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

Hello readers,

Today I'm having a look on another site that was gathering dust in my 'must browse here later' list.
Today this site is : Nine Lectures on Bees

First thing that hits me when I click the link is the date; online since 15 december 2009.  So old information.  I'll have to take things with a grain of salt.  That being said there is a TON of information out there that may seem outdated, but in fact is still very useful!

Second thing that strikes me when scrolling down is this: Rudolf Steiner.  This is a lecture series on bees by Rudolf Steiner?  What do I have to expect?  I know the name, but I have no idea what Steiner really stands for...  Guess I'll find out. 

What I see next tells me this is a collection out of a larger work of his and I decide to break up the reading of this site.  One lecture per blog post should do...  So let's get cracking!

I opened the cover sheet, but let's skip that here.

Lecture one - 23 februari 1923

Dornach

As all beekeeping is local I stop reading right there.  I need to know where Dornach is.  What climate it has, so google, let me know!

Dornach is situated in Switzerland - that's a bit colder climate than where I keep bees, and from the top of my head I'd say more 'nature' than here too...  

So now we know Mr Steiner is talking from another country that grain of salt grows.

Wasps or Bees

The first lecture appears to start of with the answer to a question from the audience. And then focuses on the bees and their life inside the hive.  In the first alinea Mr Steiner points out that the bees organise and balance their work and way of life more than wasps or ants do. He also points out that the environment has a huge influence on a beehive.  And I get the feeling he is almost saddened by the fact that bees don't share the intellect that is bestowed on humans.

Sexual drive

The second alinea dives right into the heart of things.  Bees don't know a sexual drive as do many other species.  In a beehive only the queen bee reproduces by laying eggs.  The other female bees don't, they have their drive for reproduction suppressed.

Love and the soul

In this alinea Mr Steiner has lost me.  He talks about how the sex drive is an expression of love.  Love and the soul are in the same realm.  The soul works on a number of organs in the body, and how the bees, having their drive suppressed, transform into something else.  Something that finds expression in the work they do as a whole.

Connection to venus

Mr Steiner continues with saying there is wisdom that existed in mankind, but no longer does.  This old wisdom connected this 'loving way of live of the bees' to the planet Venus for some reason.  In this the bees have surrendered themselves to Venus, where the wasps and the ants do not.  And therefore the bees have a much greater wisdom. 

Unconscious wisdom

Mr Steiner points his public in the direction of some wisdom he has spoken of in the past, an unconscious form of wisdom.  A kind of wisdom that the bees do have and is expressed in the way the bees live.  He describes this expression as a feeling we get when love finds the way into our heart, the hive knows this kind of love all the time, or at least that's how I read his words.  To understand the bees is to acknowledge they are completely pervaded in an atmosphere of love.

The love life of the flowers

As the bees are living in love, so they must feed.  They eat the parts of the plants that are the same as they are.  They eat love.  The love that is life to flowers.  - As I read this I'm starting to think Mr Steiner possesses a sort of wisdom comparable to that of a guru of India. - 

To study bees you need the soul as an instrument of measurement

Mr Steiner asks you to live the life of the honeybee through consumption of their honey and by reflecting on what that honey does to you.  Honey connects the air- and water-elements in the body, the correct amount of Honey in the food of mankind prepares the soul to be used.  It helps breathe rightly.

Beekeeping makes men strong

As the bees bring to the hive what is around it in the world, so brings the beekeeper in himself what is to be found in a beehive.

By way of the bee-hive the whole Cosmos enters man and makes him strong and able.

The first lecture about bees...  It tells you that bees don't work like other animals do.  That they deliver the wisdom of the world to you by way of love, inclusion of love through abstinence of reproduction at the individual level.

So maybe it's a good idea to meditate before you open up a hive.  To love your bees before you open them up, so they feel you are love, as they are...  I wonder if that would help you to get less stings ...

There is so much out there we don't yet understand, so much that we cannot understand with our 'brain', all that wisdom that is now lost, it is still out there!.

I must say I like how Mr Steiner writes (or at least how the lecture on bees is written)  I'm curious to find out what the 2nd lecture says.  For now I'm going to deduct lecture one into one word: Inclusion.

