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Beekeeping Information – Good and Bad
Telling the Difference is Not Always Easy
By: James E. Tew
A foot in two worlds
I have discussed this information concept in previous Bee Culture articles but it’s still on my mind and I doubt that it will ever go away. Even in retirement, every day, I must evaluate and choose which bee information and publications are appropriate for my current needs and questions. Where should I go to get correct beekeeping information? How can I tell when information that was once “good” is now no longer considered appropriate? In fact, how can I tell when information, presented to me in a nice-looking format on a professional web page, is absolutely wrong?
As it were, I have a foot in two worlds. In my earliest years, academics and enthusiasts had to maintain a “reprint” library. It required multiple filing cabinets filled with hardcopy reprints of bee research and reviews on every apicultural subject. Some authorities maintained huge libraries, while others had haphazard collections.
Most of you reading this cannot imagine life without the web. In my youth, I had to actually go the real library to do my review work. It took extraordinary amounts of time and energy. Information was dear and generally factual. Few people would spend time concocting incorrect or flimsy information.
This library-visiting process represents one of my hypothetical feet that is in the pre-web world. At the same time, my other foot is in the modern-day “web-world.” You should know that I have no interest in going back to the old way. I can only describe it as “heavenly” to whimsically key in a web search and only seconds later have information magically appear. I love this information technology, but I clearly remember the old way of information collection. It was slow, but dependable.
Now here is a quirk – even very old information is frequently found in web-based searches. At one time, I coveted classic, old bee books. They were so very hard to acquire. In most instances, in digital archival formats, I can now read classics from beekeeping eras long gone(1). It’s a pleasant read from a bygone era, but is the information still, correct? Not always.
Good bee people but bad information
In my beekeeping youth, like so many other beekeepers, I had a beloved mentor. Even now, I speak of my very first beekeeping professor with reverence and warm memories. Many professors have such a cadre of graduate students who are forever beholden to them. While my beekeeping professor did not mentor graduate students, he did teach thousands of undergraduates. Seemingly every one of them respected the man as an instructor and as a person(2).
In 1973, I distinctly remember him telling our bee class participants that drones are colony laggards and contribute essentially nothing to the functionality of the colony. At every opportunity, drones were to be eliminated. In my teacher’s defense, the bee world was wildly different at that time. Other than organophosphate insecticides, nothing else was yet a real problem – no mites, no small hive beetles, and no killer bees. Queens were cheap. Flowering weeds were common, and there were abundant honey bees – everywhere.
From the beekeeper’s perspective, at that time, drones were not critical to the specific colony in question. But if anyone had ever asked a healthy colony if it wanted drones, an entirely different answer would have been presented. This is an example of bad information being given by an excellent instructor. This is also an old obsolete memory file that I have stored away. I will never again use this advice, but the memory file just sits there – waiting for the day to come when it is once again thought to be good management to kill all drones in our colonies. Oh, wait. That is being recommended now as a form of Varroa management.
Figure 1. Drones do not seem to have many friends of AFB.
Years ago, I was at a bee meeting in the upper Mid-West. While discussing American Foulbrood, the speaker confidently explained that the reason AFB had always been such a common problem for U.S. beekeepers is that wind easily spreads the disease miles and miles away from the diseased hive site. This was why, when the bee disease was encountered, beekeepers with American Foulbrood needed to immediately implement a scorched earth policy (actually, that part is correct.). But otherwise, these comments were seriously wrong. Wind plays very little, if any, role in AFB dissemination.
Even now, this speaker is still a respected beekeeper in his bee community, as he should be. The rest of his information was rock solid. I was a traveling presenter–—the outsider— far from home and departing the next day. What would you have had me do? (Later, I told one of the meeting organizers that some of the AFB spore dissemination information should be reviewed, and then I left town.) No doubt, some of the participants today are still storing those mental files that truly need to be erased.
Spotting these embedded errors can be difficult. When repeated, most of these misinformation events easily roll from the tongue and sound factual. And then they get restated many times until the recommendation becomes an accepted tenant that is not factual.
