LESSON 60: BEE DANCE COMMUNICATION

Hello from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, and welcome to today's lesson in Beekeeping on hygienic behavior and testing for mites using a powder sugar roll.




As I have written nearly sixty lessons, I have never written a lesson on the bee dance. So today, as fascinating and complicated as it is, I want to teach on the way bees communicate through dance. Before I do, let me tell you about some things we are doing here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms.


It has been a great bee year for us. Our hives have all built up nicely and are very strong, honey production has been great and best of all, no problems with pests or diseases since we have been free of using chemicals for nearly 3 year now. Queen production has been very robust!





I removed another colony of bees from a home in Champaign, Illinois. The location of the bees was another first for us. This time, they were harder to located because they were going into a hole between the wall and the top step on the back porch.





After some investigation, I determined that the steps had a hollow cavity in the middle, and so after the owner rented a jack-hammer and after we busted open the porch, we were right. In 1954 when they poured the concrete they placed a wooden whisky or pickle barrel in the middle to lessen how much concrete it would take. The bees thought this would be a perfect place for a hive.





As you can see they build layers and layers of comb inside this nice size cavity. This was the first time I ever operated a jack-hammer, and I now have a greater respect for those who run these things all day long.





We always use our bee vac for removal jobs and without it we'd never get all the bees. This was a very challenge removal just because the concrete was so old and hard. But once we got through and found the barrel, then we were able to remove the comb and bees. The owner was very happy that we found the bees and took them away!Remember, we really appreciate your business. We are here to serve all beekeepers as beekeepers ourselves, and as our customers will affirm, we do our best to answer your questions. So, when you are considering purchasing packages, nucs, woodenware, protective clothing, extracting equipment, queens, etc., please be sure to give us a call: 217-427-2678.

LESSON 59: BEE DANCE COMMUNICATION

We all probably remember in grade school that bees do a wagtail dance, sometimes referred to as the waggle dance. If we were paying attention in elementary school, we also learned this dance is performed by a foraging honey bee, a female bee that has discovered a great source of nectar and/or pollen from flowers and she returns to the hive and dances to tell the other bees how to get there. The dance communicates three things: 1) Directions to the source 2) A sample of the source and 3) How far away it is.

We have an observation hive at our honey bee farm and customers and students always love finding and watching bees doing the wagtail dance.

Dr. Karl Ritter von Frisch (1886-1982)receives the credit for spending his life working with bees and unraveling the dance mystery. As he continued to work with bees and other insects he eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Others were, at first, skeptical as to the scientific merit behind his explanation of the bee dance.

Anyone can now study the bee dance with an observation hive, a bowl of sugar water and a few marked foraging bees. Foragers scouting around for nectar sources will land on a great find, maybe a large patch of flowers yielding much nectar and pollen. They fly back to their hive with a sample of pollen on their legs and nectar in the honey stomachs. Now, they must convince other foragers in the hive that it is worth the trip. They do so by giving the foragers in the hive a sample of the nectar and pollen. Then, with great vigor they dance in order to tell the other bees where the nectar is located and how far away.

Without becoming too technical, let me say that if the nectar source is less than 100 yards from the hive, then the foragers do what is called a round dance. They simply vibrate in a circle. This means that the nectar is out side near the hive, go and find it! We've also learned the difference races of bees have slight variations of dances, such as the Italians who use a sickle dance when the nectar is between 10 - 30 yards from the hive.

The dancer use the sun outside the hive to navigate to the nectar source, but inside the hive, she must translate the sun's location by gravity orientation on the comb.

The best example of how to explain this and see it at work is from North Carolina State University's website. You can actually interact with the location of nectar and see how the dance changes. I've used this site to locate where my bees are going based on their dance telemetry. Click Here

The forager doing the dance communicates how much energy will be needed to fly to the nectar source. This helps the other foragers determine the distance. And somehow, the dance also takes into consideration the changing position of the sun as it gets later in the day. Even head wind is taken into consideration in the dance. The dancer also gives off pheromones and sounds to assist as well.

As a beekeeper, you'll enjoy watching the dance when you lift out a frame on a nice warm day during a heavy nectar flow. You might see many bees on one frame dancing like crazy. Isn't it amazing how bees communicate?

And a late breaking discovering now tells us that bees change their waggle dance if the flowers poses some sort of threat. It's found in the journal Animal Behavior. BBC Earth News, Mark Walker reports that "Scientists Kevin Abbott and Reuven Dukas of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. that these scientist "have found that honeybees use the waggle dance to do more than just encourage others in their colony to visit bountiful flowers...They trained honeybees to visit two artificial flowers containing the same amount and concentration of food. They left one flower untouched, making it a "safe" food source for the bees.
On the other flower, they placed the bodies of two dead bees, so they were visible to arriving insects, but would not interfere with their foraging. A crab spider kills a flower visiting wasp.
They then recorded whether and how the bees performed a waggle dance on their return to other members of the hive colony. On average, bees returning from safe flowers performed 20 to 30 times more waggle runs that bees returning from dangerous flowers.

That shows that the bees recognise that certain flowers carry a higher risk of being killed or eaten by predators, such as crab spiders or other spider species that ambush visiting bees.
What's more, they factor this risk into their waggle dances, tempering them to steer their colony mates away from flowers that might be dangerous."

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You can easily unsubscribe at any time and it's free. Since these lessons are free, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it does take money and time to put each lesson together. We receive alot of "thank you" emails and phone calls, telling us that these lessons have helped beekeepers greatly.
We welcome your donations toward producing more free lessons. You can send your donation to: Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, C/O Free Lessons, 14556 N. 1020 E. Rd, Fairmount, IL 61841

We've improved our website even more, so be sure to visit us at www.honeybeesonline.com

We have been migrating more of our lessons from our blog site over to our website, so be patient with us until we complete the migration.