The bees include the whole world into their hive.

That is all folks!

Bob Out

Black Queens coming!

Hello readers,


On saturday 09th of may 2020 I'll be picking up 20 larvae of the apis mellifera mellifera.
I split a colony on may 3rd (the LL2019 into the LL2020) and went checking on it a couple of days later to see if they had made any queens.
It didn't look like it, or maybe they moved an egg...  In any case here is my current plan of action:

1. Prepare for the cups to be placed inside a hive, bring a nuc.
2. Collect the cups
3. Move them onto the frame that is prepared on site.
4. Switch LL2020 and LL2019 from position.
5. open the LL2020, check for closed queencells.
6. If I don't find any, move to step 10 - If I do find queencells I'll open the LL2019 and look for the queen and take her out into the nuc.
7. I'll take out every frame from the LL2019 that has larvae in them and move them into the Nuc with the queen.
8. Add a frame of Pollen and nectar to the 6-framer.
9. Then move the closed queencells from LL2020 into LL2019 
10. Place the cups with larvae inside LL2020

I think I covered everything to get the larvae going.

Once the queencups are closed I think of distributing them into matingnucs.

Suppose all 20 larvae are succesfull as of today I'll have this available:

1. Mini plus (1- feeder on top, standard bottom board and roof) (1)
2. Mini plus bottom feeder, standard roof (2)
3. Queencastle, holds 3 times 3 frames of zander - feeding frame, empty frame of drawn out comb and a frame of closed brood only (5)
4. 3 mini plus DYI bottoms and roofs (8)
5. Chinese mating nuc (10)
6. 2 6-framers simplex with food from fridge (12)
7. 1 6-frame Zander poly nuc (13)
8. The rest (7) caged in the LL2020
9. I might be able to take one more out and split the 2 deeps high LL2020 into 2 seperate hives.

If I want more hardware to work with I have till 18th of may to fabricate more.

I have half a mind set on not fussing too much about extra roofs and just stack 2 nucs on top of each other making sure their entrances are on opposit sides. With nothing more than a solid bottom board to keep them separate.

I'll keep you posted as soon as I can!

 Bob Out

Hive report till may 3rd 2020

Hello readers,

Today I'm here to tell you about the past week (or so) in my beekeeping life.  I had planned a lot, but then...

Weather Report: 

The weather report for the last week explains why I had to push all my beekeeping work forward.  After the last inspections from 26'th april the only 'good' day to work bees was april 27'th.  After that it was too cold, rainy and wet.  I'm expecting a lot of swarms in the coming days of good weather.
April 27'th, I'm at work, and I get a swarm-call of sorts.  Read about it in apiary 4.
So as for the weather, can't say more than what I did, cold and wet.  The bees had to wait most days till it was 15:00 hours before it was warm enough to come out, and then they had to do that in between rainfall.

Hive Report: 

I inspected most of my hives today (may 3rd 2020), although I didn't take notes like I should have done, I wanted to visit them all today, even when I didn't go in.

Apiary 1

IC2019
This hive has a lot of Varroa  pressure, I can tell by looking at how this hive does not grow.  I'll have to reduce them down and put a robber screen in front of them soon.  Unless they kick in late.  They have stayed in the top box and haven't shown any intention of building out.  A swarm from last year with bees that can't handle the varroa pressure...  Now and again I spot a bee with DWV, not a lot, but still they're there.  I haven't even opened them up yet this year!
If I would treat, this hive would get treated, but I don't so I'm ready to give up this hive.

LL2018
During the week of bad weather I peeked in now and again to see if the matingnuc was getting any attention.  The only thin I saw was on may 2nd: moisture on the sugar in the mating nuc and three bees in there, but no building out comb in the mating nuc.  I'm starting to think: 'how am I going to introduce bees in these mating nucs if I don't have drawn comb?!'  Something to get an answer on soon!

