What's in a Name? The Confusion of the Name: Certified Naturally Grown

"What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;"   William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet As all companies who struggle with branding know, a name means EVERYTHING.  I once saw a yellow ribbon tied around a tree (the symbol designating the wish for a soldier to come home from war) with a huge sign that said "Yellow Ribbon Tree Removal."  A strange name for a tree removal company, I thought, since the name implied that although they chopped down the trees, they would come (grow) back. When I first encountered Certified Naturally Grown at EAS in Boone, NC in 2010, I was thrilled that there was a way to designate something natural in the beekeeper's approach.  How I read and interpreted or assumed what the designation meant was that the beekeeper would be as organic as possible. Organic is not something a beekeeper can claim.  Our bees gather nectar far and wide from an area up to six or so miles from the hive.  As such, we have no idea if the plants they choose have been treated (likely) with insecticides that might be harmful to the bees.  But as beekeepers we can do our best to keep pesticides out of our hive management practices by going treatment free. But upon reading the requirements for Certified Naturally Grown, I think Shakespeare is wrong on this one.  It doesn't smell so sweet. Essentially what the designation means is that the beekeeper is practicing IPM (Integrated Pest Management).  In other words, the beekeeper is certifying that before he/she uses heavy poisons, he/she will have tried conservative methods first:  powdered sugar (which does work for the backyard beekeeper but not for the commercial beekeeper), drone trapping, etc.  But CNG allows oxalic acid, formic acid to a degree, HopGuard, ApiGuard, Apilife Var, etc. Thankfully they do prohibit Coumaphos and Fluvalinate. Of my fellow beekeepers who have applied, the only one who comes closest to treatment free is Jay Parsons and he uses ApiLife Var when "needed."  And although regular inspections are required, the inspector doesn't have to be qualified as a CNG beekeeper themselves, which seems a little odd.  Any other beekeeper who is willing to take the time can inspect an apiary and declare it Certified Naturally Grown.  In looking at Jay's inspection record, none of the people who have "inspected" his operation are themselves qualified as CNG and that is true of the other two people I know whose inspection reports I read. CNG puts no limits on feeding sugar syrup (despite it being a marked different pH than honey).  The president of our bee club, who urges everyone to "feed, feed, feed," and says on her application for CNG that she feeds heavily in fall and spring,  has qualified for CNG as has Jennifer Berry who feeds her bees 100% of the time, with no break, as she reported at the short course. So I feel a little confused.  Should I apply for CNG?  My hives meet the requirements and then some, but since it appears to be simply a label implying something that isn't true, I feel somewhat hesitant.  I expect people who buy honey labeled CNG are assuming that being certified naturally grown means that nothing artificial goes into the hive - which depending on the individual beekeeper could be far from true.  These purchasers have no idea what IPM means, so CNG stands as somewhat of a misrepresentation just because of what's in the name.  (It isn't a rose.....)

Bees on the Home Front are Bursting at the Seams

Colony Square is growing and growing as is Lenox Pointe. I checked on Saturday and knew I needed to add a new box to both hives really soon, but was going to be gone all day. When I got home from South Georgia, I headed out to add a box.

My friend Julia who is my beekeeping buddy at Blue Heron showed me to take the hive tool and drag a line across all the frames toward the ends so that you'll not have to remember the orientation when you put the frame back in the box. If you click on the picture below, you can see the hive tool mark I've made.

The boxes I added were a combo of old crush and strain frames and some new frames.



The bees have made fat honey comb in this box and it is bulging at the sides - yum, yum.



Lenox Points has many bees as well. These Jennifer Berry bees are darker and larger than my other hives, but maybe they'll changes as the generations emerge.

I checkerboarded these boxes so that there is a combo of the new and old box on Lenox. Every other frame in the honey section is an empty one in the top two boxes. I didn't checkerboard in Colony Square because I didn't have my smoker lit and the bees were none too happy with my 5:30 PM intrusion.



Here are the newly taller boxes. The stick on markings on the front are designed hopefully to cut down on drift. The bees will have a way to distinguish their hive from the one beside it.

