Groundbreaking Mushroom Research Gives Hope to Bees

Oct6

Bees are dying. In massive numbers. Termed colony collapse disorder, the die-off counts among its causes a parasite chillingly named Varroa destructor. A flat, button-shaped, eight-legged critter no more than 2 millimeters long, varroa mites invade the hives, latch onto their prey – the innocent honeybees, and literally suck out the bees insides like body-snatchers, transmitting devastating viruses into the hive in the process.

The worst of these diseases is deformed wing virus, believed to be one of the largest contributors to colony collapse worldwide. Named for the shrunken and misshapen wings that develop in affected bees, DWV robs bees of their ability to fly, undermines their immune systems, and shortens their lifespan to just a few days. The sicker a bee is, and the more useless its wings, the fewer plants it pollinates. Even worse, the flowers an infected bee does manage to visit become contaminated by the virus, which then results in the infection being passed on to the next bees that visit that plant. As if that wasn’t terrifying enough, beekeepers currently know no effective way to combat the virus.

But in a study in Nature Magazine, researchers including Paul Stamets of Fungi Perfecti https://fungi.com/pages/bees present evidence of a surprising solution to DWV: mushrooms, specifically easy to obtain and inexpensive amadou and reishi varieties of mushrooms. The discovery has implications not just for honeybee populations, but also the food systems, economies, and ecosystems that rely on bees being healthy, such as the huge almond growing industry of central California.

The mushrooms in question belong to the genera Fomes and Ganoderma, more commonly known as amadou and reishi. The former grow on trees in the shape of a horse’s hoof. The latter have long been prized in traditional medicine circles and are a frequent sight at Asian markets and health food stores. Both varieties of mushrooms belong to an order of fungi known as polypores, extracts of which have been shown in numerous studies to possess potent antiviral properties against dangerous infections like HIV, pox and swine flu viruses.

“I wanted to see if those extracts had a similar antiviral effect in bees,” says Paul Stamets, the study’s lead author. A prominent mycologist, the author of Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, and a passionate proselytizer of all things fungal (his TED talk, “6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World,” has been viewed millions of times), Stamets has long suspected that bees derive some benefit from mushrooms.

He recalls a scene from his backyard in July of 1984—the first time he noticed bees from his personal hive flying back and forth to a pile of fungus-coated wood chips. The bees, he says, were sipping droplets of liquid that had oozed from the mushroom’s mycelium, the fuzzy white network of cobwebby filaments through which fungi absorb nutrients.

At the time he figured the droplets contained sugar (fungi break down wood into glucose). “But then, a few years ago, I had an epiphany—a waking dream, actually, ” Stamets says. What if the bees were getting more than a shot of sugar? He began to wonder if they were in fact self-medicating.

Join Paul Stamets’ “Save the Bees” mailing list by emailing bee@fungi.com.

Late Season Nectar and Pollen

Sep9

The end of summer August to October is a challenging time for honey bees. This season is characterized by oppressive heat, drought, and a shortage of pollen and nectar. The bees naturally start making less brood and pushing drones out of the hive reducing the bee populations in size to only the bees that are essential to overwinter the colony.

If we inspect our hives and determine that our bees do not have enough honey to feed themselves through the winter, we will provide them with sugar syrup in a one-to-one ratio of sugar to water. For the hive that we recently rescued, sugar syrup supplementation was essential because we had put the swarm into a hive with bare frames and they had to quickly build out a store of honey to get through the winter.

While sugar syrup has its benefits, it does not supply the pollen necessary for reproduction. So when late-season blooms come along, we are thrilled that our bees can enrich their diet with nectar. One of the best late-season blooms that’s happening right now is a variety of eucalyptus tree that typically blooms during August and September. Here’s a video we took this morning on a hike showing bees delighting in the blossoms from this eucalyptus tree.

Bees Foraging on Late Season Eucalyptus Nectar

Late season Sugar Syrup Supplementation

Sep3

Fall is the time when honey bees run up against nectar dearth. This is when the ready supply of nectar and pollen from blooming flowers trees and shrubs diminish and the bees are forced to rely on their stored honey.

