Brushing away the bees for inspection.
By far, the bee brush is one of the most useful pieces of equipment a beekeeper can carry in their toolbox next to the hive tool. It’s sole purpose is to gently brush the bees off of the comb to better aid inspection or to remove frames for harvesting honey. When purchasing your equipment this is the one case where I recommend buying actual beekeeping equipment and not cheaping out with a horse brush or your Goody brush from high school when you had hair. The horse brush or hair brush’s bristle is much too stiff for the delicate work of sweeping away bees. To you the bristle may seem soft but to a bee it is like having a wired brush passed over your body at 100 mph.
A surgeon must have good implements and so should you. The bristle of your average bee brush is so soft it should feel like a silk leisure suit over your entire body. It will conform more to the shape of what you are sweeping providing less resistant or friction on the bodies of our little friends. This will result in calmer bees as their limbs and heads will not be ripped from their body.
The brush is good for inspections but when it comes to the honey harvest I like to move with a little more speed. The quicker I can get them off the comb the quicker I can let them settle back into their routine. So in addition to the bee brush I also carry the Stihl model BG “Big Gun” 55 Handheld Blower in my car.
The BG 55 At Work.
I am sure my old mentor would cringe if she saw me use this thing on the honeybees as it just seems to run counter to the bucolic quietness of harvesting honey on a late summer day. True. However I firmly believe I kill less honeybees in the process. Gale force winds may rip the roof off of your house but when directed right through the heart of a hive of bees it makes quick work of the evacuation process. As an added benefit usually no bees die in the process. They are simply blown out.
When I use a brush I have to lift each frame out. Every-time I do this there is a real chance that a few bees will be crushed in the process. The BG 55 eliminates this problem. After a good 30 second blow, I inspect the super. If I hear a few more bees, I BG 55 the hive for a few more seconds. I rarely have to do this more than twice.
The BG55 is not for everyone but consider it as an option.
P.S. Before you pull out the BG make sure you know where your queen is. I use a queen excluder and also verify there are no eggs being laid in the super I am extracting from.
Recently I came across an organization called Heifer International. Unlike most charities where you simply give a cash contribution for the overall funding of the organization with Heifer International your funding goes to the direct purchase of farm animals. These farm animals are then given to families across the world as a source of food and income.
Nice! This sure beats the socks I got last year.
There is a whole menagerie of animals to choose from but from our perspective honeybees may be the most interesting choice. For me it is almost the perfect choice. Honeybees have so much to offer. Not only do they yield a tasty commodity to eat and sell but they also provided supplemental services in the form of pollination for local farmers. Their wax yields a raw material that can be used in the manufacturing of candles and soap and the gathering of propolis and pollen can be collected for sale to the natural health industry.
Honeybees also require a very small footprint to operate from. A few hives can be tucked away in a back yard or even on the roof if you are in an urban setting.
To purchase a colony of bees requires only a $30.00 investment. Pretty cheap when considering all the honeybees have to offer in return.
So as the Christmas season’s commercial avalanche begins to tumble onto us. Think of purchasing some honeybees in place of a box of cherry cordials for your mother-in-law or father. Your family will appreciate it and so will the new beekeepers.
For more information please go here. Hiefer International Honeybees.
For a while I had my blog setup to take on users. Why, I am not sure since everything on the blog is available to the public. I am no longer doing so as I am getting to many users from the former Soviet Bloc countries registering with my site in a spam like format.
The only feature on my site that requires registration is the forum. I know it may be difficult to decipher that CAPTCHA code to register but it is the only way I can weed out fake users. If you are having difficulty with it please send me a note and I will personally register your name and password according to your needs. You can always later change the password. That’s it.
Jesse Bellavance
Beekeeping has turned into an apothecary’s dilemma. With all of the new issues effecting our honeybees one has to wonder what course of action to take in regards to protecting our bees. I wrote earlier that I am trying to distance myself from the use of miticides and other chemicals as I believe it destroys the long term survivability of our honeybees.
What options are on the table? First I would look to the field of genetics to help come up with a solution. With our ability to rapidly advance the process of evolution through planned selection of traits, I believe we can develop a better bee. Maybe not one that can rip the car door off of a burning wreck to rescue an infant but less dramatically be able to survive two or three seasons when invaded by a host of mites.
Gross!
I know some people may disdain the use of genetics when dabbling with the public’s food supply but I think a real absence of honeybees would be very detrimental to our nations food security. And with a rapid loss of food we can expect much more upheaval to follow. Civil war, mass starvation, roving gangs of angry motorcycle riders, and potato flavored ice cream. Maybe we would not have a Mayan 2012 apocalyptic disaster but not having a ready supply of fresh fruits and vegetables would make food shopping more expensive and our bodies less healthy. Hell we are fat asses now. Think what a steady diet of starches will do. We will all become like those hovering blobs in the movie Wall-E. I digress.
There are several scientists out their who are on the for front of developing honey bees that are not only resistant to the mites but also diseases such as American Foul Brood. Dr. Marla Spivak, for one, has helped develop the Minnesota Hygienic Italians. These honeybees are bred to exhibit a high degree of hygienic behavior that will prevent the development and spread of AFB and chalk-brood. This behavioral trait is comprised of two behaviors. The uncapping of diseased cells and then their removal of the pathogen found within the pupae, thereby eliminating the life cycle of the disease. These bees also exhibit a Varroa Specific Hygiene that targets the Varroa mite.
