Mission Honey Bee Suite is dedicated to honey bees, beekeeping, wild bees, other pollinators, and pollination ecology. It is designed to be informative and fun, but also to remind readers that pollinators throughout the world are endangered. Although they may seem small and insignificant, pollinators are vital to anyone who eats.
Plants that Attract Pollinators Popular Garden Plants:
Basil (Ocimum)
Bee balm (Monardia)
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia)
Borage (Borago)
Caltrop (Kallstroemia)
Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster)
English Lavendar (Lavandula)
Escallonia (Escallonia)
Globe thistle (Echinops)
Hyssop (Hyssopus)
Licorice Mint (Agastache)
Marjoram (Origanum)
Mexican sunflower (Tithonia)
Milkweed (Asclepias)
Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (Cleome)
Rosemary (Rosmarinus)
Russian Sage (Perovskia)
Sage (Salvia)
Wallflower (Erysimum)
Wild lilac (Ceanothus)
Zinnia (Zinnia)
Northwest Native Plants:
Aster (Aster)
California poppy (Eschscholzia)
Currant (Ribes)
Elder (Sambucus)
Fireweed (Epilobium)
Goldenrod (Solidago)
Joe-pye weed (Eupatorium)
Larkspur (Delphinium)
Lupine (Lupinus)
Madrone (Arbutus)
Mint (Mentha)
Oregon grape (Berberis)
Penstemon (Penstemon)
Rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus)
Rhododendron (Rhododendron)
Saskatoon (Amalanchier)
Scorpion-weed (Phacelia)
Snowberry (Symphoricarpos)
Stonecrop (Sedum)
Sunflower (Helianthus)
Wild buckwheat (Eriogonum)
Willow (Salix)
Yarrow (Achillea)
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Lots of folks want to know if bees consume more food in warm winters or cold winters. I’ve been searching for scientific data on this for quite a while but I haven’t found any. So, for what it’s worth, I hereby offer my opinion.
Based on hearsay and my own beekeeping experience, I believe that bees expend more energy—and so eat more food—in warm winters than in cold ones. As counter-intuitive as that may seem, I’m convinced it’s a common occurrence.
In very cold winters the cluster remains intact for long periods, brood production is extremely low or non-existent, and all other hive activities come to a standstill. The bees vibrate their wing muscles to create heat and the highest temperatures are found in the center of the cluster, but that temperature can be lower than when brood is present.
In warm winters, however, with occasional balmy days and temperatures that rise into the 40-60°F (4.5-15.5°C) range, the bees begin doing other things. They may take cleansing flights, some search for pollen, the undertaker bees carry dead bodies from the hive, house bees clean debris from the nest and sweep cobwebs from the corners. Brood production may increase, and with increased brood production comes the need for consistently higher temperatures in the nest along with constant feeding and tending of the larvae.
All of these activities require energy even though some of them are not very effective. Foraging for pollen, for example, requires lots of energy and it may or may not produce good results. The higher than normal temperatures seem to “trick” the bees into searching for something that may not be there—or may not be found in sufficient quantities to make the trips worthwhile. We’re talking cost/benefit ratios here, and the benefits will depend on local conditions.
And don’t forget, the nights are still cold. The cluster resumes warming itself during the long winter nights, so it is still expending a lot of “keep warm” energy even though the daylight hours are warmish.
In addition to tricking the bees, I think beekeepers, too, get lulled into thinking that warm weather means the bees will have plenty of food. I, for one, have been seduced into believing that winter stores would last longer during a balmy winter. But experience has shown otherwise, and I now check for honey stores earlier in warm winters than in frigid ones.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
 The bees were flying from this top-bar hive one day after the photo was taken. - Share with other humans:
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A lot is written about how to monitor mite loads with a sticky board. A sticky board is just a piece of thin wood or corrugated plastic that is covered with a sticky substance—usually pan spray—and placed below a screened bottom board. A certain number of mites drop off and stick to the board. The board is usually left in place for one to three days and then the mites are counted so that a “24-hour mite drop” can be calculated.
Some beekeepers use this magic number to decide if and when to treat for mites, but ideas differ about what this number should be. As an example, the Brushy Mountain Bee Farm site suggests treating for mites if your 24-hour sticky board count is greater than 5-10 mites in the spring or 50-60 mites in the fall. Some sources use just one number. The Virginia Cooperative Extension site reads, “If more than 40 mites are recovered [in a 24-hour period], then the colony should be treated.”
I have serious doubts about the validity of these numbers. The most obvious problem is that they do not take the hive population into account. A mite count of 40 in a single-deep, five-frame colony is very different than a count of 40 in a triple-deep, 24-frame colony. Mites per bee is the important number, not mites per bee hive.
