Apis--Apicultural Information and Issues
                    Florida Extension Beekeeping Newsletter
                         Volume 8, Number 7, July 1990
 
 
                            BEEKEEPER REGISTRATION
 
 
An article in the Florida Market Bulletin has brought in a good many new
beekeeper registrations.  The law says that all Florida beekeepers must be
registered.  It is illegal to sell bees that have not been inspected or to
keep bees without notifying the Florida Department of Agriculture.  The
registration provision of the law is relatively new.
 
According to Mr. Laurence Cutts, Florida State Apiarist, virtually all
commercial beekeepers are registered, but many part-timers and hobbyists are
not in compliance.  The importance of being registered is to establish better
communication between regulators and beekeepers.  This will be particularly
valuable after arrival of the African honey bee which is expected to affect
all beekeepers in Florida no matter how many colonies they manage.  To
register and/or have bees inspected, contact the Bureau of Apiary Inspection,
Division of Plant Industry, P.O. Box 1269, Gainesville, FL 32602, ph 904/372-
3505.
 
 
                              FAVA/CA VOLUNTEERS
 
 
The spring newsletter of the Florida International Volunteer Corps (FAVA/CA),
Communique, features a visit by Florida beekeepers Bob Tadeyeske and Ralph
Russ to St. Vincent island in the Caribbean.  Bob and Ralph spent two weeks
consulting with beekeepers.  They found conditions favorable to beekeeping,
helped establish a demonstration apiary in the botanical gardens and
instructed employees in a training center in beehive construction.
 
FAVA/CA is Florida's equivalent of U.S. Peace Corps.  It provides volunteer
short-term training and assistance to agriculture, health, education and
business in the Caribbean.  There is a great deal of interest in developmental
apiculture in the Caribbean and FAVA\CA is always on the lookout for
volunteers who are technically capable of assisting beekeepers.  Should you be
interested and believe yourself qualified, contact David Pasquarelli or Dave
Schmeling at FAVA/CA, 1311 Executive Center Drive, Suite 202, Tallahassee, FL
32301, ph 904/877-4607.
 
 
                            FAIRS DATABASE EXPANDED
 
 
The beekeeping database of FAIRS (Florida Agricultural Information Retrieval
System) continues to grow.  FAIRS is available to all Cooperative Extension
Offices in Florida.  It is a menu-driven information resource which is updated
periodically.  The next time you are in the extension office, you might ask
about the database.  Those that currently do not subscribe can get the
database by contacting the administrator, Dr. Gwen Cornwell, IFAS Computer
Support Office, Bldg. 120, Room 203, Gainesville, FL 32611-0162, ph 904/392-
3886.
 
 
                        A SAGA OF "SAD" AND "BAD" BEES
 
 
Mr. Andy Nachbaur, a California beekeeper of 35 years, provided an interesting
talk to those attending the last American Beekeeping Federation convention in
Las Vegas, Nevada.  Mr. Nachbaur also passed out a printed report on what he
calls, "Stress Accelerated Decline" (S-A-D) and "Bee Immune Deficiency" (B-A-
D) in bee colonies.  Space demands of this newsletter dictate heavy editing of
Mr. Nachbaur's full report.  According to the document, reprints are available
from Mr. Nachbaur by writing to him at 1522 Paradise Lane, Los Banos, CA
93635.  The publication is quite long; a $5.00 donation is suggested.
 
SAD and BAD conditions have been reported in all parts of the world, Mr.
Nachbaur says; they are not restricted to a specific area and may occur at any
time without warning.  They may also affect beekeepers large or small without
regard to experience.  And because SAD and BAD bees don't reappear in the same
region season after season, these conditions are difficult to study.
 
In the past, beekeepers and scientists have called SAD and BAD bees many
things, including Isle of Wight Disease; fall, spring and winter collapse or
decline; and disappearing disease.  The new popular cause, Mr. Nachbaur says,
is tracheal mites (at that time California beekeepers were not reporting
infestations of Varroa).  However, he continues, "It is my opinion...that all
of the above and every other natural or unnatural condition that afflicts
bees, that can be identified as stressful can be made a scapegoat for SAD or
BAD bees."  SAD and BAD conditions are not necessarily confined to beekeeping,
Mr. Nachbaur says (the parallel of "bee immune deficiency" to human AIDS is
implicit).  He also suggests that beekeeper management procedures might have
an effect.
 
