Enclosed is the upcoming PEI BEEKEEPERS COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION=20 NEWSLETTER to be published next week. Harvey Hyde [log in to unmask] =20 PEI BEEKEEPERS COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER =20 =20 JULY 27/94 =0C In this issue:- PRESIDENT'S REPORT COMMENTS & OBSERVATIONS UPCOMING EVENTS HAWAIIAN NEWS CROWDING=20 STING ALLERGIES REQUEENING WORKER LIFESTYLE LOCAL HELP PRESIDENT'S REPORT:- Since the last Newsletter, your executive has been working on new ideas to be undertaken by the PEIBCA.=20 One of a number of such ideas was that the Co-op should focus on making the latest beekeeping technology more available to Island beekeepers. In this regard it was proposed that a number of executive meetings include a workshop. A short executive meeting would conclude with a workshop open to Island beekeepers on a number of timely subjects. It is proposed that our October 3rd meeting include a workshop on Winter preparations. (See the next newsletter September 8th for details.) Another item to be initiated is the set-up of a comprehensive bee library to be supported partially by fund raising ventures that will be undertaken by the PEIBCA as well as contributions by those=20 interested in sharing in such a project. Of course we can't forget about our latest project --the Maritime Bee Tour to be held July 29-30. The executive have been working very hard to host this year's Tour by arranging excellent venues, lots of good food, great speakers, interesting displays, and a chance for you to talk till you drop about bees, with a lot of the beekeepers from Atlantic Canada. We are expecting 80-100 people; I am looking forward to seeing you at Tour 94 --the theme of which is "Nectars of the World!". COMMENTS & OBSERVATIONS:- An item which didn't make the last Newsletter was of the attempt by Nova Scotia Beekeepers Association to bank queens during the past winter. Jerry Draheim indicated that he produced and banked 62 queens in a climate-controlled storage, at the Kentville research station. The bees were stored at 12=F8C and 60% humidity. Unfortunately the attempt met with failure with the loss of over 90% of the banked queens. On the bright side however, there was an 85% survival rate for the queens housed in mini nucs (3 deep x 1/2 frames). For us in this part of the world, this activity is one of the critical keys for us to become truly self-sufficient in bees. UPCOMING EVENTS:- The Maritime Bee Tour July 29-30 commencing at the Kin Canter, 329 North Market Street @ 6:00 PM. For more information contact John Burhoe @ 962-3834. HAWAIIAN NEWS:- Date: 5 May 1994 12:50:31 -0700 State agriculture inspectors on Maui have intercepted a shipment of live honey bees mailed from the Mainland. State law prohibits the importation of live or dead bees in an effort to keep Hawaii honey bees parasite-free. The Department of Agriculture said the ban on honey bee imports is the main reason why Hawaii-reared queen bees are free of two mites devastating Mainland and foreign colonies. Editors Note: PEI is also in a state of quarantine and the illegal importation of honeybees from other provinces or countries, is forbidden. CROWDING:-=20 Every beekeeper is taught that strong colonies are the essence of beekeeping. However, what does crowding of bees do to a colony? Dr. John Harbo, USDA Baton Rouge Bee Laboratory, reports on this in his study "Worker-Bee Crowding Affects Brood Production, Honey Production, and Longevity of Honey Bees," Journal of Economic Entomology, Vol. 86, No. 6, pp 1672-1678, December, 1993. Through an elaborate set of experiments, using several hive sizes and different initial populations, Dr. Harbo found that in winter more crowded bees consumed less honey, but produced less brood and lived shorter than less crowded colonies. In spring and summer, more crowded bees produced more honey. They also produced less brood, but the difference was not as marked as in winter. With reference to how available space affected colonies during honey producing times, the results are not clear cut. "Of three treatments, colonies with five combs in a 25-litre hive produced the most honey and colonies with additional space and comb (10 frames in a 47-litre hive) produced the least, while colonies of five frames in a 47-litre hive were intermediate. STING ALLERGIES:- There has been so much confusion out there about reactions to bee stings, that I've been known to pounce on unsuspecting, innocent people in the street while trying to set them straight on stings. Happily, the majority of people who think they are allergic to bees aren't, only about 1 person in 10 is truly allergic to honey bee stings. Because our bees get a bad reputation from all this, it has become a pet peeve of mine, so here are the facts... There are three types of reactions to honey bee stings -- 1) yelling "Yeeooww" and dropping the frame on your foot; 2) gritting your teeth and holding onto the frame; or 3) not noticing until you later find the empty stinger still stuck in your skin. =20 But seriously, the first type is called a LOCAL REACTION. It involves pain, redness, swelling and itching surrounding the immediate