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By: David Burns
Most beekeepers, during their first few years, (myself included) seem to inspect their bees in a predictable way. We inspect our bees by focusing on individual parts rather than seeing our colony as a whole. As I wrote in last month’s article, this is because during our first few years of beekeeping we may only know how to identify what we see during an inspection rather than understanding the patterns of the single organism.
The inspection may go like this: “This is the honey super and I wonder how many frames are drawn out and filled?” Then, the focus shifts to the queen excluder and next, lifting a frame up from the brood box, “Good, I see capped brood.” Notice how each observation is viewed as an individual part of the hive. Even experience beekeepers inspect in this way. However, the difference is that experience beekeepers are quickly forming an overall opinion of the colony’s health based on each individual part they observe. Rather than simply identifying what they see, experience beekeepers interpret these observations by considering the hive as a single organism.
In this article I want to encourage beekeepers to move beyond descriptive inspections to a more interpretive way of reading a hive using four key ideas.
1. As you begin each inspection keep in mind that your hive is a single organism. Rather than observing many individual parts, try to teach yourself to see each frame, each honey bee, and each box as one single organism. This will help you more accurately evaluate the overall condition of your bees.
For example, in Spring your bees may have a healthy queen, a decent brood pattern on several frames and adequate resources. Yet even though there are several drawn out open frames, the queen isn’t laying on available comb. An experienced, interpretive beekeeper immediately observes that brood expansion is not dependent upon available space. The experienced beekeeper looks for other factors such as lack of forage, cool nights, virus loads or nutritional stress impacting the single organism.
2. Always keep in mind what time and season your bees are in. Each inspection must be placed in context of the season, environment and size of the colony. Failing brood production in the spring is much more alarming than in late Summer and Fall. Understanding your colony as a single organism allows you to respond to your bees based on what they face each season. An experience beekeeper may notice the colony contracting in the Fall with less brood and resources prompting the beekeeper to immediately begin providing nutrition to the colony.
3. Allow each inspection to guide you to predict what will happen next. New, descriptive beekeepers may be only able to describe the present situation. However, interpretive, experienced beekeepers can quickly and accurately observe what the colony’s condition will be in a week or in a month. A new or descriptive beekeeper may only see the immediate good or bad.
Avoid focusing on if conditions are good or bad during an inspection. Experienced, interpretive beekeepers are all about trajectory, observing population trends, seasonal momentum and future resources. Many times, I’ve been very happy at the amount of brood in a particular colony only a week later to notice it is declining. I predict there is a problem with this colony, and I’ll wait 10 days and see if this trend is continuing. If so, I’ll have to troubleshoot the failing brood, to determine if it’s the queen, lack of food or mite infestation. Always ask yourself, based on all my observations of this hive, where will this colony be in one month.
4. Always be sure your actions are intentional, minimal and well thought-out. An experienced, interpretive beekeeper is always asking, “What does this hive need?” As we move beyond being only descriptive of individual parts to the hive, we now move into interpreting everything we see and how it affects this single organism. This means we need to be ready to take action. An experienced beekeeper will always be considering what they can do to help each hive. These actions, from a new beekeeper, may be misguided, in haste or reactionary. An experienced beekeeper interprets all data from the inspection and when actions are needed, each step is well thought out. It’s important to keep in mind that minimal action should be pursued first. Sometimes, waiting and doing nothing is the best approach. But when a colony is weaking, the least evasive approach may be to simply move over a frame of capped brood from a strong colony. Thousands of young bees will emerge any day and join the work force in the weak hive. This may give the weak hive the shot in the arm they need. Or maybe a frame of resources from a strong hive will do the trick. Not every problem requires a fix.
Hopefully, you can begin to see the importance of advancing into being a more interpretive beekeeping integrating solutions at the right time in the right way based on the colony as a single organism.
If you’d like to watch my video where I explore more of the rhythms of honey bees, visit: https://www.honeybeesonline.com/davids-youtube-channel/
