American Bee Journal • October 2016 Vol. 156 No. 10 • The Classroom

SO appreciate your column and all the information and advice you provide! It’s the first article I read in the ABJ!

I discovered the hard way that the plastic honey bears are not made the way they used to be! I had two jars that had crystallized. Not wanting to risk of distorting the bears in hot water or a microwave, I put them on the dashboard of my car on a warm 65 degree day, thinking the sun would warm and liquefy the honey. Imagine my surprise (and horror!) When I opened my car door after work and saw that the bears had melted and the honey was dribbling into the vents of my car!! The honey had run through the vents and was dripping onto the floor of the car. UGH! What a MESS!

The car runs fine, although flies and bees tend to fly in when I leave the windows open, but the bears were mostly unusable.

Message to you and your fans—those plastic honey bears are made of thin plastic, and have a lower heat tolerance than the plastic bottles I have used in the past.

Is there a secret to getting bees to draw comb on new foundation after the nectar flow? I feed with a 2:1 sugar: water because it doesn’t ferment or mold, and there is less water for the bees to have to evaporate. Is 1:1 a better solution? I use wax coated plastic foundation and sometimes paint extra wax on it. Thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom.

Experience and wisdom. You made me smile. My day was spent extracting and cleaning up today. If I was as experienced and wise as you say and not so beekeeper cheap, I wouldn’t have been so inefficient with the several hundred pounds of honey from the partnership I have with my backyard colonies.

Great question and wouldn’t it be cool if “we” beekeepers could manage to turn on this comb building biology at will? The best we can do is influence it. If it was just feeding carbs in the form of sugar syrup, that would be easy. To make this happen it is the influence/combination of internal intervention (feeding) and external from blooming flowers producing nectar and pollen. The cue the colony is looking for is not only lots of nectar/sugar syrup, but pollen to support the potential of colony growth and population stability if not increase.

Successful beekeeping, however you measure it, is a numbers game. More bees is better than fewer bees. Drawing out foundation only happens when there is need for room to raise brood, store nectar or bee bread. Comb is absolutely necessary for colony survival. No comb, no colony. It is biologically foundational to everything. But, if there are not X number of bees that need X amount of room for short-term or long-term storage, then very little you do will make any difference.

I hope you don’t get discouraged, but you have accepted this relationship with an insect; it’s relationship with many parts and pieces in a sometimes hostile environment. You have to be aware, flexible, patient and willing to accept being humbled. If you are, it is an amazing and fun journey. Enjoy.

As I was extracting my frames, I came up with questions on my small hive beetle (SHB) problem...and what to do with slimed honey? I had the idea of putting black plastic down on the ground just about all around the stand. I pinned it down with nails and laid 2 x 12s on top to get it as close to the ground surface as possible--out 4 feet in all directions. Let’s see the beetle larvae try to get through that! I had spilled a number of larvae as I was removing the damage.

Do you have a preference on Beetle Blasters, Beetle Jail (which looks very good to me but buddies say bees will propolize it). A company also makes an entrance they say filters out the beetles. Is that a good product? Thanks again for everything.

Sorry to be a potential pain in the butt, but I want to emphasize that SHB is a SECONDARY predator of honey bees. Once they realize that they (SHB) can lay eggs because there are not enough bees to protect the colony, it is all over with. Trying to control SHB larvae after they have destroyed the colony and using Gard Star, nematodes, black plastic, concrete or stainless steel simply doesn’t work because the colony has already been overwhelmed and destroyed. SHB larvae will crawl up to 100 yards looking for a cooler, moister location to burrow in the ground to pupate. They just don’t destroy your colony, crawl out and drop to the ground and burrow down. So, Gard Star ground drench, nematodes or ground cover don’t help.

Trapping SHB adults is not a bad idea. SHB exist in the environment and are always looking for a location to raise their young. Beetle Blasters worked well when I was in Florida with the huge population of SHB living in that warm subtropical environment.

