Honey Bee Conservation

This is an opinion, meaning one bee technicians ideas and thoughts on a subject.  You are encouraged to have your own opinion.

As discussed briefly in the sugar syrup opinion post,  I do not feed inside the hive.  meaning,  I will not place sugar syrup or other artificial feed for honey bees within the hive.

I believe that feeding inside the hive is best done by bees and causes as much trouble as it is perceived to prevent, if not more.

Why, you ask?  If you saw my post on WWFD (What Would Feral Do?) you will be aware that  I observe and study natural behavior of honey bees.

It has been my own and some other beekeepers  I discuss these things with, observation that bees forage.  Foraging is the primary means to bring food into the hive.  Foraging is also the ‘ultimate’ behavior in most honey bees lives.  It is more than just bringing resources in.

All worker bees eat honey from inside the hive.  Drones, the queen and larvae are all fed honey and other stores from inside the hive by worker bees.

Bees are instinct based creatures who have shown an ability to learn on top of their inherited instincts.  Their everyday lives are shaped by these instinctive behaviors.  The tasks that bees in the hive carry out are all tightly associated with foraging behavior.  Essentially, bees need to forage.

What about if foraging bees do not find food due to weather conditions?  Bees can control the weather no more than we can.  If foraging sources are gone or too far way to retrieve, feral bees have options.

They can expand their foraging area to the point they can no longer find their way back home.  They can abscond the hive in search of a more fruitful location or they can starve.

Ideally, the bees have been foraging while the foraging was good and have stored enough to survive a short dearth.  That is strong survival behavior.

Since the bees in our hives have the advantage of having us around, they don’t necessarily have to starve or abscond.  We can assist the bees in terms of providing alternative stores.  Does that mean though, that we should spoon feed it to them as well?

I think that inserting food directly into the hive interrupts those natural, instinctive behaviors.  It also draws pests and incites robbing beyond the typical natural conditions inside the hive.

I believe that placing sugar syrup in an external location that is readily accessible  (about 50 to 100 feet of the hives) allows them to have food to forage for and supplement their own stores within the hive without further interrupting the natural behaviors of the bees within the hives.

Also, by having or planting pollen and nectar rich flowers and plants in the immediate vicinity of the hives allows the bees to encourage newly become foragers to take up the tasks in early spring to strengthen the growing population inside the hive.

“What about Winter?” I might ask myself.  A strong colony will have enough stores to survive a ‘typical’ Winter.  By encouraging foraging behavior, leaving enough stores in the Fall and providing additional food in the vicinity if needed, there should be plenty of resources for them.

The argument of “So you will let bees die because you don’t believe in placing needed food inside the hive.” is an emotional and judgmental argument that doesn’t take into consideration having the respect for living creatures to live or die on their own strengths and abilities as living creatures have done for millions of years.  We cannot do it for them, we can and should, only help them to do it themselves. In my opinion anyway.

Encouraging and promoting strong survival behaviors is one of the best things we can do to help honey bees become stronger over the year.  Strong colonies are able to withstand pests better, fight off predators and provide for the colony better as well.  Strong colonies are the first line of defense and the best chance of survival honey bees have.

Strong colonies are made with less dependence on us and more self sufficiency on them.

So no, I do not feed inside the hive.   I will give aid and succor by providing food in external locations during a dearth or at times of high need and none is otherwise, naturally available.   I will make sure that water is always available to them and easily found.   I will make sure they have more than enough food stores before I even think of removing any for my purposes.

That is my opinion.

Yes, it’s an opinion.  Take it for what it is and let’s get down to business

One of those ideas that abounds is the notion that honey bees “prefer” to move ‘up’ or in a vertical direction.

The first anecdote the infamous “they” will use as a basis for this is the ‘natural’ beehive, which is the historical notion of the honey bee hive in a tree.

In this situation they say, bees ‘prefer’ to live in a hive that allows them primarily vertical movement.

