Intermediate Beekeeping  -- Lesson Seven   Fall Management

Management of bees--Fall  

1. It is not enough to know how to manage bees for winter survival but also how to overcome losses when they do occur.  As a result, a student should understand the task required to make increases, and the natural tendency of bees to multiply on their own. 
2. At the end of this lesson, you should be able to describe the effect local flora and weather affect beekeeping in general.
3. At the end of this lesson, you should understand parthenogenesis.
4. At the end of this lesson, you should be able to describe a laying worker condition in a hive of honey bees and what to do about it.
5. At the end of this lesson, you should be able to discuss the importance of drones in the mating of queens for desired characteristics.

Influence of local flora and weather on bees

From the time bees begin to collect nectar and pollen in the spring until winter arrives,  bees are consuming honey and pollen stores.  We usually look at surplus honey as our share of their hard work.  But what is surplus honey?  It is the amount of honey not required by the bees--to survive the winter and spring until additional nectar and pollen becomes available.   But how do we as beekeepers determine how much surplus honey to remove from a hive?  The answer is not as simple as 1-2-3.  We must deal with a number of factors--such as weather and local floral sources available to the bees at various times during the year.

Generally speaking, colonies need 60 to 90 pounds of honey to survive a winter.  Lets take a look at the Plant Hardiness Zone Map courtesy of the United States Department of Agriculture.

This map show the lowest temperatures that can be expected each year in the United States.

Low temperatures in the United States reach from some small area of never going below 40 degrees F. in the year to some areas that may reach as much as -50 degrees F.  That is quite a range.  Outside Alaska, the coldest spot in the U.S. ever recorded occurred on Mt. Washington in the New England area.  Hawaii also presents us with a tropical climate.  However, most beekeepers will find themselves in less extreme temperature zones.

Because students taking this course will come from many different regions, it is difficult to say exactly what you encounter in your bee yards.  We will attempt to cover some interesting situations that might apply to your own situation.   As you should be aware, many commercial beekeepers ship their bees south for the winter season.  This is done for the very simple reason that the bees do not face the harsh realities of bees that stay in the north.  If bees are kept in a weather climate zone as indicated by the brown areas in the above map, the beekeeper will manage bees quite differently than the beekeeper who keeps bees in a weather climate zone indicated by yellow to blue colors on the map.

In the brown areas of the map, beekeeping is a year around activity.  It may get cold at times but the cold is followed by a rapid warm up.  Snow is almost unheard of and when it does occur, it is something very special.  Bees in these warmer regions often can forage for pollen and nectar during the winter.  But they also require supplemental feeding to help the bees support the brood that is raised much earlier than in the north.  It is common for beekeepers to feed pollen substitutes as well as syrup.  It is a mistake for northern beekeepers to assume that bees will do better in the south than in the north.  It is true that bees in the south build up faster, do not face the long periods of confinement in the hive as they do in the north, and forage at will.  Bees depend on the local floral sources as well and the floral source must provide a hive with nectar income to take the place of honey stores being used up to produce brood.  

Bees are kept in both double deep and single brood chambers and a deep and shallow is common.  It still requires just as much resources or more for a hive of bees to survive a winter in the south as it does in the north.  However, plants begin to produce nectar and pollen much earlier in the south and this gives that area one great advantage that the north lacks  --- the ability to sell queens and packages during March and April -- bees in the north are just beginning the process of building up larger populations.

It is common practice for queen breeders in the south  to start the grafting process in mid - February.  They will have fertile queens by March or mid March.

Mountains separate the various areas of the United States into distinct climate zones.  If you check the map, you will notice that the west coast  is also mostly in a brownish color with some zones getting cold.   However, we are faced with a major problem.  Only the people who live in an area over a period of years can truly give you information which can be considered of much value.  Take the state of California for example.  The diversity of climate is so enormous that it is impossible for us to say anything concrete about beekeeping in general for the state of California.  It depends on where in California a beekeeper happens to live and keep bees. For that reason we are not going to attempt to identify conditions state by state.  Beekeepers in Northern California may find that keeping bees there is much like keeping bees in Minnesota although the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map may show quite a difference in plant Hardiness.

What we can do, however, is give you information that might be applied to the region where you live and keep bees.   Your job as a good beekeeper is to know the honey producing plants in your region.  Two books written on this subject are Honey Plants of North America  (Currently available as a reprint from A.I. Root) written by John H. Lovell, and American Honey Plants by Frank C. Pellett.  This last book is out of print, but large number of the book in many editions are around and most likely can be found in some used book stores.  Either book should be a part of a good beekeeping library.

What you need to know about the flora (honey plants) is:  1)  What plants produce nectar and pollen for your area?   2)  When do they produced nectar or pollen in your area?   3)  How dependable are they?    4)  How must you manage your bees if for some reason the flora should fail to produce the expected nectar or pollen?      Other experienced beekeepers in your area should be able to answer the above questions.  States often collect information from beekeepers on amount of honey produced and what source produced the honey.  This information may be available from your state Department of Agriculture.

What you need to know about the weather is:  1) What winter conditions will you have to plan for? (Snow, extremely low temperatures, long periods of cold, etc.)   2) When can you expect the queen to start the egg laying cycle again after the fall shut down? (Some queens continue to lay eggs in the south and warmer regions)  3) When can you expect bees to fly on a daily basis?   4) When is the approximate  first frost free day in your area; when is the last approximate  frost free day in your area?  

