Bee Knowledgeable: Pesticides & Bee Behavior

 Evidence that pesticide use is a major factor in Colony Collapse Disorder continues to grow. More groups are taking action and bringing to light the effects of the varied pesticides we use on our ecosystem.

In recent studies, honey bees have been observed to seal off or cap over cells full of pollen. The behavior was noted because it is exceptionally odd. Bees do not usually cover or cap their pollen cells, only honey and brood. After testing the pollen in these sealed cells scientists found exceptionally high levels of chemicals and pesticides.

Would you like to know more? Check out the article about it:

Should some pesticides be banned to protect bees?

Buzz About World Pollinators

It is now well known that honeybee populations are now threatened. Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, is becoming less of a mystery. As troubling as it is, this is just the tip of the iceberg. All of our pollinator species are threatened. Check out this recent UN study: 

Bee deaths may signal wider pollination threat...

The Boojum Beeyard: Beeyard Work Day!

Spring is in full bloom and there was lots of work to be done in the beeyard lately. Our colonies are booming and it was time to put on the honey (medium) supers. A honey super, also called a medium, are just like hive boxes but are about half as deep. We place these with medium frames on top of the hive box. The bees naturally want to move upwards in the hive and will store their honey up above their brood if they can.

Why is a honey super so much more shallow than a hive box? Because those frames get heavy when they are full of honey! By using a smaller box and frames, the honey super is much lighter and easier to carry when full of honey than a deep super would be.

Kurt also brought up a captured swarm, so we needed to "hive" it, or put it in a full size hive body. So we added yet another colony to Boojum's Beeyard. Check out the photos from our beeyard work day!

First we opened the colony that needed a honey super to look for a good frame of brood.

photo: Robyn Young

Wow, look at all the capped over brood on this frame! We'll put this into the hive box that we want to put the new swarm into. Having brood in there will encourage the new colony to stay (they will now have young to care for).

photo: Robyn Young

See the pollen patties on top? Beekeepers can buy these cakes of pollen to help feed their bees, especially early spring before many flower sources are available. This colony is doing so well it has barely touched the pollen patty we put in there a month ago!

photo: Robyn Young

We inspect the colony, finding that it is indeed healthy and ready to be supered.

photo: Robyn Young

 Jaimie, an intern here at Boojum Institute, joins us for the inspection:

photo: Robyn Young

photo: Robyn Young

This metal grate is called a queen excluder. The holes are big enough for worker bees to get through, but not the queen. We put this between the hive body and the honey super. That way, the workers can fill the honey super with honey and the queen can't get up there to lay brood. That's how we make sure there's no baby bees mixed in with the honey!

photo: Robyn Young

Here's a nice photo of the bees "bearding":

photo: Robyn Young

Here we are putting the frame of brood into the empty hive box. Now it's ready for the swarm:

photo: Robyn Young

This smaller box is called a nuc box. We use it to temporarily house captured swarms:

photo: Robyn Young

A closer look at the nuc box full of bees. A gentle puff of smoke masks the alarm pheromone and calms them.

photo: Robyn Young

photo: Robyn Young

The swarm's queen is on this frame, do you see her?

photo: Robyn Young

The new home for the colony. We transferred all the frames from the nuc box into the new hive body:

photo: Robyn Young

Getting ready to "pour" the bees into their new home:

photo: Robyn Young

And there they go!

photo: Robyn Young

Now we put in some empty frames to complete the operation:

photo: Robyn Young

The swarm has been relocated! We've given them brood to care for and gave them pollen and sugar syrup to supplement them, all to encourage them to stay in their new home!

photo: Robyn Young

Thanks for checking in with the Boojum Bees!

Thank you Russell Apiaries!

The Boojum Institute for Experiential Education would like to give Russell Apiaries a huge THANKS for donating three queen bees for our splits. Your generous contribution helps keep our Honeybee and World Health program going, ensuring that students learn crucial science concepts through a hands on experience with live bees!

The Boojum Beeyard: Splitting Colonies

The early blooms of spring color the landscape and our two colonies are booming. The first Honeybee and World Health classroom presentations of the year are already scheduled and we need to get the observation hive ready to travel. The colonies seem healthy enough to do some splits.

Beekeepers can make more colonies by splitting healthy ones. Frames of brood and food are removed from a colony and inspected carefully for the queen before being placed in an empty hive box, or deep.

The existing hives are smoked and opened up. We have two hive boxes with some empty frames ready nearby.

We find frames with bees, brood, and food stores and place them into the empty hive boxes. We have also placed a frame feeder in the deep (far right). We will fill it with sugar syrup to help supplement the new split.

