To Bee Or Not To Be Honey

Varroa Mites

•••
These little critters suck, quite literally

The varroa mite appears to have been introduced to the United State in 1987 (although some literature mentions seeing mites earlier) through improper (illegal) importation of bees to Florida despite a legal quarantine which had been in place for a long time. The mites were identified after some hives were transported from Florida to Wisconsin and colony failures occurred.   Checks around the nation found that the mites were already in a dozen states. Originally the mites were identified as Varroa Jacobsoni, later ast DNA testing became more available the mites were identified as Varroa Destructor (A much more destructive species). 

Varroa mites originated from Asia. Asia bees have adapted over thousands of years to live with these mites. However the bees found in the US (and many other countries of the world) originated in Europe and they have little to no defense mechanisms against these mites.  Similar to the introduction of small pox into America, varroa is devastating to European bees.

Many beekeepers ignored the warnings from the regulatory agencies for years, not understanding what the impact would be (losing many colonies).  The mites spread across the continent quickly as many beekeepers migrate their bees across the nation to pollinate crops in across the continent. 

Prior to the infestation a lot of pollination was performed by feral colonies as well as managed colonies. Once beekeepers started treating for mites with miticides their colonies became stronger. Once the infestation took hold, many of the feral colonies started to weaken and be robbed out by stronger managed colonies.  Then the robbing bees would return with more and stronger mites to the managed hive creating a vicious cycle that was producing mites that could not be killed with the miticides previously used.  

The number of productive colonies in the US fell from 4.25 million in 1998 to less than 2.5 million hives in 2007 where a new threat was identified as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) which is a topic for another article.  

Over the years beekeepers have recognized the very real threat this beast has produced. Many are actively involved in  research to overcome the problem. Some are trying to breed better genetics into the bees, but considering new imports are banned (for good reason) they have to work with only the genetics that are in the states already.  Some are working on better treatments to kill the mites. Many of these work well at first but eventually fail because the mites that live carry on genetics which make them resistant to the treatments.

The adult mites suck, quite literally, they suck the fat body (which serves much the same purpose as blood in humans) from adult bees and the larvae.  This weakens the bees and leads to their death. A larger issue is that the mites also spread other diseases to the bees (viruses and bacteria). One such disease paralyzes the flight muscles of bees, another turns the developing larvae into a foul goo that spread through the hive and destroys it. 

The mites have a 10 day life cycle (not life span) which goes something like:

1. A Female mite finds a cell that is just about ready to be capped, sneak in and hide behind the larvae
2. Once capped the mite will lay several eggs on the larvae, one male the rest female.
3. The mite hatch in the cell before the larvae (now technically a pupae) emerges.
4. The male will mate with the female (yup they have no problem with incest those unholy beasts)
5. The female will emerge with the host and feed and start the cycle again.

Currently there are several treatments being used. Most are chemicals that target some aspect of the mites physiology that does not target the bees, but considering that they are both exoskeleton based life forms that is tough.

The most common treatment currently use acids such as formic acid or oxalic acid.  Formic acid is most effective, but has very strict temperature ranges where it is not harmful to the bees, below the range and it is not effective, and above the range and it will kill the bees. It has a benefit of being able to kill mites under the capped cells. Many beekeepers are afraid to use it because it is really hard on the bees. Oxalic acid (wood bleach) is also very effective (although the science is not clear why yet but it looks like the mites absorb it in their sticky feet and die).  It is gentler on the bees and not sensitive to temperature, but it involves more work as it is administered in either a drip or a vapor, and since it does not kill mites in the capped cells it must be applied several time to get all the mites in the colony..  

A Tale of Four Queens

 

To Bee Or Not To Be Honey

A Tale of Four Queens

•••
Ah The Mistakes I Have Made

My first year of Beekeeping had several themes and all of them packed with lessons to be learned.  I started out on Christmas morning with absolutely no clue that I was about the become a beekeeper.  A few months before my wife and I had taken our grandchildren to the county fair in Monroe with their mother. After a day at the fair I stopped by the bee keeping exhibit and marveled at the bees they had in a tent, but really had no thoughts of really keeping them. My wife had taken note and secretly decided that this would be my Christmas present.  So after all the kids and their significant others had opened their Christmas presents, they brought me my "big" gift, and boy was it a big one, everything I would need to start my first year in beekeeping including two texts, a bee keeper suit, a smoker, a complete Langstroth beehive (minus the bees), and a beginning beekeeping course in Snohomish Washington.