Apiary 2

MC2019

This hive started to build out in the bottom box!  5cm of comb was drawn out and where there was no wax foundation I found drone comb.  As there were some cups, no eggs yet, I decided to bring some of the brood down.  I took out the 4 frames in the middle and dropped 4 brood frames down there.  Then, instead of keeping the brood compact - I realise now - I just filled up the wholes I created in the top box with empty frames from the bottom box.  I didn't even take 4 adjacent frames down!  I looked for the older ones to keep them in the top box and moved the newer frames down.  As it happens to be those were each one frame appart...  I did bring those brood frames together in the center of the hive, but I didn't bother to shift the other brood frames so the heat would be compact.

I might have set this hive back in my attempt to prevent swarming!  And I don't have to remind you of how angry bees can get if you take out frames and roll them over each other...  Well I did that too...  Shows you that if you don't plan on going into a hive, you shouldn't unless you think it through first.

LL2019

The reason I was here today was this hive.  It had a stack of 3 deep brood boxes and I wanted to split this hive since they were nasty last inspection.  Even though I don't want to breed 'hot bees' I feel the varroa issue is more pressing, so I'm going to continue with these as 'local adapted bees'.  They didn't get treatment last year and are now booming!  So these are the bees I want!  How many queen cells I get will remain to be seen.  How many will be sucessfull is yet another thing, but let's go over how I went about my business...

• I smoked the entrance and took away the top to boxes, lid stil on there.
• I smoked the bottom box (full of brood) and moved the entire box, bottom board and all away from where they were. (on the other side of the MC2019 and opening more towards the East-north East.
• I moved an empty brood box to the old place (the hive has a different colour landing board - so the foragers looking for the old hive might find it, but I still believe most of them will come to this new box.  There was a frame of  honey in this box to start with, a leftover from last year.
• I removed half of the brood from the LL2019, did a quick visual inspection of the frames but didn't find the queen.  I moved 2 frames with bees to the old location and from then on I shook every frame off above the hive in the new location before moving the frames.  I was pleased to see the hive was built nicely inside the frames.  The work went smooth and well.
  This did not put me at ease at all since as I'm writing this report here I can't say I saw eggs in any of the frames, nor did I look for larvae...  Will both hives be ok?  We'll see I guess.
• After moving half of the frames from one box to the other, keeping the brood all together now, I opened the lid from the top box that I set aside and started deviding the frames.  Not a lot of bees on there so I could move on to the next step.
• Move the box on top of the old hive LL2019 in the new location  I also but an empty frame here and there and divided the middle box that was still set aside over the LL2019 and the LL2020 that was being made.
• I closed up the hives

Now I don't know where the queen is, or if I damaged her in the process.  I don't think so and I half expect her to be in the new location.  Since I smoked the hive to begin with and I shook most bees of there.

LL2020

The new hive get this name.  I'll shrink her further back to one box coming inspection may 12th to devide the queens over some nucs and the LL2020.  It doesn't matter what side of the MC2019 this hive is on, the one with the queencups and new queens will be the LL2020.  But only for a short while, since if I find more frames with queens on them I'll have to rename them as they would all be LL2020-ies.  I'm going to keep it simple and go for LL12020, LL22020 and so on.

If I'm right and the LL2020 has the queencups in the old place, I'm going to make the split with frames from this hive, shrinking it down to one box and if needed will shake some more bees from the LL2019 in there.  Let's hope I don't shake the queen in there...

Apiary 3

MCA2020
Is of to a good start.  I only took of the roof to check what's happening in the super (a full deep) and I'm happy to report 5 full frames of honey are being capped of and 2 to 3 more are being built out.
Might take of some honey from this one!

Apiary 4

Ah, the bees are here!  As I hinted earlier on, I got a swarm call of sorts on april 27th.  A beekeeper witnessed how one of his hives swarmed and he moved them into a 6-framer.  He was afraid they wouldn't stick around so he took out some brood frames from his hives, shook the bees of and gave the swarm 4 frames of brood and 2 frames of nectar.  Then he gave me a call (he told me all this during the call)  He wanted me to come and collect them, as he had 4 hives and didn't want any more.

As I was at work I told him I was interested, but would have to call somebody else to pick up the bees.  And that's what I did.  Ives, my buddy, was willing to do this all by himself!  He collected the bees, drove them to apiary number 4 and installed them there.  I went over to take a quick look (without my beesuit) and only got one sting in the back of the knee while looking inside.  

