Sustainable Beekeeping and More Early Blooms

Wow – this year is turning out to be a weird one. Today, I noticed a couple of dozen dandelion blooms over at one of my rentals! My bloom chart is getting a bit of a skew this year, as this seems really early. For some reason, I didn’t record the Dandelion bloom last year, but I think it was mid-March. This will be an interesting Spring for the beekeepers around Richmond, Virginia for sure. Having gardened for several decades, I know full well that very cold temperatures are in our future for two months ahead, but the last two weeks and the next two are like early Spring and not mid- to late-Winter! The bees are collecting nectar and pollen well in advance of when they normally do. In two of my yards, they are getting syrup and taking it down like piglets. How will this play out when it gets cold?

The big concern that most folks have is that the bee will ‘over lay’, effectively creating more brood then they can keep warm, should the temperatures drop. A big cold snap hits and they suffer – they stress themselves trying to keep a lot of brood warm. Normally, without the syrup or early blooming flowers, they wouldn’t have that much brood to cover. The other concern is around moisture in the hive. Putting a lot of sugar syrup in the hive somehow is a detriment. Having a fairly good background in chemistry and physics, I definitely do not understand this logic (we put buckets of water in the greenhouse to keep the temperature up – water stops it from getting cold, due to the massive energy it takes to convert water from a liquid to a solid.) Ventilation should resolve moisture issues and I think having a liquid in a structure actually keeps the temps from dropping as fast or as far!

In my opinion, the bees do what they need to do. I am pretty confident that they will be just fine, but only time will tell.

Sustainable Beekeeping

This past Friday, the Central Virginia Beekeepers Association out of Ashland, Virginia had Billy Davis of Sustainable Beekeeping up in Northern Virginia. It was an interesting talk and only cemented my resolve to focus on bees that are born and bred in my neck of the woods. Billy Davis focuses on splits, Nucs and overwintered Nucs to do increases off of bees that make it through his Winters. By ‘make it through his Winters’, he means that they do so after he gives them a lot of pre-stored honey frames and a big block of candy. I absolutely respect his work, but it does not surprise me that he has a ton of success overwintering bees in that manner. If you used the exact same strategy on a full hive, you’d probably have great results as well. But, the point is that he is doing it not to just ‘survive’ but to end up with an increase Nuc off of his prime hives. He advocates that we should all do this, trading our increases with other beekeepers or selling them to others in the area. This spreads good genetic material throughout, which benefits both the honey bee and the beekeeper.

He really focuses on using bees that are his version of ‘survivor stock’. He did not mention whether he uses chemicals or not, but you have to admire his tenacity. He uses tons of hives and weeds out the weak, making a great stock for his neck of the woods. If I lived up there, I’d get all of my bees from him. And that’s his goal. Folks up there should start getting their bees from him and from each other, effectively spreading survivor genes throughout the region and eventually (a tertiary goal that he mentions) leading to feral bees again. To be fair, he jammed a 6 hour lesson into 2 hours, so I probably missed a lot of the meat. I will take the full course from him in the future.

On a few points, I believe he is mistaken. The biggest is the African Honey Bee. He points out that getting local hives will prevent the spread of this bee to our region. I am here to say that AHB is coming and will be here, no matter what mankind does. The new Honey Bee pest in Australia will eventually get here as well, no matter what mankind does. Mother Nature rules, but we still fight it. As mentioned in previous posts, I believe that the future of our bee (the European) will hinge on the African strain (and the Russian strain and many others.) They will need the best traits of the mix to  make it in this rough world!

Maples are Blooming!

Bee On Crocus Bloom in February
Enjoying a little Early Season Forage

The Winter in Richmond, Virginia started out with a sledge hammer but appears to be going out like a tack hammer. It was really rough in December and most of January, but February has been uncharacteristically warm. Today, it appears to be heading into the upper 60’s and I really do not see much real cold in the foreseeable future (plus, we’ve already had nearly two weeks of weather like this!) We will no doubt see more cold weather, but March is just around the corner, which is the start of my favorite time with the bees!