I read the entire first book and most of the second book during my Christmas break before I went to the class. In fact I read the books multiple times and had memorized so much of it that I ended up being a bit of a know it all for the class (probabaly annoyed the hell out of the teachers).  The one thing I learned in the class was that it would be better to have two hives rather than one. Having two hives would allow me to compare how they were doing, and also give me twice the chance to have one survive the first winter (which is tougher the farther north you live). I discussed this with my wife and we agreed to get a second hive and order 2 packages of bees for my first year. Since I have already talked about the installation of the two hives in a previous post I will not rehash that here, but move on to the next mistake I made.

Each week during the spring and summer it is important to inspect the hive and determine how it is doing. Inspection involve opening the hive, looking for evidence of a laying queen, which is generally finding eggs and larvae, and doing tasks to reduce the chance the bees swarm unexpectedly.  These inspections are fascinating to new bee keepers (and old ones too) for many reasons.  I had named my Queens Elizabeth the 2nd, and Queen Mary of Scots. In order to get more quality time with the hives I decided to inspect them on different days, Elizabeth II on Sunday, and Mary on Wednesday. 

Well one Wednesday while inspecting Mary's hive I was not finding any eggs, and I did not see Queen Mary in the hive, to be honest I have not seen her in the have since she was installed, but at least I had seen eggs in the past but not on this day.  I panicked because I was sure that I had lost my first queen (it happens) and it is really important to have a queen.  After conferring with an expert I quickly ordered a new queen and was able to pick up the new queen on the following day. The new queen would be named Olga Constantinova (because she is a Russian Queen).

I picked Olga up early the on 5/28 and drove home with her in my shirt pocket (to keep her warm). When I got home I decided to do one last check before installing the new queen, just in case I was wrong... Umm well guess what I found... Yup... I found some eggs... And I then found Queen Mary running around the hive like she owned the place. ARRRRRGHHHH. They don't refund queens once they are sold, so now I had a tough decision to make.  Would I replace Mary with Olga (who had better genetics and cost more) or would I buy a new hive.

Well I could not bring myself to kill a queen who was so young so I ran off to the bee store and bought my third hive.  I placed the new hive in the other side of my yard and did a bit of a swap, I places Olga in Mary's hive, and moved Mary to the new hive. It was my hope that Queen Olga would be a better queen and so I gave her the more established hive.  Mary was placed in the new hive with a couple of frames of bees, larvae, and capped brood.  

Well Olga took off and became a great laying queen. Her hive did very well and grew faster than the other two. Elizabeth II's hive was second best, and Mary's hive was having slow progress.  I tried helping Mary out by giving here more resources, but it just did not work out like I hoped. 

Sadly it was about this time (7/21) that I discovered that I lost Queen Elizabeth II. I do not know how, but there were no eggs (and yes I really looked for a very long time) and no Queen to be found.  By this time I started getting better at finding the queen, but they still like to hide a bit. She was replaced promptly with Queen Catherine The Great (also a Russian survivor stock bee).

Then during a couple of inspections I noticed the workers or Queen Mary were building queen cells. They do this when they plan on building a new queen, and most of the time beekeepers cut these cells out to prevent swarming or supersedures.  After a few inspections where they had built new cells I decided that they were telling me that Queen Mary was just not a good enough queen, and they wanted another one.  So I decided to let them raise a new queen. It was a bit late in the season but they really were trying to tell me something needed to be done with Mary. 

It take only 16 day to  raise a new queen, and so I let them keep the queen cells they had built that week.  And about one week later (on 8/12/20) I got a big surprise in the middle of the day. Queen Mary Swarmed out of the hive and took about 1/2 of all the bees with her.  I was lucky that I took a break from work that day when this happened and my wife and I were able to capture the swarm in a Walmart box I had in the garage.

Off to the bee store, to buy a Nuc hive (A miniature hive) to hold them until I could figure out what to do with them.

There was still a good chance that the new queen would not make it back from her mating flights, and even if she did she might not be a good queen, although I was pretty sure she would do better than her mom (Mary).  So I waited for another week to see. Queen Sophia (daughter of Mary) was mated successfully and started laying in the hive in the following week.  But now I had a bit of an unexpected twist when Queen Mary in the Nuc hive started laying like crazy and her workers were producing wax frames faster than any hive I had inspected to date. So fast infact that the nuc was running out of room So a move some frames into Sophia's hive to help her build up faster.

