From the Editor
QUESTION
#1 One of my hives died out. A pile of dead bees appeared outside of the hive entrance. The bees were mostly in pieces, just pieces of bees. I couldn’t see any tracks of animals around the area. Why were the bees in pieces?
#2 I recently saw an article about beekeepers who got rid of ‘mites’ by feeding sugar syrup with salt and dried chamomile flowers in it. I found an article from Bee Culture in 2003 that says it works. Do you have any information on this?
Sam Kanagy
ANSWER
Thank you for the questions Sam.
One of the predators of honey bees is the PYGMY SHREW (SCIENTIFIC NAME SOREX MINUTUS). The pygmy shrew is a very common problem for overwintering honey bee colonies. Most beekeepers are unaware of the potential hazard their presence may be or mistake them for the much less harmful common yard mouse.
A pygmy shrew is a very small mammal with a markedly pointed snout. They average 1½ inch body length with a 1¼ inch tail. Their average weight is 0.105 ounces. They are able to go through a hole less than 0.393 inches.
Shrews are insectivores feeding on insects, arachnids, woodlice, and in cold climates like Canada, they specialize feeding on honey bees during Winter.
Shrews are as fast as they are small. Their heart rate and respiratory rate of 800 beats per minute is maintained by consuming 125% of their own body weight daily.
The method of feeding on wintering colonies is by grabbing a cold sluggish bee from the outside of the cluster and then taking it to a feeding place either in the back of the hive away from the cluster or in the wrapping material.
Shrews target the thorax by removing the head or entering through the top making a large hole hollowing out the thorax. They may also consume some of the exoskeleton leaving what looks like dirt (wings, legs and bit of the abdomen).
With shrews weighing about 0.105 ounces and requiring 125% of their body weight in food per day, they may consume over one pound of bees in 120 days of Winter.
The article from almost 20 years ago in Bee Culture and salt being a possible Varroa control has been disproven. Trying to kill a little bug (Varroa) on a Big Bug is hard to do without hurting the Big Bug. The best resources for Varroa control is the Tools for Varroa Mangement Guide from the Honey Bee Health Coalition. Go to; https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/HBHC-Guide_Varroa_Interactive_7thEdition_June2018.pdf and get your ‘free’ copy.
QUESTION
My business partner and I were having a debate about the ethics of queenless hives during pollination. I’m curious if you could lend some expertise to the conversation?
Let’s say you have two 5-6 frame colonies. One is queen right and one is queenless (or with a failing Queen). I would argue that the queenless hive is as much of a pollinator unit as the queen right hive for these three reasons:
1.In a queenless hive you have zero brood so almost the entire six frames of bees are available to forage rather than tend to hive housekeeping and brood rearing responsibilities.
2.You generally have a much older population of bees in a queenless hive. As we know the final stage of the bees lifecycle is foraging, so again nearly all six frames of bees would be foragers in the queenless hive. In contrast the queenless hive would likely have one or two frames of young nurse bees who haven’t yet reached the foraging stage of their lifecycle.
3.My own observations are that queenless hives are often the most plugged out with honey and pollen. This indicates that indeed they are effective foragers.
Thoughts?
Jason
ANSWER
The ultimate question is if you are a honey bee colony and there is at some point no brood to feed directly by nurse bees and stored bee bread, why put that amount of energy into this activity of collecting pollen? As an example, when we had small children, our grocery list and quantity of food was different than it is now. No developing children to feed now.
Back in the day, I remember a honey producer in the Midwest who, during a significant bloom period for soybeans, would cage the queens. The colony would collect more nectar now, and his crop would be larger and more valuable.
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that honey bees with little brood to feed don’t have a biological need of collecting pollen. But, no researcher has ever done a field trial on this as far as I know.
QUESTION
Hi Jerry,
I am back in beekeeping after a decade away, and quite excited about it. I subscribed to Bee Culture again a few months ago, and have been enjoying the magazine a lot.
I feel like I have no window into the management practices of successful operations through either Bee Culture or ABJ. The science bent is valuable, but I would like to see how that gets translated into practical management applications on successful operations.
As I have gotten back into beekeeping, I have immersed myself deep in research, trying to understand what defines successful beekeeping businesses, and what the common management practices are among them. I soon learned there are two distinct groups of beekeepers. Those who usually have bees to sell every year, and those who frequently need to buy bees every year. I want to learn from the former, and I care more about their perspectives than the latter.
I am not observing any journalism where successful operations are being showcased, either in an online format or in the publications. Have I missed it, or is this an area of opportunity?
