Bee me up, Scotty!

Do you want a crash course in Natural Beekeeping? No, it won’t hurt a bit. (Unlike the bee sting I got last week.) The best way to learn about natural beekeeping is…

(insert drumroll) Use the Force! No, just kidding. There is a better way.

The best way to learn about natural beekeeping is to read and do. Read all you can about it. Read online, read books, and read articles. Then go out and put into practice what you have been learning.

To help you, I have compiled my favorite beekeeping articles into a Natural Beekeeping Article Pack. You can download it here: Natural Beekeeping.

What will you find in this collection?

Nothing but articles on natural beekeeping and the Warre Hive that I have found to be thought provoking and meaningful. Articles that will help you get a better understanding of such things as:

• Minimal Intrusion Beekeeping
• The Principle of Nest Scent and Heat Retention
• Wild bee colonies that have naturally survived varroa mites
• Tips and techniques for natural and sustainable beekeeping
• Even a guide for making your own wax starter strips for the top bars
  in your beehive

I have compiled all the best articles into a handy ZIP file. You can download it here: http://warrebeekeeping.com on the natural beekeeping page.

Don’t stop there! Keep reading online, check out books at your local library and browse through great beekeeping sites like http://biobees.com. Always have an open mind ready to learn more about the hive and the honeybee. The more you read, the more you will know.

And every time you have learned something new about natural beekeeping, go out and practice what you have learned. There is no better teacher than personal experience.

As Yoda might say: It is the true beekeeper who knows that the more he learns, the more he discovers how much he has left to learn.

Happy Beekeeping, and may the Force of Learning Be With You!

Disclamer: Nick Winters is neither a Star Wars fan nor a Trekkie. He just thinks it is fun to allude to pop culture now and then.

But, how can you feed your bees if the weather is too cold for them to leave the hive?

Emile Warre solved the problem in his book, “Beekeeping For All.” On page 62 he describes the Spring and Summer feeder. He states:

“To feed colonies that are short of stores in spring and summer, and to stimulate comb building in weak colonies, we have another feeder. It will hold 200 g syrup.”

Warre Hive Feeder Description:

• A. Float made of 9 mm wooden rods side by side for the bees to stand on while feeding
• B. Syrup Trough 20 mm deep. External dimensions: length 250 mm; width 150 mm..
• C. Drawer. This is holds the Trough and Float together.
• D. Feeder Surround having the external dimensions of a hive-body box and a height of 2 mm more than the frame in C.

Build the Warre Spring and Summer Feeder

This feeder is simple to build. It is just a (very) short hive stand with one end open so you can slide a feeder box with syrup under the beehive.

The feeder surround should be built to be 34 cm long by 30 cm wide. These are the external dimensions of the Warre Hive Box. Leave one end of the frame open as in the picture above.

The feeder drawer does not need to be complex. You can build a small box with a flat bottom and add some strips of wood inside the box for the bees to stand on. You can add a piece of wood to the front of the box as in the picture above…but this is optional.

The Warre Feeder is great for both spring and summer feeding

You can also add some small pieces of light wood to the trough. When filled with syrup, the wood will float and create a landing place for the honeybees.

Build this feeder, fill the trough with some syrup. Fill until the syrup almost covers the float, but not quite. The bees should be able to stand on the wood float to feed.

Now, slide the whole feeder assembly under your Warre beehive. Your bees can stay inside the hive in cold weather and feast on the food you provide.

To refill the syrup, simply slide the feeder drawer out from the surround, pour some more syrup into the trough and then put the feeder drawer back.

Your honeybees will thank you!

Ever since this blog was started, many of you have been asking a lot of great questions. Questions about backyard beekeeping, the Warre Top Bar Hive, how to keep bees naturally…the list goes on!

(By the way, if you have a beekeeping question, checkout the Beekeeping Forums. Those guy’s are awesome!)

After a while, I realized that I was being asked a lot of the same questions over and over. Which is good! It means that you are thinking about how to keep bees in a sustainable manner. I like that! The bees like it too!

So, in order to answer your questions in a better fashion, I packaged a lot of the most common questions in a free Quick Start Guide to Natural Beekeeping.

I need your help to make this Quick Start Guide better. Go grab a copy at http://diybeehive.com and read it. Then, post your thoughts about it in the comment area below.

How did you like it? Did it answer some of your questions? Do I need to expand it in certain areas? Do you think it is helpful?

The more feedback you leave, the more often I can update the Quick Start Guide according to your wishes…and as a thank you I will send you a fresh copy of the Guide every time it is updated.