I really did not want 4 hives, and I was pretty sure the nuc would not make it through the winter so I came up with a wild idea that I would later learn was something called a Palmer Hive. I made a split hive that would house two Queens, separated by a thin piece of wood.  My idea was that two queens could lay more eggs than one and then I would have a better chance for them to survive by sharing a bit of heat in the winter.  So I cleaned out my wood shop and went to work building a hive from scratch.

Then I spent a week moving Queen Sophia's hive over to the position where the new hive would go.  Bees are sensitive to their hive being moved since the foragers memorize where home is and if home moves more than about 3 feet they get confused.  I moved Queen Mary in to one side of the new hive and Queen Sophia into the other side successfully.

A few weeks after the installation I had another panic day when I discovered that the workers were able to squeeze through the divider and visit the workers on the other side of the hive. I could only find one queen (Sophia) but eggs on both sides of the divider. Since neither queen was marked I only knew them by which side of the hive they were on, and now I thought one may have gone to the other side and killed the other 🙁. I purchased supplies to mark the queen so at least I would know she was not superseded.  I was able to find the queen in Sophia's side but I dropped her when trying to get her in the marking container (my first time trying to catch a queen with this tool). I could not find her again after looking for too long so I though maybe she snuck over to the other side.  So I opened the other side (after closing the first) and found the queen. I marked her successfully and released her back into the hive with a Blue dot ( the color indicates she was a queen from 2020) since she was on Mary's side when I caught her.  It looked like the workers were barely able to squeeze through the gap, so I was starting to believe the queen could not (they are a bit larger). So I went back the the first side again and low and behold found an unmarked Sophia.  She was easy to catch this time and I was able to carfully mark her (  I used white which is the color for 2021 since she was born so late in the year I figure like a car she is really next years model).

So now I have 4 Queens, Mary (Italian), Olga (Russian), Catherine (Russian), and Sophia (Italian) living in 2 full hives and one split hive.  The weather is starting to turn ugly and I am hoping that they are all built up enough to survive a Washington Winter.

 

To Bee Or Not To Be Honey

Installation into the Hives

The bees arrived after a long trip from the California Almond pollination on April 15th, and Covid 19 was in full swing in our area.  Businesses were shut down and people were working from home. Bees being agriculture were an exception (necessary business) so we were going to be able to pick up the bees on time.  We were to drive to the fair grounds in Monroe, masks on face, present our receipt at one check point, then drive forward where a person would place the bees in the trunk of my Contour, then we would drive home. No contact with the people or bees until we got home 30+ minutes later. 

Well most of the bees we contained in their package, but a few stragglers were hanging out on the outside, talk about dedication.  After getting home I set up the hive on there stands and practiced the step that I was planning on following to get the bees in their new home.  After I was sure I had it down pat, I put on my white bee suit and did absolutely nothing right.

First I had trouble getting the syrup can out of the package while keeping the bees in the cage.  Yes you really need to smack the package hard on the ground to dislodge the bees and have enough time to get the can out and something to cover the hole.  After a couple of tries I finally figured it out and you can see in the photo above that the bees were already headed back to the queen's cage.  

I was able to get the queen cage out with less troubles and and put her in my pocket. Then for the real fun (stressful) part, actually pouring the bees into the hive.  I wish I had taken video of the whole thing because it would have been a good laugh today.  Basically by this time I had figured out that it took a pretty good shake to get the bees to let go, and so I poured 3 pounds of bees into the hive as instructed, and got most of them in the hive in the first shot.  Based on future experience I wish I could have told myself to order the 4 pound package rather then the 3 pound package. 3 pounds worked, but I think they would have had a better start with more bees.

The next thing that I learned LATER was that I should have treated the package (or hive) for varroa early one because that is the perfect time since there is not brood. 

After getting the bees in the Hive I carefully opened the queen cage and stuffed a marshmallow in the hole. This helps delay the queen from being exposed to the worker bees until they get used to her pheromones and accept her as their queen.  It was pretty obvious that they already liked her at this point because they were feeding her and acting pretty docile, but being a new Beekeeper I choose to follow all the rules I was give.  Below you can see one of the workers trying to fees Queen Mary in her queen cage. 

Mary's cage was placed between the middle frames in the hive in a direction where the bees could feed her while others worked on the marshmallow to free her. In 3 days I would check to make sure she was released. This will be the last time I will see Mary for quite some time as she is a good hider, yet her story is probabaly the most interesting one of all my queens (yup there will be more).

After the first hive was done I was able to do the second hive much more smoothly.  The second hive was a little more lively but I made fewer mistakes. Soon Queen Elizabeth II was installed and the hives were closed for 3 days to get comfortable in their new home.