Holistic Approach to Colony Colapse Disorder

6/18/16-Internship-Today I went to the South Deerfield Bee Festival. This festival happens once a year and it is all about various ways that beekeepers are treating their bees to help increase the health of their bees. Session one I went to “How to open and Evaluate a Beehive”. I feel like I know enough to be able to open a hive safely and to look for honey, brood, larvae, eggs, and some diseases. I think it is really important to take a step back and to look at the basics of beekeeping from the very start. We went over how to correctly take out frames, what the smoker does to the bees, how to make sure that the queen is doing her job, and the overall condition of the hive. Going through the hive between 10Am-4Pm is the best time because that is when the worker bees are out looking for nectar. Bees don’t make the resin (Propolis) they fly to trees such as pines for the sticky sap and use that to close off holes so that no bacteria can get into their hive. We learned that when the queen is not doing her job the bees will be jumpy but if the queen is healthy the bees wees bring back pollen from various plants; the color of pollen can be yellow, orange, dark yellow, and dark orange. We learned about the life span of the bees. Fertilized eggs become worker bees, unfertilized become drones. The queen takes 16 days to emerge, workers take 21 and drones take 24.when the bees first emerge they walk around the hive a little then get right to work as nurse bees, taking care of the larvae. I then went to session two; “All about pollen and pollen collection.” We talked about a special frame called a pollen trap; this special frame scrapes off the pollen off the bees while entering the hive so that it drops into a special box for human consumption. Using this can only be used during certain times of the year when there is less emerging larvae, so that we do not take away protein from the bees. Bees are able to carry 25% of their weight in pollen. The bees store it on their body when entering the flowers; they then scrape the pollen off their body and onto their special pollen sacs on their legs. They then put to pollen into cells and make bee bread out of it. This becomes the protein they feed the larvae. Session three was all about the Top Bar Hive. This is a special type of hive that the bees make their own comb. It ensures that they don’t have to draw out a comb that has already been fitted for them. I learned that this type of hive, the entrance needs to face the south; it should also be away from wind because it is harder for the bees to keep it as warm as the Langstroth hive. We talked about various wintering options for the hive, such as putting insulation inside the hive, putting hay all the way around the hive to keep the wind and cold out. I learned so much from this bee festival, and yet I only scratched the surface with the knowledge that is out there. I am excited to see what more I can learn on my own and from working with bees.

6/19/16-Project-Today I worked on building the cages I will be using for keeping the bees in the lab, I bought acrylic glass and build the box it is an 8inch by 9inch box with mesh nets on both sides for the bees to breath. I have bottles with a tube that will lead to a sea sponge so that the bees can go and drink from the sponge. I received bee pollen so that if they need protein they will have some nutrients. What I must learn how to do not is how to graft cells from the hives into the container without killing the larvae inside, this will help me because I will be able to not only see the effects of using sugar water and nutrients on nurse bees that had been eating honey before, but also on newly emerging bees from caps.

6/20/16-Internship- Today was the kickoff for pollinator week, and we had an event at the ALC Apiary, we had the school president, governor and others come and check out the apiary that we had built. We then took them through the hives, and showed them the work that the bees do, Beekeeping inspector Kim, and Ken went through the hives showing people what to look for when opening a hive. Once we had closed the hives up and everyone left. Beekeeping Inspectors, Ken, Kim, Mark, and I went through some of the hives in the apiary to see how they were doing. What we found what hive F, G were very sick they had sac brood as well as European foul brood(EFB), Ken recommended doing a varroa test on hive F so that we could see if we need to treat them. Ken also recommended giving hive F, G antibiotics called Tyron which can help them against EFB. Hive H seemed to be okay there was signs of Sac Brood but not too much. Hive I we noticed that the bees were starting to make queen cells and were starting to get ready to swarm. We knew that Hive ten was queen less so we found and trapped the queen from hive I so that we can put her in hive ten. By placing two brood frames on an empty supper with empty frames we put newspaper between hive 10 that was queen less and the new supper with the queen inside so that the bees will eat through the newspaper and join forces to make one strong hive. Two weeks before we noticed that hive 4 was queen less, we put a virgin queen in that hive to see if she would take. When going through the hive we noticed that she did take! We also went through Hive C to see if the queen we had introduced took or not, we didn’t find the queen but we saw that the cells were being polished which means that the queen mated, and will start laying eggs within five days.

6/21/16-Internship-Today I went through the UMass hives except for hive C to see how they were doing with beekeeping club president Mackay, and Alex, We moves frames, and supers around so that the bees can start building certain frames that they had ignored before this makes it so that they will not get honey bound and stuck which may cause them to swarm. I spent the next two hours looking and observing the hives, it is an incredible spectacle to see the bees going on about their business not even concerned with a human lifting up their hive. The way that the bees talk with each other; touching antennas, and doing a wagging dance. Seems that they are always taking care of one another, and when there seems a problem, they do not argue they just get to work to fix what is out of place.

 

6/22/16-6/23/16-Internship- These two days were intensive apiary checkups. I went with Kim, and Ken who are both Mass Apiary Inspectors to check out home apiaries. It was very interesting to be watching them look at a hive, and come up with conclusion of what they believe is good or bad with a certain hive. They were able to tell if there were any diseases in the hive that the apiarist should take care of. Some of these diseases that we found were Sac Brood, which occurs when the hive is stressed. Chalk brood occurs when hives are stressed as well. More serious illnesses such as mite damage, this can be seen when a cell has a hole punctured through the capping and the head is bitten off. This means that there was mite damage in the hive. We also saw European Foul Brood which is a more serious disease that looks like the larvae are melting into the cell and turning black. We also saw moth damage where a frame have spider like string all over the frame.(Pictures of Apiaries will be in the Gallery)

6/24/16-Internship-Today we went to the UMass apiary to check out some of the hives that had some diseases such as European Foul Brood(EFB). We want to treat the bees without harming them as much as possible. Many time if the disease is really bad in the hive beekeepers need to use an antibiotic called Tyron instead we used a more homeopathic method by using lemon balm and sugar water so that the benefits can go into their system. We also made sure that the queens we had transferred were doing well. Hive ten unfortunately did not take the queen from Monday, so we have to re-queen this hive so that they will not get weak. We also prevented hive eleven from getting honey bound. This means makes it so that the queen is able to move around the whole hive without being blocked by honey. I then went to Dan Conlan who is a local beekeeper. We are going to start working together once or twice a week.