I have finally decided to give up on ever becoming a decent beekeeper. I have taken numerous classes, tried various methods, spent all kinds of money on equipment, food and new queens, and I am now officially done.
Some people find caring for bees to be relaxing. I am not one of those people. Stress is not something I handle well and the bees have done nothing but stress me out. I am tired of feeling guilty for not being a better beekeeper. I was always wondering if I was doing the right thing at the proper time. When I asked other beekeepers, I got conflicting answers. I hate feeling incompetent.
I had wanted to keep bees so I could supply myself and maybe a few friends with good healthy honey and enjoy the benefits of their pollination as well. It turned out I could not do that organically because of the mites and beetles that attack them. I tried. This year I managed to get all six hives almost through the winter, and then lost three to Nosema disease, just before Spring arrived.
Heavy Lifting
I had to re-queen one of the hives in May and was still hopeful that they would be able to make me some honey. Then one of them swarmed and I had to re-queen another hive. It all seems kind of pointless when the queens can’t even seem to survive. I gave them each a deep body full of honey that the three dead hives had made, thinking that would enable them to draw new comb for a honey super. I think it worked, but three deep boxes are too high and heavy and hard work to move when I needed to check them.
My Hot Bee Suit
The idea of having to suit up and go out there in the summer heat again was beginning to weigh on my mind. Plus I got stung a few times and each time the swelling seemed worse. Then we set up our swimming pool and the bees decided to take it over as their private water source. They could have continued getting their water at the water garden, or in the bucket I provided right next to the hives, but no. It is hard to enjoy cooling off in the pool when you are being harassed by honeybees flying at your head.
Bees Anyone?
I thought about donating everything to the Wounded Warriors Project, which helps Veterans get set up with beekeeping, but the tax deduction would not be worth much. I messaged a fellow beekeeper family who has had good luck with their bees and they offered to take the whole shebang and give me a better deal. It is a super good deal for them because they were already able to split my three hives into five today, and amazingly enough, one super is full of honey. Tonight, they are coming back to pick up all the hives and take them to their new home.
The Bees New Family-It Takes Three
It is such a relief to find people who know what they are doing to want to take these bees. Plus they will give me some honey back, which makes me happy.
Room For New Projects
It is ridiculous how much space my beekeeping equipment had been taken up in the garage. Summer feeders, winter feeders, honey supers, extra hive bodies, screened bottom boards, and hive beetle traps were all stacked up in my pottery studio area. I would rather have the space to make pots and now I do.
Goodbye bees, goodbye stress. Hello to more time for fun and maybe even some relaxing projects.
Wendy lee, writing at Edgewisewoods, Gardens and Critters
I mailed a small plastic container of dead bees to the ARS (USDA Agricultural Research Service) Bee Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland on January 14 and have been waiting for the results. Our new president slowed things down by telling the ARS they could not communicate directly with the public. That made me so mad that I took part in a demonstration for the first time in my life. Thankfully, some of that nonsense has now been lifted and I received the PCR results in my e mail today.
It turns out my bees were infected with Nosema, which is a fungal disease, to the tune of 61.5 million spores per bee. They also had 5.3 Varroa destructor mites per one hundred bees. Together, they had no chance.
What I don’t know, is why the Apivar Miticide strips I applied on August 22 did not kill the mites. Hive number 2 did not get treated until Sept 29, and I removed the strips in that hive after only 37 days, instead of the 50 they should have remained, but the other 5 hives all had the strips for 53 days. It should have worked.
I have no idea why they got Nosema but there does not seem to be a good treatment for that. I am not sure what I will have to do to disinfect the two dead-out hives stacked on my porch. They are full of honey, which might possibly harbor Nosema. I was hoping to use them to start new hives with in the spring but do not want to infect the next batch. I can do a heat treatment but am wondering how to prevent melting all the honey and wax together. I have a small greenhouse that may be able to get up to the required 120 degrees F for 24 hours but I will have to monitor it closely as beeswax melts at 144 degrees.
A 50/50 bleach water solution can disinfect empty combs and wooden ware. Maybe I will have to remove the honey from the frames so I can reuse them the combs.
Guess I will be experimenting yet again.
Who needs a science based job when my whole life seems to be an experiment?
Please, let the other four hives be healthy. I am doing all I can.
January 11, 2017
The weather has warmed up to 54 degrees F today, warm enough to open my six bee hives and do a thorough check. I still have syrup top feeders on them, with the vents mostly sealed with duct tape, and pollen patties. I hope to not find too many dead bees in January.
Hive 1. Heavy with honey stores, some syrup left in the top feeder and some pollen patty between boxes, the bees happily moving about in a loose cluster near the middle. I used a stick to clean a few dead bees off the bottom board and closed it back up. So far so good.