Here's out contact information:
Phone: 217-427-2678 (9am - 5pm Central Time Monday - Friday)

Email: david@honeybeesonline.com

Website: www.honeybeesonline.com

Online Class Registration: www.honeybeesonline.com/classes.html

I'll update the blog from New York if I have time and until next time, remember to BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
Central Illinois

LESSON 59: HYGIENIC BEHAVIOR QUEENS

Hello from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, and welcome to today's lesson in Beekeeping on hygienic behavior and testing for mites using a powder sugar roll.

But before we get started, let me say thank you to so many of you who email us or call in and offer kind words and thank us for providing these free online lessons. We hope our efforts are making a dent in the beekeeping community in helping more people get started keeping bees as well as beekeepers becoming more successful.

I recently removed a colony of honeybees from a home in Campaign, Illinois and the TV crew came out and put it on the news. Click here to what the news video.
If you are so moved to help support these free online lessons with a donation, we would appreciate it. Think of the money would would have to pay to purchase books or CDs to receive the same information. So your donation, no matter how small, will go far to assist us in keeping these lessons going out. If you do wish to donate, we thank you in advance, and encourage you to send your check to: Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, 14556 N. 1020 E., Fairmount, IL 61841 or you can donate via paypal or credit card by clicking on the link below.





LESSON: 58: HYGIENIC BEHAVIOR TRAITS & HOW TO TEST FOR MITES USING A SUGAR ROLL
Sunday, our local beekeeping club, of which I am president of, met at our honey bee farm in the afternoon. Dr. Stu Jacobson was our guest speaker. Dr. Jacobson spoke on the importance of raising and providing beekeepers with hygienic queens, bees that can detect reproducing mites and some disease below sealed brood, and carry it outside the hive before it has time to spread and cause problems.
In Lesson 45, I explained more of the details and history behind using hygienic bees, but for today we will examine more about performing the test and evaluating the results.
TESTING A HIVE FOR HYGIENIC BEHAVIOR
I'll make comments under each picture below walking you through the process. The liquid nitrogen is very cold and therefore, must be handled with care. Protective clothing and eye wear is a must to against accidental spillage. Please be careful. Liquid nitrogen can be purchased from most welding supply shops.


First, select a frame of sealed brood from one of your hives that you want to test. Make sure to choose a frame where most cells are sealed. (Images in this lesson can be enlarged by clicking on the image)
Shake the bees off and push a 3 inch diameter can down into the comb until it reaches the middle of the comb. Keep track of how many cells are not sealed. In this case, there are 18 unsealed cells within the inside of the can area.
Pour in 2 ounces of LN to prime the area. Then, pour in about 7 ounces to freeze kill the brood within the can.


Here, Dr. Jacobson demonstrates how to pour the LN, using tongs and a paper cup.
Now that the brood is killed, place the frame back in the hive and wait 24 hours. Then, pull out the same frame. If they show hygienic behavior, the dead brood will all be removed.
As in this picture you can see the circle where the brood has been cleaned out. It is not a perfect circle at the bottom due to some of the LN spilling out on to the adjacent area. This is an hygienic hive.
If we are to move away from over medicating our hives, we must make these efforts to tap into the bee's own defense against pests and diseases.
Next, Dr. Jacobson demonstrated how to conduct a varrora mite test on your hive. This will be very helpful for those of you who are concerned about v. mites. Dr. Jacobson supports what I've said for years about how the mite drop count method may not give accurate readings. In other words, if bees are good at picking the mites off and dropping them, they may have less mites on the bees but the drop board might show alot.
A better method is to capture 200 bees in a small jar with a screen lid. Put in several spoonfuls of powder sugar and roll the bees around in the powder sugar. The mites can no longer cling to the bees due to the sugar and you then shake the jar so that the mites fall though the top screen.
In our test, we used a paper plate to shake out the mites. As a result of our study, about 3 mites were visible as noted in the photo below.

Some people use various chemicals to kill the bees and the mites stick to the side of the jar for counting. Chemicals like ether or starter fluid is often used. This works, but if you have accidentally shaken the queen into the jar, she will perish along with the bees. Therefore, powder sugar will not hurt the bees but allow the mites to drop off.

I want to take this time to encourage other local bee clubs to raise the educational bar higher within the meetings. Beekeepers will have greater success the more education on beekeeping they receive. Having guest speakers or well informed and experienced local beekeepers share at the meetings on predetermined topics can really help the beekeepers in your local club enjoy keeping bees.

In our club, we meet at a different member's home each time.

Also, be sensitive toward the new beekeeper who will feel intimidated by the more experienced beekeepers and their opinionated attitudes. We are opinionated. Try to encourage the more outspoken beekeepers to be more encouraging to the newer beekeepers.

Also, our club offers a list of mentor, a list of people who are willing to work along side new beekeepers.

That's it for today! We appreciate you joining us today!

Remember, register for our upcoming courses as soon as possible as these classes fill up fast!

BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

www.honeybeesonline.com

EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com

PHONE: 217-427-2678

Twitter: http://twitter.com/longlanehoney

LESSON 58: QUEEN EXCLUDERS

Hello from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, located in central Illinois! We are a husband and wife team operating a family beekeeping business and we love it! It is a blast not just because our hobby turned into a business, but because we enjoy being together and working together with our children. And, we enjoying helping the beekeeping community as well.





LESSON 56: QUEEN EXCLUDERS

What's the real story about queen excluders? Do they work? Do I recommend them? Will they cut down on your amount of honey? Why are there different kinds of queen excluders.

A queen excluder is a metal or plastic device which looks much like a metal shelf in your refrigerator. The metal ones are made up of small metal rails close enough together so that the queen cannot squeeze through but the workers can. Beekeepers use them below a honey super to prevent the queen from going up into the honey super and laying eggs. There is now a plastic queen excluder on the market that works just as well.

PROS & CONS

PROS: The queen is excluded.


