White Man's Flies

I have looked all over trying to figure out where I found this information. I think it comes from a yahoo group called something like Historical Honey Bees. But I can't find the danged thing anywhere.  Anyway, these snippets follow the introduction of honeybees into the United States.  

A long standing assumption, is that honeybees "preceded the settlers", and were "seldom met with, at any great distance from the frontier". Typically, this distance is estimated from 20 to perhaps 50 miles in advance of the white man. The first 3 references relate this belief. 


"The Author of A Tour on the Prairies, says the Indians regard thebee as the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man; and say, that in proportion as the bee advances the Indian and the buffalo retire. The
wild bee is said to be seldom met with at any great distance from the frontier."
Tioga Eagle
February 07, 1849 Wellsboro, Pennsylvania


"As long as civilization, literally speaking, was in the woods, the bee went with it. The earlier settler and the bee were hand in hand, and the former plundered the latter and the latter stung the former with equal persistency through all the changing seasons of the year. The Indians realized in the advent of the bee the beginning of their end."
The Bucks County Gazette
December 04, 1890 Bristol, Pennsylvania


"Swarming, it became known to the Indians as the "white man's fly" and often preceded the settler into the wilderness by a good twenty miles or so. ... "
1948 - The Land / Washington. Page 359


But there is a problem with this belief.  And that is how honeybees reached Illinois, far in advance of the settlers. 
There are accounts of early explorers, traveling through Illinois, recording that they "found bees in many places, used their honey." Less than 50 years from the introduction of honeybees to Virginia in 1622, early records suggest that wild bees were abundant in Illinois. One might expect that bees would have arrived in Illinois sometime around the time which records suggest they reached Indiana in 1793, but they in fact, arrived much earlier. 
How they got there, remains a mystery. 


See Timeline of the advance of honeybees westward to Illinois: 


1622 - Virginia 


1622, Honeybees Imported from Europe.


"By 1649 people in Virginia 'have store of bees in their woods, make plenty of honey and wax…'." 

1698 - Pennsylvania


"In Swedish settlements in Pennsylvania between 1630 and 1707, `Bees thrive and multiply exceedingly… 
the Sweeds often get great store of them in the woods where they are free for any Body …'." 




"1698" (Source Oertel, E. 1976, Early Records of 
Honey Bees in the Eastern United States, 
ABJ 116, 5 parts, Feb.-June.)


=====


1754 - Ohio 


1754, Probably Spread by Swarming.
(Source: Eva Crane, World History of 
Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, Pg. 359) 


"1788" (Source Oertel, E. 1976, Early Records of 
Honey Bees in the Eastern United States, 
ABJ 116, 5 parts, Feb.-June.)


=====


1793 - Indiana 


1793 , Probably Spread by Swarming.
(Source: Eva Crane, World History of 
Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, Pg. 359) 


=====

thanks to Historical Honeybee

11 Execs, 6 Foreign Firms Caught in Honey Sting

found on the AOL news site
and reported by

Andrew Schneider Senior Public Health Correspondent

AOL News

 
(Sept. 2) -- U.S. consumers stand a better chance of buying honey free of drugs, chemicals and other illegal contaminants because investigators from several federal agencies have scooped up some of the biggest players in the sticky, international honey-laundering maze.

A 70-page indictment, released in Chicago by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, reads like Cliffs Notes for a spy novel: smuggling, bogus shipping papers, phony lab tests, shipments to Chicago warehouses and small honey-packing plants in Washington's Cascade Mountains. All that's missing is the sex.

Eleven Chinese and German executives and six of their food supply and honey export companies were charged Wednesday with 44 counts of conspiring to illegally import Chinese-origin honey, including honey tainted with antibiotics, into the U.S. by mislabeling it as originating in other countries to avoid paying anti-dumping fees, Fitzgerald said.

Why the foreign intrigue with something as benign and universally loved as honey?

The one-word answer is money. Tens of millions of dollars, and that's just what the field agents and federal prosecutors can prove at this point.

These are not nickel-and-dime scams.

"They are charged with conspiring to import more than $40 million of Chinese honey to avoid paying anti-dumping duties of approximately $80 million," said Leigh Winchell, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in the Pacific Northwest. (HSI was formally known as ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)

Illegal Additives Create Health Problems

Fitzgerald said the defendants were distributing "adulterated honey that never should have reached the U.S. marketplace."

The adulterants -- illegal additives that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says cannot be permitted in any food product -- included mostly small amounts of the antibiotics and antibacterial drugs Ciprofloxacin, Norfloxacin, Chloramphenicol and Furazolidone.

Health officials say these chemicals can create health problems for just a small percentage of the population with specific chemical sensitivities. Public health experts say the public should never be exposed to unneeded antibiotics.

The Chinese used these drugs in the late 1990s and into the new century to fight off a massive outbreak of bee-killing disease that swept like a tsunami across millions of bee colonies throughout their huge country.

