BEELINES

Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

Volume 5 Issue 5 May 2012

The Ulster County Beekeepers Association welcomes and encourages all having an interest in honeybees. We meet on most second Mondays of each month from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Rosendale Community Center, 1055 Route 32, Rosendale, N.Y. Non-members are encouraged to make a donation to the Speakers Fund.

BEELINES

Ulster County Beekeepers Association 133 Plains Road, New Paltz, NY 12561

UCBA Meets Second Mondays 7-9 p.m. at the Rosendale Commmunity Center, 1055 Route 32, Rosendale, NY AT THE MAY MEETING ....................................... 3
Rose-Lynn Fisher Bees Under a Microscope Plant Sale to Benefit UCBA Mentoring Program Bring Your Own Mug! Hive Staples for Sale At Every UCBA Meeting

SPEAKER PROFILE: ROSE-LYNN FISHER ............................................. 4

Looking for the Art in The Form: The Honeybee Under a Microscope

Bee swarm Photo by Chris Harp

BAIT HIVES ................................................................ 6

Home Sweet Home

TREND ALERT! ........................................................ 7

Bee merchandise spotted

SWARM SEASON IS UPON US ....................... 8

Swarm Management: A Modified Demaree Method Ah, The Joys of Swarm Season

BEEKEEPERS CALENDAR, GROWTH AND LEARNING & UPCOMING MEETINGS .................................. 12

Opportunities to increase your knowledge

BEELINES
NEEDS YOUR HELP!
Do you have a beekeeping story to tell or information or pictures you would like to share with fellow beekeepers? Please send text and pictures to the editor of Beelines at this email address:

APRIL MEETING EPILOGUE .......................... 13

Some small hive beetle management lessons from the April meeting On the cover: Rose-Lynn Fishers scanning electron microscope image of a honeybees wing hooks (the hamuli that clasp together each pair of wings for flight) magnified 700 times, from her book BEE, published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

Beelines.UCBA@gmail.com

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MAY 2012

Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

AT THE MAY MEETING

OUR SPEAKER PRESENTATION ROSE-LYNN FISHER: BEES UNDER A MICROSCOPE PLANT SALE TO BENEFIT UCBA
We will have a plant sale before the meeting if anyone wishes to bring in plants to sale. Honeybee plants preferable, however we wont turn any good plant away. Consider dividing perennials or sharing your extra seedlings. Proceeds benefit the UCBA Speaker Fund.

MENTORING PROGRAM
We will discuss setting up a mentoring program, be it hands-on in the apiary or as a segment before the guest speakers. Please think about volunteering to help new beekeepers or, if you are a newbee, what kind of assistance would be helpful someone to call or someone to visit?

PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN TRAVEL MUG . . .

. . . for coffee and tea at meetings. We dont want to use paper cups. There are always washable mugs available if you forget.

Monday, May 7th (the first Monday), Rose-Lynn Fisher is our speaker. Ms. Fishers exceptional images of honeybees seen through a scanning electron microscope are the subject of her photographic book entitled BEE, published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. Come be mesmerized and informed by the intriguing landscape of a honeybees body as Ms. Fisher leads us on her creative journey. We will have copies of BEE available to purchase, with the profits to benefit the UCBA Library Fund, and Ms. Fisher will sign copies after the meeting.

HIVE STAPLES FOR SALE

We still have hive staples for sale. They come in packets of 8 for $1. If you need them, find Grai.

AT EVERY UCBA MEETING . . .

Please renew your UCBA membership, return and borrow library material, and join our growing community of beekeepers.

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Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

SPEAKER PROFILE
ROSE-LYNN FISHER Looking for the Art in The Form: The Honeybee Under a Microscope
By Grai St. Clair Rice

rt and science always make interesting companions. Each discipline can offer insights to the other, and together they can change the way the rest of us see our world. Honeybees are fascinating and complex creatures. Learning about their intricate anatomy can inform our skills as beekeepers, however there is also the joy of sheer astonishment at their physiological and biological makeup. Rose-Lynn Fishers photographic images of honeybee anatomy explored through a scanning electron microscope (SEM) take us on a journey beyond our day-to-day knowl- Rose-Lynn Fisher speaking at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens Bee Centennial Day in 2010. edge and our imaginations into other-worldly landscapes observed with sense of scale is confused, and connections between an artists eye. The magnification of key anatomical the micro and macro world become clearer and elements: antenna, eye, wing, proboscis, in more tangible. In the myriad forms that constitute stunningly fine black-and-white detail are science one little bee at higher and higher magnifications, and art. there is a hint of the unending complexity of nature. I like finding the abstract in the object. I look for Fishers exploration of the honeybee with the SEM the art in the form, Fisher explains her process of occurred over 17 years with the help of a friend in the composing these works. In this bizarre frontier, our scientific field. As a professional multi-media artist 4 Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

