Honey Bee Suite » honey bee biology

Demaree demystified

Rusty — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:21:31 +0000

The Demaree method of swarm control was first published in the late 1800s and has evolved since. When using the Demaree method, the beekeeper separates the queen from most of the brood by manipulating the frames and a using a queen excluder. The result is a hive with little congestion and lots of room for the queen to lay. In essence, the hive “believes” it has already swarmed.

Here are the basic steps:

Remove the hive from the hive stand, leaving only the screened bottom board and slatted rack (if you are using one).
Above that, place a brood box filled with empty drawn comb.
Remove the center two frames of drawn comb and set aside.
Go back to the active brood boxes and find the queen.
Place the queen and two frames of sealed brood in the center of the new brood box.
Place a queen excluder above this box.
Above the queen excluder, place one or more empty honey supers and then the original brood box where you found the queen. Push the brood nest together in the center and put the two empty drawn frames (from step 3) on either end of the box.
Add your inner cover and telescoping lid.
After one week, go through the top brood box and remove any swarm cells.
If necessary, the entire procedure may be repeated after 9 or 10 days.

Lid

Inner cover

Brood box with sealed and unsealed brood

Honey super

Queen excluder

Brood box with drawn frames, 2 frames sealed brood, and queen

Hive stand with bottom board and slatted rack

Now that you have the hive set up, this is what happens:

The nurse bees stay with the brood and care for it.

The field force continues to forage for honey and pollen.

The queen continues to lay eggs and has lots of places to do so.

This situation is much like a hive that has already swarmed. The major difference is that both parts are in the same box. However,

As soon as the queen scent decreases in the top box, the bees will try to raise a queen from young larvae.

You may destroy these cells or remove them to a nuc.

After the brood hatches, the brood cells will be backfilled with honey.

In the end, the hive will not have swarmed, so it will contain lots of bees and lots of honey.

The growing hive may once again develop the urge to swarm, which is why a second Demaree is often needed.

The Demaree method can be quite effective at swarm control, but as you can see, it is quite labor intensive. It involves a lot of manipulation, good opportunities to lose or damage your queen, and a lot of heavy lifting. On the other hand, not only can you prevent swarming, but you can obtain some queen cells in the process.

One more important point: When you set up the Demaree hive, be sure to remove any swarm cells that are already present. Any cell not removed may hatch and cause a problem within the hive.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

How to open the brood nest

Rusty — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:32:55 +0000

Now that I covered checkerboarding as a swarm control strategy, I want to at least mention a practice called “opening the brood nest.” This is a technique where empty frames are placed between frames of brood. Many people confuse checkerboarding with opening the brood nest. The important distinction is that checkerboarding is done above the brood nest and does not disturb it. On the other hand, “opening the brood nest”—sometimes called “spreading the brood”—disrupts the integrity of the nest.

Here are the basic steps:

At the first sign of new white wax on or near the top bars you can begin.
Remove one of the frames near the middle of the brood nest. It should fill with festooning bees within about five minutes. If it doesn’t, it’s too soon to open the nest because there aren’t enough bees to repair it.
Assuming the empty space fills with festooning bees, return the frame to the same position.
Take an outside frame (one with no brood) out of the box, and push the remaining frames to the side, leaving the empty slot near the middle of the brood nest.
Put a new foundationless frame in the empty slot. The bees will now direct their energy to building new comb and filling in the brood nest rather than swarming.

Other considerations:

Depending on the strength of the hive, one or maybe two foundationless frames can be added to the brood box. Each empty frame must have filled brood comb on either side of it.

If there is already brood on all the frames, the frames of brood you remove may be centered in a second brood box directly above the first.

To be successful, you may have to re-open the nest and add frames every week or so throughout swarm season. Far from being a one-time manipulation, it requires constant monitoring.

Timing is everything with this technique. It must be done before the swarm impulse begins or it is completely ineffective. On the other hand, if you do it too soon you can chill the brood. When the nest is split up—and it will be for a period of time—it takes more bees to keep the brood warm. An unexpected cold night soon after spreading the nest could devastate the colony.

