Flower Watch

Bird's-foot trefoil, Lotus Corniculatus,
photo courtesy of Tim McGee

"Today was a bit of a field trip day for me to locate food sources and observe nectar gathering. I watched honeybees on birdsfoot trefoil, milkweed, thistle, and basswood," writes my beehive neighbor, Tim McGee. He sent a couple photos of major nectar producers currently in bloom that "bees love."

Monarch on common milkweed
MBGNA file photo

One is bird's-foot trefoil. or Lotus corniculatus, which resembles a tiny yellow lady's slipper orchid. Unlike the lady's slipper, bird's-foot trefoil is a non-native. The Arb & Gardens's curator, David Michener, tells me that this plant is not officially designated as an invasive species in Michigan yet,  but, "It does have a tendency to take over. I wouldn't recommend planting them in your garden." He tells me it is already designated as invasive in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and is commonly found volunteering along freeways in Michigan.

Common milkweed in the field
Courtesy of Tim McGee

Tim's other photo is common milkweed, or Asclepius syriaca. I love milkweed and have it all over my home garden in many varieties. When you plant common milkweed, not only are you feeding the bees, you are also helping build a highway for monarch butterflies, who depend on its leaves for food during the caterpillar stage. Monarchs, like honey bees, are also in decline due to loss of habitat and other factors.

Nuc'ing It Out

Now I have two nucs to compare. One Meghan made for me out of a bursting hive of hers that survived the winter. The other my carpool mate, Ben, gave me. His hive was getting ready to swarm, so we created an artificial swarm - ie, a nuc - during last class. Ben has a five-month old baby and doesn't have time to maintain a nuc at a separate property. He generously gave me his. In exchange, I promised to give him bees in the spring if he has a deadout.

If I had to predict, I would guess that Meghan's nuc will be the healthier. The queen in Ben's nuc will most likely be a full-blooded Georgian (unless his Georgia queen mated with a local drone). I don't know how well the Georgians will do in our Michigan winters. I know that Meghan's hive is a survivor. 

Anyone care to bet?

Here's how we made the nuc from Ben's overfull hive:

Step One

Our teacher, Winn Harliss, offered an empty nuc box. He says he is the most prepared beekeeper you'll ever meet, and I believe him. The three queen cells in the hive tipped Winn off that the girls might be getting ready to swarm. Creating a nuc is like creating an artificial swarm, except the beekeeper gets to keep the bees.

Step Two

Winn made room in the nuc box by removing a couple of empty frames.

Step Three

Winn removed a frame of honey, pollen and bees from the overfull hive and placed it in an empty spaces in the nuc box.

Step Four

Then he removed a frame of brood, which had three queen cells on it, and put it in the nuc box.

You can see one of the queen cells here. It looks like a little cone in the upper left corner.

-Whispered Aside-

Winn said the bees built a second layer of comb instead of drawing out this foundation because the foundation is plastic instead of wax. Some people swear by the plastic, but not Winn. He says the bees don't like it.

Last But Not Least

Finally, Winn put the new frames into the busting hive to fill the gaps we'd created by removing the brood and honey frames.

Too Darn Hot

My little white hive at Tollgate,
right across the street from the mall.
I added a super yesterday so
it no longer looks so tiny

The SEMBA beginning
beekeepers' hives

Ironically, the bee yard at Tollgate Farm is directly across the street from Twelve Oaks Mall, which my co-workers call "Negative Twelve Oaks" because more than twelve oaks had to be removed in order to build it. The farm itself is a little idyll between freeways, complete with a pond, fruit trees, garden plots, goats and a gambol-roof barn.

The farm is about a 40-minute drive from home, too far for regular weekly checks. Last time I visited, three weeks ago, I left my girls with a completely empty medium super and the bottom board still in place. By yesterday, they were overheated and spread out all over the outside of the hive (ie, bearding). In these photos, the bearding is already starting to dissipate because I removed the bottom board and tilted the top cover to provide more circulation. Later, Winn, our teacher, recommended that I move the inner cover entrance to the back, face up, and close the telescoping cover. He said there would be enough ventilation with the bottom board removed, and the closed cover would keep out more pests.

The girls were overheated
and bearding when I arrived

I removed the bottom board
(see it behind the hive?) and
tilted up the top cover to provide
more ventilation

We saw just a couple of Varroa mites on my bottom board. We had learned in class that twenty mites on the bottom board is a good threshold for treatment. At Winn's recommendation, I decided not to treat, even though I had a flour sifter and powdered sugar in my bee box. Coating them with powdered sugar would distract them from their work at hand, and the hive seems strong enough to combat the mites for now.

The weather this year has been much better than last year for bees and flowers. By yesterday, the hive was already bigger than last year's ever got to be. The empty medium from three weeks ago was already 95% full. Luckily, the girls were not preparing to swarm, so all I had to do was add a third box to give them more room. My carpool mate, Ben, was not so lucky. But more on that later.

