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Housekeeping, honey bee style

Bees are very particular about what stays in the hive and what doesn’t. The photo below shows a colony of bees eating a sugar cake that was served on a paper plate. They are happy to have the sugar, but see no use use for the plate. So they chew it into small pieces and carry it out, or if the weather is too cold, they leave the scraps on the bottom board until later. This group of bees is just getting started. I’ve recovered paper plates where nothing was left but the outer ring.

Bees starting to dismantle a paper plate.
Bees starting to dismantle a paper plate.

In the second photo you can see what I call “hop fluff.” This is the stuff left over after the bees have taken the cardboard HopGuard strips out of the hive. These particles are quite small and have fallen through the screened bottom board to the varroa drawer underneath. A modern shredder couldn’t begin to compete.

Hop fluff.
Hop fluff.

It seems that removing foreign objects from the hive is related to hygienic behavior. Anything the bees didn’t put in the hive—such as paper plates, newspaper, cardboard, wood chips, hive beetles, wax moths, etc—they will remove if they can. Similarly, diseased pupae, deformed adults, and dead bees are all removed to limit the spread of disease and avoid wasting resources on non-productive members. In addition, moldy combs are scrubbed clean, and used brood cells are polished and prepped.

Now, if I could only get them to work my garage.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

A reader’s questions answered

To a reader in central Florida,

I couldn’t get your e-mail address to work, so I’m putting the answers to your questions right here, front and center. I hope you find this.

Questions:

I live in central Florida near Ocala forest on a ¾-acre lot that I’m allowing to revert to native growth and I’m planting many types of flowering shrubs and flowers. There is also a large abandoned citrus grove within twenty yards. Last year a honey bee colony took up residence under an old aluminum shed. I’m happy to have them but they disappeared for three or four months. This winter it was mild with no frost. They are now back happily going about their business.

Question 1: Where did they go? Question 2: I’ve been studying them and wonder why they sometimes seem to attack and carry away living bees?

Thanks for your site. I love bees (never been stung even with my face among flowers weeding or watching closely at the hive) and hope the hive stays.

My answers:

#1. If they really did disappear, then the bees there now are not the same colony that you saw three or four months ago. The original colony may have left or may have died for any number of reasons. But new swarms are incredibly attracted to old combs even if they are empty of honey. They can detect the scent for long distances and seek it out. Because they don’t have to build a new home from scratch, it gives them a head start.

The other possibility is that the colony was there the entire time, just holed up for the winter. Because you didn’t see any activity for month after month, you assumed they were gone. On the other hand, if it was as mild as you say, this probably was not the case because bees are usually active on warmish days even in the winter, and if they were active you would have noticed. Still, it’s hard to say for sure, especially with them living under a shed where it’s hard to see them or hear them.

#2. Honey bees are famous for what is called “hygienic behavior.” Healthy worker bees will cart away any bees that are ill, weak, or have deformities. It is their way of keeping the hive as strong as possible, preventing disease spread, and conserving food stores. It sounds cruel by human standards but it makes sense for them. Sometimes you will even see them carry away partially developed pupae because they can sense that something is wrong even before it hatches.

Thanks for writing; those are both excellent questions.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Why do bees collect on the bottom board?

Brood nest temperatures remain fairly constant throughout the year at 93°-96° F (34-35° C.) But while a colony in late winter may consist of only 10,000 bees, a summer colony averages about 50,000 bees—and in some cases the summer population may reach 70,000+. With all those bees in the hive, the brood nest has to be cooled to keep it at the ideal bee-rearing temperature.

As temperatures increase in spring and early summer, it is not unusual to see throngs of bees sitting on the bottom board near the entrance to the hive. Even early in the morning after a cold night, they may be all lined up, looking like they are about to swarm.

However, congregating at the entrance is normal behavior for this time of year. Think of it this way:

Even a small cluster in the dead of winter manages to keep the brood nest warm. Individual bees take turns pressing their bodies against the brood and, by doing so, the baby bees are incubated at a cozy ninety-some degrees Fahrenheit.

But as the outside temperature gets warmer, so does the inside temperature. In addition, the number of hive occupants rises dramatically. So, instead of having a heating problem, the hive now has a cooling problem. Too many bee bodies sitting on the brood may make the brood too hot for optimum development.

