Politics, pesticides and bees...oh my!

June 1, 2014

Ontario is in election mode...voting day is June 12.  If you are wondering how to choose one party over another, how about thinking about the bees and checking out their platforms on the environment.

The Ontario Beekeepers Association is a very quiet organization but they have become vocal as it becomes increasingly obvious that neonicotinoids, pesticides made by Bayer and Syngenta are causing havoc with bee health as well as native pollinators.  It is also very obvious that our politicians are unwilling to go up against these corporate giants and keep handing the decision making to other levels of government.

Here is the OBA's press release for you to look at.  Ask all your candidates these questions and see if they have an answer...if they have even thought about it.

I cannot think of any issue as pressing as this one not because I am a beekeeper but because the health of the bees is an indicator of the health of the world.

Check out your candidate and their stance.  Whatever party you vote for...make sure you vote!

May 28, 2014

PRESS RELEASE

Ontario’s political parties express positions on bee health

 Milton, ON, May 28, 2014. The Ontario Beekeepers’ Association has surveyed each of the four major parties running in this year’s provincial election for their plan to solve Ontario’s current bee health crisis.

 In 2012 and 2013, over 14,000 hives were lost to bee kills linked to the indiscriminate use of neonicotinoid pesticides by Health Canada. Last year, nearly 99% of the 2.2 million acres of corn in Ontario were treated with neonicotinoids, even though the Ontario Ministry of Food and Agriculture crop specialists indicate that only 10% to 20% of acreage needs pest protection.

 The OBA has released a revised position on neonicotinoids and bee health. The new position calls for a moratorium on the sale of neonicotinoid treated seeds but offers the option for farmers to apply for one-time use if they can a demonstrate, through an approved soil test or monitoring program, a problem that requires neonicotinoid-treated seeds.  This position is consistent with that adopted by the National Farmers Union.

 Two questions were asked via email to the leaders of the Ontario PC, Ontario Liberal, Ontario NDP and Green Party of Ontario:

1)     Ontario's beekeeping industry has suffered through the loss of thousands of hives in both 2012 and 2013 that Health Canada has confirmed were the result of exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides in soy and corn planting. Should you be elected to lead the Government of Ontario, would you support the Ontario Beekeepers' Association's call for an immediate moratorium on the sale of the neonicotinoid treated seeds that are killing our bees?

2)     Ontario is suffering a serious decline in the population of the insect pollinators we rely on for our locally grown foods as the result of the indiscriminate use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Health Canada and other studies have shown significant amounts of persistent neonicotinoid pesticides in water and soil samples across Ontario. If elected, will your party declare this an urgent environmental problem?

Is Spring Really Coming?

April 1, 2014

The bee yard one month ago in the "thaw"

Wow!  It's 14 degrees C today though it feels like 8 degrees C.  I can see everyone's shoulders starting to relax as they cautiously dream of warm weather.  Our property still has many snow patches around but they are retreating and exposing bits of brown and green...at long last.

The bees are starting to feel it too.  Two days ago it was 4 degrees C and sunny and I was home.  At noon I took the chance to take a look in the hives.  I wanted to give them some sugar to help them get through the next few weeks since there is absolutely nothing out there for them to eat...and I was very curious.  It has been such a long and brutally cold winter I wasn't sure what I would find.

I opened Queen Mab II first and was very surprised and pleased to find the cluster in the top box as if they were waiting for me.  She has 6 full frames of bees and looks very active.

Queen Mab with a 6 frame sized cluster

I added an empty box on top so I could give her some granulated sugar to keep her going.  The first source of food will be the silver maple when it blooms and though I see a bit of fuzziness on the tree on our property, I think it will be at least two weeks before there is forage for the bees.  It will be a tricky balance for the next while since the sugar will stimulate the queen to lay but there won't be enough food to keep a whole lot of brood alive.  I will try not to overfeed and the minute the trees bloom I will stop.

Next I opened Queen Olivia, my awesome Australian hive.  She had 8 full frames and looks amazing!  

Healthy Queen Olivia with an 8 frame cluster

I added the empty box and gave her sugar as well.

Adding sugar onto newspaper in Queen Olivia

I then went into Queen Sangria.  She was very small going into the winter and I knew that she might not make it.  Sadly, I found what I expected...a small, dead cluster of bees.  She just couldn't keep warm enough with so few bees.  

Dead cluster of bees in Queen Sangria

Later that afternoon both Queen Mab and Queen Olivia were really busy enjoying the sunshine.  I will check on their sugar stores in a few days and hope for budding maples.

