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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril

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  • From: "Hans B Wendel (S)" <Hans.Wendel@ColoradoCollege.edu>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril
  • Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 17:49:01 -0700

take me off the mailng list please.


-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Eugene Monaco
Sent: Fri 3/2/2007 4:18 PM
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [permaculture] Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril

My daughter and I live on the same block. Last Spring we bought 2
packages
w/ queens from Rossman in S. Georgia. I already had one colony of
Carniolans that wintered over from last winter but they were weak. I had
fed them during the fall a syrup I made from organic cane sugar I got at
our
food coop, and they put a lot of it up as extra food. I didn't take any
honey off that year. I had also medicated them with Menthol and Apistan
on
the advice of the local beekeepers who swore I would lose them otherwise.
When spring came they seemed to be doing alright but the cluster was
small.
I figured they would pick up as the weather warmed and the spring flow got
underway.
I introduced Rossman's Italians into a new hive about 30' away. My
daughter
took the other colony down the street. A month or 2 later, somewhere in
early June, the queen from the 1st hive (Carniolan) was suddenly gone, but
the workers were still bringing in nectar and pollen; there just wasn't
any
brood. This had happened the year before when I had lost 2 hives, and I
knew that if I didn't get a new queen fast, the hive would die. I called
around to try to find a nuc (that's a queen with a half-hive of bees); but
it was too late in the season.
By this time my new Italian hive had a laying queen and brood, but it
wasn't
as robust as I had hoped for. I went ahead and took a frame of uncapped
brood from the Italian hive and put it in the Carniolan hive. Within 15
days the Carniolan workers had made a new queen from the fresh brood (they
pick one hatched egg that's 3 days old and feed it Royal Jelly, and then
the
cap it.) Now that Carniolan hive with a mix of Italians is doing well
(more
in a minute).
My daughter's hive in the meantime died out; the symptoms were very much
like the CCD I'm hearing about, but I don't think that is what it was. I
have heard that the CCD thing is hitting more the keepers that move their
bees around and pollinate the non-organic farms. Ours just eat from the
trees and gardens in the neighborhood, mostly trees.
My Italian hive was never doing so well; the cluster always remained
small.
Eventually, in November it gave up the ghost. I never saw any evidence of
mites, and although they did seem to just one day disappear, the colony
was
weak and small, they hadn't put up much honey, and I didn't think they
would
make it through the winter. For a while I thought that since they came
from
Florida, perhaps they were too dumb to put up enough honey to get through
the winter here, not realizing that it would get cold. I was going to
feed
them in late November to help them get through the winter, but they were
gone. They just never had any real life force; plus we had a summer
drought
and that no doubt took its toll. I thought that perhaps they joined
forces
with the neighboring colony, abandoning their colony and combined their
energy with the others to get through the winter. Kind of like what might
happen if the energy bills get too high, people might move in together
instead of everybody trying to heat their own house. This is all gut
speculation because I didn't watch them closely enough to see physical
evidence of what they were doing.
I also think they were weak queens, bad genetics. And I also think that
since everybody is convinced that the mites will get the bees if they are
not medicated, we have bred disease-resistant mites, and bees with
piss-poor
immune systems, like AIDS for bees: if the mites don't get them, something
else will. Kind of like humans that take antibiotics all the time, have
weak immune systems. I vowed to find a way to breed bees with strong
immune
systems. There are essential oil formulas on the market that work under
that principle. I figure that if they can gut it out through a season,
they
will be better off.
I also have heard stories from the old timers that if you can find a wild
colony, they will be the strongest and will make the best honey. This is
probably because they have adapted to local conditions better than the
genetically-engineered queens. I don't know if I will ever find a wild
colony, and if I did, I'd be inclined to leave it alone. Anyway, I did
not
feed my bees this past fall, and I did not take any honey off the hive,
and
I did not medicate them with anything. This approach is criticized by the
local PhD apiculturist at UT (the Real UT, big orange, the Vols who went
to
Texas and bailed out the Texans at the Alamo) as being what he calls a bee
"haver" as opposed to a bee keeper. But I think they are bee meddlers or
bee fuckers and are so far off the trail that it's almost hopeless to
follow
their advice. So far my bees have survived the winter and are out every
warm day foraging on the maples. I'm hoping that they will remain strong.
I haven't opened the hive in a while because I don't want to create chill
brood. But I can tell from the buzz that they are alive and well.
If this was just a random shot-in-the dark approach, I could be described
as
a fool, and maybe so far just a lucky fool. But what I've learned most
recently is that one needs to communicate with the Keepers of the bees (as
in Spirit Keepers), and get ones' advice from them. Easier said than
done.



Gene Monaco
Knoxville, TN

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