By: Ann Harman
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2020 issue of BEEKeeping Your First Three Years
No matter what part of the country you live in, pollen and nectar plants are blooming and honey bees are busy. If you have just received your first package or nuc with bees this is the time of year when that bee population will be increasing. For those who started their first colonies last Spring, this could be the year for your first honey harvest. It will be the most exciting one!
Today our calendars show the year 2020. If we could go back in time to 100 Years ago, to 1920, or even 50 years ago to 1970, every beekeeper would have few worries about the health and strength of colonies. True, some diseases could be present but Varroa mites had not arrived. When they did arrive in 1987 we actually knew little about them and their effects on bee colonies. Research by honey bee scientists has provided beekeepers with some secrets of Varroa and how this mite affects bees. As beekeepers learn more about this mite it becomes more and more evident that control of Varroa is essential to success with honey bees.
Research has also shown beekeepers that “wild” colonies, living in trees in forests, survive quite well without any intervention by humans. But we need the honey bees for pollination, sometimes on quite a large scale. And we harvest and appreciate the stored honey. So our bees live in hives where we care for them. Thus we need to take some action against Varroa. The bees, not having evolved with Varroa, do not yet have effective defenses against them.
As you start bee season, all of your personal gear (veil especially) needs to be in good condition and the beeyard cleared of any Winter debris. Any special Winter equipment, used in cold climates, needs to be put away in good condition-ready for use again next Winter.
Please take a minute and find your Varroa Easy Check and its alcohol supply for the coming season. Although you might not like to kill 300 bees for a test, remember that a few hundred do die each day from “old age.” A good queen in Spring will be laying five times that loss in a day in Spring. Although information is available on the powdered sugar test for Varroa the alcohol wash is considered the best method of testing. In addition, if you apply a Varroa treatment, doing an alcohol wash after treatment gives you a better sense of the efficacy of a treatment.
If you have been keeping bees for two or three years, have your colonies survived or have you lost some? Now is a good time to look back in your records (I hope you are keeping some sort of information on your colonies!) so you can make plans for this bee season. Two organizations are going to be a big help in the coming months. Perhaps you have encountered these, but if not, then here is something you can do in the next few days.
On your laptop or other device just enter Honey Bee Health Coalition. That site will keep you occupied for quite some time. Afterwards, open up Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) (NOTE: BIP ceased operations in 2023). You need to be familiar with the information provided by these two sites. The Coalition has a 25-page booklet on Varroa on their site. Read it! It gives you the information on Varroa and on treatments so that you can make an informed decision about the mite and its consequences as well as what treatments are available and how to use them. That booklet will answer all your questions about Varroa. The Partnership (BIP) collects information from beekeepers and reports the information so that beekeepers have an idea about problems across the USA. Keep these two websites for ready reference, especially the Health Coalition one. Now go back and read through the HBHC booklet again. It will help you in your Varroa decisions now and in the months to come.
Varroa is not the only problem beekeepers can have. The small hive beetle (shb) is now in many parts of the country. A well-populated hive can keep the shb under control but a weak hive or a just-installed package or small nuc can be overrun with beetles. The larvae are the ones that cause trouble. They crawl over and through the comb feeding on pollen, honey and brood. Unfortunately they defecate causing honey to ferment, called sliming. The larvae leave the hive and will travel many feet to find loose soil to pupate. Beekeepers in the south will have a greater problem with small hive beetle than those in the North where soil is not so sandy and loose.
Various styles of traps and oil-filled pans are the best controls for the small hive beetle. Also, paper coasters with three drops of wintergreen oil and laid on the top bars will chase the beetle out of the hive. Keeping hive examinations to a minimum will help in control. Bees build “prisons” of propolis to corral the adults preventing them from laying eggs. But these prisons are broken during hive examinations. Pay careful attention to any shb problems with newly hived packages and small nucs.
Our country is so large with areas of such different climates that it is difficult for a beginning beekeeper to match an otherwise good beekeeping book with what is actually happening-or will happen-in your own hives. The Spring months are particularly difficult. Swarm season appears earlier in the Spring in the warmer areas. Pollen and nectar plants, including those for a honey harvest, follow the particular climate where you and your bees live. A local beekeeping club can actually be a better source. of information than a book. Are you able to attend those meetings? If not, does the local club have a newsletter? If not is there a neighboring local club with a different meeting day or a newsletter? When all else fails, is there a nearby beekeeper who could answer some of your questions occasionally? Don’t be a pest with endlessly repeated questions. Offer to help, especially with tasks that can be difficult, such as lifting heavy supers full of honey.
Do you know when and where your state beekeepers association is going to have its next meeting? Many beginning beekeepers think that because it is a state meeting with important speakers from universities and research labs that the information will be “over my head.” Not necessarily! You could be missing some new information on mites (everyone’s problem) or on queens (again, everyone’s problem). In addition to the lectures, local equipment suppliers may have a table with an assortment of equipment. You might see a new syrup feeder displayed. Here is a chance to see it and also help you decide whether it would be better than your current feeder. In the break times and lunch times beekeepers will be talking to other beekeepers-about problems and solutions. Listen-you might hear something useful. Yes, you could hear something useless, too, but it will help you learn about bees.
There are three regional bee associations: Eastern Apicultural Society, Heartland Apicultural Society and Western Apicultural Society. Each has a several-day conference in the Summer months. Yes, there are lectures, workshops and open-hive work. Yes, some of the lectures, workshops and hive work are designed for new bees. The equipment suppliers attend these conferences with large displays of equipment and are happy to demonstrate them and answer questions. Go online to see where these will be held this coming Summer and plan to attend, even if it is just for a day.
There are two large national associations, The American Beekeeping Federation and the American Honey Producers Association. Their meetings are in early January of each year. Their trade shows of equipment are huge. However you will also see small-scale beekeeping equipment. Their speakers also come from universities and research labs and will bring new information from research that is valuable for all beekeepers. You may not wish to travel long distances to the large meetings but if the meeting venue is close by, attending one of the big conferences is certainly worthwhile. Keep track of these two associations on the internet.
Learning about bees does not stop after you have taken some classes for beginning beekeepers. Learning about what bees do happens every time you open one of your hives, even after many years of being a beekeeper. You may not actually see the queen but you learn the signs that she is present-and performing as a healthy vigorous queen should-or not. Listen to the bees and learn the sounds of a healthy, productive colony. All beekeepers learn from problems that arise.
For those in the western states or Florida with African or Africanized bees, you will not have the problems of Varroa or small hive beetle. These are not tolerated in hives of African bees. However you will be using appropriately-modified beekeeping techniques. These bees wish to be left alone to do their work. They will make a good honey crop if suitable nectar plants are available. So it will be up to you, the beekeeper, to be aware of those plants and their blooming times and have honey supers ready to put on the hives.
Keep your goals in mind throughout the bee season. Newbees with new colonies have a goal of bringing that package or nuc into a full-sized colony of bees to go into Winter. Those beekeepers in their second or third year have a goal of keeping their bees healthy and productive. Those goals are not as easy today as they were 50 or 100 years ago. However keep learning-from books, magazines, meetings and from the bees themselves.