Hive 2. This hive greets me with total silence. Dead bees are sitting along the tops of frames, others are in groups with their faces buried in cells, and then there are 3 inches of freshly killed bees laying on the bottom. I am horrified and disgusted and mad. It is so aggravating to do everything I can to keep them alive and still have them die on me.
Bees Buried in Comb
Hive 3. Sounds and looks Ok with plenty of stores and the bees near the middle.
Hive 4. Plenty of honey, pollen patty, and bees but they are all in the top box, so I switch the bottom box to the top, clean off the bottom board and seal them back up. Bees like to move up, not down, so I am giving them room to do that.
Hive 5. Dead quiet. A few frames have patches of dead bees with their faces pushed into cells but the entire bottom of the hive is covered in three inches of dead bees. I am again mad and frustrated. I feed them, buy them new queens, treat them for mites and am repaid by them dying anyway. I don’t get it.
Bottom Full of Dead Bees
Hive 6. Feels nice and heavy, still has some pollen patty and syrup and the bees are hanging around as a loose mass. After cleaning off the bottom board, I closed them back up, relieved that four hives have made it.
Two Hives Dead and Four Left
It is only the middle of January and I have lost two of my six hives already. Winter has not arrived in earnest yet. It makes no sense to me that these bees have died surrounded by plenty of food. I pull off my gloves, hang up my bee jacket and call my bee guru, Ed Forney.
He asks how I’m doing and I tell him, “Well, I was better before I opened my hives and found two dead outs already. “
I tell him about the three inch deep mass of dead bees in the bottom and he says,
“Sounds like they must have gotten into something, maybe some kind of pesticide.”
“Seriously? What could they possibly get into this time of year? “
I wonder if it is possible that the farm across the road, recently replanted to wheat, might have been sprayed to kill the weeds first.
“If there were low growing weeds blooming in there when he sprayed, your bees could have been hit by that.”
Herbicides aren’t supposed to kill bees but something certainly did.
I am hesitant to call up Neil, who farms across from me, and ask if he sprayed anything recently. I don’t want to sound accusatory or make him feel threatened, I just want to know what might have killed my bees. He told me earlier this year that he would let me know in advance if he needed to spray any insecticides and that he doesn’t usually need to. This kind of conversation is better done in person. Phone calls can be like E- mails and Facebook sometimes- you can’t read the persons face and body language- so things can come across differently than you intend them to. He is a nice guy and I know he does not want to kill my bees. I need a good old, foot-on-the- bumper kind of talk with him, out in the tractor shed, just trading stories.
Storing Hives With No Bees
I have to deal with the two dead hives yet, so I go back out to the bee yard to retrieve the two dead-outs. I load them, so nice and heavy with honey stores, into the wagon and pull them up to the porch to clean them up. The piles of dead bees seem so fresh, almost alive. I scoop them up with my hands to put in a bucket to feed the chickens. They are so beautiful that I retrieve a magnifying glass from the kitchen to get a closer look. It is not often that honeybees are still enough to study up close. Then I see one moving. She is not dead yet. They are so freshly dead that this one is still dying. I grab my camera and take some close up photos, thinking maybe I will be able to see better with the zoom. Maybe I can learn something.
One Live Bee
That is when I remember that the USDA Bee Lab in Beltsville will analyze bee and comb samples you send to them. I go back in the house to Google them and then search the house for isopropyl alcohol and a shallow plastic container to hold a handful of bees. Maybe they can figure out what killed my bees.
After getting back from the Post Office I get back into clean up mode on the two hives, scraping off and saving the excess wax and flicking dead bees off the frames. Some of the bees are wedged face first into combs and I have to pinch their tiny butts and pull them out, without squishing them. I can’t get them all and hope that’s Ok. I will be using these frames of honey to help rebuild new hives in the spring if all goes well-unless the USDA finds there is some horrible disease lurking in there.
Sealing Up Stored Hives
To keep my four boxes (2 from each dead hive) safely stored until I need them, I need to stack them up and treat them with ParaMoth. I learned the hard way just how destructive Wax Moths can be a couple of years ago when I tried to store another dead hive. Moths will get in there and dig deep trenches in the wooden walls of the hives and eat through the wax , letting all the honey drip out on the floor, while they chew up all the wax. I can’t afford to loose drawn comb, honey and expensive wooden ware to them again.
