Sunday 22 March 2020

A dead hive.

Hello readers,

With the corona virus everywhere on the planet I took measures to not visit my bees that often.

What I did was under-super all the hives so they have room to grow, whilst still keeping the heat they generate closer to the lid.
So far we here in Belgium are allowed to travel to our bees when they need tending to, but who knows what will happen to them, when or if that permission gets denied...

So 18th of march I went out to look at my hives and I also inspected a dead one.

Weather Report 18 march 2020:

17°C out today starting from noon and lasting till over 16:00.  Dry, no wind and clear skies.  What more can a beekeeper ask for?
The humidity was dropping in the air to about 60%

Hive Report: 

At home I have 2 hives still in operation.  One is on Warré frames and now has 3 boxes, only one is filled with bees.  This is the swarm I caught in Kaster (Anzegem) and may have been refered to in the past as ZK2019 or IC2019. (I keep mixing the names up for some reason).  These are actually not my bees, but bees I keep for a friend of mine, I'm glad they made it through winter!
The other hive I didn't really bother to disturb as I wanted to tend to my bees elsewhere first and they are already on 2 Zander bodies, so should have room enough to grow in spring.

I do want to share some picture I took from a dead hive:
I removed the first few frames that were empty after looking inside.  On top of the box you se in this first picture was a full box of honey! (they were also fed sugarwater  so no harvest there...)
As you can see some bees are laying on top of the frames, so they at least tried to get into the box on top.  They didn't make it though.  Was there too much room in between te boxes?  Was it the cold that drew them tight together around the brood, taking the food out of reach?  Or was it something else?  Varroa maybe?  Let's see if I can figure this out...
The first frame that had bees left me no clues other than : 'these bees were hungry' as most of them are on the frame with their face inside a cell.  Here and there you can spot a bee that's inside the cell with the entire body.  Turning the frame over also showed me this hive was dead for a while, mold on the bees gave that away.  When brushing the bees of the frame, the smell confirmed that.  The second frame had even more white mold on it and I didn't need to brush the bees to smell death.

 Turning the frame over gave me a lot more bees, mold and brushing them off also showed me some white dots inside the cells.  This must be secretion from the varroa mite.  So the culprit was probably varroa.  And if it wasn't?



 Then the next frame over might tell me the second reason, or maybe a combination of the two reasons...  Capped brood at the bottom of the cluster.  So maybe they did experience a cold snap?  Maybe they didn't recover from the cold snap due to the amount of lost bees to varroa?  Or maybe even a third factor has an equal amount of guilt: the weather.  As we didn't have any frost worthy to hand out the title 'Winter' the bees had ample opportunity to leave the hive during these months shortening their life-span and returning to the hive with nothing to show for it.

 Who will tell me what the cause of death was for these bees?  It wasn't that they didn't gather enough foodstores.  I even found some pollen on the next frame over that sat next to the brood.  Granted, not much, but still the pollen are there...
 As a finale photograph I'll show you what I found on the bottom screen.  Dead bees galore.

I cleaned out the bottom board and placed a box on top of it with some drawn out frames.  I left it there in hopes a swarm will find it and take up residence here.  If not, it's ready for swarm season!

That's all folks

 Bob Out

Monday 16 March 2020

imkercongres Mortsel 29 02 2020

The reception

Arriving early I helped out Hugo who was unloading some baskets full of goodies - a present for the speakers?  After this short greeting I moved on to the reception room. I was fitted out with a yellow paper bracelet, permitting me to help myself to some coffee, water or tea with a biscuit.  The ribbon also allows entry into the theater, where the guest speakers will do their thing.  
As I can't remember whether lunch was included, I’m hoping for a snack over noon as well.

Slowly the room filled up with beekeepers, I have to presume with local beekeepers since, apart from Hugo I didn’t know any names.  There were some faces I had previously seen in other beekeeping events, but mostly the crowd was made up of unknown people.
Small groups gathered and everybody found people to talk beekeeping with.  I picked up parts of a conversation and was witness to yet another story of losing bees over winter.  The same image that I had already found in my own hives after inspection was relayed to the mentor by his apprentice.
After a while some people came in that I knew so I put away my notebook and started my own social mingling. 


