Category Archives: Bee Health

Discussions that go directly to bee health. Mites, food, American foul brood are just a few examples

Boardman feeder that feeds sugar water to beehive
Jul 28 2012

Drama in the bee yard because of rookie mistakes

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the Italian queen in one of our hives, that we call flowers hive, was not very agressive in producing brood or encouraging her troops to build out comb. So we made the decision to replace her. I contacted Pendall Apiary and ordered a new queen.

Italian Queen Bee in the mail

Queen Bee in the mail.

When she arrived I took the queen from flowers hive and moved her into a nuc box that I ordered from Brushy Mountain. I like this model because it has 1) screen bottom board 2) telescoping cover 3) inner cover with notch to provide a top entrance 4) western size.

I took two frames from the flowers hive and brushed another frame of bees into the nuc. I then took the new queen and placed her into the flowers hive with a marshmellow in the queen cage. I popped a boardman feeder on the nuc and hey…..we are off to the races. I’m feeling all warm inside that I’ve just overcome my first apiary challange….I’m the king of the world….wouldn’t you think????

The Aftermath:

I noticed a lot of activity around the nuc hive. Wow, I thought, these bees are doing great! As time went by and I actually spent some time

Boardman feeder that feeds sugar water to beehive

Boardman Feeder..dinner bell to the masses

watching the entrance to the nuc, I saw far more activity than I would expect from this little colony…soon a different story began to emerge. I noticed what I would call “guarding” agressive behavior at the entrance. Each bee was frisked down by a sentry bee and in many cases I saw the guardian chase off another bee. I saw more bees coming and going than was appropriate for this small nest. I really got the picture when I saw two bees fight to the death. I knew that I had to open this box up and see what was happening.

The next weekend I pulled the nuc appart and what I saw was very telling of my mistakes. I saw fewer bees than I put in, I saw zero comb fill. Nothing in two hanging frames of comb…no honey, no brood, no pollen. I also saw lots of dead bees on the bottom screen. These poor bees were literally being robbed to death.

My immediate actions:

1) Remove the boardman feeder

2) Set up a winter type feeder, mason jar full of 2 to 1 sugar water feeding through the inner cover hole with another box around that with the telescoping cover on top

3) Blocked down the main entrance to zero, opened a top entrance on the back of the hive. Small and easy to defend. (I love this feature on Brushy Mountain inner covers, a notch that can be opened or closed to form an upper entrance.)

4) Brought over more frames of brood and honey and brushed in another two frames of bees.

My mistakes were killing my bees and I felt bad about it. My mistakes:

A – I did not give my nuc enough resources to make it. I learned later in an advanced beekeeping class that our club, West Sound Beekeepers Association puts on that when making up a split or nuc you should provide; 3 frames of brood and 2 frames of honey and pollen plus brush in 2 to 3 more frames of bees.

B – Never use a boardman feeder. Other bees see it as an easy source of nectar and quickly move from that into the hives resources, before you know it you have a cavern instead of a beehive.

C – Block down the entrance of a nuc or new hive. They need to be able to easily defend themselves as they get built back up otherwise stronger hives around them might take advantage of the situation.

D- Even though I may have gotten away with it this time, I need to make a hive go queen less for 24 to 48 hours before introducing a new queen.

Last weekend I made an inspection of the nuc. I’m happy to report things have turned around.

Honey comb, Warre beehive, Langstroth bee hives

Bees have filled in the space around the warre topbar

I see new comb being built, honey being stored, brood in all stages and a calm group of bees. Will this be enough to make it over the winter???? Who is to say, but they are sure better off now that I’ve fixed my original mistakes.

They say bess die because of; weather, pests, poison, starvation and bad beekeepers. Hopefully it is early enough in the season for these bees to recover from my rookie mistakes.

Varroa Mites infect beehives
Jul 25 2012

Checked Hive for Varroa Mites

Testing for verroa mites on honey bees

My version of a sticky board.

Today I checked Flower Hive for varroa destructor mites. There are several ways to do this, today I chose the least invasive way. My two warre hives have a slide board that I can slide in under the bottom screen. I taped a piece of wax paper onto the board and wiped some olive oil on it with a paper towel. I slid it into the bottom of the hive and left it there for 24 hours.

When I did this on my green roof hive a few weeks ago I didn’t find anything. This time I saw quite a few. I counted about 30 varroa

varroa mites infest beehives

varroa mites on sticky board

mites. Most hives will have some level of varroa mite infestation but when the drop count gets to 15 to 20 it is time to treat. There are quite a few ways to treat for varroa mites. I’ll not delve into those here except to say that they can become pretty chemically invasive.

We are trying to go as natural or as organic as possible. Now I’ll be the first to say that it is not natural to have powdered sugar fall from the sky onto an open hive but this is the method I chose. Dusting the hive

Varroa Mites infect beehives

Varroa Mite

with powdered sugar 1) clogs the suction cupped feet of the mites causing them to fall through the screened bottom board and 2) increases the grooming behavior of the bees so that they clean the sugar and the mites off of each other. If I had a solid bottom board hive the mites would be more likely to fall to the bottom, shake off the sugar and climb back up on the next passing bee. The screened bottom board adds ventilation to the hive and also creates a way for the mites to fall out of the hive.

I’ll check in a week or so with another olive oil slicked board to see how well this treatment worked.

Treating Varroa Mites with Powdered Sugar

Powdered Sugar Treatment for Varroa Destructor Mites

Apr 1 2012

Bees need a balanced diet too.

CCD or Colony Collapse Disorder seems to be a title that man has put on a multifaceted problem. Of course this fits nicely with our overall need to seek “the one thing”. The one pill that will make us thin, the one idea that will make us rich, the one secret to living a fulfilled life, the one exercise that will melt away love handles.

The more reading I do and the more people I talk with leads me to believe that CCD is not one ailment but rather a series of deficiencies that lead up to the demise of what was thought to be a healthy bee colony.

Though I’m not a scientist, nor do I have a laboratory in my basement…that would be cool though, I can sift through lots of data that others have collected and make sense of it. See the logic (at least my logic) and draw some conclusions.

Painted Backyard Beehive

Backyard Beehive

While reading this last issue of American Bee Journal I came across an article that made sense to me. The article by Peter Loring Borst speaks to a bees diet and covers a lot of great information about pollen and its food value. But one part jumped out at me specifically.

Two groups of bees were analyzed. One that was on a monofloral  diet (one crop of plants, one primary source of pollen like huge fields of soy, or large groves of almonds) and bees who were eating a polyfloral diet (variety of plants around the hive, no one predominant pollen source).  Both diets produced what the bees needed to be healthy and active in this life cycle….however bees that were on the monofloyral or restricted diet produced a smaller amount of an enzyme called glucose oxidase (GOX).

Glucose oxidase is an enzyme that converts sucrose into an antiseptic that we are all familiar with called hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide is used by the bees in honey and larval food production to help reduce the growth of bacteria and pathogens.  So, while the bees on a monofloral diet that are currently flying might be healthy, the next generation of bees may well have a weakened immune system due to being fed food with higher levels of bacteria.

The bees on the polyfloral, or balanced diet, on the other hand, produced greater levels of GOX, which would provide for food with lower levels of bacteria or pathogens thus producing new offspring with normal immune systems.

While there are many other factors out there that lead to the loss of a colony; weather, pesticides, pests, starvation and the beekeeper, providing a balanced source of pollen and nectar for your bees will give them the strength to deal with all the other threats against them.

Those of us that are into back yard beehives may well have the best chance of providing for a balanced diet for our bees. Just look around your neighborhood and I’m sure you will see lots of variety.