Managing Your Bee Hives
By Caroline Abbott
Otsego, Michigan
How to Find a Good Hive Location
First of all, choose a location that is easy for you to get to in order to manage the hive. If it is too far away from your house, or too difficult to get to, you won’t want to get out to the hives as often as you should. Make sure it is accessible in all seasons so you can check it in the winter, too.
The location should be well-drained, not swampy or subject to flooding or extended periods of standing water.
Ideally the hives should have protection from the west and north, but be exposed to the open on the south and east. Hive entrances should face east or south or southeast.
Hives should be located off major traffic ways for human or animal traffic.
Don’t place hives directly under trees with large branches that could potentially fall on the hives.
The hives should receive sun most of the day, but some protection from the hottest sun in the mid-summer, so a location that receives morning sun, but has some filtered shade in the afternoon is ideal.
Hives should have decent access to water sources year round and to forage that isn’t very far away, and lasts throughout the growing season.
Be a good neighbor! Make sure you let all neighbors know where your hives are, and make sure they don’t have any objections. Don’t place hives near neighbor’s hot tubs, or in traffic ways they use. If the neighbor does have a hot tub, be vigilant to provide a closer water source for your bees so they don’t become a nuisance to your neighbor. If possible, provide some type of barrier, like a fence or hedge in front of the hives, so the bees have to fly up over people’s heads to exit the hive if the hive is near to the neighbor’s property.
Be aware of agricultural activities near where you place your hives. If a field is nearby where agricultural chemicals are routinely sprayed, or if your neighbor has Tru-Green service, don’t place your hives near enough to receive over-spray.
Bees and horses are a bad mix. Horses have very narrow nasal passages and if a bee flies up the nose and stings, the horse is much more likely to have a bad reaction than other animals. If possible, avoid placing bees near horses.
If possible, place hives in several locations on your property and monitor how each location works. Be willing to move hives if they don’t do well in a location.
Watch the hive density in a location. Don’t put too many hives in one area. In a wild setting, you don’t often find 25 feral hives in one small area!
Make each hive slightly different from the others around it, by color, or position, so the bees can landmark their hive and get back home.
The hives need to be clear of tall weeds that block the entrance, so putting down landscape cloth, a piece of wood, or concrete helps to keep it lower maintenance .
Good bee forage
Honeybees have a short proboscis, so they prefer flowers that don’t have deep throats or large flower heads that require reaching too deeply in to get to the nectar. Each bee only makes 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, so for any type of flower to be a major source of honey production, there needs to be a lot of them blooming at once. A typical managed flower garden will be visited by the bees, but will not provide a major source of honey.
Large areas of native flowering plants, or fields of hay, clover, alfalfa, dandelions, wild mustard, goldenrod and asters provide good honey flows.
Surprisingly, many trees provide good nectar and pollen sources for bees. Maple pollen is the first ready in the spring. Basswood or Linden trees make an excellent light honey.
Even invasive species plants like the star thistle provide good honey flows where they are abundant.
Honeybees have the habit of only visiting one type of flower on each trip out of the hive. That is why large areas of the same plant yield the best honey flows.
How to Install a Package of Bees
There are several different ways to install a package. Here is one way that works well for a small beekeeper.
Before you get your package(s), make sure that you have all the equipment on hand. You will need one deep or two medium brood boxes with frames, a bottom board, a feeder or empty deep super and bucket for sugar water, an inner cover and a top cover for each hive. Make sure that you have the area for the beehives prepared before you get the package. Don’t place the bottom boards directly on the ground; use a wooden hive stand with an alighting board for the bees to land on when they come back from foraging. This really helps heavy-laden foragers get back into the hive. If the wooden stand is placed on bricks, concrete or landscape fabric it will last longer before it rots. If you decide to use a pallet be aware that it’s easy to get your foot stuck between the slats if you take a wrong step.
Place the bottom board on the hive stand with the entrance pointing toward the east or south. Place one deep or medium box full of drawn comb or foundation on the bottom board. Cover the box with the top cover to protect it while you’re waiting to install the package. Mix up granulated sugar and warm water in a 1:1 ratio (weight or volume) and put it in the feeder to feed the bees. If you don’t have a feeder, poke five or six holes in the lid of a ½ to 1 gallon plastic container (deli containers work great; ask for some at your local grocery store) and have an empty deep box on hand to put around the bucket.
