My trusty smoker that I purchased on Amazon years ago had been giving me problems lately, not staying lit. I cleaned it. Still no luck. Then I took a closer look inside. Lo and behold, the all-important metal disk I call an aerator because it sits slightly above the bottom of the smoker, allowing air flow under the fuel, was missing. I bet one time when I was throwing away the spent burned-up fuel ashes from the smoker, I turned it upside down over the ash bin and didn’t notice that the metal disk went out along with the debris. Ooops!
I checked online to see if I could purchase just a replacement aerator because otherwise the smoker was in fine shape, and should have been good for many more years of use. Unfortunately, my only buying options were to buy a whole new smoker.
If this happens to your smoker, know that there’s an easy, inexpensive DIY solution. Just cut off the bottom of an aluminum can, about an inch from the top. Then cut down from the edge where you cut off the rest of the can (being very careful – wear gloves – because the edge will be sharp) down to the bottom about 1/2 inch apart, all the way around. Next, bend these small sections up so that the new aerator sits up off the bottom of the smoker on these bent-up supports. Lastly, poke holes in the bottom of the can for air flow. Voila! A do-it-yourself aerator to extend the life of your smoker.
I’m watching helplessly as still-alive bees push hundreds of dead or dying bees out of the hive. By the telltale protruding tongue, it’s clear that these bees were poisoned. The poison no doubt was a pesticide or chemical some neighbor sprayed on their landscape.
Our response to the poisoning was to help the hive by adding a feeder and sugar syrup to give the remaining bees more nutritional support (and save their energy for cleaning up the hive and making more brood over sending bees out to bring in pollen or nectar); sweep away dead bees from the entrance as soon as the bees bring them out of the hive (so they don’t have to expend extra energy to then drag them to the edge of the landing board and over the side); and go into the hive and sweep out as many dead bees from the bottom of the hive as we can.
Bees are amazingly resilient! A day or two after the poisoning and initial die-off, the hive is thriving again. There are no further dead bees and although the number of bees seems to be very strong. What looked upsetting when I first saw dead bees did not significantly weaken the hive. Fortunately, it’s early spring and there is a lot of food in the blooming flowers and trees. The hive seems no worse for the die-off. I will keep a close eye on the hive, but I feel fairly confident that it will make it. I’ll report more if anything changes.
Thanks to Aubrey and colleagues at https://mountainsweethoney.com/ in Georgia for shipping us a new package of bees. In this time of COVID19 coronavirus, the thought of having another hive is comforting, knowing if all else fails with obtaining food, we can try to live off our garden and honeybees.
installing the hive
In the photo above, I had just installed the queen in her cage between the two frames that are slightly spaced apart. I then shook out as many of the bees from the shipping container as I could and they are on top of the frames.
This shows the hive from the front. The shipping container is on top to let the bees gravitate to the hive frames where the queen now resides.
In the front of the hive, you can see the feeder, already full of 1/1 sugar/water syrup which I’ll continue to support them with until they’ve filled out most of the frames in the brood box.
I don’t have a proper entrance reducer and because of the coronavirus can’t get one, so I’ve improvised with heavy wood blocks. After this phot0 was taken, I added some greenery in the front to further reduce the entrance because front feeders like this can attract robbing bees, and I don’t want this new, young, small hive to have more than a very small opening to defend.
Happy new home, bees! I hope you thrive and are very happy here.
AUSTIN, Texas — Honeybee populations have sharply declined around the world in recent years, confounding scientists and posing a grave threat to agriculture.
Now, University of Texas researchers may have discovered a way to reverse the trend.
Writing in the new issue of the journal Science, the team wrote that it had genetically engineered strains of bacteria that live in honeybee guts; there, they pump out medicines that protect the bees from Varroa mites and deformed wing virus — two chief culprits of colony collapse, a phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear.
The findings have “direct implications for bee health,” said Nancy Moran, a professor of integrative biology and the primary investigator on the study.
The stakes are high. Bees are a key player in the food chain. During a single day, a female bee may visit several hundred flowers, depositing pollen along the way; roughly a third of our food chain is the result of pollination. Austin alone has about 180 species of bees.
According to the American Beekeeping Federation, honeybees contribute nearly $20 billion each year to the value of U.S. crop production, and they play an enormous role in global food production. The California almond industry, for example, requires approximately 1.8 million colonies of honeybees to pollinate nearly one million acres of orchards.