You can do all of these things, but at the end of the day you have to determine why the colony was weak enough in the first place to allow SHB to take advantage of it. You don’t want to continue raising ‘welfare bees’.

More bees are better than fewer bees. This is all about how well the beekeeper manager is doing his/her job. The real question is not so much how to control SHB as it is about why SHB found your colony(ies) attractive? That is why honey bees need sustainable management in 2016.

I opened up a hive I thought was queenless again last week. There was about 1/2 of one side of a frame of eggs in two deep boxes of frames. I looked through the whole hive twice with no sign of a queen. I decided to try a different tactic, so I picked up a queen from a friend. I installed the queen Thursday in the cage. I went out yesterday to release the queen and didn’t like what I was seeing. When I pulled the queen cage, there were workers on the screen acting “aggressive”. So, I looked through the whole hive again. Twice! Still no sign of a queen. I didn't want to release the queen into the hive, so I set her up in a nuc with two frames of brood and some nurse bees along with a frame of honey and pollen. I’m not sure what to do with this hive now. Any thoughts?

David, if you have worker eggs, and I am assuming worker larvae and pupae that are developing to that stage, then you have a queen someplace in that hive. If you have a queen in a cage and workers are acting “aggressively” because they think she doesn’t belong, that sounds like additional confirmation.

You need to find her David—frame by frame, inch by inch. Don’t let her beat you.

just finished reading “Oxalic…One More Time” in the July 2016 Classroom of the American Bee Journal. All the articles is this publication are wonderful and I especially like the Classroom section.

I purchased an oxalic vaporizer and the instructions said to vaporize the hives weekly, for three weeks. Which we did! We started 10 hives this year from nucs— the nucs were loaded with Varroa—one in particular dropped 165 mites the first time vaporization, 60 the second and 21 the third (and we are not talking about a robust bee filled nuc)—this nuc reminded me of the show Dead Man Walking—Or should I say Dead Girls Buzzing?

Do I believe in vaporization? You bet. But, we have had a really difficult time with queens. We have replaced queens in 1/2 of the hives—and in one hive twice—all subsequent to commencing/ending the vaporization process. The replaced queens seem to be doing well (there have been no more vaporization treatments).

After reading your article, I realized we were killing our queens—trying to free them of Varroa—we had inadvertently overdosed them on oxalic acid. Being newbies and not wanting to go into the hive too often, we delayed the queen replacement too long and really set back the progress on 1/2 of the hives. All part of the learning curve—unfortunately at the bee’s expense!

I agree with you on the once a year vaporization. I did read an article that said some Italian beekeepers vaporize in the winter and late fall. For the fall vaporization they remove the queen and then in 24 days vaporize. The 24-day break evidently simulates a broodless hive and breaks the varroa cycle—and it seems to me this process also saves the queen from getting overdosed.

You indicated to follow up “with other labeled products”—we are new to this and thought the oxalic would be the sole answer—if I may ask what other labeled products do you use and when? The vaporization (3 weekly intervals) did not seem to have the terminal effect on the workers as it did on the queen. And, it does free the hive of mites—big time! If a beekeeper were going to requeen every year anyway, I could see doing the three weekly vaporization treatments early in the spring and then replacing queens at that point. Any thoughts on that process? Unfortunately, I could be killing queens at the very time I was trying to build up the hive for splits. Maybe a better idea is to do the vaporization treatments monthly, rather than weekly?

Tough learning experience, but a memorable one! I do not like forced heated vaporization of anything in a honey bee colony. A caustic acid vaporized in a confined environment like a bee hive is just not a great idea. But, there is data from Europe that says a once a year judicious treatment with vaporized oxalic acid in a broodless period can be a part of Varroa management. Unfortunately, in the US it is all marketing and sales at the end of the day, so use rates may be exaggerated.