Gone Native

They may look like animatronics, but they're real. Our Michigan native sweat bees - green eyes and all - are pretty cool. Bumble bees, with their heavy, furry bodies, are also native to Michigan, and also pretty cool.

Sweat bee
courtesy of Steve Parrish

Bumblebee courtesy of Steve Parrish

My question - does the fact that honey bees pollinate 30% of agricultural crops mean that 30% of our food produce depends on honey bees? - is still out there. 

Native bees don't produce enough high quality honey for us to manage them as livestock. They do, however, help pollinate the agricultural products we eat. Like honey bees, native bees are in decline due to loss of green space, monoculture farm practices and increased use of pesticides.

Dr. Roger Hoopingarner, a large-scale blueberry farmer and retired MSU entomology professor, says that blueberries are "designed for bumble bees." He goes on to say that honey bees prefer dandelions over apple trees. Another MSU entomology professor, Rufus Isaacs, says that 80% to 90% of Michigan blueberries are pollinated by honey bees. He's working on a project to encourage and increase the wild bumblebee population.

I especially like the use of the electric toothbrush as a field research tool.

Nursing the Queen

Remember that scene in Terms of Endearment when Shirley Maclaine wakes up her peacefully sleeping baby because she fears the baby is dead? Well, that's me.

My hive is the one with just the top cover removed.
The video is of that two-inch hole in the inner cover.

Meghan's hive really was on the verge of swarming (see my last post). That means the queen had started laying eggs in queen cups - baby queens in the making, ready to take over the hive. To prevent them from swarming, and to get me started on my nuc, Meghan cut out some of the queen cells and put them and some nurse bees in my empty hive box.

I am meant not to open the hive for a full week because opening the hive will disturb the nurse bees at work. When I went to look at the exterior of the hive today, however, I saw very little activity around the entrance. In fact, I saw no activity at all. All the other hives - including the small nuc boxes - were abuzz. 

What if my new nuc absconded? What if they returned to Meghan's hive, only a few doors down? What if they died? I had to open the hive just enough to make sure they were still in there.

Here's what I saw inside.

Yes, they are alive and kicking. If all goes well, in 4-5 days, the queen will hatch, and in a week, she'll take her nuptial flight. Stay tuned.

Still Waiting for the Swarm

I got all excited because I thought Meghan's hive was swarming.
Turns out it is only a variant of bearding - where the bees spread
out along the exterior of the hive to keep it cool inside.

Thanks, Parker, for helping me figure it out, and for the photo.

Hive, Hive, Hurray!

"Your post about nucs is a bit doomsday," Meghan writes. She goes on to say that the survival of the bees over the winter is less about growing huge than it is about the bees' conditions and ability to survive.  "Many people over-winter nucs successfully, and very small hives as well.  Many, many more factors come into play than when you put the bees into your hive."

More good news: "If you overwinter even a small hive successfully, it can be built up and split in the spring. You don't even have to take queen-rearing courses to do that, and you can be more sustainable." As I suspected, the most important thing is to have more colonies, so that when you experience overwinter losses, you still have colonies as support.

Her best guess about why my hive absconded at the end of last season: too much moisture. The technique Clay showed me of intensifying the fully drawn, honey- and brood-filled frames into a single medium will help the bees manage climate within the hive and give them a better shot at winter survival.

No Nucs!

I am eagerly waiting for Meghan to let me know my nuc is ready. I want to compare its progress to the package bees who arrived in early May. The latest word from Meghan is that the nuc won't be ready until early July.

Early July? Last year's nuc was ready in late May, and they struggled to make enough honey for the winter. They ended up a deadout. How will the new hive make it through winter with so little time to prepare? I'm hoping the drawn comb from last year will give these new girls a big enough leg up.

Nuc: a mini bee hive, complete with
queen, workers and drones

Once I get enough hives going that at least one survives the winter, I can start producing my own queens, and reducing my costs. But if my hives die off every year, I'll never get there. I'll be stuck buying somebody else's nucs or chasing swarms.

Curious about why the bees are behind? Here's what Meghan has to say:

Why the bees are behind
If you have been following the weather, you all know that this has been a very cold spring, and everything is behind schedule. (Karen's note: climatologists at the American Public Gardens Association conference a couple weeks ago said that we should expect these "frozen springs" as a feature of climate change.) The bees all use environmental cues to build up and reproduce, and it appears that they are a good month behind where they were last year - and not just here, but all over the country. I'm  working on getting queens and packages for work, teaching, and MSU from places like Florida, Georgia, and Ontario, and everyone I talk to is in the same place.  Similarly, last year I was catching swarms in April, and this year I received my first call last week, so bees everywhere are having a slow build up this spring.

To raise good queens, we need two things: 1) drones and 2) good weather for mating flights. I can't get started with queen production until there are drones, or the queens can't get mated, and the drones hatched out weeks behind where they were last year. I started raising queens in the beginning of May, as soon as I saw mature drones in my hives, but the weather quickly got cold again, and the nucs were not able to keep the brood warm during the subsequent deep freezes, and were seriously set back, or the queen cell didn't make it.  The second batch of queens emerged during a cold and rainy spell, and were (I believe), not well mated  - they need to mate sufficiently to produce fertile eggs for their lifetime. Those that haven't been superseded by the bees have not started laying, so I don't think they are of sufficient quality to sell. I am currently in the third round of raising queens, and I am feeling optimistic. The bees are starting to swarm now, meaning that they themselves think that this is a good time to be raising queens and to split colonies - and the bees generally know best about these things.  

