[Bonus] Short - Summer in the Apiary with Dewey

[Bonus] Short - Summer in the Apiary with Dewey

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Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast Shorts, your quick dive into the latest buzz in beekeeping.

Becky Masterman: In 20 minutes or less, we'll bring you one important story, keeping you informed and up to date.

Jeff: No fluff, no fillers, just the news you need.

Becky: Brought to you by Betterbee, your partners in better beekeeping.

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Dr. Dewey Caron: Hi, I am Dr. Dewey Caron. Come to you from Portland, Oregon. I present another audio postcard on communication in my continuing series of once-monthly Beekeeping Today Shorts Podcast. The topic this month is The Summer Apiary. Why should we be putting on our hot bee suits and looking inside colonies?

For these audio postcards, I've been discussing communication on three levels: Bee Scientist to Beekeeper, Beekeeper to Bee, and Bee to Bee. In my last Beekeeping Today Podcast, I discussed adding supers. We add supers to expand the living space of a hive. Supering illustrates the need to communicate to our bees. We want them to know that we have added supers for them to store nectar and ripen great quantities into honey. Our request to the bees: "Fill it up."

There are some great YouTubes out there on supering. I recommend you look at those from Betterbee, David Burns, and the University of Guelph. I also recommend the April Bee Culture article by regular contributor Ross Conrad on supering. By the time summer comes around, we might want to consider the welfare levels of stress we subject our colonies to when we add supers.

Come summer, we might now ask the bees to complete drawing foundation frames and fill up more of the existing calm space in the supers, or under-supering, versus adding more supers, or over-supering, which is to try to stimulate that hoarding behavior of bees. By this time, we have often exhausted the supply of supers and frames and our stamina with bees anyway.

Let's start with bee scientist-to-beekeeper communication. Today, something a bit different. Ross Conrad's article on supering bee culture references a recent study by Sao Paulo State University scientists, including David De Jong, Cornell PhD, who teaches anatomy to medical students at the University of Sao Paulo and does great bee research. These fellows are in Brazil.

I say different, different in both the premise of the study as well as the way the study measured honeybee stress. The study asked, are we stressing bees excessively if we over-super colonies with supers of foundation? The author start by saying, "When we examine modern livestock management, it is evident we sometimes can stress out our livestock." This is the first study looking at stress in a commercial livestock management situation. First one, studying honeybee livestock.

The study used traditional measurements. How much honey and brood was produced in a study of supering of four groups? One variation was colonies were supered with two, another, three, and a fourth received four supers of foundation. The 10 control hives were given supers of foundation as needed. The traditional measurements were honey production and brood production. They additionally looked at the physiochemistry of the honey itself that was produced, and uniquely, they also looked at gene expression of catalase and defensin, two biomarker genes that they utilize for monitoring colony welfare.

The study found that adding two or more foundation supers at the beginning of the honey flow negatively affected honey production. The control colonies, when the supers were added as needed according to the nectar flow, resulted in the highest honey production. Okay, good outcome. The question is, traditional over-supering to stimulate bees to hoard, did they measure as it was stressful to our bees?

While supering method did not affect honey physiochemical quality, they looked at things such as acidity, pH, moisture, acid content, et cetera, by looking at specific genes, genes that are the biomarkers for stress. The study was able to demonstrate over-supering at the beginning of the season might indeed be stressful to our bees. How did they determine this? With increasing numbers of supers were added to colonies at the beginning of nectar flow, the catalase gene was overexpressed in foraging bees, not immediately but by the middle of the honey flow.

Overexpression means the bees were spending more energy from beta-oxidation of fatty acids. A second gene they looked at, defensin, was examined because its expression changes whenever honeybees experience stress that affects their immune system. It, too, was overexpressed with addition of more supers at the beginning of nectar flow compared to the control of addition of supers as needed.

The relationship between honey production and high patterns of expression of the genes, defensin and catalase, can be explained by the exhaustive work of nectar collection and comb building directed to fill all the supers with honey by the over-supering, particularly at the four supers at one-time rate. This extreme biological situation negatively affected their immune system and beta-oxidation of the fatty acids of foragers.