As part of the conspiracy, the indictment alleges that the defendants had honey en route to the U.S. tested by a German laboratory. After they learned that the honey contained antibiotics, it still was to be sold to U.S. customers and even resold to some after it was rejected by others due to the presence of antibiotics.

The thousands of drums of Chinese honey, or sweetened product being sold as honey, allegedly were falsely declared as having originated in Russia, Australia, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.

Sometimes the drums were actually shipped to the second country before being transshipped with new country-of-origin identification to the U.S. Often, the switch was done by just painting the blue drums -- which are almost always used in China -- a different color and typing up bogus shipping papers.

Federal authorities have seized more than 3,200 drums of honey in Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; Minneapolis; and the Chicago area during the investigations that led to the indictments.

AOL News Watched Inspection
Last September, AOL News watched a honey packer examine rows of steel drums in a bonded customs warehouse near the docks in Tacoma. They were reportedly filled with white honey from Indonesia, according to the importers from Southern California.

The deal didn't smell right to the packer. The price was too low, and that specific type of honey wasn't what Indian bees produce. He even tried to test what was being sold. He popped the bung on several drums, carefully drew out samples of honey from each and squirted the pale, yellow-white syrup into clean jars.

The results were inconclusive, the certified lab reported. The "honey" had to be so thoroughly filtered that it was difficult to say if was even honey, the analyst told the packer.

Eventually, he declined the bargain prices even though the brokers repeatedly told him they were selling hundreds of other drums from the same shipment to other packers.

Problems Were No Secret

The honey laundering and the alleged fraud listed in the indictments has never been a secret among the U.S.'s largest honey importers and packers. All the major players knew who was buying what and at what price. The bogus, mislabeled or transshipped honey stood out, as if it had red flags waving from the shipping pallets, several in the industry told AOL News.

These experienced honey producers knew that tens of thousands of pounds of honey entering the U.S. each year come from countries that raise few bees and have no record of producing honey for export. Their newsletters, conference reports and honey market analysis laid it out in great detail.

Only as the honey industry learned of the pending indictments did it publicly anguish over the problem.

"We estimate that millions of pounds of Chinese honey continue to enter the U.S. from countries that do not have commercial honey businesses." Jill Clark, president of Dutch Gold Honey of Lancaster, Pa., said at a meeting of honey packers this spring.

Warrants Expected for Defendants Still Outside U.S.
Two of the defendants, Stefanie Giesselbach and Magnus von Buddenbrock, were executives of Alfred L. Wolff Inc., the Chicago-based U.S. affiliate of the German corporation, which is believed to be the world's largest honey importer, Fitzgerald reported.

Four were Chinese or Republic of China nationals (three of whom are also cooperating), who have pleaded guilty to related federal charges -- two of them in federal court in Chicago and two others in Seattle. Nine of the accused live abroad, and authorities said arrest warrants will be issued in the U.S. for those defendants living outside the country.

Fitzgerald and Seattle U.S. attorney Jenny Durkan may be the exceptions when it comes to prosecutors going after these smugglers. Federal investigators on the East Coast and the South interviewed by AOL News lamented that their U.S. attorneys thought the illicit honey smuggling was of little importance and not worth pursuing.

However, at least this investigation was a unique example of everyone playing nicely together.

Winchell said that in addition to HSI, FDA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. attorneys' staffs, ICE attache offices in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Manila worked closely on the investigation. And as one told AOL News, he'd learned more about honey then he ever wanted to know.

Winchell tactfully declined to comment on whether he thought this week's indictments was a wrap-up of the honey laundering or transshipping scams.

However, he said he has a newly created,15-person, full-time team of federal, state and local investigators "closely watching what comes through our ports."

US Honey Makers Take a Swat at Chinese Smugglers

All the more reason to buy locally. 

found on the AOL news site
and reported by

Andrew Schneider Senior Public Health Correspondent

AOL News

(May 6) -- After years of downplaying and even ignoring the problem of illegal and often-tainted foreign honey smuggled onto U.S. grocery shelves and into food products, major North American importers and sellers of the sweet syrup today reversed course, launching a campaign to enlist the public in combating the threat.

"We estimate that millions of pounds of Chinese honey continue to enter the U.S. from countries that do not have commercial honey businesses," said
(May 6) -- After years of downplaying and even ignoring the problem of illegal and often-tainted foreign honey smuggled onto U.S. grocery shelves and into food products, major North American importers and sellers of the sweet syrup today reversed course, launching a campaign to enlist the public in combating the threat.

"We estimate that millions of pounds of Chinese honey continue to enter the U.S. from countries that do not have commercial honey businesses," said Jill Clark, president of Dutch Gold Honey of Lancaster, Pa.

"For example, countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Mongolia raise few bees and have no history of producing honey in commercial quantities, yet have recently exported large amounts of honey to the United States," Clark added in a statement announcing the creation of a website that tells consumers, honey companies, food manufacturers and retailers what actions they can take to help eliminate illegally imported honey.

AFP / Getty Images

A beekeeper harvests honey in Hefei, China, in April. American honey producers are trying stop the flow of illegally imported Chinese honey.