area of the sting. It can vary from nothing to a "mosquito bite" bump to a swollen finger or hand, or even to a whole swollen arm. This is NORMAL -- even the whole swollen arm -- it goes away in a few days, it happens to everybody. Those of us who are stung frequently and regularly (several stings a month for a year) may develop an immunity to this type of reaction -- the body produces high levels of antibodies to the bee venom -- and you no longer need to swell up to eliminate the venom from your system. The stings still hurt though. =20 The second type of reaction is called a TOXIC REACTION. In sufficient quantity, bee venom is poisonous. Approximately 1,000 stings will kill you and a couple hundred will definitely send you to a hospital. This is the stuff that freak accidents and killer bee headlines are made of. The third type of reaction is the infamous ALLERGIC REACTION.=20 In this case, the body reacts at a site DIFFERENT from where you were stung. For example, your throat will swell or you will become short of breath or dizzy or break out in a rash (hives, anyone?).=20 You must be stung on at least two separate occasions (the first time you will react normally) for this to occur. After you are stung the first time, your body will produce "allergy" antibodies, which are essentially antibodies gone haywire -- they react against your own body tissues instead of against invading venom, bacteria, viruses, etc. When you are stung on a second occasion, these "allergy" antibodies are activated, producing the allergic reaction. The symptoms can vary from mild rashes and joint aches to the dizziness and major swelling of the get-to-the-hospital-in- ten-minutes-or-your-dead, full body reaction. Usually, the symptoms will become more severe each succeeding time you are stung, so people who are allergic normally carry a prescription allergy kit, containing a shot of adrenaline, to help lessen the reaction if they are ever stung again. I should also mention that these reactions usually begin within about half an hour from the time you are stung. They can last for hours or days. Allergic reactions can develop at any time in one's life -- some people are born with the tendency to be allergic, others develop it later in life -- in all cases, you must first be exposed to the thing causing the allergy (bee venom in this case) at least once, but possibly more times, before you develop an allergy. The people who are most at risk to developing allergic reactions to bee stings are those people who are stung OCCASIONALLY, say 2 or 3 times a year -- which includes most hobbyist beekeepers. The people who are never stung (say 2 or 3 times in a lifetime) or who are frequently and regularly stung have a much lower risk of developing an allergy. That's not to say that you should kick your hive before you open it -- just be aware that allergic reactions are a possibility, and don't take a change in your reaction to bee stings lightly. Another common misconception is that if you are allergic to yellow jackets, hornets, and/or wasps, you are also allergic to honey bees. The chances are very good that you are not. While the venom of yellow jackets and hornets are very similar (yellow jackets are actually a type of hornet), the venom of honey bees is quite different. The wasps can vary a bit more, depending on the type of wasp, but generally their venom is also pretty different from that of honey bees and cross-reactions are rare. So how many of you are still allergic??? I'm really NOT an encyclopedia, it just sounds that way!!!=20 Jennifer Finley (JVF101 @ PSUVM.psu.edu) Department of Entomology, Penn State University =20 REQUEENING:- REQUEENING WITHOUT LOOKING FOR THE QUEEN by Nick Wallingford One of the big stumbling blocks for many beginner beekeepers is that problem of how do you actually get the queen into the hive. The fundamentals -- the colony should be queenless, it should be well fed and it should have young bees emerging. How do you actually go about doing it? Most books tell you simply to find the old queen, kill her, and introduce your young queen in the mailing cage she came in. Fine, you think. Until you go out to look through your (strong) (aggressive) (agitated) colony for the queen. And knowing that you have your valuable, newly-arrived queen sitting in the house just waiting to be installed! So this message will be mostly devoted to giving you a method of introducing new queens to your hives without ever having to look for the old queen. And like any such system, it is not foolproof.