CONS: The queen is not always excluded. A small queen can sometimes squeeze. Drones get stuck. The bees often place stray comb between the openings. It does seem to slow down the progress of the bees filling the super above it. It's another high maintenance item.

TIP #1: Never use a queen excluder below a honey super that has undrawn comb. Make sure your comb is drawn out first. It is sometimes a challenge to get the frames drawn out by the bees on honey supers. A queen excluder can make it more restrictive and it can take longer. So do not place it on until the super frames are somewhat drawn out.
TIP #2: The metal queen excluder has support wire beneath the main row of wire. Those support cross bars should always face the brood nest area. This will prevent the queen from slipping through the wires.

So when you've placed it above the brood nest correctly, the wires will run the same direction as the frames below, and you can rub your hand across the queen excluder without feeling the cross bars. They will be on the bottom side of the queen excluder, running the opposite direction as the frames. We do this because when a queen tries to squeeze through she will slide along the wire, but when she hits a cross wire, she cannot continue to try to work through.

Some beekeepers are so opposed to queen excluders they call them "honey excluders". Indeed, they can restrict the passage of foraging and transport bees, and clogged with drones and wax, the passageway is even more restrictive.

MY OPINION AND APPROACH

For a new beekeeper, a queen excluder can be a big help. However, I do not use queen excluders. Instead, I monitor my queen and if I see her in the upper super, I pick her up and move her back down into the deep hive bodies.

The queen will not lay in a cell that has honey in it. So, my goal (and the bees) is to place honey in the super before she gets up there to lay, forming a honey barrier. So that is also why I like to "top super" which means I add empty supers on top of supers the bees are already filling. I don't have to worry about the queen going beyond the honey barrier.

I've noticed that if I give the queen plenty of room in her brood nest, the lower two deep hive bodies, then she rarely gets up into my supers. If she does, she lays just a small amount of eggs in the center frames and only toward the very lower bottom part of the frame. So I wait and let the brood hatch, then the bees clean up the cells and finish filling it with nectar and curing it into honey and sealing it off.

Thanks for joining us for today's lesson and I hope this has been helpful for you. Remember, we are here to help you succeed as a beekeeper. Please feel free to call us for supplies or equipment you might need. We also raise our own queens, so call us if you need to replace your queen.


Or call us for any beekeeping need you have: 217-427-2678
Visit us online at: www.honeybeesonline.com
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/longlanehoney
And check us out on Facebook too!
EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com

Until next time, remember to Bee-Have Yourself!
David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

LESSON 57: COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Hello From Long Lane Honey Bee Farms! We are David & Sheri Burns and we are passionate about beekeeping. We started out keeping bees as a hobby and the hobby went wild.

For us, beekeeping is a blast. If you are not a beekeeper, we hope you'll peruse through our beekeeping lessons and consider becoming a beekeeper.

If you are considering becoming a beekeeper next year, then now is the time to prepare. It may seem like a ways off, but not really.  This will give plenty of time for first time beekeepers to study our lessons, purchase equipment and decide on the best location for the placement of your hives.

So, my nose is glue in books every spare moment I have. My head is spinning with bee knowledge.

We've added two new features to our web presence:

http://twitter.com/longlanehoney So you can follow us as we tweet and we now are on facebook too.

LESSON 56: COMMON QUESTIONS ADDRESSED We receive so many questions from beekeepers around the world. I decided to use recent questions as this lesson. Hopefully my answers will help you as a beekeeper, afterall we all have the same kinds of questions, don't we.

And I've just thrown in random beekeeping pictures for your enjoyment.

Q... When I observed my queen moving around, I noticed she just walks around a lot and does not continuously lay eggs. Even when I think she lays an egg after looking into a cell, her abdomen does not fully immerse into the cell but she just places her abdomen at the top of the cell and she does a wiggle and goes away. I also thought that the queen measures the cell with her hind legs and then lays but I noticed she was going in head first. I do not understand what she is doing. Is this a common behavior?

A... Thanks for your questions. Let me correct you. Queens measure cells with the front legs, that's why we always hold the back legs when marking queens. If a front leg breaks off, then she will only be a drone layer. She does look head first into a cell and then moves slightly forward and rotates her abdomen into the cell to lay an egg. Sounds to me like you might have a virgin queen or a newly mated queen or a mated queen that has just been released from her cage. Give her a week and see if she doesn't work more efficiently.

Q... Hi Dave! What do you place your bottom boards on? I have mine on precast concrete patio 24” square pavers then one brick in each corner of the bottom board to allow for air flow. I have received advice from an old beekeeper that open bottom boards are bad for overwintering. Just curious. Thanks.-Herman

A... Hi Herman Hi Herman, I agree with the experienced beekeeper IF the screen bottom boards do not have some sort of shielding around them to break the wind. But, I have found the open bottom to be very helpful for getting rid of excessive winter condensation moisture from the hive.I just have mine sitting on pallets.

Q...Good afternoon, Mr. Burns - First, thanks for taking the time to write your lessons blog - you're doing more than anyone else I've seen out there on the Net to assist beginning beekeepers with their questions. It's also a great portal to your apiary website; hopefully, you're being rewarded with increased business. I had a quick question for you: I didn't see anywhere on your site a mention of which race(s) of bees you sell. I'm looking for a regular supplier of Carniolan queens (preferably Old World, but New World as well). Don't suppose you deal with these? Thanks, Mark

A... Thanks Mark for your kind comments. Carniolans are the bee of choice for us. However, we also concentrate more on characteristics than race. We open air mate our queens as well in a somewhat controlled area. So the queens that we raise do tend to show more Carniolan characteristics. We also purchase Carniolan breeder queens that we graft from.

Q... Hi David & Sheri my is Dan Richards i live in a small area called Rusagonis NB Canada I love your site yes we have a small Beekeepers Assn Keep up the great work I have passed your site to members of our assn. I am checking out the laws regarding getting Queens from USA . Thanks again. Dan

A... Thanks Dan! Nice to meet you!