Just before sunset, bring the package out to the hive. It’s very important to install packages in the evening because if you do it in the middle of the day the bees will fly all over and get confused. Using a hive tool, pry the plywood cover off of the package and remove the sugar can. The queen cage will be on the end of a plastic strip which is stapled to the top of the package. Carefully detach this strip and pull out the queen cage. It will have lots of bees hanging onto it; that’s good because it means the bees like their queen. The queen cage will have a cork on each end and has three round compartments, one of which is full of sugar candy. Remove the cork from the candy end of the queen cage and make a little hole in the candy with a nail. Lay the queen cage horizontally with the screen side up on top of the frames.
Place the feeder bucket upside down toward one edge of the hive and put the empty deep around it. Shake a few of the bees out of the package onto the queen cage. Lightly stuff a few sheets of newspaper around the sugar bucket to keep the bees from building comb off the inner cover and put on the inner cover and the top cover. Now shake the rest of the bees out of the package right in front of the entrance to the hive (this is where the alighting board on the hive stand comes in handy). The bees will march right up into the entrance to the hive as soon as they smell that the queen is in there. The advantage of emptying the package in front of the hive is that any dead bees will stay outside the hive and won’t have to be hauled out by the house bees. Bang the package on the ground if necessary to get the last few bees out. If there’s still a couple in it, it’s okay to leave the package by the hive for a day or two so that all the bees get in the hive.
Come back in three days to see if the queen has been released from the cage. If not, use the hive tool to remove the cork on the other end of the cage and gently shake the queen out onto the frames. Make sure to replace the newspaper if the bees haven’t drawn out the foundation yet. Wait a week or two after the queen is released to check the bees again; too many inspections may cause the bees to supersede the queen. When the bees have drawn out 8 frames in the brood box, add a second brood box. With medium brood boxes add a third after the bees have drawn out 8 frames in the second. Don’t check the bees more frequently than every three or four weeks. They really do better left to themselves.
Spring Inspection of Beehives
Every beekeeper does things a little differently, but this is a good guideline to follow for spring inspections of beehives.
On a warm (above 50°F) day in late February or early March, remove the top cover and inner cover of the hive to determine the condition of the bees. The top box should be the honey super that was placed on in the fall. DO NOT REMOVE ANY FRAMES from the hive; just look through the cracks between the frames to see if there are bees. If there are live bees in the top box and there are few frames in that box with honey, you will need to feed the bees. Mix a 1:1 ratio (by weight or volume—they are equal) of granulated sugar and warm water to make a sugar syrup. For 1:1 syrup you can just use hot water from the tap. There are many ways to feed the bees this sugar water. In the spring one of the best methods is to use a plastic container such as a plastic coffee can, potato salad bucket, or anything between ½ and 1 gallon capacity with a tight-fitting lid. A grocery store deli is a great place to find these kinds of containers. Make sure they are clean before you put them on the hives and that they don’t leak. Poke about six holes near the center of the lid with a frame nail. This makes a hole big enough for the bees to drink through but not big enough for the sugar water to leak out. Fill this container with the sugar water and place it upside down on the top bars off to the side of the cluster. By this point the weather gets warm enough for the bees to break cluster and get to the sugar water and putting it off to the size minimizes the damage to the bees if the bucket should leak. It’s always better to have too much food than too little—put on the sugar water even if there are still four or five capped frames in the top super.
If there are no live bees in the top super, you will need to ascertain whether the cluster is in the lower boxes or if the bees are dead. When a hive of bees dies in the winter, all the bees will die at once. If there are a lot of dead bees between the frames and a lot of dead bees with their heads in the cells, the hive is dead. If there are a few live bees they are most likely robbers from another hive. If the hive is dead you can either take it down and clean it up immediately or let the bees from surrounding hives rob out the honey. If you choose to leave the hive for the other bees to rob, close it up as securely as it was before. Mice love to move into abandoned hives, so make sure that the mouse guards are still in place. Sometimes you can determine the cause of death by looking at the hive, but other times it’s hard to tell. If the dead cluster is in the top box and there are only a few frames of honey left on the edges, the bees most likely starved.
