The one constant in beekeeping is that it’s always changing, and rightly so, I guess. Bees are intelligent, adaptive, and always improving their efficiency. In our bee club, a few of us often comment, “The bees aren’t reading the same books I am.” Swarm season is in full effect around here up around here and I’m not sure if it’s the odd weather patterns we’ve had, or if the bees just want to shake it up a bit, but they are not acting the way they did last year, or the year before come to think of it. I won’t speak for everyone, but the bees continue to befuddle and confuse me. When I think, let’s do this, because surely they will like it, the opposite is true. Could it be they are evolving and changing ever-so-cleverly to elude those of us who come to put them in a box?

I want to share a few swarm stories with you from the last two weeks to illustrate what I mean. I’ve only ever caught a single swarm in a trap that I put out. I have about 4 traps set here and there this year, but the bees just don’t end up in the neat traps I put out. I usually have to go get my bees… and I’m not complaining, it’s fun and challenging. One thing I’ve noticed is the bees are not waiting around like they did last year. For two early calls I received, the bees had left before I arrived.

I had to catch one swarm in Osgood, twice. I shook them in to a box and thought I’d run across the street to get me some lunch while they settled in. When I came back, they were gone.

The homeowner said, they were just bustling about 10 minutes ago. It became clear to me, they were bustling out of my hive 10 minutes ago. I decided to walk around the house and check the trees. Sure enough, there they were in another tree just waiting for me to shake them in to a box again. I did it again, but this time, I strapped it up and trapped them in the box so they couldn’t leave. As I watched the scattered bees all settle back into the place they were, I gave one more shake in to my bee vac inner box (just to get all the foragers I could and bring back home with me). Garry told me he’s an advocate of locking up the bees for a day or to before letting them fly to avoid them possibly absconding again. I did it, and they stayed, so, I’ve been doing this more and more.

On another job in Cleves, OH, the bees decided that ornamental grass was the place to be. Not only were they close to the ground completely exposed to the elements, they started building comb in the grass. See the picture in the attached gallery of images.

In all, I’m up to 7 swarms and two cut-outs this year and still have a trap out waiting for me. I’m committed to doing one trap-out each year just so I can have my Cleo Hogan box at work. I’ve only done one trap out before and it was last season. Trapping bees out of a catalpa tree took most of the season. I’ve given most of my swarms to friends starting up in beekeeping, or beekeepers that needed to fix some losses they had. I have become pretty picky on the swarms. If they are not abnormally large, then I have combined them and doing so has paid off. I have some new hives with double deeps that are really taking off. I find that sacrificing a bottom board, deep and inner/top cover has to be justified with a good number of bees, but that’s just me.

I’ll update more as we wrap up this swarm season. I’d love to get some pictures and stories from all of you! Email it to me, or give me something at a bee meeting and we’ll get it up here!

Update on June 18: Got a call from a good friend who works at Wilmington College and there was a big swarm off bees on campus. The hour and 20 minute drive up was made easier when he sent me a picture. It was worth the drive if they stayed put. It did. rain and hail on the way up… but they didn’t get the same weather. As we began vac’ing up the bees, we realized there was 5 rows of comb they were covering… right there, exposed to the elements… how, and why? With all the intelligence in bees, you’d think they’d never opt for full exposure. There was a week or two of comb there.

Pollen, an often misunderstood resource in the hive. I’m just as guilty as the next person on possibly not fully appreciating the value of a healthy mixture of pollen in the hive. Last season, I was pulling out some of the pollen frames thinking that it was not going to be used, or that it was old and the bees were done with it. I was focused on making sure the bees perceived there was enough room for doing their work… both to manage swarming, and also to facilitate empty space for whatever the bees needed next.

I had some discussion with Garry Reeves recently on the topic of pollen, and we both agreed that last season, we both possibly removed pollen we assumed the bees were done with, but likely weren’t. First, how would we identify such old pollen? Can we? There’s many types of pollen we see in the hive. There’s new (dull/matte finish) pollen, glossy pollen, pollen with nectar or honey on top of it, and even entombed pollen, that is coated over and sealed off, behind a layer of propolis. We hope not to see entombed pollen in our hives, and more on that in a moment.

We already know the value of pollen in late winter, early spring. The queen needs it to fire up her egg-laying, but the bees need a healthy mixture of pollen from different sources on-going. It’s their primary protein and they mix it many ways to create the concoction they need next. Nurse, or “fat” bees need it to produce Vitellogenin (Vg) which is as much a miracle as royal jelly. There is good-quality and poor-quality pollen, so a variety of pollen is suggested to be a well-balanced diet.

This gets back to us pulling out frames of pollen. Is it possible the bees really would have used what we maybe thought was spent pollen? You can bet I’ll be leaving things alone this year to see. Our original intent was the thought of keeping the brood chamber open and available for needed resources. The decline I experienced last fall could have been varroa, but what about that one that made it through the mites? This spring, I had a marked queen with only a handful of bees. Not even enough to care for the eggs the queen started laying.

Bee hives have an ebb and flow too. When we do something, it’s safe to say we likely caused an affect on that hive that may not be seen for months, or maybe even the next season. Beekeepers should have a goal for each hive. Which will be used for honey, and which will be used for increasing? Those goals will dictate how you manage that hive and the changes we make do have an affect. Just like Tim Ives describes the ecology of the hive. Adding pollen substitute, feeding sugar, and even regular hive inspections have a big affect on the hive. Our actions must be timely and exact… as best we can 🙂

This year, I plan to let the bees keep their pollen and if that means sacrificing some space for more bees or honey, then so be it.

Entombed pollen, and interesting phenomenon

The entombed pollen phenomenon is described in a paper by Dennis vanEngelsdorp and published in the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology (2009). A quick abstract of that article is:

Entombed pollen is highly associated with increased colony mortality. Entombed pollen is sunken, capped cells amidst ‘normal’, uncapped cells of stored pollen, and some of the pollen contained within these cells is brick red in color. The increased incidence of entombed pollen in reused wax comb suggests that there is a transmittable factor common to the phenomenon and colony mortality. In addition, there were elevated pesticide levels, notably of the fungicide chlorothalonil, in entombed pollen. Additional studies are needed to determine if there is a causal relationship between entombed pollen, chemical residues, and colony mortality.

VanEngelsdorp and his group suggested that the worker bees sensed bad pollen in these cells and entombed it in propolis so it would not be consumed. Bees often cover offensive things with propolis i.e. hive beetles and other dead things to keep them from contaminating the hive, so this is consistent with other well-documented behavior.

Entombed pollen cells have been found to contain various types of chemicals, including those used to combat Varroa. It has been suggested that colonies containing entombed pollen are usually in the process of dying and entombing contaminated pollen may be a last effort made by a colony to save itself.

Current theories suggest that the accumulation of pesticides in a the smaller space of a hive could be more apparent to the bees than the same pesticide in a field, or perhaps the pesticides undergo chemical changes while stored in the hive, or mixed with other things. Nonetheless, this adds more chaos to the already challenging mystery of bee hive dead outs.