Mite drop in the fall is greater than mite drop in the spring because, in the spring, most mites are under the capped cells where they are not going to fall off. Brushy Mountain recognized this in their estimate, but Virginia Cooperative Extension ignores it. Neither site discusses differences in mite count seen in various subspecies of honey bee, or differences in counts due to local climate or latitude.
The way I see it, the best we can hope for from a sticky board is to give us an idea of increase or decrease in mite loads. Or, if a beekeeper is diligent about estimating colony strength, he can assess mite drop as a function of colony strength and from there, decide when to treat.
Like many issues in beekeeping, determining when to treat for mites is a skill learned by trial and error. It is nearly impossible to make “rules” that can be used successfully, although people keep trying. All beekeeping is local and all beekeepers are different. The main problem with teaching rules instead of concepts is that it gives new beekeepers false hope, and when they do everything the books say, and their bees die anyway, they wonder if it’s worth it.
So what do I do? No sticky boards. For the past six years I’ve treated for mites once a year with one of the thymol-based products. I do this in August when brood is low and while there’s still time to raise a crop of winter bees that haven’t been exposed to the thymol. I’ve had no problems with mites or mite-borne diseases until this year when I switched to HopGuard—but that’s an entirely separate subject. More on that later.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
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The weather service predicted an inch of snow. When we got something over 22 inches, I wasn’t surprised. After all, I’ve listened to those folks guess at the weather for years. I know how well they do.
I love snow and this was particularly nice. Fluffy and light, it mounded in graceful undulations over the trees, hedges, and buildings. The power was out, then back, then out—nothing unusual around here. We played in the snow, threw snowballs for the dog, piled up dry wood by the front door. Then things turned nasty.
It started to rain and the fluffy snow soaked up the water like a sponge. Then the temperature dropped, and the now heavy snow crusted with ice. Melted snow encased branches and hardened into stalactites that hung like rows of daggers from even the smallest branches. The trees tipped and sagged under the weight. It wasn’t long before I began hearing the cracks, loud as gunshots and just as sudden, that signaled the destruction of my little forest. Not just my forest, of course, all of them for miles and miles around.
This was the second ice storm I have seen here. We still talk about the ’96 storm as if it were yesterday but now, 15 years later, it was happening again. In ’96 I slept with my head under a pile of pillows so I wouldn’t have to hear the trees break, although I could still feel the ground shake when a particularly big one bit the dust. This time was no different. And both times, when the sun rose the next morning and I peered out the window, I was heartbroken at the scene.
This time was actually worse. Hedges we spent years tending were flattened. Trees we had watered and trimmed and cared for broke like matchsticks. A particularly elegant Leyland cypress that I see out my kitchen window snapped in two about twenty feet up—the rest of it landed in the driveway.
Behind the house and up the hill the forest floor is a crisscross of wood—huge trunks and tiny twigs piled in impenetrable snags. My five-minute walk to the upper hives took just under an hour and a half as I tried to find a way through the masses of limbs lying on the steep slope over two feet of snow. We estimate we lost 200-300 trees, most of them broken fairly high up, so the trunks still have to be taken down—months of work ahead.
The sad thing for the bees is that the hardwoods fared the worst. We lost mostly alder, maple, bitter cherry, cascara, Indian plum, and saskatoon—all the trees the bees visit for pollen and nectar. The softwoods did better. Douglas-fir, Frasier fir, western red cedar, deodar cedar, incense cedar, hemlock, black pine, ponderosa pine, Colorado spruce, and most of the Leyland cypresses did fine, but they have little to offer the bees. So very sad.
Oddly enough, none of our buildings or beehives was hit. The irony, of course, is that the building are insured, the trees are not. And I can fix a building, whereas I can’t fix a tree that is broken in two.
So there you have it—the story of my week. I’m trying to look at the positive side. We have sunlight where we never had it before. We have room to plant more trees. We have firewood for years and years to come. As for the bees, they will just have to fly further and work harder. Such is life.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
 My path to the hives.
 My favorite Leyland cypress
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Thank you for visiting Honey Bee Suite. I want to mention that, following an unusual winter storm, I just braved a week of no electricity, no running water, no flush toilets, no propane heat, no telephone, and most importantly, no Internet connection. Ouch. All of which explains (I hope) why I haven’t posted or answered e-mails and comments for the last seven days. My in-box is scary looking.
So my plan for today, between washing mounds of laundry and dishes, catching up on e-bills, and shoveling dirt from everywhere (dirt happens when you live like a caveman), is to start answering your questions.