If there are no dead or live bees in the top box, it is safe to lift off the entire box to see if the cluster is alive is in the box below. If it is, put the super back on and leave the hive alone. If the super is still full of honey they should have enough to make it until spring. Never assume that a hive is dead unless you find the dead cluster of bees. The bees will probably not be rearing brood yet at this time, so finding a lot of live bees is evidence enough that the hive is alive. Never take down a hive unless you’re sure that it’s dead. If the weather isn’t warm enough for a lot of bees to be flying, it’s easier to tell whether or not a hive is alive because any live bees in the hive probably belong to it.
If you have to feed sugar water to the bees, check the levels about once a week to make sure they have enough. Otherwise, leave the hives alone until the daffodils bloom. By this time the bees should be starting to raise brood. When the weather is 70°F or above, it’s safe to make a more thorough hive inspection. Most likely, the bees will be in the top box or two. Take all the boxes off the hive, remove the mouse guard or entrance reducer, and scrape all the dead bees and debris off the bottom board. Determine which box has the most eggs or young brood in it and put this box on the bottom. If there are two boxes with brood on just a few frames, you can put all of the brood frames in one box if they’re the same size and put it on the bottom. Make sure that you don’t break up the brood nest because the bees have to keep it warm.
Bees like to move up rather than down, so put a brood box with empty frames on top of the bottom box(es). This is the time of year to take out old combs from the brood boxes that were on the bottom of the hive and replace them with new ones. MAKE SURE YOU CHECK EVERY FRAME YOU TAKE OUT VERY THOUROUGHLY TO MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO EGGS IN IT! This is easiest to do on a sunny day if you tilt the frame so that the light shines into the cells. The frames that have brood in them will also have more bees on them than empty frames.
By this point the bees shouldn’t need feeding anymore because there should be enough flowers blooming. Bees prefer natural forage to sugar water, so as soon as there is enough natural forage for them they will stop eating the sugar water. Once the bees stop feeding on the sugar water it’s best to take it off because it will attract ants. It’s usually best not to feed pollen substitutes in Michigan because they can stimulate brood rearing when it’s too early, which can kill the bees if they break cluster to cover the brood.
This is also a good time to evaluate the strength of the hive to see if it will need splitting soon or not. Late April, May and June are the time of the year for swarming, so beginning mid-April you should be checking the hives to see if they need splitting.
How to Split a Hive
In Michigan in late April, May or June a strong hive will be preparing to swarm. This is the natural method of colony reproduction. You can tell that a hive is preparing to swarm because it will be crowded with bees, there will be a large number of adult drones and drone brood, and most of the combs will be full of brood or honey. In preparation for swarming, the bees will make many queen cells on the bottom edges of the frames. These are called swarm cells and can be distinguished from supersedure cells by their location and quantity. Once the bees start making swarm cells, it’s very difficult to keep them from swarming.
Some beekeepers just set up swarm traps near their hives to catch any swarms that may issue and don’t manage for swarming at all. If this method is used, the swarm traps must be checked every day during swarming season. In order for a swarm trap to be effective, it must have a pheromone lure to attract the bees. You can buy commercially available swarm traps or make your own from empty equipment. Once a swarm is caught, it must be transferred to a movable frame hive immediately. To keep the swarm from leaving a new hive, place one frame of brood in it. The biggest problem with this method is that you may not catch every swarm of bees.
Most beekeepers prefer to split their hives rather than let them swarm. In order for this method to be effective, it must be done before the bees make swarm cells. As soon as you notice a hive becoming strong and producing a lot of drones, it’s time to split. As in everything else in beekeeping, there are many ways to split a hive, but the method outlined here is one of the easiest and most effective methods.
It’s best to locate the queen before you split the hive. She is usually in the box with the most eggs. The less smoke you use, the less you will disturb the queen. Once the queen is located, set the box that she’s in at an angle on an upturned top cover in case she’s on the bottom of a frame. You don’t want to mush your queen! Usually there are two brood boxes full of brood. If there are eggs or very young larvae in the box without the queen, you can go ahead and leave the two boxes intact. If there are no eggs in the other box but only capped brood, you will have to take one frame with eggs in it from the box with the queen and replace it with a frame from the other box. Examine both sides of the frame very carefully to make sure the queen stays where she’s supposed to be.
