Great GBA State Meeting

Last weekend was the "spring" meeting of the Georgia Beekeepers Association.  In 2013, they barely had 120 people.  This year we had 240 registrants!

We have a fabulous president of the association now who had built up the numbers of local clubs and has encouraged each of them to join GBA.  We also have better ways to publicize it since the newsletter comes out every month and people seem to read it.  And we had a program that was really good.

Here is the slideshow. Bill Owens took five of the pictures (the wonderful ones). I put captions on them but if you don't click on the slideshow, you won't be able to see the caption saying that he took the five that he did. Thank you, Bill, for sharing them with me. We will also put this slide show in the GBA March newsletter.

 We had a great program with four keynote speakers: Cindy Bee, Erin MacGregor-Forbes, Gretchen LeBuhn, Ph.D., Jennifer Leavey, Ph.D. We had breakouts done by the keynotes as well as Bob Binnie, Julia Mahood, Jennifer Berry, me and other Georgia beekeepers.

A Mountain of Old Wax from the Bees

Suddenly I find that I am managing 22 hives - I'm not quite sure how that happened and I am sure that the numbers will decrease soon.  In the process, I am desperate for equipment.

To that end yesterday ahead of my inspections, I had to get seven boxes ready in case hives needed new supers.  I had the boxes, but not the frames.  So yesterday morning at 7:15 I was in my backyard, cutting old wax out of frames with my hive tool.

Below is the ensuing collection - there will be more.  I haven't finished.  And we have at least 100 unbuilt frames in my basement.  I took those to Jeff today.  He will build frames; I will build and paint boxes.  Of course this is what beekeepers are supposed to do in the winter, but the numbers crept up on me to my total surprise!

In the next couple of weeks (when I have some spare time - anyone laughing yet?) I'll melt this down a la Cindy Bee.

If you are wondering about the (SHOCK) 22 hives, here they all are:

At my house to stay:
2 package installations
1 nuc installation
2 splits from Colony Square
1 top bar hive

At my house temporarily:
Flower Pot Swarm (this will be moved soon as the queen is mated and laying)

Total at my house:   7

At Jeff and Valerie's house
Colony Square
Lenox Pointe
Lenox Pointe 2 (AKA Swarm hive)
Five Alive

Total at Jeff's house:  4


At Community Gardens:

Morningside Community Garden
2 package installations

Rabun County community Garden
2 hives - one survived the winter, second a moved-in swarm

Blue Heron Nature Preserve (and community garden)
Lisa's hive

Chastain Conservancy:
1 package installation

Total at community gardens:  6

Miscellaneous locations:


At Sebastian's and Christina's 
2 nuc installations


At the Stonehurst Place Inn
2 nuc installations (2012)
1 existing hive from last year


Total at miscellaneous locations:  5

Grand total:  22


I will get it down to 21 and perhaps 20, though.  Julia is going to take the really weak queen and bees from Lisa's hive and put them into her observation hive.  I will take the FlowerPot Swarm and install it into Lisa's Hive.  If the splits from Colony Square don't both make good queens, I'll combine them into one hive.  That would take my numbers down to 20.


I figure that I am likely to get honey from 7 - 10 of these this year.....but maybe that's counting my honey comb before it produces......


I didn't count the club Nuc/Observation hive which is also in my yard because it is going to Julia when I move the Flower Pot Swarm to Lisa's hive.

Rendering Wax with Cindy Bee

At Young Harris Beekeeping Institute, I went to a demonstration by Cindy Bee on rendering wax. I wanted to see what she does because I now have a number of frames of slimed comb from the small hive beetle and I'd like to capture some wax from them.

Cindy puts gross old wax into an old flannel pillow case. She just pops the wax comb out of the frame and dumps it into the pillow case.


She then puts the full pillow case into this huge pan (it's for frying turkey originally). She has the water heated to boiling on a propane burner.


The wax quickly melts down and she uses this stick to help push it down and out.