Just for the record, I do not like opening the brood nest for swarm control. I believe strongly that the integrity of the nest should be maintained. As I stated earlier, swarm control measures work by weakening the hive in some way. By changing the architecture of the nest, you are interfering with the bees’ judgment about what is best for the colony—and you are doing it repeatedly. So if you decide to try it, do so with caution: read colony strength carefully and pay close attention to the weather.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Pull out a frame of brood to test for festooning. Flickr photo by Justin Leonard.

Swarm sense

Rusty — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:44:21 +0000

The conversation begins like this, “I’m a new beekeeper with a quick question. How do I keep my bees from swarming?” Then, even before the paroxysms of laughter, snorting, and choking die down, an officious, self-important beekeeper proclaims, “My bees don’t swarm because I keep them content and happy.” Wow, where do I begin?

I want to say, “Look around! What do you see besides seven billion humans?” Cats, rats, and mice tuck behind every garbage pail. Ants spill from your foundation. Termites dine on your sill plates. Mites suck bee blood. Bacteria vie for space in your gut and Occupy your kitchen sink. Weeds rend cracks in your driveway and ravage your garden. Reproduction happens, babe. Every living thing has the drive to reproduce itself. Why should bees be any different?

“How do I keep my bees from swarming?” is like asking, “How do I keep my [pick one: dog, cat, guppy, kid] from reproducing?” There are ways, of course, but the ways involve interference with a natural process. You can neuter your dog or cat. You can feed pills to your daughter or supply your son with condoms. You can tear apart your brood nest, split your hive, or cut swarm cells. Even checkerboarding interferes with the colony’s perception of its own strength.

Am I saying you shouldn’t do those things? Not at all. I’m saying that you will have a better chance of succeeding if you understand the reproductive imperative. Remember, when you try to prevent a swarm, you try to stop what a colony has an irrepressible urge to do. Swarmy bees are acting according to specs, working as designed. No manufacturer recall is needed.

That said, as beekeepers we want to prevent swarms. We want our bees to work for us, we want large strong colonies, we want to curb home invasions and spare children and old folks from marauding insects. So we try to prevent what nature is hell-bent on doing. It’s a little like building levees along the Mississippi or tsunami walls in Japan—it all works to a point.

The guy who says his bees don’t swarm because they are happy is naïve . . . and usually condescending. His words imply that your bees are unhappy and you are a bad beekeeper. BS. If all bees were as happy as his bees, the species would quickly go extinct.

I don’t believe bees experience happiness or lack thereof, but let’s use that language for a moment. Do you believe an animal is happier if it is neutered? Most pet owners swear their neutered pets are “happy and content.” Most humans want the same thing, yet they don’t get neutered in the pursuit of happiness. And a simple vasectomy or tubal ligation doesn’t prevent the reproductive urge any more than clipping a wing.

But reasonable management is not a bad thing, even if we wouldn’t go there ourselves. As humans, we can manage our animals and have compassion at the same time. My own pets are spoiled beyond measure and, yes, they are neutered and I am not. My point is simply that to be a successful beekeeper, you need to look at your colony through the eyes of a biologist, not a family therapist. Lose the idea that you must make your bees “happy” to keep them from swarming.

To prevent swarming you must interfere with the course of nature. Most swarm prevention measures weaken the colony in some way, lessening its bee-ness just as neutering your dog lessens his dog-ness. That’s okay as long as you realize that preventing reproduction enhances your goals—not the goals of bees or dogs or guppies—and not the goals of nature.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Swarm in a tree. Flickr photo by Frederick Knapp.

How to checkerboard a hive

Rusty — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:47:36 +0000

Before I explain how to do it, I want to repeat that checkerboarding is done above the brood nest. You do not disturb the brood nest in the process. Checkerboarding is often confused with opening the brood nest, pyramiding, or unlimited brood nest management—all of which are different, and all of which I will describe later.

The following applies only to checkerboarding:

When:

Checkerboarding is done in the early spring before the bees begin swarm preparations. Since there is no disturbance to the brood nest, many beekeepers like to do it as early as possible. In any case, it needs to be completed before the expanding brood nest starts to contract due to backfilling.

Where:

Checkerboarding is done in the two supers that are directly above the brood nest. The boxes may be of any size—but they should be the same size.