The truth of the matter to the tree example is that you have to bee able to observe natural bee behavior.  Honey bees build comb to fill an area.  If the area is not very vertically expansive, the comb will be short.  If there is a lot of vertical space inside the tree, the comb can grow to be very long so as to fill the cavity.  Therin is the key idea “to fill the cavity”.

No “natural” beehive anywhere, tree or otherwise has only one extremely long vertical comb.  If bees ‘preferred” vertical movement they would ideally keep to extending the one primary com band expanding it vertically, limiting the number of horizontally placed comb unless it were necessary.  That’s what the term ‘prefer’ indicates.

Instead, bees have more than one horizontally placed comb, and many of them are very long or tall in a vertical manner.  This is because , as was mentioned earlier, the ‘natural’ bee behavior is to fill the space both vertically and horizontally.

We also need to discuss the ‘natural’ layout of a bee comb.  These bee traditionalists would tell us that bees only move upward to eat, especially over a winter.  This is also not entirely accurate.

Honey bees fill a comb in a natural hive with brood in the center t ot the bottom of the comb surrounded by a ring of pollen  in the cells and the surrounding edges of the comb are then filled with nectar to be made honey and capped  on the very same comb.In this natural environment as the comb extends vertically, the brood is shifted to the bottom of the comb and the excess honey is shifted to the top of the comb and to the horizontal ends if more space is needed.

Interestingly enough, there have been enough opportunists for naturalists and bee studiers to see that honey bees do not always seek out the vertical standing tree as a home.  There are indeed plenty of the ‘fallen log’ and horizontally extended hollow tree branch examples that with no involvement of people at all, honey bees have naturally chosen to live in a horizontal environment.  That is to say, instead of the environment allowing extended vertical expansion, it requires extended horizontal expansion.

In these log and branch hives, bees have created several short and horizontal combs which follow the same basic brood/pollen/honey patterns as in the vertical hives.  The exception being that they place ‘extra’ honey stores in comb on the horizontal end combs.

Living in the horizontal log and branch hives, the honey bees follow the same behaviors as in other environments and work to fill the space.

In both vertical and horizontal environments, bees have been found to not always successfully find extra food stores that are immediately near them.  If the temperatures do not allow the cluster to expand much, if at all to seek out extra stores, any movement, vertical or horizontal is limited and bees have been found starved after a very cold winter with Plenty of honey immediately to the sides or immediately above them.

What honey bees  behavior does seem to indicate in terms of ‘preferring’ in regard to movement is that bees ‘prefer’ to move in one direction.  If the space available for movement is open vertically to them, they will not reach the end and move downward. Seeing as how bees are usually observed starting their winter at the ‘bottom’ of the comb in the brood area, there usually is nowhere for them to go but up.

If the space open to them is horizontal, they will start once again with the ‘brood’ area and move to the closest honey stores found and continue moving in that direction, not turning back if there are stores in the other direction.

Based on this observation of bee behavior in movement in both horizontal and vertical hives, it is obvious that ‘preferred’ movement is in terms of once moving, they ‘prefer’ to keep moving in the same direction and not turning back.

Direct, personal observation of bee behavior is the best way to learn about bees.  It’s nice to hear other opinions and advice from beekeepers who have been doing it themselves but, one beekeepers situation  is not necessarily anothers, meaning that each beekeepers experience, needs, equipment and motivation is relative to their geography, objectives and personal philosophy as well as their own educated decisions.

The good news is that you don’t have to adopt anything that you don’t want to.  you are free to make your own decisions just as anyone else is. Please do not try to dissuade other beekeepers from using other equipment or using other methods on the basis of false  and ignorant information though.  That does as much harm to the world of beekeepers as any disease or predator in the hive.

Holy Honey, it’s another post letting you know what’s on the mind of this one bee technician.  You know the rules, now let’s play the game…

Top Bar Hives.  It’s  a phrase that just loves to be debated.  There are those who are adamantly opposed to the idea and of course there are those who think it’s better than peanut butter and jelly.

Of course, for those of us somewhere in the middle, what does it really come down to?