The stick helps press the gross scum gum down into the bottom of the pillow case.

Then she lifts the pillow case out of the water and puts it into a colander of sorts that sits at the top of the pan and drains.

She wears gloves so as not to get burned and presses down on the solids in the bag.

Then she dumps the remains (the slum gum, as it is called) into a box and discards it.

She leaves the pot to cool and when all is said and done, she has a ring of wax.  It still needs more processing to be usable but at least some wax is recovered from useless frames or old comb.

  

I've bought some equipment - not as sturdy or sophisticated as this, but I'll report on my own wax rendering a la Cindy Bee in the next day or two.

Cindy Bee Speaks on How to Collect a Swarm

Tonight at the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' meeting, Cindy Bee, Master Beekeeper who has been working with bees since she was a child, presented a program on how to catch swarms.

First she addressed the reason that bees swarm. She suggested that we think of the hive as an entity and that when a swarm happens, it is the hive reproducing itself. In other words, the swarm is the hive's "baby." Bees swarm in springtime because the arrival of pollen stimulates the queen to lay her eggs. The hive begins to build up the numbers of bees and gets overcrowded.

The workers, not the queen, make the decision to swarm. First they make a replacement queen by choosing several eggs and creating queen cells (feeding the new larvae only royal jelly). Then they make the old queen run round and round the hive to slim her down. Finally they run her out the front door. When she flies away, anywhere from 20 - 80% of the bees in the hive follow her. This event = a swarm.

Meanwhile back at the original hive, the queen cell hatches and the new queen emerges. That queen kills any queens still inside their queen cells and begins the process of getting ready for her mating flight. Swarming delays and impacts honey production because the hive is diminished in numbers and the queen has a while before she is mated and laying so there is a disruption in the hive build-up.

The swarm that left the hive hangs wherever the queen landed while the workers fly out to possible sites for new hives. It is during this hanging time that a beekeeper is likely to get a swarm call. Cindy encouraged us to go ASAP to the site where the swarm has landed because at any point they may make a decision and leave for a chosen home.

She gave us a list of what to take on a swarm call. The list includes:

Bee veil
Plant clippers
Bee box or some kind of box to put the bees in
Scoops (Cindy suggested using a half gallon plastic milk carton with a handle that has had the top cut off to make a scoop)
A white sheet
Water (for you to drink)
Smoker and something to fuel and use to light it
A piece or two of old, dark comb (smells good to the bee)
Spray bottle with 1:1 sugar water
Duct tape (there are a million uses, aren't there?)
A queen cage
Ratchet strap (Cindy straps the hive box together for transport)
Foam or Screen wire to cover the box entrance
Ladder
Camera
Lemon Scented pledge (or swarm lure)
Flashlight
Bee vac and extension cord (if you own a bee vac)

For the last couple of years about this time in the spring I keep swarm collection stuff in my car. I have a nuc box, a white sheet, a ladder, a bee brush, and most of Cindy's other suggestions.

She suggested that if you are collecting the swarm in a nuc box or a hive box that you should make a hive top out of a wooden frame and screen wire so that you can transport the bees well ventilated. I think I'll make one for my nuc box. I did just order ventilated hive tops for my eight frame equipment but I believe they have an entrance as a feature so wouldn't really work.

Last year and the year before when I went on swarm calls, I didn't take a hive box to collect the bees in, but rather took a cardboard box. She showed a picture of a cardboard box just the right size to hold frames. She had cut a tiny square entrance at the bottom of the box and had glued in a piece of wood to hang the frames from. Boy, that would be an easy way to transport and lighter than the hive box. In other years, I've just dumped the bees into a cardboard box, closed the top and taken them home to dump them in a hive box.

She also encouraged us to ask the caller who is requesting swarm help several questions. Has the swarm landed? How high up are they? How big is the swarm? (I find it helps to ask is it bigger than a basketball? the size of your fist? the size of a watermelon?) How long has it been there? Is it on your property? Has it been sprayed with anything - including just plain water? Also exchange cell phone numbers so if the swarm flies off while you are in transit, the caller can get back in touch with you or so that you can call them if you are having trouble finding their location.