Q... How do you mail queens? Have you had success in using the plastic cages with attendants included? It seems quite small and the access to candy limited. I was going to try to avoid the expense of the three-chambered wood cages. I bank queens in plastic and would like to find a way of mailing them that way. Larry

A... Hi Larry, I exclusively use the California Mini Cage that is made by Koehnen. http://www.koehnen.com/cmq.html I have the best all around success in the following areas with this cage: --Transportation --Protection against mandibles of bees that are initially unaccepting. --Ability for bees to feed queen through the cage. --Ease of inserting candy plug. --Smaller size fits easily between frames. We are rotating queens through about 50 mating stations. So I am able to produce about 15 acceptable queens per week. I try not to bank virgin or mated queens unless I have to. It is better to bank layers than virgins. Virgins banked longer than 3 weeks will be no good. Virgin queens are tough to be accepted, so we place capped queen cells into queenless mating stations, let them prove they can lay well for a few weeks, evaluate their daughters and sell.

Q... Hi David,
I have been beekeeping for 5 years and this year is the first year I have ever extracted honey from my bees. I'm so excited! Today I peeked in my 5 gallon bucket to see how the bubbles were rising and it smelled a little like beer. I'm concerned its fermenting. All the frames were capped, 100% of them, my equipment was dry too, is this aroma normal? and if not what do I do?

Thanks so much for your time,
Nadina

A... It might be normal, but then again, normally honey doesn't smell as if it is fermenting. Sometimes, capped honey can still have too high of a moisture level. I recommend always using a refractometer to take samples. I keep my honey room below 39% humidity and I always air out my sealed honey for several days with a fan on it before I process it. If it tastes like it has fermented, then it has and is not fit to sell. A slight fermentation smell may just be that the bubbles have risen to the top and the honey below is fine. See if you can taste the honey atleast a few inches below the surface.

Also, check out my lesson 12: http://basicbeekeeping.blogspot.com/2007/10/lesson-twelve-moisture-level-of-honey.html

Q... Dear David,
I was wondering if your package bees are still available for shipment? I live in Arizona. Thank you for your help. Sincerely,Marcy

A... Sorry Marcy, all so out. Packages must be purchased very early in the year. Always call your package bee orders in as soon as you can in January or February, March at the very latest.

Q... Hi David, I'm just starting in beekeeping in New Zealand, purchased two occupied hives from retiring beekeeper and I've found your online lessons fantastic .. I really appreciate not just the what to do, but also the information about why to do it that you have put in them.
One thing I'm trying to work out is to do with inspections. It seems like I need a sunny, wind free day and a temperature really needs to be above 60F, and that ideally I should do this every couple of weeks.. but of course it is the middle of winter here, and that means the temperature typically won't get above 50F. I guess beekeepers are always having to compromise on this sort of thing. Do you have any recommendations on a winter inspection programme?
Thanks again for all the wonderful insights from your lessons.
Chris

A... Good question. Please check out my lesson 28 http://basicbeekeeping.blogspot.com/2008/03/lesson-28-spring-management-of.html

But basically, wait until the warmest day possible, maybe upper 30s or 40s (f) or 50s is better, and just briefly open up the hive to peek and make sure there is plenty of stored honey next to the cluster. Do not lift out frames with bees. You can move frames of stored honey if you want to, but remember some bees might fly out and let you know they are not happy about you opening up their hive. They may also die from the cold as well. So work fast.

Q... Hey David
I just read your lesson on swarms and I have to say I am impressed. I am a new beekeeper this year and have only 3 hives (WBC because we are English). I attended a 3 month course before starting and I gained more from your lesson than on the course. Keep it up, the bees need you.
Regards
Gary

A... Thanks Gary

Q...Hello David,

I have really enjoyed your beekeeping lessons online. I was hoping you could give me an answer to two questions:

1. In one of your lessons you stated that a virgin queen may fly several miles to get mated or at least a long distance. If a queen breeder is advertising a certain breed of queens how can he tell for sure that the queen was mated like he thinks. Let’s say that a queen breeder was advertising in a Bee magazine that he was selling pure Russian queens. How does he know that his virgin queen was fertilized by a Russian male bee if down the road a mile was a bee yard full of Italian bees??

2. I noticed in your pictures that you use a lot of double brood chambers. Can you tell me what you are doing here?
Best Regards,
Charlie

A...Hi Charlie, Good point. Lots of claims made that can really never be tested
by the buying beekeeper. You only want an open air mated queen,
as they do better and lay longer than inseminated queens. Only
through Instrumental Insemination can a queen breeder make
claims of purity of progeny.

Now, you can do a lot to control purity even in open air mating.
For example, there is not a large beekeeper near us, so we
can “flood” the area with the genes we want, and so we can
control it quite nicely, but we would never make a claim of purity.

We use two deeps so that the bees can over winter with plenty
of honey on board.

Q...David, Hope things are going well with you & your family. I know you are busy, but I have a question. I installed my package on 5/1/09 when they arrived. About how long should it take for a package to draw out enough comb to add a second deep? I check my bees every 2 weeks like you suggested, and they have drawn out about 5-6 frames. Is it normal for them to take this long? I am concerned that they may not have enough store to take them through the winter. Have any thoughts that may help me?

Thanks for all your help.

Tim

A...Hi Tim, this is every beekeeper's concern. A package of bees actually drops down a little in number after they are installed, but finally once the queen becomes adjusted to the bees, the hive takes off. How well they do depends on several factors outside the beekeeper's control such as the weather and the nectar flow. Typically we hope a package can fill up the bottom deep in about 6 weeks, and the same on the second deep. Sometimes it is faster, and usually slower. I like to "bait" the second deep, by pulling out a few frames from the lower deep hive body with brood and bees, and place them in the upper deep next to the undrawn comb. This lures the bees to move up into my second deep. Two frames is usually plenty. I have also noticed that we as beekeepers have much higher expectations from our bees than what is often practical. So be patient.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed alittle Q&A today. Our family hopes that your beekeeping season goes well. Please keep an eye on your queens. Remember to always operate your hives with a young, prolific queen. Don't take a chance and go into winter with an old or poor laying queen. Call us if you need to replace your queen. 217-427-2678.