But bee colonies have been beset by disease and die-offs. According to a national survey, beekeepers lost nearly 40% of their honeybee colonies during the 2018-19 winter, the highest rate reported since the survey began 13 years ago.
One of the suspects is the Varroa mite, a parasite spread in recent decades from East Asia to the U.S.
The mite is “considered the biggest problem in beekeeping today,” said Mary Reed, chief apiary inspector of the Texas Apiary Inspection Service, an arm of Texas A&M University, “The reason is that they can vector viruses. If we didn’t have honeybee viruses, the Varroa mite would just be considered a nuisance. If mite levels get too high, they can weaken the immune system of a single bee and of a whole colony.”
After feeding on a honey bee host, the adult female mite reproduces by crawling off her host into a cell with a bee larva. Offspring then alternate between feeding on the larva and defecating on the side of the cell. While the mites do not kill adult honeybees, they can weaken and shorten individuals’ lifespans and ultimately will kill the colony by outcompeting their host. And the mites are vectors of numerous viruses including deformed wing virus.
While the background causes of particular instances of colony collapse disorder remain “a contentious issue under investigation,” said Sean Leonard, a graduate student and lead author of the study, “mites are an increasingly severe problem” over the past couple of decades that are contributing to high bee mortality rates.
The UT team _ which involved at least eight other professors and students _ engineered one strain of bacteria to target the virus and another for the mites.
Engineering the bacteria to “knock down” genetic targets in bee bodies, Moran said, the researchers found that compared with control bees, the bees treated with the strain of bacteria targeting the virus were 36.5% more likely to survive to day 10. Meanwhile, Varroa mites feeding on another set of bees treated with the mite-targeting strain of bacteria were about 70% more likely to die by day 10 than mites feeding on control bees.
“This is the first time anyone has improved the health of bees by genetically engineering their microbiome,” Leonard said.
The team introduced modified bacteria to hundreds of bees in a laboratory setting. Sprayed with a sugar water solution containing the bacteria, the bees groomed one another and ingested the solution. The team found inoculating young worker bees with the engineered bacteria led the bees’ immune systems to be primed to protect them against deformed wing virus _ essentially acting as a vaccine _ and caused the mites’ own immune systems to fight against and ultimately kill them.
Writing an accompanying commentary in Science, Robert J. Paxton, a zoologist with the Institute for Biology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, writes that the approach is “effective, long-term, potentially cheap, and easy to apply.”
The approach could “provide a solution to many of the honey bee’s woes” and provide a way “to dissect the molecular intricacies of honey bees and their societies,” Paxton said.
But there remain major hurdles to any widespread rollout of the bacteria as a vaccinelike solution.
Leonard said it remains an open question how the genetically engineered bacteria will perform in an actual hive, where social behavior among the bees could differ from inside the lab. “How they’ll perform in an actual hive we don’t know: it might be better or worse,” he said.
And because the bacteria are genetically modified, any manufacturer or distributor of the bacteria will first have to pass through regulatory hoops, Moran said.
“These species of bacteria occur only in honey bees,” said Moran. “They are not going to jump into butterflies or other insects or anything else. They’re very restricted. They aren’t going to invade the environment in some way that concerns people.”
The type of bacteria used are highly specialized to live in the bee gut, can’t survive for long outside of it and are protective for a virus that strikes only bees. Still, further research will be needed to determine the effectiveness and safety of the treatments in agricultural settings.
News about research like this is “always good to hear,” said Charles Reburn, co-owner of Bee Friendly Austin, which operates in Southwest Austin and sells bee hives, wax and honey.
Having worked with Texas A&M University researchers, “I know what it takes from initial study to getting something marketed,” he said. “It takes a lot to get out of the lab and into the field. If it comes to testing, sign me up.”
A Varroa mite, a common pest that can weaken bees and make them more susceptible to pathogens, feeds on a honeybee. University of Texas Please g0 to Austin American-Statesman (Texas) at www.statesman.com to subscribe and for more information about this study and article.
Reprinted from Austin American-Statesman, Texas which owns the copyright
Spring is fast approaching and if you are a gardener like me you are thinking about how quickly you can get your hands in the soil and some plants in the ground.
In Southern California where Golden Glow Gardens beehives are located, we are lucky to have a climate where our bees can forage for pollen and nectar almost year-round. Even in the coldest month of January, our native rosemary’s purple blossoms are filled with our bees.