The site, HonestHoney.com, is supported by Dutch Gold, Golden Heritage Foods of Hillsboro, Kan., Burleson's Inc. from Waxahachie, Texas, and Odem International from Rosemere, Quebec, one of North America's largest honey suppliers.

For more than three years, federal investigators have had hit-or-miss successes trying to intercept box-car-sized loads of illegally labeled honey coming into ports on both coasts and along the Gulf of Mexico. More than a dozen arrests have been made of honey launderers, and ongoing investigations are reportedly targeting a number of other major players in the international scam.

Almost all have centered on honey from China intentionally mislabeled as coming from elsewhere to avoid paying stiff import tariffs of up to 500 percent. Honey from that country also attracts scrutiny because it is often contaminated with illegal animal antibiotics.

Those behind the new initiative say the illegal honey sales have cost the U.S. up to $200 million in uncollected import duties in the past two years and threaten the domestic honey business and the future of America's beekeepers.

"When honey is imported illegally, no one can be confident of its true source and quality. Some products are not 100 percent honey and have other quality issues," Clark said.

While many consumers' awareness is limited to the golden liquid in plastic honey bears, in reality most of the honey imported into the U.S. is delivered in 250-gallon or tanker-car-sized loads and ends up as an ingredient in cereals, breads, cookies, crackers, breakfast bars, salad dressings, barbecue sauces, mustards, beverages, ice creams, yogurts and candies. Investigators say that some food processors are prime -- and often willing -- targets for brokers trying to offload lower-cost, bogus honey.

In late April, AOL News reported that the nation's leading honey packers and sellers had gathered for a secret meeting in Chicago to discuss the impact that the smuggling was having on their business. Of the four firms that launched today's public awareness campaign, only Dutch Gold and Golden Heritage were listed as having representatives at the unpublicized roundtable.

And indeed, some of the nation's largest honey packagers and major suppliers have not signed onto the public-education program launched today, indicating that the industry has not coalesced around a solution to the problem. For example, not listed among the participants is Sue Bee, formally known as Sioux Bee Honey, which says it's the country's largest supplier of honey, moving about 40 million pounds each year. The company did not respond to e-mail messages Wednesday night.

Investigations into international honey laundering were first detailed in December 2008 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

New laboratory developments may aid those inquiries going forward. Until recently, only a very busy facility in Germany had the capacity to help the honey trade and criminal investigators verify the true source of the golden nectar. But for the first time, a U.S. lab has succeeded in conducting those tests. Texas A&M University announced last week that Vaughn Bryant, a palynologist and an anthropology professor, is now the only person in the U.S. doing melissopalynology -- the study of pollen in honey that allows identification of its country of origin.

By performing isotopic studies, Bryant says he has examined more than 100 honey samples for importers, exporters, beekeepers and producers with his DNA-based analysis. Many of the samples he analyzed contained labels from other countries when in fact they originated in China but were re-routed to avoid tariffs, the professor said.

Some foreign exporters get around the tariff by mixing honey from different sources; others infuse up to 50 percent high fructose corn syrup into the honey.

And even as U.S. authorities have gained a new investigative tool, it's becoming common now for smugglers to use a process called ultra-filtration that removes the pollen and makes it almost impossible for any laboratory to determine its origin.

"The beekeepers of the U.S. have been pleading with the Food and Drug Administration to enact stricter guidelines about accurate labeling for honey, but that is a long, slow process,'' Bryant said. "Meanwhile, I'm trying to help out here and there, but it's almost impossible to keep up."

The Human Bee Hive

This 'Bee Suit' Suits Him Fine; Norman Gary Billed as 'Human Bee Hive'
Sept. 14, 2010

Emeritus professor Norman Gary wearing 75,000 pounds of bees. (Photos by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

DAVIS--When honey bee expert Norman Gary “suits up,” don’t expect a standard-issued bee suit.
It’s not an “ordinary” bee suit. And what he does is not “ordinary.”
Norman Gary, a retired University of California, Davis entomology professor, wears his bees—thousands of them.
And that suits him just fine. To him, bees are not only a science (study of apiculture), but an adventure.
Gary, 76, who retired in 1994 from UC Davis after a 32-year academic career, will appear Thursday, Sept. 16 on a History Channel show wearing 75,000 bees. The show, part of Stan Lee’s “Super Humans,” is scheduled to be broadcast at 10 p.m., Pacific Time (Channel 64 for local Comcast viewers).
Host-presenter Daniel Browning Smith has billed him as “the human bee hive” and will explore bee behavior and the science behind the bees.

A crew from England filmed Gary in mid-May at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, at Rick Schubert’s Bee Happy Apiaries in Vacaville-Winters and then in a UC Davis open field where the 75,000 bees clustered his entire body.
“That’s about 20 pounds, depending upon how much honey or sugar syrup they have consumed,” Gary said.  “A hungry bee weighs approximately 90 mg and within a minute of active ingestion she can increase her weight to 150 mgs!”
Norman Gary knows bees. And he knows their behavior.
As a beekeeper, he’s kept bees for 62 years and as a researcher, he’s studied them for more than three decades. He’s published more 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and four book chapters.