On the schedule are 5 names, first up we have dr. Thijs Lambrecht, who will discuss the history of beekeeping in Flanders, Brabant.
Next up professor dr Dirk de Graaf, from the university of Gent, Honey Bee Valley, speaks about innovation in the beekeeping world; the digital era and how science has helped in the selection process towards varroa tolerant bees.
The third speaker is dr. Hans Bruyninckx, who'll address beekeeping and climate change. Then after lunch (yes, I found the schedule and there is lunch provided) we have prof. dr. Jan Tytgat, talking about pesticides and what they do to bees.
After all that to conclude the congress dr. Hans Van Dyck will talk about ‘bee smart’. The communication within a hive, how they navigate and the learning capabilities of honeybees.

A diverse and interesting assortment of topics.

Words of welcome

The first person to pick up the microphone after we moved to the theatre room was a member of the Saint Ambrosius Beekeepers Guild Mortsel-Edegem.  And he’s also the person to tie the speakers together, thank them and give them the basket with goodies as a ‘thank you for speaking’ gift.
He announced the first speaker, not as Dr. Thijs Lambrecht but as the mayor of the local commune: Eric Broeckx.  Eric, as a politician, gave his felicitations to the guild and gave a speech worthy for a man in his position, before returning the microphone.
Dr.Thijs Lambrecht
afbeelding van Thijs LambrechtDr Thijs Lambrecht took us on a trip down memory lane.  As a historian he (had his students) plow(ed) through tons of documents.  The result was a timeline that didn’t really give away any secrets on how to become a beekeeper, but rather focused on the economic value of honey and how many people were keeping bees right up until the 1900’s.  I’ll give a short overview of what I can remember on the subject:
  • 1866: the year where all beehives were counted in Belgium as part of a larger agricultural project.  The amount of hives in Belgium were 140632 hives. This information was gathered from a book: “History of agriculture in Belgium” from 1952, in it 6 pages are all about beekeeping. (The book might not be available in english, the dutch version is titled: ‘Geschiedenis van de landbouw in België’ by Paul Lindemans)
  • 1300-1400: 
    • Research proves wax and honey are imported from South Europe (mainly Spain) - the research itself was analysing remains from inside a cesspool, finding pollen from plants that did not flourish in Belgium.
    • documents are found that proves beekeepers move the hives to follow the blooming of plants
    • a household that has bees averages from 2 to 6 hives
  • 1400-1600:
    • An increase in the amount of beekeepers
    • rivalry between neighbouring villages about who can put up hives and where
    • 1568 painting by Pieter Breughel portraying a band of thieves in beekeeping-suits stealing honey
    • about 30% of all villagers have at least one beehive on their property, mainly for own consumption.  Most villagers that have bee hives are also small scale or medium sized farmers.
  • 1600-1700:
    • Heather is one of the most important resources for honey, as are wild flowers
    • A law is prohibiting people from picking flowers from the fields in Kalmthout (a region with a lot of heather)
  • 1700 - 1900:
    • guilds of beekeepers are founded.  To join one, a donation of a certain number of hives is needed.  Hives that are then rented out to the highest bidder.
    • in 1750 a crisis in beekeeping arises the rent for hives is dropping
    • The amount of beekeepers is also dropping in numbers, but the amount of hives with beekeepers that keep it up increase.
    • in 1800’s only 7 to 8% of the villagers still have bees.  This is the result of
      • sugar
      • changes in the land due to agriculture expanding
      • soot candles and oil lamps becoming a more popular way for lighting (cheaper)
    • There is a slight increase in beekeepers during the continental blockade  from 1806 to 1814, but as soon as the other resources become available again, the number of beekeepers drops again.
    • In total there are some 130 guilds in existence in Belgium, but their activities perish and the number of new members drops or is even halted in some years.
    • One of the remarks dr Thijs Lambrecht made is pretty curious, pollination is something unknown to people from this time as a church tried to fine beekeepers for the damage their bees caused in the orchard!