So what do climate and flora have to do with beekeeping?  Just about everything.  The timing of the bloom periods will also determine when the bees should be building up, swarming, bringing in nectar for a honey crop (a nectar flow rather than a honey flow), and a period  of reduced brood rearing even to the rejection of drones in the hive.

Parthenogenesis

The theory of parthenogenesis in the honey bee was proposed by Dzierzon in 1845.  Parthenogenesis is derived from two Greek words which mean virgin birth.  It may be hard to understand but Drone honey bees have no father.  The queen honey bee can produce two kinds of eggs -- fertilized eggs and unfertilized eggs.   The unfertilized egg is haploid and produces a drone male bee.   This drone bee is identical in genetic make-up to its mother.  It has her genetic pool made up of her mother and her father (the drone's grandfather) genes.  The terms parthenogenesis and haplodiploidy are used interchangeably.  One can identify a queen which is not truly mated to a drone of her own strain by looking for drones which vary in color.  Remember the drone is like its mother.  If the queens mother lets say was Italian, the queen will look Italian.  However, lets say that her father was a black bee of some kind.  Her fertilized eggs will represent a vast variety of genetic material from the 20 or so drones she has mated with.  However, as far as she is concerned, she has 50% of her genetic make-up from her mother and 50% genetic make-up from her father.   So the chances are that unfertilized eggs will represent that combination and the beekeeper will see light as well as dark drones in the hive.  If she were truly mated, the drones would be uniform in color.

Thus, it is very important in any attempt to raise queens to determine the quality of drones that will mate with virgin queens.  Poorly mated queens will produce poor quality bees.  Every attempt should be made to select drone mother queens as carefully as one selects queen mother queens.

Drone Laying queens/laying worker bees

   Results of a drone laying queen or a drone laying worker...

Nothing is more discouraging than finding a colony with only drone brood present.  The beekeeper must determine if the hive has a queen laying drones only -- result of not mating.   Queens which have not mated and it does happen, will lay unfertilized eggs as discussed above.  Or if because they lack a queen, workers have begun to lay eggs.  Since workers do not mate, the undeveloped ovaries can produce unfertilized eggs (workers are female).  The major problem with laying workers is that it is almost impossible to determine which workers are laying eggs.  Pheromones from the queen and from brood inhibit the development of workers ovaries.  If a colony becomes hopelessly queenless (no pheromones are emitted within the hive to tell the bees they have a queen) some workers will become laying workers.  It take some time for this to happen -- usually 4 to 6 weeks.  A colonies population will have decreased during this time.  It is almost impossible to replace a laying worker with a newly introduced queen.  However, we will provide you with several successful methods we have used.

First, a hive with a drone laying queen.   Upon examination of a hive with drone brood, one comes across a queen.   This usually occurs when returning to check on a newly introduced queen with a package of bees.  Queens like this are usually small as far as queens go.  One may find several queen cells started but not always and the eggs in the queen cells are still unfertilized eggs.  It is important that the queen in this case be killed, and replaced immediately with a new queen.   Older queens may also be failing.  Either they were poorly mated or have exhausted the supply of sperm to fertilize her eggs.  They should be killed as well.  We are assuming that there still is a sufficient population of bees to support a new queen.  If not, it really doesn't pay to combine this hive with another queen right hive because most of the workers are old and will not add much to the hive they are added to.   

 The hive with a drone laying worker it will be upon examination,  common to find a large number of emergency queen cells remains which are evidence that the bees tried to raise a queen but failed.   Second, there has been a break in the brood cycle of approximately a month.  Most of the capped cells will have produced emerged adults.  The population of the hive may be quite large at this point but because no new brood is being produced, the population is in decline.  The characteristic bumpy drone brood is developing in what were at one time standard worker cells.  A colony such as this is extremely difficult to requeen!   In fact, I tell most beekeepers who come to me with this problem -- I sell queens -- is: Move that drone laying worker hive to a new location and let it die.   On the original location of the drone laying worker hive, place a new bottom board, hive body, and four frames of bees and brood.  Add to this several frames of honey if available or feed if necessary.  Place a new queen in this newly started hive (Be sure to let the bees release her in the normal way--don't help them by poking a hole in the candy to speed things up), and check on the hive in several days.  If the queen has not been released -- check for queen cells.  If queen cells do exist, you must cut all of them out or your queen will not be accepted. 

 What happens in this case is the flight bees from the drone laying hive return to the original location. Finding brood and strange bees, they quickly adapt to the new colonies situation.  The drone laying workers will stay with the hive moved to the other location and you will not need to deal with them.  After the new queen is accepted and laying, the beekeeper can then go to the (DHL) hive with the laying workers and shake all the bees from it.  The brood chamber can then be placed on top of the new hive.   The bees that are shook from the DLH will have to fend for themselves and will either cluster on the ground near where the DLH was located or will wander to other hives in the general area.   A cluster of bees at the old site can then be killed very easily with soapy water.  Just mix 1/4 cup of dishwashing soap with a gal. of water and soak the cluster well.  Some I have known take a lighted propane torch and burn them.   Both will do the job.