It's about the be swarm season in Atlanta and I really want a swarm for my top bar hive, so I filled out the swarm list form and I hope she calls me at least once this season!

Cindy Bee in the news

My friend and mentor, Cindy Bee, was the subject of a wonderful article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution yesterday.


Here's the story about her business, working to rescue and relocate bees in Atlanta structures. And here are pictures of Cindy at work.

Cindy is a wise and calm beekeeper. She helped me figure out how to handle the bee tree rescue and she gives me such helpful and thoughtful advice every time I ask her.

The Bee Tree - Huge Success

Beekeeping is the best adventure I have ever had - every day there is a new wrinkle, something new and exciting to figure out or to learn. I never knew I would be dealing with bees in trees.

Yesterday Eddie, a tree man, cut down a tree near Emory and found that it was full of bees. Being a good person, he preserved the 12 foot part of the tree with the bees and brought it back to his office. He called his friend Roy, who called his friend Wade, who is a Blue Heron Beekeeper. Wade suggested that he call me and that is where this story begins. (It's all in who you know ultimately, isn't it!)

Today I went over to visit the bee tree (see earlier post) and in a panic came home to talk to Wally (Iddee on Beesource and Beemaster) and Cindy Bee, my Atlanta mentor. They both said that the best plan would be to upright the tree and keep the bees in it. It's illegal to keep bees in a tree, but the plan includes putting a hive box on top of the tree section and lure the bees up into it with food and frames and a box that hasn't been through an earthquake!

OK, I went to Eddie's Odd Job Tree removal company and conferred with Annette, who is in charge when the guys are out on jobs. I told her the options:

1. Cut the tree open and remove the hive and hope that the queen survives and that there isn't too much damage to the brood, etc.
2. Save the section and either:

• Leave it at Odd Job as their own hive (which I would manage for them) - they are very near to my house,
  
• Take it to my house or to Julia's house,
  
• Take it to Blue Heron.
  

Annette thought Eddie might like to keep it at Odd Job. So I told her I would return at a break I had in my schedule this afternoon and bring bee veils for the men to wear when they cut the tree into the 3 - 5 foot part that was the hive.

When I brought the bee veils, the men were there and wanted to get started right away. This was an AMAZING process - the slide show speaks for itself. The pictures are a combination of photos taken by me, Julia, and her son Sam.



BTW, I stopped by this evening on my way home from work and the bees were orientation flying around the entrance to their hive!

I'll put a hive box on top of the tree on Thursday morning so the process of moving out of the tree and into a hive box can take place over the fall and winter months.

Let me also put in a plug for Eddie at Odd Job - what a process he went through to save these bees. He's a good person to know - the number for his company is in the first picture on the slide show.

Preview of Coming Attractions

Today I got a call from a man whose friend is in the tree cutting business. Ed, the tree cutter, had cut a tree that had a beehive in it. He kept the section with the hive in it because he didn't want to condemn the bees to the shredder. It's in the back of his pickup.

He called to see if I wanted to come to get the bees. I am without a clue.

I posted on Beemaster and the people there who are always helpful, led me to a slideshow of how to remove bees from a tree, but to do it, I'll need to get the tree cut open. My friend Derrick said he could do it this weekend, but I may have to get this accomplished before then.

I also called my mentor, Cindy Bee. She called me back from EAS (I am so envious - I'd love to be there) and she suggested that I ask the guy if he would bring the cut tree trunk to my backyard. She then gave me great directions as to what to do once the trunk is in my yard. It involves a plywood base to set the trunk on, more plywood at the top to serve to hold a hive box and then an enticing hive box for the bees to move up into over the winter.

