24 November 2012

We are entering the time when the queen normally tapers down her egg laying to zero as the colony digs in for the long winter. By January she will start laying again. The success of the colony during the entire ensuing year depends on whether they get a good start. We will be experimenting with protein supplement this season, feeding it dry outside of the hive. The bees forage almost anytime when it is 1) light, 2) above 55 degrees F, 3) not raining. So we will see if they will be attracted to the artificial pollen (newest formulation available) as if it were from flowers. If so, this should help the queens build up their egg-laying ability and help nurse bees adequately feed the new larvae. If bad weather is prolonged, we'll feed it internally.

In the 1st attached photo, taken October 28th, you can see that they are still bringing in natural pollen! This scene could repeat itself any month of the year in our location, although the time between such opportunities for the bees gets longer and longer and the flowers become harder to find until Spring finally arrives. You can also see a drone at the far end of the landing platform. This is a bit odd because drones are supposed to be absent after the end of summer. They don't live very long, so the queen in this colony was apparently still laying drone eggs up to October. This is not a good thing. Drones take valuable energy to produce and maintain. They are also the preferred breeding choice for Varroa mites. Drones in the fall may prolong the Varroa infestation, which might otherwise naturally taper off as the queen stops laying drones and then stops laying any eggs.

You can see winterized hives in the second photo. So far, we've only had a couple of cold days, but the bees benefit from insulative retention of heat, their main product of the winter. Two of the "hives" (the tallest ones) are actually double-hives. We're trying this as an efficiency measure - reduces equipment in the field and the colonies can share heat. They are stacked two-high with a double screen separator between them and separate entrances. The 1st photo shows bees from the top hive of one double stack entering their hive from the top of the separator screen (white). They can also exit through the top inner cover entrance.

Next Bee Group meeting: Tuesday, December 4th, 4:00 p.m., Biology Greenhouse

If you would like to be part of the Bee Group, come to the meeting and you can be put on the list serve.

October 31, 2012

BRIEF REPORT: Fall has settled in the the bees are settled in with it. We ended summer with a flourish of  preparations, including Varroa mite and Nosema treatments. The results of the summer’s testing of the Fumadil-drench technique were interesting. Apparently it works if the spore count is not too high. Some of the Farm hives had pretty high infestation rates in Spring and into Summer, however, so they are currently still on a treatment regime to try to keep the disease at bay at least until the queens start laying strongly again. See graphs below for results.

The hives are insulated and look a little awkward but the bees will save energy. On Sunday, October 28th, the bees were bringing in a significant amount of pollen, probably from exotic &/or ornamental flowers. They were taking advantage of a relatively warm and dry day after a week of cold and rain. This is a good sign as to the health of the bees and heartwarming to watch. Amazingly, there were also a few drones flying! Normally they are all banished from the hive by the end of summer.

BEE GROUP MEETING: Tuesday, Nov. 6th, 16:00, Biology Greenhouse.
Anyone interested in the bees and especially in volunteering &/or taking the summer course should attend. We’ll recap the year and talk about plans for next.

Items needed:
1-1/2 qt plastic peanut/mixed nut jars (Costco type), for feeders
Rigid insulation 1, 1-1/2, or 2 inch, for hive winterizing
Burlap coffee bags, for smokers
Laundry lint, for smoker tinder
Newspaper, for combining, smoker lighting
Leftover paint (exterior latex), for hives

OUR BLOG:

http://beeinterns.blogspot.com/

Results of test of Fumadil (anti-Nosema) drench

Beekeeping photography

More photos here

HELP SCIENCE HELP THE BEES!

We are a science-based beekeeping course aiming to improve the plight of bees while training a new generation of beekeepers. The course is sponsored by the Biology Department of the University of Washington, Seattle and the UW Farm*. Our current projects are listed below. As you can see, we are investigating a diversity of bee topics.

We have a shoestring budget, which limits what we can do, but you can help us by donating through our funding tool:

HELP SCIENCE HELP BEES

OUR CURRENT PROJECTS

1. Biology and Processing of Bees Wax
Learn in detail about how bees secrete wax, its functions in the hive, chemical properties and industrial uses, and problems, especially pesticide contamination. Build a solar wax melter and render our collection of recyclable combs. Process the wax in an experiment to remove pesticide residues. Make candles.

2. Mite Monitoring & Management Testing
Learn in detail the biology of the Varroa mite and its management. You will consistently monitor mite populations in hives under various treatment regimes to assess their relative performance. Data will contribute to the series begun in 2011.

