A Sad Time for Beekeepers: Walt Wright has Died

Walt Wright died on February 6 in Tennessee. A former NASA engineer and a GE employee in the security side of things, he brought his analytical mind to beekeeping and taught all of us about checkerboarding.

Walt took up beekeeping in his retirement in his fifties. He observed the bees with his scientific perspective and recognized that the hive is driven to survive and to reproduce by swarming. He determined that the beekeeper could attempt to fool the bees into thinking that they had more room to fill with honey (and thus shouldn't leave) by leaving empty drawn comb in the crown of honey above the winter cluster.

He called this process checkerboarding because every other frame would be filled with honey - let's say frames in positions 1, 3, 5, and 7 and that 2, 4, 6, and 8 would be empty drawn comb. He moved the capped honey formerly in 2, 4, 6, and 8 into a new box above and put empty drawn comb in 1, 3, 5, and 7. This created a checkerboard effect (and thus the name).

His writings and musings about the bees have been read widely by many. Most of his writing can be found on Beesource.  On the column to the left of his bio, you can find whole articles by him - don't be confused by the list of titles below his bio - the full item can be found in the left column.

I wish I had met him or heard him speak. He made so many great contributions to the beekeeping community. It's amazing that he had impact on how so many of use think about bees.

I saw the QUEEN!

OK, I've been a beekeeper for a year and I've never seen the queen, but today I finally did in Bermuda. The population is burgeoning and I didn't see any wing problems on the bees I looked at. I was thrilled that things looked better. And then.......

I saw the QUEEN. I would never have seen her, but for the fact that there are less bees and she is obviously still my original queen so she has a white dot painted on her back. The marking color for 2006 queens is white. The two new queens I will get with my two nucs this year should have a yellow dot, the marking color for 2007, on their backs.

You, too, can see my queen - sort of blurry but there she is in the bottom of the picture below. Like me, you can recognize her by the dot on her back. Walt Wright says that you don't ever have to see the queen as long as you can see that she is hard at work by seeing eggs and larvae in different stages, but as much as I respect everything of his that I read, I don't care, I was thrilled to meet her at last.

I will be doing a powdered sugar shake at every hive inspection this year. Until my bees are regressed to small cell, the Varroa is vigorously in the picture. I didn't do a count today - thought I would be too discouraged - but I'll start a count record of Varroa on a sticky board starting next weekend. This year instead of the complete mess I made last year, I simply used my flour sifter and sifted sugar over the brood box. Then I took my bee brush and brushed the sugar that landed on top of the frames in between the frames.

Here's how the bees look after the sugar shake. Very ghost-like, huh?