Beekeeping At Sandhill

History
Seasonal Snapshots
2010 Organic Beekeeping Conference
 

History of Bees at Sandhill

by Stan 4/18/10

1975
The vision behind the founding of Sandhill Farm was to move toward self sufficiency - a key component was to grow our own food. Keeping bees was an easy fit and so a year after taking over the farm, Ann & Ed ordered bees and equipment from Sears.

The hive did fine until the milk cow accidentally knocked over the hive. Eventually, the bees died. In the meantime, a beekeeper in the area asked to locate one of his apiaries (25 hives) on our land - we were thrilled to have bees in our environment.

1980
I got stung a few times driving by the hives with our farm equipment - I asked the community to request Desi to move his hives somewhere else. Desi (Cuban), he responded: "Oh no, can't move bees in summer - zere are zousands & zousands of baby bees - they get lost. I make you good deal - you buy them." Huh? interesting proposition: but wait,I'm getting stung - maybe it will be different if they are our bees? We decide to buy them and as Desi predicted, we make half of our investment back with the first year's honey harvest.

One of the impulses to buy bees is that we were trying to find ways to support ourselves - to make a living off the land. We began making sorghum syrup in 1977 and were selling it at local fairs and on the farm. We soon noted that when we're at a table and have only one product to sell, it limits the customers. With 2 products, we can potentially double our sales!

Since then, we have continued to increase the number of products we sell at our booth - sometimes, 10 different products.

Honey sales are good - it's a profitable venture for us; having Desi as a mentor and consultant helps. He also supplies us with equipment and queens when we need them.

1986
We purchase another 27 hives from Desi- this apiary is at a neighbor's farm about 5 miles from us. Two years later, we purchase another 25 hives from Desi at another neighbor. We are rockin-n-rolling. Everything is going well: our average honey harvest is approximately the national average: 4-5 gallons per hive

1990-01
FOULBROOD! What every beekeeper dreads. We lose a lot of hives, burn some boxes, bees, & honey (recommended in the literature and by Desi).

1992: I'm hearing news of a new bee parasite: mites. After research, I decide to buy 20 Buckfast queens - reportedly, they can live with the mites.

1993
Spring: I'm scared - the mites are spreading all over the world and killing large numbers of hives. I decide to control the mites by treating with an insecticide (the next year, it's recalled).

Fall: we have a record honey harvest: 480 gallons from 50 hives: I'm ecstatic.
BUT, friends who are helping us harvest the honey point out that we have the dreaded varroa mites on the bees. According to the literature, it takes 3 years for the mites to kill bee colonies. OK, we have 3 years to come up with a strategy.

While in one of his apiaries harvesting honey, Desi has a heart attack & dies. My mentor is gone - now I'm on my own.
We buy 24 hives from the person who purchased the entire operation.

1994
Spring: All 50 Sandhill hives dead! I'm dumbfounded - how could this be? I thot we had 3 years! This must have been the third year; it fits- apparently, it is common to have a record honey crop when the bees have a heavy mite load - they pull out all stops in their attempt to overcome the mites. Also, I learn the Buckfast queens are reputedly resistant to mites - but not the varroa mites.

Only 12 hives survive in the apiary we purchased last fall.

Summer: We build up the number of colonies by dividing the hives. To overcome the mites, we get Yugoslavian queens (just released by USDA), reputedly able to live with varroa mites. I don't trust it; I treat most hives with formic acid (allowed in organic certification & used a lot in Europe).

1995
lots of queen failures: on further reading, many beekeepers report queen failures after using formic acid. Yuk! Also the bees hate it.
In the fall, distrusting other solutions, I treat most hives with Apistan - the conventional
miticide used in the industry.

1996
33 hives. I try to raise lots of our own queens - very little success. Why? My guess is that I did it too early and did not really pay enough attention to important details. It's more complicated than I'd imagined.
I feed grease & essential oil patties to bees - to control mites (the grease is vegetable shortening - makes the bees slippery so the mites fall off).