I start the storage stack by placing a lid upside down on the porch floor. This will seal off the bottom. Then I add an empty deep box, moving the frames into it one by one as I clean excess wax and dead bees off. I have three other frames of honey saved from earlier this summer that I add to the stack. I end up with a stack five boxes tall, and on the top frames I lay a paper plate with 6 Tablespoons of the ParaMoth crystals, then the top lid, weighted down with bricks. The stack will freeze which will kill any Small Hive Beetles (SHB) and the fumes from the ParaMoth will kill any moths.
I told Ed on the phone that I was giving my bees until August to start paying me back for all the money and hard work I have put into them and he assured me that he would help me with that. He is going to show me how to set up two of the hives for serious honey production and two for back up population and comb builders. The stored honey and brood frames should really help out with starting some new hives in the spring from splits off my over wintered bees.
If my bees cannot learn to be at least a little self sufficient I am going to have to give them up. They have turned into a very expensive hobby when what I was looking for was a decent supply of honey. Sure, I want to help pollinators and any plants that need bees to reproduce, but this is ridiculous.
The Russian Queen I installed September 20th in hive #3 is laying well, with lots of capped brood.
Hive #2 was treated for mites with the Apivar strips on the 29th and I drenched the ground for beetle larvae with the Permithrin again. I removed all the bottom screens with the beetle trap trays when larvae stopped showing up in them. Cold weather is coming and I don’t want them drafty.
Feeding Fall Honeybees
All the hives have gotten way too light, as if the bees are eating more honey than they are storing, which is scary going into fall and cold weather. Lots of empty combs all of a sudden, so October 6th I started feeding the 1:1 syrup again. I had removed the top syrup feeders Aug 16th when all the hives seemed full. I Fed them syrup again on October 11th.
On October 28th, another beekeeper came by to help me look at my hives and we went through all six of them, finding two of them with very little brood, one with no brood at all and all of them still way to light in honey. I went and talked with Ed for advice and he suggested feeding them 2:1 syrup and combining two of the hives, using a double screen he lent me, then re-queening the third hive and eventually combining all three, so they have a better chance of making it through the winter.
When I got back home with the replacement queen, and went through them again, they seemed stronger than I remembered, with more brood than I realized at first. So I re-queened the one with no brood (#4) and started heating water to make the heavy syrup.
2:1 Mix
One pot with 12 lbs water (1 ½ gallons) + 24 lbs sugar (6 x 4 lb bags)
One pot with 16 lbs water (2 gallons) + 32 lbs sugar (8 x 4 lb bags)
{Lb is an abbreviation of the Latin word libra. The primary meaning of libra was balance or scales (as in the astrological sign), but it also stood for the ancient Roman unit of measure libra pondo, meaning “a pound by weight.”}
Once I added double the sugar, the mixture no longer fit in my two largest pots, so I had to ladle half of it out into a five gallon bucket before mixing it all up. Such a heavy concentration of sugar does not dissolve as easily as the 1:1 mix so it was hard to not make a sticky mess all over the kitchen while briskly stirring it all up and then pouring it all into eight one gallon jugs to cool. What a pain.
I fed them every 2-3 days for four feedings and the bees filled their empty honey frames back up. Wouldn’t you think they could find food on their own? I am starting to think that there is just not enough natural forage around here for bees to make it. Corn, soybeans and grass occupy most of the open spaces near here and they do not provide much nectar. (Click on the green link for a list of nectar producing plants.) Maybe I should move them to a wilder area with less farmland, but then it would be harder to find the time to check on them, and bears would be more of an issue. Here, at least I can see them and they are behind a woven wire fence.
The Queen
A week after re-queening, on October 22nd, I went in to remove the cage and found the new queen still inside, with a bunch of other bees. She had not moved into the hive. Bizarre. So, I pried the screen off to let her out and before I could stop her, she flew away! Geesh.
I called Ed again.
“Will she come back?”
He laughed.
“Nope. You’d better come get another one.”
I jumped in my car and headed over to Back Creek and Geezer Ridge. Since she had not ever started laying, he replaced her free of charge, luckily. I came back and installed her.
I waited too long for a warm, non windy day to open the hives back up again and check on her. It was 2 weeks, on November 6th, when I checked all the hives for brood again. I went through and fed them some regular 1:1 syrup mix and gave them each half a pollen patty.
When I got to hive #4 I pulled out the queen cage only to find that, not only was she still in there, the bees had not even chewed through the candy plug to let her out! I should have checked sooner, I know. They can feed her through the screen and she still looked OK, so I carefully released her into the bottom hive and quick covered it back up so she would not fly out.
I do not have high hopes. Talk about discouraged. I am seriously thinking that if I can just get them to somehow make it through winter and pay me back in the spring through selling splits that I might get back out of this bee thing. I have about had it.
-Wendy lee, writing at Edgewisewoods Gardens and Critters