The USDA has also worked on producing a stronger honeybee with their breeding of honeybees Queens imported from the Primorsky Territory on Russia’s Pacific coast. The behavior associated with mite resistance is their ability to detect and remove mite-infested brood from a colony. When compared to existing domestic stock, the Russian honeybees showed much more hygienic behavior in association with the Varroa mite. Currently the USDA is making these queens available to commercial queen breeders around the country.
For the long term, I think this is our best bet for resuscitating apiculture in the United States and possibly around the world. The reliance on chemicals is only a band aide that more or less hides the problem. It may work for beekeepers in the short run but every time you put an Apistan strip in your hive you are making the mites stronger as they quickly adapt to the chemicals afflicting them. I am sure it is possible that even if the perfect bee was developed, which could throw mites off itself with ease, eventually a new mite would evolve to counter this trait. However in my very unprofessional layman’s opinion I think it would take a lot longer. And while that mite evolves the honeybees will be evolving right along with it.
Chemicals don’t show that kind of adaptability. Usually we end up developing another band-aid, further weakening our honeybees, or begin increasing the amount of chemical concentration to keep pace with the problem.
Hopefully the folks in the USDA with the lab coats and pocket protectors will save us.
JPB
Last year at my old apiary I experienced what a Catholic might call a “miracle”, a Protestant “the will of God”, and an atheist “WTF”. No, I did not see the face of Jesus in my honeycomb. If I did you would have heard about it on E-bay and I would be drinking beers in Bavaria with all of the money I would have made.
I began to notice the Fall before that two of my hives were beginning to succumb to the mites despite my efforts to save them. Assuming the worst I fed them as much sugar as they would take and treated them for Nosema and AFB. I no longer use the miticides as I think in the long term it makes our honeybees weaker. That is my personal preference though and I don’t judge others that do, especially people trying to make a living off of beekeeping.
WTF
For the next season I would replace those two hives with some new comb and frames and two packages of Buckfast bees. Currently inside were standard M1-A1 issue Italian bees. Early in January, before I placed my order for the Buckfasts, I went to the apiary and tapped on the side of the hive with my ear to the wall of it. Nothing. I checked all four sides in case they were centralized on one side and still nothing. Popping open the telescoping cover I quickly looked in and could not see or hear anything promising. With a sigh, I opened the brood chambers and confirmed what I believed to be true. The colony had perished. The same unfortunate situation existed in the other hive. Later that weekend I called up Weaver apiaries and placed an order for three packages. One for a new hive I was starting and the other two to replace the lost colonies.
In March I went out there and began preparing for the new bees. Cleaned out comb buildup, scrapped off propolis and dead bees from the bottom board, and replaced old frames. Come the following month I was going to be ready. Or so I thought.
The day came with a 4:00 AM call from the post office. The bees had arrived and the Postmaster would appreciate it if I could come and pick them up. I quickly drove to the P.O. and picked up my girls with a mister of warm sugar water to give them a drink. Packing them off in the car I drove home and prepared to put them in their hive later in the day.
The day was perfect. Warm and about 4:00 PM. I drove out to the hives ready to begin the new season with anticipation. As I pulled my Subaru up to the hives I noticed more activity coming out from all three of my hives. “WTF” echoed through my head. Why are there live bees coming out of my empty hives? This was not robbing either. There were bees coming and going. Some with little parcels of pollen on their legs and others with stomachs full of nectar ready to be transferred to the younger house bees.
Uh Oh. Where are my girls going to go? Furiously pumping my smoker, I trudged over to the squatter bees and demanded from them an explanation. Ignoring my entreaties I began opening their misbegotten hives. Inside each one of the two hives was a robust colony already in full swing. Brood circles were full and at least 18 days developed.
Inside my Subaru the bees were getting restless. I could see them looking at me with their billion pixel eyes with anticipation. I had to be quick on my feet and not show any fear otherwise they would not respect me and managing them would become a bear.
Running to my car and sliding over the hood like the Duke brothers I flung open my door and unlocked the child safety locks. With the rear door open I hefted the three packages of bees and placed them in front of the new hive I “was” going to establish with one package. Only now it was going to be three packages in one hive. It took about 10 minutes each to dump them all in. By the time the sun set most of them had marched into the hive and only a few hundred were still hanging around the empty packages. The sad part of this story is that I now had two homeless queens. Looking in their queen cages I could see the attendees bouncing around looking for a way out while the queen sat idly next to a clump of sugar paste.
I called a few people to see if they wanted them but no one was interested. So one fine sunny day at work, I unplugged each cage opening and let them fly off. They were probably eaten by a bird or such but at least they had a few days of liberty. I felt like the couple who raised and released the lioness Elsa.
The hive did pretty well that year.
I am not sure how it came to be. Swarming season usually happens around July in my area. For not one but two hives to experience the same spontaneous generation of healthy colonies I am at a loss. I am sure there is a scientific explanation for what happened. Maybe a few feral colonies were forced to relocate and my empty bee hives fit the bill. Or maybe the one healthy colony I had split itself into three separate colonies. I don’t know what to think. I have to say it made my day despite the expenditure of about 300.00 dollars to populate one new hive.
