LESSON 46: Poor Winter Hives

Hello Friend, from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms!

We are David & Sheri Burns helping you discover and enjoy being a beekeeper! In today's lesson, I'll be giving you information on how to improve your chances of pulling your bees through the winter, and I'll show you some new inventions I'm working on to remove winter moisture from the hive. Before we get into today's lesson, let me encourage you to get ready for spring by ordering your hive and bees!



Call now to order: 217-427-2678.



LESSON 44: Poor Winter Hives

Now that most of the USA is facing exceptionally cold temperatures beekeepers start to worry about bees and they should! Many beekeepers make the mistake of trying to winter weak and questionable hives. We all do it at times. As a result, many hives fail during the winter months, primarily during the months of February and March. Those that do survive are so weak, they are not very impressive during the following year.

Right now, in most hives, there is excess and dangerous moisture. Moisture develops from the bees themselves and from the stark difference in temperature between the cluster's 90 (f) to the very cold temperature outside the hive. Condensation develops on the inside of the hive and collects on the top cover and drips back down on the bees. Bees can be cold and stay warm effectively, but not with cold water dripping on them.

I've been conducting moisture tests on my hives this winter and already the findings are alarming. The amount of accumulated top cover moisture dripping down was much worse than I thought.

I've been opening my hives and observing how much moisture is on the underside of the top covers.

This photo was taken from my experiments conducted on December 17th at 6:00 p.m. with an outside temperature of 43 degrees (f)

Ventilation can help, but still the threat of cold water dripping on the bees requires more attention than just a few extra points of ventilation.

My brothers is the engineer of the family and we had a discussion the other day on the problem with moisture in the hive. He recommended that I build a particular device to attract the moisture and cause it to drip outside the hive. I took his ideals, headed for my shop and came up with several devices that I am experimenting with.

The first one is a bit more complex than the others. Two pvc pipes 1 1/2 run through the top cover at an angle. The pvc pipes are vented on the top. Metal pipes run through the middle of the pvc pipes and extend 4-5 inches outside. The idea is that the cold air turns the metal pipes cold and that cold is transferred on to the pipe as it runs through the pvc above the brood nest are where the heat is and draws the condensation onto the metal pipes and drips into the pvc pipes and runs out of the hive.

The next one that I am trying is a device that holds an angled piece of metal above the cluster. The air is cold above the metal and the warmth of the cluster is under the metal, thus forming condensation on the bottom of the metal. Since it is angled, the water run out side the hive.

The metal extends outward beyond the back of the hive so that water runs along the angled metal and drips outside the hive.

Another approach to reducing condensation in the hive is to insulate the inside of the top cover. A glass of ice tea condensates on a warm summer day because the water temperature is much colder than the air around the outside of the glass. By wrapping the glass in a thin layer of insulation, the stark contrasts of cold and warm is eliminated and no condensation will form.

By merely insulating the inside of the top cover, much condensation will be eliminated. Here's how you can do it. Go to your local sign shop and ask for scrap pieces of plastic corrugated sign material. I call it plastic cardboard. Politician signs are made from this material.

You can also find this material at most office stores and sometimes at Wal-mart.

Then, go to you local home improvement store and buy a role of floor padding that goes beneath laminated floors. Some call it floor sound barrier material. It is very thin, about 1/8 of an inch, slick on one side and textured on the other.

Now, staple two layers of plastic cardboard on the inside of your top cover as shown in the photo. Then, staple in a piece of the floor covering with the textured side facing the bees. The two layers of corrugated plastic will help insulate the top of the hive where the heat rises. And the textured side of the floor covering will also serve as another layer of insulation but it will also help absorb moisture as well.

Here's what the final work looks like:

It is fine to leave this material on the hive all year long.

These are a few examples of what I'm experimenting with this winter in helping to remove moisture from the hive. Bees are the opposite of fish. Fish need water and cannot live long in the dry. Bees need a dry environment and cannot survive in a wet and moist environment. The modern day beekeeper must place more emphasis on keeping colonies dry and thus keeping them healthier.

