Holistic Approach to Colony Colapse Disorder

East Wareham

7/11/16-Internship-Today I had the time to really go through a single hive and really try to observe everything I could. I believe that as a society we have forgotten how to observe nature and our surroundings. We continuously want something new, however I have noticed that by observing something long enough you can start seeing certain things that you wouldn’t have been able to if you didn’t observe long enough. It was nice and it definitely showed be a different part of beekeeping. I wasn’t trying to do anything to the hive or manipulate it in any way. I just wanted to really take the time to appreciate the bees and what they do in the hive.

7/12/16-Internship-Today Kim and I went through hive and re-queened them. Hive E is now my new favorite because it is the problem hive. We combined this hive with another one the week before, What we did was take brood frames from another hive and placed it in this hive what that does it help increase the population in the hive as well as give a boost so that the queen can lay. I then went to the lab and dissected bees. II have been stung by bees so many times yet have never dissected the venom sac. Today I looked at the honey bees’ venom sac and the connection of the stinger to the rest of the body.

7/13-7/15-Internship-The last three days we have been driving down near the cape for cranberry bog apiary inspections. These apiaries are a little different because most of the hives belong to migratory beekeepers. This means that these beekeepers go around the country and place their hives in a certain location for pollination of certain crops. The bees within these hive definitely acted different then the bees at the UMass apiary they were much more likely to sting and were not as happy. Cranberries are not nutritional nectar for the bees so it made sense why they were not as happy. It is incredible that these insects are so productive that they can pollinate 2000 acres of cranberries in a month. The ratio of bees to acre is approximately 2 acres per hive. The cranberry bog apiaries that we inspected were those of Ocean Spray and Makepeace farm Cranberry bogs which are two of the largest cranberry growers in the state. Working on these apiaries we saw a whole host of diseases and interesting things in the hives. We found small hive beetles destroying a hive this is an insect that goes into the hive and causes havoc on honey frames. We found Wax Moth that destroyed colonies too, this is also an insect that goes into a hive and ruins a colony if they are not strong enough. We found European Foul Brood which is a viral infection that can be cleaned up but can have dire effects on a hive. There are two reasons for EFB it can be the fact that this hive is infected with this disease or it may be that this hive is showing signs of EFB idiopathic from another infection such as Varro Mite. In one of the hives we inspected we found a Black widow which is native to Western Massachusetts. We also found in a hive that had died Mud Diver Wasp nest which is a type of wasp that built its hive in a dead honey bee hive. The last three days the three of us( Kim, Mark, and I) went through 225 hives. I personally went through sixty hives it was a lot of lifting extremely heavy boxes some of which weighed close to eighty pounds. I have to express that being a Mass Bee Inspector is an extremely difficult job yet very rewarding.

7/16/16-Project-Today I made a Nuc I took two frames of capped Brood and two frames of honey and Pollen and put them in a Nuc hive I then placed in between these frames a frame of capped queen cells. They have been capped for 5 days and will emerge within 3 days and hopefully will create a small hive. With the addition of two new Nucs our apiary is now at 25 hives!

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