In the box without the queen, take a frame with eggs and make a small notch on the cell wall with the hive tool near the bottom of a cell with an egg or very young (less than three days old) larva in it. This will make the bees raise this larva to be a queen. Notch three or four cells to make sure of success. Once the cell is notched, put it back in the hive, put that box directly on the bottom board, put a brood box with empty frames above that box, put on the lid, and leave that half of the hive alone for about a month. If you try to check it before the new queen gets mated the bees will be very aggressive. The bees almost always will raise their own queen using this method. If for some reason there isn’t a queen a month later, get a new frame of eggs from another hive and try it again.
Put the brood box with the queen on another bottom board in a different location, put a brood box with empty frames on top of that, and cover the hive. It’s not necessary to move the hive three miles from the parent hive. Most of the forager bees will go back to the parent hive, but enough nurse bees will stay to take care of the brood and the hive without the queen will need the extra bees to keep going until their new queen emerges. Check this hive a few weeks later to make sure the queen is still alive and is laying.
How to collect honey
As with every other area of beekeeping, there are lots of methods of honey collection. This method is suitable for hobby beekeepers with less than ten hives who want a high-quality product with no question about moisture content.
Honey supers can be placed on the hives as soon as the major honey plants such as alfalfa, white dutch clover or basswood start blooming in June. Use medium or shallow supers for honey; the bees usually will not completely fill deep frames and they are also really heavy when full. Only put clean, white combs or clean foundation in honey supers to ensure a high-quality honey. If your honey frames start getting dark or dirty, use them for brood boxes. Start with one super per hive. When the super is about half-full, even if it’s not capped, put another super under the first one. If you check the hives frequently throughout the summer, you will only need two supers per hive. If you prefer to only collect honey at the end of the summer, you will need to keep putting more supers on the hive as the upper ones get filled up. A queen excluder is usually not necessary if there is sufficient room for the queen to lay in the brood box.
Don’t take any frames off the hive until they are at least 80-90% capped on both sides. The bees cap the honey when the moisture content is low enough; if they haven’t capped it yet, the moisture content is still too high. Once a frame is mostly capped, take it out of the hive, set it in a clean place a few yards away and replace it with an empty frame. After all the capped frames have been taken out of a given hive, close the hive and use a bee brush to brush the bees off each frame, one at a time. This makes the bees angry, so it’s usually best to brush each frame in a slightly different location so that angry bees from the last frame have more trouble finding you to sting you. The bees will go back to their hives; the brushing doesn’t injure them.
Put brushed frames in an empty super and cover it with a clean towel or clean top cover. It’s best to devote a towel for this purpose because it will get propolis stains on it which are impossible to remove. Make sure you don’t leave any opening in the super or you will get robber bees, especially in the fall. Don’t leave these supers of capped honey outside. Take them into the honey house, garage, basement or kitchen immediately. Make sure there are no open windows, doors, dog doors or any other opening to the room with the honey supers because the bees will find it. If there’s a hole in a window screen, don’t open the window.
As it gets toward fall, make sure that you don’t take any capped honey out of the brood boxes even if they are the same size as the supers. The bees will need this honey to make it through the winter. Don’t collect any honey after Labor Day because the bees will need it.
Uncapping and Extracting Honey
Only extract frames that are at least 80-90% capped to reduce the chances of fermentation. This is one method of uncapping and extracting; every beekeeper does this differently. This method works well for a hobby beekeeper.
Get everything set up before you start extracting. You will need for sure:
1. An uncapping knife (you can use a “cold” uncapping knife and dip it in boiling water to heat it up between frames, or you can get an electric uncapping knife. Don’t try to use a kitchen knife; it’s the wrong shape)
2. A container to uncap in (a long, shallow plastic tub or even a roaster pan will work, or you can get an uncapping tank with a honey gate from a bee supply company)
3. An extractor (if you don’t have one you can probably borrow one from someone else)
4. Something to strain the extracted honey (a piece of cheesecloth in a metal strainer works, or you can buy a series of plastic strainers)
5. A bucket to hold the honey when it comes out of the extractor (make sure this is a food grade container. Plastic frosting buckets work really well; you can get used ones very inexpensively from a bakery or grocery store. NEVER use a bucket that had something strong-smelling in it such as pickles or garlic because the smell stays in the plastic and can’t be washed out.)