1997
Only 7 hives survived the winter. OUCH! What am I doing wrong? I begin to do essential oil treatment seriously - in sugar water fed to bees weekly. We buy bees and frames of brood from a local beekeeper and queens from commercial producers in AL & CA to start new hives. (At this rate, it is not a paying enterprise...)
End of year I treat a few hives with Apistan and all hives w/ Terramyacin (for foulbrood). (I don't want to lose so many hives again...)

1998
33 hives FOULBROOD again - ugh! I take away their honey and feed it back to them w/ Terramyacin & essential oils. Amazing - they bounce right back and we have an average honey harvest.

1999
Foulbrood continues - I treat hives individually. I continue with essential oils & terramyacin. For the first time, I hear that foulbrood is now resistant to terramyacin.

2000
24 hives. I buy bees and queens again - wanting more bee hives NOW.
I make a few screened bottom boards - for mite control; apparently, mites fall off bees and if they fall through a screen, they can't climb back up into the hive.

2001
23 hives. I begin introducing small cell foundation - for mite control (what else?). The only bees that draw it correctly are captured swarms. I realize that this will require a lot of management. I put all hives on screened bottom boards.

2002
No more chemical treatments: terramyacin or apistan.

From now on I use only treatments allowed in certified organic production: powdered sugar, essential oils, acids.

I begin using powdered sugar and
garlic powder for mite control - the powdered sugar makes the bees slippery so that the mites fall off and through the screen bottom board. The garlic? To deter/kill the mites.

I also start to use drone comb catchment & destruction for mite control: drone brood is more attractive to the mites - they migrate into the drone brood and then we freeze it to kill the mites.

2003
12 hives survive. I buy more bees, brood, & queens.

I try a new system of mite control (developed in Holland): rotating brood in and out of hives so that each colony has a time of no brood and so no place for mites to reproduce. It consists of drone catchment and a lot of brood & hive manipulation - it really upsets the bees and so is unpleasant for us as well.

2004-06
I'm seeing a lot of mites. I treat all the hives with formic acid and continue with small cell and powdered sugar dusting.

2007-8
I continue having to re-queen about half of our hives every year: it dawns on me - it may be the effects of formic acid - the literature confirms my suspicion. I back off on formic acid: at most, one application per year (rather than 2) and treating only half of the hives.

2009
No more formic acid. At end of season, we treat most hives with thymol.

2010
We have the best over wintering ratio in a long time - we lose only 2 hives. At the moment several of our hives are visiting an organic apple orchard in Canton, MO (about 70 miles away.)

We look forward to their return.

 THE BIG PICTURE

Beekeeping changed dramatically with the arrival of varroa mites which have now spread all over the world; they arrived in our area about 1990. A reference point: the few years prior to that, we had 75 hives; after the mites, it takes as much time & energy to manage about a third as many colonies. Everything we do is centered on how to control varroa. Perhaps it is making us better beekeepers - we are paying a lot more attention to the bees and looking for hardy bees.

Our strategies for managing varroa are in two categories: treatments and management.

Treatments

With the arrival of varroa, the industry responded with chemical treatments - apistan was the standard and is applied by inserting plastic strips treated with fluvalinate into the beehive. The bees walk on them and spread it throughout the hive. In emergency situations, I used them. Beekeepers discovered that after 3 years of treatment, the mites developed resistance The chemical companies responded by coming up with new (& nastier) treatments. The beekeeping industry acknowledges that chemical treatments are short term; the long term strategy is to breed bees that can live with varroa. It is proving more difficult than envisioned. Many producers are advertising their queens as being varroa resistant: hygienic in general, and in particular Minnesota hygienic, Russians, etc. Each has merit: we've tried several but it appears that none are magical - after awhile, they lose those particular genetics.

Essential oils: when varroa first appeared, many beekeepers looked for natural controls - esential oils were popular: especially wintergreen & peppermint oil (I added tea tree oil). I thought they were working for several years - looking back, it seems that some of the effect was due to my paying close attention to the bees. After a few years, I concluded that they were not worth the effort.