Norm Gary before the cluster stunt. Click to enlarge.

But he is also a bee wrangler. He trains bees to perform action scenes in movies, television shows and commercials. His credits over the last 35 years include 18 films, including “Fried Green Tomatoes”; more than 70 television shows, including the Johnny Carson and Jay Leno shows; six commercials, and hundreds of live Thriller Bee Shows in the Western states.
Gary estimates he has performed the bee cluster stunt at least 500 times over the past 35 years. He remembers 54 performances at the California State Fair alone.
The History Channel episode may be his last professionally staged bee-cluster stunt, he said. However, he will continue to serve as a bee consultant to video producers and has just written a beginning beekeeping book, “The Honey Bee Hobbyist,” to be published in early December by Bow Tie Press.
“Bees are trainable, if you ask them to perform behaviors that are in their natural behavioral repertoire,” Gary said.
For the shoot, Gary borrowed New World Carniolan bees from Schubert, whose bee stock originated with bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of the Laidlaw facility.  “Bees are not inclined to sting if they are well fed—happy and content—and are ‘under the influence’ of powerful synthetic queen bee odors—pheromones—which tend to pacify them,” Gary said.

Norman Gary attracting bees. Click to enlarge.

Bees are attracted to pheromones and cluster on drops of pheromones he places on himself.  While at UC Davis, he formulated a pheromone solution that is very effective in controlling bee behavior.
“Bees wrangled by this procedure have no inclination to sting,” he said.  “Stinging behavior occurs naturally near the hive in defense of the entire colony not for the individual bee, because it dies within hours after stinging.  Using this approach I have has as many as a million bees clustered on six people simultaneously “
Gary once trained bees to fly into his mouth to collect food from a small sponge saturated with his patented artificial nectar.  He holds the Guinness World record (109 bees inside his closed mouth for 10 seconds) for the stunt. 
“Most people fear bees,” Gary acknowledged. “They think bees ‘want’ to sting them. Wrong!  They sting only when the nest or colony is attacked or disturbed or when they are trapped in a physical situation where they are crushed.”

Norman Gary, the bee man and the musician. Click to enlarge.

Sometimes, with the heavy weight of the bees on his body, he’ll receive one or two stings per cluster stunt. Sometimes none.
Gary, who began hobby beekeeping at age 15 in Florida, went on to earn a doctorate in apiculture at Cornell University in 1959. During his career, he has worn many hats, including hobby beekeeper, commercial beekeeper, deputy apiary inspector in New York, honey bee research scientist and entomology professor, and adult beekeeping education teacher, and author.
Known internationally for his bee research, Gary was the first to document reproductive behavior of honey bees on film and the first to discover queen bee sex attractant pheromones. He invented a magnetic retrieval capture/recapture system for studying the foraging activities of bees, documenting the distribution and flight range in the field. His other studies revolved around honey bee pollination of agricultural crops, stinging and defensive behavior, and the effects of pesticides on foraging activities, among dozens of others.
Today his life centers around music and bees. He has played music professionally for more than 50 years and for nine years has led a Dixieland band, appropriately known as the Beez Kneez Jazz Band, recording two CDs.  He has performed more than 30 years in the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, the world’s largest jazz festival.
His instruments include the “B-flat clarinet,” which he plays when he’s covered with bees.
“I’m still very active in bees and music,” Gary said. “It’s a good life.”

from the UC Davis Department of Entomology website

Discovered: Unique bee nests made out of petals

VIA   WIRED

By George Barrow |19 May 2010 |Categories: Wired Science

It's not uncommon for people to fill their homes with flowers to liven up the place, but how about having your house made from them?
Researchers working in Turkey recently discovered a species of bee that builds its nest from flower petals, creating multicoloured homes for their larvae to grow in.

The rare Osmia avoseta bee is one of an estimated 20,000 types of bee, but defies the typical bee image of living in vast numbers in communal hives by fending for themselves and creating single nests for each of their offspring.
Around 75 percent of the world's bee species are solitary. However, the Osmia avoseta is unusual as it creates a triple layered nest to regulate the humidity of its larvae.
The female bees spend up to two days creating the intricate nests by chewing off individual petals and carrying them back to a small burrow in the ground that will help form the shape of the nest. She uses nectar to glue the petals together, and lines the cocoon with mud before adding a final internal layer of petals to protect just one larvae.
A small amount of nutrient -- consisting of nectar and pollen -- is then added to the tiny nest before she lays her egg and seals the nest by folding in the petals and applying more mud. Each bee will build as many as ten nests -- often in close proximity to each other -- measuring less than 1.5 centimetres in length.