3. Hygienic Behavior Assessment
Use a standard freeze-kill method to create a uniform "unhygienic" patch in the brood of colonies of several different strains. Assess the ability of the bees to detect dead brood and remove it. This is a behavioral trait correlated with the ability to clean the hive of disease spores and possibly other problems. This test was developed by professional researchers for breeding more "hygienic" bee strains.

4. Dance Behavior and Forager Mapping
Record foraging dances within the hive and translate into a detailed map of foraging range centered on the Farm apiary. Then, to verify the data, go to one of the indicated sites, set up feeding stations, mark bees that arrive, and try to recover the marks in one of the home hives.

*The UW Farm is a group of University students, faculty, and associates that run an on-campus, food-growing, urban organic farm. The Farm is now growing food for the campus food services! Check out the Farm link and come visit!

What do bees do when it rains? If it's not raining very hard, they may brave the storm and continue to fly out for food. But to them, a raindrop is a bucket full! So when it rains hard, as it did this morning, the bees stay home but crowd the porch and wait for the sun! These gobs of anxious bees are just raring to go! As soon as the rain lets up, they're OFF! Great work ethic  -- they have already put up a whole box of honey, even in our cool, wet summer!

Featured on The Daily: "Braving The Swarm"

We were featured as a part of The Daily's Double Shot.
Take a look at what our classmates, Alex and Russ have to say about the beekeeping internship!

Building a Solar Wax Melter!

For one of our class research projects, we are learning how bees secrete wax and testing wax to learn about pesticide contamination. For this purpose, we built a solar wax melter on Saturday to test old comb we have acquired from the apiary. We will use it to process wax and test pesticide residues. Photos from our work party after the jump.

An unlikely encounter with a bumble bee nest

Salvage shopping for materials for the bee course, my attention was drawn to a "bee nest" in a corner of the yard at the Re Store in Ballard. A sign assured me (with Abe Lincoln guaranteeing it) that bees were at work. I saw none. Later, the counter person explained that bumble bees had taken up residence in the bird house above the sign. On closer inspection I could see that, sure enough, bees were very occasionally coming and going from the box. And they were indeed bumble bees, Bombus mixtus to be exact, a common local species. This is unlikely because this species is not well known to nest in such spaces but prefers ground nests close to the surface. They are often found in compost heaps, for example. Our main above-ground species is B. melanopygus, which often make nests in such bird houses, which are a good dimension for them and may contain fluffy materials from previous bird occupancy. But these B. mixtus, a later-active species, seemed to be doing fine in this abandoned avian apartment. Typical of b.b. nests, it smelled putrid and the entrance was smeared with crusty, caked up excretion. Unlike honey bees, bumble bees are not very clean, they don't really need to be - their colony breaks up and abandons the nest by mid-summer. With some observation I saw one large worker emerge and dash around the entrance several times, wiping her abdomen on the surface, before retreating inside. With some finger-scratching, I eventually coaxed another timid bee to appear briefly and feebly buzz its wings before also retreating. Not much of a defense, typical of this relatively docile species. The obstreperous B. melanopygus would have had me running in seconds.

- Evan

Welcome to our cozy mess!

Bumble bee!

Frankenmoth!

Introduction to wax moths
Oh no! Not another Frankenhive!

Well, not exactly. Turns out that. due to improvements in my barn, the increased winter temperatures have, for the first time, made wax moth an issue in my stored equipment. I found a stack of infested honey frames that needed cleaning up.

Typical wax moth damage. 
(arrow shows an actual adult moth, larval tunnels, and frass)

This frame was almost completely eaten out!

So, just enlisting the help of the Farm hives for the task. Infested frames put on top of the bonified honey supers. The bees will kill the moths, their larvae and eggs, and clean and rebuild the comb.

Return of the Queen of Frankenhive

She's baaaaack!
Well, after several days the class popped the lid on the former Frankenhive to have a look at the tamed throng. Surprize! The top box, supposedly with no queen (having been fatally wounded in action) never-the-less had tons of bees all over the pile of old combs, festoons hanging from the lid, and...eggs & young larvae! So, somehow, a queen was once again with the colony. Where did she come from? Could the damaged queen have miraculously recovered? Was there a sneaker queen in the colony that took over? We may never know. Weird. So, the hive had still been a double-queen affair despite the initial attempt to combine.

To try once again to tame the beast, the known queen from the bottom box was removed, all the bees from the top box (including the mystery queen, hopefully) were shaken and brushed off their old combs onto the new foundation below to join the existing small, now queenless colony there, and then all the brood-containing combs were put back in the to box on top of a queen excluder. Three weeks hence, all the brood will have emerged and the old comb can be recycled and replaced with new foundation. This should be the last step in making a single-queen, strong colony. Or so we hope.

