Preparing for Swarm Season

Swarm season will be soon upon us. In central and south Texas, it's not unusual for swarms to be active from early spring to late fall, while different natural flora bloom throughout these months. Some regions will have more of a prolific nectar flow season than others around the same time of the year. Our big nectar flow is mainly in the spring, followed by a small nectar flow in the fall.

Swarms tend to happen with the onset of the nectar flow. There are many other reasons why swarms occur throughout the year. It could be that the colony has outgrown its space, congestion, lack of ventilation, lack of laying space, strong colony, disease infestation, and or reduced queen pheromones.

When colonies swarm, roughly three-fourth of the bees along with their mother queen will leave the hive. Whereas each individual honey bee, of any caste (worker, queen, drone) works for the totality of the colony, swarming equates to its reproduction, the birth of a new colony.

Did you know that scout bees (older than the foraging bees) are the ones to search for a new home for their swarm?

PachaMama Bee’s services include removing colonies and swarms from unwanted places. Whether they've been established in some structure for years or recently perched on tree branches, we see how quickly swarms can establish themselves into cavities of homes just within a few days of arriving. They quickly build fresh comb and the queen starts laying; foragers are already coming back with pollen and nectar. They do not waste any time making themselves at home in their new location (and getting ready for the next big season, so they can survive winter).

Though we cannot alter this biological imperative, there are ways to work with Mother Nature. Enter swarm management. To begin, the beekeeper must know his/her goals with the hive. For PachaMama Bees, the goal is to propagate our colonies. Loosing seventy-five percent of a colony’s bees due to swarming, can be a bit of disappointment. But if you ever get to see a swarm happen in action, sit back and enjoy it. It’s a beautiful thing.

In short, here’s what we do to manage to prevent swarming.

Set up swarm traps
Clip the wings of queens
Add more brood space to colonies
Cut queen cells
Split colonies with new queens

We prepare way ahead of time. Securing spring queens by ordering in the fall. Fall is also the time we build up inventory, assemble equipment, and do a bit of equipment painting. We assemble and make ready nuc boxes.

Inside the hives, we make sure that our colonies have plenty of food resources to make it through winter. We'll supplement as needed by feeding by sugar water and pollen patties.

In the first months of the new year, hive inspections are revealing our colonies have plenty of food resources and are at full strength. Proactive measures taken in the fall have paid off; not to mention checking and treating for varroa mites.

In early spring we'll start looking for swarm queen cells. Swarm queen cells are usually located at the bottom of the comb. But they can be found in other spots in the comb as well.

If we find queen cells in a hive, we'll cut most of the queen cells and leave only the largest two queen cells in the comb. Then take two frames of brood with nurse bees and a frame of honey/pollen. These frames along with the queen cells in the comb are placed in a nuc box. The original hive is moved away to another spot in the yard. The nuc is placed in the spot that the original hive was located, with the same entrance orientation. This is because the foraging force of bees will help the nuc grow, reestablishing themselves in their new home while the original hive will rebuild its population on their own with the help of the nectar flow. Later in the season, we’ll requeen the older queen from the original hive.

We perform this action over again with the rest of our apiaries with newly mated queens. Some colonies will requeen themselves without our intervention. While there are many methods of hive splitting, we mainly focus on colony splits with a mated queen. Strong colonies are chosen for hive splits. Sometimes we’ll get two or three hive splits from one colony- and that is why it’s so important to manage for swarms.

References
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/IN970
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xMjUwMWU5OC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw/episode/MjMyYTY1MjYtN2Y1Yi00MDYxLThhZjgtYjA5MjQ2YTE5YWJk?ep=14

The Resourceful Beekeeper

Anybody involved with beekeeping knows it’s a constant learning process as new research comes out, new products hit the market, or unexpected freezes and abnormal amounts of rainfall take your season on a new course. I’m continuously learning and filtering information that is out there to help grow my hives and to help you with yours. In this blog, I put together a collection of free resources suitable for both the novice and experienced beekeeper. Find my description of the content and format so you may choose what interests you most.