This year, as we wrote about in a previous post, We rescued a late-season swarm and installed them in an empty hive. We knew that starting this colony on bare frames so late in the season presented a risk that they would not survive the winter because they did not have the stored honey to live off of. For this reason, and to help them boost their storage of honey, we began to feed them one to one sugar to water syrup and discovered that they were going through a full mason jar twice a day. When we inspected the hive just 10 days after rescuing it, we were amazed by how much come and honey the bees had already built up in the hive. Sugar water was proving to be a great support.

We read that sugar supplementation increases the chance of robbing by other colonies, so we decided to supplement our next weakest hive at the same time. So far, so good. All hives are thriving.

Catching Late Season Swarm

Aug29

Spring is the season for swarming, but here we are just before Labor Day weekend and a swarm showed up in the garden. We happened to have a hive free due to the fact that one of our colonies departed after we split and requeened….could they have returned?… so we quickly boxed up this swarm and deposited it in the open hive.

The bees were very docile (until we knocked them off the fruit tree of course). They seemed to quickly adjust and settle back down to calm dispositions.

Because it’s late in the season with fewer flowers and nectar, we filled up a feeder with 1/1 sugar water and will feed them – probably through the whole winter – to help them establish. I also have ordered bee patties for this colony to further boost their health and chance of thriving through until the next nectar flow.

Hot Sauce in Hot Austin

Aug22

With a bumper crop of tomatoes and chile peppers in the GOLDEN GLOW GARDENS, we decided to make our own hot sauce. Testing recipes lit a few taste buds on fire, but we think the result is flavorFUL with just the right amount of spice and heat for these 100+ temperatures we’re having here in Central Texas.

Lucky for us, we settled on our favorite recipe just in time to bring it to the 29th Annual Hot Sauce Festival in Austin. Come on by on August 26th, give it a try, and let us know what you think!

Angry Bees

Jul21

our mistake with this hive was letting it get too big and having an outside feeder. A larger hive promotes angry bees, at least in our experience. An outside feeder attracted bees that did not belong in the hive, both robber bees and even aggressive, Africanized bees that are more likely to try to enter and take over your gentle hive.

Our solution with this hive was to take it apart and divide it. Then we introduced new gentle-stock queens to turn over the genetics of the hive (in about 30-45 days). Eventually, the hive returned to being a gentle hive.

Gentle Italian Varoa Sensitive Hygenic (VSH) Honeybees

Apr18

Resilient Bees Survive Notre Dame’s Catastrophic Fire

Mar15

Beekeeper Nicolas Geant kept three hives on the roof of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Unknown to even many Parisians, three hives of bees were living on the roof of Notre Dame. Even more surprising, despite the inferno that caused such devastating damage to the famous Cathedral, the bees remain alive and well, having survived the inferno that burned Notre Dame in March 2019.

The beekeeper confirmed (as reported on CNN):
“I got a call from Andre Finot, the spokesman for Notre Dame, who said there were bees flying in and out of the hives which means they are still alive! Right after the fire I looked at the drone pictures and saw the hives weren’t burnt but there was no way of knowing if the bees had survived. Now I know there’s activity it’s a huge relief!”

Notre Dame has housed three beehives on the roof over the sacristy, just beneath the rose window, since 2013. Each hive has about 60,000 bees. The beekeeper said the hives were not touched by the blaze because they are located about 100 feet below the main roof where the fire spread.

Location of beehives on roof of Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris — Location of 3 Beehives on Roof of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

While it is likely that the hives filled with smoke during the fire, as we beekeepers know, that doesn’t affect the bees as it does us humans because bees don’t have lungs. We regularly smoke our bees when we open our hives to inspect them and that merely calms the bees down, and may interrupt their communication with one another or affect their choice to keep honey in their bodies momentarily. But the smoke does not harm them provided there is no fire and not too much heat.

If the temperature had gotten hot enough to melt the wax combs inside the hive, the bees would have become stuck together and would have all perished. However, because heat rises, and the hives were below the actual fire, the bees survived.