As proof, I was finally rewarded with a few blooms over the past week! The crocuses started blooming around the 10th and I have had a few bees on them. But today, my early Maples started! Whoohoo! The bees have started to work the blooms a bit and I am hoping for a good brood build up. I expect to have a look at some of the hives in the apiary with the sugar syrup tomorrow. They have basically gone through 20 lbs of sugar (or what amounts to about 8 gallons of syrup) over the past two weeks and I am wondering what they are doing with it.

Maple Blooms
February Maple Blooms

Now is really a good time to get some painting done. I have actually stayed ahead of this chore fairly well since last Fall, with a lot of painted deeps, mediums, shallows and nuc’s to show for it. But, I still have unpainted wooden-ware and now is as good a time as any to get that done, just in case. I am a firm believer in having twice as much as you think you will need and a little extra for any swarms or cut-outs that come along. One of the things that I am working on this weekend is equipment for two trapouts that I will be starting in March. I plan to use these bees to start several Nuc’s, if all goes well, so I want this stuff ready well in advance.

A trapout is mainly used to get the majority of the bees in a feral hive and eventually force the queen to leave the spot, due to no foragers returning. The beekeeper effectively takes most of the bees back to his yards and can then use them to start Nucs with queens from his best lines. The problem with trying this in early March is mainly that the bees will have only just started to grow their populations. So, you really only stand to get a fraction of the bees you might get if you started it in June (when the hive should be at max population.) But, that is all theory. There may be very good reasons to do it in March that I simply do not know since I have never tried it. Come April, I will have the results and it will be another lesson for the bee books!

Let’s Experiment

Last Spring, there was a lot of consternation about slow build up. Of course, this was only on my part, as the bees went about their business with no worries whatsoever. Basically, both of my hives were building up at about the same pace, but I had spoken to (or emailed) other beekeepers in the area that were seeing more mass (more bees in their hives.)

During one such conversation, back in the Spring of 2010, a beekeeper from Buckingham mentioned that some folks in his neck of the woods would put light syrup on their hives in February to give the hives a jump start. The general theory is that you put a weak sugar-water solution (1 part Sugar to 2 or 3 parts water) on the hives. This makes the bees think that the nectar flow has started and they begin to ‘build up’ (a term that basically means the Queen starts to lay a bunch of eggs). By the time the real nectar flow starts, they will have a TON of bees and really be able to sock away the honey.

Since last Spring, I ran into a wizened beekeeper from yesteryear who put out buckets of syrup water in his apiary to get an early build up. As always, I am fascinated by simple approaches and decided to give it a whirl in one of my outwards.

Bees Eating Syrup from a Dog Waterer
Dog-waterer Turned Bee Feeding Station

I mixed up a batch of weak sugar syrup (10 lbs Sugar, 3 Gallons Water) and poured it into one of my old dog waterers. On Sunday, around 11 am, I placed it in a central area between the hives (it was as much as 40 yards from two of the hives and 30 yards from the other three). By late afternoon (right before I went to watch the Steeler’s get a whooping- booyah!), the bees had found it and were on it pretty thick. During lunch today, I checked in on them around noon and they were really putting the stuff down.

It will be interesting to see how this works. I am pretty sure that I never even considered feeding from outside of the hive (now or in the Summer) as I did not want to feed the feral bees. Now, I am having second thoughts. This was very easy and it did not cause any robbing (like it does, on occasion in late Summer, when the syrup is placed within one hive.) I may not ever feed in the Winter again (we’ll see how it goes with this experiment), but I will most definitely feed outside again (until such time as I figure out a good reason not to.)

