Keeping bees

Alvin my mentor for bees reckoned that the queen should be laying by christmas day unless it was less than minus ten degrees av temp for the last month .
He also stated that he opened the hives on 26 Dec no matter what the weather to check and if needed also added more home made fondant sugar patties ( shop stuff often has preservatives & other chemicals in it that is not good for bees )

NHG, here is a good annual outline. Mind you this pertains to southern Connecticut, they are near a month ahead of us on some things.
http://www.backyardbeekeepers.com/to-do.html

Thanks camprn.

Someone suggested the workers may be eating the eggs if there is no honey/pollen stored. Hmmm.

This is a real learning adventure. There are small clusters in both hives. I don't think they can hang around another 28 days even if the queen does start laying, but we'll see.

Glad to hear your nuc survived!

Okay, I shrunk one hive down to one medium, and the other hive down to 2 mediums, to help keep them contained, almost nuc-like but not quite. And if queenie doesn't start laying by 2 weeks from now, I may put some bees from my new package in there (actually in both) to give them a final push.

I was looking forward to having my bees today...now to wait another week!

Our package bee delivery is also delayed for two weeks.

I was doing some searching for friends earlier today and came across this site ..it deals with bee health and several other useful aspects of beekeeping & seems very up to date ( 2011 ) .
I think some of you keepers might find it interesting so here it is .....

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/

Thank you plantoid, that site has some excellent info, and I am reading a lot of the symptoms that my small clusters are experiencing, obviously my bees are on their way out. Now I know I won't supplement them with more bees from a new package.

One thing I just learned on there is that colonies who don't eat pollen patties are sick. My pollen patties have been in there since February, which is why I couldn't understand how they might have starved.

I was just reading in the April issue of VegNews how neonicotinoids are so harmful to bees. Does anyone know if this include the annuals in Nicotinia genus? We sometimes put them in our perennial garden but I'll stop if it's harmful.

CC

CC there is alot of junk science about the neonicotinoids it's difficult to get a clear picture .
Here in the UK there has been a sudden jumping on the band wagon of politicians up for re election in the forth comming May elections I doubt any of them have any sensible knowledge of the possible situation other than trying to gain votes from the gullible.
When you look at the sources of who funds what for both for and against the use of them you see big battle line dug deep.
Those that produce the neo nicotinoids appear to have proven quality high ground morality .. those against them appear to present very flawed information to base their opposition to them .

If you look at the scientific bee keeping link I gave you might be come a little less worried when you see what the link is saying.

plantoid wrote:I was doing some searching for friends earlier today and came across this site ..it deals with bee health and several other useful aspects of beekeeping & seems very up to date ( 2011 ) .
I think some of you keepers might find it interesting so here it is .....

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/

One of the best bee science site out there!

camprn wrote:

plantoid wrote:CC there is alot of junk science about the neonicotinoids it's difficult to get a clear picture .
Here in the UK there has been a sudden jumping on the band wagon of politicians up for re election in the forth comming May elections I doubt any of them have any sensible knowledge of the possible situation other than trying to gain votes from the gullible.
When you look at the sources of who funds what for both for and against the use of them you see big battle line dug deep.
Those that produce the neo nicotinoids appear to have proven quality high ground morality .. those against them appear to present very flawed information to base their opposition to them .

If you look at the scientific bee keeping link I gave you might be come a little less worried when you see what the link is saying.

Plantoid, please post a link to back up your opinion here.

Camp it is not just one link it is the many many pseudo science articles that infect the internet. Usually it boils down to some leap of misinformed faith that the originator is right with out the various proof's and checks that a serious scientific subject would be hit with .
There are hundreds and thousands of such conspiracy theories afloat on the net .
we've just seen the horrific result of one such type theory .

Some jerk of a docor in the UK started saying the MMR vaccine was responsible for kiddies turning out at three or so years old as deformed and metally disabled .

It got to fever pitch , all the TV & press jumped on board despite official assurances that there was no justifiable link to the supposed side effects . Many parent scared stiff by the hype refused to vaccinate their kid against the MMR diseases .
As a result over the last ten years thousands of kiddies have been hit with measles , it is a notifiable disease . Not every case has been notified if the kids didn't get taken to the doctors.

In our area alone it has been notified via the doctors surgeries that over 800 have been hit with measles since Nov 2013 , over 80 of those infected have had to have specialist hospital care .
One guy ages 25 is thought to have died as a result of the measles a few days ago , post mortem results not yet released .

The doctor that kicked things off with his spurious sensationalist revelations has been struck off the medical register in the UK and now resides and possibly practices in the USA . He still says he was right despite numerous scientific reviews of all known data .

Apply that scenario to all sorts of protest groups around the world , look deep into the professionally conducted proofs and tests , not only of theory but also of trials and you start to realized that those who protest as often as not don't have a full grasp of the situation , neither have they decided to look at the other side of the coin to try and evaluate things themselves .