6. Warm water and towels to clean up the sticky mess
Some other things you may want are:
7. A cappings scratcher (available from bee supply houses)
8. A fly swatter (flies love honey)
9. Containers to bottle the honey (glass or plastic; these can range from a pint Mason jar to a plastic honey bear)
10. Attractive labels for the containers (if you have enough honey to sell)
The first thing you must do before you can extract your honey is to uncap the frames. Do this by placing the frame on end in the uncapping tank. Make sure the uncapping knife is hot enough to melt the wax but not so hot as to scorch the honey. Slide the uncapping knife under the wax starting on one end of the frame and working to another. The idea is to cut the wax off while leaving as much of the comb intact as possible. Leave the wax cappings in the uncapping tank for now.
One a frame is uncapped on one side, flip it over and do the other side. If there are just a few cells that are still capped, use the cappings scratcher to break the cappings on these cells so that the honey will come out when the frame is extracted.
Once the extractor is full of frames, you’re ready to extract. If the extractor will stay in one place while you turn it, it’s best to leave the honey gate open while extracting. If you have an older extractor that jumps around a lot when you turn it, it may be easier to leave the gate closed and open it after each set of frames. Never use an extractor with a motor when the gate is shut. Make sure that you place the bucket under the honey gate. It’s easiest to place the strainer right on top of the bucket under the extractor so that the honey will be ready to bottle when you’re done extracting. (Figure 3). The honey is strained simply to remove wax particles or bee parts; pollen grains stay in the honey. You can strain your honey and still call it unfiltered as long as you don’t have to heat it to put it through the strainer.
The actual extracting process is very simple: Turn the crank on the extractor and the honey will come out of the frames because of centrifugal force, hit the outer wall of the extractor and run down the sides to the honey gate. If you have a radial extractor (frames look like spokes on a wheel) you need only spin it once to empty both sides. If you have a tangential extractor (frames form a square or triangle shape in the extractor) you will need to flip the frames around to extract the other side. It only takes a few minutes of turning the frames to get all the honey out. Once the frames are extracted, they are ready to be put back on the beehives for the bees to fill up again.
After all the honey has run out of the extractor and through the strainer, it can either be stored in the plastic bucket or bottled. If you plan to bottle your honey, it’s best to do it within a month or two before it crystallizes. The easiest way to bottle is to use a bottling bucket with a built in honey gate—simply hold the clean containers under the gate, open it, fill the bottle and shut the gate ( Figure 5). You can also use a ladle to fill small containers with liquid honey, but make sure you hold the container over the honey bucket as it will make a mess.
If you wish to sell your honey in the state of Michigan, you must put your contact information (phone number, address and/or email address), the net weight (in both US and metric measurements) and either “pure honey” or “100% honey” or “Ingredient: Honey” somewhere on each container. As a service to your customers, it’s nice to put a label on the container with instructions on how to decrystallize the honey. Here’s an example of a decrystallization label: “If your honey crystallizes, simply place the jar in warm water and stir until the crystals dissolve. Or, place honey in a microwave-safe container with the lid off and microwave it, stirring every 30 seconds, until the crystals dissolve. Be careful not to boil or scorch the honey.” Further labeling is not required, but the more attractive the label the more likely you are to sell the honey.