Close Shot of Bees Feeding in February
Bee Jamboree at the Feeding Hole

I actually checked one of the hives and it appeared that they were storing it around the brood nest. I am torn about this behavior. I have a gut feeling (no evidence) that honey from real nectar is much better then my sugar syrup (even if I do have Better Bee in it.) This is the roughest time of the year for a bee, so why give  her second rate food (assuming there is a difference between nectar and syrup)? But, on the other hand, it gives me a bit of comfort to know that they are socking away some stores exactly where they’ll need it if (quite honestly, I should say when) it gets cold again (at the edges of the cluster.) But, on the other other hand (is that three hands?), are they filling up cells that the queen might want to lay in? Ha! Who knows. The bees know and that’s all that matters.

Finally, I also put pollen patties on each of the hives in this yard (if brood rearing is going to ramp up, they are going to need some pollen! – well, they may need it if they were lazy last Fall and didn’t put enough away!) This brings me to my last observation for today – protein from the bird feeder! I had heard of it, but had never seen it. Folks have said that bees will sometimes scour bird seed, looking for a few bits of protein in the stray pollen. This past Friday, I found one of my bees (well, a bee in my yard anyway) doing just that! She was running in and out of the feeder, filling her legs up with some dust substance (which was pollen, no doubt – probably not the best, but still worth collecting in her mind.)

Bee In Bird Feeder Closeup
Yum! Bird Feed Pollen!

Are Your Bees Doing Ok?

As mentioned previously, my periodic hive checks in 2011 have (so far) indicated a nice honey store left on all hives (except the Westover Hive, which I cannot currently check – they moved up to the attic in early January…) But, I will continue to check on them, every time it gets into the low 40’s. The bees have had a cold Winter, following a fairly dry Autumn in the Richmond, Virginia area. They are at risk.

Starving Bees
Starving Bees

As an example, David Stover, an active Top Bar Hive beekeeper in ERBA, sent me the following email today. He agreed to let me post it here, for the folks that check in. I think it is a great Alert for us all – get out there and have a peak. Make sure your bees have some honey (and if they don’t, David also offers a quick recipe to get some food into the hive.)

I received a call from a beekeeper that had just discovered his hive had died out on Monday. I went over to help him take a look. Almost zero honey. The bees starved and froze. Lots of pollen, not that it did them much good. So this morning I made up a batch of Fondant. Checked my hive at home which had stored up what I thought was way more than enough to see them through the winter and it was almost empty of honey. A few frames with a little capped honey here and there but certainly not enough to make it through. I smeared fondant into the combs of three frames both sides, and the bees were on it pretty quickly. I did see a few frames partially filled with wet nectar so the bees have been collecting nectar somewhere when it has been warm enough.

I checked four other hives and all but one were in the same condition. The one hive that was fairly small had a good amount of capped honey. Just as a precaution I added some fondant to that hive anyway. The smaller hives I went through completely and did not see any signs of brood and not much pollen. All hives now have some fondant to help out.

So if you haven’t checked your hives you might want to take a look this weekend. Sunday is supposed to be in the 50’s and sunny.

Fondant Recipe:

1 part water
4 parts sugar
1/4 teaspoon white vinegar
I also added 1/4 teaspoon Honey-B-Healthy (just because I had some)

Put into big sauce pan. Bring to a boil while stirring the whole time to prevent the sugar from burning. Leave it to a gently boil for 5 more minutes or until it reaches 234 F. test with a candy thermometer if you have one. Take it off the heat and let it sit until it cools to 200 F. With an electric hand held soup mixer or whatever mixer you have beat the mixture until it turns sort of white and has lots of air bubbles in it (took about 5 minutes). Pour into a shall container and let it sit undisturbed until cool.

In Langs you can put it on top of the frames over the brood/cluster in a shall dish or on wax paper. (put some sticks in it so the bees don’t get stuck)

In a TBH I either smear it into empty comb or put it in a shallow narrow plastic dish, cut to fit, and slide it on the floor of the hive as far in as I can get it.