For the past 15 years or so I’ve been involved with planning meetings for beekeepers. Big meetings (well, pretty big meetings) of around 350 - 600 or so, and small meetings of say around 40. I’ve dealt with planning budgets and paying the bills; meals and menus; contracts for hotels and dorms; tours and busses and schedules; speakers, their transportation and audio visual equipment needs (which have changed dramatically in the last five years); auditoriums and breakout rooms; what to have at breaks; vendors and their tables and shipping and returning requirements; entertainment; good and bad weather; moving bees to just-over-there parking lots; promotion; and recovering afterwards. I’ve also attended big and small meeting....Apimondia with a couple thousand attending, and a county meeting with four dedicated souls attending in spite of a horrendous tropical storm.

But the First National Beekeeper’s Conference held in Sacramento in January without question has to be the best meeting I’ve ever attended. Bar none. What an exceptional way to spend five days. And the title says it all .... 1500 people can’t be wrong, because that’s how many attended I’m told. That’s more than the Federation ever gets, more than the Producers ever get, and more than the two combined ever got. That should tell you, and them something spectacular happened. And of course all of those meeting things I just mentioned took place at this meeting (well, not dorms), so I am able to appraise the accomplishments of those in charge.

Because of politics and personalities the two groups have for the 22 years I’ve been here held separate meetings. Sometimes they even had their meetings on the same days but in distant parts of the country. So if you were so inclined, as the businesses of beekeeping tend to be, to attend both of these meetings you’d spend money for two hotels, two shipping charges, two registration fees, and twice as many meals. I used to campaign for the two to get together at the same place at the same time, while keeping their politics separate. And there were a few conference calls discussing it over the years. And that’s kind of what they did this time, with their separate business meetings, and even separate banquets. The rest was excellent.

There were just over 50 vendors who set up shop for the four day event from every corner of the country. Some were brand new to the business, or have been around awhile but were brand new to this particular meeting. Several of the new products we review this month were picked up from these folks. Besides, I’m always interested in what’s out there we haven’t seen before no matter where it comes from – there were established businesses like Gamber Container, Brushy Mountain, Mann Lake, Pierco, Dadant, BetterBee, B&B, Kelley, GloryBee, Cowen, Cook & Beals, Sherriff suits, and even Bee Culture magazine among others; or those been-here-awhile but still getting known businesses like NOD Apiary, Shastina Millworks, PermaDent, Mother Lode Plastics, Ellingson’s, Used Pallet Co., and Honey Acres. There were the new faces too, like Castle Dome, Alaska Heavenly Honey, Country Rubes, and Mite Zapper. Plus all the others I haven’t mentioned but were showing their wares that were there, giving away business reminders – those pencils, key chains, calendars, and samples.

You could spend a whole day in that one room, and I think many did. No doubt this is the best way to look over all the old stuff you haven’t had a chance to see up close before, plus all the brand new stuff, because you get to pick it up and see how it feels, or watch it work or try it on and you get to talk to the folks who actually invented it, or manufactured it, or sell it on a day to day basis and you get to quiz them all you want. It’s amazing how much beekeeping you can learn talking to these folks. If the vendor room was all there was, it would have been worth the trip for me.

Unless you’ve been out in the beeyard for the past six months you know that several beekeeping associated groups met with the two big beekeeper groups during the week. On Tuesday the First International Symposium on Honey and Human Health was held. A couple hundred people came early to sit in on this first-time event.

This whole-day affair covered enough about honey to make your head spin, but it was all interesting and informative. Malcolm Sanford sat through the whole thing and has his report about all the good things learned about honey and health. Quick summary...take a tablespoon of honey before you go to bed every night for better health and sleep habits.

As part of this busy week the American Association of Professional Apiculturists met...they call it the annual American Bee Research Conference, bringing in the best and brightest and busiest of our honey bee scientists. All manner of topics were covered in their separate but equal meeting...that is, it was their meeting, but anyone registered at the Conference could attend. And many did. This group normally publishes the abstracts for their papers in the American Bee Journal later this year so for now it’s interesting to note the number of papers that covered a variety of topics, just to see where the interests of our scientists lie, and perhaps what changes are being made.

Some papers I classified as covering two topics...like 'The Influence of Varroa infestation and colony parameters on small hive beetle populations.' This paper, in my opinion any way, deals with two subjects...Varroa and small hive beetle. Given that somewhat fuzzy definition then...

