Honey Bee Suite » spring management

Post-package anxiety

Rusty — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:24:16 +0000

Every time I install a new package of bees, I get post-package anxiety. It comes from thinking too much about the egregious price I just paid for a bunch of bees that, save for the queen, has a lifespan of four or five weeks.

Not only is the package doomed to fade away, but the bees have a lot to accomplish before they do all that fading. They have to accept the hive, establish it as their home, build a nest, tend to the brood, and start putting away stores. In short, they have to replace themselves inside of a month and, since there is no brood in the oven when they start, hive failure is only one mistake away.

The first thing I worry about is the queen. Is she alive? Will they accept her? Is she fertile? And will she be a decent layer? And then there’s the rest of the gang. Will they like their new home, or will they abscond the first chance they get? Will enough bees survive long enough to care for that critical first batch of brood?

Instead of becoming more relaxed with the passing years, I’ve gotten more anxious. Before I knew so many things could go wrong, I didn’t worry nearly so much. But now . . . well . . . I even invent things that might go awry.

Nineteen days ago I installed three packages, the first I’ve purchased in several years. I released the queens three days after installation and then left the colonies alone for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks I decided on an abbreviated inspection—just a quick look for brood with minimal disruption.

That brief look turned into one of those joyous moments in beekeeping. In each hive I saw brood all the way to the frame edges and solid as rocket fuel. What a sight! The hive populations are set to explode in the next two weeks and there are still many bees from the original packages. I have never seen so many frames of brood come together so fast.

Are they as anxious as I?

So what did I do differently? The answer is honey. I had many, many frames of honey on hand, so I started each package on five frames of drawn comb sandwiched between five frames of honey. I was really excited about the prospect of not having to make syrup, which is why I did it, but I never imagined it would have such an impact on the bees.

Now that I’m thinking about it, of course their feed would affect their performance. Honey is designed to be the perfect bee diet and has much more to offer than syrup. It’s full of vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals and flavonoids. It has a flawless balance of sugar types. It has flavor and aroma. It has the ideal amount of stickiness and the perfect amount of water. No doubt I have made a great discovery . . . honey is good for bees!

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Doing the Mississippi splits

Rusty — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:54:46 +0000

I’ve described many types of splits in the past, including:

Walkaway splits

Swarm control splits

Cut-down splits

Shook swarm splits

But now, of course, someone wants to know about Mississippi splits. I have to say, I just love that phrase. It has rhythm. To me it sounds like a dance, an ice skating trick, or a dessert. I want to do the Mississippi splits just so I can hear myself say it.

So what is it really? Like any of the splits listed above, a Mississippi split is the division of a colony. It is a way to increase the number of colonies you have by selecting a large colony and dividing it into smaller nucleus colonies.

Besides increasing your colony count or replacing winter losses, splitting also provides a measure of swarm control, interferes with the Varroa mite reproductive cycle, and encourages queen production. It provides an opportunity to rotate bees onto fresh foundation and a means to accumulate fresh comb for replacement. In addition, it creates easy-to-move units for sale or for transfer to other bee yards.

How many kinds of splits exist? I’d say the number is limited only by the number of beekeepers making them. Each beekeeper has a unique method that uses slightly different population criteria, timing, equipment, or philosophy. Inevitably, some of these techniques become so popular or so publicized that they get named. However, it is important to remember that honey bees, adaptable creatures that they are, can pretty much handle any type of split—the named variations are much more important to the keeper than to the bee.

The name Mississippi split was given to a technique developed by commercial beekeeper Richard Adee who overwintered his bees in that state. Adee divided each of his mature two-box colonies into four nucs, giving each one equal parts of the brood, honey, and pollen, then filling the extra space with empty frames. Each unit was then given a queen cell and left alone until the new queen was mated. This technique is also referred to as an “equal split” or a “poor man’s split.”

But again, don’t put too much stock in the name. After all, this is not much different from any other popular split and the names are interchangeable depending on the person. Remember that the principles of colony division and population increase remain the same in spite of variations in technique.

But still, I can’t get it out of my mind. The idea of a Mississippi split makes me feel like dancing . . .

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

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.

Must I feed a new package of bees?