Prof. Dr. Dirk de Graaf

I didn’t take much home from dr Dirk de Graaf his presentation.  He introduced some digitale alternatives to replace a notebook to take notes during hive inspections.  He mentioned the BEEP and Arnia systems, talked about how many they have or ordered and what they are used for.  He touched upon the wishes of europe to use these systems to create a ‘digital beehive’ that could be used to approve plant protection products. (see the EFSA project for that)
He also spoke about their selection work and how he hopes the bees they are creating towards varroa tolerance are going to stay locally adapted and spread amongst the beekeepers.
To be honest, I don’t recall any results from all the work he has pointed out to be doing.  Sure they found 8 markers on 6 genes that indicate, for our region, that the bees that have those markers show a good promise towards resistance or tolerance.  But no results were tied to those conclusions, in fact he asked for more funds to further investigate these findings in queen breeding.
He also showed that beekeepers working together with Honey Bee Valley in the queen selection program have had favourable results towards selecting queens that have a 0 virus load.  But he did not mention why this is a factor that is interesting for beekeepers. One could assume that having a minor virus load already present inside a beehive would help with fighting off that disease as the bees are familiar with it rather than have ‘clean’ bees that all of the sudden have to deal with said disease.
After his talk during lunch Dirk came over to our table for the briefest of moments and we had a little discussion on this selection topic.  I can say he has admitted that to come to a workable result we have to let nature help select the bees in a more natural selection process.

Dr. Hans Bruyninckx










Climate change was the topic here, a topic that can be split into 3 major items:
  1. Global Warming
  2. Decrease of Biodiversity
  3. Exhaustion of our fossil fuels in correlation with the former 2 items

Dr Hans Bruyninckx pointed out that the European Green Deal is already too late, even if all targets are met in time (or even earlier).  As we already have irreversible effects on the planet and specifically for Belgium:
  • Increase in heat waves
  • less precipitation during summer periods, but more rainfall overall during one year.
  • extreme weather conditions (storms, high wind velocities, heavy rains)
All this will result in a changing environment.  Nature will survive, but a lot of species will not coop at the speed needed to adapt themselves to the changes around them.
Bees have a good chance of making it, since beekeepers will try to keep their hives alive, and bees have a good adaptability, provided they have a longer period of blooming flowers.

Lunch time
During lunch time we debated amongst ourselves mostly about Dr. Hans Bruyninckx presentation and what that meant for us.  In fact the thought was posed that we have to stop teaching others to become beekeepers. First we should bring awareness that there is a shortage of food sources (biodiversity)  and stimulate beekeepers first and others second to provide forage for the bees.
In the light of climate change we should not blindly follow associations like ‘natuurpunt’ - an association that is looking to preserve landscapes - but rather than preserve landscapes we should prepare them for the upcoming changes.  Maybe we need to look at what type of conditions we are expecting to have and introduce plants that thrive in those conditions. With the risk of being judged for bringing in (invasive) exotic species. But it is only logical that the planet will adjust itself if we let it, and that would mean that plants would have to adapt, or would have to travel at the same speed the climate change does.  So why not prepare for that and already introduce the plants here?

We worked our sandwiches down during all this social talking and the topic changed into varroa.  One of the present beekeepers wound himself up over the fact that there are ‘natural beekeepers that just don’t treat’.  Said beekeeper does not use any products in his hive, but treats by taking out all infested brood out of his hives, to let them recover from varroa infestation, so that they make it to the next year.  He firmly believes that simply stopping treatments is detrimental. The load of varroa that is everywhere, so he believes, brings too high a pressure for the bees to adapt. It is his belief that the amount of varroa keeps growing, even inside hives that make it through their first winter, resulting in loss of the colony during the second winter.
I did not contradict him as I did not feel the need to.  He did ask me about how long I’ve been beekeeping after I admitted having lost 10 out of 13 hives.  He did not press the matter, I did not say anything.
Another beekeeper there agreed with him, but did say he did not treat, except when the mite- load called for it.  I have no idea what treatment said beekeeper uses if the mite-count is too high. On counting mites, I asked the first beekeeper what method he used and what the threshold is he utilises.  The answers were: sugarshakes and 2 in wintertime.

This made me revisit my own beliefs on the way home later that day, but I firmly believe that the bees are capable of adapting on their own.  The only practical problem is that there are no wild colonies left to start with in my region (or at least none that I’m aware of). So after capturing a swarm, they might indeed die after the 2nd year, for reasons explained above.  This would mean I have to keep doing what I do, until the bees that are ‘created’ to be varroa tolerant are widespread, start to swarm and fall into my lap. Making my entire operation (trying to get to vital bees by myself) obsolete.
I’ve decided to keep going for it in my own way, if it works, great, if it doesn’t…  then I’ll end up with bees that were bred to be resistant in the lab and undergo a natural selection from that point on - resulting in even better bees (I hope).