Also, we continue to make improvement on our hive equipment that we build. If you are in need of additional hive or hive components, give us a call at 217-427-2678. We also sell all beekeeping equipment. And feel free to allow us to become your mentor in beekeeping!

Until next time remember to BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns

Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

http://www.honeybeesonline.com/

217-427-2678

LESSON: 56 HOW TO TELL WHEN YOUR HIVE IS QUEENLESS

Hi we are David and Sheri Burns at honeybeesonline.com  Please visit our Main Website at: http://www.honeybeesonline.com

WARNING: There is a push to make beekeeping appear practically hands free. New beekeepers are failing to implement best management practices. I want to be your mentor. I am currently accepting positions to mentor a limited number of beekeepers. You'll have access to my personal cell phone and private email. And you can send me videos or pictures of your hive when it just doesn't seem right or you don't know what's going on. You'll also receive 4 new instructional videos from me and a weekly tip of what you should be doing. Click here to see if spots are still available.

Here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, we are committed to help you be a successful beekeeper. David is a certified master beekeeper. We are offering classes to help you learn about overwintering bees in the winter.

Check out our entire list of beekeeping classes we offer by clicking here.

WINTER-BEE-KINDS are now available online! Orders are pouring in. You In order to get ahead of the game, we have placed our Winter-Bee-Kinds online. PLEASE NOTE, orders will be shipped out starting November 1, in the order they are received. In other words, if you order your WBK this week, yours will ship the first week in November. However, if you order yours on September 1st, there will be hundreds of orders ahead of yours so you may not get your order until  . We do our best to stay caught up but the popularity of our WBKs is overwhelming.  Thank you. To order online go to: http://www.honeybeesonline.com/feeders/

Hello, from Long Lane Honey Bee Farm. We are David & Sheri Burns operating a honey bee farm in Central Illinois. We not only enjoy beekeeping, but it is a passion for us too. We especially enjoy helping more and more people enter the wonderful hobby of beekeeping.

Beekeeping is more than just a few crazy people, wearing funny hats and risking their lives while playing with killer bees. First of all, beekeepers keep gentle bees. For the most part, honey bees are gentle, busy and are not aggressive. We raise queens, and we make sure that the queens we raise are from hives that are not aggressive. Of course the worker bees do have stingers, so proper handling of the bees along with adequate protective clothing is necessary. Beekeeping is a billion dollar industry. Millions of hives are kept by beekeepers across the US.

Because honey bees are becoming scarcer, it is important to educate our local communities on the important role honey bees play in providing us with healthy food through pollination of our crops. Without the honey bee our fruits and vegetables would be at great risk.

Here's a squadron of bees returning to base loaded heavily with nectar. Beyond needing our bees to provide our food, bees are just fun to keep! There is so much to learn and learning is fun. To keep bees and broaden our understanding of the honey bee is a wonderful and very therapeutic past time and hobby.

To help beekeepers enjoy beekeeping even more, we provide these beekeeping lessons, containing our own photos along with important information and advice in being a good beekeeper. If you enjoy these free online beekeeping lessons we encourage you to donate toward these lesson. There is a place at the end of lesson to donate, and we do appreciate it in advance. When considering a donation, think about how much it would cost if you had to purchase books or take a college course that contains all the information in these lessons.

Today, I want to share about keeping a strong queen in your hive.

Lesson 55: HOW TO TELL WHEN YOUR HIVE IS QUEENLESS

Queenlessness is serious. In fact, queenlessness is the single most greatest threat to a hive’s survivability than any other disease or pest. Yet, it is easier to correct and overcome than other pests and diseases. Then why is queenlessness such an issue? In this lesson I want to address several key factors about queenlessness: 1) Why do queens die or disappear? 2) How to determine if your colony is queenless 3) How to make a queenless colony queen right 3) What to look for when your hive is about to become queenless 4) How to determine how long your hive has been queenless 5) What causes a worker to start laying in a queenless hive 6) How to deal with a laying worker 7) Suggestions to help avoid your hive from becoming queenless.

Every hive has only one queen. Her primary role is to lay eggs, sometimes 1,000 – 3,000 a day. Without a prolific queen, the colony will never build up in population and will always lack adequate foragers, thus there will be a constant lack of incoming pollen, nectar and water. The colony will eventually become so weak that it will succumb to pests or diseases.

However, with a young and prolific queen a colony will quickly increase in population and ample supplies of pollen, nectar and water will allow the hive to expand, be productive and resist most common pests and diseases. Therefore, a queen right hive is essential at all times during the year. Queen right is a term used to define a hive that has a prolific queen. As you can see in the picture below of a hive, it is full of bees. We believe that by keeping a hive very crowded, but not congested, a hive remains strong enough to resist most pests and diseases.

Notice how the many bees cover almost all of the frames on top. I removed one frame to inspect and to be sure the queen is laying good. But even hives that are queen right can suddenly become queenless. How does this happen so quickly?

Why do queens die or disappear? Remember, honey bees are livestock. More specifically, bees are bugs, insects that are at great risk not only from the normal threat of nature, but also from the hostile world beyond the sweet clover fields and tranquil meadows. Traffic, pesticides, insecticides, and those who see all insects as a pest pose a great threat to the survival of the honey bee. Because a queen is a small ¾ inch bug, she too can perish for various reasons. She can become ill or old and die. She can accidentally be smashed by the beekeeper when frames are pushed back together or covers are placed on a hive. She can be killed by the other bees if she shows signs of inferiority. And when another queen is raised in the same hive, the queens will fight and only one will survive, but certainly they both can perish in the fight.