Rusty — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:11:13 +0000

This is a new beekeeper question—and a very good one. If you install your bees on drawn comb with a good supply of honey, you probably don’t need to feed. But if you are installing that package on fresh-from-the-box woodenware, read on.

Picture this. You and your many sisters are scooped up by a gigantic, flightless, hairy malcontent and put into a wooden crate with a nasty stepmother who is locked in a cage next to you. Her perfume reeks. Your box is shipped halfway across the country in the back of a giant truck with hundreds of other such receptacles. You’re given some watery syrup to keep you alive. You sip this half-heartedly and even share it with the nasty stepmother as you and yours are jostled around in the airless, dark, smelly container. It’s hard to hang on as you sway this way and that. Some of you fall off and die.

Eventually, after changing vehicles a few times, you are sprayed with cold syrup (that’s right, you get sprayed with your dinner) and then dumped in a large two-story box with wooden frames hanging like empty picture frames on parallel clotheslines. What gives?

Over the next few days you become accustomed to your nasty stepmother who no longer seems so nasty. In fact, she’s really not bad at all . . . even her perfume is becoming tolerable. You groom her, feed her, and keep her warm as best you can through the odd screened cage. Then one day the hairy malcontent throws off your roof, lets in the cold air, and releases your stepmother. It’s all so hard to comprehend.

Now pay close attention. The days are balmy, plants are growing, and you are working your asses off trying to build a nursery, bring in supplies, feed the family, take care of the babies, and get ready for the coming winter. But there isn’t enough food for everyone. Some family members are hunting all day long, bringing home everything they can find, but it’s not enough. It’s not sufficient for a family that started out with nothing in the pantry, especially when they first had to build the pantry. Some of your siblings are exhausted from overwork; the weakest ones are falling dead. The family is shrinking. Step mom is pregnant, but there’s not enough food to raise all the kids. Things are looking bleak. What you really need is a food bank.

Then one day the hairy malcontent returns, more malcontent than ever because his high-priced box of creatures is disappearing. He has brought a companion—also hairy but definitely quicker on the uptake—who installs a temporary food bank just above the nursery. You and your siblings give thanks—with this little boost to your diet you will be able to “catch up.” You will be able to get that nursery completed, the furniture installed, the kids fed . . . and maybe convince step mom to raise some sons. And if you’re lucky, you will be able to fill the pantry before winter.

So to all you first-time beekeepers out there, the short answer is “yes”—feed that new package of bees. You will be glad you did.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite.com

Creatures in a box. This could be you! Flickr photo by Joe DeLuca.

The perils of spring

Rusty — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 20:45:40 +0000

While it is natural to sigh with relief when spring finally rolls around, in truth, spring is one of the hardest seasons for both bees and beekeepers.

Spring colonies that have overwintered face a particularly daunting set of circumstances. For example:

By spring, the number of individuals in a colony is greatly reduced compared to the previous fall. Fewer bees are available to perform the many colony chores, including keeping the brood nest warm.

Bees weakened by cold are more susceptible to disease. Since there are few bees to keep the colony warm, the chance of disease rises.

If the colony is infected with mites, the mites are concentrated within a smaller population of bees, so the chance of a mite-vectored viral infection is high.

Food stores—both honey and pollen—are low so poor nutrition, or even starvation, is always a possibility.

Bees weakened by poor nutrition are also more susceptible to disease. So as the winter progresses into spring, the bees are more likely to succumb to a pathogen.

Many of the bees are old, having lived through the entire winter. These bees are not as strong or resilient as young bees.

Moisture may have built up during the winter. A wet or damp hive is a haven for various fungal infections, such as chalkbrood disease. In addition, water dripping onto the cluster may chill or kill the bees.

The bees may not have defecated in a very long time, increasing the likelihood of dysentery.

Not only does dysentery weaken the bees, but feces deposited within the hive can become a breeding ground for bacteria and other pathogens which may also weaken or kill the bees.

So don’t relax too soon. Help your colonies along until their populations are once again overflowing the hives.

