Monday, May 31, 2010

Another inspection – but the commentary is only on two hives and some of our philosophy about our beekeeping...

Saturday marked the last of the weekly inspections of our first Italian hive. From now on, we’ll check on them once a month unless they give us a reason to do an emergency inspection. They are doing fabulously: kicking out bambinos left and right, collecting nectar and pollen, building comb predominantly on the foundationless frames, and remaining active but not hostile. And I think a few have set up a honey laundering racket based at the swing set in John’s backyard...

John and I are excited about their choice for building comb. Some beekeepers have found that bees actually prefer the foundationless frames over foundation. A little terminology seems in order here: a frame with foundation has either a sheet of wax or plastic that is imprinted with hexagons of a specific size – most often 5.4 millimeters. The idea is that the bees will draw their comb on top of the foundation and it will be easier for them since the shape is already there. Plus, the foundation adds some stability to the honey extraction process. 5.4 mm is also bigger than what bees naturally draw their cells on average (this little distinction is important, so keep it in mind). Two questions arise from this idea: (1) do bees really like having some of their work done for them and (2) is it really best for the bees? It’s distinctly possible that the answer to both questions is no.

In a natural hive (i.e., in a log or crevice or the siding of your house), the cell size of a honey comb ranges from about 4.5 to 5.4 mm. Not much of a difference to you and me, but a big difference to the bees. When they draw it on their own, they tend to build the larger cells toward the top of whatever they are connecting to and the smaller cells toward the bottom. According to one beekeeper who studied this for several years (I wish I could remember his name, but for further information, check out the first appendix in Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen, an incredibly well-written book about Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, and bees in general), this allows for maximum efficiency during the winter months as they can breed a smaller bee at the bottom and thus a bee that uses less honey over the winter. Plus it allows for better pest control.

Before I go any further, let’s review CCD. CCD appears to have a multiplicity of causes, pesticides and stress topping the list. Standard commercial beekeeping requires the bees to be moved all around the country for pollination services and honey gathering. Bees may not be sedentary, but they aren’t jet setters that look for the next great thing in the next state either. Migratory beekeepers haul thousands of hives around for thousands of miles a year, completely disrupting the natural ebb and flow of the hives. Plus, over the last two decades, varroa and tracheal mites and a variety of bacterial, fungal, and viral infections have spread like wildfire throughout the world. So beekeepers, in stressing out their bees, opened the door to these pests and diseases. They disrupted and destroyed the bees immune systems through the stress and vast amounts of miticides and antibiotics. All of this combines to lead to massive overwinter deaths for the bees: Colony Collapse Disorder.

The beekeeper, who used to do exactly what everyone else did with pesticides and antibiotics but abandoned that practice to avert CCD in his colonies, found that his bees were better able to control mites in the smaller cells, though it’s unknown why. A female mite lays her eggs in a cell with a freshly hatched bee larva. The eggs hatch while the bee pupates – which happens after the cell is capped. This gives the mite larvae plenty of time to feed on the pupa, much like ticks (to whom they are related). If it doesn’t die from the mites, the pupa pupates into a worker bee and eats out of the cell, but is usually weak and malformed. Here’s where the small cell comes into play. Somehow the nursery bees can detect the presence of mite larvae or even the female mite when it is capped inside a small cell. The nursery bees will then rip the cell open and dispose of the infected bee larva. Some mites might still make it, but a good chance stands that the bees will eliminate a mite infestation on their own.

The other thing he found, as well as others, is that bees don’t prefer to have the work done for them. As with our experience with our Italians, they seem to prefer building their own comb their own way. Our plan is to go hybrid. For the brood chambers, John and I will use the foundationless frames mostly so we can avoid using any miticides, but also to let the bees just be bees. For the honey supers (all the hive bodies that we’ll add for honey collection) we will use frames with plastic foundations for ease of extraction. To keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey supers, we’ll use a screen called a queen excluder between the brood chambers and the supers. Extra protein in the honey is not what the doctor ordered!

The Carniolans are still kicking along. And I don’t know why. They’ve been without a queen for about five weeks. All that I have read suggests that they should be dispirited or even angry. Instead, they continue to collect nectar and pollen and raise the brood we transplanted from the Italians. None of the brood cells screamed “I’m a queen cell! Look at me!” But we could be wrong. Hopefully, one or more of the cells has a queen growing in it to set the Carniolans queenright. In the meantime we are continuing to supplement their diet with sugar syrup and wait. I expect them to surprise us, but I’m worried that most of the bees are at least middle aged or older and we may not get a queen in time.

Posted by Bob Nelson

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