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MAY 2012

SPEAKER PROFILE
living in LA, her interest kept pulling her back to honeybees under the microscope. The first time I looked at a bees eye magnified I was amazed to see a field of hexagons, just like honeycomb, she explains. there are reoccurring patterns everywhere in nature. It was years before I ever made an exhibition print of these images. Fisher laughs, and when I did it was at the right time. Since 2004, the elegant 12 x 15 prints of these honeybee images have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and her timing coincided with a surge in interest in our favorite pollinator. A collection of Fishers honeybee landscapes have been published in her book entitled BEE, by Princeton Architectural Press (2010), and are beautifully organized in anatomical sections and arranged from lesser magnification to greater magnification. Fishers speaking engagements offer yet another view of her work as she talks about her artistic journey and projects her SEM images on a wall in

continued

Eye 190x. grand scale. Fisher laughs, I love the contrast of these magnified images projected big on the wall . . . its almost grotesque. For those of us who have an opportunity to experience this fantastic body of work, it will change the way we think about honeybees.

Rose-Lynn Fishers website: www.rose-lynnfisher.com UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS BEEyond Everhart Museum, Scranton, Pennsylvania May 4 - September 3, 2012 http://everhart-museum.org/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions BEE Piermont Straus (Gallery and Bookstore), Piermont, New York May 5 - July 4, 2012 Opening event with book signing May 5th, 4-7 pm www.facebook.com/events/343468599046326/ Here is a link to an NPR Daily Picture Show piece from September 2010 http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/09/03/129631866/it-s-the-bee-s-knees-no-really

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MAY 2012

Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

BAIT HIVES
Home Sweet Home
By Tom Hutt swarm cells. The next day I noticed scout bees darting in and out of the box. First one, then two, then a dozen or more scouts. This went on for two weeks. The scouts would also investigate my other four bait hives, two of which were placed 150 feet away. The big day came! As I was getting out of my car, I heard the distinctive roar of a swarm. I watched as it descended onto the bait hive only 20 feet from the swarming colony. It was a primary swarm with many bees and seemed to take on the look of a single flying beast that actually cast a shadow on the ground. After landing on the box, the swarm broke again and formed a thick cloud of buzzing thunder. Then onto the box again, forming a tight, large cluster. There they stayed for two days. Then in an orderly, single file, they marchedinto the bait hive. This procession took three hours. After a week, despite a cold snap, foragers were bringing in lots of pollen. So it seems with good design and careful execution, the bees can take care of colony splits on their own and you dont have to lose your bees if youre not around for the swarm. For my new colony, its Home Sweet Home.

ost of the literature Ive read on bait hives and all of what Ive heard goes completely against what happened in my apiary on April 17, 2012. The idea of bait hives has fascinated me since I started researching the topic three years ago. What could be better than just hanging a box in a tree and then collecting your free bees! As the accepted practice goes, you generally cannot set up a bait hive just a few feet from an established hive and bait a swarm from that hive. Many seasoned beekeepers instruct that you set bait hives hundreds of feet or yards away from your apiary location to stand a chance of luring them in. The bees would not choose to set up a new home so close to the old. I eventually narrowed my research to renowned bee researchers Thomas Seeley, Roger A. Morse and Richard Nowogrodzki (Cornell Cooperative Extension Publication, Information Bulletin No. 187). Also, Mr. Seeley has a recent article in Bee Culture Magazine (April 2012, Using Bait Hives). He states in his 12 rules for bait hives that location isnt so important as long as there is swarm activity present. I constructed my bait hives to Mr. Seeleys specifications, with a few of my own design modifications thrown in for good measure. The first bait hive was set up on April 2nd 20 feet from my hives, one of which was preparing 6

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MAY 2012

Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

TREND ALERT!
Bee Merchandise Spotted
By Grai St. Clair Rice

t seems that beekeeping is really getting fashionable these days and showing up in all sorts of places. I found myself on the edge of beeing horrified when I went onto the Williams-Sonoma website to lust after a new roasting pan and realized that they have an entire new component to their branding called Agrarian. They are marketing to the upscale, fashionably green-conscious society that can afford copper trowels. I dont mean to sound condescending, because I want to embrace any positive shift towards everyone taking better care of our earth. So I clicked onto that section of their site, and there right above Chicken Coops is Beekeeping!