"These hives appear to be strong productive hives after a honey flow or
extended broodrearing period," Mr. Nachbaur contends.  However, he continues,
they can lose population quickly, leaving boxes full of honey and empty of
bees.  Two symptoms of SAD and BAD bees Mr. Nachbaur describes are (1)
increasing numbers of black, shiny or old bees and (2) numbers of dead, dying
and crawling bees.  Although pesticide use in California is heavy, Mr.
Nachbaur has found SAD and BAD bees in areas where few pesticides are used and
in some instances bees sent in for analysis showed no residues of toxic
chemicals.
 
The symptoms described above, according to Mr. Nachbaur, could be related to
viral infection.  The realities of bee viruses, he says, are that there are no
quick fixes or magic bullets.  Mr. Nachbaur believes viruses are present in
most bees, but don't become epidemic every year.  He correlates viral
infections with stress put on colonies by a number of causes.  One is the
extreme crowding of apiaries in California during almond pollination.
 
Nutritional resources also have much to do with SAD and BAD bees, Mr. Nachbaur
says.  "Bees reared on low quality diets may look normal and be in great
numbers, but not have the ability to properly feed brood; or rear bees that
have shortened longevity."  Poor pollen sources, Mr. Nachbaur says, associated
with SAD and BAD bees are those of grasses:  rice, corn, milo.  In California,
pollen of two wild plants, tarweed and coastal manzanita, seem to be involved.
In the case of tarweed, Mr. Nachbaur has observed that a great deal of this
pollen will in fact stop broodrearing, even though other conditions appear
optimal.  Another source of pollen, almonds, is also suspect.  As Mr. Nachbaur
says, "The generation of beekeepers that I learned from did not regularly go
to the almonds in the spring even though they lived close to the almond
growing regions, because their bees did better elsewhere." It was only when
cash rental became popular that bees were purposefully moved into almonds.
Mr. Nachbaur's conclusion is that bees require a balanced diet and to get this
almost always require more than one kind of pollen.
 
Sugar syrup feeding can also help reduce cases of SAD and BAD bees, Mr.
Nachbaur says, if applied at certain times.  These include the fall and/or
right after bees are unloaded from being trucked out of summer pasturage.
However, Mr. Nachbaur indicates that bees with advanced cases of SAD and BAD
are unable to use syrup, which eventually may simply pool up on the ground. In
Florida, bees under heavy stress have also been rescued by inserting a frame
of emerging brood.
 
Poor diets, pathological viruses and subsequent reduced broodrearing take a
great toll on colonies, according to Mr. Nachbaur, who says, "The stress of
nectar collection is easy to understand when no broodrearing is taking place.
The bees work themselves to death...the results may be full boxes of honey and
knot heads..."   The latter are colonies with small clusters of bees.  This
situation quickly leads to colony death.
 
Mr. Nachbaur does not minimize the effects of other diseases, pests, predators
and toxic chemicals which can lead to large numbers of SAD and BAD bees.  As
he says, "The results of so many BAD, SAD bees over the last few years has
been a lot of SAD beekeepers looking for a quick fix to a very complex
problem, keeping healthy, productive bees."  Beekeepers need a laboratory that
will examine bees for common pests, predators and also viruses, Mr. Nachbaur
says, and the time has come to accept the fact that any single affliction may
be of little harm alone, but in combination can be fatal to bee colonies.
 
Mr. Nachbaur describes two major constraints to successful beekeeping in the
1990s.  These are finding high quality bee pasture and renewing colonies that
die for whatever reason.  Actually, it turns out the second constraint is also
very much related to the first.  That is, Mr. Nachbaur says, "The ability of
beekeepers to renew or replace colonies that die out, or become so poor as to
be a liability, is a serious problem that can be met by applying rule number
one:  keep your bees on high quality pasture."  Failing this, Mr. Nachbaur
says that dramatic loss of colonies, such as those experienced by California
beekeepers in 1987-88, will continue.  In addition, there may be even more
frequent unexplained losses causing SAD and BAD bees in the future.
 
I was struck by the similarity of Mr. Nachbaur's remarks to what has been
occurring in Florida in the last few years.  Colony conditions in the
panhandle and other parts of the state reporting unexpectedly large dieoffs
are in many ways parallel to the SAD, BAD bees of California.   Mr. Nachbaur's
notions about a diagnostic laboratory, the importance of the pollen resource,
experimental pesticide use in colonies, monitoring thresholds for pests,
nutrition and other limiting factors have all been addressed in past issues of
this newsletter.
 