A virgin queen must fly out of the hive several times to mate. This mating flight can be very treacherous. She can easily become a tasty meal for a bird or fall victim to nasty weather while she’s out. And even if she does make it back, the question is, did she mate adequately. So even though a hive can successfully raise their own queen, there is no better proof that the colony has a prolific queen until eggs are visible.

How do we determine that our colony is queenless? No eggs. You can click on the images to see a larger version. Study the picture and familiarize yourself in identifying eggs and larvae. An egg stands up in the bottom of a cell. By day three, the egg has laid down on the bottom of a cell and hatched into a larvae. You can see the royal jelly surrounding the larvae in the picture.

Even if a mated queen is present but we see no eggs, we are essentially queenless. You’ll develop a skill that will allow you to open up your hive and listen to the bees and observe their behavior. A queenless hive usually has a louder roar, and usually appears more disorganized. If you do not see any eggs on any frames, then you are queenless.

How can we make a queenless colony queen right? Purchase a new, mated queen in a cage and introduce her to the new hive with a candy plug. Or if the hive is raising their own queen, allow them to do so. If you allow the colony to raise their own queen, you will have to wait longer until the virgin queen emerges, matures, mates and starts laying. If you purchase a mated queen, she will start laying within a few days.

Is there a way we can tell if our colony is about to become queenless? Yes and no. Obviously if the beekeeper smashes and kills the queen, this cannot be known in advance. However, if the current queen has space to lay but is laying poorly, then the colony may try to replace her soon or they may not. Or if you see mostly drone brood, which sticks up above the smooth worker brood more like bullets, then you know your queen will soon perish. Also, if you see queen cells, either swarm cells on the lower part of the frame or supersedure cells on the upper half of the frame, then watch your hive carefully. Something may be wrong and it may become queenless. Finally, if you know the age of your queen, then you can determine how long she has left. This is somewhat unknown because some queens can do real well for several years, maybe three or four years. Some are only good for one year. Therefore, it is best to requeen your colony each year.

When you find that your hive is queenless, it is important to know how long it has been without a queen. This will tell you how long you have to obtain a new queen. For example, if you see only sealed brood as in the picture to the left, you know that your queen has been gone for more than a week. Sealed brood looks different than sealed honey. Sealed brood is usually darker and more textured looking. Whereas sealed honey is brighter and looks more wet. If you need help learning the difference, just use a tooth pick and poke a cell to see what's inside. If you see unsealed larvae, then you have some time before your hive experiences the affects of queenlessness. But you should work promptly to provide a new queen.

The unsealed brood means that those bees will be hatching in about 15 days so you still have new bees on their way. Let me test you. If your queen is missing but you see what's in the photo to the left, how long has your queen been gone? You can click on the image to enlarge. Some of the larvae is sealed or capped, but some are exposed. So we know the capped larvae are atleast 8 days old and the uncapped ones are large enough to be atleast 6-7 days old. So you've been without a queen for about a week. You have time to act, but you must act fast to purchase a new mated queen so there will be a minimal gap of emerging workers to keep the hive strong.


However, if there are no eggs and no sealed brood, it means that you will have nothing more than what you have. Each day, your hive will become smaller in number because without emerging brood the older bees will die. If you have no brood at all, sealed or unsealed, then you have an emergency! You must get a queen within the next few days. Pay extra and have her sent overnight. Every day counts. Your hive is a mere 30 days away from total collapse. Act fast.

Once the queen has perished, and the hive has attempted but failed to raise a replacement, you must act fast because without a queen, workers could become what is known as a laying worker. With the strong pheromone of open brood, not the queen pheromone, the other female workers’ ability to lay is suppressed. But without open brood pheromones, several female workers may start laying eggs. But since a female worker is not fully develop as a layer nor has she ever mated, nor could she, then her eggs are all infertile thus they will only become drones, male bees.

A laying worker in a hive usually means certain death of the colony. Since a laying worker will only produce male drones, the absence of workers means certain collapse of your hive. A laying worker does not have the long abdomen of a queen so when she lays, she cannot always place her eggs on the bottom of a deep cell. The eggs are often found on the side of a cell. But the obvious sign that you have a laying worker is that each cell contains many eggs. Sometimes a newly mated queen or a queen without room to lay may lay more than one egg in a cell, but a laying worker will fill up a cell with eggs. Study my photo here to familiarize yourself with what the eggs look like from having a laying worker. See the numerous eggs in the cells. Remember to click on the image to enlarge for a closer look.

It is suggested that even strong, queen right colonies always have a few laying workers, but the bees keep them in check. From the photo, can you see which one is the laying worker? No, you cannot. They are impossible to spot.

How do you get rid of a laying worker? Some say you can dump all the bees out in the yard, twenty feet or more away from the hive and the laying worker cannot find her way back in. Others say she can and will fly back. Some claim to have made special queen introduction cages which allow the newly mated queen to lay eggs on comb under a cage and eventually the bees will kill the laying worker. But introducing a queen into a hive with a laying worker often means the laying worker and her gang will attack and kill the newly introduced queen. And you’ll never find a laying worker. Don’t even bother trying, they all look the same.

I’ve had success by introducing new queens in cages into a laying worker hive, but it does take several tries. Unless you raise your own queens, this can be costly. It is easiest for me to remove a few frames from a queen right hive with the queen on it, and place them against the wall of a laying worker hive. The good queen along with her two frames of bees seem to seek and destroy the laying worker. Then you can easily replace the queen that you removed from the queen right hive.

The traditional solution is to take all the frames out of a laying worker hive and give them to strong colonies. The strong colony will usually kill the laying worker.

Finally, how can beekeepers protect their hives from becoming queenless?

Inspect your hive every 2 weeks. You do not necessarily have to spot the queen as long as you see that there is a good number of eggs and larvae. The photo to the left is what you want to find. Brood in various stages including eggs. This photo shows eggs near the edge of the frame.

