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TheWaterbug
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Re: Bee Keeping

I pulled 14.5 lbs last month! I have 4 hives going into fall; I hope I can keep all 4 alive through winter:

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imafan26
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Nice.
We only got one harvest so far this year, but are hoping we will have enough frames to do another small harvest.

We lost a total of 4 hives this year but we have gained 6 from collecting swarms. We even collected a swarm from one of our own hives and it stayed. We have a total of 10 hives now.

One hive has 2 supers of honey, but they also have deformed wing disease. We have been using Hopsguard for mites but they are not as effective as MAQs. Unfortunately, MAQs and formic acid are temperature sensitive and the daily temperatures last week was 93-94 degrees which would probably kill the queen and brood. They still have a lot of bees but we may need to harvest the supers before the hive suffers more losses and the hive cannot defend the honey. We have Hopsguarded again because of the temperature but as soon as it gets cooler we will have to MAQ the hive. Most of the other hives are swarms and are still building. There is honey in the brood boxes but most are not ready for supers. We have changed out all of the super frames. We will move some of the short frames of honey from the brood boxes to supers on the strongest hives and change out the brood box frames as we go along.

Some of the hives have requeened. We can usually tell requeening from swarm cells. The hives swarm when they are short on space. Bees will spend a lot of time on the outside of the box. Swarm cells are usually on the edges of the frames and requeening cells are in the middle of a frame. Hives that are requeening because of a failing or lost queen get a bit more aggressive and we don't see a lot of brood anywhere. It may take a month or more for a virgin queen to start laying again, but once she is present, at least the hive will calm down. The bees will lay down a lot of honey in the meantime since there is no brood to take care of. If the new queen is successful, the bees will be less aggressive and we will start to see brood again.

If a hive has swarmed, we will find the opened queen cell and the number of bees will drop significantly in the original hive. We won't see much brood for a month or more until the new queen is established.

Swarm hives take a while to rebuild. We need to increase their numbers before winter comes. It does not freeze here and there is forage year round, but the clusters will get smaller. Four frame clusters going into winter rarely survive. Of our 10 hives, even if we feed them, we are likely to lose 3 or more hives over the winter. Clusters smaller than 4 frames are unlikely to survive.

On the other hand, we can take almost all of the honey in the hives and leave only a couple of frames for each hive over the winter months. We have to take the excess honey because the smaller number of bees will not be able to defend the honey from the small hive beetles. The small hive beetles are attracted to the honey and will slime it out if there aren't enough bees to defend the honey. We also have been feeding the smaller hives even over the summer. I don't really understand the logic of feeding bees when there is a lot of forage around. I could understand if the hives are fed and the bees are concentrating on increasing their numbers, but the number of frames covered are not increasing very fast on some of the swarm hives. I would have thought replacing the queens with younger mated queens with good genetics would have been the better option. Swarms always have older queens and it is unknown how long they will last. I would have rather encouraged re queening instead so we will have younger queens going into the winter months so that the queen has a better chance of surviving the winter months. It is hard to re queen in winter when the numbers are low, brood diminishes and there aren't as many drones around for a new queen to mate with. We have so far only seen a couple of hives re queen. Most of the hives either re queened in January or are original older swarm queens.

The hive we have with deformed wing virus has the most honey, but it is the one most likely we will continue to see decline.

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rainbowgardener
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Wow, it seems like it is so hard to keep bee hives going these days: deformed wing virus, hive beetles, varroa mites, foulbrood, nosema, colony collapse disorder ... to name just a few. Was it always like that and I just didn't know because I hadn't read as much about beekeeping? Or is this new related to the concentration of poisons in the environment*, climate change, environmental degradation and other factors.

*I have read that when they test hives that have suffered colony collapse, they find high concentrations of over 30 different pesticides, herbicides, and other poisons.

It seems like we don't hear as much about colony collapse disorder these days as back when it first became commonly known in 2006. But I found an article from June this year, saying US beekeepers lost 40% of their hives over the past winter, a record number. This is despite a lot of work to try to understand and reduce colony loss. :cry: :cry:

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Colony collapse disorder is a complex issue and there is no smoking gun. Climate change, persistent pesticides, monoculture, habitat loss, parasites, disease, urbanization, and breeding may all contribute.

