Suzanne D Cohen 2019-09-09 11:59:44
I didn’t react as I would have expected. I barely reacted at all. Perhaps it was because, for the past five years, I have been regularly talking to beekeepers who have lost hives. Sometimes they are very emotional conversations as they call Betterbee, where I work as a customer service representative, for advice. Sometimes they are choking back tears, and I tear up myself. Yet often, despite their anguish and frustration, they are calling to find out what they can do next, and to order whatever is needed to start again or to keep their remaining hives healthy.
Perhaps that is why I didn’t completely fall apart when I discovered that one of my own two hives — my very first hive, my overachievers, my baby girls, who had safely made it through their first winter — had not made it through their second. And maybe it was partly because I was performing a hasty end of winter inspection of my two hives, before heading up to visit my mother in a Glens Falls nursing home, where she was recovering from a broken hip. All I know is I opened up my two hives on February 9, 2019, toward the end of a cold, dragged out winter and — even though I had treated them with an oxalic acid dribble going into the winter, and twice earlier with Formic Pro, and despite carefully supplementing them with winter patties when stores appeared low — where my newer 8-frame wooden hive was full of active bees, my 10-frame BeeMax hive was silent and still. It was packed inside with, and surrounded by, very very dead bees. My first honey bees. The bees I was trying to help. Dead. What had I done wrong?!
Ah, but the resilience of beekeepers can be astonishing. So many, like myself, have taken on all this work, the pretty hefty expense, and the periodic emotional toll because, way ahead of having honey, we recognize the grave importance of increasing our dwindling honey bee populations.
I went back to work that Monday morning and told everyone there about my loss. Not only are the owners beekeepers, but so are many of my coworkers. And if they aren’t beekeepers themselves they nonetheless know a HECK of a lot about honey bees. It goes with the territory! Anyway, owner Joe Cali suggested I send a sample of bees from my dead hive to the United States Department of Agriculture. He was concerned that something other than the diseases from varroa mites may have killed my bees. The testing is a free service of the USDA, which is nice. My honey Dennis and I thought the bees might have died from exposure to the cold because, even though they were in an insulated polystyrene hive, there was a slight crack up near the top between supers where one of my frames wasn’t seated well. I thought my own carelessness had killed my bees. But both Joe Cali and ABJ’s Eugene Makovec weighed in that our scenario was unlikely. More often than not, even if it appears a colony has died from the cold in the winter, it is the fact they were already weakened by the diseases caused by varroa that finally leads to the colony’s collapse. Strong hives can usually take care of themselves.
To prepare the lab sample, I watched the online video three or four times, and gathered up the items I needed. I bought a Varroa Easy Check to also get a mite count from a sampling of my dead bees, while I had the chance. At home after work I climbed out on our back roof, where I keep my hives, and collected a sampling of my bees from various parts of the hive. Then I put them in a container containing alcohol, placed it in a sealed plastic baggie, and packed it carefully in a box addressed to the USDA in Maryland. I felt like a SCIENTIST, for the first time in my life! I mean, I was the one who got permission to leave the room when my science class was dissecting frogs in high school. The thought of handling a dead creature like that made me sick!
But, I’m skipping the emotional part. I opened the dead hive to collect the sample for testing. All the tiny corpses in the silent boxes had to be cleaned out for reuse of the boxes. It made me very sad. So recently it had been a busy, happy hive of productive honey bees. Now, on inspection, the bees in the colony seemed to have died mid breath. The top super was still full of honey, and bees were all over the frames, some with their heads stuck inside cells. It reminded me of what happened to the people in the Sci Fi book, “Andromeda Strain,” I read as a child. I received the results back from the USDA in mid-March. No Andromeda strain. Diagnosis: varroa mite (Varroa destructor). Approximately 4.0 mites present per 100 bees. The sample was tested for varroa and nosema disease.
So, what has changed in my approach to beekeeping since my first hive loss? Well, I am leaving less to chance. Where I was doing frequent mite counts (24 or 72 hours) with just my varroa trays, now I am doing that but ALSO spot checking with sugar rolls. And a good beekeeper never stops learning. Over the past few years I have taken Betterbee’s Beginner and Intermediate Beekeeping Classes. Of course, we have some on the job workshops, but I also recently took Anne Frey’s In Hive Class, and Jack Rath’s Introduction to Queen Rearing. Now, I realize, I will actually be able to read and partly comprehend my autographed copy of Carl Jurica’s “Practical Queen Production In the North”! Carl is such a sweetie.
I find that coworkers Nancy Wicker and Anne Frey are great for providing the least invasive and friendliest approaches to tending bees possible. Nancy says she once did the Sugar Roll varroa test alongside Betterbee’s Chris Cripps’ V-Check and they got the same mite drop count. For those like me, who opted out of dissecting frogs in high school, I am more comfortable with the sugar roll that leaves one’s sampling shaken and covered with powdered sugar, but mostly alive. And one day last year I was also expressing my discomfort to Nancy with the number of bees I found myself squishing when putting my boxes back together. The boxes are so heavy, and I found it hard to manipulate getting the boxes on squarely while nudging bees off the edges with my bee brush. Nancy taught me to use wooden paint stirrers (the thickest you can find) on the edges of my hives. I put one across each corner before lowering a box on top, and then slide them out one at a time. I use that method whenever I work my bees now, and I know I kill far fewer.
