Honey Run Apiaries-A Beekeeper’s Blog

There are really two things two things that one needs to consider before they graft for the first time in the season.  The availability of drones is the first.  To successfully raise queens one must have a plentiful supply of dones for mating and they must be mature drones.  Drones in the larvae state when you graft won’t be mature enough for mating when the queen is ready.  Instead you must be looking for capped drone brood at the minimum and preferably lots of capped brood and a few adult drones already emerging from their cells.  The picture to the right is a good sign.  This hive had lots of drone brood in the pupae/purple eye stage in the burr comb between supers plus a few newly emerged drones on April 2nd.

While the availability of drones is somewhat out of the beekeepers control and depends on the weather, it’s very possible to help things get an early start by feeding pollen or pollen substitute.  Hives with plentiful resources (especially a protein source) will raise large numbers of drones.

The other factor to consider is the weather itself. While you can graft and manipulate the hive to set up cell builders and mating nucs while it is still relatively cool, queens simply won’t mate until the temperature is around 68-69 degrees or warmer without rain or too much wind.  This unfortunately is completely outside the beekeepers control and extended forecasts are not accurate enough several weeks into the future when the larvae you just grafted will be a mature queen ready to mate.  This makes early queen rearing difficult and somewhat of a gamble if there aren’t a couple good mating days in the 3 week window after a queen emerges from her cell. 

For beginners I generally recommend waiting until May or later to do their first graft.   Drones generally aren’t an issue then and the weather mid May and later when the queens will be ready to mate is usually much more reliable.   For those willing to gamble it can be done nearly a month earlier with some care, but there is always the risk of a late April cold spell that lasts too long where your new queens will fail to mate and will simply turn into drone layers.

Some beekeepers keep track of the health of a hive or what needs to be done on the next visit to the apiary by marking on the hive or setting a brick in a particular orientation on the hive.  I must admit I do sometimes use a brick as a reminder when going back to a bee yard.  It is not the best or most reliable method of record keeping.  It is however cheap and easy, and Jim Fischer and other members of BeeSource.com contributed the following guide to record keeping using bricks (I can’t claim any credit here, but thought it far too useful not to share):

The Signal Brick System Explained

1. If the brick is atop the hive, the cover has not blown off just yet.
2. If the brick is on the ground, a bear has visited your apiary
3. If the brick is standing upright, the bees are Egyptian, or have seen "2001 – A Space Odyssey"
4. If the brick is lying on its side, see above, but a bird has knocked it over
5. If the brick is wet, don’t work the bees right now.
6. If the brick is hot, check to see if you can pull some supers.
7. If the brick is ice-covered, knock on the hive with the brick to see if you still have bees. As a general rule, no noise means no bees.
8. If the brick is covered with stingers, you likely have had AHB take over your hive. Dress and acting accordingly.
9. If the brick has moss on it, you have not checked that hive often enough.
10. If you talk to the brick.. and it talks back to you.. you’re visiting the hive too much!!!
11. If you suddenly have more bricks than hives, its time to make splits.

It shouldn’t be a complete surprise.  Ohio’s inspection program has been dwindleing for some time now as state inspectors retire and aren’t replaced.  However, I got that gut feeling that something terribly wrong when my 2009 apiary registration came in an envelope marked ‘Emerald Ash Borer Program’.   I know the program was litterally down to one state inspector, but now it was looking like the Apiary Division of the Ohio Department of Agriculture which once has several inspectors and a secretary was demoted to a lone inspector given a corner in another programs office.

Not long after I received news report about the loss of Ohio’s inspectors.  4 more counties had dropped their inspection program and the last remaining inspector at the state, Andy Kartal, will likely retire mid year and I honestly don’t believe he will be replaced.  At best I suspect his many, many years of experience will be replace by a plant pest inspector, likely with little experience with bees, and will serve double duty as state bee inspector and plant pest inspector.  Even a single full time inspector can’t begin to cover the state, including the growing list of counties with no county inspector, so this could put the state inspection program in a comatose state.  It may still be there, but virtually lifeless.

Does this mean disease will be on the increase in the coming years?  Perhaps, after all the inspection programs started due to widespread disease (mainly American Foul Brood) and the inspection program effectively brought it under control. But perhaps the worst thing besides this and the lack of a valuable resource for new beekeepers is the negative impact to beekeeping research just when it is needed most.  Inspectors often provide valuable information to research programs and are often partners in the process (See The Fate of Bee Inspection in the U.S, Bee Culture 2003).

Want to see a change?  Talk to your county officials (they pay for the county inspector), and your state representatives both at the state and national levels.  I know everyone is asking for money right now and everyone needs to do their share of belt tightening, but we can’t afford to completely eliminate funding for beekeeping without paying far more in the future.

Those who were reading my blog on a semi regular basis probably notice my absence for the past many months.  Rest assured all is well, though perhaps too much so.  My day job, programming for Data Business Systems, has kept me quite busy and my wife’s relatively new business, Busy B Realty, has been picking up steam in spite of the slow, and sometime outright stagnant housing market.  This also ment that as I became busier, I also had less help and just couldn’t keep up everything.  So the unnecessary had to be put off to the side.  Not a bad problem to have right now.

Also, some may not have been aware that I opened up a side business (The Ranco ETC Store) and it has been growing as well.  It really started as a offshoot of the temperature controllers I was oftering on this website and ties in nicely with my experience and education in electrical engineering.  It’s far from enough to quit the day job and focus more on bees, but it’s enough to make it worth while.