OTHER WINTER SURVIVAL TIPS FOR HONEY BEE COLONIES

It seems that many beekeepers fail to realize they must keep their hives extremely strong during the bee season. The hive must always have a good laying queen producing many frames of solid sealed brood. A poorly laying queen must be replaced immediately. DO NOT keep a poorly laying queen. Your hive might survive the summer, but it will not produce enough foragers to gather much honey, and it will probably not survive the winter. This image shows how a good queen will produce solid frames of sealed brood. Limited brood or spotty brood will make for a weak summer hive and a hive that is certain to die during the winter.

The larger the quantity of bees in the hive means the colony will be of better quality. Most people are prone to care for the sick or injured. Some try to nurture an injured bird back to health. We really can't afford to do this will honey bees. A weak hive only means that certain diseases and pests are merely days away.

What surprises most beekeepers is that two weeks ago the hive was strong, two weeks later the hive is weak. What happened? The loss of colony strength can be assessed by an experienced beekeeper. Is it mites? Is it a brood disease? Is it noseam or tracheal mites? Most of the time it is not. More often it has to do with the expansion of the hive being limited and the hive entering into swarm mode or queen replacement mode. If a colony is not satisfied with their queen, they may decided to keep her or replace her. Both are risky. While we believe colonies can successfully replace a failing queen, remember that they usually make more than one queen cell, and when several queens emerge they fight and sometimes they are both killed or injured. Now the hive cannot produce a queen because there are no one day old eggs left.

A lack of hive expansion is another problem why hives fail to survive the winter. They may build a honey dome above them as bees do. This dome can become a barrier. Therefore, the beekeeper must monitor the honey dome above the brood nest and continue to break up the honey dome by putting in frames of empty drawn comb, giving room for the brood nest expansion during the summer.

Poor winter hives are nothing more than poor summer hives. When beekeepers say winter killed off their hives, they really should say that the hive never prepared properly during the summer for the approaching winter. If water leaks through my roof during a rain storm, I can't blame the rain for penetrating my roof. It's my fault for not preparing my roof for a rainy day.

Winter is what it is, cold, snowy and long for those of us in northern states. For those of us losing hives in the winter, we must re-think how we keep bees. We must thing "strong hives". We must have heavily populated hives. When we remove our inner covers, we must have so many bees that we can barely see the tops of our frames because of the number of bees as in the photo below.

A beekeeper keeping ten weak hives would be much better off to combine the ten hives into five strong hives. We are so fearful of our hives swarming that we keep them running far below strong numbers, through divides and splits. We need to re-think this and allow our hives to be "boiling over" with bees like mine in the picture.

Strong hives have a better chance at controlling Small Hive Beetle, V. Mites, American Foul Brood, Chalk Brood, European Foul Brood, wax moths and other diseases and pests. We must remember that a honey bee colony is a single organism. The stronger the hive is in population, the better the organism functions.

So many times I watch beekeepers open up their hives and I am ashamed of how few bees I see in the hive! We must keep strong hives! We must learn to have more bees in a colony through better management practices of better laying queens and breaking up the honey dome to allow brood expansion.

Strong colonies know how to prepare for winter. The stronger they are the better they are at winter preparation. The weaker they are the less they will adequately prepare for winter.

Interview ten beekeepers and ask them how old their queen is and how well she was doing in the month of October, and probably more than half will tell you they do not even know if they have a queen for sure.

Not only do colonies need to be heavily populated, but they need ample stores of both honey and pollen. Most beekeepers only think of honey stores and not pollen stores. But, bees need both pollen and honey. Honey is the carbohydrate and pollen is the protein and bees need both even in the winter.

Make sure, during the summer, that your bees are storing plenty of pollen in the lower brood chamber. This will help them have a jump on early spring brood production.

In our next lesson, I'll address insulating hives, whether it helps or hurts and I'll show you some experiments I'm conducting with winter wraps.

Check out Studio Bee Live at the upper right side of this blog or by logging on to: http://www.honeybeesonline.com/studiobeelive.html

See you next time and remember to Bee-Have yourself!

