MORE RESEARCH ON NEONICTINOIDS

This article discusses ome recent research on neonictinoid effects on honey bees.  In summation the jury is still out.

https://sciblogs.co.nz/guestwork/2017/06/30/more-evidence-on-the-effects-of-neonicotinoids-on-honey-bees-maybe/

RE-QUEENING

In the world of beekeeping there are many controversial subjects.  One of those is re-queening.

 

Sometimes your hive goes queenless.  In about 30% of those cases the hive does not successfully re-queen itself.   It then becomes necessary to re-queen that hive rapidly to avoid laying workers from taking possession of the hive.  Laying workers take control soon after the last developing brood is capped.  The combination of queen and brood pheromones tends to keep the laying workers in check.  Addition of a frame of eggs and uncapped brood from another hive can delay the laying workers.  Re-queening in this situation is not controversial.  It is then just a matter of whether to use local/regional raised or factory raised queens. 

NOTE: “Factory Raised” queens is a term referring to large scale queen breeders that raise thousands, no tens of thousands, of queens.  This can cause a genetic bottleneck since both the queens and drones come from a small (not genetically diverse) population.

Local/regional raised queens in theory have become acclimatized to the local/regional weather and forage.  This should help with winter survival.  Whereas, factory raised queens probably come from California or one of the southern states.  These queens may not be acclimatized to our severe winter weather. 

A second reason to re-queen is to keep the average age of your queens lower.  Young queens are less likely to be superceded in the following year. The probably of a supercedure of a 3 year old queen is rather high.  If a supercedure is just prior to the honey flow, the multi-week process could cut into the nectar gathering potential of the hive, since the hive bee population normally dips at this time.  There is some data that indicates 2nd year queens are the most productive.  After that the queen productivity declines.  Re-queening allows the beekeeping to somewhat prevent unplanned supercedure and to also keep the queen productivity in the optimum range and hopefully increase honey yield.

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A third reason to re-queen is to alter the genetic makeup of the bees in your apiary.  Most beekeepers start with packages that come with factory raised California or southern queens.   Historically these queens did not have anti-varroa characteristics and are thus more susceptible to winter failure from varroa related viruses.  Recently selectively breed bees with anti-varroa characteristics have been developed.  These are VSH (varroa sensitive hybrids), Primorsky Russians, Purdue Ankle Biters, regional survivor stock (such as Michigan Mutts) and others.  Ah ha, the topic for another blog article; designer bees!   Although technically not re-queening many beekeepers incorporate improved genetics when doing splits in the spring.

 

Re-queening for the second and third reason is usually done in late summer after the honey harvest.  Queens are usually in short supply at that time; so plan ahead.

 

The alternate approach is to do no re-queening and let nature take its course. 

OVER THE HUMP

We have now gone past the summer solstice, when the longest amount of daylight occurs.  From a length of day standpoint its all downhill from here to December 21^st.  The solstice also marks the beginning of summer. The bees somehow know this and the hive/queen will begin to slow the raising of brood from its peak spring rate.  The plants also seem to know this.  Most seed producing plants have already bloomed.  Therefore the honey flow also tends to slowly decline from here on out.  Based on my personal observations it seems that the bees have already stored more than 60% of nectar by this point. In our area it seems that by mid-July the hives are basically just breaking even between consumption and nectar gathering.

 Remember the third line in the swarm poem.  “A swarm in July ain’t worth a fly”.   That’s because even a strong swarm in July usually can’t store enough honey to make it through the winter; let alone to gather a surplus.  Also as the raising of brood is reduced the bees begin to store honey in the upper portion of the brood chamber.  This adds to the impression that honey making has slowed since it is not ending up in the honey supers.  That said, the extra rain we have been seeing this year may extend the length of the honey flow.

 

The solstice also marks the time after which it is unwise to attempt to start a new hive unless you will go to extra lengths to allow its full development.  After the solstice a nuc and new queen will not have enough time to grow the hive population and store enough provisions to survive the winter.   Of course by heavily feeding a new hive,  adding capped brood or frames of bees from another hive can give the new hive a boost and let them get strong enough for winter.  Experienced beekeepers know to start new hives prior to the end of June to avoid the extra work and winter loss risk. 

Now is also the time to begin thinking ahead about your fall plans.  Remember the 6P’s. ( Prior planning prevents piss poor performance)  So what should you be thinking about?

-Have you lined up the use of an extractor?

-Do you have buckets and bottles for the honey harvest?  Think in terms of 3 gallons of honey for each full medium box. 

-After the harvest in mid-August comes mite control.  Have you procured the items for the method you have selected?  Mite control should be done in mid-August so that the “winter” bees raised after that will have the least problems with mites and the associated viruses. 

-Are you planning to re-queen the hives with older queens? 

Think about these things now so that later you won't be saying to yourself  "I should of thought about that before". 

NEW OR OLD BEE PREDATOR? submitted by beekeeper Jon

Beekeeper Jon caught this itsy bitsy spider having a bee snack on his spray bottle.   I've noticed similar colored spiders lurking under the lip of my outer covers.

USE AN EXCLUDER OR NOT

Here is an article about the use of queen excluders.  In short the author recommends using them.

http://naturesnectar.blogspot.com/