Transcript Introduction to Beekeeping: What`s the Buzz?

Sustainable Beekeeping
Presenter: Bill Theiss
Tuesday/Thursday 6 - 8 PM (September
2,4,9,11)
Gypsy Hill Park
Syllabus
• Thursday – September 11
– Hive management procedures and techniques
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Exterior and interior hive inspection
Splits and hive body rotations
Queen rearing
Pollen, nectar and beneficial flowers
– Honey and beeswax
• Types of honey and beeswax
• Honey harvesting, handling, packaging and storage
Honey Bees as a Superorganism
Superorganism—an entity in which its many
members carry out specialized and vital
functions to keep the whole functioning as a
unit.
Hive Temperature Management
For healthy development, young bees must be
maintained between 89.6 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
In contrast, adults can withstand temperatures as high
122 degrees Fahrenheit. Worker bees create heat by
contracting their thoracic muscles, similar to shivering
in mammals. To protect the vulnerable brood when it's
hot, workers fan the comb, spread fluid to induce
evaporative cooling, or – when the heat stress is
localized - absorb heat by pressing themselves against
the brood nest wall (a behavior known as heatshielding).
Hive Management
• Spring Evaluation (3 to 5 colony checks)
– First exam (Late Winter) – Weather permitting, conduct a quick, visual
evaluation of honey stores to determine if they are sufficient. Initiate
supplementary feeding of pollen substitute between mid-January and
early February; this can help improve colony health and population
buildup. Reposition frames or hive bodies as necessary.
– Second exam (Early March) – Evaluate food stores, queen condition,
and colony strength.
– Third exam (Late March) – In late spring, inspect brood, assess queen,
identify disease, implement swarm-prevention measures.
– Fourth exam (Mid-April) – Continue swarm prevention practices.
– Fifth exam (Late April / early May) – Add honey supers and reverse
hive bodies if necessary. (Avoid disturbing colonies during major
nectar flows except for quick inspections or to add additional hive
bodies when necessary.)
Hive Management
Healthy capped
worker brood
should appear as
uniform flat or
slightly raised,
light brown
cappings
surrounded by
honey and pollen
stores
Hive Management
How do you know if
your queen has been
superseded since your
last hive inspection?
Marking Queens
Baldock cage
Plunger marking cage
Hive Management
• Summer Evaluation (1 to 2 colony checks)
– Assess overall performance, e.g., honey production, tendency to rear
brood and adjust rearing to nectar flows, and gentleness.
– Remove and process honey. (Quick processing of honey helps prevent
problems with small hive beetles.)
– Inspect for diseases and evaluate mite population levels via sampling in
late summer. Administer appropriate control methods, but only if
treatment thresholds have been reached, and only after honey stores
have been removed to avoid contamination issues. In particular,
treatments for tracheal mites are no longer recommended unless
population levels are high. Varroa mites should be treated according to
threshold guidelines for your particular region (e.g., in Virginia, treat
when 50-60 mites / 24 hours are counted using sticky boards).
– Evaluate queen condition. Good queens produce a solid brood pattern,
similar-aged brood, and appear healthy.
– Requeen colonies, if necessary, between late-August and September.
Plan to requeen at least every other year.
Hive Management
• Fall Evaluation (At least 2 colony checks)
– Evaluate colony strength (e.g., are there at least 30,000 bees, 40 to 60
lbs. honey, and the equivalent of 3 to 5 frames of pollen). Supplement
food stores or combine smaller colonies if necessary.
– Identify presence of diseases or other pests. Implement disease
management strategies if necessary.
– Avoid colony inspections if poor weather conditions exist (e.g., periods
of wet weather and/or when daytime temperatures are below 60°F).
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Winter Evaluation (One late winter check weather permitting)
– Check the colony periodically during the winter to ensure hive integrity
(e.g. the hive cover is on securely and the hive entrance is
unobstructed).
– Make a quick internal inspection of the colony in mid-January to assess
its condition, but avoid leaving the hive open for an extended period
because it causes stress to the bees.
