Bees- The Saga

There is so much to learn about keeping bees. Up until recently, I have not known enough to be able to keep mine alive. I have been a very bad bee mamma. I had a hive in the 70’s, which a bear got, and another in the 80’s, which was really mean, but now I am trying again. I did manage to catch a swarm a few years ago when a friend had his bee hive here  but I do not have much experience other than that. Bee keeping is, surprisingly, one of those things that some people get all hyped up about, almost like religion or politics. It is hard to sift through all the conflicting information and make good decisions. I have had bee people get mad at me for not blindly following their methods, but I don’t blindly follow anybody, so they will just have to get over it. I need good reasons for doing things. Reasons that make sense both scientifically and rationally. Some people  blame farmers using neo-nicotinoids or genetically modified crops for killing all the bees,  I think I may have finally found some bee folks whose opinions I can respect and who can give me intelligent, well reasoned answers. Unfortunately, I have already lost two hives, two years in a row.

First Attempt

In Spring 2014 I purchased one package of Italian bees and one of Russian bees and installed them in two hives.  Neither one made it through to the spring.The Russians were stronger than the Italians during the summer and lasted about a month longer, into March, but I did not know enough to keep them going. I was reading books and getting occasional advice from a (militant- “You have to do it my way”) beekeeper in Pennsylvania, but it was not enough.

In the Spring of 2015 I replaced those first bees with one Italian package and one Carniolian nuc. A nuc (nucleus) is a small hive with about 4 frames of brood, pollen and honey. There are bees already working and a queen that they have accepted who is laying  eggs. A nuc is ready to go and I got it from a beekeeper close by who puts them together to sell. All I had to do initially was install them in a full size hive so they could expand. Packages, on the other hand, consist of about 3 pounds of assorted bees collected into a shoe box sized, screened in box with a separate tiny cage holding a queen they have just met. You don’t know how many workers or nurse bees are in a package, nor how old they might be. Bees only live about 45 days so old ones won’t be useful for long. The queen needs to start laying as soon as possible to keep them going but sometimes package bees don’t like the smell of their new queen and they will kill her off. If you open the hive and don’t see any eggs being laid, then you have to get another queen right away.

This package of bees  killed their queen before she was even out of her cage ( they can sting her right through the screen) and they also killed the replacement queen I bought. I was advised to join the two hives in an attempt to get one strong hive out of them. I put a layer of newspaper between the two hives and stacked them together. That seemed to go OK. I applied the HopGuard strips to control the Varroa mites in August but the hive never got very strong. They were dead by December, even though they still had honey stores and it had not gotten cold yet. There was no brood so the queen had either not survived or she up and left. It was depressing. Getting expensive too. Package bees cost about $100 and a nuc is $165, queens another $35.

Second Attempt

Desperate for information, in the winter of 2015,  I joined a local bee chapter and attended their monthly meetings assuming I would get good information. However, they had conflicting opinions about what the proper way to keep bees was and there were even arguments  during the monthly meetings. The last thing I needed was to sit through a meeting where folks got into arguing about who is right. I avoided going after that. They held classes for beginners and advanced beekeepers though and I attended those. I was supposed to get a mentor during the classes but I didn’t because how would I know if the mentor’s ideas were right or if they were just pushing opinions? Instead, I got into a lengthy conversation with one of the guys who had started keeping bees the year before. I decided I would read books, talk to people who kept bees, and see if I could  maybe come across someone who was willing to help me on my own. That did not work out so well because I did not find a mentor and was still not sure what I was looking at when I opened my hives. I could not tell what was normal and what was a problem when I had nothing to compare them with.

One thing I had been told in the classes that seemed to make sense  was that I needed to install screened bottom boards on my hives to help with cooling in summer and prevention of damp in the winter. There was a sliding tray to insert below the screen to catch any mites that fell off the bees to enable counting how many mites there were. So I installed a bottom screen. I still couldn’t tell how many mites there were. I have since learned that screened bottom boards cause the bees too much extra work because they have to bring in  more water as it evaporates too quickly. Then in the winter, they can’t keep the now drafty hive warm enough and will starve rather than break out of their warming cluster to go eat the honey a few frames over.  See what I mean about conflicting information?

By the end of November it was obvious that there was no longer a queen in the hive, no eggs or larvae, just a small group of workers left. There was still honey, which I have saved, and lots of empty comb, so I will use it to help out the bees I get next. I broke down and attended another bee chapter meeting in the hope of meeting someone useful, which I did. Cheryl and Ed Forney, of Geezer Ridge, told me not to give up, they would help me learn about keeping my bees alive. They are a very generous couple who work with Veterans in West Virginia, helping them get started in bees. They would be holding free classes towards the end of winter at their farm and I could come out and go through the hives with them when it warmed up, to learn by doing. Finally.