This sounds like fun. I hope I can talk him into driving it over to my house *(about 2 blocks from where the truck with the bees is parked). I have an extra veil, gloves and a bee suit, so we'll see and I'll report back with pictures tomorrow.

Blue Heron - the Queenless Saga

As you'll remember from earlier posts, my hive at Blue Heron was started with a nuc that had no queen. There was little or no brood in the box and we saw no queen and no evidence of a queen - no new eggs or larvae, very little capped brood, all in all a sad state of affairs.

To cope with this I gave the hive brood and eggs on two frames, hoping that they would make a queen. They made at least one perfectly lovely queen cell and the hive is calm, quiet and seems to be chugging along.

Meanwhile the nuc supplier calls and wants to "make us whole" by giving me another nuc, this time with a queen. I called several beekeepers whom I respect: Cindy Bee, Jim Ovbey, and I posted on Beemaster. Everyone agreed that the hive that made its own queen needed to have a chance.

So we got permission from Blue Heron to install the nuc in a second hive. I will keep an eye on the first hive to see if the queen they made successfully mates and begins to lay eggs. If she succeeds, then we have two good hives and I'll move the newest one somewhere else. If she fails, I will combine the hive I installed today with the first hive since we know there's a good queen in the new hive.

Here's what our process today looked like:



Now the supplier feels good about coming through with a queenright nuc, I feel good about Blue Heron allowing us to temporarily have two hives there, the whole process provides a great teaching/learning opportunity, and the new queen in the first hive has a chance to prove herself.

Everybody wins!

The Camera: An Essential Tool in Hive Inspections

Persephone looks like a hive that is flagging. I have felt quite discouraged about it. I opened it on Friday which was a very warm day (over 65). The bees in the other three hives were going like gangbusters - flying in and out, carrying pollen. The bees entering and leaving Persephone looked like marauders - they were hesitating at the entry and seeming tentative.

So I opened the hive to see what was up. I had left a ziploc feeding bag on the top of the second box, but very little had been used. This confirmed for me what I was afraid of - that the hive had died. Then I started pulling frames.

First I pulled from the bottom box where there were no bees. This was a deep (this hive was started from a nuc last year which came with deep frames). The frame had stored honey but no bees anywhere.



This is what I saw on the back of the frame: all of the bees in the photo below are dead, just clinging to the wax as dead bodies. Obviously I had my camera and was taking pictures so I could post here about the demise of this hive.


In the second box, a medium, I found lots of honey stores and a cluster of bees over about three frames - the size of a tennis ball. They were on top of honey but I saw no evidence of a queen - no brood that I could see and nothing but a few bees and the honey.

I left the hive after taking a few pictures and called Cindy Bee. "Is there a queen in this small cluster?" she asked. I told her I hadn't seen any evidence of one. She and I decided that I should combine this tiny group with another hive. She suggested that I used vanilla on the top bars of the hive I was moving the bees into to decrease the chance of rejection. And that I should do this soon so that the bees didn't die out.

I left for the mountains with the plan to combine this tiny cluster with one of the three strong hives when I returned today.

Before doing the deed, I transferred my pictures from my camera to the computer and looked at my record from the inspection of Persephone. On the first photo, you'll see bees, stored honey, lots of hive beetles.



In the second photo down at 6:00, you see Her Majesty. And above her you can even see eggs and brood in the cells!



Without this camera record, I would have begun transferring the bees and lost a potential good hive. There's no way in this weakened and quite small state that this hive will amount to much this year, but I'm going to do my best to help Her Majesty make the best success possible out of this.

I of course called Cindy again to report the news. She suggested that I move this small group into a nuc hive and feed them. I'll move a frame of brood and nurse bees from a thriving hive into the nuc as well if I can be sure there is no queen on the frame!

The Hive is alive! Long Live the Queen!

Nosema or no nosema?

In the winter cluster, the bees do not relieve themselves. On a warm day, they finally can fly and they are desperate to get rid of their bodily waste. This hive, Mellona, has a splatter of diarrhea on the front just above the entrance after a warm day for the bees. I should note that the warm day came after a number of below freezing days in a row.

