Winter bee watching

[gwizzie]

Hi Folks,

Sorry not been around been busy working 7 days a week just now :( never mind end in site soon I hope....

Anyway I have a few questions regarding wintering your bee's... On visiting my bees today just to do a visual check that all hives were upright, I noticed that most of the hives were VERY active ? temp here today is 13deg.

Is this just bees going on the water run and a few going to the toilet ?

Is this common and ok as I thought that they would be wrapped up for the year ?

Will they not be using more food stores ?

Thanks again in advance.

[greengumbo]

First time I've been at home during daylight yesterday and the bees were flying from all colonies very strongly. Great to see them doing wee cleansing flights over the field before returning to the hives. Saw one on a borage flower as well. In December ! I think it was about 12'C at noon.

It was so warm I had to take steps with Christmas dinner Turkey "Lurkey" that has been hanging in the loft at 4'C for the past few days and gut and dress it (is this the most middle class thing thats ever been written on SBAi?).

Oh the humanity.

[gwizzie]

First time I've been at home during daylight yesterday and the bees were flying from all colonies very strongly. Great to see them doing wee cleansing flights over the field before returning to the hives. Saw one on a borage flower as well. In December ! I think it was about 12'C at noon.

It was so warm I had to take steps with Christmas dinner Turkey "Lurkey" that has been hanging in the loft at 4'C for the past few days and gut and dress it (is this the most middle class thing thats ever been written on SBAi?).

Oh the humanity.

Hi thanks!

Sorry not sure what your reply has to do with the questions I asked ?

[greengumbo]

Ah yes !


Is this just bees going on the water run and a few going to the toilet ?

>Most likely - that's what mine are up to when flying at this time of year.

Is this common and ok as I thought that they would be wrapped up for the year ?

>As long as its warm enough they will be out and about.

Will they not be using more food stores ?

>Possibly - have you hefted your hives ? Give them a Christmas gift of fondant :)

[gwizzie]

Ah yes !


Is this just bees going on the water run and a few going to the toilet ?

>Most likely - that's what mine are up to when flying at this time of year.

Is this common and ok as I thought that they would be wrapped up for the year ?

>As long as its warm enough they will be out and about.

Will they not be using more food stores ?

>Possibly - have you hefted your hives ? Give them a Christmas gift of fondant :)

LOL thanks I have a few Christmas gift of fondant already wrapped up for them ;)

[Greengage]

14 degrees in Malinhead last night (Thursday) at 4.10am mad or what.....

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Greengage
They were all flying yesterday
I can't get my Winter treatment started :)

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[Greengage]

I discussed this i.e the treatment with Apibioxal with some local beekeepers and I suggested that I should wait until temps drop below 4 degrees and there is no brood (How without opening I dont know as ivy Pollen is still being brought in) anyway temp are set for 13 degres today and no sign of it droping alarmingly until after christmas as El Nino is moving warm air up over the country. I think I will just have to go for it before Jan 1st and hope for the best at least thats what others are going to be doing so fingers crossed they are right.

[The Drone Ranger]

It is warm for the time of year Greengage and the bees have been out flying around so it is just a case of waiting
It will get cold soon and if we get a dry day after a week or so of cold weather then I'm just going to go for it
When you get past Xmas the day length starts lengthening and laying will be even more likely
You can never be sure there won't be brood but the treatment will still be worth doing
I think because evaporation carries on working for longer it might be better in these circumstances
but who knows for sure :)

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[Feckless Drone]

who knows for sure?

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not me - I've never seen pollen being brought into a hive that did not have or was very quickly about to get brood, but then I've never looked in Dec/Jan. So there is the issue. I've got hives packing in the pollen at the weekend so I think I'll wait until after some cold weather, into later Jan probably before washing my frames with OA.

[fatshark]

I think because evaporation carries on working for longer it might be better in these circumstances
but who knows for sure ?

The additional thing in favour of vaporisation is that it's better tolerated ... even if (as DR suggests) there is sealed and unsealed brood in the colony, there should be few if any toxicity problems that you otherwise get with trickling. There's a paper in J. Apiculture. Res. from the Sussex group just recently (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/33537) that has looked at this - link to the press release as I don't have JAR access at the moment.