Installation Updates

Checked on the 8 frame Jennifer Berry hive and it was also doing well. The bees were located to one side of the box. It looked as if they had slid my three empty frames to the side and installed the five frames of bees on the other side.



I could see eggs and was relieved that the queen was laying although there was very little larvae, so I remain a little cautious.



On this hive I moved the five frames from Jennifer and the one of mine that they were using to the center of the box and put an empty frame on each side. Following the rule that when the bees have drawn out 80% of their box, it's time to add a new box, I then added a new medium super, filled with foundationless frames before I closed up the hive.

Then I drove to Stonehurst Place to see how those hives were doing. I lit my smoker but never really used it. I didn't need it and regretted lighting it because I then smelled like a Girl Scout campfire at work for the rest of the day.



In those two hives, I didn't see the queen but saw good evidence of her presence. You can see the uncapped brood in these frames. I also saw eggs, so I feel good about these Jerry Wallace hives which seemed to be off to a good start.

We had given them baggies of sugar syrup, but they had not touched them, due to the current nectar flow. I removed them from the hives and left them to their own devices for obtaining nurture.



The yard and garden at Stonehurst Place is very oriented to the bees. The hives are underneath a tulip poplar and the gardens themselves are planted with salvia, coreopsis, zinnias, cosmos. These bees should be happy as am I in their off-to-the-races start.

I put a new medium super with frames on each of these hives.

It's funny at the beginning of bee season all the hives are at about the same place but as time goes on, the differences in the bees of the two hives and the growth rates, honey production, etc. become more apparent.

Goody Bags for the Metro Short Course

Taking the Metro Short Course brings a wealth of bee knowledge. The presenters are people like Jennifer Berry (who writes a monthly article for Bee Culture and manages the apiary at UGA), Keith Fielder (Georgia Master Beekeeper and field agent), Cindy Bee, Curtis Gentry (author of the Peace Corps guide to building top bar hives) and many others.

In addition, the participants go home with a goody bag full of bee "goodies." Some of what is in the bag is in the photo above. I'm in charge of the Goody Bags this year - it's my third time doing this job.

The goodies include more than is in the picture. In the picture you see the bag, a jar of honey, a tube of lip balm, a CD with PDFs of the presentations of each of the presenters, a copy of First Lessons in Beekeeping by Keith Delaplane, a copy of ABJ, various bee catalogs, pamphlets from the National Honey Board. In addition, we'll add to this tomorrow a copy of Bee Culture, a list of regional bee suppliers who sell nucs and packages, a resource list of Internet connections, a handmade candle, and a couple of other things.

These items have occupied one side of my sun porch all the fall. I will be so glad to give them away on Saturday!

I was also in charge of burning the CDs and making the @$%^#$^ labels for them. That is a job I never want to do again. It's difficult to gather all the PDFs of the presentations and I found making the labels beyond challenging.

 The program that came with the labels taught how to calibrate the printer, which I did so that it printed perfectly on the model. Then on the actual label, the printer often pulled the paper in incorrectly and I threw away almost as many labels as I actually used. Never again.

NOTE:  If you're counting, this is my 800th post on this blog!

Bee Plans for 2011

This blog is to share my bee experiences with all of you but also acts as a journal for me.  So for the record, here are my plans for this year:

I've ordered two nucs from Jennifer Berry and will be installing both of those at Blue Heron or one at Blue Heron (assuming my hive there survives the winter) and one somewhere else.  They should be available the beginning of April.

I've ordered two nucs from Jerry Wallace (he's only selling locally in Atlanta) to provide bees for Stonehurst Inn on Piedmont in Atlanta where I will be the beekeeper.  I haven't written about this here, but I will in the months to come.  They are an environmentally friendly B&B in midtown Atlanta and want to serve their guests their own honey.  They have a perfect spot for two hives.  I'm going to be the beekeeper this year and their innkeeper is taking the short course at Metro Atlanta on the 22nd so she will be good at it and may take over in time.  For now, I'm the beekeeper and the bees and the hives belong to them.  Jerry didn't give me a pick up date, but I was his first order so I assume I'll get them end of March or beginning of April.

