Package of bees from Georgia [H+R Apiaries}

Thanks so much to my Bee Mentors Jane and Rob Wild for installing the three packages this year!

#BeeChat from @happyhoneybees

Every Sunday on Twitter from 2pm Pacific Time / 5pm Eastern Time we are getting together to figure out ways to help bees, so check out #BeeChat. I just figure the more we beekeepers all share information and experiences the more we can all help the bees. Please join us. Simply search #BeeChat and see a record of all the bee information that people are sharing. Please pass along.

Bees at school.

BEES @SCHOOL.

This spring semester we added three hives to our school campus. It is really beautiful where the hives are placed. We were fortunate to have lots of beekeepers (and mentors) in the valley. There are lots of beekeepers nearby because our school is in the middle of citrus and avocado groves (home of the Pixie Tangerine). Two of our hives hives arrived already well established and the third is a maverick hive, truly a renegade hive. The third hive is essentially feral but we thought we would take it as a great experiment. The last time I opened that hive they went nuts. Crazy feral bees. I was stung 8 times. Oh well. I decided to let them be for a few days before I went back to open it up.

It is really great having hives at school because eventually we will be able to serve our own honey at each table. Also there are many students at school who seem to think that bees are cool. I am hopeful that this fall we will be able to harvest the orange blossom, sage and rain water tasting honey.

The Peach Trees where my bees go.

Before the rain rolled in.

Barefoot Rookie 'keeper

Update from home hives:
I lost three of my four hives this winter, even though it was quite warm compared to last year. My new 3#packages are arriving the week of 5/7 from H+R Apiaries in Georgia.  Last year the hives with the georgia bees collected 60 pounds of honey. They are hard workers and very patient as I rummage around in their hive. I have learned a lot from them.

Also at school we now have three hives. Two well established hives and one maverick. It's quite wild in the maverick hive. It looks like a top bar hive when in fact it is a langstroth. When we opened up the hive last weekend was a riot. I was stung 8 times. A drag. I think we will let them settle down a bit and get the smoker fired up next time.

life as a rookie.

Harvard study finds common pesticide kills bees

Here is a petition to the EPA to ask them to ban the sale of neoniconitoid


THIS STORY APPEARED IN
Boston Articles
Harvard study finds common pesticide kills bees
April 06, 2012 By David Abel


A common pesticide used increasingly in recent years for crops such as corn and soybeans is the probable culprit in the destruction of honeybee colonies around the world, a study released Thursday by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health has found.

The researchers said they found convincing evidence of the link between the pesticide known as imidacloprid and honeybees abandoning their hives, or colony collapse disorder, which they say began occurring in 2006 on a scale and scope never seen before in the history of the beekeeping industry.

Bees pollinate about one-third of crops in the United States, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and livestock feed. A widespread loss of bees could be devastating to the nation’s agriculture.

“The significance of bees to agriculture cannot be underestimated,’’ said Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology at the Harvard School of Public Health, who estimated bees account for about $15 billion in revenue for the agricultural industry.

“It apparently doesn’t take much of the pesticide to affect the bees,’’ Lu said. “Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment.’’

Before 2006, the typical bee colony collapse was between 25 and 30 percent; that figure has doubled since then, said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist of the Organic Center in Boulder, Colo., and former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Agriculture.

Bees are exposed to the pesticide through nectar from plants or through high-fructose corn syrup, which beekeepers use to feed their bees, the researchers said. Corn grown in the United States has been treated with imidacloprid since 2005.

But officials at Bayer, the German chemical and pharmaceutical company that produces more of the pesticide than any other company in the world, said that the study was flawed and that its findings should be disregarded.

They said imidacloprid is used only on a small amount of the nation’s crops, although they could not provide specific figures, and argued the doses used in Lu’s study were excessive.