[alancooper]

OA sublimated the other day - calm and 13C. Bees flying, ivy still flowering (with fresh pollen) but bees not going too far and no pollen loads.
Next day varroa counts in six home apiary hives were 36, 31, 10, 0, 0, 0.
How I wish I knew how many bees in each, how much sealed brood and the state of clustering - then I might be able to decide how many grams of OA crystals to use? As for speculating whether I have three hives with a good grooming tendency - well ??????

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Alan
if you keep a running count of varroa killed you might get some useful indications from that
It might be worth looking in one of the Zeros to see if there is brood ( or as I found once no bees lol! )
If you have time to stick any dead varroa under the microscope then you can look for oxalic crystals on them
Something to do in the quiet season :)

[madasafish]

OA sublimated the other day - calm and 13C. Bees flying, ivy still flowering (with fresh pollen) but bees not going too far and no pollen loads.
Next day varroa counts in six home apiary hives were 36, 31, 10, 0, 0, 0.
How I wish I knew how many bees in each, how much sealed brood and the state of clustering - then I might be able to decide how many grams of OA crystals to use? As for speculating whether I have three hives with a good grooming tendency - well ??????

An IR thermometer aimed at the crown board will give you an idea of the likelihood of brood. No need to open up.

Mine are at 16C - so no brood.

[gwizzie]

Well now i am seeing gorse flowering ? see what keeping bees does to you!!!
I would never have noticed that before as I thought it was around february that it started to flower.

[fatshark]

When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of season (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/feb/22/plantwatch-spring-gorse-flowers) ... i.e. never ;)

[gavin]

not me - I've never seen pollen being brought into a hive that did not have or was very quickly about to get brood, but then I've never looked in Dec/Jan. So there is the issue. I've got hives packing in the pollen at the weekend so I think I'll wait until after some cold weather, into later Jan probably before washing my frames with OA.

No point in delaying other than briefly to catch them clustered (if you are trickling). Bernard Mobus and others reported that through the winter hives have brief small bursts of brood raising and it is all out of sync in any apiary. That shows that they are not (necessarily) responding to better weather by raising more brood. So many people assume so, but I haven't seen any evidence that it is true. Maybe Italians do, I don't know, but you'd be better requeening them.

Colonies prepare for winter by dropping brood raising to low levels early on and most colonies shed workers and reduce their size for winter. Various reports elsewhere say that November and December are the best time for treating with oxalic acid. The bees' focus after the solstice is to start building for spring. If you have colonies that have laid in plenty of pollen then my guess is that they will use it from January onwards.

While I'm on, just wish to say that there seems to be a rush to convert to sublimation on the back of one PhD study and a press release from Sussex on a paper that - last time I looked - wasn't even published yet. I've no doubt that sublimation works well and is fine for those who know about handling dangerous vapours outside. What I will continue to doubt until I see good evidence to the contrary is that it is much better than trickling, which has to be safer for the beekeeper.

[gavin]

Someone whose judgement I trust and who is a little shy on this matter :) has written to say that in his (southern) locality with fairly prolific bees the end of the first week in January consistently has been the best time for lack of brood. Sealed brood I think as it was said this is consistent with the least laying being around the solstice.

Merry Queenrestfulness everybody!

G.

[fatshark]

While I'm on, just wish to say that there seems to be a rush to convert to sublimation on the back of one PhD study and a press release from Sussex on a paper that - last time I looked - wasn't even published yet. I've no doubt that sublimation works well and is fine for those who know about handling dangerous vapours outside. What I will continue to doubt until I see good evidence to the contrary is that it is much better than trickling, which has to be safer for the beekeeper.

Wise words ... however, there's clearly been an upswell in interest long before the Sussex data hit the shelves (or paywall) and there's a wealth of data available online showing both the relative efficacy of dribbled vs vaporised vs sprayed OA (all much of a muchness and well within experimental noise caused by the state of the colony etc) and how well tolerated vaporised OA is (very by the bees, not very by the beekeeper :( ).

[Jon]

Surely they tolerate Oxalic trickle pretty well too and there has been quite a lot of research done on this elsewhere in Europe.
As Finman likes to say in the other place, just Google Nanetti and varroa.
I have used it for about 6 winters now and not noticed any problems.