It is believed the eggs hatch within three to four days, but it is not know if they remain as larvae throughout the winter before emerging from their petal palace in the spring.
A team from the American Museum of Natural History and another team working in the Fars Province of Iran -- who made the same discovery on the same day -- have published the discovery of the Osmia avoseta bee in the American Museum Novitates.
 

Photo Credit: J. G. Rozen

|

Online Editor: Nate Lanxon

harvesting honey

We had many frames of capped honey from the contaminated hive that needed to be extracted manually. If extracted in a machine we run the risk of spreading the bacterial spores to clean frames.  I am not sure how other people do this but I took a metal spatula and scraped the comb off the wax foundation and plopped it into a large glass jar and set it out in the sun to melt. 

After two days in the sun I poured it through the strainers and into a plastic bucket with a spout attached for easy bottling.  It took about an hour to drain through the three layers of mesh strainers and the paint straining sock.  It looked like about a gallon of honey.  The wax comb got tossed into the compost and covered with straw.  The mouse that lives in the bin will be pretty excited about its sweet windfall. 

I stuck a spoon into the bucket and pulled out a spoonful of honey and noticed that it had a weird rubbery gelatinous texture.  It did not flow like honey but sort of stretched like thin jello.  It tasted fine but the texture was gross.  Not sure what is the matter with it but I do not want to give it to anyone as a gift, that is for sure.  It could be that the honey has less water in it than usual.  The bees dehydrate the nectar until it is the correct ratio of water and sugar.  Maybe this batch somehow was dehydrated too much.  I am thinking about taking a little of it and adding water to see if I can get it to the right consistency.   If that works then I will add water to the rest and have about a gallon of usable honey.  Or I can give it to my friend, Bill, who makes honey mead.  The consistency will not matter to him.  I have another batch sitting in the sun today from another box and hope it does not have the same problem.

surprise in the second hive

pollen

The second hive also seemed to be doing well this spring.  This is the hive I saw queen supercedure cells in a few weeks ago and was kicking myself for not doing something about them at the time.  We opened the top box and saw that there was not much activity.  I had thrown the box on to give them more space in case they were considering swarming.  Peter S. wanted to have a look at one of the frames and since there were hardly any bees in the top box I just grabbed a random frame and yanked it out so he could get at the others easily.  Normally, one gently removes the second frame in and sets it aside to make space to work and then each frame is gingerly removed so as not to roll or squash any bees...especially the queen.  He took a look at the one I pulled and noted that the comb was not fully drawn yet.  Then he sort of gave a yell and shouted "Here she is!  The queen!  She's on this frame!"

My heart lurched.  I could have squashed or injured the queen with my carelessness.  The chance of her being on that frame was so small I did not even consider it a risk.  But from now on I will assume she could be anywhere in the hive and to act like she might be on any frame I pull out.

I got some good pictures of her wandering around while Peter S. held the frame in the sunlight for me.  She is dead center in the picture below.  Notice how she is elongated and the color of polished wood rather than golden and striped like the worker bees. 

 The Queen!

We set her aside in an empty hive box out of the way from harm and continued our inspection.  In particular, I wanted to see those supercedure cells in case they had hatched.  The brood pattern was healthy.  There were a few drones (male bees) wandering around but I did not get a picture of them. 

About halfway through the hive we spotted the queen cells and had Peter S. look at them to tell us if they were new or already hatched.  He could not tell but had us look inside to note that there was no egg or larvae at the bottom surrounded by royal jelly so most likely they were old.   A beekeeper can predict the behavior of the hive by noting where the queen cells are located.  If they are hanging off the bottom of the frame they are swarm cells and the hive is preparing to fly the coop, taking your workforce and honey producers along with it.  The beekeeper can scrape those swarm cells off in an attempt to discourage the bees from swarming. 

If the cells are more in the center of the frame like these are, the hive is making a new queen for itself to succeed the current queen who may be laying poorly, injured or dead.  It is best to leave those cells alone.  Or, if you see plenty of eggs and larvae and a laying queen you can take that frame out of the colony and place it in a new empty box along with some frames of brood and nurse bees to make a brand new colony.  That is what we were hoping to do with this colony but since the queen cells were not in use we decided to just leave the hive alone. 

Queen supercedure cells

We had the entire colony cracked open and spread out all over the bee yard.  Each of us had a frame of bees in our hands.  I was sorting through some boxes to find extra deep frames when Peter S. again yelled out that we had a problem.  He gathered us around and showed us a cracked brood cell and that is when I smelled it.  Foulbrood.  It smells rotten, like really old dirty laundry, or rotting bugs and fermented honey.  I thought I had smelled it earlier when we were sorting through some of the frames filled with honey but I just thought it was something on my gloves or some other funk.  I should have spoken up. 

Then all hell broke loose.  We had stuff strewn all over the yard and now we realized that we had no way of knowing for sure if it came out of the sick hive or was leftover from working with the healthy hive.  The reason we needed to know is that all frames in the sick hive had to be destroyed and all the boxes needed to be scorched.  We had just made a lot of work for ourselves.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle while we threw out ideas for how to fix this problem.  In the end we decided to shake all the bees into a new empty box of frames with new wax foundation and have them start over from scratch.  We put down one deep with empty frames and one super with drawn comb so the queen would have somewhere to begin laying as soon as the workers cleaned out the comb.