Rusty

Use caution when removing entrance reducers

Rusty — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:22:01 +0000

During these first warm and sunny days of spring, the bees literally climb over each other to get in and out of their tiny entrance. You’ve got the urge to remove the entire entrance reducer so they have plenty of room to move about. But be careful.

Pollen is usually in good supply before nectar and, until the nectar starts flowing, your bees are collecting mostly pollen—and craving a source of carbohydrates. If the entrance reducers are removed too soon, stronger colonies may take the opportunity to rob the weaker colonies of any honey they have left. If you see a great crowd of airborne bees in front of a weak hive, this may be what is happening.

So until nectar is plentiful, keep the entrance reducers on the weaker hives, and fully open only those you know to be strong and populous. After nectar becomes more available, the weaker colonies will expand and soon be able to defend their hives. At that point, you can enlarge their entrances or remove the reducers altogether.

Rusty

What vitamins should I give to my bees?

Rusty — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 01:45:06 +0000

I am in no way an expert on honey bee nutrition. But in the past few years—especially since the advent of colony collapse disorder—many knowledgeable people have been studying bee nutrition under the theory that healthier bees are better able to withstand the onslaught of diseases and environmental stresses that face them. In my opinion this is an excellent line of inquiry. Living things in general do better when they are well fed.

Like most animals, honey bees need a variety of carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, vitamins, and minerals for optimum health. In nature, bees get the majority of their carbohydrates from nectar (honey) and the other components come mostly from pollen. Pollens vary in their nutritional composition, but since honey bees normally consume many different types of pollen, they are able to meet their nutritional requirements.

Trouble can occur in the hive at the end of winter when food stored the past summer is largely depleted. For this reason, beekeepers often feed pollen substitutes in the early spring. Since a full complement of amino acids (the substances that make up protein) is required to produce brood, feeding pollen substitutes in spring can help colonies get off to a good start.

Many companies now produce pollen substitutes that can be made into patties, mixed with syrup, or fed dry. Each product has been designed with a slightly different profile of the essential nutrients, but I am in no position to say which is best. I would probably trust any of the commercial preparations.

In the past, I have always fed pollen patties in the early spring and, in general, they have been poorly received. Usually they were only partly eaten before they dried into hockey pucks and I tossed them out. This year, in place of pollen patties, I decided to experiment with making hard candy enriched with pollen substitute.

The first time I put the pollen-enriched cakes in the hives I also put in some leftover plain candy cakes—I just wanted to use them up. So in each hive I put one plain candy cake and one candy cake fortified with pollen substitute. A week later when I checked the hives, I was amazed to find the pollen-fortified cakes gone and the plain ones still there. Obviously, there was something in there the bees wanted.

I have repeated this three times in the last month. My bees just love the stuff and I’m very curious to see how they do as spring approaches.

Hard candy, of course, is not something to use with a new package of bees. Although I’m not starting any new colonies this year, if I were, I would try one of the liquid amino boosters in sugar syrup along with Honey-B-Healthy. In the past I’ve used only Honey-B-Healthy and syrup, but after watching my bees munch down the pollen substitute, I’m pretty much sold on the idea.

I’m very interested to see how these overwintered colonies compare to those I’ve overwintered in the past. I will also be on the lookout for the results of controlled experiments where these “designer diets” were used. It is all fascinating.

Rusty

Measuring the bone pile: death in the hive

Rusty — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:12:56 +0000

Yesterday I pulled the screened bottom board out of my top bar hive and dumped it. What seemed like an incredible number of moldy bees mixed with pollen and comb dropped heavily to the ground. It made a wet thud, like a saturated mop hitting the deck.

Cleaning the unappetizing stew of deadlings off the bottom board is a rite of spring. Although it can be disconcerting to a new beekeeper, it is nothing to be alarmed over. Here’s why:

An average colony going into winter may contain 50,000 bees. An average overwintered colony stirring in spring may contain 20,000 bees. So where are the other 30,000? Well, a goodly number of them are in that pile; others were carted out of the hive by ambitious house bees during the winter months. You saw those on the landing board and in front of the hive in the snow.

If the hive appears healthy and active then the pile of dead bees is just—well—a pile of dead bees. Clean it up, put the hive back together, and forget about it. Everything is going according to plan.

Rusty