I've ordered 10 three pound packages from Don in Lula, GA (Dixie Bee Supply).  His will be available for pickup in mid-March.  His packages I've written about here before.  His bees are small cell and are not treated in any way.  I got his bees for my top bar hive and for my Rabun County hive.  I hope they make it through the winter.

Meanwhile these 10 packages are going to be part of a new enterprise.  My son-in-law Jeff (whose house is where Topsy lives) and his best friend Greg and I are going into the honey business, starting with ten hives of bees.  Jeff just got his MBA and has thought up a good business plan for this as well as had the idea.  Greg has the land - a farm south of Atlanta with a peach orchard on the farm next door.  And me, well, they like it that I am a Master Beekeeper and are relying on me for knowledge about the bees (!).

We plan to get these bees started, make splits in July so that we go into winter with 20 hives, and grow our business.  Hopefully in 2012, we'll have honey to sell.

Both of the guys are new to beekeeping and will be taking the Metro Short Course this next Saturday at the Botanical Garden.

Distressing First Inspection at Blue Heron

Today Julia ran the first inspection of the year at Blue Heron.  She made a new sign for the apiary from the side of one of the hive boxes that washed down the creek in the flood last year.  It is at once both a sign about the apiary's location and a memorial to the seven hives that died last year.

We installed the nuc we got from Jennifer yesterday into a hive at Blue Heron.  We also looked at the other two hives which were installed on March 30.  I don't really know what to think about the first installed hives.  We saw no eggs or new brood in either hive.  Both were filled with bees.  There were no queen cells in my hive.  There were five queen cups, open, in Julia's hive and one closed one that didn't look like a queen cell....it seemed too small to me.

Jennifer told us that the intense early bloom was making the hives swarm.  She warned us to watch for signs.  We have seen no queen cells in either hive and we have looked.  Usually a hive doesn't swarm until after there are drones in the hives.  Julia's hive had drone brood and we saw a couple of drones.  Mine also had drone brood that looked old.

Also we know not to cut queen cells when there are no eggs in the hive.  Why?  Well, if you cut the queen cell and the hive has already swarmed AND there are no eggs in the brood box, then you have killed the future queen and there are no resources in the hive to make another one.  It's a moot point, really, since there weren't any closed queen cells.

So this is a very odd problem.  Have both hives swarmed without leaving a queen behind?  Did we totally miss queen cells that emerged in both hives and they both have virgin unmated, as yet, queens? 

Interestingly, without discussing it,  each of us went home feeling awful and opened our hives at home.  We each have at least one hive with brood and eggs to spare so we are going to add a frame of brood and eggs to each of the first installation hives at Blue Heron.  If they have a queen who isn't laying for whatever reason, the brood and eggs will boost the numbers, but if they need a queen, the brood and eggs will give them the resources to make one.

Oh, and while this is good news, it also felt like a let down.  I had put a sticky board on my Blue Heron hive. We pulled it and after three days, only saw one mite, and it was questionably identified.  I've seen mites on boards easily before, but I think Jennifer's bees came with very few mites so our mite drop was beyond insignificant.  We thought we'd show the participants what a mite looked like and weren't able to do even that!.

So here's the slideshow of the nuc installation. When we realized we had a problem, I got so worried that I forgot to take many pictures after the installation. 

A Clean Hive Tool Makes for Healthy Bees

Jennifer's hive tool at the Queenery was an inspiration.  As she walks toward us, she is cleaning this already pristine hive tool.

I have recently read that a USDA survey showed that 30% of honey packed by beekeepers had spores for AFB in it and that 100% of commercial-packed honey had spores for AFB.  One simple way to address contaminating hives is to clean your hive tool between hives.  Jennifer is using a wipe in the picture above.  I've also read that the hive tool can be heat cleaned between hives.

In shame and embarrassment, I present the before picture of my hive tool below.  It is gunked with propolis and other debris.  And I pick it up and casually use it moving from one hive to the next without thought.  No more will I be behaving in such an irresponsible way.





You can see the soapy water below the gunky tool.  Today I gave all of my hive tools a good washing and then went after each of them with the brass bristled brush.