This is not to say that all Mr. Nachbaur's ideas should be categorically
accepted.  Some are controversial and based on observations with little
scientific data to back them up.  Nevertheless, he has taken the time to write
down what he has seen over the last three decades of commercial beekeeping.
This is an important first step in determining how he and other beekeepers
might begin to deal with SAD and BAD bees.
 
 
                       REFLECTIONS ON PROTEIN MANAGEMENT
 
 
The Florida panhandle feeding study is now in the hands of reviewers.  When it
is published, I will provide information on how to obtain a full copy.  Like
many scientific studies on honey bees, the results are not definitive and the
causes of unexplained bee losses in that region remain controversial.
 
One of the major arguments I used to embark on a feeding study was that
protein nutrition played a great role in the large-scale dieoff reported in
the panhandle and that its manipulation was something the beekeeper might
incorporate into a management plan.  Much of what Mr. Nachbaur said, reported
elsewhere in this issue of APIS, corroborates this idea.  Practically every
time the possibility of protein deficiency was broached as contributor to the
problem, however, the hue and cry was raised that pollen was not in short
supply.  This may have been true, but the quality of that pollen not deemed to
be a limiting resource by beekeepers in the area remained, and still remains,
a mystery.
 
Beyond Mr. Nachbaur's concerns about almond and tarweed pollen elsewhere in
this newsletter, other information exists showing pollen quality cannot be
ignored in bee management.  Study in Australia by G. Kleinschmidt and A.
Kondos published in the Australasian Beekeeper has shown that colonies on high
quality pollens maintain sufficient brood levels and can be moved to
successive honey flows.  On the other hand, when feeding on low protein
pollens, colonies maintain large populations working light flows, but rapidly
decline under heavy workloads which also leads to increase in nosema levels.
In addition, under heavy honey flows, bees in colonies with a rapid decrease
in body protein lived only 20-26 days, whereas those with 40% lived 46-50
days.  Thus, colony reproduction was not able to replace bees fast enough when
longevity was short, whereas populations remained large during a twelve week
flow when longevity increased.
 
Given the above information, Mr. Kleinschmidt suggests careful management of
the following factors to maintain optimum bee populations:
 
A.  A prolific queen. B.  Brood movement and/or supplementation. C.  Attention
to nutrition (carbohydrate and protein).
 
Most beekeepers in the U.S. usually pay attention to all of the above, except
protein nutrition.  Here is what Mr. Kleinschmidt says concerning colony
nutrition: "The use of sugar syrup will substitute for nectar, but current
artificial pollens only supplement or extend natural pollens in the Australian
environment, not replace them."  Thus, he continues, natural resources can be
more fully utilized by:  (a) managing colonies to maintain body protein at
pre-determined levels; (b) collecting and storing (freezing) pollen for later
use; and (c) using supplements for the first one to two generations of
buildup.
 
Mr. Kleinschmidt says that all of the above strategies require specific
beekeeper action and continuing production costing to determine their
suitability.  Passive management previously practiced only permitted economic
survival, he continues, because natural resources were abundant and production
costs lower.  He concludes that active management for a pre-planned specific
purpose and crop is necessary for survival of Australian beekeepers, and that
planning often begins nine months before the selected honey flow.
 
The quality of pollens is determined by Mr. Kleinschmidt and his colleagues
using the Kjeldahl method, a standard procedure which shows how much nitrogen
(crude protein) is present.  Some 50 bees are taken from the brood nest and
analyzed.  This nitrogen or crude protein determination is another reason,
besides detection of diseases and pests, for beekeepers to consider using a
diagnostics laboratory.
 
In addition to crude protein, another technique used to determine nutritional
status of bees is to look at their brood food glands.  Dr. Christine Peng,
University of California, Davis recently said at the Western Connecticut
Beekeepers Association meeting that bees highly infested with tracheal mites
had very poor glandular development.  This indicated an inability to rear
brood at all or if they did, the resulting bees were small.  When Dr. Peng's
remarks were reported by Dr. Larry Connor in his column, "Students of the
Honey Bee," in the June, 1990 issue of The Speedy Bee, he asked the question:
"Is intensive protein feeding part of proper management against mites?"  It
could be.  Paying closer attention to protein management might be an important
key in determining the reason for many of the SAD and BAD bees in beekeeping
outfits today.
 
 
Sincerely,
 
 
 
Malcolm T. Sanford
0312 IFAS
202 Newell Hall
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-0312
Phone (904) 392-1801
FAX: 904-392-5660
BITNET Address: MTS@IFASGNV
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