Prof. Dr. Jan Tytgat

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor Dr. Jan TytgatProfessor Dr. Jan Tytgat was up next.  He addressed the plant protection products rather thoroughly divided into several topics: the kinds of products and how they work + how long it takes for nature to get rid of them The application of said products - use as intended + side effects like seeping into the soil and water, only to resurface inside plants and waterways. Sub-lethal effects in honey bees caused by these products (that we know of) Symptoms in bees after coming into contact with these products
Use of products within the beekeeping circles themselves and the impact on the bees.
  1. Synergy between products - in general most fungicides and aragnacides have the ability to enhance (more than double even) the effects of other pesticides.
  2. The use of PPP’s in Belgium, amounts shown in numbers.  And those numbers were metric tons! Hallucinating.
  3. Integrated pest management systems for auto-control and the importance of biodiversity to limit the effects.
I’m not going to get into details here on the entire presentation.  Most of it is theoretical and as I don’t use any products, nor can I mitigate the use of them in my environment further than my own garden, I have to make do with the reality around me.  This presentation was however very suitable to bring awareness that our way of producing food is not a sustainable way.

Dr. Hans Van Dyck
The final speaker was dr. Hans Van Dyck.  He talked about how every individual sees the world in his own way and how within a species this way is somewhat the same, but still different.  He also told us that other species see the world very different than us but in the end, if we go far back enough into evolution, we find a common ground.  All life has the same origin, still not all species have the same needs. As an example he told us about how plantlife and pollinators need each other, use the needs of the other to satisfy their own needs.  It’s very plausible to assume the bee doesn’t care about plant-sex-life, yet she is a part of it. It’s very plausible to say that all the bee cares about is the nectar, the pollen, the propolis or water. So in fact it is the plant that uses that need of the bee to spread its pollen around! Sometimes this fails as bumble bees or some wasps have been known to chew through the flower petals to get directly to the nectar without passing the pollen at all.  This shows that bees can learn. Some bees find things out all by themselves, sometimes they copy the behaviour of others.
As an example dr hand Van Dyck showed us some experiments.  On bumble bees, and how they were made to pull up a disk from underneath a barrier to be rewarded with nectar from the center of the disk.  Once they had one bumble bee that knew what to do they gave him an audience. After simply watching that bumble bee perform the pull out the disk trick 40% of the audience (all bumble bees) also knew what to do!  Some other experiments showed you can train bumble bees, they used a model (a dead example of the species on a stick) to show bumble bees how to put a small ball in the center of a disk resulting in a reward. Such smart creatures, with so tiny brains!
Honeybees are also capable of learning.  They were exposed to colours, shapes and number of items.
  • They could learn that they had to choose the same (colour); After flying inside a hole that was painted yellow they had a choice to go through one of two holes, the same yellow or a different blue coloured hole.  Choosing the same colour was rewarded.
  • They could learn that they had to choose a different colour, or choose something else. This time the reward came if they picked the other option and not the same colour twice.
  • They could learn simple math! They were made to enter through a yellow portal with a number of dots on it, then pick the portal with one fewer dots inside. Or through a blue portal after which they had to choose the portal with one more dot in it.  
Dr. Hans Van Dyck also pointed out that there were personalities to be found within insects of the same species, or even within the same group of social animals, like honeybees.  They are not pre-programmed machines! If they are conscious is another matter, but they sure are not the same.

Aftermath

It was a long day, and I left the aula on my own, as the people I was sitting with were talking amongst each other and addressed others as well.  I figured I’d drive home, skipping the drinks and snacks to enjoy the company of my family.
Arriving at my car I was disappointed in the economic system.  I used an app to start a timer, allowing me to pay for parking space during my stay, only to find I received a ticket anyway!  My timer charged me 6,13 EURO for parking there, the ticket asked for 25 euro.
I fully intend to file a dispute about this, and I hope I’ll be acquitted for paying the 25 euro extra. I had a good day, but not that good a day… (as a side note I can now tell you they dropped the fine!)

Bob Out.



Sites to visit - Nine Lectures on Bees - lecture one.

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