David & Sheri Burnswww.honeybeesonline.com

217-427-2678

STUDIO BEE LIVE QUESTIONS CALL 217-427-2430

Lesson 45: Hygienic Honey Bees Are A Must

Today, I want to share with you about the importance of keeping hygienic honey bees. I will share why it is essential to only use queens that are hygienic and for those of you raising queens, I will give you step by step instructions on how to test your hives for strong hygienic behavior using the Liquid Nitrogen testing method. Before we jump into this informative lesson today, I want to share a few other things first.
Sheri and I have been having so much fun producing Studio Bee Live broadcasts, a daily audio podcast all about honeybees. Be sure and listen to our program. It is found on this blogspot lesson to the upper right or you can log in to: www.honeybeesonline.com/studiobeelive.html




HYGIENIC HONEY BEES ARE A MUST

Somewhat new to contemporary beekeeping is the phrase "hygienic bees". Now, typically we think of all honey bees as being hygienic. You know, honey bees rarely defecate in the hive. They fly out to void themselves, so we know that bees are somewhat hygienic. They keep a very clean hive.

However, over the last few years greater emphasis has been placed on hygienic behavior in how the bees monitor sealed brood. When we refer to hygienic honey bees, we mean more than just keeping a clean hive, we mean their are some honey bees that monitor sealed brood and if there is a problem, either disease or pest such as American Foul Brood or mites, they will open the cell up, and remove the larvae.

This is not as new as we might think. A notable work from the past on hygienic bees goes back to the 1930s. O.W. Park, in the early 1930s began this work and actually found that hygienic bees could cut American Foul Brood from 70% down to 10%. So for the last 80+ years, work continued off and on with developing a more hygienic progeny. The most prominent work and name associated with hygienic bees has been the work of Dr. Marla Spivak and her queens knows as the Minnesota Hygienic Queens. Dr. Spivak said that she thinks this hygienic behavior is found in about 10% of honey bees.

I heard Dr. Spivak's assistant speak last year, Gary Reuter, and he encouraged all queen rearers to consider testing for hygienic behavior in our hive selection programs. He showed pictures and gave examples of how easy it is to conduct these test. I will be interviewing Gary for Studio Bee Live next week.

I want to share how to perform the hygienic discovery test on a hive for those of you who are raising your own queens, but before I do, let me share with you how important I believe this really is.

I've traveled to some third world countries where my doctor warned me not to drink the water, eat the food or get a mosquito bite. Some of these countries have very poor hygiene. A lack of sanitation knowledge keeps some people believing that if you cannot see a germ, there is no germ. Thus, bacteria and diseases flourish.

A few times, I've caught the bug while traveling in these countries. As of late, I've tried really hard to be more hygienically aware because I don't like being sick far from home. But we do not have to travel to a third world country to get sick from germs. By not washing our hands, we can catch a cold after shaking hands with someone who is infected. Thus, the more hygienic we are, the healthier we stay. Same is true for honey bees too.

The less dust, mold and germs we have in our homes, the healthier we are and the same is true for bees. This is a MUST! We have to get off the medicine treadmill with our bees. We cannot continue to effectively keep honey bees by dumping medication in the hive. Try living your life the way you treat you bees, and any medical doctor would warn you that it is not a healthy lifestyle.

Producing queens that have a strong hygienic behavior, in my opinion, is the key to reducing mites, American Foul Brood and other issues related to cleanliness of the hive. Imagine having bees who are able to detect AFB or reproductive mites in a sealed brood cell, and then open up that cell and carry the contaminated elements out of the hive.

It is also my opinion that a large cause agent of CCD is the amount of chemicals beekeepers add to their hives that gets absorbed into the comb and becomes unlikeable to the bees or begins to affect the bees in negative ways. This may not be the only or major cause, but to me it has to be one of the components. Thus, by using hygienic queens, we can reduce the medications in the hives and achieve an equal success rate from this hygienic behavior.

As much sense that this makes, there are many queen providers who still make no effort to incorporate this hygienic characteristic into their stock. This testing does add another time consuming step to the equation of an already demanding process.

However, as more state queen rearing projects spread, and as more beekeepers seem interested in raising their own queens, I want to challenge all queen providers to sell only queens from known hygienic hives.

How do we determine this?

