Holistic Approach to Colony Colapse Disorder

6/10/16-Internship-After checking the top Bar Hive the day before we realized that the queen was not in the hive. We looked all over for her but there was no sign of her. There was no brood, eggs or larvae which means that the queen had either died while swarming or was kicked out because she couldn’t produce any eggs. Dr. Herbert and I decided to pay a visit to Dan Conlon a Local Beekeeper who has queens. We bought from him a Black Russian Queen so that we can put her in this Hive. Black Russian Queen is a better choice for a top bar hive because of the small amount of honey the bees consume over winter as well as their hardiness factor. Black Russian Queens are the most diverse genetically from any other bees in the world. Dan Conlon has been able to have his bee’s even resist Varroa Mites from causing havoc on his apiary.

6/10/16-Project-Today I went to the Lab that I will be working on with feeding of the bees. I received a key to the lab...I guess it means its official. I will be starting my project next week.

6/11/16-Internship-Going into the top bar hive today I noticed that the bees had accepted the new queen.. The new queen is placed in a wooden box with a mesh cover and a candy cork. If the bees feed the new queen through the mesh it means that they have accepted her into their family. We keep her in the hive with the candy cork so that the bees in the hive can recognize her pheromones, once they do she will become their queen. I also have made an Apiary Check List. Being that our apiary has now grown to 21 hives! We have to keep very precise data on what is going on in each of the hives that we check on. 

6/13/16-6/16/16-Internship-For the last month I have been working with bees every single day, and am starting to learn about how to take care of them. This week was different instead of working in the apiary I worked at a preschool. I went to the preschool to do an outreach program on the bees. It was an amazing experience to see the preschoolers get so excited about the bees. At first as I was putting on the beekeeping suit many kids came over to me and asked me if I was an astronaut. I started explaining to them that it was actually a beekeeping suit and that I work with bees. It was funny to see their curiosities be caught by something as strange as a person working with bees. There were so many questions, they have only ever heard from adults about how dangerous bees are and how being stung hurts. Bringing in a different perspective I showed them that in fact bees are a very gentle insect and that when taking care of them in a careful manner they in fact don’t sting. When I first started talking there were a few kids who blocked their ears because they did not want to hear about bees. The kids were very interested in the beekeeping tools, the smoker was a big attraction and many kids related it to an accordion. I showed them that putting smoke on the bees creates a distraction in the hive so that I can go into the hive and look at various frames. I explained to them how most of the bees are actually female and there are only a few male bees in the hive. I think that this was very confusing to the boys in the group who could not wrap around that there are only girls! And few boys in the hive. I talked to the older kids about what makes the honey bee an insect, being that it has three parts to its body and six legs. I explained to them how honey is made by the bee going from flower to flower sucking nectar and changing it into honey in the hive. I showed them how important pollination was to earth and how without it there wouldn’t be trees, flowers, or anything alive (in the gentlest way possible). By the end of my presentation the kids were bewildered by this insect, even the ones who had covered their ears in the beginning came up to me to look at the suit and touch the smoker. Before I finished my speech I gave honey to all the kids to show them what a miracle the bee truly is to Earth. By the end of all my presentations the whole school was buzzing about bees.