=20 It works for me and for many other beekeepers, but if it doesn't for you, first make sure you are following directions. Then consider special problems you might have, especially as they relate to the 'golden rules' of queenless, well-fed, with plenty of young bees. The system I will describe is not new, and it was not my idea. It's a combination of all sorts of ideas. Its the sort of management technique that develops when you have a fair idea of what you want to do, but you're not sure how. Then, rather than just making up your system, you sit back and think about bee behaviour and try to work effectively within the bounds of the ways bees will *usually* respond to certain stimuli. The object of the system is to create a nucleus colony on top of the old colony. I wanted a system that could be easily used by hobbyist or commercial beekeeper alike, without ever looking for the queen. It should be versatile, both in being able to deal with colonies of differing strengths and with end results. That is, the resulting nucleus, or top, can be used to re-queen with or to start a new colony. The method should use a minimum of extra equipment, and no exotic or complicated gadgets (much as I like them...) They are based around beekeeping systems that use two full depth brood chambers for most of the year. The system introduces a third box, which is of the same depth as the brood chamber boxes. After all is complete, you'll want to work this extra box 'out', especially if you (1) use different depth boxes for storing/extracting surplus and/or (2) you are particular about using white comb only (never used for brood rearing) as honey supers. The only 'extra' piece of equipment needed is a split board, also known as a division board. To those of you who may not know what that is, it is simply a hive mat (inner cover) that has had a notch cut out of the rim on one side so as to form an entrance for a colony set above it. The notch can be anywhere from 20 to 100 mm wide; I prefer to have mine about 50 mm, making it large enough for a fairly strong unit but still small enough that the bees can protect it while the colony is still small. I have modified the inner covers on all of my hives in this manner. Just to try something new this last autumn, I turned them over on my hives in an effort to give some sort of upper ventilation. I'm not really sure how much good it did. You will also need a queen excluder. As I have one of these for each hive as a matter of course, that is no problem. One last piece of equipment needed will be another box of drawn comb. Now, after all that prelude, let's see how the system works.=20 For the sake of beginning, let us assume that it is springtime and your colony is housed in two boxes and you want to simply re-queen it. As you'll see later, you have other options, but let's start from this basic case. When you open your hive, you'll find most of the brood and bees in the upper box. Remove three frames of brood, both sealed and unsealed, from the centre of the brood nest. Take a glance over them first to see if you can spot the queen. Now that you're starting on a method that means you don't have to find her, its amazing how often you will! Then shake all of the bees off of them, back into the colony.=20 You needn't shake off every last one of them, so long as you are sure that the queen is not one of the bees remaining. Now, place these three frames into the middle of the box of combs you have brought with you. If there are plenty of stores in the parent colony, take two good frames of honey, shake the bees from them, and place them in the new box with the three frames of brood. If there is not much honey in the hive, you will have to feed either the parent hive, the nucleus, or in the worst case, both. Now, you can start to re-build the hive. Replace all the frames you have taken from the parent colony with empty combs, doing your best not to split the brood nest if possible. On top of this second box, place the queen excluder. On top of the excluder, place the new box containing the brood and honey that has had the bees shaken from them. Put the lid on the hive and go away.=20 Think about what you have just done. You have lifted brood and bees above the excluder. What is going to happen to the brood up there? The pheromones it gives off will attract nurse bees that are down in the main hive up to it. Combining that with the frames of honey, the third box that you have added has quite a 'pull' to bring bees up into it. But remember, there is a queen excluder between the boxes, so there is no way the old queen can come up there. After about 20 minutes, if you go back to the hive and lift the lid, you will find that enough bees have come up into the nucleus to take care of the brood, defend the colony and take care of your new queen. All you have to do now is replace the queen excluder with the division board and presto! You have your nucleus colony ready for introducing the young queen. It is queenless (because the queen couldn't come up through the excluder). It has plenty of young bees (because they have come up to take care of the brood you lifted). And it has plenty of food (because you provided them with two frames of honey). All the conditions have been met for ideal queen introduction. You can expect that some of the bees will drift back to the main colony, but the young bees taking care of the brood will most likely remain - the new unit shouldn't drop in bee strength too drastically. This system could be used on a larger number of hives. By the time the beekeeper has worked through the yard, shaking bees from brood and honey to lift into the new box, the first hive would have been left long enough for the bees to come up. Introduce your young queen into the top and wait a week. Don't disturb them in this time if at all possible; until the new queen is established and laying fully, the bees haven't really fully accepted her. Disturb them during this period and it is possible for them to turn on her. After a week, you will have a parent colony on the bottom, only slightly reduced in strength by the bees, brood and honey you took.