In addition, the vast number of bees in the colony restricts the air flow through the hive. This occurs at the same time that the bees are trying to dry down the nectar and turn it into honey.

In response to these problems, the bees congregate in different places. They begin by sitting on the bottom board. As temperatures rise even more, the bees may “beard” on the outside walls of the hive, or hang in festoons from the landing board. Think of sitting on the front porch to stay cool on a hot summer’s day—same thing.

Follower boards and slatted racks can both provide additional congregation areas—places where the bees can sit without overheating the brood or restricting air flow through the hive. You can also help by providing screened bottom boards, screened inner covers, and upper entrances—all of which increase air flow through the hive.

I am probably guilty of over anthropomorphizing bees, but it is one of the easiest ways to figure out what they are doing and why. We need to stay warm in winter, and so do they. We need to stay cool in summer, and so do they. When we have excess moisture in our homes, we try to remove it—and so do they.

Remember, though, that even if the air feels chilly to you, the bees have huge numbers of individuals in their homes that we don’t have. So even a modest increase in the outside temperature can have a significant impact on the inside temperature, and the bees react accordingly.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Bee with bi-pollen disorder?

After I wrote about floral fidelity and the purity of pollen baskets, I received this awesome photo by Chelsea at thehoneybeat.com. Look carefully and you will see the worker in the center of the photo has pollen baskets of two distinctly different colors. So how did this happen?

I’ve tried to think this through, but it’s tough. On one hand, the pollen baskets look to be pure, just like normal. In other words, the yellow and orange pollens are not mixed together, but kept separate.

But on the other hand, how did she do this? Surely, she wouldn’t fill one basket completely and then the other. If so, she’d be flying lopsided. Pollen baskets are always filled at the same rate so the bee stays balanced.

Was she foraging on two types of pollen at once and separating each color as she went? This seems equally unlikely.

Chelsea asked if I had any ideas but, in truth, the more I think about it, the confused-er I get.

Rusty

How did this happen? Photo by Chelsea
How did this happen? Photo by Chelsea

Cell phones and bees: hang up and forage!

In graduate school I took a class from Gerardo Chin-Leo, a passionate and intelligent faculty member at The Evergreen State College. The class was about harmful algae blooms, but the first assignment was to find articles in the popular press and compare them to the scientific papers they were supposedly based on. OMG. It was truly an eye-opening exercise.

Recently, a rash of stories have appeared in the news media about a paper in the peer-reviewed journal, Apidologie. The popular headlines tell us that cell phones are causing the death of bees, they cause colony collapse, they cause bees to get confused, fly away, or die.

I have read the paper in question, “Mobile phone-induced honeybee worker piping” by Daniel Favre. As usual, the press has totally distorted the findings. The paper itself is very much like most scientific papers in that the author tells how he designed his experiment and reports on what he found. He doesn’t make sweeping generalizations from his data. The press does that all by itself.

Our understanding of the natural world comes from many, many such scientists. Each one looks at a tiny piece of the puzzle. Once the work is published, it helps other scientists design their experiments. They may build on the work, refute the work, or confirm the work. Science does not happen in a vacuum. So, no, you can’t fault the author of the paper or the journal that printed it. Fault the press.

Basically, the author put cell phones in beehives and compared the bee’s activity to the activity of bees with no cell service. He found that when the cell was in standby mode the bees behaved like other bees, but when the cell was in communications mode the bees became agitated, especially after about 30 minutes.

The worker bees exposed to the phones emitted more piping sounds, a behavior that is seen when bees become agitated—as when they are about to swarm or when the hive is jarred, intruded, or exposed to excess noise. He also found that, after prolonged phone calls, the bees remained agitated for as much as twelve hours.

All this is interesting and relevant information in the search for how electromagnetic fields affect bees, but it doesn’t prove that cell phones cause colony collapse disorder. Favre summarizes his own work like this:

The present study suggests that active mobile phone handsets in beehives noticeably induce the rate of worker piping.

He then goes on to suggest what research is needed in the future. One obvious short-coming that he points out himself is that this study needs to be repeated using phones that are various distances from the hive. After all, how many people keep their cell phones in a beehive?

Rusty