American Bee Journal • October 2016 Vol. 156 No. 10 • Letters To The Editor

Send your letters to the editor, Attn: Joe Graham, Dadant, 51 S. 2nd Street, Hamilton, IL 62341, Fax: 1-217-847-3660, or email: abj@dadant.com. Due to size and content, we may be unable to publish all information received. Thank You!

It was a really lovely day; I was supposed to be helping Stephen super up his bees he keeps on a neighbouring farm. I was a little disappointed that the bees seemed to be surrounded by nothing but corn, which at that moment, was very tall. The bees in this spot, however, were doing very well and producing lots of honey. I could not resist retrieving my camera from the truck to snap a few photos of Stephen at work. I got completely distracted by some poisonous parsnip and the interesting bugs crawling over their scaffolds of yellow flowers.

Before I knew it, with my shutter clicking away, I was passing the corn and parsnips and stumbling into fields of alfalfa. I felt a flood of joy to see the purple carpet before me, knowing this offered the bees a wealth of security. I had simply to stoop over at the edge of the field to snap these photos, the closeup of the bee on the flower being my overall favorite.

I was not at it long before I heard Stephen hollering at me and looked up to realize I had unwittingly traveled well out of sight, but luckily not out of ear shot. I hurried back to help and finish up our work, not realizing I had gone so far. Stephen simply shook his head and smiled, but I was at least glad I could show him the snapshots into the tiny worlds all around us. And one of his busy bees hard at work in the sanctuary of the alfalfa fields.

As an engineer I’ve learned that, when something can’t be supported by hard math it is only a myth or a legend. There is no exemption there. However as a beekeeper, I’ve learned that biology is somewhat different. There are hard rules here too, but sometimes there is an exemption as well.

I accepted the hard fact, bees can’t move eggs or larvae. They aren’t equipped properly to do that. Over the years I have found queen cells in very strange places like many fellow beekeepers. I always dismissed that, and I’d thought I missed something. It is so easy to overlook even a fully built queen cell in a busy hive, never mind an egg or young larva, so I always dismissed the possibility of transferring eggs or larvae by the bees.

However, recently I had a strange experience which forced me to reevaluate my standing on this issue. First, I read an excellent article in the Ontario Bee Journal, by Melanie Kempers: Ask an expert: “Can worker bees move eggs or larvae?” (Ontario Bee Journal, 2016/01, page 6-7) citing no less than six scientific references to support this phenomenon.

Here are the events, which have shaken my earlier beliefs. I had a very strong double chamber hive that I needed to split. Instead of looking for the queen in a crowded 20 deep frame hive, I installed a queen excluder between the chambers. After a week it was obvious the queen was in the top chamber. The lower chamber had no open brood at all.

After the split I decided to use the lower chamber as a starter hive. For this purpose I pulled out two frames of old sealed honey and added two frames with new plastic foundation, side by side, for preparing the graft. My plan was to replace one of them with my grafting frame, the other with a fresh honey/ pollen frame. However inclement weather delayed my grafting by a few days.

Finally, when I did the grafting, I put the grafting frame in the place of one of the new foundations. I didn’t have a fresh honey-pollen frame for the other one, because I forgot it. It was late afternoon and I decided not to look for it. Instead, I installed a top feeder on the frames. However, when I pulled out the empty foundation I noticed the bees had started to work on the other one. Strangely, on the barely started cells there were two large queen cell bases, barely 1/8 inch high. I thought it was a good sign, the bees are eager to start raising queens, so I’ll have a good acceptance.

So, again, it was a new clear foundation, nothing to overlook or go unnoticed. I didn’t destroy these new queen cells, because they were in such an early stage and obviously empty and dry. To my surprise I had a very poor acceptance when I checked my grafting frame. The bees cleaned out all the cells on my middle grafting bar, except one, at the very end. On the top bar I had a few more accepted. I wasn’t happy, but I just put it back, so they could seal them.

When it was time, I pulled out my grafting frame with the sealed queen cells, I noticed that two queen cells were also sealed in the middle of the other foundation. I just couldn’t explain how the larvae got there, unless the bees moved them over from my grafting frame. These strange cells were of the same height like my cleaned out middle bar on the grafting frame. They hatched and produced good size queens; both mated later.

How did it happen? I don’t know but my grafting bar was very close by, loaded with the right age larvae. The distance is minimal (bee space) and plenty of opportunity to execute the transfer. Maybe some attempts failed, but maybe not all of them. Is it possible at all? I don’t know, but do we have hard evidence.

Let’s have a look at the following event: A few days later I had another interesting experience. I always handle the frames without gloves. Once in a while I get a sting, of course, when I accidentally squeeze a bee on the other side of the frame. Since I don’t use much smoke, the top of the frames are covered by the bees too and they crawl over my fingers and hand as well. It doesn’t bother me, because those never sting. However, once I had a strange feeling on my finger tip, beside my finger nail. I felt like a bee wanted to remove something with a noticeable effort. It wasn’t like when they lick a drop of honey or something sweet.

When I had a closer look I noticed a bee wanted to remove a sting from my skin, one I didn’t feel before. The sting was in a flat angle, so didn’t penetrate my flesh deep and consequently I didn’t notice it. I watched the bee and what she is trying to do.