– Initiate colony buildup and survival by adding supplementary pollen
substitute in late January.
Hive Management
• Disease Prevention
– American Foulbrood – Practice good management and sanitation
techniques. Bees from infected colonies will usually recover after being
shaken into clean equipment with new foundation. Always use clean
hive tools and equipment to avoid disease transmission between
colonies. Do not use prophylactic applications of antibiotics.
– Bee Paralysis Viruses – Re-queen using a different honey bee strain.
Add a frame of sealed brood from a healthy colony. Control varroa
mites which vector viruses.
– Deformed Wing Virus – Control varroa mites which vector this virus.
– Nosema Disease – Practice good management and sanitation
techniques. Sample colonies for Nosema, especially in summer. Treat
with Fumagilin B, if necessary. Limit colony stress by selecting good
apiary sites. Always use clean hive tools and equipment to avoid
disease transmission between colonies.
Hive Management
• Disease Prevention
– Develop and initiate a comb rotation practice with the goal to gradually
replace old comb with new comb. Each year, provide bees with a few
frames of new comb so that over the course of 3 to 5 years all comb is
replaced.
– Use clean equipment and tools; transfer bees to clean equipment with
new frames and foundation.
– Re-queen with a different and/or hygienic honey bee variety.
– Learn to recognize and identify honey bee diseases, particularly brood
diseases.
– Correctly identify and regularly monitor diseases BEFORE attempting
chemical controls.
Hive Management
• Pest Management
– Wax moths – During winter, store equipment in a dry, non-insulated,
unheated room with good air flow to avoid moth problems. Comb
honey should be stored in the freezer. In summer, hive bodies with
comb can be stored in a well-lit area and stacked on end to prevent
wax moth infestation. PDB (paradichlorobenzene) is not recommended
unless absolutely necessary.
– Varroa mites – Utilize sampling procedures to determine mite
infestation levels and implement cultural control practices, such as requeening or trapping mites in drone comb. Tolerant honey bee stocks
exist. Chemicals should ONLY be used if mite population samples
exceed the treatment thresholds.
– Tracheal mites: Treatment is typically unnecessary unless sampling
indicates otherwise. Resistant honey bee stocks are available.
– Small hive beetles – Store honey properly and do not leave supers
containing honey open and vulnerable for any length of time before
extraction. Comb should be kept in a location with low relative humidity
(<50% RH) to keep beetle eggs from hatching.
Hive Propagation Methods
• Hive Splits:
– A hive split is essentially a controlled swarm to:
• Increase the number of your hives
• Prevent natural uncontrolled swarming
• Produce nucs for sale
• Queen rearing
– Queens can be used for:
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Splits
Creating additional Nucs for the apiary or for sale
Sell for profit
Replenishing queen less hives
Hive Propagation - Splits
• Select hives for split potential
• Use only strong overwintered hives
• Wait until temps are above 60 degrees to avoid chilled brood
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Select frames of brood and bees in all stages of development,
including frames of honey and pollen, and place in Nuc or on top of
a strong queened hive separated by a double wire screen, with top
entrance facing the opposite direction
Shake several frames of nurse bees into Nuc
Feed 1:1 sugar water to stimulate comb building
Move splits in Nucs as far away from apiary as possible to reduce
incidence of robbing
Reduce Nuc entrance using grass or entrance reducer
Re-queening not required if eggs, nurse bees, larva, capped brood,
honey and pollen are available, as bees will raise their own queen
Hive Propagation – Queen Rearing
• Advantages of raising your own queens
– No shipping stress
– No cost other than borrowing some frames and bees from your
apiary and building Nuc boxes
– Control over which of your best hives to use as breeding stock
– Can become a source of income
• Disadvantages
– Requires time, effort, and dexterity (depending on method)
– Requires ample drone populations (DCA’s) outside of your
apiary
– Success is subject to weather conditions during mating
Queen Rearing
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In all queen rearing methods, the young worker bees raise the
queens and do the work, not you.
To coerce the bees to raise queens, you manipulate the hive
conditions to encourage queen rearing behavior.