Third Attempt-Spring 2016

I am bound and determined to successfully raise my own bees. In January I ordered one box of Italian package bees and one Carniolian nuc for delivery in late April from a beekeeper close to me that I had dealt with before. Then, in early March,  I attended more bee classes, this time at Geezer Ridge, a very successful apiary about 45 minutes away. There, I learned about the life cycle of the Varroa mite and why my treatments had not worked to get rid of them. I learned that I would need at least three hives so that I would be able to borrow frames of brood from the stronger hives to help build up the weak ones. So I ordered two more nucs raised at Geezer Ridge, where I knew the bees would be healthy and ready to go, and one more package  to go with the first in case I needed to switch the queens. I also ordered 2 more double deep wooden hive bodies so I will have 5 altogether this year. Three nucs and two packages should ensure I have enough bees to help the weaker ones out. I missed the Facebook announcement for the first class but made the second, third and fourth, which was a field day.

In my first class, I learned that every hive in this area will have mites and there is very little that actually works to kill them off.  Some of the other diseases could be a problem but are not always, so we learned what to look for. I learned that Ed is all about following scientific reasoning and studies and he knows why something needs to be done as well as what. That was refreshing. The bees must have proper nutrition in the form of protein (pollen patties) and carbohydrates (sugar) to keep their immune systems up.  There are many environmental stressors around today that bees did not have to deal with in the past. Breeding queens for resistance to stress and disease is important. Bee colonies will be considerably weakened and lose most of their brood (into which the mites lay their own evil eggs) if the mites are not controlled in the fall and then again in the spring. It is not enough to kill the adult mites hanging on the outside of the bees (the ones that I should have found under the screened bottom board), I have to kill the other life stages as well. Some of the miticides that are sold harm the bees more than the mites and some only kill one life stage of mite.

In the second class Ed showed us how to install package bees and nucs, how to feed them, and how to manipulate the frames so the bees do not have to waste energy. He answered lots of questions from the class of about 50 people without making anyone feel stupid. He advised that we talk with our farmer neighbors and get them to let us know the night before they spray, so we can lock our bees up for a short time.

In the last class, we suited up and went through a bunch of different hives, looking at the eggs and larvae, counting the brood frames in each hive, seeing the pollen they were collecting (Maples), the honey stores they had left. We moved some of the frames around to make it easier for the bees to take care of, placing the honey to the outside, putting drawn empty comb near the brood so the queen could easily lay nearby. Basically centralizing their work for them and taking advantage of their natural inclination to move up. We learned how to feed them for the winter with pollen patties, and fondant, a fluffy icing sort of sugar, and then changing to the warm weather, sugar syrup top feeder. He kept going until we were all feeling comfortable around the bees and done with asking questions.

So this year I am going to follow the advice of these professional beekeepers, who manage to winter over all their colonies, and I will use the systemic miticide that they use. Unfortunately, I have to give up on raising my bees organically or I risk losing them again, which I am not willing to do.  I had  been trying to keep the Varroa mite population down by hanging Hop Guard strips in the hives, rather than using a harsher chemical miticide. The good news is that the hives are not treated when the honey supers are on so the honey for people, when I finally get some, should be fine. I feel much better knowing that I can call on Ed and Cheryl for advice, and I plan on spending time learning in their bee yard whenever I can.

Getting Ready for the Bees-March/April 2016

The two new double-deep (meaning two deep boxes as opposed to shallower mediums), ten frame hives I purchased needed to be painted so my five year old grand daughter and I set them up on boards in the backyard and first applied primer.Then, since I have learned that it is OK to paint them colors and not just boring bright white, we went to the store to get some paint. I picked a light green, so they would not be so glaringly obvious in the pasture. While in New Zealand this winter, I saw hives in all kinds of colors stacked by the sides of the roads. Some people paint them to match their house, some with Amish designs. The bees do not seem to care.

I also bought new top feeders for each of the five hives instead of the frame feeders I had been using. They hold more, are easier to fill and clean, and more bees can reach them at a time. Ed experimented with a hole in the feeder box and came up with the proper size to prevent the bees from building burr comb (wax comb that bees build out to fill any gaps larger than a certain size) between the two halves of the feeder. They like it dark where they build comb. Bees are very particular about the space between their combs. If you don’t space the frames correctly they will bridge them all together and make a mess.

I will be registering my bees so the state inspector can check them out if I need him to. This means that I am now aware of the best management practices for keeping bees in my state. There are limits on liability for beekeepers if they follow certain guidelines.  For instance, if you live on less than 1/2 acre you can have up to 4 colonies , and they need to be facing away from your neighbors or have a hedge or fence that forces them to move up above head height on their flight path. 8 Colonies are allowed on one acre and as long as you can place them no closer than 200 feet from developed land there is no limit. There are also rules about how best to manage your hives. I had no idea.

So now I have to set up more cement blocks and level them so I can put two inch boards across as bee hive shelves. I like the way Ed does it with cement doorway lintels but I will stick to the much lighter weight boards for now. Then I might paint the older white hives with this nice new green if i get the chance. I will set all the hives in place and be ready for when they arrive, which depending on the weather should be somewhere around the third week in April. I will post then with new pictures and the story of installation.

-Wendy lee writing at Edgewise Woods, Gardens and Critters