I want to start off with the argument that  I have seen more and more frequently in user forums and chatrooms, which is that top bar hives are part of a “fanatical” movement embraced by tree hugging leftists and hippies who only care about being one with the universe and may actually be doing more harm than good in their misguided activities.

Yes,  I have actually seen that posted, you just can’t make this stuff up anymore. i have talked with quite a few people who have taken to using top  bar hives in the last ear or so, some even longer.  I have taken up top bar hives myself, in the interest of full disclosure.

However,  I don’t see the majority of these people as part of a movement per se.   I see these as people who have bad backs or work injuries or maybe just aren’t very big people .  Top bar hives make a much easier task of working with bees in a hive, plain and simple.   No heavy boxes to lift off and put back on every time you inspect them.

I see many of these people also as people who don’t want to spend a lot or don’t have a lot of money to spend on beekeeping equipment but still want to work with honey bees.  There’s nothing wrong with finding alternative ways to accomplish the same thing without spending as much money, especiialy in these economic times.

So, while we are protecting our backs and saving some money, what else is beneficial about top bar hives? Well, through observation, bees are able to build comb and cells according to their own design, they get to do it their way.  Since  we are not bees and cannot make wax ourselves,  I think  I like to let the pros make the decision of what size cells and comb they want to use.  After all, they have been doing it for a very long time. But hey, that’s just me.

Many people are very concerned that bees will swarm from a top bar hive moreso than from the traditional style hives.  The jury is really still out on that and management techniques play a very large part in that.  However, it might be noted that swarming is a natural reproductive activity for honey bees ,so again, I say why try to tell them how to be bees?

others say that top bar hives are no good for commercial use or for deliberate effort of producing honey or pollination as they are more difficult to transport and the notion that honey bees in a top bar hive produce less honey over time.  both interesting points and having quite a bit of validity to them.  However,  Still missing the point.

Many many,  I daresay most, people who are adopting top bar hives are doing so not becasue they have a goal to be a major honey producer or shuttle around bees for pollination contracts.

If there were any ‘movement’ associated with top bar beekeeping, it’s not to be ‘organic’ or to be the new ‘in thing’ for beekeepers all over.  it’s more for the folks who favor self sufficiency, low cost and a different interaction with honey bees than traditional beekeeping provides.

Most top bar beekeepers  I talk to don’t want to take over the beekeeping world and really don’t care how many other beekeepers are using them.  They are just using a hive that feels right for them and are glad to have alternatives.

Yes, there is the occasional zealot who wants to change the world  and convert everyone to their team, but they are really in the minority  while unfortunately making more noise than the others, thus demanding a lot of attention.

I find top bar beekeeping to be fun and less physically demanding and allows more natural behavior for the bees.  By the way, for those who insist that bees ‘natural’ behavior of moving vertically instead of horizontally, I think the history of finding bees in fallen logs and in porch roofs and under floors often enough shows that bees will move in whatever direction they need to move to survive.

Enjoy your bees.

Yes, the opinion continues on here and you can take it s you like. No ones arms are twisted here.

In many beekeeping forums and websites, the discussion of how to work with bees,  to use chemical treatments or no treatments or to feed  or not to feed or whatever might fall in between, to me is largely dependent on one personal philosophical approach and how they got their bees.

Focusing more on how the bees were attained for this post,  I am of the thinking that the more one has financially invested in their bees, meaning how much they pay for their bees will determine in large part how willing they are to take ‘experimental’ risks with those bees.

For example, if one beekeeper buys a package of bees, costing approx $75, they don’t relish the notion of those bees dying on them that same winter from disease or mites or whatever else they feel might be preventable with the use of treatments.

Those purchasing beekeepers are more likely to want to protect their investment, especially in these turbulent financial times and be willing to shell out more money to try to keep said bees alive.

However, that too has a limit.  if the cost of treatments greatly exceeds the purchase price of bees, meaning if it’s cheaper to replace bees than it is to treat them, a beekeeper who is less emotionally involved with their bees might very well decide that not treating is better for their financial circumstances than paying for treatments.