As you verified, it works well to kill varroa, but it kills or damages queens because they get hit every time because of their longer life spans. As you found out, queen life spans are shortened a bunch. Workers and drones are damaged as well, but they are replaced faster. There are lots of alternatives that are effective and not quite as dangerous to honey bees or the beekeeper.

I use Apiguard (thymol gel) and Apivar (amitraz), a low residue miticide in rotation. Follow label directions. Then, of course, sample and survey to keep ahead of Varroa. If it were easy Steve, everybody would be a beekeeper. Hang in there!

Hey Jerry, is there any cleaner that you know of that will melt wax? It would be great to be able to clean equipment without using scalding hot water that burns your hands.

If you can’t heat up whatever you want to get beeswax off of, either by melting and wiping off with a paper towel or freezing it so it can be scraped off, flaked off, that makes it tough.

Pure Gum Turpentine is used to dissolve beeswax in order to make high quality beeswax furniture polish. I have never used Pure Gum Turpentine as a beeswax cleaning agent, so let me know if you try it. There are other chemical solvents as well as branded products that will also dissolve beeswax and you can easily Google them on the Internet. However, you would not want to breathe the fumes or expose your skin to them. Also, some of them are quite flammable. Be careful!

I have a question about wet supers. I extracted one deep from each of my two hives. If I put an inner cover on top of the second brood box, then put the wet deep back on, will they clean it up and store the honey below it

It depends on how strong your next nectar flow is. Remember, there is a hole in the inner cover, so they can get in and come out. You want them to use that hole now in order to clean it up. However, if they need storage space for the fall flow, that hole works just as well as an entryway to store honey.

1. Have you seen bees with white eyes that appear to be blind? It was mainly drones, but a few worker bees had them as well. The bee acted as if it were blind and a few were falling on the ground. Is this issue due to inbreeding or something else completely unrelated to genetics?

2. I have been told by a beekeeper that his brood was not being capped completely or it was being uncapped during a purple eye stage. Is this a Varroa issue?

“One of the best things about working at the Bee Research Lab in Beltsville is that rarely a day goes by when I don’t get to experience or learn a new fact about beekeeping. I am quickly realizing that although it seems like things in beekeeping are ‘cut and dried’ there are many exceptions to, well, almost everything. One such example is the case of the unusual drone I got a chance to see the other week.

“The drone’s body was larger and stouter than that of the worker and had all the normal characteristics of a typical eat, sleep, mate and die drone, except when it came to its eyes. Instead of the large, black, impenetrable, squashed together eyes, as I like to call them, this drone had eerie, white eyes. Drones are developed from unfertilized eggs causing them to have only one set of chromosomes. This means that all recessive genes are expressed in the drone and none are hidden by dominant genes.

“Once again, I learned something I never knew was even possible. While white-eyed drones are not common, from time to time they do occur in a colony. Drones can also have red variations, ranging from garnet, to brick and cherry, and also shades of ivory, in addition to black. The ‘traditional’ black-eyed drone is known as a ‘wild-type,’ drone, and as you are well aware, is most common within the colony. Drones can even have one eye of each color, now that would be a sight to see! In cases such as with the red-eyed drones, the eyes can change color over time eventually becoming black by the 14th day of adult life. White-eyed drones do not change to black, but can start out with a slight, almost greenish hue, becoming more cream colored over time.

“What I have found out is that white eyed drones live a normal life until it is time to mate. Once they leave the hive, it is evident from their aimless flying and inability to make it back to the hive that they are blind—a sad fate for a drone that doesn’t have much hope in the first place. However, if you ever do come across a different eye colored drone, take advantage of the fact that drones can’t sting and take a second look. They are an interesting sight to see.”