One worry I might have is that the bees may have nosema. Cindy Bee (really her name) a local bee authority and friend/mentor of mine told me not to worry about it. She sees it most winters and simply cleans the area of the hive box, but doesn't do anything for the bees. They get over it naturally.

In an old post from 2003 on Beesource, Michael Bush said, "How do you know they have nosema?" Diarrhea is not necessarily nosema. There are a lot of things that give them transient diarrhea. Just because you get the runs for the day does not mean you are dying of giardia."

Nosema is an opportunistic disease and it thrives with weaker hives - due let's say to stress or fighting off the winter cold in a cluster. However, diarrhea may be caused by stress and not mean that the hive has nosema.



Cindy says that to clean off the hive helps stop the spread of the problem if it is nosema. My plan is to clean the hive box off on the next warm day (not tomorrow when the high will be in the low 40s, but maybe this weekend) and to hope the bees with the upset tummies can make it through the winter.

Why Would a Hive Abscond?

This little survivor hive left its original home. Bees now are preparing for winter. Why would a hive leave everything behind and try to find a new home when there are no food sources in Atlanta right now and when their numbers are small?

Cindy Bee says that if the SHB (small hive beetle) has gotten into the hive and fermented the honey, then the bees have no supplies. Desperate, they don't know what else to do beyond abandon their home.

Jerry Wallace, a wonderful Atlanta beekeeper who is always willing to muse over things bee with me, says, "Healthy, well-fed robust hives minimize most beekeeping problems."

He also says:
1. The bees only need to have only as much room in the hive box as they can defend. This means having only the number of frames that the bees can cover. In Atlanta he leaves each hive with the brood box and one super filled with honey as winter approaches.
2. Hives are weakened when eager beekeepers rob the hive of all the honey supers and leave them with no stores for winter, planning to feed sugar syrup to make up for greed since "removing all the honey for harvest adds more stress"
3. A stressed hive offers more opportunity for the SHB to gain the upper hand

He also pointed out that a hive slimed by SHB is usually not worth saving but should be combined with another hive.

If I were to combine this rescued hive with another, I'd have to kill the queen. At the moment this queen has been quite brave, making two forays in an effort to find her bees a home. I am going to try to get this nuc up to par and overwinter the hive in the nuc.

Michael Bush does this on a regular basis and talks about it on his site.

The Bees Found Me!

Today as I left for work, I noticed a swirling swarm of bees in my neighbor's yard across the street. I was running late and couldn't stop but I could see a plate sized pile of bees on the ground with others circling overhead and rejoining the group.

When I got a break in the day, I called my neighbor, Tom, and told him about the bees. He was shocked. He said he had been standing in that exact place earlier in the morning and there were no bees. I asked him to leave them alone and if they were still there when I got home, I'd put a hive box with them and try to retrieve them.

I called my local beekeeping guru, Cindy Bee. She said this was probably a hive that had absconded because of some problem like small hive beetles ruining their stores. Hungry and desperate, the bees leave the hive because of lack of supplies and lack of choice. She suggested that I set up a hive box with drawn comb and put it next to the pile of bees with a ramp of cardboard or cloth and that the bees would probably march right into the box.

At the end of the day, I drove home and looked over at my neighbor's house. The bees were gone. Oh, well, I thought, it wasn't meant to "bee." I checked my hives for signs of absconded bees but all of my hives were full and active.

When I get home at the end of the work day, the first thing I do is to let out the dogs. I opened the kitchen door and went out with Henry and Hannah. I was running with Hannah when I noticed the dish sized pile of bees in the center of my backyard.

The bees found me!

I did what Cindy suggested: I put out a medium nuc box, filled with drawn comb. I made a cardboard ramp and smeared a little swarm lure on it for encouragement. Right away the bees started climbing the ramp into the box! I had to go to a working dinner but by the time I left, they were steadily entering their new home. I have another box for this nuc - it's a medium nuc from Brushy Mountain - that I will add tomorrow.