Gary Reuter was very helpful in the workshop I attended. He explained in detail how to perform this hygienic test. Anyone raising queens should and can do it. It is pretty simple. The test is performed using Liquid Nitrogen (N2), the cold stuff! I called around and the best place to purchase it is from a near by welding supply company, the ones that sell various welding gas. They will sell you Liquid Nitrogen. I decided to purchase a 5 liter canister made for (N2). The canister is pricey, between $400-$500, but it is the best and safest way. If you are not testing regularly, you could just put the (N2) in a cooler. But you have to be very careful, as it will immediately frost bite your skin. You have to wear proper protection, because an accidental spill or splash could cost you a limb. (N2) is cheap, at about $3-$4 a liter.

We will begin running our tests this spring by using metal cylinders that we make from 28 gauge galvanized metal, left over pieces from the metal we put on our top covers. These cylinders need to be at least 4" tall and 3" in diameter. The 28 gauge metal works best because it is thin enough to press into the sealed brood in the frame. 4" tall is important so that as the (N2) "boils over" as it freezes and kills the brood within the 3" circle, it will not boil over and out onto the rest of the frame.

It is important to pour in 10 ounces of (N2) on the section of brood within the metal cylinder. This is the sufficient amount to kill all brood cells. Be sure and make a note of any unsealed cells so that when you come back to count, you'll have a base number to work with. There are about 160 cells within a 3" diameter. It is recommended to pour in a couple of ounces first and wait for the edges to freeze or for the (N2) to evaporate then pour the remaining 8 ounces in.

So what you want to do with the (N2) is freeze kill a 3" diameter area of sealed brood. Then, you place that frame back into the hive for 48 hours. Be sure and mark the frame so that you can easily find your test frame in 48 hours. When you find it, now observe how much of the 3" area of dead larvae has been removed. If it has all been emptied, then you have a very hygienic hive to breed from. If not, keep testing other hives.

Like I said, pretty simple!!

Sunday, our temperature will rise to 52. I am planning to go into a few of our hives that have a large wind block as the wind will be strong from the South. When I go into these experimental hives, I will be observing the following:1) Amount of sealed brood or egg
2) Location of the cluster/queen
3) Amount of both stored pollen and honey
4) Evidence of excessive condensation in the hiveThree hives I am experimenting with are:
1) A series of 3 nucs with 5 frames, all stacked on top of each other. Each one has a 3" screened hole in the floor, allow one nuc to heat the one above it.

2) A hive that was compressed into a single deep, to observe how well a hive can overwinter in a single deep.

3) Two strong hives that were mere merged into one hive by placing two deeps from one hive on top of two deeps from another hive.Since we've already had several weeks of very cold weather and winds here in Illinois, it will be interesting to see where the bees are at in mid December. I'll keep you posted.We are getting closer to the end of the year, and as of January 1, 2009 we will raise our prices on our wooden ware. So you can save money by ordering your hives yet this year. Please get your hive order in as soon as possible for your 2009 beekeeping needs!Last year, our queens were in such demand, we were not able to fulfill all orders. Though we are vastly increasing our queen production for the spring, we are still looking at selling out. Therefore, we have decided to take orders for queens starting January 5th as well. These are our Illinois reared queens from our survival hives that have never been medicated and have proven to be winter hardy, good honey producers, gentle and hygienic. We hope to have queens ready to sell my the end of April or early May. First come first serve basis so secure your queen/s fast! We are planning on producing around 1,000 of these queens and probably about 500 - 750 will pass our criteria as sellable mated queens. These queens are held in their own nuc to demonstrate their laying ability for 14-21 days before they are sold.

We only ship our queens through express mail, 1-2 day delivery time.

Here's the number to call to order your hives, bees, nucs or queens:

217-427-2678

STUDIO BEE LIVE

We welcome your questions to Studio Bee Live. Call in an leave your question on our answering machine and we'll play your voice and our answer on an upcoming broadcast. We have a special number just for questions:

217-427-2430

Check out our website at: www.honeybeesonline.com and if you don't see what you need there, call us up and we'll make sure we take care of all your beekeeping needs!

See you next time and remember to BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns

Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

www.honeybeesonline.com

217-427-2678

EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com