I've pulled some Clorox wipes to take on the Blue Heron hive inspection tomorrow (we want to teach these new beekeepers how to do it better than I've been doing it.).



The hive tool on the right is five years old.  The one on the left is a little over a year old (Brushy Mountain gave those away in 2008 or 2009, I believe).  The one in the middle I don't really like and have only used once or twice, so it was a picnic to clean!



So I'm ready to stop potentially spreading disease and get down to healthy beekeeper practices.

A Visit to the Queenery and Jennifer Berry's Apiary

This morning Julia, her son Noah and I left Atlanta at 6:30 AM to drive to the Queenery near Athens, GA, to pick up Julia's nuc for the Blue Heron's last hive.  We had a great time and learned a lot.  One thing we learned that is not evident in the slideshow:

Jennifer's hive tool was immaculate and shiny (unlike either of ours).  She cleans it between hives which lowers the chance of transmitting disease or other issues between hives.  We vowed to take Clorox wipes in our equipment carriers to be able to clean our tools between hives.

Here's the slideshow of what we saw and how we got the last nuc for Blue Heron.  Remember that if you click on it, you'll have an opportunity to read the captions and watch the show full-screen.

Jennifer Berry Speaks to our Bee Club

Tonight we were privileged to hear Jennifer Berry speak on IPM management of the varroa mite. It's always fun when Jennifer comes to speak both because she is so entertaining and is so full of good information.

First she talked about the Varroa mite and how it reproduces. As most of you probably know, the mite enters the cell just before the cell with the larvae is capped (on about the seventh day). Within the cell, the foundress mite lays her first egg, a male, and then follows with female eggs. She has 13 days in a worker cell to procreate effectively. She has 16 days in a drone cell, so the varroa mite prefers the drone cell.

Jennifer first discussed the ways varroa has been addressed chemically. Beekeepers used a chemical approach, first with apistan (fluvalinate) and later with coumaphos. With the Apistan, mites quickly developed a resistance to the chemical. With coumaphos there were many issues including bad queens who laid poor brood patterns and didn't live long. She had slides from studies showing that drones survived better in hives with no chemicals and that queens had better, more long lasting reproduction with no chemicals.

Thus, we use integrated pest management or IPM, as it is known in the bee world. There are four main IPM approaches: biological, cultural, genetic and chemical.

The biological approach has not worked with the varroa mite. The idea would be to develop a fungus that kills the mite but it has not been efficacious to follow this approach.

The second approach is the cultural one. This includes screened bottom boards, drone brood trapping, powdered sugar shakes, and brood cycle disruption.

• Bottom screens allow mites to fall or be groomed off of the bodies of the bees and when they fall through the screen, they can't get back up into the hive and onto the backs of a bee. 
• In drone brood trapping, the drone brood is cut out of a frame or a whole frame is pulled and then the brood is either destroyed or frozen. Since the varroa prefers to breed in the longer developing drone cell, this rids the hive of a lot of varroa. 
• Powdered sugar seems to be effective, especially when the sugar is sifted over the hive pre-spring brood build-up. This means that the most effective time to do powdered sugar shakes in Atlanta would be between January and March while it is still winter. 
• Finally brood cycle disruption means doing something to stop the queen from laying. This could include doing a split so that half the hive would be queenless while they make their own queen. It could also include caging the queen for days - Jennifer has done it for seven days; Brother Adam did it for ten. These approaches stop the laying in the hive and since the varroa mite needs larvae on which to lay her eggs, it also disrupts the varroa cycle.

The third approach is the genetic one.  Jennifer encouraged us to buy good queens from breeders who are breeding for hygienic behavior, especially when it comes to varroa mites.  (Varroa Sensitive Hygienic queens are those who breed for hygiene that includes clearing out cells in which varroa lives).

The final approach is chemical.  Jennifer pointed out that she doesn't use Coumaphos or Fluvalinate.  There are a few chemicals that are essential oils with a thymol base that she would consider using.  Jennifer also talked about oxalic acid which is WOOD BLEACH.  She asked would you want that in your hives with your bees?  She also felt similarly about formic acid which is caustic, corrosive to equipment, dangerous for human's eyes, lungs, etc. and hard on bees and brood.  She was not in any way positive about the use of these caustic substances. 