As I did not want to inspect the hive - it was growing colder in the evening - I called the beekeeper again: Did he check to see if there were any queencups on the frames he put in there? - He didn't, but he didn't think they were on there...

I knew what I had to do in spite of colder weather conditions.  Yes you can inspect bees starting from 15°C and that's what it was, but still, they had brood!  So 35°C is 20°C warmer than 15°C  I urge you to take a shower with water form 35°C and then have your wife turn it to 15°C in one go, see how you'll like it..

So here's the video of what I did:

I don't recall, did I post the construction of the hive in the video on here already? I don't think so, so I'll show you the pictures from the video on here to:

Above you can see the inside of the brood box, a hexagon shape made out of wooden boards - if I remember correctly 12 mm thick.

This here is the board I'll put on top of the brood box, the outer measurements fit that of the most common hive in Belgium, the simplex hive, so if I want I can super with a box with frames.

The outside material is plastic.  I used an old floorboard system as an outer layer.  I believe the plastic will help prolong the lifespan of this hive as the rain should just drip off.  You can see the plastic floar boards are hollow inside, which should provide a first layer of insulation.  In between the hexagon shape and the plastic boards there is more insulation: wood wool.  A natural product that I was able to buy from a guy that had a couple sheets to many.

 

 The bottom of the hive looks like this.  Open, appart from where the insulation is.  What the material is, I couldn't say, it feels more durable than plastic, a bit harder as it would snap if you try to bend it, but it's not so hard as when you drive a nail through it it would break.

The initial idea was to put this hive on top of some compost and then let the Stratiolaelaps scimitus a predatory mite find a home in there.  It is said the bees go down towards the mites to help them get rid of varroa.  It's not so much that he predatory mites go up into the brood to find the varroa, as the condition in the broodnest is not ideal for survival of this mite.

But as you could see in the video, and on the last picture, I have not yet built this hive stand for compost and am now using a bottom board with screen.

The hole is the only entrance I was planning on using, with a disc to seal it off, but as you can see, putting it on a regular bottom board also works.  I saw the hive today (may 3rd) and am happy to report most of the bees use this round entrance instead of going all the way down to fly out.  Returning bees do divide themselves towards bottom and 'top' entrance.

Apiary 5

ZKS2020
Is going to prove to be a problem child.  I fear I dropped the apparant dead queen in there or damaged her in some other way.  As of today she still does not have any brood in the cells.  There was heat being generated, but that could be to build wax.  Although I heard the bees don't build if the queen is not there.  But hey, you only know things when you experience them for yourself right?
The hive in itself grew a bit in size.  6 frames built out in the top box (out of 8) and 4-ish in the 2nd box.  They were still building from what I could see.  So I haven't lost all hope yet.  I do hope to see brood next inspection, 12th of may, and if not, I might just put a queencup in here from the nasty hive LL2020...  Even if I don't know if that's such a good idea for a school...  The other option is to take a frame of brood out of my IC2019, but seeing as the Varroa load is pretty high, I'm not sure that would be a better option.
I could just let them die and use the was as a resource for the next swarm...  Have I given up already?  No!! They haven't! They're still building!! So let's trust them!

Apiary 6

Didn't hear back from the owners, didn't go there to install a hive stand yet.  It's on my to do list!


That's all for today folks!

Bob Out

Sites to Visit - Michigan State University Pollinator Initiative

Hello readers,

Today I'll be browsing the website of Michigan State University.  I heard of it during a webinar about pollinater Landscape and figured browsing it would be a good fit for the blog.

So this is the site I have stored on my browser : https://pollinators.msu.edu/resources/pollinator-planting/pollinator-supportive-trees/

The first page I looked at:

The link will take you to an introduction why planting trees is a good idea for improving your pollinator landscape.  After explaining that it directs you to pollinator friendly trees (fit for the michigan state) and treegrowers aka: 'where can I get some'.

As I live in Belgium the local trees might not all be native, but the gest is the same and frankly, so are a lot of the trees.  Maple, willow, fruit trees, linden, all native here, so the lists are usefull!