Tanging a swarm
– factual misinformation
This topic will get me some email messages. The thought is that once a swarm departs the hive, clanging pieces of metal together will cause the swarm to land. At meetings, I am told by occasional beekeepers that doing that very procedure brought a swarm right to the ground. Consider this. It would be impolite – even evil – for me to take that pleasant memory from the beekeeper. There is no science to explain why this would happen. Additionally, the question is begged how many swarms that were tanged that did not come down?
Losing a swarm is disappointing. I have personal experience with that pain. I can also say that tanging is as good as anything one can do when a swarm is escaping. Playing a loud radio, spraying the swarm with water from a hose, or tossing stones through the swarm will probably have the same random effect. The good news is that other than amusing the neighbors, no harm is done when swarms are tanged. Ironically, alerting neighbors may be the reason tanging was ever begun as a swarm manipulation.
Double screens for Winter nuc
survival – usually factual
misinformation
A common management procedure is to put a smaller colony above a stronger colony and separate them by a double screen. It is thought that it makes Winter life easier for the smaller colony. Indeed, in some instances, it could very well do that. But there seems to be so many variables as to make the success of the procedure random.
How large is the bottom colony? What is the cluster size of the smaller upper colony? How far is the bottom colony from the upper colony? How severe is the Winter season? Does the warmer, moisture-laden air cause a problem in the upper unit?
Bottom line – wintering small colonies, into the future, will be a challenging process. Since this top wintering procedure has been practiced for years without consistent positive results, it seems that this is not the silver bullet answer for wintering small colonies. For sure, double screens have other uses such as making Spring splits or producing queens, but I am not convinced that top wintering is one of its better uses.
Figure 2. A double screen. Note closeable upper entrance.
Drumming bees – shows all the signs of factual misinformation
Though not practiced much now, drumming instructions persist in both new and old literature. Yes, you can find instructions in those ancient, digitized bee books that I earlier referred to.
When transferring bees from one box to another – for whatever reason – the drumming procedure is thought to cause the bees to abandon their stores, brood and former nest cavity in lieu of a new or different box offered to them.
It is a simple procedure: Flip the box to be abandoned so the combs are reversed (comb bottoms are upward). Position it near the new box. Tap, drum, bump, bang or thump on the side of the inverted box with something – hands, hive tool, stone – for an undetermined length of time with an undetermined level of vigor. If all goes well, the bees will inexplicably begin to abandon hive and home and move upwardly.
Search the web. There are videos and testimonials documenting the success of this procedure, but as is often the case, if this procedure is a sound one, why is it not used for other common bee manipulations? Why is it not a staple of bee management? Removing bees from supers? Driving bees up or out for package shaking or split making? Driving bees from the wall of a house?
Interestingly, the electronic bee media has hybridized the procedures of tanging and drumming. What should this blended procedure be named – “trumming?” In this variant procedure, drumming – usually on a wooden surface – will cause a swarm to land. This information is wrong in so many ways.
In earlier articles, I wrote that “It is presently thought that bees do not readily sense airborne vibrations.” I made the following arguments. Maybe they feel the vibrations within their body. Then how do they exclude the noise of my neighbor’s lawn mower or the garbage truck passing, or the tractor in the soybean field behind my beeyard? Last year, all Summer long a water tower was constructed a few miles from my home. There were frequently rhythmic metallic sounds coming from the site that went on for hours. Yet, I could not tell that any of my bees left my colonies. Why doesn’t any rhythmic environmental sound cause bees to leave their hive?
Now, all these years later, the following information is commonly available on the web.
“Yes, honey bees can sense airborne vibrations. They have highly developed sensory mechanisms to detect vibrations and sounds, which are crucial for their communication, navigation, and foraging behaviors. Honey bees primarily detect airborne vibrations through the following mechanisms:
- Johnston’s Organ: Located in the second segment of their antennae, this organ is sensitive to vibrations and sound waves in the air. It allows bees to detect and interpret airborne vibrations, which is important for their ability to communicate and navigate.
- Mechanoreceptors: Honey bees have mechanoreceptors on their bodies, particularly on their legs and antennae. These receptors can detect vibrations through solid surfaces, which can include airborne vibrations that cause surfaces to oscillate.