Re mite drop, Most of mine drop very few in winter but I always get the odd one or two which drop a couple of hundred. These ones would be in trouble by mid summer starting with a mite load like that and it could have a knock on effect with the mites getting into neighbouring colonies.
The mild autumn will only have made things worse as there were probably 3 or 4 generations of brood raised after August Thymol treatment with the mite numbers doubling every generation.

[The Drone Ranger]

Surely they tolerate Oxalic trickle pretty well too and there has been quite a lot of research done on this elsewhere in Europe.
As Finman likes to say in the other place, just Google Nanetti and varroa.
.

When I watched Ghosts in the hive it occurred to me that throughout Summer most varroa in well managed hive would be fairly inbred whereas in an infested hive during Winter there would be more than one female laying per cell and possibly the out crossed progeny might be more vigorous and hence more dangerous
Just a thought :)

[fatshark]

2511

[alancooper]

An IR thermometer aimed at the crown board will give you an idea of the likelihood of brood. No need to open up.

Mine are at 16C - so no brood.

I might try this - thanks :) But before I ask Santa - is it based just on your observations? - or is it generally accepted by other beeks?
Alan.

[gavin]

I might try this - thanks :) But before I ask Santa - is it based just on your observations? - or is it generally accepted by other beeks?
Alan.

Sounds like a more accurate way of doing the 'back of the hand' test. Best applied to the crownboard immediately after lifting the insulation before things cool. I would imagine this works well when there are significant areas of brood and less well for a small patch.

Watching for brown dust on the floor insert (if you cleaned it last visit) also tells you when (and where) brood is being uncapped (and sometimes when cells are being cleaned out ready for laying).

[greengumbo]

I trickled all my hives with OA yesterday and received some nice stings on the wrist through the gloves.

No hives had flying bees at 9am but when I lifted the roofs the poly-hive inhabitants were extremely active and feisty. The wooden hives were much better behaved and tightly clustered (read colder!!).

All hives flying at 1230 and visiting gorse, mahonia and Schistostylis which are in full bloom. Sweet rocket is flowering as well and some ivy still going.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi greengumbo
That made me smile
they are a bit too lively at the moment, for me anyway
On one I removed the mouse guard as gently I could and was rewarded by a sting on the wrist
(from the only bee on guard duty!)
"Ungrateful little bee " (or something very like that) I shouted
A few seconds later all her mates arrived and I pushed off to find the Anthisan

[madasafish]

Sounds like a more accurate way of doing the 'back of the hand' test. Best applied to the crownboard immediately after lifting the insulation before things cool. I would imagine this works well when there are significant areas of brood and less well for a small patch.

Watching for brown dust on the floor insert (if you cleaned it last visit) also tells you when (and where) brood is being uncapped (and sometimes when cells are being cleaned out ready for laying).
Yes: I remove insulation and immediately point IR thermometer - the one I have (£12 ex eby iirc) has a laser light to show where you focus.

All my colonies are insulated (except my one polyhive) and had the same crownboard temp 15-16C. It's 5-10C outside and gray and raining most of the time, no pollen coming in so no chance of brood.. And white cappings only on the varroa board. Some have clear crownboards and some ply. Results the same.

Roof/crownboard insulation is a minimum 100mm

[Greengage]

I read this on one of the facebook beekeeping pages, A honey bee queen mates on wing with an average of 12 males and stores their sperm to produce progeny of mixed paternity. The degree of a queen’s polyandry is positively associated with measures of her colony’s fitness, and observed distributions of mating number are evolutionary optima balancing risks of mating flights against benefits to the colony. Effective mating numbers as high as 40 have been documented, begging the question of the upper bounds of this behavior that can be expected to confer colony benefit. In this study researchers used instrumental insemination to create three classes of queens with exaggerated range of polyandry– 15, 30, or 60 drones. Colonies headed by queens inseminated with 30 or 60 drones produced more brood per bee and had a lower proportion of samples positive for Varroa destructor mites than colonies whose queens were inseminated with 15 drones, suggesting benefits of polyandry at rates higher than those normally obtaining in nature. The results are consistent with two hypotheses that posit conditions that reward such high expressions of polyandry: (1) a queen may mate with many males in order to promote beneficial non-additive genetic interactions among subfamilies, and (2) a queen may mate with many males in order to capture a large number of rare alleles that regulate resistance to pathogens and parasites in a breeding population. Their results are unique for identifying the highest levels of polyandry yet detected that confer colony-level benefit and for showing a benefit of polyandry in particular toward the parasitic mite V. destructor.