There were five papers on nutrition (definitely a record for this topic); four on Nosema (I’ll bet that’s a record for this disease in the last two decades); 13 on Varroa biology or control (that’s maybe down a bit, finally); five on some form of molecular genetics (gaining every year); five on small hive beetle biology and control (steady); one on Russian bees; one on tracheal mites (good to see this is declining); one on general honey bee health; two on the management of packages and queens; two on propolis (another record I’ll bet) and three on basic honey bee chemistry.

Each of these 15 minute talks was the result of some months, even years of research by grad students and researchers looking for answers or stumbling on answers while looking for questions. These meetings are a wonder of statistics, graphs, charts, and bullet pointed slides that help solve some of the problems beekeepers are having. Plus, it gives beekeepers at the conference an opportunity to actually ask a scientist questions about something, and better, those same scientists get to spend days and days mingling with the beekeepers who are having the problems they are trying to solve, plus discover new problems on the horizon. Both, I think, benefit.

Speaking of new problems, Colony Collapse Disorder and associated problems were high on everybody’s list of must-see.

It started with pesticides aplenty here, and even if they aren’t the CCD curse, they are killing bees faster than beekeepers can make them.

David Mendes, a 7,000 colony, Massachusetts/Florida beekeeper/pollinator talked about pesticides in the environments his bees must visit when pollinating crops and how these chemicals may be contributing to his problems...and his problems have been significant. His first comment was that pesticides aren’t tested by the EPA but rather by the Chemical companies that make them, and then the EPA approves them for use, or not. Any guesses on how those results come out?

He talked about not only the financial but emotional stress that losing 60 – 80% of your bees has on beekeepers...anything more than 50% in a year and it gets real, real hard to recover. Two years in a row and you could be looking for a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart, he said.

David Hackenburg, the first to report Colony Collapse Disorder last year (but not the first to have it, certainly), first told about the 2000 or so colonies he had moved to Florida in early January, but within a couple of weeks 80% were gone with the same symptoms of CCD he saw in his bees last year. He quoted Jerry Hayes, the State Apiary Inspector from Florida (where CCD is common) who said that 'beekeeping was the ugly step-child of American agriculture'. How so? The government has made lots of promises so far Hackenberg said...but so far...not much has happened.

He also mentioned pesticides, specifically Imadacloprid, and how it was used everywhere, by everybody. But he went on, and I quote...'Big Ag has control of the USDA from the Secretary right on down to almost the lowest guys on the totem pole.' What to do? Get a hold of your congress folks and get them to get some action...get the money out, get control of the chemicals.

Dave Ellingson, another commercial beekeeper and beeswax processor talked about doing everything the way he had been doing things...and nothing was working. It used to be, when a colony dies, air it out and reuse it ... now, that new colony will die too. His pesticide comment was that farmers are now ‘stacking’ pesticides ... that is, combining insecticides, herbicides and fungicides in a single trip across the field instead of three trips. The problem? When combined these chemical blends become a thousand times more toxic than when used alone. A thousand times more toxic. Imagine.

Gene Brandi, a 2000 colony commercial beekeeper talked about one specific pesticide problem. Spraying fungicides on blooming plants. Generally these compounds aren’t harmful to honey bees .... adult honey bees that is, which is all the EPA makes the chemical companies test (remember who does the tests, and who approves the results). Meanwhile, these non-adult-harming compounds that are brought back to the hive are being fed to baby bees. Would you feed fungicides to your children? No? Neither would I but we are routinely letting honey bees do just that. These chemicals come back to hives on the pollen the bees collect, then store, then feed to their children. This just screams for long term studies on the effect of these chemicals on all the inhabitants in the hive over several generations...the question is, do these chemicals, when fed to brood, affect the adults the brood eventually becomes? Right now absolutely nobody knows. Nobody.

Scientists still don’t know for sure what causes CCD, and it may be pesticides are the problem, pure and simple (well, pesticides aren’t pure or simple, are they?). Certainly the stress that constant exposure to pesticides exerts on the honey bee population, and the strain this stress puts on a honey bee’s immune system is one of the links in the CCD chain.

As part of this session that list of chemicals I talked about last month that was found in wax, brood, adult bees, honey and pollen was shown again, and again it started at the ceiling, ran down the wall, down the center isle (dodging the many people sitting on the floor), and headed out the door. The list is so scary that it makes me want to sit on the floor. We are surely killing bees by the way we are keeping bees.

The latest report on research results from USDA CCD trials came to light at both the San Diego meeting and the Sacramento meetings – together they make a good story.