Please bear with me while I catch up. Every single one of my readers is important to me and I will try to keep you happy.
Cheers,
Rusty
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A number of years ago my daughter and I went on a pie trip. I had just read American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads by Pascale Le Draoulec, then I sent it to my daughter who also read it. At the same instant we knew what we would do.
It just so happened that she was getting ready to move from Louisiana to Washington, and I was going to fly out to meet her and help drive her car (and stuff) back here. I had always wanted to visit the southeast—not just fly over it—and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. We planned to take the long route home, visit the rural south, and eat pie at every opportunity.
It turned out to be one of the best trips of my life, even though it was totally cramped and highly caloric. Once all her stuff was packed in the car, along with sleeping bags, tent, and other camping gear, I had a little pocket of space in the front seat where I just barely fit if I didn’t move (or eat) too much. To save money we planned to camp every second night, so all the camping gear was a necessary inconvenience that allowed us to spend more days on the road.
We ate pie at virtually every meal. We each ordered different kinds and split them so we could sample as many as possible. Sometimes we ordered additional pieces “to go” and stuffed them in the glove box for later—or for breakfast the next morning. (Glove box pie is something you learn about in the book along with dumpster pie, which is self-explanatory.) I had pieces of pie wedged in the cup holders, balanced atop my camera bag, secured in folds of the tent, and tucked under the seat. Chocolate pies, berry pies, cream pies, caramel pies, crumb pies, nut pies, and awful pies. You name it, we tried it. We’d sit in our sleeping bags on frosty mornings and tuck into the decadent slices, dissing a few, inhaling some, making notes.
I’d all but forgotten about this hedonistic trip until I started writing about honey varieties last year. Now I’ve got this recurring thought: I’ve got to take a honey trip. When I realized how site-specific so many honey varieties are, I began to think that driving around the country to collect them from their source would be the ideal trip. Not only could you collect honey, but you could talk to beekeepers, see the local flora, take photos, and get a true feel for the honey’s origin.
In decades gone by you would frequently see hand-lettered signs along the road advertising “Honey for Sale.” Many of these places had self-serve stands where you dropped your money in a tin can and selected your jar of honey. Some sold vegetables as well. Some sold eggs. Those tiny venders are not so common any more, but I’m sure I could find local honey if I put my mind to it and stayed on America’s back roads.
The honey trip is coalescing in the back of mind. What an ideal thing for a blogger to do: all that tasting, visiting, and writing dispatches “on location.” Hmm. Sounds like heaven. Anyone up for a trip?
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
 Honey for Sale. Flickr photo by Selena N. B. H. - Share with other humans:
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Recently a friend pointed out that the popularity of beekeeping ebbs and flows in a big way. The fluctuation is caused not by commercial beekeepers but by hobbyists and side-liners who tend to segue in and out of the hobby with the fad of the day. The previous big surge in beekeeping occurred in the 1970s after books like Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé focused attention on our food supply, and legislation such as the Endangered Species Act highlighted problems with our environment.
Today’s surge in beekeepers can be almost directly linked to colony collapse disorder. CCD focused attention not only on honey bees, but on native pollinators and other food supply issues such as pesticides and industrial farming. I say “almost” because other food and environmental imperatives pre-dated colony collapse disorder, among them outbreaks of e-coli 0157:H7, mad-cow disease, and salmonella in eggs.
Nevertheless I agree with my friend that the popularity of beekeeping will peak, then die off as some new environmental issue snares public attention. Her point (I think) was that I should be prepared to have something else to write about and perhaps what I’m doing here is all for naught.
However, I don’t see it that way. I think Colony Collapse Disorder—whether it actually exists or not—has done enormous good because it captured the public’s attention and focused it on creatures that have gone largely unnoticed. People who knew nothing about pollination or crop production became aware of the interplay between humans, bugs, and the food on our tables. Others learned that there was something to be treasured about stinging insects . . . that not all that buzzes should be banned . . . and that life as we know it depends on bees. How can that be bad?
Colony collapse disorder served as a wake-up call, a warning that things are not right in the world of industrial farming. A huge influx of hobby beekeepers will not, by themselves, save the honey bee—but a surge of public awareness might. Groups all over the country are pouring money into pollination research, bee breeding programs, pesticide inquiries, and alternative farming practices. This is the type of action that may ultimately solve—or at least ameliorate—the pollination problem facing us today and in the future.
As for me? I’ll always have something to write about.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
 Thoughts for a winter day. - Share with other humans:
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Experienced beekeepers frequently talk about brood pattern. But what is a brood pattern and how do you tell a good one from a bad one?