Regardless of the queen rearing method employed, to stimulate
the creation of queen cells, the Nuc must have:
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Eggs or very young larva (<1 day old)
Sufficient nurse bees old enough produce royal jelly (>1 week old)
Capped brood to produce nurse bees for the new queen’s progeny
Food stores (honey/sugar water, pollen, fresh water source)
Warm temperatures (> 65 degrees) or placed above strong hive
An absence of queen substance pheromone for 6-10 hours
Queen Rearing Situations
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Emergency Queen Cells – queen cells
created by worker bees upon sudden
loss of a queen. These queen cells
are usually small and undesirable to
the bee keeper and they rarely
produce high quality queens.
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Supersedure – Planned replacement
of queen by worker bees. Swarming
is a form of supersedure. Requeening
by natural or artificial supersedure is
the preferred method to rear queens.
Usually 1 to 3 cells are built in the
same comb.
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Swarming – Natural colony division
and a uncontrolled split of the hive.
Supersedure
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Reasons for supersedure
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Queen in poor physical condition
Old queen
Diseased queen
Depleted spermetheca
Queen poorly bred from old larva
Poorly mated queen
Not enough queen pheromone or poor pheromone quality
Small colonies are less likely to replace an old queen
based upon pheromone levels alone, as a less amount
of pheromone is needed in smaller hives to prevent
supersedure.
The workers and new queen will tolerate the presence
of the old queen until the new queen is successfully
mated.
Two Fertile Queens Cohabitating
Supersedure
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Colonies that have just superseded rarely swarm unless the colony is
overcrowded and does not have enough space.
Good stock can come from superseded queens but you may also get an
aggressive mix. If you have a pure queen and she is superseded, her
daughter will have 1/2 of her genetics passed on to her offspring. The
drones she mates with will provide the other 1/2. Thus, if she mates with
drones of other races, the bees she produces will be hybrids because they
will have genetic material from both races.
The best practice to prevent the colony from initiating supersedure is by
re-queening the colony every year, or at least every other year.
When you replace the old queen with one that is purchased from a
reputable queen breeder, the queens and drones supposedly come from
“gentle stock”. When your supersedure queen (probably of good queen
stock) flies off to mate, you have no control over the drones with which
she is mating. They may or may not be from stocks that you want in your
hives.
Swarming
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Swarm cells are typically at the bottom of the frame and are more
numerous (6 to 12), or possibly up to 50.
The Swarming Factor
Swarming is influenced by:
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Available colony expansion space
Age of queen
Nectar availability
Genetics of queen
Weather
Geographic location
Queen Rearing Methods
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Miller
Alley/Smith
Hopkins
Jenter
Doolittle
Ben Harden
The goal of large volume
queen rearing methods is to
encourage the bees to build
queen cells that can easily
be removed from the
foundation and placed into
mating nucs.
Queen Rearing Methods
• Miller Method
– Requirements
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Nuc box for each queen to be raised (mating Nuc)
Nuc box to build cells (cell building Nuc)
Egg source
Worker bees of correct age to build and feed cells
Supplemental feeding
Queen Rearing Methods
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Alley/Smith Method
– Employs a strip of egg
containing cells cut with a
hot knife and steady hand,
with approximately every
other egg destroyed to
produce the desired
spacing between queen
cells. The strip is fixed to
the bottom of the frame
using hot wax.
Queen Rearing Methods
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Hopkins Method
– Destroy eggs to select for
the number of queens
desired and to prevent
queen cells from being
built close together
– Lay the frame of eggs
horizontally in Nuc
– Cut cells out a few days
before expected
emergence of youngest
capped cell and distribute
to mating nucs.
Doolittle Frame of Cell Cups
Grafting bars employed using
plastic or custom wax queen
cups
Queen Rearing Methods
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Jenter Kit Method
– Allows queens to hatch in the same
frame by surrounding the queen
cells in cages
Queen Rearing Methods
Grafting
Grafting
Queen Rearing Methods
Ben Harden “queen right” queen rearing method
All eggs, larva and pollen stores must be placed above the queen excluder
Questions?