time found a cluster of queen cells in the middle of the frame. I was disappointed. The cells looked like emergency cells made and sealed very quickly, because they had certainly not been on the frames the week before. What had happened to Patience? How had she disappeared, or why had she failed, barely a month after she had emerged? I felt disappointed for my bees too. They had persevered to recover after spring and I had felt so pleased for them when I had seen Patience on the comb and the brood nest start to grow. But worrying would again change nothing. I let Thomas remove one of the queen cells at John Chapple’s request for a beginner’s hive which had gone queenless. I was glad at least to give one of our lovely line of queens to another hive.

Inside Peppermint’s hive all was well. This week I had a small gathering around the hive of familiar and new beekeepers. Peppermint’s heir was spotted climbing over a frame and I quickly caged her to do some manipulations to the hive, which included taking a frame of brood and a frame of honey to donate to Patience’s former colony. I hoped this would help to sustain the queenless colony while waiting for a new queen to emerge.

I could have marked the new queen, but I had just recovered from a small operation and was starting to feel like I had done enough beekeeping for the day. As I closed the hive, I decided to pass on Patience’s name to Peppermint’s daughter. It is too good a name to waste and it seems both myself and the bees will need a little more patience before the hives can be ready for winter.

Inbetween hive inspections there has on occasion been time for cake for both beekeepers…

… and bees.

I’ve enjoyed every moment spent with my bees in spite of the challenges this season, though I’ve spent less time blogging about the bees in favour of spending time in the garden. That’s a story for another post.

 

Source: Patience

Honey, I’m Home

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beekeeping

Source: Honey, I’m Home

It’s no mystery that, at the age of 49, Sherlock Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs, gave up being a detective, and devoted himself to beekeeping. What we don’t know is what he did with all that honey?

The enigmatic Mr. Holmes is unlikely to ever divulge the answer, though he did let slip some of it went in little pots to the house of Dr. Watson, as Christmas presents for the doctor and his wife. Sherlock himself was surprised to learn that honey can be used as a form of expression. Dorian Gray told Holmes about the artist Blake Little and his most unusual photographs, taken between the years 2012 and 2014. Mr. Little, a portrait photographer, used over 4,000 pounds of honey, drenching his subjects–including a dog–with the golden elixir then capturing their images forever.  All of these delicious photographs, which have been compared to primordial beings trapped in amber, can be seen in Little’s book Preservation.

Sherlock is a bit dumbfounded by the waste of it all. In his day one ate honey on scones, and was grateful for it.  Ought the product of the industrious bee wind up exploited in such a decadent manner? Is this art or mere frivolity? And exactly how long does it take to wash all that honey out of one’s hair?

 

Source: Honey, I’m Home

How One Artist Makes Saving Bees a ‘Big’ Deal

Tags

beekeeping, education

Source: How One Artist Makes Saving Bees a ‘Big’ Deal

When it comes to the current bee crisis, artist Matthew Willey sees the writing on the wall – and has chosen to paint over it. “I want to put bees in the front of everyone’s mind” the North Carolina-based artist says. He has committed to personally paint 50,000 honeybees – the number necessary for a healthy hive – on the walls of communities across America.

“As an artist I figured I could take these small, misunderstood creatures and paint them really big so people will notice them,” says Willey.

His initiative, called The Good of the Hive, uses art to highlight amazing honey bee behaviors and their connection with humans, all while raising awareness about the current honey bee struggle.”We need them, it’s not a maybe.” Willey says.

Willey’s first mural at Harold P. Curtis Honey Co. in LaBelle, FL. (Photo: The Good of the Hive.)

The artist was inspired by a honey bee that had flown into his NY apartment last fall. “It was moving really slowly, like it was sick,” says Willey. When the honey bee died a few hours later, he turned to google for answers.

Bees live in highly organized colonies, each with an important task. When feel they cannot perform said tasks, due to age or health, they exit the hive and do not return. “I think this behavior is amazing” Willey says, “When they feel sick, they’ll remove themselves for the good of the hive.”

This explains the phenomena of colony collapse, the mass disappearance of bees from their hives. Where typically a handful of bees would regularly leave a hive in this fashion, now thousands are, and the entire colony is left defunct. With no signs of slowing down, it’s raising red flags for the beekeeping industry and the global economy it supports.