A brood pattern is nothing more than the place where the queen laid her eggs. Simply put, the brood pattern is the shape of the brood nest. The queen lays her eggs altogether in a group, and the group has a characteristic shape that we call the brood pattern. It is easiest to see when the brood are capped with wax, but an experienced beekeeper can see the pattern even when the brood are in the egg or larval stage.
The capped brood are usually in the center of the frames, and since the cluster is more or less spherical, so is the brood nest. On cold days or nights, the cluster of bees is able to keep all the brood warm since the brood pattern mimics the shape of the cluster.
When you look at one frame you are seeing a slice of the brood nest. Think of a round loaf of bread. If you cut it in parallel slices, the pieces on the outside are smallest. As you get closer to the center of the loaf, the slices get larger and larger. After the largest slice, they begin to get smaller again.
It is the same with your brood pattern. The frames on the edges will have less brood than the frames on the middle, and the very biggest will be in the center. The bees usually store a layer of pollen around the brood nest, and above the pollen–and perhaps to the side of it–they store honey. Drone brood is often found along the bottom or the sides of the worker brood.
A slice (frame) taken from the center of the nest is often described as a rainbow–a layered arc consisting of brood, pollen, and honey. The nest is not always dead center in the middle of the hive, but it may be. Photos of good brood patterns are often so perfect that the beginning beekeeper thinks something is wrong with his bees. I’ve included a photo below that shows a pattern that you’re more likely to see–good, but not picture perfect.
Another important aspect of brood pattern relates to the number of empty cells. Some empty cells are normal and may even be used to warm the brood. But the brood cells should not be random or scattered; cappings should be uniformly brown or tan and not sunken. Too many holes in the pattern may indicate an old or failing queen, or they may indicate disease, or they may indicate a colony not large enough to care for all the brood. It is for these reasons that beekeepers use the overall look of the brood pattern as a measure of colony health.
The photo below shows a foundationless frame, not completely drawn out. The brood nest is skewed toward the front of the hive, but you can see that the pattern is solid with only a few empties. Pollen is stored in the uncapped cells on the perimeter of the brood nest and honey is stored in the upper corners. At the bottom of the brood nest is a spattering of drone cells. Although this frame doesn’t have a textbook pattern, it is obviously from a thriving colony. With a little practice, you will be able to identify a good pattern when you see one.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
 Brood pattern on a foundationless frame. Flickr photo by Maja Dumat. - Share with other humans:
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At least not in the way we’d like. In the past few years a flood of articles has heralded native pollinators as “saviors”—groups of selfless, tireless, seldom-seen gladiators that are going to step in and save our food supply once the honey bees die off.
This is a comforting thought, and perhaps one day native pollinators will shoulder the bulk of our pollination needs—but it won’t happen within our current system of agriculture. It can’t. Successful transition to native pollinators will require nothing short of a complete overall of our current farming system.
If you read about the biology and ecology of wild pollinators, you will see they can be very efficient in terms of the number of flowers pollinated per minute. So efficient, in fact, that you wonder why the heck we ever started using honey bees. But as you dig deeper, you will also see they have very different life cycles and habitat requirements.
Some native pollinators will forage only a few hundred yards from their homes while honey bees will easily cover a three-mile radius—even more if resources are scarce. Some native pollinators visit only one plant species, or several, while honey bees pollinate hundreds. Some native pollinators are active only a few weeks of the year while a honey bee colony will forage any time the weather permits. Most native pollinators live singly or in small groups while honey bees live in massive colonies. The list goes on.
In the “old days,” let’s say before the end of WWII, people who kept honey bees kept them for honey. And if you didn’t keep bees, you didn’t worry about pollination. In fact, no one paid any attention to pollinators because there was no shortage. A farmer planted a field, the pollinators did their thing, and a crop was harvested. Short-lived, picky pollinators weren’t a problem because there were hundreds of different kinds. There was always one or a dozen other species to pick up where the last one left off.
But the Green Revolution changed how we farm and, before long, there weren’t enough native pollinators to do the job. The fields were too big, the habitat was too scarce, and pesticides were everywhere. As farms got bigger and more mechanized, honey bees had to be trucked in along with other forms of migrant labor.
Even the people who are currently studying native pollinators concede that without significant changes, native bees might supplement—but not supplant—honey bees. Some experts estimate that up to 30% of the farmland would have to be converted to bee habitat. Hedgerows, borders, and habitat strips would have to be interspersed with crops. This reserved land would need to remain un-tilled and be planted with large numbers of flowering plants so that something was always in bloom.
