Campbell's Honey

If you had  10 colonies of honey bees and half of them died during the winter, that's quite a loss!  But if you could walk into that same beeyard in the middle of May, and manipulate those  colonies, and half an hour later see 10 living colonies, with busy bees flying in and out, wouldn't you call that a miracle?

Of course you would, unless you were the beekeeper who made it happen.

How To Make 'Splits'

It's all about  watching and working  with each live colony to get them up to full strength in the spring. Feeding sugar syrup if  they are hungry,  checking the Queen's brood, and adding a frame of fresh eggs from the strong colonies to equalize all the live hives.

Then, by mid May the queen has filled the top super (brood-box) with larva, and the bees have been bringing in nectar and pollen. The queen is forced to go down to the bottom super where she begins to lay in the freshly cleaned honeycomb the workers have prepared.

Along comes the beekeeper and checks the hive. Prying the supers apart , he sees the newly laid eggs, and the abundance of bees in the bottom super, and the miracle begins to happen. He sweeps clean the parts of a nearby dead hive, and sets an empty super on top of a bottom board. Then he takes the top brood chamber from the live colony and sets it on  top of the dead box, making a live two super hive again. Revisiting what's left of the live hive, he switches the remaining supers and puts the remaining super (the bottom box of the live hive), on top of the 2nd empty super from the dead hive.

The Workers Make A New Queen

It makes no difference which hive the Queen is in, because the workers will raise a new Queen using the fresh eggs which can be found in either super of a strong hive. The workers will know immediately if the Queen is absent, and will begin at once to raise a new one with a freshly laid egg in an elongated Queen Cell and  will increase the feeding of Royal Jelly. In less than 25 days a new Queen will hatch, mate with a drone, and begin laying eggs a few days later.

Special note - When making splits, the live bees are always placed on the top of the empty 'dead' supers, because heat rises, and bees are very prone to chill, esp the fresh brood, and eggs.

Sadly enough this Miracle Story is the best case scenerio.  It doesn't always happen. If the live hives are weak and  the bottom supers empty, the Beekeeper must wait until the colony gets up to strength. My success rate with splits is about 95%, but this year I've been through all my colonies and I am still short  35 colonies. I was lucky, in that many of my remaining live hives came up to splitting strength by mid May. Any splits I make later, may not be strong enough to gather honey, when the flow begins in July.

One of the happiest places on earth is the middle of a beeyard on a warm sunny day in May. Thousands of honey bees are noisily buzzing in a constant coming and going... They fly in all directions, like tiny transport planes at a commercial airport, they buzz in to off-load, take a brief respite, tank up again on honey (to re-energize) and off they go for another load of nectar, and pollen. It takes a lot of energy (honey fuels the bee) to haul in nectar from the field, but unbelievably, a strong colony in July can fill a 60 Lb honey super in three days.

A million workers inside these hives are fanning the moisture from the nectar (the honey making process) and making an aromatic scent, which adds to the quiet roar that makes up the ambiance of the bee-yard.

The beekeeper is hardly noticed, and its quite possible to work without gloves on such a day. The bees are so busy they are quite unconcerned and dont seem to notice the beekeeper's bare hands as the hive is manipulated. The big difficulty is to work without touching, or putting a finger on a bee, which makes working amid thousands of bees without getting stung next to impossible for a commercial Apiarist with a schedule to maintain. There are times when I almost wish I had just three or four colonies, so I could spend all day working with them.

Spring flowers in the month of May paint the landscape with dabs of brilliant color.  Yellow dandelions, white plum blossoms, pink and white apple blossoms send the honeybees droning off in all directions, like little airplanes, hungry for the sweet addictive nectar. The beekeeper is also running off his feet, working to get his colonies of honeybees ready to move to nearby apple orchards for spring pollination. Its the season of time management, as each hour in each day is precious to beekeepers, bees and apple blossoms.

Apple trees are living, breathing, beings. Their reproductive cycle erupts in the spring, and their intense excitement and promise is flaunted, like a bride at her wedding, all dressed in stunning pink and white with beautiful scented bouquets. The bees are ready to answer the call to duty. Their job (one that a tree cannot perform) is to impregnate, or pollinate female parts of the flower with male microscopic pollen grains which  the bees gather from other apple trees and blossoms. The tree's trade off for the service of pollination, is pollen, which is needed to feed the young bees, and of course the nectar from the blossoms makes honey. As the bee flies to the orchard their short body hair attracts a positive electrical charge. The pollen grains attached to a flower's anthers carries a negative charge. As the bee gathers nectar, the negatively charged pollen grains stick to her hair, and are carried from flower to flower, and in this way, the pollination process is achieved.