The first shake rained a shower of contaminated nectar into the new boxes.  So then we had to shake out the nectar onto the ground and then the bees into the hive.  It was heartbreaking to see all the beautiful comb and brood and nectar go into the big black trash bags.  All that work just thrown away.   I ran in the house to get the antibiotic, Terramyacin, and mixed it with powdered sugar to treat the hive. 

 powdered antibiotic on the ends of each frame

After everything was put back together Charley collected all the hive tools so he could sanitize them.  I went back and boiled up some 1:1 sugar syrup, waited for it to cool and poured it into a ziplock bag.  I put one ziplock bag into each hive and poked holes in it so they could get to the sugar water.  Feeding them this sugar water will give them the energy to build out all the new comb they will need to build up their population again.

Splitting the Superstar Hive

Peter H. and Charley wait for Peter S. to get done with his phone call.  

Tuesday we headed out to the beeyard to split the big superstar colony,  hopefully preventing it from swarming this spring. The idea is that the beekeeper interrupts the bees' process of preparing for a swarm by dividing it in half and refocusing the bees on to building comb and building up their population. When a colony swarms, a totally natural springtime event that propagates the bee species, the end result is two colonies. A swarm is a beautiful sight to behold. It sounds like a freight train steaming through your yard and to see 20,000 golden buzzing insects in flight is breathtaking. The problem with swarming for the beekeeper is that you might not be there to catch the swarm and place it in a new hive box, plus the colony that stays behind will not produce much honey that year. For urban beekeepers, the bigger problem is freaking out your neighbors when 20,000 bees move into their attic or garage en masse. Managing the colonies to prevent swarming is the most responsible thing to do in an urban setting, it is beneficial to the beekeeper because you keep both colonies in your beeyard and perhaps beneficial to the bees...since they have expanded to two colonies without the effort of building up a swarm and do not have to look around for a new home.

My beekeeper friend, Peter S., came over to lend his experience and my co-beekeepers, Peter H. and Charley were also on hand for the excitement and to lend their brute strength (full hive boxes are heavy). I planned on standing back and taking lots of photos. 

We started by opening up the hive and having a look at what they were up to on this fine spring morning. The hive was bubbling over with bees and they contentedly worked away as we lifted frame after frame and inspected them for a healthy brood pattern, the queen and any possible problems. 

Peter H. and Charley look for the queen.

Peter H.  hoping for his first glimpse of an egg.

We looked and looked but could not locate the queen. She was in there, because we saw many freshly laid eggs. This queen has a very healthy laying pattern.  We saw a lot of capped and uncapped brood.  I was able to see some eggs and larvae in various stages of development. 

frame of uncapped larvae and eggs.  The queen is probably on this frame or one nearby.

uncapped larvae

freshly laid eggs and a larger larvae

Since this hive was so healthy and active we decided it was a good candidate for a split.  It was a little annoying  that we could not find the queen and set her aside during the split, but even if we could not find her we knew she would end up in one or the other boxes.  It is just better to keep her out of the way so nothing bad happens to her while moving all the frames and boxes around.  

I had set up an empty hive box at the end of the beeyard a few days before just in case they swarmed and happened to find the box inviting.  We took a frame with eggs and uncapped larvae and moved it into the middle of the empty box.  Then we found another frame of mostly capped larvae and nurse bees and moved that one into the new box next. One either end of the box we placed a full frame of capped honey.  Then just in from that a frame of pollen. I scrounged up 4 frames of empty drawn comb and we filled up the rest of the ten frame box with those so the queen would have someplace to lay her eggs. 

The bees were getting a little irritable so we quickly closed the new hive up and went back to what was left of the original hive and filled in the empty spaces with new frames of wax foundation so they could get going on drawing out new comb.  I had set a deep box on the hive the week before to give them space and maybe keep them from swarming until we could get out there and give them a proper inspection.  That was not really a smart move because now the bees were putting capped honey in the deep frames which means we would have to extract a really heavy box of honey later on.  But it was already started so we found some other half filled frames of honey and stuck them in the deep with a queen excluder separating the brood nest from the honey, hoping that they would fill those frames up in the next week or so and then we could extract them and use them in the brood chamber once they were empty of honey. 

The split of the superstar hive went very smoothly.  The two new hives seemed to be set up pretty well for spring. One of them contains an already laying queen and the other enough eggs and nurse bees so that they can create a new queen by feeding a few of the eggs royal jelly.  Hopefully, if we keep up on them and give them all the space the queens need to lay eggs, we may have acted early enough to prevent any swarms this season.  Of course, the bees do what they want, so they may decide to swarm later anyway. 

Tomorrow I will write more about what we found when we opened the second hive.