As the Notre Dame beekeeper said, “They weren’t in the middle of the fire, had they been they wouldn’t have survived. The hives are made of wood so they would have gone up in flames. “

“Bees don’t have lungs like us. And secondly, for centuries to work with the bees we have used bee smokers. A bee smoker is a box with bellows which creates a white, thick cold smoke in the hives, prompting the bees to calmly gorge on the honey while beekeepers do their work”

Notre Dame Bees on Gargoyle of Notre Dame, Miraculously Alive After the Inferno

Using Beneficial Insects for Hive Health

Sep2

Recently, and very sadly, one of our hives absconded, we think due to hive beetles. Absconding means the whole hive leaves. Swarming usually involves smaller numbers of bees, with one queen, departing, leaving some remaining bees behind, perhaps with a second queen, or about to make a new queen.

The only good news about a hive absconding is that you know the hive flew off. There are few or no dead bees left behind, or outside the hive, as you’d discover if a hive was poisoned by pesticides, or succumbed to Varroa mites, or attack from another hive.

Absconding usually means the bees were finding it hard to live in the hive for some reason. The important thing is to figure out what the reason was. I had been down at the hives and noticed almost no bees going in and out of hive 3. Just the week or two before it had been thriving. I did find one dead bee right at the entrance. The hive felt cold to the outside touch and there was no lovely humming sound coming from the hive. Nervously, I opened the hive – and discovered it empty of bees. I noticed something I’d never seen in one of my hives before – a black beetle walking on the inside of the hive. Upon closer inspection, there were a good number of these beetles on the lower part of the hive where the brood were. As we pulled out the frames, one by one, we were shocked to see all the honey gone. Well, at least that might mean that the honeybees gorged and filled themselves up with their honey to take it with them.

We also noticed not much brood and some capped brood prematurely uncapped. Upon reading, we learned that hive beetles feed on honeybee larva and honey. If the number of beetles gets too large, it weakens the hive by making the bees work harder than ever and not gain any ground as their honey and next generation of offspring get eaten by the beetles.

To kill the bees in the hives, we installed super easy to use and effective bee blaster strips on top of the hive between frames. We filled with vegetable oil (to drown the beetles).

We also put a neat little trap on the bottom of the hive to kill any down there (the beetles go to these two places often so you can kill them when they’re there). They are thin black plastic containers. You open them up, put a little honey and boric acid in the middle. The honey attracts the beetle and the boric acid kills them. Only the beetles can get in the holes, which are too small for the bees. You check the traps periodically and discard the dead beetles.

To be sure the hive beetles didn’t return to the area where we keep our hives, or live underneath the hives, it’s recommended to put a layer of gravel or rocks on the ground under the hive. We also distributed two types of beneficial nematodes under and around the hive and in all the greenery nearby.

This beneficial nematode, called Steinernema riobrave, is specifically good at eating hive beetles like the ones we had in our hive. We wish we’d been using the nematodes earlier before we lost our hive!

From the arbico-organics website: Steinernema riobrave are naturally occurring, soil dwelling ambush predators that control a wide range of turf and citrus pests including armyworms, black cutworms, citrus weevils and Japanese Beetle grubs. They are also significantly more effective for treatment of subterranean termites than some of their counterparts. Similar to other nematode species, S. riobrave release a bacteria once they have infected the pest. This bacteria slows feeding and kills the pest within 24-48 hours of infection. The beneficial nematodes will continue to reproduce inside their host after death and emerge ready to infect other hosts. Best yet, you can release these nematodes around your vegetables, fruit trees, and other consumable crops, and near your pets or livestock…even indoors. They are safe.

Here’s the link to where we bought our supply. We actually used NemaSeek and NemaAttack https://www.arbico-organics.com/product/beneficial-nematodes-steinernema-riobrave This is what the contents look like. It’s pretty easy to use. All you need to add is water. You need a strainer to remove the gel after you add water and agitate to activate the nematodes before you distribute them. If you have a sprayer, that’s the best way to apply them.