What:

Alternate frames of honey are removed from one box and replaced with frames of drawn empty comb. For example, in your first super you may remove frames 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 (which are all full of honey) and replace them with frames of empty drawn comb. When you’re done, the even-numbered slots have honey, and the odd-numbered slots are empty.

You take the frames of honey you just took out of the first super and put them in the second super in the same position they had before, that is, in position 1, 3, 5, 7, And 9. This time, the even-numbered spots have frames of empty drawn comb, and the odd-numbered slots are full of honey. When stacked atop one another, the boxes look like this from the side:

Full	Empty	Full	Empty	Full	Empty	Full	Empty	Full	Empty
Empty	Full	Empty	Full	Empty	Full	Empty	Full	Empty	Full

Why:

Checkerboarding breaks up the solid band of honey that rings the top of the brood nest. This band of honey signals the bees that winter preparations are complete and it’s time to swarm. When the band is interrupted, more storage areas are exposed, and the bees defer swarming until the empty spaces are filled. Eventually, optimal swarming conditions pass and the colony may not swarm at all (see Checkerboarding).

How:

In my opinion, checkerboarding is easiest when you overwinter in three brood boxes. By early spring, the brood nest is usually in the middle box, with a box full of honey above and an empty box below. You can just put the brood box on the bottom and use the other two boxes to checkerboard. Your extracting supers can go above the checkerboarded boxes.

You can also checkerboard without three brood boxes, as long as you have a box of honey and a box of drawn comb to use for setting up the checkerboard.

Variations:

The original checkerboarding model used only empty drawn frames between the frames of honey—and the purists still do. Many beekeepers, however, have had good results using frames of undrawn foundation or even foundationless frames.

If a colony does not span the entire box, you can just checkerboard the middle frames, say 3 through 8, and leave the end frames alone.

Results:

Done properly and at the right time, checkerboarding will

Prevent swarming
Increase hive population
Produce a larger crop of honey
Eliminate the need for invasive swarm-control manipulations
Prepare the hive for winter without supplementary feed

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Checkerboarding: the X-files of beekeeping

Rusty — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:06:58 +0000

A discussion of checkerboarding gets men all riled up. And I don’t mean “men” as a pronoun for all genders, I mean male humans. Come on, you’ve never seen a group of women all vexed and loquacious over checkerboarding. It doesn’t happen.

Furthermore, checkerboarding induces these self-same men to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. They make up new vocabulary, talk in cryptic terms about bloom dates and nectar flows, and schedule manipulations based on the number of weeks before other things might happen. They write in long dense paragraphs about what the bees are thinking—“colony awareness”—and how the bees “perceive” the changes you’ve made to their colony. Worse, they maintain bees can be “fooled.” I seriously doubt it.

All of Walt Wright’s original papers about checkerboarding—also known as nectar management—can be found online. Also, the various bee forums have endless discussions (I’ve heard these called wrestling matches) about checkerboarding. For anyone so inclined, I urge you to read these.

But if you want it simple, the theory of checkerboarding goes like this:

Every colony has two objectives. The secondary objective is survival of the species, otherwise known as reproduction. The primary objective is survival of the individual colony.

This is no different than any other living thing and is especially apparent when you think of a bee colony as a superorganism. Animals, plants, protists, or whatever all need to survive themselves in order that they may reproduce. It is the way of nature. It is not rocket science.

So, first and foremost, your colony takes care of itself. If it becomes strong enough and large enough, it will then swarm and produce another colony. But the final decision on whether or not to swarm is based on conditions in the hive. One of those conditions is the amount of food that is stored above the brood nest.

Checkerboarding changes the configuration of the “pantry” above the brood nest, which causes the bees to postpone swarming. Since reproduction is secondary to self-preservation, this really works. The bees delay swarm prep in order to clean up the mess in the pantry. Done properly, checkerboarding can greatly increase honey production and defer or prevent swarming altogether.

Most authors say that checkerboarding “fools” the bees into thinking that not enough food has been stored, so they keep storing more. But I don’t believe bees are fools. Thing is, you have gone into their hive and changed their storage system into a configuration they don’t like. They won’t leave until it’s fixed so they keep storing more honey in an effort to restore the configuration. That’s not being fooled, that’s being stubborn. They won’t swarm till the job’s done right.