[mbc]

Interesting. I Google it and found : http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142985

This has quite serious implications when considering the statistics of likely in race matings, optimal polyandry, avm and such.

[prakel]

This has quite serious implications when considering the statistics of likely in race matings, optimal polyandry, avm and such.

This has been one of the reasons I've found the idea of avm to be questionable. It's always struck me as being a very unnatural process, more like an opportunistic result created by beekeepers placing lots of colonies close together. I'm fairly sure, based on what we so far know of honey bee mating, that it wouldn't be the optimum method of maintaining a strong population in nature.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi prakel
If AVM does exist then I feel it would occur in certain strains of all races not just Amm
But although I am sceptical I'm keeping an open mind
Check the hive monitoring thread
If we got the project I'm suggesting up and running it might help answer the questions
We could know whether the low temperature, bad weather, short duration Amm mating flights are a reality because that is the cornerstone for AVM theory

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[prakel]

Hi prakel
If AVM does exist then I feel it would occur in certain strains of all races not just Amm
But although I am sceptical I'm keeping an open mind
Check the hive monitoring thread
If we got the project I'm suggesting up and running it might help answer the questions
We could know whether the low temperature, bad weather, short duration Amm mating flights are a reality because that is the cornerstone for AVM theory

Sorry, not much chance of me reading the hive monitoring thread -it frazzles my brain just thinking about it :) Reminds me of some of the extreme-insulator posts elsewhere.

I doubt very much that it's any more a 'strain' issue than a racial one. Opportunistic behaviour resulting from an unnaturally high density of colonies, maybe. but I'll be pleased to hear any results you do get so long as I don't need to learn about programming anything in the meantime (I'm still finding new gadgets on my three year old phone!).

[The Drone Ranger]

Sorry, not much chance of me reading the hive monitoring thread -it frazzles my brain just thinking about it :) Reminds me of some of the extreme-insulator posts elsewhere.

I doubt very much that it's any more a 'strain' issue than a racial one. Opportunistic behaviour resulting from an unnaturally high density of colonies, maybe. but I'll be pleased to hear any results you do get so long as I don't need to learn about programming anything in the meantime (I'm still finding new gadgets on my three year old phone!).

Gosh I really hope its more constructive than arguments about thermal conductance Lol!

If AVM was a density driven behaviour wouldn't the big name beekeepers from the past have been reporting it (the Gales,Snelgroves,Pellet etc)?

When it comes to hive monitoring
The most important thing about any project is deciding what info you want to get out of it
That then points to what data you need to put in
In technoland what a systems analyst does


In the real world that's what everyone does, so any thoughts you have are gold dust
For example how can we detect when a queen leaves a mating nuc ?
I am mulling over noise or perhaps invisible UV marking
The worry with the UV is that although we dont see it birds do :)

Mostly everyones knowlege is like a lake 100 miles wide and 1 inch deep
An "expert" might have some 2 inch deep bits of a the lake
A specialist a 12" deep pond sized bit
I am still battling with tapatalk
I can't find anything on windows after XP
Googling keeps me sane using Linux (else it would be broken a lot of the time)
A village idiot could get something out of an arduino or Attiny thats the reason they are popular :)

[prakel]

If AVM was a density driven behaviour wouldn't the big name beekeepers from the past have been reporting it (the Gales,Snelgroves,Pellet etc)?

Funnily enough, I believe that the primary historical references I've seen were from the big names -maybe because they were the ones who published their observations. I've already referenced the observations which I've come across, in the various different threads on the subject.

If someone states that there are no long term feral colonies left an entire raft of astute observers will come forth to assert that they've been following one or several such colonies for a decade or more. Yet I'm still waiting to see one discription of avm happening outside one of these secluded colonies which have been closely watched for several years. That'll no doubt change now! I think the name apiary vicinity mating is quite apt and probably the biggest clue as to what's going on.

On the subject of Gales, several years ago I did some renovation/conversion work on the family farm. At the time they still employed a couple of the old hands; they were probably little more than youngsters in the days of the bees, we had some great conversations a lot of which were about queen bees dashing around all over the place... a great opportunity lost to the ignorance of my youth!