The bees are actually making a comeback. More people are keeping bees and beekeepers are managing hives to control disease and pests. There is more awareness out there and some people are at least trying to limit their use of organophosphates and are using more short acting pesticides or minimal pesticides. People are being encouraged to create pollinator and habitats for beneficial insects and predators. Of course there are still people who will kill a bee on sight, but more people do call beekeepers to try to save some of the swarms instead.

We have 10 hives currently. 7/10 are swarms caught this year. Although, our hives actually have larger clusters than most people because we have forage on the 30 acre property and on neighboring properties that do provide some forage all year.
In the mainland, bees will need to be fed and they need at least a full super of honey for winter food. We only leave 2 full frames of honey for our bees. When the bees cluster, we remove extra frames and and harvest any honey that is ready. We manage our hives with inspections every two weeks and we try to treat our hives for varoa mites every 3 months or so. We have beetle traps in the hives and since honey attracts the beetles, we need to minimize the amount of honey and frames in the hive so it is easier for the bees to defend the hive. We are also feeding hives that are small and we have given struggling hives brood if another hive is strong enough to donate a frame. We still will lose about 25% of our hives over winter. This is not unusual. Swarming is the bees' way of cleaning house by establishing a new hives and moving away from the old hive to find new sources of food which reduces the pressure on local resources. It is also the way that bees spread their genetics by breeding with bees from other hives.

Pollinator hives that are rented by beekeepers to farms to pollinate pecans and other pollinator dependent crops usually have higher rates of dead hives. Mainly because the monoculture of the farms not being a healthy diet, farm use of chemicals, and bees trucked hundreds of miles away are usually not being managed often. Usually honey and wax are not collected from pollinator hives because of the conditions on the farms.

We have tested for mites to show trainees, but we actually fumigate the hives on a schedule since we will never be able to kill all of the mites. Our aim is just to control their numbers.

We control diseases by changing out the frames and foundations every three years. Most of our frames now are a year or less old. All of the super frames have been changed out, but it is harder to change out the brood box frames. We are fairly isolated but Leeward college is only a couple of miles away and they have hives too which could be interacting with our bees. We do have 2 hives that have had chalk brood. Chalk brood is a problem in wet weather and we manage that with ventilated bottom boards and removing the chalk brood frames and foundations. Chalk brood weakens a hive but does not out right kill them.
One of our beekeepers has had American Foul brood in her apiary and did have to destroy the bees and the hives to control it.

We usually treat the hives with MAQ's when the supers are off the hive. MAQ's are organic, but very hard on the queen and brood and is temperature sensitive. We have been using Hopsguard this summer since it has been too hot to use MAQ's and it is less toxic to the bees.

Bees are exposed to a host of different chemicals in the environment. Pesticides, fungicides, herbicides that are sprayed on farms and urban landscapes.

Studies have been done to see what residues are left. 67-95% of all samples were contaminated by at least one chemical. Bees surprisingly are very good at getting rid of pesticides and very few residues are found on live bees or in the honey. The highest concentrations of chemicals are in the pollen and beeswax. The most common chemical residues found were from products the beekeepers themselves were using to treat the hives for varoa mites.
Neonicotinids, and pyrethrins were very rare and the levels were not significant. Organic pyrethins only last about a day and if plants are not sprayed only when they are not in flower, it helps. Neonicotinids are often targeted for their harm to bees but they were rarely found in tests. Most of the concentrations of chemicals are found in the pollen and bees wax, which is why we usually treat hives when the supers are off and we don't save wax from the brood boxes. It is another good reason to change out older frames and not to make sure tools are cleaned after use especially, if they are being used on other hives.

I myself only take care of the bees at the urban garden. I have a suit and basic tools, but I don't have bees at home. I live on a small lot in the middle of a subdivision. Instead, I prefer to create habitat and plant nectar and flowering plants all year round to attract pollinators, beneficial insects, and predators. I have bees and beneficial insects visiting my garden every day. I rarely have aphids. I only spray when natural and cultural controls aren't enough. I have no effective controls for slugs, erineum mites, black spot, or bulbuls.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0067007



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