Formic acid: is found in the hive naturally and ants have it in their bodies as well (but the kind we use is from a laboratory). Beekeepers – especially biodynamic ones and in Europe have been treating with formic, oxalic, and lactic acid for quite a while with apparent good success. I treated hives with formic acid for several years and it appears to control the mites – but it is nasty stuff. The fumes burn my nostrils, the bees hate it, and it seems to result in queen failure. It works by soaking special pads with acid and then inserting them in the beehive: the acid is released slowly. Over a period of 3 weeks, it releases enough acid fumes to kill the mites but not the bees.  So far, every time I have treated them, some of the bees seal off the pads with propolis - rendering them useless. As of 2008, we discontinue using it.

Thymol - appears to be more gentle: bees do not react to it like formic acid. We have used it only once - in the fall of 2009.

Management:

Small cell: we began introducing small cell foundation in 2001 (for more info on small cell - see my blog post of 3/28/2010 - on sandhill website). The idea is that small cells result in smaller bees, who are better able to live with varroa mites. The challenge is that often the bees do not build small cells consistently so I gave up on it. Then I found a Mennonite beekeeper in mizzourah that invented a different small cell – the bees like it and draw it more consistently. However, he moved to Arkansas and is currently not selling the foundation. We are still in process of introducing small cell foundation - the goal is to have all hives using small cell for their brood nest - it is fine to use various cell sizes to store honey.

Powder sugar & screen bottom boards: we dust the bees with powder sugar. The sugar makes the bees slippery so that the mites fall off, through the screen bottom board, and unable to crawl back into the hive.
How effective is it? It's hard to tell - but it's a fairly benign and non intrusive practice - we continue to do it.

Drone catchment: the varroa mites prefer to incubate in drone brood (they take 24 days rather than 21 to mature) and more food is packed into the cells. More food = higher reproduction rates. We wait until the drone brood is capped - but before they hatch, then freeze the brood - killing the mites and larvae.

AND NOW?

It appears that what has happened with beekeeping mirrors developments in agriculture in general: the idea being that by controlling nature, we can overcome all challenges. Control consists of chemical treatments to kill the bad guys. Nature responds by evolving resistance and the treadmill continues.

What about CCD (colony collapse disorder)? The scientific and beekeeping community continue to collaborate on trying to solve this puzzle. Result? Nothing definitive; the current theory is that it is due to a combination of factors centering around STRESS: due to more systemic pesticide use in crops, migratory beekeeping in which the bees are moved often and pumped up for particular pollination contracts (eg almonds in CA), as well as the widespread use of insecticides inside the hive for mite control, etc.

Top Bar Hives have recently become very popular with hobby beekeepers. The advantages: no lifting of heavy boxes, the bees build their own comb and decide what size cells to make, opening the hive is less invasive, and the bees become more gentle. It is attractive for many first time beekeepers. The trade off is that the comb is harvested along with the honey: more wax but less honey. Many of the folks who have top bar hives are more interested in the bees than the honey.
We just started our first top bar hive today  4/18/10.

As of now (4/18/10 ), we are planning to not use treatments of any kind. Our strategy is to get the bees to live with the mites with the help of: small cell, screened bottom boards, and having the bees raise their own queens to coexist with varroa.
Stay tuned!

THE COMMUNITY FACTOR

We live communally. I've used the personal pronoun a lot in this narrative - I have been the primary bee caretaker since 1982; however, there has usually been at least one other member that worked with me every year and each left their imprint: Grady, Thea, Ann, Inge, Jules, Gigi, & currently, Apple. When they were involved for more than a year, we began to make decisions jointly. We have also taken numerous interns and visitors for their first experience with bees. It's a real treat to watch a newbee be awe struck at seeing thousands of bees at work in the hive - and sometimes crawling on their arms!

Seasonal Snapshots:

Spring--Collecting Pollen

Summer--Swarm Season

During June and July we are sometimes called upon to remove swarms from neighboring lands. Here we see a classic swarm resting on a tree branch.