By taking advantage of this stubbornness, you can harvest extra-large quantities of honey and keep those bees working for you instead of winging over to your neighbor’s swarm trap. In addition, you get to head into winter with a large and robust colony.

Many misconceptions surround checkerboarding. The most common one is that it interferes with the brood nest. It does not. Checkerboarding is performed in the honey storage areas above the brood nest, not in the brood rearing areas, so it is an excellent and non-invasive swarm management technique.

Next time I will review some of the more obscure checkerboarding vocabulary—important to beekeepers if not to bees—and take a look at how checkerboarding is done.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

X-Files Season IV Episode 3 "Home"

Backfilling the brood nest

Rusty — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:26:27 +0000

In everyday English, to “backfill” means to refill. So if you want to plant a bush, bury a conduit, or repair a water main, you dig a hole, do what you have to do, and then put the dirt back in. Simple enough. The meaning is only slightly different in beekeeping, but different enough to be confusing.

In beekeeping, backfilling refers to filling an empty brood cell with honey or sometimes pollen. In other words, a cell that previously held one or more generations of developing bees, is now used to store food.

This may occur at different times of year. For example, in the fall when the colony has finished drone rearing, the drone cells may be filled with honey. There are several good reasons for this: drones won’t be raised again for many months, the cells are the wrong size for workers and, since they are close to the main nest, they are convenient storage areas. A well-stocked pantry right at your finger tips—er—tarsal claws!

But there is another time when bees start backfilling . . . just before swarm season. But first, let’s back up a few weeks.

In the early spring the brood nest expands in a process that is the opposite of backfilling. As the bees use up the nectar and pollen adjacent to the brood nest, they turn those empty cells into brood-rearing cells. This allows the colony to raise many more bees—enough bees to maintain the hive and prepare for winter, as well as enough bees to swarm.

Then, as swarming time gets close, the bees begin backfilling the outermost brood cells with honey. This shrinks the nest size, which in turn decreases egg laying by the queen. It means that, after the swarm leaves, the brood nest will be small enough that the remaining bees will be able to care for it. Backfilling provides a way of scaling down the entire operation so a greatly reduced workforce can still get the job done. Ingenious!

It is important to understand the concept of backfilling if want to manage swarms. Checkerboarding—a popular but often misunderstood swarm management technique—is based on this backfilling behavior. Checkerboarding should be started at the peak of brood nest expansion, just when the nest stops getting larger and begins to shrink . . . but more on that later.

Just for the record, “backfill” can also be a noun, the name for the stuff you put in the hole, as in “They already capped the backfill.”

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Backfilling a hole with dirt. Flickr photo by Archaeobobalist.

Sipping bug juice through a straw

Rusty — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:34:43 +0000

Trophallaxis is the direct transfer of food or other fluids from one insect to another. It is especially common among the social insects such as bees, wasps, ants, and termites. In many species, including bees, trophallaxis is an important part of colony communication.

While fluids such as nectar, water, or royal jelly are being transferred between bees, important information is transferred as well. For example, workers who have licked the queen pass on some of the queenly essence to other bees during the exchange. Not only does this inform the colony that the queen is alive and well, but it also suppresses the development of ovaries in worker bees. Trophallaxis is also used to distribute information about new nectar sources or about feeding conditions inside the brood nest.

The fluid is transferred through the proboscis, a straw-like tongue used for sucking liquids and also for tasting. Although it may look smooth and uniform, the proboscis is actually quite complex, composed of several different parts. You can think of it as a tube within a tube. The outer tube is useful for sucking in large quantities of liquid such as water or honey. The smaller tube inside the larger one is used for collecting tiny amounts of liquid such as that found inside flowers. This tube is equipped with a hairy spoon-like tip that helps to mop up the small drops of nectar. The tip also has taste receptors.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, Zachary Huang, a professor of entomology at Michigan State University posted an amazing set of trophallaxis photos. He has captured images of one bee feeding one, two, three, four, and five other bees simultaneously–all of which appear to be kissing. The photos were taken in Australia (watch out for those Australians!) during one eight-minute period. Be sure to have a look. Other great bee photos by Zachary can be found throughout his website, Bee the Best.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

What is a brood pattern?

Rusty — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:57:00 +0000

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.