On the contrary, if a beekeeper has caught swarms and trapped bees without cost or inexpensively, their financial motivation may be less less geared toward spending any money on keeping so called “free bees’ alive with treatmens at all.

I also think that those people who do pay for bees and those people who prefer to not pay for bees have very specific motivations for using the approaches s they do.

A beekeeper who purchases bees may not want to wait or take a longer time to accumulate a certain number of bee colonies to accomplish what ever it is they intend to accomplish, like pollination or honey production as a primary motivation.  Their interest in keeping bees alive and protecting their investment is twofold in initial expense and having something to work with make gains down the road.

Comparatively, perhaps more beekeepers who are inclined to catch bees instead of purchasing them may not have such targeted interests and may have a more relaxed approach and find their enthusiasm is motivated in the acts of catching and observing bees being bees with no ‘push’ to result in selling a  product or service primarily.

This isn’t to try to indicate that one type of beekeepr is “wrong” or “right” or that one is better or worse than another, more to further illustrate how many different philosophical, motivational, and environmental affects there are on beekeeping decisions.

If you are going to buy bees, try to learn as much as you can about the breeder and the methods they use in terms of how it relates to your ideals before you make a purchase.

If you are going to try to catch bees, you want to make sure you know how to identify signs of disease and pest infestation before you bring a colony back to the yard where your healthy bees are.

Once again, the opinions of this bee technician are coming to you in the hopes of providing helpful information.  As usual, you don’t have to agree, disagree or any other ‘gree.  it’s just my opinion.

Beekeeping in the city.  urban beekeeping, whatever you call it, it all too often faces the same predicament, fear.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that most people enjoy the benefits of honey bees being active and present in the world.   No need to show hands of how many people like honey.

People like their apples and cherries and cucumbers and pumpkins and blueberries and almonds and the list goes on and on. Honey bees are a big part of making sure those crops are pollinated to give us plentiful and healthy results.

However, to not allow beekeeping in cities and other urban areas forces the large rural and commercial beekeepers to provide for more consumers.  This puts a lot of pressure not only only those beekeepers, but the bees as well.  Beekeepers very often buy bees from bee breeders who increasingly are breeding bees from the same stock or lineage, leading to inbred bees with weakened immune and reproductive systems.

Allowing beekeeping in the urban areas creates opportunities for there to be more small scale beekeepers who are able to  closely manage and even breed bees that are acclimated to the region, potentially better bred due to interactions with local feral bees, and providing the local area with bee oriented products and services for a lower price as high shipping costs and availability are diminished.

Most urban laws that prevent or restrict beekeeping are designed out of the public fear that someone will get stung by a bee and suffer an allergic reaction.  While it is true that under one percent (<1%) of the population are truly allergic to honey bee stings, meaning that those people are affected with Anaphylactic shock, the vast majority of people only experience a local, physical reaction resulting in the common “bump” or swelling , itchiness, etc.  This is usually easily treated with benadryl or the like and goes away relatively quickly.

Of course, there is also a fear about africanized honey bees making their presence into urban areas and the media has helped no one by referring to them as “killer bees” which they are not.  Africanized honey bees are more aggressive in their defensive traits, but the actual percentages of people being killed by bees, all bees combined mind you, is still less than one percent of all deaths across the country. Africanized honey bee genetics that may or may not show up in urban beehives are able to be effectively managed by responsible and active beekeepers taking the appropriate measures and it is by having trained and experienced beekeepers legally operating within urban areas that will help to protect residents from random occurrences of highly aggressive bees.

It is in urban areas best interests to not have unduly restrictive laws and ordinances that result in few to no ‘legal’ beekeepers in the area.  These potential beekeepers having the space and opportunity to practice beekeeping provide highly valuable services and products to the area in the way of public safety.  After all, It is most often a beekeeper who is best prepared and able to remove unwanted bees from a residents property without anyone being much bothered or stung in the future.