A young passerby stops to take a photo with Willey and his mural in Durham, NC. (Photo: Facebook)

Willey paints with the same dedication the honey bee brings to it’s hive. He understands the power an individual holds. His murals generate buzz, which ultimately lead to conversation and education about an issue that affects everyone. “We’re all connected” he says.

Willey has been shown overwhelming support for his efforts from coast to coast. His nationwide-hive “flies” along on the walls of an apartment building in Washington, elementary school in North Carolina, and on the brick facade of the Burt’s Bees headquarters. His most recent bees are painted on the blank canvas of a truck cargo trailer – you might even see it on the road. “Bees are in every community,” Willey says, “so that is where I am going to paint them.”

Stay up to date with Matthew Willey and The Good of the Hive community on Facebook and Instagram. Followers can expect to see day to day progress on his current projects, and be the first to know where he’ll swarm off to next.

Source: How One Artist Makes Saving Bees a ‘Big’ Deal

Is Beekeeping an Art or Science?

Tags

beekeeping, education, opinion

Departing from the nuts and bolts of beekeeping, today’s post asks the reader to insert his or her own thoughts on the matter of beekeeping as an art, science, or both.

I came across this article while brainstorming some approaches to teaching newcomers to the world or beekeeping. I’ll leave my thoughts out of the matter for now and simply say the student may need to be cognizant to the approach taken in their instruction.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2016/04/19/art-v-science/

Beekeeping comes but once a year

Tags

beekeeping

Bees with eeb

It is time for the much-anticipated annual post on my plans for the coming year. I did one for 2016, so this will be my second such post.

There is a difference between knowing something and experiencing something, perhaps theory versus practice. Agriculture, including livestock, is seasonal. There is a time for planting, a time to feed the cows hay, a time to keep the horses in the barn overnight, and a time for all the other activities that happen around a farm. We know this.

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Honey Storage Tips

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beekeeping

Picture above credit to: Bee Somebody blog.

Beekeepers are frequently asked about honey crystalizing, what it means, if it affects the quality, and what can be done to prevent it, and can it be reversed. The short answers are: It simply means the sugars in the honey have come out of the liquid state and formed crystals. Honey is a product of the nectar of flowers which vary in their ratios of types of sugars. Nectars with high glucose to fructose ratios tend to crystalize quickly. Here in South Carolina cotton honey is often sought after however it crystalizes quickly, sometimes in just a couple months. Tupelo, on the other hand, may last years. Regarding quality, crystallization is not a reflection on quality one way or the other. In some countries crystalized honey is sought after and used as a spread.  Crystallization is simply a process that occurs based on the ratio of sugars in the honey. To prevent or delay crystallization keep honey at room temperature or in a cupboard. Never keep honey in the refrigerator which is close to the ideal temperature to promote crystallization. Finally, to reverse crystallization, simply place your jar of crystalized honey in a pan of warm water. The warming process should be a gentle and patient warming. I tell people to do this at night just prior to going to bed and they will wake up to a jar of liquid honey ready for use at their breakfast table. Never rush the process or attempt microwaving the honey or enzymes and other healthy properties are destroyed, or worse, plastic bottles can melt and contaminate your precious honey.

More information can be from found on the web page Benefits of Honey.

The Clumsy Beekeeper

Tags

beekeeping

Bad Beekeeping Blog

When I was much younger, my brother and I visited a world-renowned bee breeder who produced thousands of queens every spring. I don’t remember much about that trip to the north-Florida panhandle where every town had some elegant white clapboard homes shaded by mossy live oaks. The place was steamy and humid. Bee season was almost over for the year. I don’t remember the five-hour drive to see the beekeeper or the way he greeted us. But there is one thing that stood out on the visit.

Even Humpty had his moments.

The north-Florida queen breeder reached for a basket that held a half-dozen caged queens, knocked over a smoker, and dropped the queens. The reason that this stood out for me is easy to explain. Queen rearing is a very fine craft, requires great dexterity, and insists upon smooth gentle motions. It’s a very precise job, demanding keen observation…

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