Bees in Rosemary
Being a beekeeper, I always think about how I can include more bee friendly plants and flowers in my garden to make a sanctuary for honeybees and other beneficial pollinators. This is as easy as planting a small cluster of native wildflowers, herbs or a flowering vegetable garden. Keep it natural, organic, chemical free, let it continue to flower and you will be providing a vital food source for your local bee population. As an added bonus your vegetables will thrive from being well-pollinated and you’ll have a bumper crop of veggies at harvest time. Here are some simple guidelines I follow.
Choose plants that attract bees – Bees love native wildflowers, flowering herbs, berries and many flowering fruits and vegetables. While bee balm is the flower that may spring to mind first, depending on which growing zone you live in, there are many other plants that guaranteed to attract honeybees, and keep them happy at your property. Some honeybee favorites plants (listed alphabetically by kind)
Annuals Asters Calliopsis Clover Cosmos Dandelions Marigolds Poppies Sunflowers Zinnias Perennials Buckwheat Buttercups Clematis Cosmos Crocuses Dahlias Echinacea English Ivy Foxglove Geraniums Germander Globe Thistle Hollyhocks Hosta Hyacinth Rock Cress Roses Sedum Snapdragons Snowdrops Squills Tansy Tulips and all bulbs Yellow Hyssop Garden Plants Blackberries Broccoli Cantaloupe Cucumbers Gourds Melon Peppers Pumpkins Raspberries Squash Strawberries Tomatoes Watermelons Wild Garlic Witch Hazel Herbs Bee Balm Borage Calendula Catnip Chives Coriander/Cilantro Fennel Lavender Mints Oregano Rosemary Sage Thyme Shrubs Blueberry and all berries Butterfly Bush Button Bush Honeysuckle Indigo Privet Trees Alder American Holly Basswood Black Gum Black Locust Buckeyes Catalpa Eastern Redbud Fruit Trees (especially Crabapples) Golden Rain Tree Hawthorns Hazels Linden Magnolia Maples Mountain Ash Sycamore Tulip Poplar Willows
Avoid using herbicides or pesticides in the bee garden. They not only can be toxic to bees but also are best not introduced to children or adults that visit your garden. Ladybugs, beneficial nematodes, spiders, and praying mantises will naturally keep pest populations in check
Skip the Highly Hybridized Varieties. These plants have been bred not to produce seeds, so they also produce very little pollen for bees.
Group the same plants together – Try to plant at least one square yard of the same plant together to make a perfect bee attractor. But if you are short on space planting just a few wildflowers or herbs in a planter or window box is all that’s needed to provide more foraging habitat for the honeybee.
Select Single Flower Top Plants such as daisies and marigolds, rather than double flower tops such as double impatiens. Double-headed flowers look luxurious, but produce much less nectar and are so dense with petals, they make it more difficult for bees to access the pollen stamens deep inside the flower.
Provide a fresh water source – Bees need a place to get fresh, clean water. A pond, a fountain, even a swimming pool (especially if it is low or no chlorine fresh water), a waterfall or water feature. Fill a shallow container of water with pebbles or twigs for the bees to land on while drinking. Make sure to maintain the container full of fresh water to ensure that they know they can return to the same spot every day in your bee garden. A bird bath with plants or stones for the bees to rest on, a slowly dripping hose, or almost any shallow water source will work. Mind standing fresh water for mosquito breeding though! (as an aside on this topic, I highly recommend a fascinating book, “The Path Between Two Seas,” about the building of the Panama Canal. Talk about the dangers of mosquitoes in standing water!)
Here are some sources of bee safe seeds to grow bee friendly plants.
Beekeepers checking on hives are some of the first people into fire-ravaged forests, and are not prepared for the traumatic sights and sounds of wounded and suffering animals.
NSW Apiarists Association president Stephen Targett said the situation in north-eastern NSW was “truly devastating” to beekeepers and extremely traumatic.
“It’s doing their heads in, the screaming animals, the animals that are in pain, that are crying out in the forest, it’s absolutely horrific,” Mr Targett said.
“One beekeeper employs some young people and it has really traumatised them.
“So the beekeeper has arranged counselling for these young beekeepers who went into the forest and he won’t allow them back into the forest for a period of time.
“These older beekeepers will go in and make sure the forest isn’t screaming at them before they allow these young people back in.”
Concern for Mental Health The impact of the drought and now bushfires has worn beekeepers down.