This study, the authors state, shows for the first time that honeybees, managed as livestock, are subject to management stress similar to other animal livestock. We can conclude that honey production increases when supers are added according to storage necessity compared to the addition of two, three, or four foundation supers at the beginning of the honey flow period. Greater internal space in the beehives increase expression of the genes defensin and catalase and foragers without interfering with the total colony population development or anything to do with the honey that was stored itself.

As a postscript, adding supers of drawn comb was not studied. We could ask, would stress be as evident if supering was done with drawn comb? Manage stress and how we manage our bees, something we need to be aware of. I read in a May Betterbee newsletter, ultimately, beekeeping is a highly idiosyncratic hobby. How one person keeps their bees is going to be different from those around them. Our aim is not to put certain methods above others but instead explore and share information about different ideas and practices.

We are now in what I call the between time of the beekeeping calendar. We're not yet sure of the ultimate amount of honey we can harvest. We are between the hope that the nuc we started will develop and grow big enough to survive winter, but suspecting it might not. We are not sure if the bees will draw a comb on those outside frames of foundation, as we hope they might. For sure, we are between hope and reality. All these and more speak to how we individually keep bee colonies. No one size fits all. Beekeeping is definitely highly idiosyncratic.

Now that summer is here, beekeeping might be more of a chore. To begin with, we have to don heavy protection veil and coveralls, even though it is hot. Our bee colonies are bigger. Well, maybe not as big as we hoped, or maybe too big than we could want it. It is less fun to inspect them. The propolis now really cements the boxes together, and inside the boxes tightly sticks the frames to each other.

The hive tool strains in our hand before allowing us to lift that first frame. That smoker, if we still have a good volume of smoke, just doesn't seem to work as well as it did when the colonies were smaller in the spring. What realistically can we do in our hive management-wise? What message do we, the beekeepers, wish to communicate to our bees? Do we still need to bolster the weak and weaken the strong? Probably not. Do we still need to add another super? Probably not. For our bees, do we want to make sure that they finish those frames of foundation? Yes, that's probably a good idea. Do we need to check for the queen-right condition? Easy to find cat brood, but now we might really have to examine a bunch of frames to find eggs.

As for actually seeing the queen herself, it's tough enough under the best of conditions. It's really tough now. One thing we might do, really might need to do, is to check colonies for Varroa as our spring mite management. Do you remember that Varroa control plan we worked out in the winter before the season started? Has that plan worked well? Did you remove the drone brood? Did you use oxalic acid extended?

Now the legal product VarroxSan is available. Did you use formic or thymol one or more times? I wonder, did they work? We can now begin to sample colonies for mite numbers, as the bees have less drone brood, plenty of adult drones certainly, and the mites have largely moved to the plentiful worker brood to reproduce. To get a good representative sample, it's best to take the adult bee sample from a brood frame with open brood. Knowing that percent infestation number, number of mites washed from adult worker bodies, we can take appropriate mite control.

Our message to the bees: "Reduce mite reproduction now in the summer to ensure you will all be strong enough to rear a sufficiently large and healthy population of worker bees in order to have a decent chance of surviving the winter." What works for mite control in the summer? To help with our decision, I recommend you consult the Honey Bee Health Coalition's tools for Varroa management. I have listed that in the resources at the end.

In summer, we are limited to two main factors. One, we still have honey we want to harvest, so the essential oil products, Apiguard and ApiLife Var, which might have worked very well in the spring, should not be used now for the possibility of tainting the honey. The synthetic Apivar, this insecticide Amitraz, is not allowed when we have supers on colonies and we want that honey.

The second factor, too, is a large bee population. Some tools, chemicals, do not work as well as control methods needed to be distributed to the large brood area and adult colony population. There's a lot of bodies, both brood and adults, in those colonies. Non-chemical controls of drone brood removal, brood break, heat treatment, or screened bottom boards, once we could use, are really no longer effective as we could use them during spring brood up, so we think acids. Three that we know work. Formic, oxalic, and the acids of HopGuard.

We know formic acid has side effects on brood. The queen often stops egg laying and workers will eliminate open brood. This is a possible summer option, especially if our adult bee mite sample shows higher than 2% to 3% mites. Also, we know it is okay, or at least not objectionable, to reduce the size of a colony in summer. Might even be desirable to do so. With formic use, we communicate to the bees, "Slow your roll, slow that continued population expansion, and reduce mites." Noble communication on our part.

Oxalic acid. Oxalic can be used as a dribble, as a fumigate, or as an extended method of having bees walk on pads with the acid, what we call oxalic acid extended. The first two, dribble and fumigation, require repeated visits at least half a dozen times to affect control. A better, less invasive way is oxalic as extended. Keep mite numbers where they are, hopefully low. They are now as a commercial product for Oxan, but many beekeepers have adopted the home recipe of impregnated sponge material with oxalic acid via heating a carrier like glycerin or canola oil. A new product might be on the market before long for oxalic extended as well.

The third acid, HopGuard, is messy and the product stinky. It tends to dry out rapidly, requiring reapplying new strips. It's not the best option. If you like it and use it, continue to do so by all means.

With acid controls, we need lift-off supers to add the impregnated pads between the brood boxes, avoid placing them in the supers. Doing this work sends our message, "Reduce mite numbers." We want colonies to be strong enough to rear that sufficiently large and healthy population come fall so they have a decent chance of surviving the winter.

One other message is when should we remove supers and how much should we leave for the bees? We can remove supers and extract them at any time, so long as the comb is three-quarters capped. Most beekeepers, however, do not only do that but do one extraction at the end of the summer, nectar flow much easier. Weather is warm, then capping of the honey-filled frames is easier, the honey flows better, et cetera, et cetera.

We need to remove surplus honey anyway to make our late summer mite control easier. Reduce the number of boxes and reduce our beehives down to the essential brood-rearing area. This is easier on our backs, of course.

The answer to how much we should remove relates to your philosophy and your locale, where the bees are. More specifically, what the season will still offer to nectar resources for the bees to collect. Those are questions answered with experience from several seasons of keeping bees. For beginners, get this information, search for and ask your local experienced bee mentor. This will give you a better handle on how much to take and how much to leave. Remember, if you ask three bee experts, you will get six answers to your question. How much to remove is a topic for another podcast.

Finally, bee-to-bee communication. As I've explained in earlier podcasts, there are numerous needs for bees to send messages to their sisters. Sound, chemical pheromones, and behaviors are three, but we know bees learn to perfect behaviors and can watch other bees to learn their behavior. Volatiles and empty comb are known to affect hoarding behavior in honeybees, and it stimulates them to store honey.

From the study for the researchers in Brazil, we can also better understand that sometimes some things we might do when managing our bees may cause undue stress. Undue stress, or beekeeper-induced stress, might not be desirable for long-term colony health or colony survival over winter. How do bees communicate stress among themselves? We are aware of three means. Auditory signals, for example, their buzzing intensity. Chemical signals, certainly the alarm and scent gland pheromones are two critical methods here. A third method of the tactile signals, defensive behaviors, such as head-butting, bawling, et cetera.

A comprehensive study of stress in the bee colony in terms of bee-to-bee communication has yet to be conducted. If you wish a delightful discussion of communication cues and signals, those would be how we're going to reach this, I recommend a post by Ann Chilcott of Scotland, who is utilizing the information of Tom Seeley. Her blog is listed with the end material. Dr. Seeley summarized some of the cues and signals in his books, Honeybee Democracy and Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners, both Princeton University Press books. However, if you search, in neither book does Dr. Seeley use the word stress. Stress in bees and bee communication, bee-to-bee, need study.

Summer beekeeping, the bee postcard for this month. I trust you are able to successfully communicate to your bees and supering mite control and other managements that we want to help keep them healthy. We also have a major expectation that we want some harvest, but we intend to take only what is surplus and leave the rest for you guys, for over winter. A lower mite level would be less stress, so the rearing of the fall bees' full-fat bodies will better increase their chances to survive the winter.

Phew, that is a lot to communicate. Are you ready for the summer challenge in this season? Be proactive in your management. Bee well. Thank you. Good day.

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