Month: April 2019

One of the best things about being a beekeeper is that everyone is interested in honey bees. Who doesn’t like honey? Or flowers? Or fresh fruits and vegetables, most of which need to be pollinated by our friend the honey bee?

I enjoy sharing my honey bee passion with others, particularly children. Not too long ago I discussed beekeeping and pollination with a group of homeschoolers from Nevada. Their ages ranged from 3 to about 14 years and I was worried about keeping everyone’s attention. To my great surprise – and relief! – these kids had super-great questions, from how honey bees navigate and different tasks of worker bees to the kinds of crops they pollinate.

One question stumped me: Do bees sleep?

Great question, I replied. I’ll have to read up on that.

I suspected that bees do not sleep. How could they? They get so much done! “Busy as a bee” certainly is true, but the reports from biologists proved otherwise. This comes from Dr.  Universe, a science education project based at Washington State University.

Honey bees do not work 24-7 but they do work day and night, taking shifts sleeping inside the hive. Their sleeping patterns change as they age, with younger bees sleeping a lot less than the older bees. In fact, the oldest bees (those that forage for nectar, pollen, propolis and water) have the most regular sleeping pattern, getting 30 to 90 minutes of sleep each night (they only can forage during daylight hours).

Other bees take short sleeps – catnaps! – of about 15 to 30 seconds at a time. Bees do not have eyelids but researchers who have carefully watched honey bees have found that they stop moving their antennae, which droop, and their wings lie next to their body. Their legs may be folded underneath them and in some cases, sleeping bees may fall over sideways. This can be dangerous if the bee is hanging onto the side of a honeycomb. That’s when other bees will hang onto another bee’s legs to keep it from falling!

Sleep is important, especially for older bees. Studies have found that sleep may improve a bee’s memory. Research has shown that bees that stayed awake for long periods of time were poorer dancers than their well-rested counterparts. Dancing is how bees communicate where they find when out foraging. (One side note: These homeschoolers got to see my “bee dance” but more about that in another post!)

Photographers also have found bees asleep inside a flower. I couldn’t think of a better place to catch a power nap. As many times as I have tried unsuccessfully to photograph a bee on a beautiful flower, it’s obvious that I haven’t found any sleeping bees!

Yet again, another wisdom we can learn from bees. No matter how busy you are and how many things you want to get done, we all need our rest now and then.

Dr. Universe at Washington State University

More about sleeping bees (Science ABC)

Today’s blog is written by my husband-and-beekeeper-companion Dave. He also took all these photos, and in a few days we hope to post a video as well.

April 23 ends up being “Bee Day.” Got a call this morning that our bees have arrived from California. We made a short trip to Spring Valley Honey outside of Perry, to pick up our special deliveries.

The garden house is ready and we have three 2-pound boxes of bees (about 30,000 ladies) resting for installation this afternoon. The hives have been cleaned, re-painted, sorted, frames re-distributed, boxes re-level and are airing out.

In the photos below, you can see the 3 boxes and the aluminum tab that hangs the queen cage inside the box. Now all we have to do is take out the queen cage, add a marshmallow plug, hang her in the hive, and pour in the bees – just like water!

Then we will close up the hive and leave them alone for a few days, when we check to make sure that the queen was released by the worker bees.

Yes, April 23 is Bee Day for us!

And, this Bee Lady adds, a beautiful day!

This is where we picked up the bees

Empty hive awaits

A closer look at 10,000 bees

Top of the cage – showing sugar water

It seems like spring has been taking its good ole time coming this year, but leave it to the bees to find signs of spring before anyone else. The one hive we have left has been collecting pollen from trees for weeks now, and this week I found my ladies thoroughly enjoying themselves amidst the spring wild flowers that have started to bloom in our woods.

And I mean thoroughly enjoying themselves! I watched my bees for a few minutes. They were all over the bloodroot and Scilla. A closer look and I found one gal literally crawling inside an unopened bloom. She would disappear for a few seconds, then climb out and start all over again.

When bees forage (the most difficult and dangerous task for worker bees), they will visit 50-100 flowers on each trip. A single bee might make 20 trips a day, flying 2 to 5 miles to find nectar needed to make honey. She can carry half her weight in pollen, no small task when you’re making that many flights.

In addition to nectar and pollen, honey bees collect a plant resin called propolis. They use this to make bee glue (more about that next time, the bane of beekeepers everywhere!) to seal holes in the hive.

Here’s another amazing thing: to make one pound of honey, honey bees need to fly 50,000 miles and visit 2-3 million flowers.

I’ll leave you with that amazing fact.

Nature’s technology – the sun – turns out to be the best answer to getting rid of a nasty disease that killed at least one of our beehives this winter. Yeah for the sun!

What you see above are all 20 frames from one honey bee colony. They are laid out on our flat roof to soak up ultraviolet rays from the sun. These rays kill fungal spores of Nosema disease, one of two microscopic parasites that affect the gut of honey bees.

After writing last week about the death of three hives (and receiving tons of condolences – thank you!), I posted a couple photos on a local beekeeping website. One photo showed the tell-tale signs of dysentery (diarrhea) — reddish-brown spots inside the hive on top of the frames.

Lo and behold, within a few hours other helpful beekeepers advised me to get a sample of the dead bees tested for Nosema. The only way to diagnose this disease with certainty is to examine intestines of infected bees under a microscope. So off I went with my dead-bee sample in a cottage cheese container to find Andy Joseph, our state apiarist who has an office in Ankeny.

Two days later came the bad news in an email from Joseph.

According to his tests, my bees averaged 29.3 million spores per bee. The threshold for treatment is about a million spores per bee, so my bees were quite sick before they died. Wow! Now I really feel bad about the care of these bees!

Joseph explained that beekeepers have few options for treatment. A chemical that had been used to disinfect hives with Nosema has disappeared from the market. Ultraviolet light from the sun, however, kill the spores so I was glad to hear about a low-tech fix. And even better – sunlight is free!

Here’s what else I learned about Nosema:

Adult worker bees get infected with the spores at a young age, which lodge in their intestines. The fungus causes the bee to have trouble digesting food for the rest of its life. Infected bees do not produce food for the brood. In fact, they often skip the stage where they are nursemaids for young bee larvae (worker bees perform all the jobs in a hive in a certain order that’s related to their development). Worse yet, these bees take on the most difficult job in the hive before they’re ready: foraging.

Hmm, fewer nurse bees in the hive. Not good.

And young, inexperienced bees who aren’t feeling well hunting for nectar, pollen and water. Double not good.

When the queen bee is infected with the spores, she also has a shorter lifespan and quits laying eggs. That can spell the death of a hive.

My hives could have had symptoms of Nosema for a couple years, but not enough to cause the death of the colony. But when it’s cooler, and bees are not able to take a cleansing flight, the spores can build up and spread rapidly. That’s probably what happened this year.

I also learned that the best defense against Nosema is to maintain strong hives with healthy bees able to withstand stress, such as Nosema. I also need to recognize early signs and be on the lookout – without the surprise of a dead colony.

Beekeeping is an adventure; I never know what I’ll see when I open the hives. No matter how long I keep bees, I’ll always be a student, never a master!