Crazy crazy crazy ...

It's been so busy on the bee front that I just haven't had the heart to write about all that's going on.  Because it's one step forward and three back.   After much work and effort, a good portion of our bees are dead or vanished.  Plus being out of town for a week just didn't allow much time to blog.

To sum up the bee situation.  The hive at home in the backyard is very strong and everything is smooth.  They may even get a honey super next week.

The hives at the bee farm are in pretty bad shape. Only one out of five hives is strong and a survivor.  And one hive has about a 10% chance of making it.  The others are gone.  Varroa mites, hive beetles and wax moths really took their toll.  Pesticides is also a possibility for some of the problems.  AND a virus that may have been introduced by the varroa.

After doing battle with all these bee killing dilemmas, I have learned A LOT.  My next batch of bees will be better prepared to combat all these possible threats.  The bee yard has been resurfaced with crushed shell which will aid in fighting the hive beetle larvae hatching into attacking beetles.  Plus I'm working with another fairly new beekeeper and we're coming up with modifications to the hives that will take into consideration the Florida factor and how hive beetles enter the hive.  Hopefully this will limit the bee losses.  Around the country beekeepers are losing on average 60% of their bees annually.  So far this year in only a few months I've already lost 70% !!!  But I'm in this battle for the long run and will continue to perfect my beekeeping.

And the other reason I'm not blogging is it would be one disaster after another.  The gardening has been consecutive problems one after another.  The way I'm trying to face that is instead of looking at all the plants getting decimated by insects, critters and mold, I'm will positively focus on all the plants that are doing well and thriving.  And plenty of them are doing well.   But the bottom line is that whole thing is also going to have to be rethought.  I tried using natural tonics from Jerry Baker's books to create organic veggies.  Only problem is the tonics don't seem to work and even make things worse sometimes.  So I need to talk to some master gardeners and get some solid advice before the fall planting season.  This summer I'll just focus on ornamentals and work on irrigation and shading some areas.  And that's ok ... another learning process which is how most people learn before getting a beautiful perfect garden.  Just like the bees, it will be much better next year.

We've harvested some honey already.  Tonight we harvested 5 frames of honey on our new motorized extractor.  And it worked great.  The extractor is a good quality American made 6/9 frame extractor.  Quite an extravagance but as I said earlier, I'm in this for the long run.  The frames came from a hive that needed to have the honey super removed.  Their numbers were so decimated that they were spending most of their energy fending off robbers.  No foraging was going on and I'm pretty sure this hive will be done by the end of the month.  No queen, no brood, no foraging .... things look pretty grim.  If I can give them some brood and a queen they may have a chance but that's a longshot.

The magic swarm trap / magic oak tree are unfortunately no longer attracting swarms.  Because I could sure use some more bees around now.

Dead bees everywhere

While visiting the bee farm yesterday I noticed a large dark spot in front of one of our strongest hive.  Unfortunately the dark spot was a pile of dead and dying bees.  And it spanned a good size area.  I immediately suited up and opened all the hives to look for anything that might have caused this disaster.  Nothing inside the hives gave me any clue as to what caused this tragedy.  The good news is the hive still was loaded with healthy bees.  The bad news was the next morning there was a fresh new batch of squirming bees in agony on the ground in front of the hive entrance.  It will probably be a couple days before we know how many will die.   

 

A couple new plants

After going into the hives yesterday, I then noticed all the milkweed plants were stripped bare by a bunch of hungry caterpillars.   What a day.

Pesticides, herbicides and fun honeybee facts

While at our beekeepers meeting last week, the lady in charge of our group told us that when she recently went to inspect her hives she found several hives full of dead bees.  Inside the hives were full of dead bees and there was a pile of them dead on the ground under each hive.  Quite distressing for a beekeeper.  Another hive was trying to swarm and get away but they too were dying.

Why did this happen?  It's unknown at this time so she froze many many of the dead bees to give to a state inspector to help determine the cause.  Not sure it will ever be known but the probable cause is pesticides.  The actual pesticide may be hard to determine but another possible culprit may be the chemical used to kill lawns / crops named roundup.  Some are even saying it may be the cause of colony collapse syndrome.  Roundup is a cancer causing chemical that is sprayed on most of the corn people eat.   Here's an article on the subject if you're interested http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/roundup-bees-zm0z10zarc.aspx?PageId=7

So to counteract the downer of reading about dead bees here's a couple "Fun Facts" that was on a beekeeping brochure from St. Pete College in addition to a few other online sources:

Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.  Honey is the oldest food in existence and it never spoils;  it contains all the substances necessary to sustain life including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it's the only food that contains "pinocembrin", an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning.

Honeybees will usually travel approximately 5 miles from their hive for pollen and nectar.

A single honeybee will produce approximately 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime

It would take about 1 ounce of honey to fuel a honeybee's flight around the world.

A honeybee has to travel over 55,000 miles and visits approximately 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey.


88% of pollination of fruit, vegetables and seed crops in the U.S. is accomplished by honeybees.

Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food. Their sense of smell is so precise that it could differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower carried pollen or nectar from metres away.

A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work.

 Larger than the worker bees, the male honey bees (also called drones), have no stinger and do no work at all. All they do is mating. In fact, before winter or when food becomes scarce, female honeybees usually force surviving males out of the nest.

Each honey bee colony has a unique odour for members' identification.

Honey bees make about 200 beats per second with their wings, creating their infamous buzzing sound. A worker bee in the summer lasts six to eight weeks. Wearing their wings out is the most common cause of their death.