We search each frame for the queen. We have two colonies to work from and therefore need to locate two queens.

One queen will be placed in the observation hive with a frame of brood. The other will stay with her colony. Look at this frame full of honeybees! How many bees do you think are on there?

We will need to get three new queens for the splits, unless we want to let the bees rear their own. Since we are in southern California and have a high risk getting Africanized queens, ordering Italian or Carniolan queens would be best.

The new splits will be without a queen for a few days. They will start getting anxious and build queen cells, relocating a young larva into each one. The nurse bees will feed the separated larvae royal jelly. This will cause the larvae to pupate into queen bees.

The observation hive is complete with a queen and two frames of bee brood and food stores. The third frame is empty, giving them some room to expand. These honeybees will travel to classrooms all over, providing an exciting lens into the world of science for the students.

A good day in the beeyard! Boojum Institute's executive director and chief apiculturist Kurt Merrill surveys the apiary and the work we accomplished.

The Boojum Beeyard: Mite Treatment

  We emerged from winter with two healthy hives at the Boojum Beeyard. During the first inspection of the year, we noticed Varroa mites in both colonies. Though it wasn't a bad infestation, we decided to treat using food grade formic acid. Formic acid is a naturally occurring substance. It is found in the venom of most stinging plants and insects. For instance the sting of the nettle plant is from the formic acid. It is also found in the venom of bees and ants. It has many different uses, but beekeepers use it against tracheal and Varroa mites.

The formic acid comes ready to use, in acid soaked pads.

The bees are in the bottom box, called a deep. Another deep and an empty medium super are placed on top. The pads which are saturated with formic acid are placed in the upper level of the stack.

Time to button up the colonies. The lid is replaced and the formic acid is now fumigating the colony. The bees are unharmed by the acid and the mites are exterminated.

Though it does not harm the bees, it is still an acid and all the proper safety guidelines need to be followed.

Now we let the treatment do it's job. We will be coming back in a couple of weeks to do some spring colony splits.

Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Varroa Mites

The honeybee has a specialized enemy called Varroa destructor. This mite can only reproduce and grow in a honeybee colony. 

1) What is a varroa mite?

photo: Agricultural Research Service

These mites are tiny. An adult mite is 1-1.8 mm long and 1.5-2 mm wide, reddish brown in color, and has a flat, round shape.

The adult female mite goes into a honeybee brood cell and lays eggs on the bee larva. The mites develop as the young bee develops and attach themselves to the bee as she hatches from her cell.

This photo shows a Varroa mite on a bee larva:

photo: Pollinator

A Varroa mite on a honeybee pupa:

photo: Agricultural Research Service

2) How does it harm honeybees?

They live attached to the bee, sucking the bee's blood and leaving open sores. This weakens the bee and exposes the bee to diseases. It attaches itself to the body of a honeybee and, like a flea or tick, sucks the hemolymph (honeybee "blood")  from the bee. This weakens the honeybee and spreads disease, called varroatosis. The disease causes deformed wings and the bee is unable to fly.Varroa mites are one of the leading causes of death to a honeybee colony.

Magnified photo of a Varroa mite attached to an adult honeybee:

photo: Christopher Pooley

3) What can humans do to help?

There are many different ways that beekeepers have developed and use to help kill and control the infestation of Varroa destructor.

There are several different miticides that are used to fumigate the bees. These methods can range from strong chemical treatments to all natural solutions. The more natural, organic solutions include the use of essential oils, oxalic acid and formic acid. These do not harm the bees, but kill the mites that are attached to adult bees.

Other methods for eliminating mite problems are the use of screened bottom boards on box hives. When the bee cleans itself and knocks the mite from her body, the mite falls through the screen to the ground and cannot easily climb back up into the main body of the hive to reattach itself to a bee. Small cell foundation is another method of beekeepers. Using a smaller sized base cell foundation encourages the bees to build smaller cells for their brood comb. This gives the mite less room inside the cell with the developing bee and discorages mite reproduction.

Beekeepers also treat their bees with powdered sugar, poofing it onto their bees and into open brood cells. This encourages the bees to clean themseves vigorously, dislodging the mites. The powdered sugar also makes it hard for the mites to hold on and climb, causing them to fall to the bottom of the hive and not be able to climb back up.

Beekeepers and breeders are also breeding bees with more natiral mite resistance. Russian bees are naturally more mite resistant. Breeding these genetic traits into other strains of honeybees helps create new breeds that have a better defence against this old honeybee enemy.