Here we have a bee box ready with drawn comb and some honey to receive the swarm.

Shake, shake, shake they fall in with their queen.

Organic Beekeeping Conference:

There were 44 of us at the Third Organic Beekeeping Conference in Oracle AZ March 5-7, 2010. These conferences were begun and organized by Dee Lusby, an organic beekeeper, a researcher (www.beesource.com) and an early proponent of organic = no treatment beekeeping. I'd discovered this movement 8 years ago, was fascinated, and implemented some of the management techniques; I quickly discovered it was more complicated than I'd expected. I had also wanted to attend one of the earlier conferences but AZ was far away. This time I was already in AZ for an advanced organic inspector training; further, I contacted Arthur Harvey of Maine to see if he was going. Arthur is an organic inspector and has one of the very few certified organic bee/honey operations in the country. Arthur informed that he'd been to the first 2 conferences and was not planning to go; however, if I went, he would come as well. He had been trying to get folks at the conference to enter discussions on establishing standards for organic beekeeping in the US.

March 5
Arthur & I attend the morning session at the Advanced Organic Inspector Training - it's about Organic Apiculture, the first time it's offered here (partially due to the USDA's National Organic Program now in the process of formulating organic apiculture standards). After the session, we drive 2 hours north to the Organic Beekeeping Conference at a YMCA camp way out in the desert near Oracle AZ. I'm looking forward to meeting the legendary Dee Lusby.

The facility is unpretentious: a large open room with several tables of bee equipment & supplies and about 50 chairs. Dee pulls herself away from an animated discussion - to register us. She continues talking bees: "are you aware that there is a left and right side to every frame?" I look at her skeptically - is this her idea of a joke? She senses my ambivalence: "come here, I'll show you." She holds a frame of bee comb up to the light: "look inside the cells - see the Y pointing down? When I turn it around - see how the Y points down on this side?" After several attempts, I see it. She continues: "this may not make a difference to you - but it's a big deal to the bees. When you switch frames from left to right - it's like someone moving your furniture; after awhile, the queen goes "how can I do my job when the furniture is constantly moved? I'm leaving - so she swarms - that ever happen to you?" OUCH! (Coming to this conference, swarming is one of the main issues I want to explore - we had excessive swarming last season). I've been here less than 10 minutes and already my head is spinning: YES! This is what I came for.

People are standing around outside in small groups - talking bees. After dinner, we introduce ourselves to the group. It becomes apparent that there is no scheduled program; tonight, a few of the regulars will sketch it out: who speaks when and for how long. That's cool - I'm down with informal.

March 6.
We have sessions all day: 8 am - 9:30 pm, except for breaks and meal times. The speakers are us: small time beekeepers (Dee is the only large scale beekeeper - 600 hives). She is not a speaker - "I'm trying to draw back;" however, she is the queen bee here - her pheromones set the tone.

Some topics are common to most beekeeping conferences: how to increase the number of your hives, personal experiences in beekeeping, health benefits of propolis, etc; others are new to me: top bar hives, how to get started with no treatment beekeeping, the interaction of microbes and bees in the bee hive, and apitherapy: a practitioner demonstrates how he uses bees to stings people to treat human illnesses.

Some generalities: about half of the folks here keep top bar hives rather than "Langs" (Langstroth hives = standard beekeeping equipment, after Langstroth - who invented the movable frame inside the hive 150 years ago). Top bar hives (lots of info on the internet) is a more natural way of keeping bees and it disturbs them less; consequently, they are more gentle, but make less honey. I gradually get it: these folks are more into bees than honey. For them it's a way of "going back to nature" or bringing nature into their backyard.