We load the colonies on our trucks and move them to orchards as soon as the first blossoms appear in the spring. This procedure is best carried out in early morning, or late evening when most of the field force bees are home in the hive. Apple trees do not all come into blossom at the same time, so we leave the bees in the orchards for up to two weeks to complete the pollination. As soon as the pollination process is completed and we are picking the colonies up to return them home, we can see the tiny apples forming on the trees. This inspiring observation gives us pause, and we think of our bees as tiny creators who have just engendered an apple crop.

Honeybees, it seems, are plagued with predators, both large mammals and microscopic Tracheal Mites.  But the largest and most evident bee predator is the Black Bear, which has been roving Southern Ontario since before the first settlers arrived. When I began keeping bees about thirty years ago, we seldom saw a bear or experienced  damage in the bee yards.  Although there have always been areas that were prone to bear damage, we were usually able to out guess the bear 95% of the time.

That all changed about 10 years ago when the Black Bears became far more prevalent during the summer months. We were getting hit so often, it was difficult to carry on. We tried every method we could think of. One hobby beekeeper set his 2 colonies of bees close to his house and put the tractor's front-end loader down over them, which effectively defeated the Bear. This solved his problem, but would not work in a professional situation. Another apiarist put his bees in his barn and locked the door, but the bear smashed in the door and smashed up the hives.

Then American technology (made in China) came to our rescue in the form of a reliable solar-powered electric fencer. Beekeepers soon learned that 3 strands of electric wire stretched around the beeyard would keep the bees safe. The bear soon learned that touching his bare nose on the charged wire, would send an electric current through his body, to his 4 bare feet, and into the ground. The resulting electric shock was great enough to teach him the facts of life in a definite hurry. Today we seldom have any bear damage to the hives, but every bee yard must be protected at all times with an operating electric battery.

Black bears are very specialized, and some of the most successful creatures in the wild. When a mother bear with cubs comes upon an unprotected bee yard she breaks up several colonies to get at the honey. The cubs (without the thick hair of their mother) would stay back, out of deference to the bees, which were furiously stinging everything that moved or smelled  like bear.  Mother bear solves this dilemma by picking up a honey-box and walking on her hind legs, as far as 100 yards to get away from the angry bees, so the cubs could eat. A bear can digest anything it can swallow, and if hungry enough they will eat the wooden frames along with the honey. The frames are strengthened with wire, and the bear will swallow the wire along with the honey and wood. A few days later the strong acid in the bear's stomach will have dissolved the wire.

Nobody gets a free ride, not even a honeybee. Today there are a multitude of pests living on its blood, while other viral foes attack the developing brood in the comb.

Today, we were placing formic acid pads on the top bars of the brood chambers in an effort to eradicate tracheal mites, a microscopic transparent creature which lives in the tracial tubes of the honeybee.

This tracheal mite lives on the bees blood, and will increase in numbers inside the tracial tubes until it weakens and suffocates its host. Formic acid is a naturally occuring substance (which can be found in very small amounts in honey) is lethel to the tracheal mite in a stronger solution. At Campbells Honey, our approach is to soak small pads in formic acid, and then place them on the top bars of the brood chamber, right inside the beehive.

How does formic acid work? The mites are killed when the bees breathe in the strong fumes of the acid. Its essential to wear gloves and use tongs when you apply the acid soaked pads; we must be careful not to come in contact with the solution, which can severly burn our skin. Beekeeping is dangerous sometimes.

All beekeepers smoke when they are working around honeybees. Smoking is considered ok in a beeyard, even in a health conscious society. Honeybees are calmed by the smoke of almost any combustible material, from dry leaves, to dead grass, or wood shavings.

Why does smoke work? Bees are hatched unable to reason, instead they have an inborn reaction to many given situations. One of these is the threat of fire, at which time they rush to their stores of honey, and gorge themselves, perhaps trying to save as much honey as possible before the possible destruction of their hive.

A  bee with a full stomach is a much calmer insect than the one who is a lean, mean, fighting machine.  When the Apiarist prys open the hive cover, he first puffs some smoke under the cover. Then, when the cover comes off, the bees are scrambling down between the  honeycombs, instead of flying up to attack. A honeybee is not concerned with her own life, as her intent is with the safety of the colony.