Lively Queen Olivia in the sun

So the bee season is off and we will see what the future brings.  A loss of 33% or a success rate of 66%...it all depends on your perspective!

Happy New Year 2014

Jan 5, 2014

Happy New Year to all of you!  I haven't written since August.  Apologies!  I am looking out the window at a grey day with falling snow that threatens to continue all day long.  We have just gone through a cold snap that saw the temperatures during the day go as low as minus 26  (centigrade) with the wind chill.  Brrr.  No bees to be seen during that time but as soon as it warmed up to minus 2, the bees came out for cleansing flights and clearing out their dead.  There were about 10 bees dead in the snow outside of the hives after this.

These are the little signs that let me know that there is still life in the hives.  Another sign that gives me hope is the melting of the snow around the opening that shows that the bees are heating the cluster.

Heavy snowfall on the hives in November 2013.  Melted snow around openings.

Here's a little update on the state of each hive and what we can expect from them in the spring.

Queen Mab II:  This hive started with an Ontario queen, was doing very well and decided to swarm in June last summer.  I let her build her own queen and rebuild the hive on her own since there were no queens to be had and it was still early enough in the season.  I did not take any honey from her last summer.  So Queen Mab II is a new  Ontario queen and will be about 3/4 year old in the spring.  She should be fairly robust in numbers.

Queen Olivia:  This hive started with an Australian queen and was the star hive last summer.  She never showed any interest in swarming and built up very quickly.  I took about 3 frames of honey to harvest from her.  She is going into the new season with a mature queen so I will have to watch her carefully to make sure she doesn't swarm.  I will probably have to do a split very early in the spring.

Queen Sangria:  This is my experimental hive.  She is made up of a queen from one of the swarm cells from Queen Mab that I took when she was making queens  I added bees and brood from Queen Olivia.  To keep her fed through the winter I gave her a full box of capped honey from Queen Olivia.  I could have harvested all of that for us but instead I am buying honey from the market!  Queen Sangria is a new Ontario queen and will be the same age as Queen Mab II but will not be near as robust.  It will be amazing if she makes it through this long, cold winter but it will be a good experiment regardless of the outcome.

I will be spending the next three months preparing boxes for the splitting of the hives, with the help of my handy husband, Bill.  My challenge is to avoid any swarming this coming spring...at least of my own bees!  

So  now we  wait for spring.  I keep the bird feeders full of seed for the juncos, woodpeckers, cardinals, chickadees, sparrows, nut hatches and mourning doves that visit the back yard every day.  Sometimes we see a skunk or opossum slide through the snow drifts and of course, dozens of grey and black squirrels.  Recently, it was so cold, I couldn't see through the frost on the window of the back door so I took a picture with my very cool new macro lens on my I-phone.

Macro picture of fern-like frost on the back window.

This is what I see when the window is not covered with frost, taken with the very cool fish-eye lens on my I-phone.

Snow bound Ontario

I wish you all the best in this brand new 2014!

July to August Bee Diary

Aug 18, 2013
 It's been a month since I have written. I have been into the bees many times since that last post so I thought I'd better catch you up with a few notes and some visuals.

July 7 Looking for the New Queens

I knew it was a little early to be looking for hatched and/or fertilized queens but since I was heading out of town for a while, I thought I would check. I had a couple of hope-to-be beekeepers coming to visit so I knew it would be interesting for them as well. I opened the experimental hive first. The queens had not hatched yet but the worker bees that I had grabbed from Queen Olivia to populate the hive had decided to build another queen in response to this queenless hive. I removed this queen cell fdue to my human need to meddle! Here is the frame with the queen cells still capped and my visitors looking at a frame.

Capped Queen cells on bottom of frame

Melodie and Gerhard

July 11  First Honey Harvest of Summer 2013

I took 3 frames of capped honey from Queen Olivia and Queen Mab II to harvest since they had a bit of surplus.  I am using the crush and strain method now instead of using my beautiful extractor.  I cut the whole comb out of the frame and let the honey drip through a nylon cloth.  In some ways it is faster as I only do a few frames at a time and I don't have to clean out the extractor every time.

Cutting the honey comb out of the frame.

Bill made me a beautiful shelf for the beeyard for setting the boxes on.  Its cross pieces have a point cut into them so there is as little contact as possible with the boxes.  This way the squishing of bees is minimized.  An awesome addition to the beeyard--good for the bees and my back!

Perfect shelf to hold the boxes

July 17  Hot Bees

It may be hard to believe that we went through a heat wave that had everyone and everything drooping.  It went as high as 35 degrees but was feeling like 42 degrees with the humidity.  It felt like it lasted forever though it was in reality only about a week and half. We had all our fans going non-stop to deal with it.  The bees were madly fanning as well and hanging on their front porches day and night.