Thing is, even with all those resources devoted to wild species, it might not be enough. We would have to change pesticide practices, stop poisoning roadside weeds, and eliminate larger-than-life fields. We would have to become stewards—rather than pillagers—of the land.
I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from keeping a hive of honey bees or tacking a bee block to a fencepost. But even thousands of them won’t assure a future food supply. To do that we must change the way we farm—from endless rows of monoculture to GMOs to weed control—it all has to be fixed. Native pollinators can’t save us unless we save them first. Care of pollinators needs to be job one.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
 Bumble bee on ceoanthus. - Share with other humans:
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For short term storage, queen bees can be kept in a banking frame. This is a simple device made by installing a horizontal bar into a regular frame, creating a space that is just large enough to hold your queen cages. The banking frame can be used for up to about three weeks. Queens kept longer than that should be released into a nuc so they can develop normally.
The key to successfully banking queens is to install the frame in a queenless colony or in a queenright colony above a queen excluder. In addition, the frames should be constantly supplied with newly hatched nurse bees to care for the queens. In a queenless colony, you will have to provide a steady supply of ready-to-hatch brood from another source. Individual cages should not contain attendants—just the queen.
Banking is a good option if you are raising queens for sale, if you have an oversupply of queens in your own apiary, or if you are experiencing a long stretch of inclement weather. Remember, though, that the host colony must be strong, well-fed, disease-free, and have a good supply of sealed brood.
The banking frame shown below holds the cages vertically and works fine for a small number of queens. Alternatively, you can build a frame with multiple bars that hold the cages horizontally—sort of like bees in a pantry. The horizontal arrangement can hold many queens but, remember, you must have a supply of newly hatched nurse bees large enough to care for all those queens. Consider the colony strength when deciding how many queens to bank in a single hive.
Even though I made the opening in my banking frames just large enough to hold the queen cages, over time they still sag in the middle. If the cages are too loose they can fall out, especially when you are first installing them in a hive. In a few days they will be firmly propolized in place but, until then, be careful not to drop a cage. Sagging of the horizontal bar can be prevented by fastening the center cage in place, or by installing a vertical support piece.
Also, although queen cages are basically the same size, they differ radically from one manufacturer to the next. If your cages come from multiple sources, you may need to build slightly different frames for each type. Even cages from the same source may be slightly different lengths, so the banking frame often requires a little tinkering to get it right. Banking frames can be made from any size frames, depending on the size of equipment you use—deeps or mediums are the most common, but a shallow frame would work as well.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite
 Banking frame, shown with two queen cages, will easily hold eight or ten. The vertical supports are for stability and to prevent sagging. - Share with other humans:
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Carrot honey is indeed unusual—unusual because domesticated carrots, Daucus carota, are a biennial crop that develop their famous taproots during the first summer of growth. When you want to grow a carrot, you buy a seed, plant it, harvest the carrot two or three months later, and never see a carrot flower. So how do you get carrot honey?
To get carrot honey you have to find a seed grower—a farmer who grows carrots for the express purpose of harvesting their seeds at the end of the plant’s second year of life. And what better place to find a seed farmer than in Oregon?
Oregon is famous for seed production. The Willamette Valley produces most of the grass seed grown in the United States, as well as seeds for many vegetables and herbs. Other parts of Oregon also grow seed, and the carrot honey I tasted came from Madras, an agricultural community in central Oregon. I’m told that carrot seed is not grown in the Willamette Valley because the crop tends to out-cross freely with wild carrot (Queen Anne’s Lace), a plant that is plentiful in that local area.
Although carrots are readily pollinated by wild insects including bees, wasps, and various flies, vast acreages of carrot flowers need the help of honey bees or mason bees to get a reliable seed set. The bonus for the beekeeper is a crop of rare honey.
Carrot honey has a dark amber color with an aroma reminiscent of chocolate. The taste is strong with a bite to it—a sharp spike in an otherwise earthy, caramel flavor. I also detected a “grassy” aftertaste, not quite like foraging on a meadow, but something close to that. This honey would be intriguing in any recipe where you want the taste of the honey to shine through. It would also complement a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. But even if you prefer your honey straight up, don’t miss this one; it is a different experience and a must-try for your life list.
Since I was tasting while writing, I’m now seriously stuck to the keyboard—a sweet occupational hazard. While I clean up this mess you should consider giving carrot honey a try. My sample came from Flying Bee Ranch in Salem, Oregon.
Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite.com
 The wild carrot is closely related to the cultivated one. Photo by Vera Buhl. - Share with other humans:
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Copyright Unless otherwise noted, all text and images used on HoneyBeeSuite.com are copyright Rusty Burlew 2010-2011 and may not be used without permission.
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