Captives who change allegiance

Rusty — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:40:58 +0000

Do you remember the Stockholm Syndrome? It’s a behavior seen in some hostages in which they develop sympathy for their captors, often to the point of defending them. The most famous case in America is Patty Hearst who, after being captured by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, eventually joined them and helped rob a bank.

What does this have to do with bees? Not much. But a recent discussion of robber bees reminded me of the syndrome. It seems that robber bees, if captured and held within the hive they were robbing, will eventually change allegiance and become part of that colony.

Opinions vary, but three days seems to be a number many beekeepers cite for the length of time the robbers must be held captive. This agrees with the 72 hours often cited for how long you must keep bees locked in a hive before they will perform a reorientation flight. (Beekeepers wanting to move a hive just a short distance can lock the bees in the hive and move it. When released after three days, the bees will reorient themselves to their new position.)

Several beekeepers I know of have used robbing bees to boost the population of a failing hive. Once the robbers were inside the hive, they just locked down the hive and waited for three days. By then, most of the robbing bees called the new place home and the colony population was greatly increased. One beekeeper even used a one-way bee escape over the entrance, so robbing bees that got in could not get back out.

Bees locked up like this in the heat of the summer need good ventilation and a source of water. Otherwise, there are few downside risks. Yes, there is a chance of the queen getting killed, but she may have died anyway had the robbing frenzy continued. From what I’ve heard, queens locked up with robbers usually make it.

An alternative to keeping the bees locked up for three days is to screen them in just long enough to move them several miles away. Most of the robber bees will re-orient and join the hive in the new location.

Although it is far better to avoid robbing in the first place, this is a fascinating twist on using bee behavior to your best advantage.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

How to stop robbing

Rusty — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:42:15 +0000

No matter how you do it, you must stop robbing or you may lose your colony. Robbing bees will tear open all the honey cells and clean up every last drop. Fighting between bees will kill many and, once the hive is overpowered, predators such as wasps will move in and kill any remaining bees and brood.

Robbing is most common during a nectar dearth and can often be prevented by restricting the entrance to the hives. This works because the colony has a greater chance of defending a small opening than a large one. With very weak or small colonies, however, even this may not be enough.

Robbing can be identified in several ways:

Fighting. Bees will tumble and roll—sometimes on the landing board, sometimes in the air.

Dead bees may be seen on the landing board or on the ground in front of the hive.

Robbing bees can often be seen examining all the cracks and seams in a hive, even at the back and sides.

Robbing bees are often accompanied by wasps.

Some of the bees in the fray may appear shiny and black. This appearance is created when the bees lose their hair while fighting. Both attackers and defenders may have this appearance.

Robbing bees are never carrying pollen on their legs.

Robbing bees often sway from side to side like wasps, waiting for an opportunity to enter the target hive.

Pieces of wax comb may appear on the landing board.

Robbing bees are louder than normal bees.

Because robbing bees are loaded down with honey when they leave the target hive, they often crawl up the wall before they fly away and then dip toward the ground as they take off. This may not be immediately obvious, but if you study them for a while, you can see it.

Once it starts, stopping a robbing frenzy is not easy.

Smoking will not stop robbing, but it will give you a reprieve while you close up the hive. I get the smoker going well and set it next to the hive while I work.

Reduce entrances to a very small opening. Some beekeepers stuff grass in the entrance—a technique that keeps out the robbers but allows some airflow.

If robbing is really intense, you can simply close up the hive opening with hardware cloth or screen in a size the bees cannot get through (#8 or #10 work well).

A water-saturated towel thrown over the hive confuses the robbers but allows the hive residents to come and go from underneath the towel. Evaporation from the towel keeps the hive cool.

Install a robbing screen. This device re-routes the hive residents through an alternative entrance while the robbing bees, following the scent of the hive, continue to butt into the screen.

Some beekeepers spread a commercial product such as Vicks Vaporub at the entrance to the colony. This product contains strong-smelling compounds such as camphor, eucalyptus oil, and menthol that confuse the robber bees.

Some beekeepers recommend removing the lids from all the hives in the apiary. The theory is that the bees become so busy defending their own hives that they stop robbing other hives. However, if the robber bees are coming from somewhere other than your own apiary, it won’t work. Also, it will do nothing to stop wasps and other predators from entering the hives at will.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com