An excellent report by Dan Rather. More questions than answers but this story at least heightens the awareness of the impending doom of the honey bee unless we can get a handle on the use of chemicals and pesticides on our crops.
Tag Archives: honey bees
How dying honey bees affect you, great info graph!
Honey bees in the snow
Bee hives like snow
It is December in Seabeck Washington. While our winters are very moderate compared to much of the country we do get snow from time to time. We just had two days of snow and our neck of the woods had over 10 inches. The days now are upper 30s and might get into the mid 40s this next week, the nights are in the lower 30s….in any case the snow will not last long.
A friend asked me today about the bees. What do they do when it snows? Do they hibernate?
This is the 6 million dollar discussion. How do you get the bees through the winter. This is the crux of what so many beekeepers struggle with each year. It is not unusual to have a 30 to 50% loss each year.
The bees do not hibernate. I consider hibernation like a sleep state. Bees remain active throughout the winter. They generate heat with the same muscles they use to fly. They flex or pump their mucsels in such a way that they maintain a core temperature of about 89 to 97 degrees F.
During warm weather bees come and go from the hive. Collecting and returning with pollen, nectar water or sap. They also leave for cleansing flights as they do not defecate in their hive.
At about 64 degrees F the bees begin to cluster, that is collect closely together to preserve heat. There are two basic parts of the cluster; the core which uses its muscles to create the heat and the outer layer that acts as insulation for the core. As temperatures drop the cluster tightens. The bees rotate from the inner part of the cluster to the outer, taking turns generating the heat. The energy they use is fueled by the honey they eat or the sugar the beekeeper has given them if they do not have sufficient honey stored.
The queen slows down egg laying and stops all together for a short time all to preserve energy and make it through the winter. Some think that the winter solstice is what keys the queen to begin to slowly build up the brood again.
Beekeepers in areas with harsher winters may actually wrap their hives to better insulate them, making it easier on the bees. The typical advice when it snows is to leave the snow on the top of the hives, it acts as an insulator.
My goal now is to just check them on warmer days and ensure they have plenty of sugar….and hope I don’t suffer the 30 to 50% loss that others have.
Thank you Lee for this great question.
Resource for information in this post came from here: http://www.capabees.com/main/files/pdf/winteringpdf.pdf
Beekeeper places hives in cold storage facility for the winter
Yakima beekeeper finds that bees winter better in cold storage news.yahoo.com/video/seattlek… via @yahoonews
— Frank (@BeekFreak) November 30, 2012
Winter – The season for the beekeeper to get strong
Here we are, late fall staring down the barrel of winter. The rains are driving and the winds are blowing. Our hives are all tucked in, tied down and sugared up. Other than doing a quick visual inspection on the next warmish sunny day and maybe replenish the sugar, we have done all we can do to get the bees through this winter.
We spent the early spring setting up the hives and feeding our bees, the late spring and summer building up our hives. We spent our weekends counting sticky boards, adding supers, estimating brood, cutting out drone comb and watching for signs of a swarm. We’ve tried to systemize our inspections, take copious notes and all the while staying observant. On the lookout for robbing, pests, varmints and disease. All our efforts for the bees. A singular focus to help them stay healthy and grow strong.
Now it is our season. The time for us to feed our brains with new information for the next bee season. Time to read the books we heard about but haven’t had time to open. Time for chores, record review and plans for the new season. Time to renew our subscriptions to American Bee Journal or Bee Culture magazines. This is a great opportunity to fix any of your boxes that are in need of repair and build your list of tools and equipment you will need for next year.
I know the internet is working overtime to eliminate everything printed…but there is nothing better than snuggling up on a cold winter day, a hot fire, drink of choice and a nice stack of bee magazines, product catalogs and bee books.
Here is to a nice long winter….the season of the beekeeper.
Quick Guide to Bee Equipment providers:
Food for the beekeepers brain
Preparing your beehives for winter and building sugar boards
As I approach my first winter in beekeeping the biggest hurdle yet to overcome is keeping my bees alive throughout the winter. Even the most experienced beekeepers struggle with this. So I’ve set some milestones for myself and will go into this season on purpose…so that if I completely blow it I’ll at least know what not to do next year.
My goal: have all 3 hives alive on April 1, 2013.
Going into the winter it is important to have plenty of stores for the bees. Ideally I’d like to have about 50 pounds of honey in the comb so that the bees have plenty to eat. It is also important to have a low verroa mite load so that the bees have a good chance of making it.
I checked my hives a few weeks ago and as usual…good news and bad news. The good news is that I seem to have a low mite count. In one hive I have 25 mites that dropped in a 24 hour period and on the other only 14. My target was less than 24 mites per 24 hour period….I think I’m good on this issue.
On stores…..not so much. Very little honey in the comb. 2 to 3 frames in one and less than that in the other. The nuc has maybe one full frame of honey.
My plan of action based on my hive inspection:
1) no mite treatment
2) Feed sugar water through Oct then switch to sugar and pollen patties.
The reason you cannot feed sugar water all winter is because the ambiant moisture is so high the bees would not be able to store the sugar water in the comb and then get it down to below 18% humidity. Anything above 18% and it will spoil giving the bees dysentery.
Above is a video showing how I built the sugar boards. A nice 1 day project to improve the chances your bees will survive the winter.
Bees, you can’t eat just one….
I think I might have the Lays Potato chip syndrome when it comes to bees. I started out with two hives, after all, that is what all the books say to do. This way you can compare one to the other and get a better understanding of bees and how they live. That was in class #1. It is only in class #6 do you learn about swarming.
Swarming is a colonies natural instinct to ensure survival of the colony and despite man’s best efforts you will usually have a swarm in at least some of your hives. So, this means I should probably have a couple of hive bodies and some frames set aside just in case I come home from work one day to a buzzing mass of beemanity in my yard (read more likely my neighbors yard) and have some plan in place to deal. It is a natural extension that if I have to add a hive I’m going to need someplace to keep it….so here is a list of what I did and how I set up two more foundations. This is very similar to setting up my original two but these are a little bigger. You can read that post by clicking here.
The reason these foundations are bigger is because I’ve decided to go with 8 frame westerns as I expand my apiary. I purchased a nuc from brushy mountain and 5 unassembled western 8 frame boxes from Mann Lake. I think this will allow maximum flexibility with dealing with a swarm and swapping frames from hive to hive if I need to. To accomodate the larger hives here is my parts list for two foundations:
4 16x16x2 cement pavers
8 8X16X6 concret blocks
Left over bag of sand from my first two foundations
I like to use the 16×16 pavers because they are easier to level, then put the concret blocks on top to give me a little height and to allow me to run a web strap over the hive and through the concret blocks. This will add some stability in the winter time when the winds pick up.
So this year I may end up with 3 or 4 hives….what happens next year if say 2 or 3 of the hives swarm….there you go….you can’t eat just one 