Last Fall researchers gathered 160 colonies that showed symptoms of having Colony Collapse Disorder. They wanted to study the phenomenon that colonies that die of suspect CCD aren’t invaded by those opportunist pests beekeepers routinely see when a colony dies ... bees from other colonies robbing out the honey and other scavengers like wax moths and small hive beetles. Also, when bees were put back in hives that had died from CCD, the new bees came down with the symptoms and the colonies again perished. This was completely alien to the beekeepers who experienced this ... it just wasn’t in the rules.

So researchers took 40 colonies of the 160 colonies and had them irradiated – just like medical instruments – to sterilize them; 40 colonies were not treated at all, these then being the control colonies; 40 colonies were treated with acetic acid, known to control other honey bees pests on beeswax comb; and 40 of the colonies had the brood comb removed and the new bees were put on the comb found in honey supers, thinking no brood had been there previous to the addition of new bees.

All 160 colonies then had packages of honey bees put back on them, the bees coming from shipments from Australia. The colonies were fed the standard treatment for the antibiotic common for treating Nosema at the rate of one gallon, two times. They were also fed supplemental pollen substitute to help acclimatize and get ready for the honey flows to follow. The colonies were tested for Varroa mites and were tested for Nosema infection. Varroa tests showed very, very low infestations, and colonies treated for Nosema showed low levels, or no levels of infection after treatment. This is a key measure since both of these maladies have been implicated in causing or contributing to CCD in colonies.

Then these two groups were divided again, with half of each treatment put on trucks to spend the Summer pollinating, while the other half stayed home and made honey.

Already in December almost all the beekeepers with these colonies were reporting high losses. Those colonies treated with acetic acid, the control colonies and those put on just honey comb were all reporting at least a 50% loss late in November whether moving for pollination or home for honey. The colonies that had been irradiated showed a 70% survival rate early on, but more as time wore on. It seems that the irradiated colonies, by faring better, pointed to some relationship between a living organism and CCD, that all seems moot now.

The conclusion by the investigators after evaluating these colonies this Winter was, at least so far, CCD is 'likely an interaction of pesticides, Nosema, virus, nutrition and mites'. But what role each of these plays is still undecided, or unfound. No single factor stands out completely, yet.

Other things besides pesticides were found in the samples taken early in the game last Fall. But there’s still some information that the beekeepers who gave samples haven’t been given I’m told ... and some beekeepers are getting a tad upset ... the feeling goes that I gave you samples so you could examine them and tell me what’s wrong. Instead, you take the samples, do your research, get a paper out of it, get a grant because of the paper, and I still don’t know what you found. To me, that’s a terrible thing to do to a beekeeper who just lost 80% of his business it seems. I wonder if those researchers will be able to get more samples?

In any event, what has been found in CCD colonies (OK, we’ll tell the beekeepers here, a year late), so far has been the Israeli virus, now generally assumed to be world wide in distribution ... and in the U.S. there seems to have been at least three introductions – the Australian group, a Montana group, and a small hive beetle group (nothing more was said about that, but I find it intriguing). None of the groups were closely related to the original virus found in Israel. Go figure.

Unknown bacteria were found, thought to be symbiotes aiding in digestion. There were several previously undiscovered fungus, one pathogenic, and one in Australian bees not found in the U.S. Both Nosemas were found and some trypanosomes were discovered .... lots in CCD bees, hardly any in healthy bees. Plus, seven other viruses were discovered.

It’s plain that we don’t have healthy bees, isn’t it?

It wasn’t all doom and gloom at the meeting however. There were two offsite excursions that you could take that were both entertaining and informative. One was a bus trip to the California branch of Mann Lake Supplies. We got to tour the warehouse, see the shop, then head off to a tractor and truck museum for an hour or so of nostalgic wandering. Then we were fed, back on the bus, and home. It was well organized and went as smooth as glass. Plus, this was all on Mann Lake’s nickel, so thanks, folks.

Another night we toured the renovated bee lab at UC Davis. Several organizations have teamed up to put some steam back in this facility, including the California Beekeepers, Project Apism and others. After years of being ignored, Eric Mussen’s lab has been cleaned spic and span, refurbished, and is ready to go ... especially now that Sue Cobey is on hand. A new position has been funded in the beekeeping science arena there, and the future looks a lot brighter for everybody. Interestingly, Jerry Bromenshenk and his colleagues were going to set up their virus detecting machinery in the Davis lab during almond bloom so beekeepers could bring samples in to see if there’s anything amiss with their bees. A sample takes just minutes to prepare and not much longer to run to see what viruses, and other diseases are present in the sample. But at the last minute Davis bailed on this (for unknown reasons, but helping beekeepers certainly wasn’t on their list).