Getting Stung

Initiation ceremony - it's not about the pain. Roll up yer sleeve, honey, this is for your own good!

The first activity on the first day of the Bee Course is to get stung. This is as much about how to avoid the pain as curing the anxiety about it and to test for allergic reactions. Advice: quickly scrape off the stinger to avoid maximum venom dosage. Don't squeeze it or you'll inject all the venom.
Yes, the poor bee will die, having left a good part of her innards behind. In nature, though, the attacker will likely flee or think twice before proceeding to harass the colony and one dead kamakazi worker out of thousands of 0.75 X identical twins is a worthwhile loss for the protection.

Frankenhive!

Saga of the quizzical transformation of a thrown-together hive.

Here is Frankenhive! It was the result of adding 3 different colonies together, 2 from "take-outs", i.e. bees removed from walls, etc., and 1 free swarm. It was not clear that any of these had queens when they were acquired from Jerry the Bee Guy. Also, we were short of equipment, so the easiest thing was to just put them all together and see what happens! The different groups of bees were added on top of one another and separated with newspaper to slow down the mingling of bees, which is supposed to prevent fighting. It got to be quite an impressive tower hive.

Two weeks later, it is time to look inside the monster! Always interesting to peep inside a hive. Well, here is what greeted the beekeeper. Starting from the top box, a massive "festoon" of worker bees, making long chains of each other, swinging like trapeze experts. But no new comb, rather unexpected.

Festoon!

This is a swarm which was being combined with Hive 5 a few days earlier -- the workers, even without a queen, had drawn out several combs from the lid of their box. You can see the edge of it underneath the covering of bees.

Here is a picture of a similar and more usual situation

Below the festooning mass of worker bees was the original pile of extracted combs covered in bees, many recently emerged. At the bottom of the pile of old comb was one with some new brood, somewhat unexpectedly. And as the last piece was being lifted up, there was a queen! Unfortunately, she had been fatally wounded in the dissection of the hive. So only her workers would survive hence, fine to combine with whatever was in the lower boxes.

Below the top colony was a box of comb that had originally also received a swarm. But there were no bees in it now and none of the foundation had been drawn. Bees from both the top and bottom boxes had refused it in deference to their old comb. Below this middle box was another layer of newspaper with some corner holes chewed through to the bottom box, as intended, and piles of paper shreds from chewing up of the upper barrier.

Finally, in the bottom box there was another pile of original, natural combs from the first take-out colony. As with the top hive, there was a queen and a small amount of new brood but lots of recently emerged workers. This time the queen was carefully lifted out and temporarily caged to avoid squashing her as the old comb was removed. The worker bees were shaken off and frames placed in the box in place of the old comb. Then the queen was reintroduced to the reconstituted box with her workers. All the brood was moved to the top box, which was then lowered on top of the bottom box with a queen excluder separating the two layers. This will keep the queen from laying eggs in the pile of old comb above while the remainder of the brood emerges from it and will allow eventual recycling of the old comb. The workers will pass down into the queen's box and begin to help rear the brood and, hopefully, under new conditions, draw out the foundation on the new frames. Voila! The monster will transform into a normal hive. It already looks less scary:

New Queens Released, More Swarms

On Sunday our new queens were released into two un-queened receiver colonies and they dove right in. They'd been in cages for 3 days, each getting used to the odors of her new realm. In a month the worker bees will begin to take on her characteristics and we hope for the best!

Jerry the Bee Guy keeps supplying us with bees to fortify the existing hives. The 10th swarm so far (including removal jobs) was added to hive 6 later on Sunday. This is an awkward way to build up the bee population but it should work.

Bee guy

Jerry the Bee Guy saves the day!

Here is Marvin Johnson, a.k.a. Jerry the Bee Guy, bee removal expert and purveyor of fine evicted bee stock, the likes of which now populate several Farm beehives. Colleting docile swarms is easier on the catcher and the bees compared with cutting an entire defensive hive out of a building. But Marvin does this for a living and has helped us save money and build up our hives at a time when bees are no longer available because of high demand and the advancing season

Royalty On Her Own Time

Queens in transit. A few of her daughter workers are included to take care of her until she is released. 

We waited an extra few weeks. Then an extra 9 nerve-wracking days during which time the "receiver" colonies gave up and began to rear their own queens. Finally they arrived, our experimental stock from "local" breeder in southern Oregon. Immediately they were installed in small "nuc" hives with small populations of anxiously awaiting workers. The nucs were made up from two of the best swarms collected the past 2 weeks. One was queenless after ensconced in a Farm hive but the other had a queen that waited a week to begin laying; she had to be transferred to another swarm hive that was also apparently queenless. The new hybrid queens will be released from their cages in 3 days and should be laying within a day or so in their adopted colony. They are supposed to be "resistant" but these days, this is like saying your cereal is full of "goodness". But they are as local as we could find on short notice and we will be testing them against Varroa mites and for hygienic behavior.