Of course I'm not going to order my trees oversees, so that would be something to look for, local tree farmers.  As it happens, I have two only a stonethrow away from me! 

I can't stress out enough, if there is something I would do differently to my beekeeping career, it would be to plant trees, bushes and flowers for the pollinaters before introducing them.  But then again, that could be 'cheating' as the landscape is what it is.
In any case a beekeeper needs to be more aware of his surroundings in relation to the bees he keeps there.

To help you out further the site has a pdf on how to plant and grow trees! I downloaded it and added it to my gigantic library of stuff to read and sort out. I hope I get to it one of these days! (I must admit, after scrolling through it, a little voice in my head went: translate it to dutch and use this to start a project in a school!  If all kids in the class plant one tree in their garden...  how cool would that be?! - But let's stay on topic here)

The next resource on that same webpage still is one of hedgerows.  Next best thing after a tree, so also very interesting!  But a site I will not store as I get redericted to it from this one if I need it.

The last link this page shares is one of how to actually plant trees depening on how they are delivered, with bare roots, in a container or in a burlap sac.  In that site there it also tells you how to prune dead branches out of the tree, so a must read before you get to digging a hole...

So that's the entire page.

The second page I looked at:

As a beekeeper you have to click that button that says 'beekeeper' right?

So where does that button take you?

Well, it starts of by showing you a nice picture of a brood pattern on some comb.  Not the freshest of combes I've seen, but  a good representation of what you're looking for in a beehive.

Underneath the picture is a 'Sign up for the mailing list' option, which of course I clicked on and signed up for !  (Even though they didn't seem to expect anybody from abroad doing that as they asked for my state, and not my country...  without the option to go for abroad I left it blank and it took my application!)

The rest of this page is a table of contents you can use to quench your thirst for knowledge, just follow what picks your interest. Even the webinars (one of which I stumbled on and through that found the site) are listed on there.  The main topics to browse through are:

• General beekeeping resources
• Honeybee Health
• Webinars
• Handouts and articles
• Resources on dealing with farm stress
• Resources for commercial beekeepers

Then at the end of that list you have some e-mail adresses to contact with bee-specific questions.  Apart from one name (Ana) I recognize from the webinar (which I fell asleep in due to the time difference - but I'll look at it again through the links!) all the names are new to me:

1. Dr. Zachary Huang (bees@msu.edu)
2. Dr. Meghan Milbrath (mpi@msu.edu)
3. Ana Heck (heckanar@msu.edu)

The General Beekeeping resources are 'Michigan State oriented'.

But it doesn't kill you if you do have a look at what they say!

The Honeybee Health topic has (at this time) only four links beneath it, one is for Varroa, the last about AFB, then a topic on feeding your bees and one about what to do with ants in a hive.

The Webinars is just that, webinars you can follow and learn from, follow the link to find out more!

Handouts and articles brings a (currently small) list of articles and (currently) focused towards the beginning beekeeper.  There are resources on how to get started, how to light a smoker, how to maximize your wax production in new equipment, etc.

The last two topics with resources are just that.

The third link I followed:

Took me to a pdf I downloaded straight away, the topic was Treatment Free Beekeeping.  An article dating back to 2016 by the hand of Meghan Milbrath, Ph.D. , a dr. I do not know.  The jest of the article is we want to go back to treatment free, all of us do, but we can't do it cold turkey and hope our bees will survive.

While I understand the article's conclusion (which is frankly and honestly the only thing I read) I didn't feel inspired to read the entire thing.  I feel it is more directed at beekeepers who treat and want to stop treating since it's saying if you do it the wrong way; you're going to lose your bees at a faster rate than when you keep treating them.

But in the end, if you do monitor for mites and only treat those who need it, you can select those who need the least treatment to breed queens from and use those queens to requeen those colonies that do require yearly treatments, untill they don't.

As it was getting late, this was the final page I looked at.  I might go back to this site if I remember the info on it and need to look something up, or want to know how others see that specific topic.

In any case, go take a look, form your own opinion, cause we all know: 'all beekeepers have one'...

That's all folks

Bob Out