So, download your copy right now, then come back and tell me what you think!

Thank you!

Listening to Your Bees

by Peter Dight

I believe the hiss is a warning…

I’ve a reasonable library of beekeeping books, and a couple of years ago I was reading an old book which mentioned listening to your bees to see if they are going to swarm.  It told of how a queenright colony, when their hive is sharply tapped upon, will react by ‘hissing’.  I believe the hiss is the bee equivalent to a warning signal, generated by a section of the population fluttering its wings in response to the vibration caused by the tap.

If the colony is making swarm preparations, weeks before a queen cell is drawn the queen will be slowing down her laying rate as she becomes exhausted or as the bees, sensing a drop in queen pheromone, start withdrawing food for the queen.  Thus the emerging young bees have fewer larva to feed when they emerge as nurse bees.  This surfeit of nurse bees, as yet not fully developed in their first 10 days since hatching from the comb, are milling around in the hive with little or nothing to do.  Now, when we tap a hive in this state, the normal hiss starts, and the idle nurse bees react by imitating the response, but their underdeveloped wings and/or inexperience cause the resulting sound to differ noticeably.

A longer hiss may indicate a swarm

So, on tapping a colony, if you get a short sharp hiss it will be queenright, while if you get a longer deeper toned attack followed by a sustained decay, which resembles a wave more than a hiss, then you are likely to be facing a swarm soon.  This can be noted some two weeks before the first queen cells are drawn and can cut the number of intrusive manipulations required for swarm control, and save a lot of time if you have a quantity of hives.

When I read about this and asked other beekeepers I was laughed at, and still am when I ask some beekeepers.  I tried it the next season after learning about it and after months of noting no difference in the hiss’s I heard, one day noted an easily recognizable difference; and yes, a week later queen cells were starting to be drawn.

Since then I discovered a 1950-60 invention called the Apidictor, and if you know of a beekeeper with electronic and audio design background, you may try to get them interested in building one for you.

End of Article

Hive tapping does work…I tried it

As soon as I read this article I went out to my hives and started tapping them to hear how they were doing.  Sure enough, they responded exactly as Peter wrote that they would.  I also did some research and found a schematic for the ” Apidictor” at Beesource.com. There I learned that one E. F. Woods created a device which was able to electronically isolate the key “swarm” sounds…the sounds which could indicate to a beekeeper a possible swarm in the future.

So, try it out…listen to your bees.  Who knows, we may yet learn something from nature!

Thanks to Peter Dight for letting me share this article!

“There has been no time for natural selection to evolve a response to varroa – which is why it kills our colonies.”

This is an interesting question…do honey bees need to “evolve” a response to varroa, or do they already have an instinctive response to the varroa mite? It seems that some bee strains do indeed have an instinctive response to the varroa mite, and this genetic trait can be passed along to other strains through selective breeding.

For instance, researchers and bee breeders have been Breeding Bees for Resistance over the last 15+ years to produce a honeybee which is Varroa Resistant.  Other strains are naturally resistant, such as the Russian Stock. This particular strain has been used to create a line of bees which shows good Varroa Resistance.  Olympic Wilderness Apiary is a good example of an apiary which has developed mite and disease resistant bees.

If some bee strains have developed resistance, then could it not be possible that other bee strains in the wild could have developed a similar resistance naturally?

“Here in the UK almost all wild/ feral colonies have died in the last 5 years – and presumably wild colonies were making ‘natural comb’.”

This is an interesting statement. Is it documented? I would like to know if it is hearsay or fact that almost all the feral colonies have died in the UK. Just across the Channel in France, researchers have documented cases of Honey bee colonies that have survived Varroa destructor. Some of these colonies have apparently lived for more than six years while actively combating Varroa.

There has been an increase in feral swarms

I work mainly with feral swarms…and in my area (NW Oregon and SW Washington) there has been an upturn in the number of feral swarms over the last 15+ years. My source for this information is from beekeepers in the area, researchers, and a major bee pest control companies here in Oregon. One company I consulted has been operating since the 1970′s and the owners kept honeybees even before that.

My point is that we do not really know for certain how many colonies around the world are resistant and how many are not, mainly because we cannot physically access all of the feral colonies around the world. I tend to look at it this way: if you find a feral swarm and you know it came from a wild colony…then there is a good chance this feral swarm has some level of mite resistance. After all, it has survived in the wild for some time without human treatment.