Part of IPM includes understanding the economic threshold.  IPM recognizes that there are pests in the hive and rather than focus on eliminating the pest, the IPM approach is about recognizing when the level of pest in the hive is above a manageable level to a point called the Economic Injury Level, where the hive will be harmed because of the presence of the pest.

Jennifer suggested that at this time of year in general a mite drop in 24 hours of 60 mites or 125 in a larger, more thriving colony, is at the economic threshold.  If your colony measures at that drop level, then you need to do something such as one of the previously mentioned IPM approaches.

In the UGA bee lab, Jennifer is now doing research on the effectiveness of powdered sugar shakes, looking at the timing (doing them before the queen starts laying brood for spring) and the delivery method(top down or bottom up - blowing sugar into the hive from the bottom).

Julia and I left the meeting and decided to put a sticky board under one of the Blue Heron hives with the plan of looking at it on Sunday at our Metro Hive Inspection.

 

What I Learned at GBA

Well, I learned a lot at GBA (and had fun). The most interesting talk I heard was by Jennifer Berry. She reported on the toxin project going on at the UGA bee labs.

They have been exploring the sub-lethal effects of chemicals in honeybee colonies. They wanted to look at honeybee colony health and how miticides might impact that. They particularly studied Checkmite, Apistan and non-labeled (ie, not labeled for honeybee use) Tactik and Maverik (probably misspelled).

I found this next part amusing. They wanted to start 48 colonies of bees off with non-contaminated wax. So Jennifer bought wax from two different "organic" beekeepers. They sent the wax off (at $275 an analysis) to determine if the wax indeed were non-contaminated. In fact the process found that there was both Coumaphos and Fluvalinate in the wax - probably from purchased contaminated foundation.

Faced with an impossible task - no available "pure" wax, Jennifer set all of her colonies up on foundationless frames and lo and behold, the bees drew beautiful wax! She was so proud of it that she had a slide to show us. Like most foundationless frames, the bees had filled the frame but had not attached the lower corners.

These researchers looked at foraging, the health of baby bees, the ability of the bees to return to the hives, the numbers of queen cells, etc. They found, for example, that there were the highest number of supercedure cells in the hives in which apistan and coumaphos were applied - the bees were all saying, "What kind of a place is this? We need new leadership!"

Overall the control hives which were not treated did the best. They, for example, had the highest level of foraging and returning home after foraging. In general, as many of us assume, science is now proving that no treatment is best.

I always love to hear Jennifer speak and I never fail to learn something....but the most fun with Jennifer was on Friday night at the fried fish dinner. We had entertainment - a band called "Always, Patsy Cline." Jennifer (and the other three of us sitting together) were rocking out, singing along with "Patsy."

I know it's a Hank Williams song, but Jennifer was really the absolute best on "Your Cheatin' Heart."

Jennifer Berry and Queen Rearing

Tonight Jennifer Berry talked to the Metro Atlanta Beekeeper's Club meeting about queen rearing. She talked a little about grafting, but focused on choosing the bees from which to rear your new queen. I was most interested in what she said about hygienic queens.

She chooses the hive from which to make a queen based on many factors including honey production (which she said was 15% genetics and 85% management), hygenic behavior, gentleness, and several other factors. She said to determine whether a queen was raising bees who were hygenic, you can do the following:

• Cut a section of comb out of a brood frame - about 3- 4 inches round or square
  
• Count the number of empty cells, ones with pollen, or ones with honey so you'll know how many in the section did not contain brood to begin with
  
• Freeze the section overnight in the freezer
• Return the section to the brood frame and toothpick it back in place
• The next day (24 hours later) check on the section and count the empty cells.
  

Since all of the brood in the frozen section will now be dead, what you want to find is that the bees have cleaned out the cells in the section. This will be a great indicator of good hygenic behavior and will then indicate a hive from which to raise a queen. If they don't do a good job of cleaning out the dead cells, then you wouldn't choose to raise a queen from this hive.

Isn't that fascinating?

BTW, her reference for a good book about queen rearing is Successful Queen Rearing by Spivak.

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.