Preparing Hives for Winter
Every beekeeper overwinters slightly different, and many of them have good success with markedly different methods. Every method that has good success, however, contains at least three main components:
- 1. Strong bees
- 2. Sufficient stores
- 3. Moisture control
The most important thing, of course, is to make sure that the bees are strong. A weak or sick hive will not survive the winter no matter how well you prepare it. Bees that are adapted to the local climate are much more likely to survive our Michigan winters than bees that just came from Georgia or Florida. If a hive is full of varroa mites, hive beetles or wax moths, it will probably not survive the winter. You can combine two weak hives to try to get them through the winter, but if both hives are really weak there will be too many empty frames in the lower boxes and the cluster will be too far away from the stores. If you know that you have weak hives earlier in the season you can combine them then by moving all the brood frames from each hive into one box, placing one box on a hive stand, covering the first box with a sheet of newspaper and putting the second box (preferably with an upper entrance) on top of the newspaper and covering the hive. By the time the bees chew through the newspaper the two hives will tolerate each other.
If a hive was queenless during the summer, it may have produced a lot of honey, but all the bees will disappear before Labor Day. Don’t think you have CCD if this happens; the hive has probably been queenless for a long time and you just didn’t notice. A hive full of yellow jackets is always a bad sign; a live hive won’t let yellow jackets in.
Labor Day is the time to begin preparing your hives for winter. Don’t collect any honey after this point; the bees need it all to make it through the winter. A hive should have honey stored in all the brood boxes in addition to a full super of honey on top. It’s always better to have too many stores than too little. If the hive doesn’t have enough honey of its own, take frames from a hive with excess to make sure that the super is full. Just having ten frames of honey isn’t enough; they should be mostly capped on both sides. The weight of the super is a good indication of whether or not there is enough honey. If it doesn’t weigh very much, it’s not enough.
If there isn’t enough honey or you choose to extract all that is left, you must feed the bees. The easiest way to do this in the fall is to feed sugar water in a 2:1 ratio (weight or volume—they are equal) of granulated sugar to water. You will have to heat the water to get the sugar to dissolve. Use whatever feeder method you used in the spring to feed this sugar water. Keep refilling the feeder until it gets so cold that the water might freeze.
Adequate ventilation is necessary to prevent moisture buildup in the hive during the winter. If moisture builds up, the bees will chill and die and mold will overtake the hive in the spring. The easiest way to provide ventilation is to prop the top cover up slightly with small pieces of wood. Make sure the opening is not large enough for mice to get through. Make sure the hole in the inner cover is not blocked by a feeder or anything else, so that air can flow. Also leave the entrance as open as possible, using ½” hardware cloth to keep out mice, but leaving the entrance open to the air. Leave the screened bottom board open for bottom ventilation. Make sure the bees have an upper entrance to leave the hive for cleansing flights during the winter if the bottom entrance gets blocked with snow and ice or dead bees. Make sure you have a heavy stone or brick on the top cover to keep it from blowing off in high winds.
Throughout the winter do external checks to see if there is evidence of life, such as bee droppings on the hive or the snow around the hive and fresh dead bees in the snow in front of the hive. Keep the entrance clear of snow and ice. Do not open the hive in the cold weather. If you notice a lot of animal prints in the snow by the entrance, you can put a board with nails sticking up in front of the hive to discourage damage to the hive by skunks or other animals.
Bee Pests and Diseases
DISCLAIMER: Every bee-keeper approaches management of pests and diseases differently. I will outline the major pests and diseases common to bees, particularly those commonly found in our region. I will then offer different management techniques for dealing with these pests and diseases and my personal bee-keeping philosophy regarding this issue.
Pests
Varroa – this is a parasitic mite which was imported from India. It feeds on brood and multiplies in capped cells. In large infestations, adult mites can be seen on adult bees. However the best indication of whether varroa is a problem in a hive is to pull out some drone brood with a cappings scratcher or a fork, and see if there are any mites on the brood. Mites prefer drone brood because it is larger and the cells are larger. Mites are a reddish brown color and are about 1 mm in diameter. Intervention – Varroa intervention has become quite a controversial topic among bee-keepers. Chemicals, both organic or not can be placed on the hive to kill mites. These chemicals MUST only be used when there are no honey supers on the hives. It is against the law to have any kind of chemical treatment, organic or not on the hives during honey flow. Other treatments include: Powder sugar dusting, using drone brood comb as a trap, screened bottom boards, and sticky boards.
Tracheal mite – These mites infest the trachea of the bees. They have no outward signs, so they are difficult to detect without dissecting dead bees and examining the trachea for damage. Intervention – Chemical treatments for varroa are also effective against tracheal mites because they are both mites.
