At 08:17 AM 11/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
 
>There are still a few occupied bee trees in this area (western West
>Virginia) and one of the largest swarms I captured this year came from a
>house in town that is said to have been there for many years. AFB is not a
>problem here so this may help.
 
Hi Steve and Friends,
 
"Yes, Virginia there still are bees in the trees."  If this is not a quote
from a famous Christmas letter it should be. Virginia is not the only area
in the US that still has bee trees but you would never believe it by what
is quoted in the hype we are exposed to every day about our bees. What
started as a simple observation in one area of the US has exploded by its
re-telling into a problem that never was.
 
As long as bees swarm there will be bee trees and this is the bottom line.
Sure bees in the trees suffer the same as bees in our hives from the
problem of the day be it lack of pasture, poor forging conditions as well
as disease, pests, and predators. There is NO separate feral or wild honey
bee populations despite what some would like to believe. What makes the
feral population different is the competition for nesting sites and some
natural selection but most important is the number of kept hives in any one
area that naturally restock the bee trees.
 
Today we practice a migratory system of beekeeping trading our production
for gasoline by keeping our bees on wheels. This has caused a great change
in swarming patterns with the location of swams having shifted from the
north to the south and east to west. Bees that swarm in California almond
orchards at the end of the bloom would in the past normally swarmed in
their northern or eastern home state. Let us not forget that good
beekeeping also does not permit uncontrolled swarming and we have become
more expert at preventing it.
 
At one time here in Central California a beekeeper could increase 100%
every year just by catching swarms today catching swarms would not make up
normal winter loss or 10% of our bees. All this good beekeeping combined
with good and bad pasture seasons has of course resulted in less bee trees
in this area that never had that many because of the lack of nesting sites
as our older building have be replaced by tighter modern constructions. Few
today remember the wooden sidewalks of old.
 
>Speaking of small cell size, I noticed my older hives without queen
>excluders move up into new honey supers as I add them through the summer.  I
>know this could be from many reasons but wonder if bees do prefer newer
>comb.
 
Its the heat. The queen prefers the warmest area of the hive and will not
lay on cold combs. Many wonder how a good queen catcher can catch so many
queens when they spend so much time themselves looking for their queens.
Most fast queen catchers know to look in the warmest part of the hive which
of course varies with the time of day so in the am the queen may be found
on the side facing the sun while on a warm afternoon she may be found in
the middle of the hive and if the hive is really warm she may be found on
the bottom side of the top or even at times not found at all.<G> Most
beekeepers find that darker combs are preferred by queens and this to maybe
because of the heat a old black comb can attract and hold compared to a
nice white extracting comb. Its also easier for the beekeeper to see the
queens work in the bottom of a dark cell and miss it in the bottom of a
white comb.
 
>>another post. Just a few years after the onset of varroa there are
>>practically no feral colonies here in Western New York. Farmers and long
>>time residents have told me of bee trees that have been around for many
>>years, were always populated and are now dead.
 
Sure I believe this, the only question I would ask any beekeeper how many
feral hives do you know about and how long you have known about it. It
surprises me that most can only count a few, many none other then the old
bee tree they knew as a child,  and most do not follow the condition of
these feral hives for any length of time.
 
>> Gardeners and vegetable farmers tell us there are no bees visiting their
crops. It seems likely
>>that  many of these colonies had small cells as you mentioned and bee
>>trees are seldom disturbed by beekeepers.
 
This would seem unusual because honeybees and their problems actually are
said by some to make it better for other types of wild bees so garden
pollination should be no problem. It is true that some years the weather
keeps the bees in during the part or all of the pollination season causing
less then maximum yields even under controlled condition where hundreds of
thousands hives are available to do the job. And it is also true that if
all the commercial hives in one area are moved to another area a dramatic
reduction in available honeybee pollinators can be expected. This may be
critical in areas that for what ever reason had few kept hives to began with.
 
Nothing prevents any farmer from keeping his own bees which would be one
way to remedy the pollination problem and at the least spend lots of
production dollars keeping their own bees alive which is a type of poetic
justice for all the years of spraying those same bees when own by
beekeepers and generally making life miserable for real beekeepers. I like
the rumor of giving every farmer with a beehive $100,000.00 and expect that
it would be gone in a short time and they would be back looking to rent
bees for pollination. Reminds me of the lucky beekeeper who won a million
in the lottery and was asked what he would do with it and said "I will
continue keeping bees until its gone". In the end the farmer will not only
lose the money but also will have no bees..
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
http://beenet.com
 
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