From Anne I learned it is easier to maneuver the heavy boxes by holding them against my body. Imagine that! I also learned some dos and don’ts with regard to smoker usage. The first time I’d ever used a smoker was when I entered that fateful “Find the Queen” contest at EAS in Guelph, Canada in 2015. I had never used a smoker, or a hive tool, or inspected a hive, and I only had a hat and veil on my head — no gloves or jacket. When I removed the first box it seemed like hundreds of bees emerged and started crawling up my bare arms. And what defense did I have? The smoker! The smoker is supposed to calm the bees! So, I grabbed the smoker provided and began somewhat frantically puffing smoke on my arms. It worked. The bees dissipated. And a minute later I found the queen and won the contest. But after that, when I began tending my own bees, I would use my smoker on the offense. I still find that puffing smoke directly at my body, intermittently, keeps bees mostly off of me. But, I learned from Anne that I might otherwise be using my smoker as too much of a good thing. She tends to use the smoker to gently herd her bees, like sheep, and warns that blowing smoke directly over your frames can cause the queen to descend into hiding below. That’s a very good answer to why I have so rarely found the queens in my own hives, even after my grand beginning as a queen finder! I find their handiwork — the eggs and larvae — but almost never see my queens.
Another improvement in my beekeeping practices is I now keep a more thorough journal. In the past I kept notes in the squares of the calendar hanging over my desk. But, this season I am keeping detailed notes in an actual journal. Big difference! Having the real detail to look back on is very helpful. This bee season in Upstate New York got off to a very slow start. We had unseasonably cold and seemingly endless rain, making it very difficult for foraging. I fed my hives sugar syrup to make sure they had plenty of sustenance through the hard times. Now my bees are putting on honey with gusto. I treated my overwintered 8-frame hive with Formic Pro in early spring, and all three hives have extremely low mite counts so far. Sugar rolls and varroa trays have only found the occasional mite or two. When customers have told me they’ve had counts this low I usually think they’re just doing something wrong! But, I’m thinking being shut in so much has perhaps kept my bees isolated from the bees from other hives thus far, and thus isolated from their varroa mites. Or ... I’m doing something terribly, terribly wrong! I will treat all three hives with Formic Pro soon, to play it safe. Weather is downright hot and muggy now, so my bees are spending a lot of time bearding out of every hive opening, like families hanging out on their front porches on a summer evening.
So, I did reach my goal of having our decided maximum number of three hives on my back roof this summer. I just reached that goal by more effort, and with more expense, than anticipated. I had expected to have two hives survive the winter, and then I was going to split the healthiest, saving time by purchasing a mated queen and introducing her to her new kingdom. Instead, one of the two colonies had to be completely replaced. I opted for buying a package this time, partly to save money, but mostly because my first hive had been started from a five frame nuc. I wanted the new experience. I had purchased two Hogg Halfcomb systems, an 8-frame and a 10-frame, so I was planning to try out Herman Danenhower’s new simplified Juniper Hill Split (also known as the Danenhower Split) to get the chosen hive to maximum readiness for the Hogg Halfcomb super. Instead I found myself telling Herman I would wait until next year, due to the slow start to the season. But, Herman said I might be surprised. And even if the cassettes aren’t filled to capacity you can slap them back on the hive the following year for completion. Pretty cool! So, when I found two of my three hives bursting at the seams in July, I added another super to my 8-frame hive, and then the 10-frame Hogg Halfcomb super to my package hive. I was very excited. I removed just the outer cover to take a peek, a few days later, and there were little bees bopping around in every cassette! So cool!
I do love my bees. During one of those nights of pouring rain in the early spring I was unable to sleep, worried that bees might emerge in the morning and drown in a BeeMax hive top feeder I had mistakenly forgotten to remove from the roof that afternoon. I finally got up at 5 AM (and I am NOT a morning person!), crawled out on the wet, slippery roof in my nightgown, tossed the feeder through the window into our Bee Room, and awkwardly slithered back inside the house. Wet and grubby, I went right back to bed and back to sleep with my mind at peace. My babies were safe.
As I’ve stated before, beekeeping is demanding, but one can lead an otherwise busy life and also be a hobbyist beekeeper. I’m now a grandmother of an active 14-month-old. She’s walking! I am fortunate her family lives nearby, and now my younger son has finished graduate school and moved home. My job has never been busier. I have a chinchilla, a rabbit, two guinea pigs, three cats, a Chihuahua (which probably falls into the category of dog), four fish ... oh, and my Dennis to take care of, and tons of other hobbies and pursuits. But, I still have plenty of time and energy to devote to my honey bees.
Yet, with our best efforts, monitoring and treating regularly for varroa mites and eliminating other pests, by providing warmth, preventing moisture, and giving supplementary feeding as needed, with crawling out on our roofs at 5:30 in the morning, there will be some losses of honey bee colonies. A discouraging reality. Yet, we clean out our boxes and carry on!
Suzanne Cohen has been a hobbyist beekeeper since the spring of 2017, and is a customer service representative at Betterbee in Greenwich, New York. She is a retired secondary English teacher and social worker, and is a singer/songwriter/playwright/poet... among other things.
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