Queen Mab II and Queen Olivia cooling off

July 23  Introducing Queen Sangria

I finally got a chance to go into the hives to see if the queens had hatched and been fertilized.  It was a cool and sunny day.  I went into my experimental hive first and there she was!  A big, striped queen laying eggs.  There was new brood and new wax being drawn.  (My great nieces Madison and Megan named her Queen Sangria as that is the drink of choice this summer.)  I gave this hive a box of frames on top to give them some room.  I then went to Queen Mab II.  Though I did not find her Majesty, it was very clear that she was doing great since there was evidence of laying.

Queen Sangria--you can find her!

August 4  Fixing "wonky honey comb"

I figured I'd better look into Queen Olivia, my star hive to see if there was any surplus honey to be harvested.  What I found was "wonky honey comb".  Since I don't use plastic foundation, the bees are left to their own devices to build straight combs.  Mostly they do, but in this hive they had built on angle so each comb started in one frame and then half way through continued to the next frame.  This makes taking the frames out singly impossible without making a very sticky mess.  I took out 5 capped frames to harvest and then tried to fix the rest with wire.  Honey was dripping everywhere and the bees were in a frenzy trying to clean it up before strange bees or wasps happened upon the mess.  Once I had the broken comb fixed I gave it to Queen Sangria to eat/clean up.

Wiring the combs back into the frames

August 17  Bee Check

It has been unseasonably cool these last two weeks with temperatures going as low as 12 degrees some nights.  I imagine the nectar production is limited though I have seen a lot of pollen going into the hives.

It was time to see if the hives needed more room and if all was well.  I checked Queen Sangria and found her Majesty happily laying.  They still hadn't done much work in their extra box but I saw that they had cleaned out the two fixed frames completely which supports the theory that there hasn't been much nectar.  I hope that she can build up the population to a large enough cluster to make it through the winter.  If she doesn't I will have to amalgamate her with another hive.

I opened up Queen Olivia and also found her Majesty working in the bottom box.  There hasn't been a lot of honey production in her either so I left all frames in.  To tell the truth, I wasn't that interested in harvesting honey this weekend anyway.  

Busy doorway at Queen Olivia

I then went into Queen Mab II.  For the first time ever, I found her Majesty!  She was working in the second box from the bottom  She is striped just like Queen Sangria, as they are related, if not full sisters.  The hive looks busy and healthy but I did spot a varroa mite on one of the workers.  Of course, I knew that all the hives must have mites but it is still disappointing to see one.  We will see how the hives do.

Queen Mab II--right in the middle of her retinue

So there's your little update on the bees of Waxen City.  I have harvested about 23 lbs of honey.  The first harvest has an extremely floral taste...perhaps linden tree?  The second harvest is just plain sweet!  It is still a wonderful hobby.  I feel that I learn something new each time I go into the hives and I have become more calm and relaxed as I work with them.  

I know that there has been a lot of media around honey bees and other pollinators and their precarious position in our world.  I will write again about that and the ominous possibility of a world without bees but for now, enjoy the sunshine and the incredible Ontario harvest of fruits and vegetables available at our markets.   I leave you with an image of a Red Admiral butterfly on an echinacea blossom.

Red Admiral butterfly on echinacea

Queen Rearing Workshop in Burgessville Part 2

The beautiful view at John's bee yard

June 19, 2013

And the story of queen rearing continues.

Day 21 - 26:  The fertilized queen has returned from her fertilizing flights to mating hive and is laying eggs.  The hive should be checked at this point to make sure that she has come back safely and is indeed laying.  She can then be caught, marked and caged to be added to a hive that needs a queen.  Marking the queen tells you what year she was born.  There is an international code for marking queens:

Colour          Year ending in

White            1 or 6

Yellow          2 or 7

Red               3 or 8

Green            4 or 9

Blue              5 or 0

Take the first letter of each colour and say "Will You Raise Good Bees?" to remember the colour chart.

We practised picking up drones by the wings and then marking them.  Drones can't sting and are not as "valuable" as queens.

Marking a drone with a paint marker

The queen can then be caged with 5-8 attendant bees (young bees that care for the queen) and some queen candy (fondant).  The candy acts as a slow-release plug.  The cage is added to an existing queenless hive and the workers in the hive eat away the candy.  As they work they slowly become accustomed to the pheremone of the queen and learn to accept her.  When the candy is all eaten the queen can come out, be accepted by the population and start laying.