Small hive beetles – These do not survive our winters, but have been increasing in our hives in recent years. They are small black beetles that like to breed in the comb and make a mess of everything with their frass. They destroy comb and leave a slimy, smelly mess all over the hive. Some of them hitchhike in packages. They can also fly from apiary to apiary and spread that way. Intervention – placing beetle traps in the hive, sticky boards, oil traps and screened bottom boards.
Wax moths – These moths feed on the larval skins and wax, mostly in brood comb. There are two kinds, the greater and the lesser, but both will completely destroy empty comb by spinning cocoons in the comb, leaving web trails and eating the wax. Intervention – keep a close eye on hives and remove empty boxes promptly, or combine weak hives, or boxes so there are not a lot of empty brood combs in the hive for them to infest. When storing empty comb, put moth balls in them, just be sure to air them out very well before using them again.
Mice – They move into empty boxes that have been vacated when the bee cluster moves up in the winter. They chew up comb, fill the empty space with their nest and all their “waste” which basically ruins several frames, usually in the middle of the box. Intervention – place mouse guards on the hive entrances and make sure none of the openings in the hive are larger than 1/2 inch in diameter.
Ants – Most ants in this region are really not a problem, just a nuisance. The sugar ants are attracted to the sugar water or honey you put on the hive for the bees. When the hive builds up sufficient numbers, the ants usually leave. In warmer climates fire ants are a problem, and bee-keepers have to place their hives on stands with cans of oil under the legs to discourage them.
Skunks – Yes, skunks like to eat bees, and apparently can tolerate their stings inside their stomachs. They will even teach their young how to raid a bee hive to eat bees. If you find foot prints or other signs that skunks may be visiting your hives, you can put a board with nails pointing up in front of the hive to discourage them.
Bears – No, I don’t know of any close to our area, but not too far north of here, they can be a problem. The only solution is to fence in the hives with bear-proof fence.
Diseases
Nosema – is characterized by bee dysentery. The droppings left are like tobacco stains, not mustard color like normal bee droppings seen in the winter and early spring. A new strain of nosema, nosema cerana may not have the dysentery component, which makes detection more difficult. The traditional intervention for nosema is Fumagilin, which is fed in sugar water in the hive. This treatment has traditionally been done as a preventative measure, but some bee-keepers are questioning whether to treat something if it doesn’t currently exist.
American Foulbrood (AFB) – Characterized by discolored, sunken or punctured cappings in brood. The dead brood will be older sealed larvae or young pupae upright in cells. The dead brood will be dull white, becoming brown and almost black over time. The brood will be ropy. There will be an odor. AFB must be completely destroyed by burning all the comb and burning, or completely scorching the hive with a torch. AFB is very contagious and at one time it was the law that you must destroy your hives if you had it. AFB was the reason moveable frame hives were the only legal hives for many years in the US, because the frames could be easily inspected for AFB. Traditionally Terramycin or Tylan have been used as a preventative for both AFB and EFB.
European Foulbrood (EFB) – The brood will not usually be sealed. Some will be sealed with discolored, punctured or sunken cappings. This usually affects younger larvae than AFB. The brood will be more watery than AFB, and won’t be as sticky. It will have a sour smell. The frames will still need to be destroyed, but this is not as serious a disease as AFB.
Sacbrood – The brood will be sealed, scattered cells with punctured cappings, often with two holes. The dead brood will be grayish or straw-colored, which then turn grayish or black with the head end darker. The brood will be watery and granular with a tough skin that forms a sac. It is not always accompanied by a smell, if it does it is just slightly sour. Sacbrood does not spread and the only intervention is to try to strengthen the colony.
Chalkbrood – The dead larva will have a chalky white appearance, and will be mummified. There is no treatment for chalkbrood, a strong colony will remove the diseased brood, but a weak colony will be unable to do so and the disease will spread and overwhelm the colony.