I’m thinking of putting together several nucleus hives this summer or early fall. I’ve reviewed the available literature and at this point feel comfortable with the methodologies suggested. What remains unclear, however, are the steps and procedures for overwintering these nucs successfully here in Connecticut. I will be making up five-frame nucs. Will they require a second five-frame deep super or would it be better to winter them in a single ten-frame super? In either case, will I need to insulate the hives? I have never had to insulate established two-brood chamber full sized hives going into winter. How many full sized frames of honey and pollen will they require minimally to survive either in a full deep or a two-story, 5-frame nuc? Any suggestions, information, web sites, etc. in reference to overwintering nucs would be greatly appreciated.

As always, thanks for your input. Your help in the past has always been extremely helpful and very much appreciated.

Short story: Last Sept I had a stupid late swarm. I put it into a full Styrofoam nuc I bought at one of the many meetings I go to, called the ‘Bee Box’. I hadn’t used the insulated Bee Box so thought that I needed to draw out some frames with foundation so I would put the swarm in the Bee Box with these empty frames and have them draw them out if they had time. They would die over winter because they were too small and wouldn’t have time to raise enough winter bees, etc., but I would still have a few more drawn out frames in spring.

About January I took a quick look and saw that there was about a ½ cup of bees left with the queen. Unbelievably small, but obviously the Styrofoam nuc had kept the temp warm enough and eliminated large swings in temperature so they hadn’t died yet. The Bee Box came with a feeder and I put a frame of capped honey from another colony in and still thought they would die. But experimenting is fun. They didn’t die; they grew! And this year that colony produced two 6 5/8 inch supers of honey. Amazing.

So, I guess my quick call out to you is that stable temps, that result from a well-insulated nuc, whether a Bee Box or addition of insulation to your existing wooden nucs, is a key feature you need to consider. Good queens and plenty of honey are needed, of course. I am not sure a lot of beebread is needed, couple frames half full, makes a difference over winter. With these unusually small colonies, not biologically designed to make it through a Connecticut winter, I now think not only warmth, but stable warmth (no wide swings in temperatures) is the key. Of course, mass can be added with a second nuc super and more bees is better than fewer. But, that is your decision. Please consider lots of insulation into your nuc overwintering planning. Good Luck!

I am new at beekeeping, about two years now; I have two top-bar hives and one Langstroth; two hives are new with package bees. My location is in south central Texas, Washington County, where last week we had 20 inches of rainfall in two days.

Here is my concern: I have fed my bees with 1.5:1 sugar syrup inside the hive. In addition, I have added a Bee-Pro patty as a protein supplement. Within two weeks the small hive beetles invaded two of the weaker hives and infested the entire patty with beetle larvae. I cleaned them out and did not place any of the patty back in the hive.

Questions: 1. Is there anything that I can do to discourage the invasion of small hive beetles (SHB) and infesting the patty food? 2. Would it be better to just not feed the patty?

Another issue that I have: My Langstroth hive has a screened bottom; whenever I pull out the drawer beneath the screened bottom there are about two dozen small hive beetles on the floor; some of the hive bees get in this area as well. Do you have any suggestions on controlling beetles in this situation? Thank you for your expertise and valued assistance.

A few years ago Texas had been in a significant drought and now it has swung to these ‘Noah’ events that we see on the 6 o’clock news every night. It is amazing and tragic to hear about the lives and property lost. Hang in there.

The supplemental diets available really don't do much at this time of year. If you still want to feed something and keep the SHB from using the large patties as SHB maternity wards, make the patties smaller and thinner. If the bees are very attracted to the diet, make several quarter diameter size disks about 1/8 in. Thick. The bees will remove the diet faster, taking away the opportunity of reproduction from the SHB. Obviously, you will have to replace your diet disks more quickly, but will have eliminated the SHB smorgasbord.

The good thing with the drawer that allows SHB to hide is that they are not in your colony looking for an opportunity to reproduce. You have your own SHB trap. If you have a small rechargeable hand vacuum, take it with you and vacuum them up. Or, because they don't like light simply remove the drawer. But most likely, then they will go into the hive. I vote to vacuum.