It is these urban beekeepers whose bees will pollinate local gardens and flowering trees in their neighbors yards and in city parks.  It is these beekeepers who will provide locally made honey, wax, pollen and other healthy products at a more affordable cost than by shipping these items in over long distances.  Yes, it is the urban beekeeper who will help keep residents safer from ‘wild’ bees by monitoring the area and catching or relocating bees from unwanted public areas.

Not everyone wants to be a beekeeper, but by making it too difficult for anyone to be a beekeeper hurts the community much more than it helps in the long run.

Yes, one more in a line of posts that represent only the opinions of one bee technician.  You are free to to disagree.

On the topic of Africanized honey bees, which the sensationalist media refers to as “Killer Bees” so as to scare everyone and sell more newspapers or ad time or whatever, I attempt to walk a calmer path.

Africanized honey bees (AHB) are honey bees that back in the late 50′s were brought into South America from Africa and mixed with the more common and established European honey bee (EHB) which is what we a re all familiar with.  As usual, humans playing little gods thinking they can improve upon nature.

The result was a fiasco that let the african bees out and mix their more aggressive traits into those of the EHB’s.  These are hybrid bees that made the honey bee more of a pest than the beneficial bee it has been.

Believe it or not, these bees are not always aggressive.  There have been colonies of AHB found in areas that are no more aggressive than EHB’s which are noted for more calm behavior.

There are a lot of Chicken Little types, raising a rukus of how the wolrd is screeching to a halt because AHb are moving into the U.S.  There really is no excuse for such over reaction except that the media keeps pushing nonfactual stories.

There are studies which show that as AHB reach sea level and higher land, the aggressiveness and other of the less desirable AHB traits diminish.  As they move toward the north 35th parallel, they face temperatures that their genetics cannot endure, so they must either die or adapt to EHB genetic traits, essentially making them EHB’s instead of AHB’s .

Panic and fear are never the responses to make decisions on.  The more calmly and rationally we as a group of educated and research dedicated beekeepers respond, the better we will find workable solutions.

If a beekeeper finds a colony he or she suspects is AHB  (or even if it is an unusually aggressive colony of EHB) one surefire way to make noticeable effect is to place a known EHB queen to replace the old suspect queen.  Within a relatively few short weeks, the colony will be ‘back to normal”.

Depending on how quickly they accept the new queen, diminished aggressivemness can be seen in as little as a few days.

Yet another humble opinion of just this one beekeeper.  You are free to disagree or do your own ‘thing’ without any problems from me.

I see and am part of discussions that delve into the mysteries of breeding bees, particularly queens, for select traits, such as low propolis usage or gentleness to work around or one of the ever sought after incredible honey producers.

Depending on what one beekeepers primary objectives are in beekeeping, will point them in a direction of specific traits to look for in honey bees.

A honey producer might first and foremost look for tremendous honey production before anything else.

A pollination beekeeper might look for big brood buildups and foraging behaviors.

A hobby beekeeper might look for gentleness above all else.

Pretty much all beekeepers are interested in mite tolerance, and disease resistance among others.

I consider myself a conservation bee handler before anything else.  While I have pollination interests as well, my first concern is plentiful, healthy bees.

I have thought long and hard about breeding and ‘selective’ breeding.  I have toyed with the idea of playing little god in manipulating bees to meet my interests.   I decided against it.

What I have come to is this.  Natural selection and good bee instincts will win out in the end.  Bees will always make honey and bees will always reproduce, after millions of years I have little doubt of that.

What my breeding will amount to is encouraging honey bees to use their instincts and genetic behaviors to their utmost.  Those bees which survive with as  little interruption from me, will eventually end up with the traits they need to be survivors.

I can encourage ‘natural’ behaviors in certain ways.   I can not add medications inside the hive to weaken and make their systems dependent to be healthy.

I can not put food that is not made or brought in by the bees inside the hive.  They will need to use their foraging instincts to their best if they are to store food and survive winter instead of becoming dependent and look for food to be artificially brought in for them.  Yes,  I do believe feeding artificially inside the hive damages foraging instincts.