Queen of the Sun

"Taggart Siegel, the director of "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" embarks on a pilgrimage across continents and centuries in his new upcoming film Queen of The Sun. Queen highlights unsung heroes who are dedicated to the survival of bees: from poets and philosophers to scientists and shamans, from political activists to biodynamic beekeepers. Across the globe Queen exposes the long-term effects of modern agriculture, and the industrial practices of beekeeping while sharing the mystery of the honeybee..."

I saw The Real Dirt on Farmer John in a tiny theater in the Marina District that seated about 20 people.  It was so tiny but came complete with red velvety floor to ceiling curtains and plush cushiony chairs.  I was the only one at the screening.  Too bad because it is a great film.  You can see it on netflix and I think it is worth it.  so  I am excited the director is making this film about bees. 
link to their site here
and then see some photos on their flickr site here

Swarm Class

I spent the most beautiful day we have had all year in the basement of a museum taking a class on controlling swarms and making splits out of healthy hives.  All I could think about was that if I was a bee colony, this would be the day I would swarm.  And my beekeeper would be out of commission till 4 so I could probably make a clean getaway.

The class was long and a little scattered but the teacher packed a lot of information into the day, Unfortunately, only about a fourth of the alotted time was spent discussing swarms and swarm control.  The rest was random Q&A about diseases, hive set up and bee behavior.  My advice to teachers...do not let the students run the class with endless questions.  Give your presentation, take questions at the end of each section of info, and do not do the hour and a half every one in the room introduce yourself to the class segment if there are 50 people and we only have 5 hours.   Boring.  And a waste of precious time.

I learned some cool equipment tricks, like cutting out tines from the ends of the queen excluder  so that the field bees are encouraged to head right up into the honey supers with their cargo.  You want to keep the queen out of the honey supers because the last thing you want is larvae in your honey.  ick.  She is too big to fit between the tines of the excluder but the worker bees fit just fine.  or so I thought.  But it seems that when the bees are full of honey in their bellies they do not fit so well between the tines and it is uncomfortable for them and it slows them down.  Sometimes it even discourages them and they drop off their honey below in the brood box.  So if you cut out a few wider spaces they will move up and down through the excluder much faster.  The field bees come in the front entrance and walk right up the inner wall of the hive to the top of the boxes.  The queen stays mostly in the middle of the box, so even though she can fit through the newly made openings in the excluder she probably won't even go over that far in the box to notice there is a new passageway. 

I also learned that in the olden days beekeepers would find the queen and PUT HER IN THEIR MOUTH!  to keep track of her while they inspected the hive.  She has a hard time using her stinger when she is full of eggs so the beekeeper is not likely to be stung.  Now there is a special clip that you can catch her in and it holds her gently until you release her back into the hive.

Tuesday I will be making a split out of one of the hives.  It had some swarm cells in it the last time I inspected the hive and I do not want it to fly away into the blue sky.  My beekeeper friend, Peter, is coming over in the morning to help me go through the hives so I will put up some photos of that whole process.

Recording of Swarm Signals

A beekeeper emailed me this link from BBC Earth News site of a video recording of the piping sound scout bees make when signaling the colony to begin the swarm.

"During the reproductive season, large honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies synchronise an explosive departure of most of their workers and the queen.  This causes a swarm as the honeybees travel to form a new colony in a new location.  The sudden departure of bees has been known about for centuries and bee keepers have even found ways to avoid it happening and avoid loosing valuable bees.
But scientists have only recently begun to understand how the bees coordinate their departure and mass exodus...
read more and watch the video after the jump

Point of View

Insects have their own point of view about civilization 
A man thinks he amounts to a great deal 
But to a flea or a mosquito
A human being is merely  something good to eat
Don Marquis Archy and Mehitabel (1927)

Practical Farmer

Not sure where this comes from. A beekeeper I know sends these tidbits out on the San Francisco Beekeepers' list serve and I like to post them here for all to enjoy.

Mail - February 19, 1875, Hagerstown, Maryland

Why Do Bees Swarm ? -The question is
often asked why do bees swarm?
We answer, simply because they were so
created. Like the animal and insect world
to multiply and increase their species, which
is just as natural when conditions are favor
able as "the sparks to fly upwards;" but one
tells us "they only swarm when they are
forced to it." This is contrary to the law of
nature. From the beginning of time bees
have bees known to swarm, and strange to
any their flight has been towards the "setting
sun"—yes, even in advance of civilization
they have reached the "far West," Bee
will swarm when the conditions are favorable, 
even when their domicile is not on
fourth filled.—Practical Farmer.

Cleaning Moldy Frames

Today I grabbed all the moldy fuzzy frames and hosed them out. Underneath the mold were beautiful swirls of pollen.  Another beekeeper told me that as long as the bees are not overwhelmed by the mold they can usually handle cleaning it out themselves.  He said they even have been know to eat the mold and blend it into their bee bread.  These frames were pretty fuzzy, so I figured I would give them the upper hand and hose some of it out for them. 

