Howard Scott 2016-09-08 12:24:16
Liying Peng emigrated from China in 2002. Even though she graduated from medical school in China, she worked in the USA as a nutritionist. Then, she married her husband, Tao. When he got a job as professor of biostatistics at Brown University, they moved to the small seashore town of Barrington, Rhode Island. They had two children. In 2014, the family had a large garden, and Liying realized that there weren’t many honey bees pollinating her plants. So she and her husband pollinated the plants themselves by touching male to female plants. That effort proved to be a daunting task.
At that point, they decided to become beekeepers. Actually, it was Liying’s activity, and Tao helped. Tao built a makeshift nuc, and they got bees from a nearby beekeeper. When the nuc blossomed, they transferred the bees to a hive. They wound up with a few hives in the first year, 2014. She liked the fact that she hardly paid a dime for all this activity.
The second year, she expanded greatly. She began queen grafting, raising 60 queens. She installed her hives in outyards. By the fall of year 2, she had 18 double-nucs and 8 production hives. This year, her third as a beekeeper, she has about 50 hives, 20 of them production hives and the rest are nucs and one queen-rearing hive. They are spaced in five out-fields. So far, in year 3 she’s grafted 100 queens and harvested 700 pounds of honey. One production hive has four honey supers on it. But most importantly, she hasn’t lost a hive to CCD, plus only three or four of her nucs have swarmed. Her husband built her an observation hive, which is installed in the house, and that also has overwintered. That’s a pretty impressive record for anyone, but especially for a newbie.
Moreover, Liying was not formally trained, but learned through doing. At the beginning, she had no beekeeper friends. She wasn’t a member of a bee club. She didn’t even know about local bee schools. Rather, she read many books, rolled up her sleeves, and went to work. The first year, she didn’t collect honey, but left it to strengthen the colony. She decided to expand using double-nucs and after investigating, settled on EWK nuc boxes, a German, mini-frame, top-bar design. She likes the fact that they are mini-frame, two deep, and that the bees create their own foundation. In fact, she became fascinated with double-nucs as a way to raise hives as well as for over-wintering. She also found queen-rearing exciting. She particularly liked that timing was critical. Of course, along the way, Liying has found friends and mentors and continues reading the literature. I guess you could say she is a self-made beekeeper/scientist in the finest ‘pursuit of knowledge’ tradition. In other words, her real interest is learning the whys and wherefores of honey bees.
Liying has used grafting as her way to build up her population. Her rate of grafting success is 70 to 80%. As a regular practice, though, she admits, grafting is tricky. She offers, “Timing is critical. If a queen hatches and you are not there, they kill all the other queen cells. The key is to get to the hive a few days before the queen hatches and remove her. That’s why I go to my queen rearing hive every other day. Also, you need steady hands and good eyes. Younger beekeepers have better luck grafting. ” She’s created a lot of queens, more than she needs. She sells some of her excess and gives some away.
For most beekeepers, however, Liying recommends splits as a way to expand. She says, “Splits are easy to do. You divide a thriving hive, putting them in two boxes. What I do is kill the queen, and the bees in both boxes create new, young healthy queens. It takes 16 days to get the new queen, but it’s worth the wait to have a strong specimen.”
She also favors nucs as an efficient way to raise hives. It’s easier to work with a small population. You can control the movement in and out at the entrance. You can more easily see what’s going on. For those reasons also, nucs are an excellent vehicle for research. She is also pleased that she overwinters her nucs, demolishing the theory that colonies need large populations to overwinter.
She also has decided on the Carniolan queen. They are hearty, industrious, and non-aggressive. They are able to take cold weather better. She likes the fact that they are dark colored. To her, that makes sense that darker queens would be able to perform better in colder climbs. For example, in northern China, her relatives all have dark bees.