I can allow them to build their own comb and not force them to build cells all one size or outside their own design or intent.

By doing these things, or not doing them rather, I allow the bees to use and hone the abilities and traits they have built up over the years that have kept them alive, if not for the constant interference of well meaning people.  That’s about the best breeding program I can think of.

Once colonies living under these situations have adapted and actually proven they are surviving over a period of several seasons,  I know they have built the traits and tendencies to do what bees need to do to thrive

Is my method going to be workable for other types of beekeepers with different interests?  probably not. Will the resulting survivor bees be of use and interest to other types of beekeepers once they show the survivor traits?  It is very possible these bees will be of interest to many.

People have artificially introduced pesticides, various types of parasitic mites and intrusive management methods in rather quick time to honey bees, often not letting natural time of progression to work and allow the bees to gradually adapt to newly introduced changes to their environment.  With such rapid introduction to these problems and so little time for natural adaptation to them, the bees have been beaten into a weak and unhealthy situation.

The idea of being exposed to environmental pressures to effect evolutionary adaptation is not a new one, but as with anything, there are levels of exposure which work better and those which do not.

If bees are exposed to heavy and constant pressures , especially when they are suddenly thrust upon them, it is easy to be overwhelmed and instead of having time to adapt, they simply grow tired and weak.

If bees are exposed to light environmental pressure, the evolutionary adaptations will not likely happen quickly but over a long period of time.

When the pressures are constant but not immediate and overwhelming however, the bees will maintain the strength to fight off the existing threat and adapt their evolution in a timely manner to be better prepared to deal with the pressure in the future.

It is my hope that the design of the conservation yard  I am working on will provide that last, intermediate, environment. By allowing the bees to adapt without being overwhelmed may be the positive environment that can help them to overcome many of the exiting issues they face.

As noted, this is one bee handlers opinion.

Where I come from and the dictionaries we are able to buy, Feral means any animal or creature that was once in captivity but is no longer.

That would mean bees which are no longer living in  maintained beekeepers beehives are now feral.  I think it’s pretty easy to call.  Living in a managed hive is not feral, not living in a managed hive is feral.

One question for clarification that comes up though is “How feral is feral?”  Meaning, how many generations will it take to consider bees as not behaving as though they were still in a beekeeper managed bee hive.

I am coming to identify ferals in one of three categories; “independent ferals”, “transitional ferals” and “dependent ferals”.

It has been noted by more than one beekeeper that bees that have been living in beekeeper managed hives, especially living on pre made foundation, that the bees will continue to build the same size cells as the foundation they had been living on for at least a few generations to come.

Some beekeepers have observed it takes at least two to three generations until they begin making ‘typical’ bee determined sized cells instead of what they had been forced to draw from the foundation. If bees have lived several generations in managed beehives being fed inside the hives and being treated with a variety of anti-mite and disease treatments, it will take at least the same two to three generations for bees to adapt to not finding food provided inside the hive for them.  They will need time to re-awaken or re-introduce those genetic behaviors such as strong foraging and storing tendencies and traits that allow them to respond to parasites and diseases on their own.

So, bees that have been feral long enough to have adapted to survive and live fully independent of managed beehives,  I would call “independent ferals”.  I would say these bees are true survivors which would be a tremendous addition to beeyard which values those survivor traits and does not plan to re-introduce dependency building management techniques.

Bees that have been feral for a short time and have not fully made the adaptations to “independent”  I would call “transitional ferals” and these are still in danger of not surviving if they do not continue to adapt. This is the least easy to identify state as they will have adapted some areas and not others.

That leaves bees that have likely very recently left a managed bee hive and are still inclined to behave as though they are in managed care.  These bees are very much in danger of not surviving independently and only time will tell if they successfully make the transition.  Not all bee swarms do succeed.

So when you catch that swarm that just landed, keep those things in mind about their degree of feral-ness.

Much of the chances of their success will depend on how you watch them and if you are a heavy management type of beekeeper or a light management type.

But, that’s just my opinion.