Also be sure there is plenty of room for the queen to lay. If you see your hive is honey or pollen bound, you either have to shake out the pollen or extract the honey or put in empty drawn comb if you have some available. Failure to provide room in your hive for expansion can cause the bees to become congested. Remember we advocated crowded hives, but not congested hives. A congested hive means there is no more open, drawn out cells for the queen to lay in, or the forages to store pollen and nectar. Thus they will prepare to swarm.

Yesterday one of our hives did just that. Because we crowd our hives, they can become congested faster than we can sometimes give them drawn comb. But we'd rather err on the side of being too crowded than having a small and weak colony. Swarms are friendly. This swarm was gracious enough to agree to have their picture taken with me. I later shock them into a new hive and they are content now. By the way, if you are a beekeeper, you absolutely must have an extra hive on hand to catch swarms, swarms that come from your hive or for when you are called upon to help save a swarm near you. Yesterday a gentleman called us because he caught a swarm and had nothing to put it in.

Fortunately, we rushed him out a hive. But we cannot always send a hive right out, so please plan ahead. June is a big swarm month. Hives seem to swarm more on the first nice day after a storm or rainy weather. Now the hive that produced this swarm may become queenless. Hopefully they did their job, and produced a new queen. The old queen leaves with the swarm and the new emerging queen takes over. But remember, she is virgin queen, and must fly a mile or two away to mate with other drones, not from her hive. She can be killed in her flight by birds or storms. Will she make it back, and will she be mated well. Much is at stake.


Replace your queen yearly to ensure you have a young, prolific queen. Each day we send out queens to beekeepers across the country. These are queens that we raise from our honey bee farm that show the characteristics that we want in a honey bee.

We gather queens from their mating nucs once they've proven to be good layers. Then we add 4 attendants to care for the queen during shipment. Then, we add the candy plug along with one drop of water for the 1-2 day trip. It works out well.



We have mating nucs scatter throughout. The queens do not mate in the nuc, but it merely provides a place for the queen to live, be cared for and to show how well she can lay after she mates.


These mating nucs are near a cedar tree and use it as a land mark to find their way back to their specific hive. It is amazing that a queen can fly out, travel for miles to mate, and return home.

I was holding a virgin queen in my hand a few weekends ago, showing her to several people. She took flight, flew around a few times and was gone. The people were sad that she flew away. About twenty minutes later, she came back and landed on my leg. I picked her up and put her back in her cage. She did not mate on this flight. When queens return home from mating, they have the last male's genitalia still attached. Even though she returned home without a mating sign, it was still impressive that she had such a great sense of orientation and returned to her original take off point.

In fact, in my main mating yard, I can't even find my way around, but the queens do great picking out which hive is their home.


Some people use colors or markings on the hives or physical land marks, but we've found that for the most part the queens do fine finding their way back home.

Well, this concludes today's lesson and I hope it has been helpful to you in being able to keep your hive queenright!

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Until next time, BEE-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns
LONG LANE HONEY BEE FARMS
http://www.honeybeesonline.com/
217-427-2678

LESSON 55: SWARMS, HOW TO MAKE A QUEEN INCUBATOR & MORE...

Welcome to Long Lane Honey Bee Farms! We are David & Sheri Burns, and we enjoy making a livelihood from bees. Now that it is June, our bees are really keeping us busy. It has been another challenging spring. We've had our share of rain and cool weather, but as the season progresses the weather conditions improve. We are producing lots of nucs and queens. We were issued a clean bill of health from our state's apiary inspection program through the Department of Agriculture, so we are happy about that! Now, I'm spending long days preparing the nucs. We sold over 60 nucs, so that's keeping me out in the bee yards all day long.

Our queens are doing great again this year, and filling up the brood area faster than we can keep new frames supplied for the queens to have room to lay. We are working hard every day grafting and raising queens! We are having very good results both in successful queen rearing techniques as well as the characteristics that we are seeing in our queens. Our queens orders are about a week behind but we are producing queens as fast as we can. It does take time to properly test the queens characteristics and make sure they are mated well. Queen rearing is a fine art. We have even added a few "trade secrets" to make our queens even better this year. We had to take the queens off our website due to demand out running supplies.
This is the time of year for swarming and we are having our fair share of swarms this year. No matter how many swarms we have, it is still beautiful to observe. A swarm is worthy of our full attention. Until you've stood in the middle of a swarm before, you can't say you've really experienced a swarm. My son was weed-eating and heard a swarm roar over the sound of the weed-eater!

Below is a video of a swarm that I shook from a tree near my nuc yard. Healthy hives swarm! Seriously, a reproductive swarm means that the hive was strong and healthy enough to produce another colony. Another reason bees swarm is because they become congested. Another "trade secret" that I will share with you, is that we overcrowd our hives and in so doing, they often become congested. I feel it is better to have a strong, crowded colony than a weak and struggling hive. Strong and crowded hives are more apt to resist pests and diseases. There is strength in numbers. As a result of the way we overcrowd our hives, we do have the occasional swarm like this one. Let me show you how I shake swarms from trees.

For the most part, swarms are not aggressive. I am occasionally stung by bees from a swarm but usually not. If you keep your hives near bushy trees like pines or a blue spruce, they usually land in the tree low enough where you can capture them and put them in a hive.

I learned something from an "old timer" beekeeper who said if beekeepers would stop chasing swarms and spend that time taking care of their own hives, they'd have better hives. I tend to agree with him. We have turned down most of this year's swarm calls. It just isn't worth it.

I' ve found that swarms like to land in my old ceder tree. This tree has been the resting place for many swarms over the last few years.

Not all swarms land low. Here's my oldest son, David, after he climbed a 30 foot tree with a Bee-Vac and captured a swarm that filled this entire holding cage. It was on the trunk of the tree and would have been impossible to remove without a bee-vac. We sell these, by the way.

The only reason I occasionally catch a swarm is to use it to draw comb. Swarms are good comb builders! Sometimes that's the only thing I use swarms for is to draw out foundation.