First, a word to the wise for those thinking of just letting nature take her course, or becoming convinced to do so by someone advocating for this hands-off approach. You are keeping the bees, you are their manager. This is not nature. Don’t forget, bees in the wild have a high mortality rate. So you don’t want to lose your investment and probably don’t want to harm the bees of your neighbors either by spreading pathogens. If you want your bees to stay alive, thrive, be healthy, and possibly harvest honey from your hive, be a proactive beekeeper and be informed!

From The University of Florida Extension Lab, this podcast interviews master beekeepers, commercial beekeepers, field research scientists, and more. I listen to this when I'm on the road. Find it on online here: https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/honey-bee/podcast/#

Randy Oliver has a mountain of knowledge. He does the legwork we can all benefit from. His website articles break down the why, how, when in beekeeping.
https://scientificbeekeeping.com/

The interactive Varroa Management Decision Tool - answer a few easy questions and the program will generate seasonal treatment options for managing varroa in your colonies. Bonus, there are videos to go with it for those that enjoy visual learning.

Remember, It’s always important to follow the label. Like those podcasters in ‘Two Bees in a Pod’ say “The Label is the Law”.
https://cantilever-instruction.com/varroatool/story_html5.html

Additionally, the Best Management Practices for Bee Health are downloadable on The Honey Bee Coalition’s website.
https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/hivehealthbmps/

The University of Guelph Honey Bee Research Centre has put out good educational beekeeping videos. They’re located in Canada but a lot of their educational material applies far.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3mjpM6Av4bxbxps_Gh5YPw

Bob Binney does not hold anything back, as he lays out large-scale honey production as a commercial beekeeper. His sourwood honey has earned top honors as the "Best Honey in the World."
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDyga7OtRJSzHzXXXurYCmQ/videos

Geek out on scientific research papers on honey bees related articles at
https://www.researchgate.net/

Or cut to the chase with those 12-page, jargon-filled articles with this helpful recap of the latest research on pollinator health science in Notes from the Lab, https://blogs.cornell.edu/mcartlab/notes-from-the-lab/

DIY kind of person, build your own equipment.
http://www.michiganbees.org/beekeeping/in-the-beekeepers-workshop/

The deep plunge, becoming a Master Beekeeper. The University of Florida Research and Extension Lab has online courses you can take.
https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/honey-bee/
Or if you are here in Texas, Texas A&M offers an online course, but with in-person testing.
https://masterbeekeeper.tamu.edu/master/

And there’s more…. Follow PachaMama Bees on social media and this blog for updated resources, tips, and best practices.

Proactive Feeding: Spring

First of all, I’d like to thank all the researchers and beekeepers that have put in decades of work to help us understand better the world of bees and beekeeping. And there's a whole lot more to learn ahead of us. While beekeepers try to optimize and have success with honey bees for whatever goal we have, it's up to us to lead into the next generation of beekeeping.  

Personally I've been beekeeping for a handful of years, and I expect to do this as long as possible, or physically allowed. As a beekeeper I’ll always have an evolving path for growth and experience. I've had many successes with my hives, but I've also had failures. Hive losses have become an expected part of beekeeping. Some years I've ranged from 25-40% hive gross losses. Fortunately, they're usually made up with requeening, hive splits, and swarm captures. I’ve raised survivor stock year after year, but that was a small hobby and ended selling my hives only to buy more. The survivor stock always comes through and makes up for the rest.  I strive to decrease the amount of hive losses that occur every year. There are factors that affect our hive losses. The number one is varroa mites. They spread disease and weaken hives, ultimately killing the hive.

So how do we optimize our own beekeeping practices? Well, there are tons of research articles and practices. Before diving into this, I’m not endorsing products or practices. There are many recommendations and proven techniques, so it's up to you to make your mind on how you would like to approach your path to becoming an experienced beekeeper, and perhaps help others along the way.  

Usually, honeybees are able to acquire all of their dietary needs from available flowers or stored resources in the hive. Under normal circumstances, bees are able to forage and store enough pollen and honey to provide for their nutritional needs throughout the year.[1] Why do anything at all to the bees? Don’t they already take care of themselves in the wild? 