Teed Off

Sometimes golf courses get a bad name because of the intensive water and chemical needs of the green, particularly in places like Scottsdale, AZ. (I was there recently and learned that they have 200 golf courses ... in the middle of the Sonoran desert!)

Honey bee looking for pollen and nectar at Radrick Farms.
Photo courtesy of Paul Scott.

However, golf courses are by definition dedicated open space, and many golf courses and golf course associations have explicit conservation goals. Along with this great picture of a honey bee, Paul Scott, General Manager of Radrick Farms golf course, sent me Radrick's environmental stewardship goals. 

"We are proud of all the work it details," he writes. Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses. Groundwater Guardian Tree Site. Community Partner for Clean Streams. Reason to be proud.

Next up for Radrick: on-site honey bees, in partnership with the University of Michigan student beekeepers (who also have bees at Matthaei Botanical Gardens).

Peonies & Pollen

Honey bee snagging pollen from a peony at the Arb's peony garden
courtesy of my former co-worker Nick Hadwick. One nice thing
about a beekeeping blog is that people me send their cool photographs.

Beautiful. 

Peonies are generally associated with ants, but as you can see, honey bees like their flowers, too.

Our bee teachers suggested we garden to benefit honey bees. The list of "beneficial" plants included a bunch of invasive species like autumn olive, Japanese knotwood and black locust.

How do you wrap your mind around non-native species that are beneficial for human purposes, like earthworms and honey bees? Is the concept of native vs. invasive plants just a form of politically correct xenophobia? Is it shoveling against the tide? Or is climate change and ecosystem globalization nature's way of sloughing off the most invasive species of all...human beings?

Who knows? Myself, I'll plant peonies but stay away from purple loosestrife in my own garden. By the way, the Arb's peony garden (where this photo was taken) is in full bloom now and it a great time to visit. I'll be there on Monday from 11 to 7. Come see me, and bring your favorite photo.

One Month In - Brood

We released our package bees exactly a month ago. Sunday was the best class ever. Our instructors were brief and focused inside so we could get out to the beeyard sooner. Thanks, guys!

I'd already put a second medium on the brood box a couple weeks ago. With a three-pound package, I started with 10-12,000 bees, so I estimate I've got about 35,000 now, thanks to my queen (read: egg slave). 

Instead of completely filling the brood box, the girls built upward. The result: two half-filled mediums. Clay showed me how to rearrange the frames to get the optimal arrangement: honey frames on the outsides, then pollen, then brood in the center. Fullest frames to the east since the girls like to go west. We moved the empty and drawn comb frames to the top box, and made sure all the frames are evenly spaced to ensure bee space.

What's bee space? It is the exact amount of space bees need to move freely through the hive. Too much space, they'll build comb. Too little, they'll seal the space with propilis. Bee space. About 3/8 of an inch.

Mighty Mite

"Are we going under? I don’t think so," says State of Michigan Apiarist Mike Hansen. "But we are going to go through some very challenging times." Mike goes on to say that shortly after the introduction of the tracheal mite into the U.S., we saw large overwinter declines in beekeeping operations in Michigan. This was complicated by the Varroa mite. "Many of America’s beekeepers tossed in their hive tool."

I had Varroa mites in my hive last year. I used a screened bottom board, which allows pollen and other detritus from the hive to fall through onto a piece of white plastic sheet (resembling a blank election sign). You pull out the sheet to inspect what's in the hive. One of the horticulturalists here at the Gardens helped me see the tiny movement on the board, and showed me how to look through a microscope to identify it. Using Google images, we were able to identify the speck as a Varroa mite.

Meghan (my bee mentor) was not alarmed. She said that the population in my hive was still small and manageable. After more on-line research, I elected to sprinkle the hive with powdered sugar. When they clean off the sugar, the bees also clean off the mites, causing them to fall through the screened bottom board and out of the hive. The mites are not able to clean the sugar and die of overheating, but the sugar does not harm the bees. Still, I wonder if the Varroa mites had anything to do with my deadout last winter.

The nasty Varroa mite attacking drone larvae.
It's disgusting.

Mike Hansen talked about the new generation of beekeepers: people who look carefully at beekeeping as a business and investment, and have accepted the changes in life needed to follow the migratory patterns necessary to overwinter and manage large numbers of bee colonies and have them ready for pollination when they return to states like Michigan in the spring.  That's beyond my level of effort, but I am prepared to devote time and attention to understanding the health of the hive, pests and diseases, and working to keep the hive strong.

Those simpler days when Sherlock Holmes could leave the hive unattended year upon year, only opening it to harvest honey, are gone.