Queen Cage installed on frame

Plastic and wooden queen cages

It was so cool to be hanging out with a bunch of fellow bee keepers in the beautiful Ontario countryside.  Some of us were new bee keepers and some with many years of experience and we all had different reasons for wanting to learn about queen rearing.  I was there purely to satisfy my curiosity and others wanted to be able to raise their own queens to make sure that they would have a supply when queens were needed or to save money on re-queening.

Beekeepers with trainer (the one in bare arms!)

I will probably never raise queens since I only have two hives but I learned so much about the biology of bees.  I also learned to be more comfortable around the bees...John's bees are very gentle and I was working barehanded the entire day.  The most exciting thing for me was picking up a drone to mark it.  Bare hands are necessary for this fine work.  That is not to say that I will be that cocky always...I do not enjoy being stung!

Proud graduates!

We drove home after the workshop tired and fulfilled.  A great day for all of us!

Queen Rearing Workshop in Burgessville Part 1

June 19, 2013

On Sunday, June 9 I took part in a queen rearing workshop put on by the Ontario Beekeepers Association.  It took place in Burgessville south of Woodstock at John Blyderveen's beeyard.  I got Queen Olivia from him.

I carpooled with 3 other beekeepers from London and the first thing one of them said as she got into the truck was, " Isn't this going to be great?  We can talk about bees all the way down and back and know that we are not boring anyone!"  It was true...we talked bees all the way there.  How fun is that?

John has a business, Oxford Honey and Supplies.  He sells supplies to beekeepers, extracts and bottles honey and also has his own bees.  He builds nucs with imported bees from Australia and sells them. This season he has been struggling as so many of his bees are perishing due to the neonicotinoid pesticide that is being used to pre-treat the corn in the fields around his farm.  He welcomed 24 beekeepers into his beeyard regardless of these losses and let us tear his beehives apart and put them back together multiple times.  Here is a shot of some of his hives he keeps behind the farm house.

John's Bee yard

We registered and were given blue or red name tags to put us into two teams for learning.  I was in the red team...Go Red!  First we did some classroom learning about queen and drone biology, queen rearing equipment, record keeping, timing and other methods of queen rearing.

You may remember from former posts that any larva has the potential of becoming a queen if it is  fed a large amount of royal jelly for a longer period of time by the nurse bees.  You also might remember that the hive has only one queen and she has to go out of the hive to mate with 10-20 drones.  This takes place over 2-3 days.  She then is able to lay 1000-1500 eggs per day and some of them will be drone eggs and most will be worker eggs.  

So we were reminded of all of this in the class. We learned that honey bees will rear queens when the colony is queenless, or the present queen is being replaced or the colony is preparing to swarm.  When these circumstances are in play, the nurse bees will choose a larva that is 1 day old and start feeding it royal jelly.  They will also build out the cell to be able to hold a queen, which is called a queen cup.  

We were there to learn how to produce the queens ourselves.  We learned how to find  a 1 day old larva, pick it out of the cell with a paint brush or Chinese grafting tool, and move it to a  queen cup made of wax or plastic.  I was terrible at it and my grafts certainly all perished.  The larva needs to be put in the queen cup in exactly the same position since its breathing holes are only on the top and it would drown if put in upside down.  A frame of queen cups can hold as many as 45 queen cups.  Here is a picture of a strip of queen cups and a frame of brood we were grafting from.   Next is a frame that  holds the strips of queen cups.

Queen cups for grafting--yellows one are wax, grey ones are plastic

Day 0:  The frame of queen cups is then put into the centre of an empty box with the following frames:

1. Honey & pollen

2. Empty foundation

3. Capped brood

4. Capped brood

5. Pollen

6. The frame of grafted larvae

7. Open Larva

8. Capped brood

9. Capped brood

10. Frame feeder full of 50% syrup

Queen cup frame in cell starter

This is a queenless hive which means the worker bees will be motivated to create queens.  This is called the queenless cell starter.

(Always check all the frames for natural queen cells since that could upset the whole idea...also make sure there is no queen!)  Lots of bees are needed for this operation.  Once this box is set up, the workers will  start drawing out the queen cups to create the large queen cells needed for the queen larvae to grow.  They feed the larvae royal jelly the whole time.

Day 2:  The box is placed on top of a hive that is queen-right (has a healthy queen).  A queen excluder is place between the two boxes to separate the queen from the hive on the bottom and our queen builder.  This is called the queen-right cell finisher.  The workers are spurred on to finish off the queen cells and capping them by knowing that they have a queen and will prepare for swarming behaviour. 

Day 10:  Brush the bees gently off the cells and move each queen cell carefully to a nuc (4 frame hive) or a mini mating box...a tiny hive.  A pheremone strip is added to the tiny hives to encourage the workers to remain in the nuc. 