“It’s a very effective and safe insecticide, much safer than the products it replaced,’’ said David Fischer, director of environmental toxicology and risk assessment at Bayer CropScience, who said the product has been sold since 1994. “All they have shown is if you feed massive amounts of a toxic insecticide to bees that you can cause mortality.’’ Continue here.

These are my bees and bee mentors

MORE INFO HERE from Scientific American

Hive cleaning

Trying to figure out why the hives didn't make it through the winter. Died in clusters with their heads in the comb. Plenty of honey, so they didn't starve.

Winter Bees - so so sad

I feel like I failed my bees. Two hives still buzzing, one hive done.
My bee mentors who have 10 hives have lost 4.
I am going to start feeding my other hives this week 2/14/11

Winter Hive Check-in

Guest Blog Post from - Alex Jokela: Beekeeping in Minnesota!

Ice crystals around the front door in MN.

It is January in northern Minnesota. This means we have had much snow which is usually followed up with several severe cold days and nights. Night time temperatures, at their coldest, will reach down to -40F without the wind. How does one keep bees in colder climates? For me, it started with planning. My planning started in August while attending the Eastern Apiculture Society's annual conference (held in Boone, NC, last year). I quizzed any master beekeeper who was from a northern state and who would give me a couple minutes of their time. Valuable common sense tidbits that I assembled, in piecemeal fashion, into comprehensive plan.

Moisture Control.

Growing up, while hunting whitetail deer with my father, I learned to pace yourself while hiking in the woods. You did not want sweat. As soon as you stopped to wait for the occasional deer to wander by, you would become cold faster with the moisture on your body.

The same principle of moisture and cold holds true with beehives. Moisture + cold is a perfect equation for ending up with a pile of frozen, dead bees mid-winter. To control excess moisture (remember, bees shiver in the winter to keep the collective warm; lots of moisture is given off with the shivering), a master beekeeper from Maine recommended using homasote board as an inner cover. A piece the length and width of your top super is cut, and then, using a router with a rabbiting bit, a groove is routed out from middle of the piece - roughly halfway through the material - to one edge. This will be your top entrance for the winter.

On top of the homasote, a 2" wood spacer is used. Inside the space, a piece of rigid foam insulation cut to snugly fit. The outer cover is then placed over the spacer with care being taken to not cover the cut-groove in the homasote.


Insulation Wrap.

I picked an insulation-blanket-type wrap. It is covered in a heavy-mil black plastic. The insulation is loose enough to trap air between itself and the hive boxes while the heavy plastic is useful for keeping out drafts. The wrap is pulled up and secured just below the groove in the homasote board.

As a side note, I use screened bottom boards during the warmer months; to prevent updrafts into the hives, I slid a solid piece under the screens. The bottom entrance is still accessible, but gets covered with snow.

It is very important to make sure that the top entrance remains accessible; this will be the bees' link to the outside world while their bottom entrance is in the snow.


Wind Break.

We have a taller fence to the east and north of the hives. These are the predominant directions the winter winds blow from. Even though the hives are wrapped snug and warm with insulation, there is the fence to act as a wind break. The fence, during the warmer season when the bees are active, also forces the bees to enter and leave the hives at a very steep angle - well above the yards of any neighbors.

Depending upon the size of your apiary, it might not be conducive to put up solid fencing; instead it might be enough or more time-economical to have the top entrance facing away from the predominant wind direction.

Lastly, food. This is a tricky one. You want to harvest enough honey for yourself, but you also need to leave enough for your bees for the winter. It gets trickier if you get an extra cold snap that causes the bees to "lock up" and be unable to reach the food stores. A beekeeper friend had this happen last year; in the spring, there was plenty of food stores left, but all his bees frozen out directly under the food.


By day, Alex is a programmer and data analyst for the University of Minnesota Duluth. But, in his off time, he tends bees and gardens. He is also actively involved in basset hound and coonhound rescue - he and his wife, Melissa, own two bassets and two coonhounds. He blogs about bees and gardening at http://snowshoe-farm.com/blog

Bee Hives at the White House

Hear a nice interview HERE

Digital Subscription to BeeCulture

Good Magazine.