More than a million hectares has burnt in NSW since the start of this year’s bushfire season, with hives and key foraging country for bees burnt out.
Peter Matthison from Elands, south-west of Port Macquarie, estimated he had lost 70 per cent of his hives and 90 per cent of the sites he used for his bees.
“I’m a pretty resilient guy, but I’ve lost a lot of bees,” Mr Matthison said.
“Those bees are more than livestock to me … I think of them like I’m their dad a bit, I look after them and they look after me.”
“If I have to watch [more hives] burn after we’ve lost a hell of a lot already, I just don’t even know about starting over again, I just don’t know what to do next.”
Despite the devastation, Mr Matthison was starting to think about rebuilding — a process that would involve sacrificing honey production for a year to split hives “over and over again” to build up numbers.
“I’ve got just enough hives that if I decide to keep going I could start rebuilding over the next year or two,” he said.
“It’s pretty much decimated most of our business, not just the bees but all of the forest and the plants that we use to make the honey.”
Mr Matthison said it would be at least three years before he could use some of his sites again, some of which supplied flowers for the highly sought-after Manuka honey.
“Up and down the coast it seems like most of what burnt first was all of that coastal Manuka country, and we won’t get to make honey on that for at least three years,” he said.
Mr Targett believed a three-year recovery estimate was conservative.
“The fires were that hot in places that some beekeepers, who have a fairly good understanding of their local bush, don’t believe those trees will be flowering or producing nectar and pollen for the bees for at least 20 years and in some cases they don’t believe it’ll be in their lifetime,” he said.
Finding sites with Manuka trees was crucial.
“Without Manuka honey in our pattern for the next three years, we won’t survive on regular table honey, it’s not worth it for us,” Mr Matthison said.
Further north, Michael Howes from Australia’s Manuka was also moving hives because of bushfires. But that was proving a challenge with drought gripping much of the state.
“At the moment we have 300 on other sites … we are slowly moving them out depending on whether there’s any nectar coming in,” Mr Howes said.
“With the drought, the trees are flowering. But there’s no nectar there for the bees, so we’re monitoring that, and as that worsens we’re moving them out and trying to find better pastures so to speak.”
Cost of honey to rise
Mr Targett warned consumers would soon pay more for their honey.
“In the short term it will definitely reduce the honey production in the state, so you’re likely to see a price increase happen in the short term at least,” he said.
“It won’t be a doubling of the price of honey — but prices will move up.
“It’s not just [bad] for honey production … bees are worth far more to the NSW economy through pollination.”
Seeking new areas
The NSW Apiarists Association is calling on anyone with land available for bees to get in touch.
“I’ve received phone calls from people who have land, they’ve got a farm, and no beekeeper is putting bees on their farm, and they have rung me up and said, ‘I have 100 acres, beekeepers are welcome to put bees on there if they wish’,” Mr Targett said.
“I get their contact details and flick it out to NSW Apiarists Association branches and then the branches flick it out to the members, and if any of the members require somewhere for their hives they can contact these farmers.
“It’s very much appreciated. People are thinking about bees and the importance of bees for food security, regional employment, and everything like that — it’s great.”
Mr Targett also hoped to work with the State Government to allow beekeepers to use public land including national parks to temporarily house beehives while the bushland recovers.
It’s been a tough month at Golden Glow Gardens, but we’ve learned some valuable lessons. We had resolutely resisted taking honey from hives #1 and #3 to give the bees plenty of stores for the winter. Turns out we should have harvested the honey because both hives have absconded, taking their honey with them. Here is what we think happened to hive #1.
I had seen one yellow jacket buzzing around hive #1, which had never recovered to be as strong as before after we split it mid-summer. The yellow jacket eventually made its way in the entrance and I naively thought “well, he’s in trouble” thinking he would swiftly be dealt with by all the bees inside the hive.
yellow jacket feasting on the bee hive
I probably made a fatal mistake with that assumption. We were gone for a few weeks and returned to find the dreaded quiet hive. Upon inspection, sure enough, all the bees – and brood – and honey – were gone from the hive.
At the same time, we discovered this ground yellow jacket nest, which we’ve since removed. But it hadn’t been there, at least looking as vibrant as it was when we found it, a few weeks before.
Yellow Jacket Ground Nest Near Our Hives
Our conclusion is that the yellow jackets robbed the hive of its honey and drove the bees away (what I prefer to believe over thinking the bees were killed by the yellow jackets).
