Beekeeping

The basis of honey bee winter survival lies in their ability to fo rm a winter cluster. The winter cluster is a precisely organized, dynamic structure that functions like a biological heating system. It is worker bees instinctively gathering together, centered around the queen and remaining brood. Ideally the winter cluster will form between boxes (in 2-3 box hive configurations). It moves upward as the season progresses to maintain contact with honey stores. This initial po

Most of us will use harvested honey as a dietary carbohydrate. I trust you were satisfied with the honey you were able to harvest this season?  Your honey might be directly consumed or used to sweeten beverages, desserts, salads, cooked into main dishes, be dribbled on toast and used to help keep baked goods fresher for a longer period of time. Honey is a natural sweeter, perhaps preceding all other concentrated sugar sources to benefit human  nutrition. There is another i

WVBA members were encouraged to complete a web-based survey document in a continuing effort to define overwintering losses/successes of backyard beekeepers in Oregon. This was the 16 th year of such survey activity. I received 250 reports from Oregon beekeepers keeping anywhere from 1 to 49 colonies; Willamette Valley members sent in 173 surveys, four more than last year but three below average return for the past 6 years = 20.5%. Overwintering losses of WVBA respondents =

The pnwhoneybeesurvey remains OPEN until April 30 th .  Please participate  @ https://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/survey/  .  This will be the 16 th year. I have modified the survey so you can simply enter survival/loss this past winter; select Fast Track to pass around questions on management if you wish. The 19 WVBA members so far responding (3 below average of 22 last five years) to the 2024-25 survey report a 16.5% winter loss level, well below the 10 year WVBA average winter

The pnwhoneybeesurvey is OPEN. The members of WVBA have been especially supportive of this annual survey of Oregon and Washington backyard beekeepers.  Please participate before May 1st @ https://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/survey/  .  This will be the 16 th year. I have modified the survey so you can simply enter survival/loss this past winter and Fast Track avoiding responding to questions on management if you wish. For Oregon backyarders, the overall trend is essentially flat

The stretch of winter without bees can feel lengthy. We readied our colonies in the fall for the long lean months of cold, and then had to leave them to do what they do. Do you see the winter months as a much deserved reprieve from the physical labor of bees and other outdoor work?  Has your attention turned to reading and contemplating about bees? Are you anticipating the arrival of catalogues with beekeeping equipment and botanical offerings? Are you patiently waiting for s

Have you thought about treatment-less beekeeping? Dead Bees Don’t Make Honey by Theresa Martin (2024. Little Wolf Farm, ISBN 979-8-9902757-0-6, available from Amazon) is best explained by its subtitle 10 tips for Healthy Productive Bees. This newest of practical paperbacks is an extremely well written guide to help ensure success with bee colony care using the natural history of bees. Author Theresa Martin is a 6 year beekeeper from Kentucky. She started with 2 colonies and

A bee egg is 1/1000 th the size of the eventual adult bee. It may surprise you that all the eggs a queen lays in beeswax comb cells are NOT the same size.  Younger-aged queens, not surprisingly, lay more robust, larger eggs than older-aged queens. Two-year old queens lay eggs that weigh 1/3 rd less. And eggs from older-aged queens are less likely to survive. The mortality rate of eggs increases as queens age - from 3.5% to 8.9%  by the time the queen is 2-years of age. Eggs

WVBA members are encouraged to complete a web-based survey document in a continuing effort to define overwintering losses/successes of backyard beekeepers in Oregon. This was the 15 th year of such survey activity. I received 171 reports from Oregon beekeepers keeping anywhere from 1 to 41 colonies; Willamette Valley members sent in 13 surveys, less than ½ the previous year (26) but an improvement of the low number the previous year when only 10 WVBA respondent surveys were

The pnwhoneybeesurvey is OPEN. The members of WVBA have been especially supportive of this annual survey of Oregon and Washington backyard beekeepers.  Please participate before May 1st @ https://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/survey/   If you want a quicker survey experience please print the note sheet @ https://pnwhoneybeesurvey.com/notesheet/  which is a great tool just to have in your bee yard as a reminder for all that can be done, not to mention for ease of tracking for next yea

Just in time for our early season decision making on what is best to feed our bees is the latest release from the Honey Bee Health Coalition  Honey Bee Nutrition Guide . https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/nutritionguide/ The guide reviews the basic of bee nutrition and serves as a manual for supplemental feeding in bee hives. It is a straight-forward, uncomplicated coverage of the complex and nuanced world of honey bee nutrition. It was prepared by Dr Priya Basu, recently a

The Varroa mite is a formidable foe? As my April PNW survey shows, our annual loses, most specialists agreeing due to varroa mites, continues around 40%. We need better tools (better bees/weaker mites/better controls) to combat the mite. Here are three promising developments that might help.   Weaker Mites: Greenlight Biosciences https://www.greenlightbiosciences.com/ of Rochester, NY presented a seminar recently on their development of a very novel type of miticide,  Vades

While the importance of the male drone is often dismissed, we can definately state that drones are important for a colony’s reproductive success. The virgin queen receives sperm from more than a single individual leading to diverse patrilines – a critical contribution for colony-level function. A study of a group of German scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior at the University of Konstanz, Baden-Wuerttemberg with computer scientists from the Free Unive

There is a new pest in the US – the yellow-legged hornet Vespa velutina . It is a hawker.  Last month when I travelled to Georgia to assist with their Master Beekeeper training and speak at the Georgia fall statewide bee meeting, this new pest was the hot topic. New Discovery On August 9 a beekeeper near the port city of Savannah, GA reported 2 individuals of what he believed were wasps eating numbers of bees in front of his colony. Positive ID was confirmed  (Aug 15 th ) f

Do you have enough bee books?  Is there room for one more on your shelf? If yes, consider Raising Resilient Bees by Eric and Joy McEwen. (Chelsea Green Publishing. 2023. 254 pages). Eric and Joy McEwen live on a 35 acre farm in the remote Illinois River valley of SW Oregon close to the California border. Their isolation figures prominently in their new book “Raising Resilient Bees - Heritage techniques to mitigate mites, preserve locally adapted genetics and grow your own ap

Robber bees are foraging honey bees gone bad! Robbing bees take the fast track to riches – they  invade another colony to steal insufficiently protected stored honey reserves or sugar water being fed to a colony other than their own.  Robber bees aren’t trying to destroy another colony, rather they seek to save their own colony from starvation. Honey bees are compulsive hoarders.  Rare in natural nests, robbing is all too common in our modern apiaries when we site colonies of

Spring – the busiest bee season! Like the other four seasons (swarming, supering, harvesting, fall), spring  comes with varying activities for beekeepers depending on weather conditions and our beekeeping objectives.  Beekeeping is a continuous learning experience. In spring, bee colonies need to grow their colony population and rebuild their stocks of honey. Our “reluctant” March and April 2023 spring offered some lessons we might incorporate into spring beekeeping. Spring

Beekeepers MUST work in the spring to keep mite numbers low in September and October. The concept: if we flatten the mite growth curve in the spring their eventual population will not be as large and the harmful viruses they foster will mean less fall colony collapse and overwinter colony losses. Read to end for how to flatten mite growth in the spring. It seems varroa mites are using drone brood to grow their spring population, based on new research from University of Maryl

Many WVBA members probably saw the news about the development of a honey bee vaccine to protect colonies from American foulbrood. The most recent good news was that the USDA has issued a conditional license for two years for vaccine use. The vaccine, PrimeBEE , should be available for purchase in 2023. And additional good news is that it will not be necessary to give a vaccine shot to every bee in the hive- only the queen will get the vaccine.   Dalan Animal Health, a small