The good news is that while I’m busier than ever, the success of the Ranco store has allowed me to help out a couple out of work beekeepers who are virtually out of a job due to the current economy.  It should also help me focus more on growing the business, the bees, and of course post once in awhile to this blog.

It’s May 28th.  Do your hives look like this in Ohio?

10 of the 14 hives in this apiary look this strong right now.   The 2nd to the top super was added to the hive just 2 weeks ago and most hives already have a significant amount of honey in it or have it filled and were building comb on the top of the bars.  They desparately needed more space and I added yet another super this trip (the top super shown in the picture).    Also keep in mind that 3 or 4, 5 frame mating nucs were made up from each of the hives in this yard just 6 weeks prior to this picture.

Not all hives look this good, but a large number of them do and I account much of it to the effort made last year to requeen nearly all of my hives and improve the stock.  I must say I’m very happy with the result.  The down side is that it’s going to be a real chore lifting off all the honey to get down to the brood nest to pull larvae for grating on some of these that are breeder queens.

The Maumee Valley Region will be holding it’s class on June 6th and 7th.   It is a hands on class where you will learn both the theory of queen rearing and practical methods with a slant on rearing queens in Ohio.  Cost of the class is free to members of the Ohio Beekeeping Association, otherwise the cost is $20 and includes a 1 year membership to the association.

Full details and a map to the location can be downloaded in this PDF – 2008 Queen Classes

If you have any questions or to reserve a spot call me at 419-371-1742 or email tarheit@watchtv.net

Classes will be held this year in 8 regions of Ohio.  Should our class not fit your schedule or location, check out out the OSBA webpage for other queen rearing classes held in Ohio this year.

I’m still here in spite of my absence from the blog for about a month.  Not to worry, I’ve suffered no tragic accident, I’ve simply been busy with work and bees from dawn till dusk and sometimes much later.

The weather here has been cool and wet and we are still consistently well below the average temperature for this time of year.  It has made it difficult to keep the queen rearing on schedule because there have been very few days warm enough for mating flights.   It hasn’t been as bad as it was a few years ago where a 3 week cold spell April and May caused a complete halt to production and loss of all queens in the mating nucs because it simply took too long for them to get mated, though I did have one batch of queens that was about a 50% loss.  Fortunately it looks like things may break this weekend and temperatures may be above normal for awhile at least.  I’m looking forward to it.  We shouldn’t have to be running the pellet stove in May.

It’s always a busy time of the year, inspecting hives, splitting up hives for mating nucs and for sale, grafting, etc.  and the weather can make it even more difficult.  Still, it’s nearly done….nearly 200 mating nucs are in production, hives have been inspected and supered if needed, nucs for sale have virgins running around in them just waiting for a warm day later this week to mate, and I’m starting the first batch of  II queens this week.    It’s a couple weeks behind because there have been very few days were drones were flying to collect for II. 

One thing I would change for next year…If we have such a wet spring, I need to buy a pair of waterproof boots.  Carrying equipment and bees though water because you can’t get the truck back to the apiary isn’t fun, but it’s worse with wet feet.

I just received notice that the Auglaize County Extension Bee School to be held April 19th has been canceled because they did not receive enough advance registrations.  They said they plan on holding an evening class in May instead, tentatively May 6.  I’ll post details here as soon as I have them.

Note:  I was not aware based on the fliers distributed that they were expecting advanced registration and I suspect they would have had plenty of people show up based on those I’ve talked to. 

The spring season has started in earnest. This past Saturday the silver maples started blooming and by Sunday enough was blooming that the bees were completely ignoring the open feed pollen substitute. Probably a good thing as real pollen is better for them and I was starting to run out of substitute as they had consumed nearly two 5 gallon buckets worth.

The weather Sunday was quite warm in the upper 60\’s. Many of the hives had a significant amount of drone brood and the strongest had adult drones. At least one hive had several hundred adult drones…which means it\’s time to start grafting…right on time. I made up one queenless hive, reducing it from 4 medium boxes to 3 from the strongest hive I had checked and grafted the next day, Monday. Checked the grafts on Tuesday and found almost all were accepted so things are progressing nicely. The real work begins late next week…inspecting hives and making up dozens of mating nucs.

Researchers at the Ohio State Bee lab announced they have found a new tool to fight terrorism, the honey bee.

In 2005, scientists from the University of Montana, Montana State University and The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration conducted successful tests showing that the honey bee could be trained to find landmines.  By feeding the bees sugar water containing traces of the explosive, the bees will hunt out the land mines by smell and the bees can be tracked with Lidar.  These amazing insects only miss their target less than 1% of the time.

Now researches from Ohio State have found a way to use this same mechanism to hunt out terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  They have found that they can train the honey bees to seek out humans by body oder. In addition, by using the more aggressive Africanized honey bee, who’s defense response can be triggered by CO2 in our breath, the bees will actively seek out and sting their target.  While this may only serve to be a minor annoyance to the terrorists, researchers are working on potent sedatives that can be fed to the bees that won’t affect the bees but will find it’s way into the bees venom.  While the bees do die when they sting, they are relatively inexpensive and it is simple to train new bees.

"The goal is not to harm anyone, but to incapacitate them so troops may move in safely.  This could revolutionize how suspects are apprehended up and virtually eliminate hazards to our troops or civilians.  It’s a very promising technology and we’ve had interest from the FBI and several other state law enforcement agencies hoping to use it."

Recent calls to the Ohio State Bee Lab to obtain additional information and verify the above fact were not returned.

No terrorists were immediately available to comment on the ironic use of suicidal bee attacks to apprehend terrorists.