After the tour of the lab we were treated to another dinner, where it was announced that Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream was donating a total of $250,000 to Penn State and UC Davis for honey bee research (do you supposed they’ll turn down this money?), and they were creating a new Ice Cream named Vanilla Honey Bee to draw attention to the plight of the honey bee at the moment. It turns out that honey bees are responsible for the creation of nearly 40% of the flavors Häagan Dazs ice cream produces every year, so they have good reason to be concerned and to invest in our industry. In any event, thanks folks.

Back to work. What do these symptoms sound like to you?

..no dead or trembling bees

..no crawling bees near the hive

..no brood diseases

..an elongated season with brood late into the fall

..frequent queen replacements

..lots of honey and lots of pollen

..empty hive

..dead bees found 700 yards from the hive

According to one speaker, these are the symptoms of Nosema ceranae, that new disease that we’ve had here in the states for as long as a decade some say.

Moreover, colonies that are found dying in December through February have lots of spotting and huge Nosema spore counts, and lots of virus...deformed wing virus and more.

But here’s the mystery – colonies that are crashing in April through June have lots of spotting, but low, low spore counts, and only IAPV is found. The first batch had Nosema apis, the second, ceranae.

One piece of advice for checking in the Summer for this malady is to check foragers ... they are the oldest. You’ll find most of the epithelial cells infected in the foregut, extensive lyses, plus the ventriculus just plain doesn’t work and the bees starve to death ... prematurely.

There’s still lots of talk about mites because beekeepers still can’t control mites. That’s a fact. So we still talk about them.

Economic injury levels were discussed ... what’s in a number ... here are some for a colony in May ....

A 1% infection is equal to five mites on a 24 hour sticky test, or

Three mites/300 bees in a sugar roll, or

Five mites in a sugar dust test.

More info....60-80% of the mites in a colony are in drone brood at any one time. Remove drone comb. Use screened bottom boards, sprinkle sugar on bees, and do July splits. Use a queen cell put in on day 21 after the split to make a long broodless period. Dust with sugar.

Lots of talk about oxalic acid, which is still waiting to be registered I’m told. Still, some are using it, or at least experimenting with it.

Here’s what you need to consider with this stuff. MEASURE what you apply, but it’s cheap, fast, effective, dangerous, and you need to get in on when the colony is broodless. Three treatments? August 15 (see splits, above), midwinter...unless you live where I do... and early Spring, before brood takes off. I don’t make any promises on this since I’ve never tried it, but a lot of research has been done, especially in Canada, where, I’m told, a brand new efficient vaporizer has been invented. You’ll see it soon.

Again, measure correctly for each box. They use 35g of 2.8% OA/liter sugar solution in Canada, and put only 50 ml in a two story colony between frames with bees on them, half in top box, half in bottom box. It moves throughout the colony by the sugar solution on bee to bee contact. 32 - 50°F outside is best temperature.

Apigard. The dose seems to be a question. Label says 50g, two times two weeks apart. Too much say some, Rather, 25g, three times, two weeks apart. Read the label or kill your bees.

The outside temp should be in the 80s, put it between boxes toward the back. Some put between combs. 90° or more too hot. It needs to be available in the hive for at least a week at a time. Unofficially, it’s great on tracheal mites, but it’s not labeled for that...it’s just a gift. Don’t have screened bottom boards on when you use it, but leave the entrance wide open.

There were four full days of this. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what went on. There were Special Interest Groups, a Sideliner Workshop, socials, queen programs (honey queens, not honey bee queens), a kid’s day, and I got to do a local T.V. talk show.

For more of this read Malcolm’s report, since he’s covered things I didn’t.

One last thing. Starting this Summer (a hard date isn’t fixed yet), this magazine, working with Dr. Tom Rinderer and his colleagues at the Baton Rouge Honey Bee Lab plus many, many others, will begin publishing a refereed scientific journal aimed square at the people who can use it .... beekeepers. Scientific jargon will be kept to a minimum, statistics will be straight forward, and the material covered will be practical, useful and meaningful for the people who need the information the most. Watch for this coming this Summer. It will be a part of this magazine four times a year. And best of all – it’s yours for free.