I knew it was going to rain the next day so I stacked all the frames up on my sweet pea tower to hopefully dry out before the rain.  The bees found them right away and started cleaning out the cells and carrying back the good stuff they could salvage back to their hives.

More on the Honey Guides

Honeyguides

"It has been reported that the ratel’s inclination for honey has resulted in a mutualistic relationship with sub-Saharan African birds called greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator). Honeyguides derive their name from a well-supported mutualistic relationship with humans where the bird actually guides humans to bee hives, using calls to recruit humans before guiding them to a known hive on their territory. The Bushmen that tend to cooperate with honeyguides incapacitate bees using smoke. The birds, along with eating larva, honey, and wax from the hives are often offered honey as a “thank you” by the Bushmen. While the relationship between humans and honeyguides is well documented and studied, many scientists argue that the relationship between honeyguides and badgers is not mutualistic and may be seen as an association due to honeyguides taking advantage of the opened hive. Regardless, the birds find it difficult to near impossible to access honeybee hives without the assistance of something like a large mammal (human or badger)." more from Scientific-Illustration

Got em

Lots of mites.  Every little red dot in this photo is a dead mite.  The golden specks are wax and pollen that has fallen through the screen.  There must have been 30 or so on each board.  Not great.  That is a lot of mites.  I'll shower them with more powdered sugar next week and see if I knocked the population back.

Powdered Sugar

The bees have varroa mites and one way to get rid of them is to sprinkle powdered sugar on them.  The mites slip off the wood and off the bees into the sticky board below.  It is suggested to use Vaseline, but that is a petroleum product and I want nothing to do with that.  I used it once and it was so nasty to clean up I decided I would look for something more natural that I could compost.  It was funny to send my friend on an errand into the Castro Walgreens to buy a giant sized tub of Vaseline, though.  This time I bought a giant tub of soy margarine from the health food store.  It is enormous and it made me wonder what on earth you would do with this much margarine if you did not have bees to take care of.  

The bottom board of the hive is a wooden frame with a screen on the bottom and a landing strip out front.  This allows for air circulation and to keep pests out of the hive and to allow condensation to leave the hive.  The hive boxes sit on top of that.  The one I have has a slot in it to slide the sticky board, thin white plastic rectangle, into the bottom board.  So I buttered up the sticky boards and slid them into the hive bottom boards of both hives.  Each sticky board has a little plastic loop so you can pull it back out again without having to use pliers. 

Then I took a sifter and showered about 1 cup of powdered sugar over the hive. 

The bees were a little startled but right away began grooming the powdered sugar off each other.  This is one of the ways they can knock the mites off each other.  I closed up the hives and let the bees take care of their new snowfall.  In 24 hours I will remove the sticky boards and see what I have caught. 

Honey Badger

I found a cool site called Scientific-Illustration while looking for some honey bee images. I have heard of these creatures but never saw pictures of them.

"The honey badger, consistent with its name, is known to raid honeybee hives. Not only is the badger after honey, but it also feeds on the honeybee larva. Naturally, the bees aren’t too pleased about the badger’s invasion, but have few options, with the badger being mostly resistant to their stings. While not immune to the stings, the badger’s thick skin and coarse, bristly hair offer protection from bee stings...read more here after the jump...

But be sure to come back and check out these amazing videos. It is interesting to see the difference in the tone we take now as compared to the 70's in nature shows. No more cute sound effects of bees stinging the nose. Now it is all about murderous and violent thugs in nature. I'd like to go back to the innocent "good old days".

Bees in Pakistan

Muhammad Khabbab, a visitor to Mr. E's Mysterious Bees via Kristin's blog, The Urban Field Guide,   is documenting his container garden in Lahore, Pakistan in his blog, Garden Geek .  I am amazed by the number of pollinators he has been able to photograph in his own garden over the year or so he has been blogging.  It makes me realize how few native pollinators we have in the city of San Francisco by comparison.

The bee in the top photo may actually be a fly that has evolved stripes to mimic those of the bee.  If a predator thinks you might sting its tongue, it thinks twice before trying to eat you.  I love the vertical stripes in the center segment and the horizontal stripes on the thorax.  It's a good look.

From the photos of all the flowers Muhammad is growing I thought that Lahore must be in a hot, humid tropical region.  I was right about the hot part,  Lahore is in a semi-arid region with long hot summers, as in well over a hundred degrees,  a monsoon season and then dry mild winters.   It is the capital of the Punjab province, with a population of 10 million, making it the second largest city in Pakistan and the 5th largest city in South Asia, 26th largest in the world.  It is known as the City of Gardens, which may explain, along with the climate, why so many insects flourish in such an urban area with a high human population.   When you see a container garden in a large urban city like Lahore covered with butterflies, moths, bees and flies, it makes you wonder how here in San Francisco, a city of a mere 800,000,  can emulate it and bring back some of the natural diversity to our own city.

This bee resembles the queen in a honeybee colony with its elongated body.  

But the queen is not usually out working on the flowers.  So this is some kind of native bee.  

This bee is possibly a carpenter bee.