Well, my friend, we don't live in the wild or own undeveloped, undisturbed land with thousands of acres of prime natural resources readily available to us. Not only that, we have taken honey bees from their natural environment and placed them into hive boxes.  

Tom Seeley talks about ‘Darwinian Beekeeping’, and mentions Darwin’s Black Bee Box where natural selection is allowed to take place without interference. Natural selection is a very fascinating subject with honey bees. Though it may work for a hobbyist, it will not work for a sideliner or commercial beekeeper.  

Once we start spending more time and money on beekeeping, one question to ask yourself could be. What’s your purpose with your hives? If your purpose is to harvest honey from your hive or do hive splits, then you're counting on having a good nectar flow in your area, that means having enough resources for your bees to forage and produce excess honey from their hard work they put in, that means you need to have a strong hive going into the nectar flow season, that means your hive needs to not swarm right before that nectar flow starts. Among other things, that means being prepared for it.  

Supplemental feeding during nectar dearth has been a part of my feeding regimen, which I intend to keep on doing. Why? Because natural resources are not optimal throughout the year for bees to thrive season after season. Sometimes you may get a drought, really hot summer, or some natural disaster that can have a domino effect, honey bees end up having the short end of the stick. This equals poor nutrition.

Furthermore, honey bees require carbohydrates (sugars in nectar or honey), amino acids (protein from pollen), lipids (fatty acids, sterols), vitamins, minerals (salts), and water. Additionally, these nutrients must be present in the right ratio for honey bees to survive and thrive.[2] What do you mean by the right ratio? Many studies have shown poly-floral pollen diets are superior to a single species of pollen, this factors into the health and longevity of the honey bee. If this ratio is off balance and their food source is poor, honey bees will underperform.

What if your hive is not strong enough? By strong I mean having about 40-60 thousand bees in your hive. A weak hive would be about 10 thousand bees, this is about 3 frames of bees in your hive. To help out the weak hives to get ready for the spring nectar flow. You will need to start taking measures. Six to eight weeks beforehand, they need supplemental feed, (e.g. pollen patties, sugar water syrup). You can do research on how to make your own or buy it ready made to feed your bees.  Pollen provides the only natural protein source for bees. They need quantity and quality to raise their young and become healthy fat bees. Feeding supplemental patties early in the season will stimulate them to start raising young, because the natural pollen they otherwise would be foraging is not necessarily available. There must be discipline in this, a regular visit to check on your bees is necessary to keep on feeding them, and making sure they don’t swarm off right before nectar flow starts, otherwise their brood production will stall. Put in the time to do your own research!   

Nectar flows stimulate hygienic behavior.[3] It’s also important to be able to nip the varroa mite population from growing along with your bees. Seasonally in a trend of time, the mite population tends to have a rising curve right after the curve of brood increases during nectar flow. This is because they feed on the brood, adult bees, and reproduce inside the capped cells during the brood rearing period. In other words, the mite population increases after the brood population increases if left untreated. The hygienic behavior of bees is best when they're at full strength hive. Healthy colonies groom themselves, remove dead and dying adults.  They employ nature’s resources and they use propolis. It helps keep a clean hive, and kill foreign bacteria. Due to its waxy nature and mechanical properties, bees use propolis in the construction and repair of their hives for sealing openings and cracks, smoothing out the internal walls, use as a protective barrier against external invaders like snakes, lizards, and so on, and against weathering threats like wind and rain.[4]

In order to optimize a honey bee colony at full strength as beekeepers we would need to take necessary measures. Pollen patties and sugar water syrup are a good source of help, as well as treating your hives for mites. A weak colony will need a boost. Their chance of survival dramatically decreases if there are very few natural resources available to them. Therefore supplemental feeding is necessary in order to give the weak hive a fighting chance. There are other factors to consider as stated before. Being prepared for the nectar flow season requires investing time and resources to follow through in keeping your hive strong and alive.

[1] https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/18/36/ad/0755bd1756238e/US20120308686A1.pdf

 [2] https://bee-health.extension.org/honey-bee-nutrition/

 [3] https://www.bvbeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Fat-Bees-Skinny-Bees.pdf

 [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3872021/