Thank you!
John Kempf
ANSWER
Not to be a pain but please define ‘success.’ At what level is success considered success? Can a commercial beekeeper keep losses around 30%…yes. Is that success? Or in an example a business operation taking bees to a warm part of the country, providing lots of nutritionally incomplete food, treating with toxic chemicals every 10 days, re-queening every 90-120 days and then selling what has been forced honey bee production as nucs or packages, that 50% have to be requeened or varroa kills them or the Varroa/Virus complex takes over. Is that success? I could go on and on.
All that to say in my humble experience it is all about beekeeper consistent informed management for the Varroa/Virus Complex, and all the diseases that take advantage of honey bees with compromised immune systems and collateral damage from varroa controls.
There is no great checklist other than the information from the Honey Bee Health Coalition, HBHC, https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/ Go here and at the top, click on resources.
Thanks for the great question and sorry for my realistic but perhaps pessimistic answer.
QUESTION
I want to point out to you that there is an assertion made in a ‘Catch the Buzz’ daily email blast titled “Almonds Without Bees” that is simply not true. It states:
“In return the beekeepers tend to get hives back bubbling over with bees and new brood as almonds are said to be a “complete” nutritional resource for managed bee colonies. “
It is a well proven fact that monoculture agriculture does not provide a complete nutritional resource for bees. Bees need a variety of pollen in order to stay healthy, as has been published by numerous articles in your own magazine.
I hope you will print a retraction of that because it is patently a false statement, put out at www.almonds.com. I expect better of a magazine that is supposed to be for beekeepers and is supposed to publish factual articles. If we can’t trust your magazine to proof read articles for accuracy, why should we bother to subscribe?
Elizabeth
ANSWER
You may be right or you may be wrong but remember that I do not write anything in Catch the Buzz. Catch the Buzz is not Bee Culture magazine. Catch the Buzz is a daily email blast to share all sorts of different ideas, opinions and direction in our industry from independent sources. The shared information in Catch the Buzz is from other publications that I get permission to re-print to share, right or wrong, and bring info to readers so they can move their thoughts forward.
If you look at the very bottom of that Catch the Buzz you will see this…. To read the whole article go to: 4,000 pounds of almonds without bees? It can be done (farmprogress.com).
I would encourage you to share your thoughts with them.
Thank you for reading Catch the Buzz. Thank you for contacting me at Bee Culture. Now, advance your thought with Farm Progress.
Stay safe and well.
QUESTION
I read a recent article you wrote regarding oxalic acid usage for varroa mites.
We run a 2000 colony operation and have used oxalic acid for about 15 years now. We are located in upstate NY and would predominantly use the dribble or “drizzle” method in December or early January, weather permitting.
I always heard as well as observed that the dribble method was hard on the bees…that the OA solution would burn eyes and the exoskeleton. It should only be used one time when broodless.
The last four years or so we have mainly been using OA vapor with the pro vap 110. In my experience, it seems to work as well but be much less harsh on the bees, especially since they don’t have to dry off. I know we always had good mite reduction using the dribble method, but it seemed to be too hard on the bees. I thought vaporization could be done repeatedly if necessary with no ill effects on the bees.
I believe your article states that OA vaporization is very hard on the bees as well. Can you give me sources for that information? Any information would be helpful.
Thank you for your time.
Ben
ANSWER
I am glad you are having confidence in OA with varroa control. But….nothing is perfect and there is collateral damage with use of anything.
As an example if you watch any TV there will be ads for ‘medications’ for us humans. At some point in the ad there will be a very fast talking announcer telling us all the bad things that could happen to us because of use, all the while on the screen showing happy smiling people.
You have a great weekend.
Sources for Ben’s Question
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5620704/ ‘Effects of Oxalic Acid on Apis mellifera’
Terpin, B., Perkins, D., Richter, S. et al. A scientific note on the effect of oxalic acid on honey bee larvae. Apidologie, 50, 363–368 (2019).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13592-011-0102-0 Sublethal Effects of oxalic Acid on Apis mellifera: changes in behavior and longevity’
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-019-05247-2 ‘Toxicity of oxalic acid and impact on some antioxidant enzymes on in vitro reared honey bee larvae’
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00891844/ Cell death in honey bee larvae treated with oxalic or formic acid’
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Erik-Tihelka/publication/328200942_Effects_of_synthetic_and_organic_acaricides_on_honey_bee_health_A_review/links/5bc24d02a6fdcc2c91fb762d/Effects-of-synthetic-and-organic-acaricides-on-honey-bee-health-A-review.pdf