After the first year, Liying decided that her backyard plot wasn’t conducive to good beekeeping. Her home is in a neighborhood, and she didn’t think it was a healthy area for raising bees. So she googled the local terrain for blocks of green within three miles of her house. Then, she drove around, found owners, and spoke to them about the use of their land. Some fields were used for growing corn and the farmers used pesticides. But some fields were used to produce other crops and no pesticides were used. Still other fields were not farmed. She chose several appropriate fields that would work and approached the owners. Her pitch was that honey bees are important, that her bees would benefit their land, and that she would give honey to the owner’s family.
A few said no, but most were agreeable. Liying set up her production hives and nucs in the center of five fields, so that the bees were far away from any pesticide contamination, or even civilization itself. Some of the fields are 30 acres or so. Plus many of them abut conservation land. She also finds out who else is keeping bees in these areas where her out yards are. There are only two or three, and they are all small-timers keeping two or three hives. As a result, her bees get the lion’s share of nectar flows.
Liying explains her reason for using out-yards: “Bees need to be in a healthy environment to prosper. There can be no more than minimal contamination. There also needs to be extensive vegetation as well as diversity. For instance, one out-yard has privet trees (bushes), and she harvests privet honey. She finds the rich variety of flora is good for the bees.
With such an elaborate and far-flung world, record-keeping is essential. She originally used a book. But, as she expanded, it got too cumbersome to write everything down. So she has adopted something Vermont beekeeper Michael Palmer does. She lays down a strip of masking tape on the hive outer cover, and marks down, using a Sharpie, what’s going on inside. With dates beside each entry, she can approach her hive and know what to do.
Liying has no problem with medicating. As a treatment against varroa, she uses oxalic acid and applies it with a sprayer. Her principle has been to only spray when there is no brood. That means winter, and finding the window of opportunity. To determine this, she inserts a thermometer in her hives. During brood production, the temperature is 88 degrees. But if the temperature is 70-75 degrees, there is no brood production. So, she usually treats at the beginning of December. However, she is rethinking this and might also treat in August. She uses oxalic acid because Europeans have been using it for 30 years and because the product is so inexpensive. She has purchased a vaporizer from a supplier for $80.
But Liying doesn’t feel that varroa mites are the big problem. She says, “My bees have varroa mites—sometimes a lot, sometimes her bees are covered—but that is not what’s hurting them. It’s viruses. That’s what’s causing CCD.”
Liying also feeds her bees during the winter. Of course, it is mandatory for nucs to survive. She goes in her hives weekly, and if the bees are clustered up top, she feeds fondant.
What’s in Liying‘s future? She’s continuing with her study of bees. Her main interest is nucs and queens. She feels nucs deliver more genetic information. Although honey sales aren’t a priority, she has found a Chinese group which buys all the honey she wants to sell. They are fascinated with beekeeping, and they chat on-line. If Liying had to give a main interest, it is creating sustainable apiaries.
Learning is a constant. She has two mentors, Wayne Andrews and Ed Karle, who she frequently confers with. She recently spent two days with Michael Palmer, a Vermont beekeeper, who tends 1,000 hives. She is a member of the Rhode Island Beekeepers Association. She has begun to give talks to other bee organizations. She attended a conference and answered questions. She’s watched over 30 videos, some several times. She continues to read the literature, as a way to gain insights. So, without question, she’s a serious student of beekeeping.
Her father, a surgeon in China, keeps wondering why his daughter doesn’t practice medicine. She only has to take a board test to qualify. But Liying is too absorbed in the work. Liying says, “I prefer to work with bees. They make me happy. I am thinking of applying for USDA grants this next year, which will further my knowledge of these amazing creatures.”
And so for now we are blessed with this scientist/beekeeper, who could make a difference. She is the real deal, not just a beekeeper, but a bee thinker.
Scott, a 30+ year Pembroke, MA beekeeper, is the author of the best-selling Bee Lessons. He has published over 175 articles in ABJ. He can be reached by e-mailing dancinghill@gmail.com
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