Cindy suggested that I feed them heavily because they are now in a hive with absolutely no stores. I mixed up 2:1 syrup and put it in a Boardman feeder on the front of the hive. I didn't think about stings and did all of this with bare hands and no veil. I only got stung once under the fingernail of my right index finger - and that was because I smushed a bee while moving them around to put on the Boardman.

I hope they live and thrive - I'll sure try to help.

I Captured a Swarm!

Cindy Bee (Ga Beekeeper of the Year 2006) keeps a swarm catcher list. I never got a call last year but today I did!

I was driving to work, feeling a little down because I only had appointments at 9 and 10 this morning and then nothing else until late this afternoon. As I pulled into the parking lot, my cell rang and it was Cindy - she had a swarm for me in an office complex parking lot near my house.

I called the woman who reported the swarm and told her I couldn't get there until 11:30, but I would be there then. Then I went to work and hoped, hoped, hoped the bees would still be there at 11:30. The bees had first been spotted last night, so I'm sure they were about ready to move on.

At 11 I raced home, grabbed my pruning shears (she said they were in a small tree), a large cardboard box, a sheet, some tape, my bee brush, my gloves, two bandanas (to keep my helmet from slipping over my eyes!) and then found that my beesuit was wet in the washing machine. I threw it in the dryer for a few minutes while I packed the car.

It was raining when I arrived in my still-damp beesuit. But the bees were the easiest to get in the world. They were a small swarm on a drooping branch on a tree. Because of the rain a number of bees were also clustered on the juniper bushes below.

Cindy told me to put a sheet under the cardboard box and then shake the bees in. I tried to put the sheet on the tops of the juniper bushes, but it was difficult. The box I set right under the bees. I had to work around parked cars and these ^$^#^^%$ juniper bushes.

I shook the swarm from the four different branches on which it was located into the box and then cut some of the juniper out from the area below and shook those bees into the box. I waited about 45 minutes for the bees to find the box. Several put their rear ends up and started the nasonov dance so I felt pretty sure the queen was in the box.

The bees kept me company in the car and were all over the back window. When I popped the back of the car and took out the box, I moved really slowly so that those loose bees might feel inclined to come along.

Cindy had told me to take an empty hive body and set it over the hive body full of frames in which the new bees would live. That would serve as a funnel for the bees to get them on top of the frames in the box below.

I turn into a complete nervous wreck doing something like this, so bees were not only in the hive box funnel but in a pile on the deck in front of the box. For the life of me, I don't know how I could miss such a big target, but I did. I was afraid the queen might be in the clump on the deck so I slid those onto a piece of cardboard and dumped them into the box.

I hope I didn't injure the queen in my awkward transfer from box to hive, but it is accomplished and the bees are orienting and I'm happy.

Josie, the lady who reported the swarm, was kind enough to take pictures of the removal. She got stung in the process. I hated that - bees were swarming all over me and I didn't get stung even once, so I felt bad for her.

Great day not to be busy at work! I hope these girls are happy in their new box (the one I had set out for a swarm lure).

The Slowly Swirling Small Swarm

Everyone I spoke to about this small swarm told me that I would need to help the hive gradually adjust to the position I wanted the hive to be in on my deck. It couldn't stay where it started out because its location, directly in the flight path of two other hives, would make it practically impossible for me to work or to inspect this little hive.

Cindy Bee and Brendhan (Understudy on Beemaster.com) both told me to move the hive at night after dark and to help the bees adjust in different ways. Cindy said to move the hive a foot every day and turn it about a quarter turn with each move until I had it where I wanted it. Brendhan said that I would need to put grass in the entrance of the hive to make the bees think a tree branch had fallen and that they needed to reorient themselves.