The sting lodged into my skin had a significant abdomen part (digestive tract with muscles, glands, venom sac, etc.) with the last segment of the rings, which provided a hard case for the soft interior. First the bee grabbed the soft interior and I thought she is going to eat it. Instead of ripping it out, she left it behind and tried to get a better hold. Then the bee grabbed the hard skin of the abdomen segment, which could resist more pulling force, and I felt this on my skin.

My impression was that the bee had full control on how hard to grab and what pulling force she applied to the sting structure, because it never broke away, although this was visibly possible. The bee didn’t want to take it apart, she wanted to move it as a whole.

After several tries she wasn’t satisfied with the firmness of the upper part; she investigated how to get to the bottom part. She walked around and bent the sting back and forth to see where she could grab the sting rod, which was exposed just above my skin. By doing this she made very sophisticated movements with her head and mandibles. Although the upper part of the sting made it difficult, she was finally able to grab the sting rod and pulled it with a surprising force I could feel it on my skin. She worked on that sting very persistently over a minute, but she couldn’t remove it. That observation convinced me that the bees have way more fine motor control over their mouth parts.

When we look at the anatomy of the bee mandibles, there is no practical (or scientific) reason to dismiss their ability to do delicate movements to accomplish the larva transfer. The two mandibles come together more like our palms, not like our jaws. The workers’ mandibles don’t have teeth like the queen’s, and they’re more like spoons, which don’t preclude the possibility of holding a larva gently. Beside the mandible shape, the control of the applied pressure is the other key component in this process.

Yes, the above observation happened in the broad daylight where the bee can rely on her eyesight alone. What about in the darkness of the hive? Well, the bees can find a much smaller varroa and remove it from themselves or from their nest mates by grooming, or in other words, chewing off by the mandibles. From this point of view, it is secondary what kind and how many sensory abilities make this possible. The key point—the removal of the tiny varroa, compared to the much larger size of two/three day old larva, requires controlled physical movements, executed by a very precise mechanical coordination of the mandibles. Otherwise, the allogrooming wouldn’t happen, because the other bees wouldn’t tolerate it (rough handling).

The many functions of the bee mandibles include processing wax and feeding larvae, which means they are able to handle very soft substances as well. The above incidents clearly indicate to me how much fine control the bee has over the pressure she applies by her mandibles. Consider how clumsy our grafting attempts are on the scale of the tiny larvae we transfer and yet many of them survive. There is no reason to believe the larvae don’t also have a chance to survive this manipulation by bees themselves.

I understand that these are not scientific experiments, with fully controlled and minute observed and recorded facts. However, the circumstances were unique and greatly reduced the human error for missing or overlooking something, even if it was presented by shear luck, rather than design. It was good enough to shake my science-based technical mind and open it to the very idea of eggs or larvae beeing moved by the bees. (P.S.: I’m aware of thelytoky, but I don’t think it was enough time to occur.)

References: Melanie Kempers: Ask an expert: “Can worker bees move eggs or larvae?” (Ontario Bee Journal, 2016/01, page 6-7), Mark L. Winston: The Biology of the Honey Bee, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandible (anthropod mouthpart): bee mandibles, Andinof, G.K. & G.J. Hunt: A New Assay to Measure Mite Grooming Behavior - presented at the 2010 American Bee Research Conference in Orlando, FL.

In the 1960’s, President Kennedy partnered states with Central and South American Countries. Wisconsin was partnered with Nicaragua and the collaboration has remained strong with the Wisconsin/Nicaragua Partners of the Americas. Several years ago Martin Havlovic, a professor with the University of Wisconsin and past president of the Wisconsin/Nicaragua Partners contacted Dr Michael Bauer, a beekeeper, to help train new beekeepers in Nicaragua. Since then the project has grown. You can see more about the project on our website, http://nicabejaproyecto.org/ and our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Nic araguaBeeProject2016/?fref=ts.

Right now, we are trying to enlist more beekeepers to help us train new beekeepers in Nicaragua. Most of the honey produced is exported to Europe as organic honey. The balance is sold locally. The result is that families are raising their standard of living substantially.

If there is some way we can get this invitation published in the ABJ, it may help us connect with more beekeepers. I have traveled to Nicaragua twice and it has helped me become a better beekeeper as well as helping others. Our next scheduled trip after the October trip is in late January through early February. We will be there for three weeks.

Kent Pegorsch Main Street Marketplace & Dancing Bear Apiary 103 N Main Street Waupaca, WI

Have you ever wondered what an Africanized bee colony looks like? Have you ever wanted to see how beekeeping occurs in a developing country?

The Nicaragua Bee Project is traveling down to Nicaragua on October 22 through November 5, 2016 to conduct training workshops for new and existing beekeepers.

This trip will be led by Dr. Michael Bauer, a beekeeper from Waupaca, WI. He has been in Nicaragua several times to teach, train and start beekeeping groups. You will have the opportunity to travel with Dr. Bauer to Nicaragua and visit beekeeping activities in Nicaragua. You can either observe or even teach some of the training programs depending upon your desire and willingness.

Your cost for this trip is your airfare and food. Lodging (double room) and transportation and translations will be provided by the Nicaragua Bee Project. Current round-trip flights from Chicago to Managua are approximately $700. Food will run you $20 a day.

You will also have an opportunity to travel about the country of Nicaragua, meet local beekeepers and rural families in their homes, visit a volcano, tour historic cities and artisan markets as well as enjoy local food, drink and culture.