Boom & Bust Behind Glass

Observation hive dynamics take a downturn.

Queen cells first observed

It became obvious that the observation hive cast off a swarm when 3 queen cells were seen on one of the upper frames. The population of the hive, recently bolstered with the addition of brood and bees from another hive, was also suddenly lower. On June 7th, two of the queen cells were open. By then, the bees had diminished to only enough to cover a couple of frames. A queen was seen among them. However, she seemed lethargic and did not command a very impressive retinue. Sometimes pre-mating queens behave differently, so this could have been the situation. Weather would have prevented mating anytime in the past few days. But on closer inspection, her right rear leg appeared paralyzed, which is possibly why she was slow. She may have been injured in fighting with her emerged sister. This is not a good sign. Will she survive? Will she lay? In a week or so we should know. She may need to be replaced.
Life behind glass is always more precarious than in a normal hive. Fortunately, we have the means to stabilize the situation and should have a vibrant colony on display by Summer term!

Swarms and more swarms!

The intermittent sunny weather is drawing out the season.

A swarm was seen near the apiary over the last weekend. None of us swarm-catchers were there to get it. Still not sure if it came from one of our hives (hopefully NOT) or was incoming. Jerry the Bee Guy also called that he had captured a swarm and could give it to us but again it was on the weekend and the swarmies were predisposed. WE SHALL KEEP TRYING!!!

Swarm season! Bees everywhere!

Swarms began to appear a month ago but reached a peak last weekend. Although our 6 swarm traps did not collect any, there was intense scout activity at half of them. A loose swarm was collected in Oregon by Professor Evan Sugden while on a field mission and installed in one of our hives on return. Here are some pics of that exciting adventure (as swarm capture always is!)

Walking into a swarm!

Swarm up close (in a rose bush at McMenamin's, Troutdale, OR).
After it settled for the evening, it was put neatly into a box for transport to UW!

Swarm finds a home!
The swarm box is coupled with a hive, allowing the swarm bees to march right into a perfect new home! (This swarm dispersed 200 miles with some help!) Welcome swarm colony No. 1!

Cold, Rainy Weather Suppresses Activities

Waiting for those May flowers...

Rainy and cold today. The new hives were mostly not foraging, the older, established hive was sending out workers, however. No pollen coming back, not surprising considering the flower-scouring rain. The bees in the observation hive were cold and clustered toward the bottom, having abandoned a frame of mature brood above. They have no honey, will soon have to feed or take apart to insert a frame of honey. These conditions represent a dangerous crunch time for the bees, who's populations are maxing now even as nectar availability declines. This will definitely slow down the swarm season.

Observation Hive Installed: A hive morphs from 3 to 2 dimensions!

With great ease, 4 frames from one of the overwintered hives were transferred with the queen to the recently cleaned observation hive and sealed in. By the next day the queen was laying calmly. Weather kept the worker bees in. As sometimes happens, especially with small colonies, it takes a few days for foraging activity to pick up. Here is a pic of the o-hive from mid-summer 2011:

New Bees Arrive

Two new packages of bees for the UW Farm hives were collected at Beez Neez Apiary Supply by former student and current Bee Team manager Jamie Bass. They were introduced to the waiting hives, single story with brand new wax foundation. The bees were very slow to "march" into the hives, even though a frame of brood had been placed in each to attract them. The packages were supposed to be queenless; the queens had been ordered from a different source and would be joined with the bees later. However, it was discovered next morning that the packages contained queens none the less (the usual way they are shipped) so the producers had made a mistake. This is why the bees were reluctant to occupy their hives -- they chose to stay with their queen instead, even though this meant spending the night outdoors in a cold screen cage! Next day bees and queens were introduced to the hives and settled in quickly. The plan to allow the bees to rear temporary queens from the provided eggs had to be abandoned. This way, the bees would be able to set up normal operations within hours rather than waiting 2-3 weeks for a new queen to grow up, mate, and begin laying. (The ordered queens will be put in separate, additional hives, or might replace the package queens.) The hives were given sugar syrup to help the workers secrete lots of wax for drawing out the comb, the actual working space of the hive, used for food storage and nursery chambers. All was well 2 days after the operation, with forager bees already bringing home loads of pollen and nectar.


Here is what a package of bees looks like: