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THE PEACE BEE FARMER: 2021 The bees in a package are workers gathered from numerous hives, and the queen is reared separately. A package of bees only becomes a colony after a few days when the bees detect and then organize their behavior around the queen’s pheromones. You can gather bees when colonies swarm. Swarming is a natural occurrence; it is reproduction

of bees

THE PEACE BEE FARMER: NUC HIVES AND PACKAGESAUTHOR: RICHARD UNDERHILL A nuc is a bee colony in equilibrium; it contains an egg-laying queen, brood of all stages, and workers of all ages. A nuc may be a split, or colony division. A split is made by dividing a hive, moving frames of bees to a new hive and introducing a new queen. Alternately, you may purchase a package of bees: bees in a box and not on frames. THE PEACE BEE FARMER: THE QUEEN BEE MAKES A MATING FLIGHT The queen bee is responsible for producing all of the eggs for the honey bee colony. Unlike organisms that mate again and again for the production of each offspring, the queen honey bee mates but once for a lifetime of egg laying. THE PEACE BEE FARMER: THE HONEY-BOUND HIVE The Honey-Bound Hive. Honey bees are tireless workers. Anytime that there is nectar available and flying conditions permit, foragers are out collecting. The guard bees at the hive entrance welcome any bee entering with nectar, even if it is a forager drifting into the wrong hive. Once the nectar is inside the hive, it is stored in combs, even THE PEACE BEE FARMER: PUERTO RICO'S BEES The Newsweek article explains that Africanized Honey Bees crossed the Caribbean in 1994, likely by boat, and established colonies in Puerto Rico. These became gentle bees, not expressing excessive defensiveness to humans. A second important trait of these new bees is of most importance to beekeepers: They are highly resistant to Varroa mites. THE PEACE BEE FARMER: STORING HONEY SUPERS The supers can then be stored over winter. Stacking clean supers so that air flows through them usually prevents wax moth damage if the frames never held brood. If frames that held brood need to be stored, they need to be protected from wax moths by stacking tightly and covering. Use PDB moth crystals to kill wax moths. THE PEACE BEE FARMER: SOYBEANS AND HONEY Soybeans in any location often include both early and late season varieties. Planting different fields with different varieties helps the farmer spread out the harvest. This benefits honey producers with bee hives near the soybean fields by extending the bloom period, often by several weeks. I also spoke with several Arkansas beekeepers this

week.

THE PEACE BEE FARMER: CHILLED BROOD It is chilled brood caused by having a portion of the comb exposed to cold or damp conditions without being covered by protective bees. Chilled brood may have discolored larvae similar to European foulbrood or eneven, discolored, and perforated cappings like American foulbrood. There may be an unpleasant odor as well from decaying bees

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THE PEACE BEE FARMER: THYMOL TREATMENT FOR VARROA Thymol Treatment for Varroa. Varroa mites were first detected in the United States around 1987. These visible parasitic mites followed by just three years the detection of microscopic mites that live in the trachea, or breathing tubes of the honey bee. The two species of mites decimated honey bee colonies. For a number of years it was common to THE PEACE BEE FARMER: ASPARAGUS IN BLOOM Asparagus in Bloom. When the young shoots are picked fresh from the home garden, asparagus is a spring-time treat. Shoots which rise daily from underground tubers are picked daily for a short period. After a few weeks of eating the vegetable shoots cooked with butter and raw in salads, the asparagus plants are left to grow into lacy four-foot THE PEACE BEE FARMER Beekeepers fight the ill-effects of viral diseases of honey bees to maintain healthy colonies, aware of sacbrood disease and bee paralysis, caused by viruses, as well as Kashmir virus, black queen cell virus, and deformed wing virus. At least 50 viruses vectored by THE PEACE BEE FARMER: 2020 The year 2020 has been dominated by the Covid-19 virus. Viruses are infectious agents, smaller than bacteria, that infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants, even microorganisms. Millions of viruses exist; some infect a narrow group of hosts, and others infect a wide group of hosts. Viruses are carried, or vectored, from one host THE PEACE BEE FARMER: 2021 The bees in a package are workers gathered from numerous hives, and the queen is reared separately. A package of bees only becomes a colony after a few days when the bees detect and then organize their behavior around the queen’s pheromones. You can gather bees when colonies swarm. Swarming is a natural occurrence; it is reproduction

of bees

THE PEACE BEE FARMER: 2019 The Fourth of July has always been a significant day for Peace Bee Farm. Colonies started in the spring, from nucleus colonies, like the ones in today’s photo, packages, swarms, or colony divisions should now be well established. The memorable date is a good time to make some important bee hive record-keeping checks. THE PEACE BEE FARMER: STORING HONEY SUPERS The supers can then be stored over winter. Stacking clean supers so that air flows through them usually prevents wax moth damage if the frames never held brood. If frames that held brood need to be stored, they need to be protected from wax moths by stacking tightly and covering. Use PDB moth crystals to kill wax moths. THE PEACE BEE FARMER: THYMOL TREATMENT FOR VARROA Thymol Treatment for Varroa. Varroa mites were first detected in the United States around 1987. These visible parasitic mites followed by just three years the detection of microscopic mites that live in the trachea, or breathing tubes of the honey bee. The two species of mites decimated honey bee colonies. For a number of years it was common to THE PEACE BEE FARMER: CORN PRODUCES POLLEN Honey bees are attracted to the flowering plants, and they collect nectar and pollen from them. The attraction of the bees is part of a mutually beneficial relationship that THE PEACE BEE FARMER: SUMAC IN BLOOM Sumac in Bloom. Smooth sumac is the only tree or shrub which can be found in each of America’s 48 contiguous states. This important bee plant is in bloom now. Its blooms will be followed shortly by winged sumac. Both can be found in stands along roadsides or along the undisturbed margins of woodlots. Sumac’s small, open clusters of

flowers

THE PEACE BEE FARMER: REDBUD IN BLOOM Redbud in Bloom. The sight of purplish-red color splashed through the understory of the woods is a true sign of spring. Redbud trees are in bloom throughout the Mid-South. These small trees covered with pink or rose flowers are easily recognizable from a distance. They grow under the oak and hickory cover of the woods and along ditch banks and THE PEACE BEE FARMER: GUARD BEES PROTECT THE HIVE Hi, i have a bee hive in the air brick of my home and it is just outside the door. The bees have been there for a number of weeks now and they have never been an issue towards my 2 dogs or my family, however last night a family member came with her 8 year old daughter and sat at the garden table within minutes the guard bee came iver and stung her just under her eye. skip to main | skip to sidebar THE PEACE BEE FARMER Peace Bee Farm Master Beekeeper Richard Underhill of Conway, Arkansas muses on life with the bees and other things. THURSDAY, JULY 4, 2019

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Independence Day, the Fourth of July, is a day of celebration in the United States. It’s the day that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, marking the beginning of a new country. The Fourth of July has always been a significant day for Peace Bee Farm. Colonies started in the spring, from nucleus colonies, like the ones in today’s photo, packages, swarms, or colony divisions should now be well established. The memorable date is a good time to make some important bee hive record-keeping checks. We always counted the number of full-sized hives in place on the Fourth of July. When we harvested honey at the end of the summer, we divided the total weight of honey harvested by the number of hives in on the Fourth of July, giving a measure of the honey yield per hive. By keeping records of honey yield in each bee yard, the beekeeper can compare bee yards. While the yield of any bee yard may vary from year to year depending upon surrounding agricultural plantings, a measure of the honey yield over time can help the beekeeper determine which bee yards are low producers. These yards may need to be abandoned in favor of more productive yards. The Fourth of July is a day in which the bees are busy filling honey supers in the Arkansas Delta’s agricultural areas with soybean and cotton honey. In central Arkansas’ river valleys and Ozark Mountain foothills, early July marks the end of the spring honey nectar flow. The Fourth of July is also a landmark in the beekeeping year. Swarms captured and hived before this date stand a good chance of building a large population of bees and accumulating enough honey to survive the following winter. Swarms captured after this date will likely starve over winter. These swarms need to be combined with existing colonies. After a quick count of your hives, enjoy the day devoted to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. --Richard Posted by Richard Underhill

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THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2019

MAKING QUEEN BEES

Every honey bee hive has a queen, and only bees can produce honey bee queens. Queen production peaks in the spring when there are drone bees available to mate with the queens. Timing is critical in queen rearing. I assisted a group of Arkansas beekeepers who performed the steps required to produce a number of queens. Strong and healthy honey bee colonies reproduce on a colony-wide basis by swarming. Swarming is the culmination of a month-long process in which the colony divides and half of the bees fly away to find a new nest. One of the final steps in swarming involves the colony producing one or more queen bees. This natural process of producing queens was replicated by G. M. Doolittle more than one hundred years ago, and the Doolittle Method is used today to produce queens world-wide. This method requires beekeepers to establish a number of different hives for queen production with each hive set-up to accommodate a different step in the queens’ development. Typically, beekeepers establish queen-mother hives, queen-cell-starter hives, queen-cell-finisher hives, and queen-mating-nucleus hives with bees of the appropriate age and necessary food. This hive preparation is often a shared endeavor among cooperating beekeepers. Our early-April queen production effort involved six seasoned beekeepers. On grafting day, we searched the queen-mother hives for one-day-old larvae to graft into queen cell cups. Worker bees tend to these young larvae and convert them into queen bees. We found that our first queen-mother hive had progressed in its natural manner toward swarming. The queen had stopped laying eggs, and day-old larvae were not available. We found four queen cells produced for swarming, like the one in today’s photo by Desmond Simmons. One queen was actually in the process of emerging as an adult. We used these queen cells to produce four additional colonies. Grafting continued successfully with larvae taken from other hives. At the end of the day we started the development of queens for two hundred new hives. --Richard Posted by Richard Underhill

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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2019 AN UNEXPECTED BEEKEEPER One hundred people quite deliberately headed toward Savannah, Tennessee in spite of extreme rainfall, flooding, and violent weather. They were drawn to the Savannah Area Beekeepers Association’s sixth annual Short Course in Beekeeping. One person, however, a businessman, Paul Durr, braved the weather to attend the meeting by accident. Mr. Durr misread the announcement in the local newspaper. Interested in furthering his business skills, he thought that he would be attending a bookkeeping course—not a beekeeping course. Once he arrived, Mr. Durr decided to stay for the day. He did, after all, have a long-time interest in honey bees, having shared his home with colonies of bees that have lived in the space above his ceiling for 40 years. Mr. Durr sat in on beekeeping sessions throughout the day. I had the honor of giving the keynote presentation, introducing the new beekeepers to the history of the beekeeping craft by tracing the tradition of beekeeping from its honey-hunting roots with our cave-dwelling ancestors. Training sessions were conducted by invited speakers and talented Savannah beekeepers. Dr. Jeff Harris from Mississippi State University, renowned for identifying honey bees with the Varroa Sensitive Hygiene trait, spoke on developments in breeding parasitic mite tolerant bees. EAS Master Beekeeper Kent Williams described measures for increasing honey production, and Trevor Qualls taught the new beekeepers how to install packages of bees into their hives. Other speakers described the bee hive equipment, methods of feeding bees, catching swarms, and what to expect in the first two years of beekeeping. Conducting a random drawing, “Coach” Lynn Wood, the Tennessee Beekeepers Association’s Regional Vice President, awarded three bee hives to new beekeepers. Mr. Durr was drawn as a hive winner. He was surprised to end his day becoming an unexpected beekeeper. His greater surprise came in learning that “Coach” Wood remembered teaching him years earlier in high school. Today’s photo: TVA releasing two million gallons of Tennessee River floodwater per second at Wilson Dam, Florence, Alabama. --Richard Posted by Richard Underhill

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Tennessee Beekeepers Association TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2019 CAN PLANTS HEAR BEES? Whenever I encounter evening primrose plants in bloom, I watch them for a while. These native plants attract a variety of bees and other pollinators. At night, evening primrose is highly attractive to large moths. In the early hours of the morning, fast flying blue orchard bees visit the yellow flowers. Later in the day, butterflies, honey bees, flies, and other insects actively forage evening primrose. In today’s photo a honey bee collects nectar from evening primrose. Honey bees can detect differences in nectar sugar concentrations of one to three percent, and foraging worker bees seek those nectar sources with the greatest concentrations of sugars. Lilach Hadany, a researcher at Tel Aviv University, questioned whether plants could hear sounds similarly to animals, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/flowers-can-hear-bees-and-make-their-nectar-sweeter/. Hadany’s findings reveal that at least one plant, evening primrose, responds to the vibrations of pollinators’ wings. Within minutes of exposure to vibrations in the range of honey bee wing beats (0.2 to 0.5 kilohertz), evening primrose increased the concentration of sugars in its nectar. Hadany’s lab found that within three minutes of exposure to honey bee wing-beat-frequency vibrations the plants increased the nectar sugar concentrations from between 12 and 17 percent to 20 percent. In field observations, her researchers found pollinators around evening primrose plants nine times more frequently after the plants were visited within the past six minutes. The resulting sweeter nectar is naturally more attractive to bees and other pollinators. Since flowering plants, such as evening primrose, depend upon insect pollination for reproduction, any plant that attracts more pollinators has a reproductive advantage. Evening primrose flower petals are shaped like an open bowl. Such shapes concentrate and increase vibrations. The researchers at the Tel Aviv lab found that evening primrose flowers concentrated vibrations of the frequency range of honey bees. The ability of a flowering plant to increase its nectar’s sugar concentration would make it more attractive to pollinators and more likely to be pollinated, the first step in the plant’s reproduction.

--Richard

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MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2018

PAX VOBISCUM

A beekeeper friend who is an avid outdoorsman proclaims, “I’d rather catch a swarm of bees than a five-pound bass!” Beekeepers manage colonies of honey bees for various purposes: honey production, crop pollination, to improve fruit orchards and vegetable garden production. However, many beekeepers tend to hives simply for enjoyment. Friendships develop between beekeepers who work hives together. Beekeeping tasks vary throughout the year with some months considerably busier than others. Winter months require little work inside the hives where the bees are alive and active, but clustered together for warmth and not flying. At this time of year, beekeepers can construct and repair hive equipment, plan for the next year’s activities, and devote some leisure time to reading. I like to reread some of my favorite beekeeper authors, such as Richard Taylor. He offers thoughtful views of beekeeping in _The Joys of Beekeeping_, 1984. Taylor writes of the relationship between bees, beekeepers, and nature. He explains, “When I see a bee tree I know its inhabitants are the evolutionary product of millions of years, and that what I call ‘my own’ bees are but the smallest step from the bee tree. The forests lure them back and always will.” Regarding the swarms that my friend loves to catch, Taylor says, “Swarming is of course essential not only to the survival of the species but also to nature itself, for without bees the many plants—both wild and cultivated—that depend upon them for the viability of their seed would also be threatened with extinction.” While setting-up my backyard hives for winter, I noticed a downy woodpecker that has learned to use a twig as a tool to gather food from a suet feeder. Taylor writes, “We need the whole of nature, and we need to be reminded that we are a part of it.” The Underhill family of Peace Bee Farm wishes you good health, and cheer, healthy bees, and enjoyment of nature. May peace be with you. --Richard Posted by Richard Underhill

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THE WINTER SOLSTICE

The sun rose this morning as far south along the horizon as it will appear anytime through the year. We call this day the winter solstice. This is also the year’s shortest day. Starting tomorrow, the sun will appear to rise slightly farther to the north daily until the summer solstice, June 21, when the sun rises in its northern-most position. These apparent movements of the sun along the horizon have been observed since ancient times. They allowed early peoples to develop calendars, vitally necessary for telling farmers when to plant precious seeds needed to feed increasing populations. The life cycles of many species are tied to the seasonal changes associated with the length of days. Among those species is the honey bee. For the honey bee, the winter solstice is the beginning of the new year. Queen bees start laying eggs on the winter solstice. Here, in the temperate zone, the blooming of most flowering plants follows the length of days as well, blooming spring, summer, and fall. Few flowers are found in the winter, and the life cycle of the honey bee follows the availability of flowers. The bees gather nectar from flowers, convert it into honey, and survive on it through the winter. The honey bee is unique, being the only insect in the temperate zone that stays alive and active throughout the winter. Honey bees eat the high-energy honey that they produce and generate heat by vibrating their flight muscles. They are thus able to survive in cold weather, clustered tightly together to retain warmth. Other insects, like lady bug beetles, hibernate in cold weather, protected under tree bark or leaves. Wasps, hornets, and yellowjackets die off annually, leaving a mated queen to start the next year’s colony. I communicated today with my friend, EAS Certified Master Beekeeper Wubishet Adugna, in Ethiopia, shown here with coffee that he exports. Wubishet’s tropical honey bees follow seasonal changes based upon annual rainfall patterns instead of the length of days. --Richard Posted by Richard Underhill

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MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2018 PROPOLIS FOR BEE HEALTH Propolis is one of four substances, along with nectar pollen, and water, that foraging honey bees bring into their hive. The collection of propolis is an important colony protection behavior. Bees collect propolis from the sap, gums, and resins of trees, often evergreens. The sticky substance is used to seal cracks and small openings in the honey bee colony’s hive. It is the “bee glue” that attaches beeswax combs to the hive. When a swarm of bees moves into a hollow tree cavity, or when a beekeeper hives a colony in a new hive, the bees varnish the inside walls of their new home with propolis. Not only does the propolis provide a protective barrier against drafts and moisture, it also provides antimicrobial protections. Foraging bees returning to their hive walk across an antibacterial and antifungal “door mat” of propolis deposited at the hive entrance. Honey bees use propolis to help protect the colony from invaders. Bees entomb with propolis dead mice or intruding insects too large to drag from the hive, preventing the spread through the hive of bacteria from decaying pests. Bees also trap Small Hive Beetles in propolis “jails” within the hive. The behavior of collecting propolis is a heritable trait. Some beekeepers in the past considered manipulating heavily propolized hives unnecessarily messy, and therefore selected for bees that collected little propolis. However, colony health benefits of having plenty of propolis in the hives makes it advantageous to encourage propolis collection. An article published in the _Journal of Economic

Entomology_,

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/11/28/propolis-how-beekeepers-encourage-better-hive-health/

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describes how researchers tested several means of roughening the interior of bee hives to encourage bees to fill small openings with propolis. I regularly roughen new hive boxes with a steel brush and a jagged flint rock from Arkansas’ Boston Mountains. Researcher Dr. Keith Delaplane, entomology professor at the University of Georgia, describes encouraging bees to deposit extra propolis as partnering with biology. In today’s photo bees eagerly gather and reuse propolis from a recently opened hive. --Richard Posted by Richard Underhill

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ABOUT ME

* Richard Underhill

EAS Certified

Master Beekeeper and Owner of Peace Bee Farm of Conway, Arkansas. Former President of Arkansas Beekeepers Association, Tennessee Beekeepers Association, and Memphis Area Beekeepers Association. Recipient of the President's Volunteer Service Award. View my complete profile

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