Im still going to select my desired beekeeping equipment from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, or look up the Mennonite lad who was offering his wares to the Catskill Mountain Bee Club last year. I only hope that whoever is inspired by the Williams-Sonoma website to start tending bees doesnt just consider it a fashion accessory. On another side, I do have a soft spot for functional objects with bees on them, and since springtime often generates merchandize with bunnies and butterflies, I did a search on the internet for bees, and ended up on the Sur la Table website. Im not really a napkin ring kind of gal, but we do need a small milk pitcher, and the plates look fun. Im a sucker for a honeybee. 7 Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

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MAY 2012

SWARM SEASON IS UPON US

It seems every season is different, and as beekeepers we are certainly tapped in to the vicissitudes of weather and the bees responses. So this year, we have had early warmth and a fabulous early flow that spurred the bees to a vibrant start, and then the past few weeks of up and down temps has also brought cool, windy conditions, not conducive to foraging or swarming. Until last weekend, when swarm were bursting forth everywhere! We offer two articles in this issue that are very different approaches to the seasonal management concerns about swarming, and perhaps losing our beloved queens. Swarming is a beautiful, life-affirming force for the bees, as well as for those of us who experience them. However, a couple of hives can quickly multiply. Have your equipment ready if you wish to try to collect your swarms.

Swarm Management: A Modified Demaree Method

By David Blocher David Blocher is the Ex Officio - Recent President of the Backyard Beekeepers Association in Connecticut. We are reprinting this article from their newsletter with permission. If they arent making honey, they are making queens. years. Im not the inventor of it by any means Richard Taylor described it years ago in a Bee Culture article, and the elegance and simplicity of it bespeaks a deep knowledge of honeybee biology (which he probably learned about from somebody else). By the way, this is the only swarm prevention technique that is curiously not discussed in his excellent treatise on producing comb honey, The Comb Honey Book. This technique has the following advantages: It is a guaranteed to keep your bees if you find uncapped queen cells in your hive, which is a sure sign that the hive will be swarming shortly. You do not need to buy an additional bottom board, inner cover or outer cover. After the manipulation is complete, you have the same number of colonies as when you started. Youve kept the full strength of your hive for the nectar flow. It allows you to retain the genetics of the existing queen if you want to raise daughter queens from her. Perhaps her offspring show some mite resistance or are exceptional honey producers. I generally try to super my colonies by about the first week in May and begin checking strong hives around the same time for signs of the swarming impulse (developing queen cells, exploding populations and crowded conditions). By May 15th, the colonies are often bringing in surplus honey. My rule of thumb at this time is that if a colony isnt

ne of the greatest challenges in beekeeping, especially with an overwintered hive, is keeping your bees (i.e., preventing your bees from swarming). Swarming is a biological imperative, and almost all colonies will attempt to swarm. Swarming, though, is a bane to the beekeeper, can be a nuisance to your neighbors, and if your goal is honey production, the potential for a substantial crop disappears with the swarm. A second challenge is preventing your colony from swarming without expanding your number of colonies. There are a number of swarm prevention techniques, but most result in an increase in colony numbers after the manipulation. This requires buying an additional bottom board, inner cover, and outer cover or additional deep hive bodies and frames and foundation. If you are not careful, you can have exponential colony growth and quickly become a commercial beekeeper. Finally, avoiding swarming by increasing your colonies doesnt maximize honey production if anything, after splitting your colony into two units, your surplus honey production will likely be minimal. Since dealing with swarming is a problem everyone faces with an overwintered hive, I thought Id share a technique that has worked for me over the 8

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Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