- Waggle Dance: Bees use the waggle dance to communicate the location of food sources to other members of the hive. This dance involves specific movements and vibrations that are sensed by other bees in the hive through both the air and the substrate of the hive.
- Airborne Sound Detection: While honey bees are more sensitive to substrate-borne vibrations, they can also detect certain airborne sounds, especially those produced by other bees or predators.
Now, I am uncertain. No harm seems to be done to the colony so drum away
Queen excluders – the eternal argument
You either hate them or you love them? Only very briefly is an undecided beekeeper unopinionated on this bee discussion. Misinformation and hyperbole flow from both camps. “I use them to keep the grass down out in front of the hive.” “I have always used them and never found them to be a problem.” “These things are nothing more than honey excluders!” “They cause swarming.” “They clog with burr combs.” My favorite description is this one presented by a recent speaker – “Though I don’t like them, and do not use them, here is a description of the pros and cons of excluders.” That was certainly an unbiased source of neutral information.
An older publication presented quite a few years ago indicated that without an upper entrance, queen excluders did reduce honey crops.(3) In fact, simply using web based searches, finding opponents with confirmed opinions to queen excluder use is common. But actual objective research findings are rare.
So, I offer my unbiased, but emotionally based opinion. I have these devices in my storage building right now. Depending on my future schedule, I might use them or I might not. They can be useful when finding a queen that has refused to show herself, and they have specialty uses in queen production or comb honey production. These devices clearly have novel uses and do seem to function to keep the queen confined as needed. If maximal honey production is the goal, I could see how they might hamper foragers from squeezing through them. If maximum management efficiency is the goal, I can also understand why they might be used.
All the reasons to use or not to use these grids are readily available on the web. I refer you to search there. If they fit your need, use them. If they are not helpful, don’t use them; but I cannot categorically support the disdain that some have for them.
There are so many more of these questionable missives…
A few more examples are:
- Bees sting because they are angry. In fact, they can sound angry, but is that enough to declare them as being irked?
- Our clothing, protective gear – indeed, even the beekeeper – produce an offensive odor to the bees. A speaker once said that to bees, beekeepers stink. Hmmm, that’s just a bit heavy handed.
- Drones follow the queen from the hive as she takes her solitary mating flight. No, they don’t.
- Bees hate black colored clothing or protective items. It can only be because black bears are bee’s natural enemies. What if bears are not indigenous to the area? Are bees still instinctually wired to hate bears?
- Members of a smoked colony engorge on honey in preparation for departing the burning colony. This behavior is probably a holdover behavior from their days in a tropical environment. Great story, but what about the queen and the brood that will need to be abandoned? How will the fleeing colony replace its queen?
- Bees come to know the beekeeper, ergo strangers or apiary visitors would be treated differently. Yeah, dream on.
- Alas, when the beekeeper dies, the bees must be told. The process is referred to as, “Telling the bees.” This is a quaint procedure. I don’t think the bees notice, but when I have lost a dear beekeeper friend, it seems to help me with the loss – even if it does not help the bees.
It’s not usually evil efforts
Happily, most bee people are not intentionally trying to mislead other bee people. They believe the information they are disseminating and practice the procedures themselves. Keep an open mind and be leery of broad recommendations that have a miraculous ring. Questioning everything is okay. Change your mind when you need to.
Thank you
I honestly appreciate you reading to this point. Thank you.
Dr. James E. Tew
Emeritus Faculty, Entomology
The Ohio State University
tewbee2@gmail.com
Co-Host, Honey Bee
Obscura Podcast
www.honeybeeobscura.com
(¹) For instance, look at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65820/65820-h/65820-h.htm for instruction on how to line bees from 1949.
(²) My first university mentor was a distinguished World War II veteran. He was awarded three purple hearts. Yet, during bee classes lectures, he never uttered a single word about his wartime experiences. Not one. I only learned of this part of his life as I read his obituary.
(3) http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/jerry-hayes/queen-excluder-or-honey-excluder/