This theme is highlighted in the presentation by Corwin and an apprentice, Claire, of Boulder CO. Although he had no experience, Corwin began catching swarms and installing them in top bar hives. He found the bees to be gentle and easy to maintain. He began teaching classes and was overwhelmed by how many were interested. For many, it's a way to help bees (this was during the time when the plight of bees was in the national media). It is also a way to be an active participant in sustainable living and production (similar to folks gardening and keeping a few chickens). Some had attended local bee club meetings - only to be discouraged by beekeepers discussing products used to treat their hives. This is not what they had in mind. Corwin's classes rekindled their interest in natural beekeeping and he showed folks how to build top bar hives, catch swarms, and take care of them. After 10 years, they have hived about 350 swarms in top bar hives in people's backyards. As the number of hives in the area have increased - so have the swarms. They are now expanding into neighboring towns and people in other parts of the country are using this model to establish similar programs. (For more info, see backyardhives.com.)

Another theme: any & all treatments are discouraged and considered detrimental. Ramona gives a fantastic presentation on the intricate relationships and balance between microbes and bees within the hive. Even the so-called "soft" treatments (allowed in certified organic operations, eg acids: formic, oxalic, lactic, & thymol), totally upset the bees, the microbes, and their delicate balance. Dean's presentation "How to get on the treadmill of no treatment beekeeping" is an overview of how to transition to this ideal.

On Saturday night, Arthur and I talk about organic standards & certification. I'd been preparing myself - sketching notes of what I wanted to say. Whenever I met Dee, she would tease me: "ha, you'll be up front tonight - we're gonna roast you!" I tried to be nonchalant "come on - you don't scare me!" But, truth be told, she did! Arthur had warned me that folks here scoff at organic apiary certification because some products are allowed and they distrust government regulation.

I go first in our session - I want to get it over with. I decide to keep it personal: give a background of how/why I am involved in the organic certification movement. I'm not trying to convince anyone - I want to build bridges. I'm more nervous than I'd realized and cut my presentation short. Arthur is more relaxed and gets into the nitty gritty fairly quickly. He is very knowledgeable about the proposed standards, has all the details at hand and discourses at length. I scan the audience, looking for signs: are folks engaged? interested? Want to talk about different issues? Sometimes I cut Arthur off to call on people who raise their hands - to steer the conversation to what people really want to talk about. Summary: we have an informative and lively discussion.

Two comments after the session bolster my spirits: "hey, I appreciated the way you did build bridges - just like you said in your introduction"; and next morning Ramona says: "I could tell you really wanted the discussion to go well - I get that you don't like conflict and work hard at getting to a smooth place - and you did!"

The conference ends at noon on Sunday. The last half hour, Sam entertains us with his humorous tunes on his ukulele - mostly about bees & beekeepers. It's a great way to end.

Arthur & I leave immediately to go back to our inspector's gig to attend our annual meeting. After that, we drive to Dee's ranch. The tradition: after the conference, some folks crash at Dee's place for anywhere up to a week - to see her operation and continue networking. I expected about 5 - but there were at least 15! People sleep in guest rooms, couches, and some of us on the floor. It's fun getting to know people better and hear their stories.

Next morning it's chilly and threatening to rain. No weather to go see bees - instead, Dee shows us how to make propolis capsules and gives us a tour of her honey house - it's a large scale operation with old timey equipment.

Ruminations:

• I'm humbled: our farm has been organic for more than 30 years and been certified for 20. I've kept bees for 30 years - the folks at this conference are more "organic" than I am - in the sense that they practice and spread the word that NO treatment beekeeping is possible.
• Many of the beekeepers in this movement are more into bees than honey - I feel ambivalent here:  I want to believe that my first priority are the bees; however, we are also a commercial farm and part of our mission is to demonstrate how to make a living from the land - which includes selling honey. Then there is Dee - she started this group and is dependent on bees for her income.
• Organic vs organic certification. I'd like these folks to be involved in discussions re certification standards but there is little/no incentive for them - in fact, they scoff at the current proposed standards.
• This group's enthusiasm and love of bees is infectious & inspiring; it's part of a larger sustainable and green movement.
• The energy feels like community building: it's an intimate group and we are a small minority. It reminds me of the organic gardening/farming movement 20-30 years ago.