Pheremone strip

The queen cell is attached to the wax comb by making an indent int the wax and then gently adding the cell.

Mini Mating box---tiny hive!

Queen cell added to comb in mating hive.

Add two cups of bees to mating hive...and do not stir.

Day 12:  The virgin queen emerges from the queen cell.

Day 13 - 17:  The virgin queen grows and prepares for her maiden flights.  It must be sunny, above 18 degrees Celsius and not very windy.

Day 17 - 20:  The virgin queen is mated by 10-20 drones by flying to areas where drones are hanging around waiting for virgins.  If many queens are being raised in the bee yard, the bee keeper will make sure that many drones are being raised as well.

Too many pictures for one post so Part 2 will tell you what happens next!  See you.

A Series of Related Bee Events

Thursday June 27, 2013

In the middle of a meeting at work, I got a call from Bill letting me know that there was a very large swarm in the top of our Manitoba maple...very high up.  I suggested he set up a bait hive on top of a ladder to see if we could entice them into it.

Bait hive on top of ladder

All day Thursday, she stayed up in the tree.  It was rainy all day Friday.  I wrote John the beekeeper to see if he could tell me how long the bees could survive in a rainstorm out in the open.  He wrote me back to let me know that a swarm outside could last 4-5 days.  In fact, it is sometimes easier to entice the swarm into a box in inclement weather.  I rubbed lemon grass on the box and left some in the opening hoping that she could not resist it.  At this point I had no idea where this swarm was from though logic would  say that it must be one of my hives...likely Queen Mab.  My sister was convinced that the swarm was Queen Maggie coming back!  We crossed our fingers.

Saturday was still grey but starting to clear and she was still up in the tree.  Bill and I were very busy that day since we were part of a local garden crawl (much like a pub crawl  including lovely drinks at each garden) and were hosting the bbq later that day.  I had my camera with me all morning in case something happened with the swarm.  Nothing.  Nothing that is until Bill and I were completely immersed in setting up tables and chairs.  During that extremely short period of time, the swarm decided to take off.  What an anti-climax!

We shrugged, took down the bait hive and had a lovely garden party.

PS:  We did catch a cat though! :)

Smokey climbed the ladder to entertain us

Monday July 1, 2013

Happy Canada Day!

I went into Queen Mab to see what had happened and if that swarm on the weekend was her.  What I found was a so-so strong hive with at least 8 capped queen cells.  No Queen Mab to be found.  I really should have gotten a puppy!  Sigh.

Capped queen cells

Queen Mab laid the eggs in the queen cups so that the hive would still have a queen after she left with half of the hive.  The workers fed the larvae with royal jelly for the entire time until they capped the cell.

This swarm was so unexpected since the hive was young but they were extremely healthy and built comb super fast on the open frames.

I wrote Dave and John for advice and to see if they had any mated queens for sale.  Neither of them had any queens and they both said to just let the hive alone to hatch its own queen naturally.

Tuesday July 2, 2013

I got scared by the Queen Mab story so I thought I'd better go into Queen Olivia this morning.  She is very, very strong.  She has lots of honey stored in the top box.  I found her majesty very easily and I didn't find any sign of queen cells or queen cups on any of the frames.  Yippee!

I have decided to do an experiment and have started a third small hive with a couple of frames of honey and brood from Queen Olivia and a frame of brood with 3 queen cells from Queen Mab.  It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.  I closed up Olivia and added another box on top for honey storage.

In case you are wondering what the timetable for these queen cells to move on to being queens in their own right, here you are:

In 7 days from today the queens should emerge.  The queen will strengthen, put her make up on and then head out to be fertilized by 10-20 drones.  She will then come back to the hive and start laying eggs.  That is all she will do for the rest of her life ( 3-5 years) unless she gets sick or accidentally dies...or she swarms due to a unaware beekeeper taking care of her.

In 21-28 days from today I should be seeing eggs in the comb.  I am going to go into both hives with queen cells next Tuesday to see if they have hatched and to see which one got the crown.  The first queen to hatch will go to all the other cells and kill the occupants.  If they hatch at the same time, they will have a duel to the death.  The queen uses her stinger in this duel and she is capable of stinging multiple times.  I am told that she will only use her stinger in this fight and not for stinging humans.  I haven't tested that theory...don't plan on it actually...she is much bigger than a worker!

It seems that beekeeping this season is very dramatic.  Makes for a more interesting blog.

I am on holidays now so gardening and beekeeping are my focus these days...and sleeping in.

Campanula with yellow lilies

Honey bee at sage blossoms

Happy summer!