Management for healthy hives
As the old saying says, “prevention is the best medicine”. A strong, healthy hive will be able to withstand the pressure of pests and diseases and will be able to keep these enemies at a tolerable level within the hive. Many of our techniques for controlling pests and diseases have focused on getting rid of the pest or disease, rather than strengthening the bees so they can fight them off on their own. By removing the pests and diseases, we have weakened our bees. They have been unable to develop resistance to their enemies because we have taken the enemies away. In the process, we have often stressed the bees by weakening them with the chemical treatments designed to destroy the pests. If we focus on strengthening the bees, rather than on eliminating the pests, I think in time they will develop a reasonable resistance which will allow them to live with tolerable levels of these pests and diseases.
Warning signs of a weak/stressed hive - Weak hives will have decreased activity noticeable even from observing the traffic at the entrance. Often you will see guard bees engaging in numerous fights at the entrance which indicates a lot of robber bees attempting to get in from stronger hives. You may also observe yellow jackets and other predatory insects entering the hive with little or no resistance, or find them inside the hive. When you lift the top cover, there may be ants under the cover. A strong colony of bees will not tolerate the ants. Inside, you will find a small number of bees. A queenless hive will have no worker brood, only perhaps some scattered drone brood. A strong, queenless hive will be defensive, but a weak hive may not be. A weak hive will have little or no honey stores and will have a smaller than normal number of bees for the time of year.
Causes of a weak hive:
Queenlessness is the most common cause of a weak hive. If the hive is re-queened quickly enough, it can be corrected.
Chemical over-spray – if a hive is located too close to a place where agricultural chemicals are used, it could be poisoned by overspray. Prevent this by choosing a hive location away from crops that are routinely sprayed, including orchards. If the hive is used for pollination, make sure it is removed as soon as the blossoms drop from the crop being pollinated, so it won’t get accidentally sprayed.
Swarming – If your hive swarmed, over half the bees and the old queen may have left. If this is the case, check to see if there is a new queen in place and that she is laying. The best prevention for this is to keep close watch on your hives and purposely split them before they get anywhere near having completed swarm cells.
Too much moisture/lack of ventilation – bees, like most creatures need a dry, well-ventilated environment. Make sure the hive is well ventilated and receives at least some sunlight throughout the day. Some research indicates a sunny location prevents small hive beetles and other pests. This can be accomplished by ventilated the top cover and using a screened bottom board year round. Don’t place your hives in a swampy area.
Too much human intervention – As bee-keepers, we are anxious to make sure our bees are doing well. However there can be too much of a good thing. If we disturb the hive too much, the bees may supersede their queen. Some research has indicated that small hive beetles increase with too much hive disruption because the bees guarding them go away and they escape. Bee-keepers should limit hive inspections to about once a month unless a check from the outside indicates something that needs immediate attention.
Drifting – Bees locate their homes by landmarks which are unique to their hive. If all the hives look exactly alike and are lined up in a perfectly straight row, they may drift to the wrong hive. Over time, one hive will become very strong and the others weak because all the returning foragers are going back to the one strong hive. Prevent this by painting hives different colors and arranging them at slightly different angles. Also try not to put too many hives in one location.
Lack of stores – A strong hive will make plenty of honey to overwinter, but we as bee-keepers may take off too much when we harvest and leave them with inadequate stores for the winter. Sometimes this is hard to judge, so we need to make sure we monitor them and feed them if necessary.
Trapped in the hive in the winter – The bees need to get out for occasional cleansing flights in the winter. If there are no alternative entrances to the main entrance and it gets blocked with snow/ice or dead bees, the bees will be trapped inside with no way to take cleansing flights and the hive will become soiled and quickly breed disease.
Damage due to storms, large animals, falling branches, etc. – Bee hives are remarkably resilient to being damaged, but have to be put back together quickly. If the queen was killed she needs to be replaced quickly. If there was young brood in the hive at the time of the accident, the bees will re-queen themselves unless the hive was too seriously disturbed. Try not to place your hives in low spots which are subject to flooding, or under large trees which could lose branches. Don’t place hives in an obvious deer run or by large holes which look like coyote or other animal dens.
Poor genetics – Occasionally you will have a hive that just won’t thrive no matter what the conditions. There isn’t much to be done in this situation. You can kill the queen and re-queen with a queen from a strong hive. Other than that, you really don’t want to propagate the poor genetics, so it is best to let nature take its course and practice “survival of the fittest”.
|