It's a given that sometimes a resut will be slewed or not data developed won't be fully published ..... lifes like that.
Some guy over here has recently been jailed for concocting false results to make his theory work but when peer reviewed the alarm bells rang loud and clear for a long time , right up untill the court case infact .
The law used to jail him is very old , the judge was only allowed to give a three month tarriff as that is what precedence had set down many years ago . ( I bet that will be reviewed soon )

The UK had some very very stringent testing regimes that came about because of the Thalidomide issue of 50 yrs ago .
So tough in fact that some drugs used in the USA can't make the bar over here , but will sail over the main land european legislation .
Like wise there will be a few cases where we in the UK do something that is shunned elsewhere in the world .

One thing we have big probs with is on the internet that anyone can say anything about anything without much recourse to show proof to it untill the companies /people affected by the statements get wind of what is being said and have the money to seek a legal intervention . But by then the damage is usually done and lots of people have a cancerous view of the subject especially if big wealthy corprations are the ones seeking redress .

Union Carbide and the Bopal type incidence or the BP finalized type blame game oilspill are quite different kettles of fish .


The great gnashing of teeth and wailing with ashes on sack cloth covered heads does not help .

Old saying ... Be careful what you put into your head or some one else will seems to be even truer today with the advent of the internet than it ever was before it came along.

Thanks for the warning Plantiod.

This thread is about beekeeping in general and for further discussion of the benefits or the detriment to the environment of neonicitinoids, or GMO crops, I suggest that that discussion is best left in the Food Business Forum

The scientificbeekeeping site is a tremendous source of good information for the beekeeper, whether a hobbyist, sideliner or commercial production interests.

Camp
The neonicotinoids part of the thread is bee related .
Some folk associate the use of them with bees dying because of the collection , drinking of nectar or collection / use of pollen from plants sprayed with the neonicotinoid based sprays .
Some also say it is also in the honey produced by the bees and this has caused a weakening of the bees overtime making them susceptible to all the bee diseases that cause colony collapse .


Me I'd look much more at Varroa Jacobinski for any possible troubles .
Asiatic bees apparently groom themselves and each other to remove the mites , our apis melliforra ( sp ) have not yet evolved to that stage though apparently they may with a bit of help from genetic engineering .
If anyone has bees that they observe grooming themselves or each other to remove eithe braula or varroa mites you could become a very wealth person if it is a transferable trait .

Grooming traits in honey bees is highly desired. VSH is Varroa Sensitive Hygiene and there is active research being done on selective breeding to enhance these traits in honey bees.
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2012/Q4/scientists-tracking-down-genes-that-help-bees-defend-against-mites.html

Russian bees are also known to have hygienic behavior.
[b]http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=2744&page=10


Varroa jacobsoni is typically found with Apis cerana (Asian honey bee) and Varroa destructor have been classified as separate mite found with A. mellifera (European honey bee).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_jacobsoni

That link explaning the split up of varroa classification to Jackobinski and Destructor types was new info to me .
Shows just how things move on when your out of things for nine years or so.

NHGardener wrote:

what's the matter?

I'm pretty sure both my hives are on their way out due to mites. It's the only culprit I can think of.

DARN...............

(very small clusters)

NHGardener wrote:I'm pretty sure both my hives are on their way out due to mites. It's the only culprit I can think of.

DARN...............

(very small clusters)

Are you seeing any other signs of disease, like deformed wings? When you had the hive open did you happen to see any drone brood? Did you feed them. If you think it is mites, do you think it's varroa giving trouble? Have you done a mite count? (... probably not quite enough bees to do that...) I most always still have hope.

2 problems besides the small clusters: No brood (not even drone), and they're not eating the pollen patties much. (I've been feeding since February.) I also watched a video online, someone showed their deadout hive with the blanket of bees on the bottom board, had them tested, and the mite count was high. There has to be a reason why the strongest hive is reduced to such a small cluster with so many dead bees. 1 yr. old queens in both hives, still there.

Now that I've reduced the hive boxes (and swapped all the honey frames into them), I'll check once more for brood when the weather warms. Pretty soon the winter bees will die off, and there will be no nurse bees.

Haven't gotten the hang of mite counts yet. I really didn't think they had mite issues. But there's no odor in the hives, no signs of moths or beetles or mice.

Before my first cup of joe, not good!

Thanking my lucky stars it was only one hive. Being in town I was gambling the bears wouldn't make their way here. The bees must have put up a good fight as there was minimal damage to the hive ware. The really sad thing is this was a great queen a nice laying pattern. I am so hoping she is still in there, somewhere. The temp was 37*F when I found these girls at 7:30 this morning. The bees were clustered in a few spots and I didn't take time to hunt up the queen. I will be heading out to the electric fence company a bit later today.

What a shame camprn. I always hate stories like this.

NHGardener wrote:
Haven't gotten the hang of mite counts yet. I really didn't think they had mite issues. But there's no odor in the hives, no signs of moths or beetles or mice.

You can easily spot varroa mites, if you open up some drone brood cells. The brownish red of the mites really stands out on the white larvae.

If you can't find drone brood, look at empty brood cells for the droppings (little white dots) the mites leave on the insides of the cells

This is not the same as a count, but you can ascertain a high levels of mites this way.

camprn wrote:Being in town I was gambling the bears wouldn't make their way here.

Sad!

It was a young bear. He only pulled out brood frames. An older bear would have smashed the woodenware into toothpicks.

But now he knows where the goodies are. There's probably only one solution. You know the 3-S rule, don't you?