Here are yellow jackets attacking and robbing a honeybee hive
A nest of Yellow Jackets are not easy to drive away or kill! First I tried tea tree oil and cinnamon. This didn’t seem to diminish the yellow jackets numbers a bit. Next I went to Home Depot and got wasp killer and sprayed it – at night wearing full bee suit – on and into the nest. The nest was completely covered in foam.
The next day, I walked over near the nest to see if there were any yellow jackets. Yes, and they were mad. One must have gotten caught in my hair because after I was in the house I felt a sting on my upper ear.
I can sadly report that yellow jacket stings hurt much worse than honeybee stings and, at least in my case, can cause ferocious allergic reactions. This is my ear three days after the sting, which is visible as the small white bump on the inside of my upper ear. The inflammation and swelling went down to my neck on the side and under my chin. Tonight we are proceeding to use other poisons and I will report later on how they work.
hugely swollen ear, neck and face with painful redness and inflammation 3 full days after yellow jacket sting. Ouch!!
A contributing factor to the bees leaving may have been ants. The ants also could have come in after the hive was abandoned when there were no bees to protect the comb from being polished off by the ants. Ants will eat bee larva. Here’s a video (not from our hive) showing them doing that.
Although we had used Terro baits and tanglefoot on the legs of our hive stand, we think nearby tall plants may have been a way for ants to get onto the hive stand. However they got there, we discovered ants in the vacant hive. There were even a few dead hive beetles when we cleaned out the hive. Lesson to ourselves: don’t leave the hive unattended and uninspected for so many weeks in the vulnerable early fall timeframe.
Tanglefoot has been a life-saver for our hives to keep the ants from climbing up from the ground.
We also find putting dimataceous earth on the ground under the hive (and even brushing it lightly on the sides and top of the hive) works well to repel ants. Just don’t put it in front of the hive or in the bees flight path. For convenience, we sometimes order these products online, but they are usually easy to find at local garden supply stores or even walmart or home depot.
Normally the terro ant baits work really well for us (the ants take the poison back to their nests and it kills the colony and the ant queen).
The good thing is that the hive equipment is still in excellent condition. We are going to bag it up and store it until next spring when we’ll be on the lookout for a swarm of nice, mellow bees to give a home to. 2020 will be a better season!
We believe that feeding our bees certain supplements helps them be as healthy as they can be, and supports their natural immune strength to repel things like foulbrood. Why should gut health not apply to honeybees?
Mann Lake sells a bee pattie that provides bees with probiotics to keep them strong and we use it at Golden Glow Gardens. Our bees love the patties and devour them within weeks.
Golden Glow Honey Bees Enjoying Mann Lake Probiotic Bee Patties
Nature Magazine published an article recently confirming our theory. The link to the full article is https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-019-0541-6. In part, what Nature said is that “American foulbrood (AFB) is a highly virulent disease afflicting honey bees (Apis mellifera). The causative organism, Paenibacillus larvae, attacks honey bee brood and renders entire hives dysfunctional during active disease states, but more commonly resides in hives asymptomatically as inactive spores that elude even vigilant beekeepers. The mechanism of this pathogenic transition is not fully understood, and no cure exists for AFB. …. These findings suggest the usage of a lactobacilli-containing hive supplement, which is practical and affordable for beekeepers, may be effective for reducing enzootic pathogen-related hive losses.” Read on if you’re interested in this topic!
Six weeks after finding a swarm of honeybees up in the branches of an orange tree, capturing the swarm and making them at home in one of our empty hives, this newly established swarm is thriving. Aren’t they happy looking bees! It’s great to see them returning to the hive, legs plump with pollen.
Since we rescued this live late in the season (end of August), we were concerned they wouldn’t have enough nectar or pollen to build up a well-stocked hive before winter set in. So we regularly feed the bees a 1/1 sugar syrup, sometimes adding Honey B Healthy for extra fortification. The bees have built up lots of fresh comb and filled it with honey, which we’ll let them keep to live on over the winter. They do still seem to be pulling in a lot of flower supplies, but whether it’s that or the syrup supplementation, this hive is thriving. Last time we inspected the hive, we found the frames building out nicely with comb and filled with uncapped honey and brood too.
Here is the entrance to the hive, showing the bees going in and out at a great pace, laden with pollen on their legs when they return. We gave them some beeswax scraped from the queen divider on the absconded hive to use to renew and build out more of their own comb.