SWARM SEASON IS UPON US

making honey, theyre making queen cells and preparing to swarm. That is, if the colony has enough bees to be in the supers, and good flight weather prevails yet they are not gathering honey you can be sure they are preparing to swarm. You should begin looking for queen cells in earnest. The technique is based on the following three simple principles of bee biology: Bees cannot swarm without a queen. Bees cannot raise a queen if they do not have the necessary eggs or larvae. A queen right hive will not swarm if there is no population pressure. Make sure you understand these principles. Re-read these, if necessary. Ill wait. Also, this manipulation assumes that your colony is in two deep hive bodies, but it could work just as well with three medium supers, if that is your configuration. It does require three important things: You must purchase or make a double screen board (see picture), also called a Snelgrove board after its inventor. An inner cover with duct tape over the oval on both sides will work in a pinch, but only if the inner cover has a ventilation notch cut in it. You must locate the queen. As with all swarm prevention techniques, you must remove developing queen cells, unless you intend to raise a queen to replace the existing queen. In that case, leave one or two queen cells in the queenless portion of the hive, but remove the rest. Double screen board with entrance gate open (this entrance will be at the back of the hive). Lets say you crack open your hive and find swarm (aka queen) cells hanging from the bottom of the frames in the top deep. Its time to go to work. We want to perform the following three steps upon seeing the first queen cells with eggs or larvae in them. Put all the CAPPED BROOD in one hive body, making sure the queen IS NOT on these frames. Try to avoid putting frames with eggs or open brood in this deep hive body, but if you have some open brood which often cannot be avoided thats OK. This hive body with capped brood will remain on

continued

This is an example of a Snelgrove Board used in this swarm management method. This has a double screen in the center, and pairs of entrances to control movement and direction of bees. Its use seems more prevalent in the UK than in the US. the bottom board. This portion of the colony is now queenless. Put the honey supers back on top of this hive body, and place the double screen board on top of them with the entrance at the back. Put all of the OPEN BROOD and the QUEEN into the other hive body, along with some frames of pollen and honey. Place this on the double screen board, and put the inner and outer covers on this hive. We will leave the hive in this configuration for 10-14 days, and then reunite at the end of this period. Why does this technique work? Review the first two biological principles above. By placing all of the capped brood in the bottom hive body and making this half of the hive queenless, you have prevented the bees from raising an emergency queen. These bees will not leave the capped brood, and they cannot leave the hive in a swarm since they do not have a queen. Review the third principle of bee biology. In the queen right portion of the hive you have reduced the

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MAY 2012

Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

SWARM SEASON IS UPON US

population pressure, by placing its entrance at the back of the hive. All of the foragers will return to the main entrance at the front of the hive. The top half of the hive, the queen right portion, has been effectively depopulated, and only the nurse bees remain with their queen to tend to the developing brood.

continued

You have simulated a swarm while at the same time managing it. After 10-14 days the swarm urge has passed. You dont want to leave them separated for any longer than about 14 days, because at that point, all of the capped brood down below has emerged, and they would otherwise begin to fill these empty cells with nectar. Instead, at this point, you want the queen to start using these empty cells to lay more eggs in. In the meantime, they have been filling your honey supers with lots of nectar! Two big caveats: Because they are queenless, they will be desperate to have a queen. If you have had to put ANY frames of eggs or larvae in the bottom hive body with the capped brood you must go back one week later and destroy the developing queen cells that they have begun to raise. Otherwise, you will soon have a queen in that deep hive body! Second,

as with any swarm-prevention technique, you must remove all of the queen cells, unless you leave one or two in the queenless portion in order to requeen that part of the hive. Reuniting the two portions of the hive: After 14 days (two weekends for the backyard beekeeper), you will want to recombine the two hive bodies. The reason for this timing is that the capped brood in the nest in the bottom deep will all have emerged by now, and the colony will be filling these cells up with nectar. Of course, they will also have been filling up your honey supers with nectar since all of the cells in the deep hive body were filled with brood, so dont be surprised if the honey supers are quite heavy already they have had no brood to feed, so their attention has been devoted to nectar collection. Also, at this point, the urge to swarm has past. Two weeks after the manipulation, reunite the colony using a newspaper between the two hive bodies. This is probably not strictly necessary, but I always do it. The bottom deep is filled with young bees that have emerged, and they are desperate for a queen. I always place the queen right portion as the second deep hive body, and then put the honey supers above it (using a queen excluder). Any nectar that they have put in the bottom deep hive body will soon be moved into the honey supers, since bees dont store honey below the nest as a general rule, only above it. This is a great technique especially if the hive is in the middle of swarm preparations because you keep the full strength of your colony for the main nectar flow, you get to preserve the hives genetics, and it does not result in an increase in the number of colonies. However, as with any time-sensitive hive manipulation, you must check for emergency queen cells a week after splitting the colony, and then reunite them after two weeks. It is also quite flexible. It also lends itself to requeening the hive quite easily, either by allowing a queen cell to emerge in the queenless portion, or by adding a purchased queen. In either case, leave the mother queen in the colony above until you combine the two, and then dispatch her. Let your imagination run wild and good luck! 10 Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