Bee by Rose-Lynn Fisher

Picture of BeesKnee by Rose-Lynn Fisher, Video here.

I was giving this book for my birthday yesterday. It is really cool, check it out.

"Of the ten million or so different species of insects on our planet, none is more fascinating than the honeybee. One of the oldest forms of animal life still in existence from the Neolithic Age, bees have been worshipped and mythologized since the beginning of human history. Known popularly for their industriousness ("as busy as a bee") and highly valued for their role in agricultural pollination (every third bite we take depends on them), bees are now kept by a quarter-million beekeepers in the United States alone, and millions more around the world."

Makes no sense.

Wik-Bee Leaks: EPA Document Shows It Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees
BY Ariel SchwartzFri Dec 10, 2010

The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops. A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined--electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.

The document, which was leaked to a Colorado beekeeper, shows that the EPA has ignored warnings about the use of clothianidin, a pesticide produced by Bayer that mainly is used to pre-treat corn seeds. The pesticide scooped up $262 million in sales in 2009 by farmers, who also use the substance on canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat, according to Grist.

The leaked document (PDF) was put out in response to Bayer's request to approve use of the pesticide on cotton and mustard. The document invalidates a prior Bayer study that justified the registration of clothianidin on the basis of its safety to honeybees:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct RQ based risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long-term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

The entire 101-page memo is damning (and worth a read). But the opinion of EPA scientists apparently isn't enough for the agency, which is allowing clothianidin to keep its registration.

Suspicions about clothianidin aren't new; the EPA's Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFAD) first expressed concern when the pesticide was introduced, in 2003, about the "possibility of toxic exposure to nontarget pollinators [e.g., honeybees] through the translocation of clothianidin residues that result from seed treatment." Clothianidin was still allowed on the market while Bayer worked on a botched toxicity study [PDF], in which test and control fields were planted as close as 968 feet apart.

Clothianidin has already been banned by Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia for its toxic effects. So why won't the EPA follow? The answer probably has something to do with the American affinity for corn products. But without honey bees, our entire food supply is in trouble.

READ ENTIRE article here

The BeeKeeper Next Door - NYTimes

Deborah Augustine
Mike Barrett keeps his bees in a hive that sits on the rooftop of his two-story row house in Astoria.

By KRISTINA SHEVORY
Published: December 8, 2010

"The number of bees has been falling since the end of World War II, when farmers stopped rotating crops with clover, a good pollen source for bees, and started using fertilizers. Pesticides and herbicides became common as well. In cities, native plants were ripped out in favor of exotic ones that were not good for bees.Then, four years ago, honey bee colonies mysteriously started to die around the country. This drop-off, called colony collapse disorder, added to the mounting health problems, like mites and diseases, that bees are facing. About 30 percent of the country’s managed colonies have died; around a third of the deaths are related to colony collapse disorder, according to the Agriculture Department.“We don’t know the primary cause, but we know the combination of poor nutrition, heavy pesticide use and bee diseases have put bees into a tailspin,” said Marla Spivak, an entomology professor at the University of Minnesota and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for her work on honey-bee health."

READ WHOLE ARTICLE HERE

Vanishing of the Bees

Vanishing of the Bees - Trailer from Bee The Change on Vimeo.

I can't wait to see this movie!

Entemologist, studying bees

From MacArthur Foundation 2010

Marla Spivak is an entomologist who is developing practical applications to protect honey bee populations from decimation by disease while making fundamental contributions to our understanding of bee biology. Essential to healthy ecosystems and to the agricultural industry as pollinators of a third of the United States’ food supply, honey bees have been disappearing at alarming rates in recent years due to the accumulated effects of parasitic mites, viral and bacterial diseases, and exposure to pesticides.

With my Beeks (Bee + Geeks = )

Thank you to Jane Wild and her husband for teaching me even more about my hives!