How would you feel if King Kong Lifted the roof off your house, and began to rummage around in your kitchen and nursery? A real scary idea, isn't it?

An unsmoked hive that's being manipulated by the beekeeper feels threatened, and can become almost unmanageable. This has a detrimental effect on the health of the colony, which will not go back to work until they calm down once again. With each bee-sting, a pheromone is given off, and this strong scent enrages the colony, causing many more bees to rush into the fight.

The dandelions are blooming, and the bees flying, as I parked the truck by Beeyard #1. It was 8:30 am on a warm Monday, and I was surprised to see so much activity so early. I lit the smoker and began lifting lids and inner covers, The bees were wall to wall (as we say when they are so strong they cover the complete hivetop.) I spread a Tablespoon of Oxytet across the hive bars to (a drug) prevent American Foulbrood, and apply 2 strips of Apistan between the middle bars to discourage the Varoa Mites. Varoa Mites suck the blood from the living bees. Its like a person with a blood sucking pumpkin stuck between his shoulder blades. The worker bees are flying back to the hive even as I work, loaded with 2 sacks of bright yellow pollen (one sack on each back leg). They are so happy to be working again after a week's hiatus of cool wet weather. I work my way along the back row of colonies, happy with the condition of the Colonies. Now I find a colony with only a handful of bees. They have enough honey to eat, but their numbers are down so low they can't keep the new eggs and developing brood warm. The Queen has been laying, but the new brood is chilled and dieing. I pry out some frames and find the Queen on the first frame I pull, She  looks young and sprightly but  is effectively limited by low population and cool spring weather. I use my hivetool to pry out a few more frames and put the frame with the Queen back in so she won't get lost. Now I go on ahead searching for a wall to wall colony, with an access of nearly developed brood and lots of bees. I take a couple of frames (making sure the Queen of the donating hive is not on the frames) back to the original cold hive. I place the bee-covered frames on each side of the Queen's Frame. Now that she has help to keep warm, that colony will thrive.

Beekeepers Prepare For Spring Pollination

When the colony is threatened, hundreds soldier bees fly out, in total disregard for their personal lives, and thinking only to save the colony sting the intruder to chase it away. If the attack was successfully thwarted, the bees that staved off the attack will certainly die, as their stingers remain in the body of the attacker, and are torn from their abdoman as they fly off.

That the bees recognize the colony as a single entity, is proven by the fact that if a single bee, or a small number of the insects, are attacked or threatened while away from the colony, not one bee comes rushing to the rescue. Single Bees are dispensable, but the colony as a whole is not.

Most Ontario  beekeepers have lost from a third to over half their bees this winter, and the Summer Honey crop is now in Jeopardy. My 100 dead colonies are cleaned and sitting on the hive bottoms, as if waiting for more bees. What to do? The few bees that are for sale are selling at a premium. My remaining live colonies are strong with good populations, but its been a long winter and the  expanding populations are rapidly eating up the remaining winter feed supply of Honey. Dandilions are the first significant nectar flow, ( the weather channel is calling for a cold week ahead) and we wonder if the dandilion flow will be in time to save the bees from Starvation.

Unwrapping is not a big Job, and can go quickly if all is well. But when colonies die, the fun of unwrapping is not there. I'm finding too many hives filled with dead bees, and the smell is very unpleasant.

Last October we packed well over 1200 healthy, strong, well fed Colonies, for the winter. This spring we unwrapped less than 900 alive and well.The problem has been getting progressively worse, year after year, and the panic point is fast approaching, where there will not be enough Honeybees to pollinate food crops for Human and Animal feed. 90% of the food we eat depends on natures #1 pollinator the honey bee to pollinate and set the  fruit and seed.

Scientists call this Problem C.C.D. or Colony Collapse Disease, and they refuse to name the Cause (could it be for Political reasons,?) Beekeepers believe CCD is caused by the buildup of Chemicals in the environment which is poisoning the honeybees. Huge Multinational Drug Companies producing hundreds of  different Insecticides, Herbicides, and Fungicides, some of them now Systemic, show up in the nectar as the bees gather it from flowers, and carry it back to the hive, where its fed to the developing Brood. CCD is a problem in Canada, but in the USA its already a disaster. Some countries in Europe have already banned some Chemicals from being used on food crops. There is now a shortage of Honeybees world wide, and its no surprise.  If you think the world food supply is short, you have seen nothing yet!