=20 And you will have a nucleus colony headed by a young queen above the split board, all set for your next decision. You can either use it to re-queen the parent colony, or you could place it on its own floor to use for increasing your colony numbers. If you choose the second option, it would be best if you actually moved it several miles away to avoid the loss of field strength through drifting. If you want to re-queen the parent colony, you could now go through it, looking for the old queen, preparing to unite the two colonies by replacing the split board with a sheet of newspaper for them to chew their way through. But that would defeat the whole point, wouldn't it? We're supposed to be doing this without ever looking for a queen, aren't we? If you can go through and find the old queen, aided by any tricks/knacks you might have to quickly locate queens, so much the better. You're certain of results then. But, believe it or not, you have the odds of success heavily in your favour if you simply newspaper the two units together without looking for the old queen at all. In almost 90% of the cases, if you unite two colonies with the young queen on the to of an old queen, the young queen will be left to head the resulting hive. Why this happens is open to argument. Some beekeepers will tell you that the bees always select the best of the two queens. I doubt that. My explanation goes along the lines of the young queen's bees are confined in the top box when you replace the split board with newspaper. As well, her field bees returning cannot use their normal entrance, the slot on the split board. They then drift down to the main colony entrance. As they are foragers returning with a load, they will be accepted without causing outrageous fighting at the hive entrance. I think the old queen is then probably killed by the 'scissor' effect of bees foreign to her coming at her from both directions - down as the bees confined above the newspaper chew through and move down in the hive, and up by the foragers from the top unit coming in through the bottom entrance and finding a 'strange' queen in 'their' hive. It has certainly worked for me, and if the thought of trying to find queens is an impossible one for you, the system might be worth considering. You might just want to experiment with it to see if the time savings will repay the small amount of uncertainty involved. It's not the answer to all of a beekeepers problems, but it just gives you an idea how by thinking a little bit about bee behaviour, you can sort out your management system to make your life a little easier while doing all you can in the interests of maximum production. Nick Wallingford (East coast, N Island, New Zealand) Internet [log in to unmask] WORKER LIFESTYLE:- The worker bee normally adheres to the following pattern of duty within the hive following the first 10 days after her emergence. The young bee has a short period of self grooming. She eats large amounts of pollen. She then cleans the debris out of cells vacated by emerging bees. She then becomes a nurse bee and deposits a mass of royal jelly in the base of cells to feed the larvae 2 1/2 to five days old. Later she begins to feed the one to two day old larvae. She then begins to take short orientation flights from the hive.=20 The next 10-day period of a worker's life is spent doing another group of varied chores. She secretes wax and builds cells. She accepts nectar from field bees, handles and stores it. She packs pollen in the cells. She removes dead bees and other debris from the hive. A few bees of this age take on guard duty at the entrance to intercept honey bees and other honey robbers. =20 The next 10 to 20 days of her life or until her death is spent working as a field bee. She takes 12 or more daily flights from the colony foraging for nectar, pollen, and water.=20 LOCAL HELP:- The following list identifies the members of the PEI Beekeepers Cooperative Association who donate their time and expertise to the promotion of the honeybee. All are willing to assist the public with their honeybee problems/questions. Just call. If we cannot help, we will refer you to someone who can. President John Burhoe RR#4 Montague Ph. 962-3834 Secretary Paul Dick RR#9 Winsloe Ph. 368-8277 Glenda Carver 30A Newland Cresc. Ph. 892-0973 Harvey Hyde RR#2 Cornwall Ph. 566-2228 Internet: [log in to unmask] Carol Jollimore RR#2 Kensington Ph. 886-2044 Sharon Labchuck RR#2 Breadalbane Ph. 621-0719 Internet: [log in to unmask] Philip Maxwell 10 School St. Kensington C0B-1M0 836-4943 Al Picketts Norboro 836-5180 Eunice Wonnacott Box 2624, Charlottetown C1A-8C3 Internet: [log in to unmask] ****************************** Did you know that Caucasian bees, on becoming queenless, have been known to steal an egg from a neighbouring hive, carry it home, build a queen cell and raise their own queen?