The first day (first picture) the hive moved about a foot and turned toward the sunporch door. Day two the hive is turned even futher and has progressed another foot toward my ultimate goal. On Day Three, it is directly in front of Mellona and facing at a right angle from where it started (90 degrees). Notice the grass in the entry. And on Day Four it is in its final position.

I added a feeder with sugar syrup 1:1 because I left for the mountains this morning and won't be back until Sunday. I couldn't resist lifting the top for a peek this morning before I hit the road. There are four frames of buzzing busy bees in there. Some of the brood I added must have hatched.

I hope, hope, hope they are raising a queen. By the time I get back to Atlanta, my equipment for this hive will have arrived and it can have a real telescoping cover instead of this 2' X 2' sheet.

IPM and the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Meeting

Tonight the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' meeting centered on IPM (Integrated Pest Management). Jennifer Berry from the University of Georgia's entomology program talked to us about studies she is involved in about the varroa mite.

Although she did discuss some chemicals, I am not planning to use chemicals in my hive, so I won't report about that part of her talk. She did talk about research showing that the screened bottom board is essential to effective IPM. At UGA the screened bottom board stays open on the hive all winter long. She discussed three non-chemical ways to manage the varroa mite (all in conjunction with the screened bottom board):

1. Using hygenic stock such as the Minnesota Hygienic bee or the bees raised in N Georgia by the Purvis Brothers Apiary

2. Killing drone brood. The drones are in the capped state longer than house bees and so the varroa mite likes to lay her eggs in drone cells because the mite has a greater chance to grow up. So you put drone foundation in a frame in the hive and when the cells are capped, remove the frame and put it in the freezer. This kills the drone larvae (and thus the mite can't grow). Put the dead drone frame back in the hive and the bees clean it out and start again.

3. Doing the powdered sugar shake (as I did this year). Take a flour sifter (now why didn't I think of that?) and sift the powdered sugar over the brood box. Put a sticky board under the SBB to catch the varroa which fall as the bees groom each other and the mites fall off. Then you can count the fallen mites to get an idea of how many mites are in your hive. If you do a powdered sugar shake every 10 days for a month, you should significantly lower the mite count.

I asked her about small cell bees and she said that the UGA lab is just beginning a study on small cell. One major beekeeper, Bill Owens, in Georgia has all of his hives regressed to small cell and she talked about his successes. With 800 hives, he has only lost 3 hives this year and not to varroa.

On the other hand, she mentioned that while Dee Lusby is going around talking a lot about small cell, she didn't feel convinced because she noted that Dee lives in Arizona and all the bees there are African honeybees - which have a shorter developmental cycle anyway and are varroa resistant. Jennifer's point was that the bees that Lusby has regressed to small cell would be small and varroa resistant because of their genetic heritage (African) and that the cell size didn't make a difference. She also talked about how long it takes to regress bees and how hard it is.

Jennifer is sampling honeycomb which Cindy Bee finds in her bee removal business. So far the "wild" comb is about 5 mm and doesn't support the theory that bees in the wild naturally build 4.9 mm comb. If you'll scroll down this link, you'll find a short write-up about both Cindy Bee and Jennifer Berry.

In spite of all of this, I am ordering small cell foundation this winter to begin regressing in the spring.

Bee Status Report

I donned my beesuit and lit the smoker! I used dryer lint to get it started and pine needles to keep it going - Hooray!

I checked on both hives and they look great. Bermuda has gotten a new shot of adrenalin and is growing rapidly - still a couple of frames behind Destin. Both are working well in the medium that I added last week.

These two layers - the hive body and the medium super are for the bees. This weekend or even maybe on Friday I'll add a honey super that may actually be for me.

I went to the Metro Beekeepers
meeting tonight. In Atlanta we have one of the oldest ongoing beekeepers' associations in the country. It's a great place to get help with beginner questions. Cindy Bee (that's really her name) who is famous in Atlanta for rescuing swarms of bees was there. She knows so much about it. I loved hearing her talk about her bees.

I'm learning more every day and from every contact with other beekeepers.