It's usually the old queen that leaves with the swarm, so when you catch a swarm it is usually a good idea to re-queen that swarm or it may not make it through the upcoming winter with the older queen.

In April, I flew down to Florida to shake packages and as you may remember from an earlier lesson, I mentioned that I was able to visit with commercial queen producer, David Miksa. In the April and May issue of the American Bee Journal, David was featured in a large article about his life long pursuit of producing queens. Every year I continue to sharpen my queen rearing skills and it is through knowing people like Dr. Joe Latshaw and David Miksa and others that I am able to improve my line of queens. I added about 5 different "survival" genetic stocks that I purchased from other parts of the US. I believe genetic diversity is crucial to very productive queens.

When I visited David Miksa, I was impressed with his incubator. When you produce large numbers of queens, you will need a place to hold sealed queen cells, especially when there is a bottle neck, say your mating nucs are still full as you wait for those queens to mate and to be used in hives or sold. What I like about David's incubator is that it has a glass door. And as we talked about it, he told me that it was just a glass door refrigerator. He added a heating element along with dual thermostats in case one goes bad.

Last year we used a "Little Giant" 9200 chicken egg incubator. They are around $50 and you'll need to keep your cells at around 92 degrees.

When I was at Sam's Club a few weeks ago, I noticed that they had a nice size, small, pop-can refrigerator just alittle over $150 with a glass door. With a glass door, you can more easily see your cells and monitor the temperature and humidity. It fits nicely under my counter.

I bought it and then removed the important parts from my 9200 chicken incubator and placed the heating elements and thermostat on a piece of plywood. Then, I placed the electronics on the bottom shelf of the fridge.

I wired the heating element up by routing it through the drain hole in the lower back part of the inside fridge. So, I didn't have to make any alterations to the fridge. So when I'm not raising queens, I can use it for an extra fridge.

You'll find as a beekeeper you can save lots of money by making your own incubator instead of buying one. Many queen producers make it even more simple by taking an old fridge, even one that no longer works, and simply place a low wattage light inside. You can wire the door switch so that the light is always on, and then put it on a thermostat to keep it around 92 degrees using a VERY low watt bulb. That's right, a light bulb will keep it warm enough. This works well too. There are lots of old refrigerators out there, and you may even fine one with a glass door.

I hope that by sharing insightful information about queen rearing, that more and more beekeepers may try their hand at it. It is quite easy and very enjoyable and rewarding, not to mention it can save you money from not having to buy queens when you need them. And by raising your own queens, you can also raise queens from the hives that you like best.

Also in this lesson, I want to WARN you to keep an eye on your queen. Inspect your hive every 14 days to be sure she is alive and laying well. If you lose your queen, your entire hive will all perish within 6 weeks, so be sure to keep an eye on your queen, and replace her with a new one at the first sign that she has perished.

Here's a picture of one of our "Pioneer Queens" this year. Also, I must stress how important it is that you replace your queen every year. When a virgin queen mates, she stores the sperm from the drones in her spermatheca. She usually mates with 15-20+ drones on a few mating flights. Because she stores the sperm, she will eventually run out. Then, she can only lay unfertilized eggs, which only makes drones, male honey bees. So by requeening your hive every year, you are insuring that she is able to lay strongly throughout that year and into the next spring.

People often ask me when is the best time to requeen a hive. Typically, any time is better than not doing it at all. Bees requeen their own hives whenever there is a need, so we can too. But I believe timing of requeening each year can produce different results. In other words, if your old queen is starting to not lay well in March, then by all means replace her so that you can have the results you want in March which is a better brood pattern, which means more bees. But, if you are replacing your queen simply because you want a younger queen, then you MUST do this after the turning of days (June 21).

Melvin Disselkoen became an EAS Master Beekeeper in 1986 and has worked bees for over 35 years. He wrote an article about outbreeding the mites. His research and explanation of outbreeding the mites makes real good sense, and it was while reading his work that I realized it is best to requeen after June 21.

His complete article on this can be found on his website at:

http://www.mdasplitter.com/article.htm

His point is that if you requeen after July 21, a new queen will outbreed the mites. The brood cycle of a mite is 13 days, and a worker bees is 16 days. Since a new queen after June 21 lays like a spring queen, she will out-lay the mites. Less mites means healthier overwintered colonies and better spring build up. That's a huge reason to wait until after June 21. Other reasons for requeening each year include: swarm reduction, stronger spring build up, better honey production due to increased spring foragers and more.
I've also been very busy preparing nucs. Some days I spend 12 hours a day working the hives to pull out 4 frames to meet our nuc demands. I'll be glad when the last of the nucs are gone! Here's a picture of my youngest son, Christian, after we packed up some nucs. These were a special order as you can see they are nucs, but they are all on medium foundation. Some beekeepers like using all medium size boxes rather than the larger deep hive bodies. We are happy to help out. Beekeeping is usually a skill based on knowledge, wisdom and experience. However, I've learned that making nucs is an art! It is not for the faint at heart.

I could go on and on, but I do want to address a very large problem within the beekeeping community. It's not CCD, though there are more cases of it than CCD, I'm sure. The problem I'd like to address is the disappearing hive tool. Where do they go? How can they disappear? Are aliens from other planets stealing our hive tools with some huge magnet from the mother ship? I doubt it. But I've solved my personal problem of lost hive tools. I bought a nice one! :)

Not only do I lose hive tools, but I leave them in the back of pickup trucks or on top of a hive, and because they are metal, they will rust. Leave one on the ground all winter, and it will almost rust away by spring.  Click here to go to our online store for this item. 

If you are still needing hive equipment you can order it online or give us a call. Our contact information is below. Thanks so much for following these lessons!

Until next time, remember to Bee-have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns

Long Lane Honey Bee Farms

www.honeybeesonline.com

217-427-2678

EMAIL: david@honeybeesonline.com