“…nobody has yet explained why forcing bees to breed in smaller cells will stop parasitation by varroa.”

I am an advocate of natural cell beekeeping.

I don’t think it will either. I am not an advocate of small-cell beekeeping. I am an advocate of natural cell beekeeping. Why not let the bees build their own comb to their own specifications? Typically, natural comb is not an average size. It varies from “large cell” to “small cell.” I know that Varroa can attack in natural cell size as well as in regular foundation cell size. I would rather have my bees combat Varroa in the cell size of their of making, rather than one I have forced on them be it natural or small-cell.

Those are my thoughts on varroa mites.  I am currently looking into Essential Oils for Mite Control to reduce mite loads and combat disease in the hive.  I will post my findings here on this blog.

Thanks for reading! I value all input and comments. Discussion makes the world a more interesting place.

Humanity depends on the lowly honeybee

Honeybees are in trouble. Varroa mites, nosema, colony collapse disorder and foul brood have all taken their collective toll on the small but hardworking insect to which humanity owes so much. Besides furnishing honey for commercial bread-baking and beeswax for quite a few of the top of the line cosmetic supplies, bees regularly pollinate over one-third of the world’s agriculturally derived food supply. Needless to say, humanity depends on the lowly honeybee.

Thus it is our responsibility, our duty, as beekeepers to ensure the health and happiness of the bees in our care. We must practice bee-friendly and sustainable beekeeping.

To do this, we need three things: a bee friendly paradigm, or worldview, a bee friendly hive for the bees to live in and a bee friendly management system that puts the honeybee first and the beekeeper second. This does not mean that the beekeeper cannot expect to obtain honey or hive products…it simply means that he must always put the welfare of his bees before potential gain and profit.

We need a bee friendly beehive system

Gain and profit have driven many beekeepers to adopt hives and management procedures that are unnatural to the bees, all for the love of honey or money. We have often heard the phrase: “Bees are adaptable and can live in any type of hive cavity.” This may be true…but we quickly forget that along with some hive cavities come the management practices of the beekeeper who owns those cavities (aka beehives.)

As long as these management practices mirror naturally occurring bee phenomenon, the beekeeper will have a healthy hive. If the management practices contradict naturally occurring bee phenomenon, weakening of the bee colony is the inevitable result.

For instance, in frame beekeeping, a beekeeper often fills frames with ready made beeswax foundation. Pressed into the foundation are hundreds of cell bases, all ready for bees to draw out into wax comb. This seems all right…until we look at the fact each cell is exactly the same size. Do bees make each cell the same size in naturally occurring comb? Apparently not.

Naturally occurring comb has a large variance of +/- 6.1 mm to +/- 4.3 mm. Is it healthy to keep bees in cells that are all the same size? It is interesting to note that the current modern era of bee diseases coincides with the rise of the modern frame hive 150 years ago. Does forced cell size have a part in the problem?

To help the honeybee is to help mankind

In order to put the welfare of our bees first, we as beekeepers need to make sure that our bee hives and management practices match as closely as possible natural bee phenomenon, or what bees would do naturally in the wild.

We need management practices that are non-intrusive and bee hives that protect the synergy of the bee colony residing inside. We also need to have a paradigm in which we see honeybees as part of a greater network of life in this world. Bees truly are an integral part of the environment, and to help the honeybee is to help mankind.

In 2007, I discovered a new hive design

This spring (2008) I am experimenting with a new beehive design.  Since I started beekeeping, I have always used the standard ten frame Langstroth hive which is predominant here in America.  In the fall of 2007, I learned of a new hive design through the Organicbeekeepers Group on Yahoo.  This new hive design was named after its developer, Emile Warre.

Emile Warre was a Frenchman who used over 350 different hives in his effort to develop a hive which was simple, low in cost and of benefit to both the honeybees and the beekeeper.  Warre wrote a book which outlines his experiences and demonstrates his hive system, which he called The People’s Hive.  It has been translated into English by Mr. David Heaf of Wales and is available for free download.  Mr. Heaf is also the moderator for the Warrebeekeepers Group on Yahoo. I joined and learned much from the knowledgeable beekeepers on that group.

I began my adventure…

I read Warre’s book and my curiosity was piqued by his take on beekeeping.  I decided to take the plunge.  I downloaded the free plans for the Warre Hive, purchased some wood and nails and built a couple of hives for less than $65 dollars apiece.  I am pleased by how they turned out.  I will post some photos of them soon. I still need to paint them, and will put some bees in them in the very near future.