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SWARM SEASON IS UPON US

Ah, The Joys of Swarm Season
By Chris Harp and Grai Rice

continued

A collection this years swarms. They pick the darnedest places to land! Please note: The guy in the tree is a professional treeman. Do not try this at home!

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Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

BEEKEEPERS CALENDAR
MAY
Make spilts for increasing colonies and as amanagement practicefor varroa mites. Swarm season is underway. Position bait hives, with old comb, at a good distance from your hives and as high as possible. With nights still dropping into the 30s and 40s, any hive that swarms now will be in danger of having the new queen expire in her queen cell due to the cold, or not be properly mated. Bee careful catching swarms, not because of being stung, but because you dont want to break a leg. Bee wise, and bless the ones that get away. If you have a swarm, do not go into the hive for 10 days to allow the new queen to get settled and start laying. Put supers on ahead of the flow. If fresh comb needs to be built, workers need time and food to construct comb.

GROWTH AND LEARNING

HoneybeeLives Inspect a Hive classes at the HoneybeeLives Apiary in New Paltz are scheduled on different dates in May and June. Check www.HoneybeeLives.org for description and dates. Watch for notices about Anarchy Apiaries Boot Camp dates, taking place sometime in May or June in Germantown. Sam Comfort is just landing back in the area and will be offering his unique learning experience once his spring bees have been handed out.

UPCOMING MEETINGS
MONDAY, JUNE 11 The Ancient Traditions of the Sacred Bee Keepers, Evidence from the Ancient Mediterranean World. Slide lecture and drumming by Layne Redmond. MONDAY, JULY 9 UCBAs 5th Annual Summer Picnic Details TBA No Regular Meeting in August Watch for details about UCBAs Annual Apiary Tour

Frame-drumming bee priestess

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MAY 2012

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Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association

APRIL MEETING EPILOGUE

Some Small Hive Beetle Management Lessons from the April Meeting
By Grai St. Clair Rice

ike Embrey was our main speaker in April and filled us in on the life-cycle and management issues of the expanding realm of the small hive beetle (SHB), which can infest hives and stored supers, feasting off and damaging honey and pollen. Tom Hutt brought in his modified bottom board and his SHB lure /traps that are fascinating designs. We also learned that, except for keeping accessible entrances to hives to a minimum and squashing them with our fingers when opening hives as they scurry from their bee prisons, there are not many things that seem to help yet. There are a few things that seem to work at moderating their reproduction: SHB larvae exit the hives to pupate in the ground. Placing a tray of diatomaceous earth (DE) between the varroa screen and the bottom board will cut up and kill the larva trying to exit the hive that way. Extreme caution needs to be taken as you handle the DE, both contact and inhalation, and you must keep the DE contained where it cannot come into contact with bees or other insects that it could harm. Chris Harp found that a 17 x 11 cookie sheet fits perfectly under an eight-frame hive. A shim can be adapted if greater distance from screen is desired. A lure/trap that Tom Hutt made makes good sense and seems to work. He places a small tin with a mixture of apple cider vinegar, pollen, borax and cantaloupe juice in the middle of a larger tin with oil. 13

This is positioned upwind from hives in a darkened, screened box (screen big enough so SHB can get in but not enough for bees). The adult SHB lay their eggs in the small tin and when the larvae crawl out to pupate, they end up in the oil and die. Mike Embrey has noted that in-hive traps are less likely to work in the warmer months of May-August since the SHB dont need the hive for warmth. Note: Correction from April Beelines Small hive beetles do fly during the day, not at night.

BEELINES
MAY 2012

Journal of the Ulster County Beekeepers Association