Bees

[bertiefox]

"You will need a second deep, a queen excluder"

Just wondered what others' experience has been with excluders. I stopped using them years ago and have never had any real problem with the queen laying in the supers unless the comb is in terrible condition. I only use an excluder now if I deliberately need to keep the queen 'down below' or 'up above' for special reasons like queen rearing. Some beekeepers think the excluder makes life more difficult for the workers on their way to the supers. I must admit I wouldn't want to have to negotiate a sharp metal edged grill every time I got home to go into the house!

[robertb]

I don't like them, and I find a colony will have to expand more before it starts putting honey in the supers if there's an excluder on it. I do use them, though. I think the question of whether the queen is likely to go up depends on the strain. A strong flow will keep her down, but we don't often get those in Britain.

[sandbar]

I use them because that's the way I was taught.

My excluders aren't sharp edged at all. They are made up of round-profile wire ... much like your barbeque grill ... just really closely spaced. The workers have no trouble navigating through the bars at all. Ensure my honey supers are brood free. They're cheap to buy, too.

[synergy]

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8306970/Einstein-was-right-honey-bee-collapse-threatens-global-food-security.html

Read this just this article this morning on food production affected by bee collapse. one of my goals is to build a few hives but I haven't gotten around to it, but now feeling I ought to put in some evenings in the workshop and get to it. There is a very small local beekeeper meetup group I can learn from.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Adding nesting spots for solitary bees is easily done:

[mnjrutherford]

Definately hook up with your local group. You will find their advice and assistance more valuable than gold. For some basic reading on "stuff", I suggest www.dadant.com/ (Dadant & Sons) I'm hoping that turns into a link? Anyhow, you can get some ideas regarding prices and when you listen to the group talk you'll have some good mental pictures to associate with some of the terminology they'll use.

Regarding honey bee decline... I kinda take it with a grain of salt. Honey bees were not prevalent up this way until the Europeans came along and clearly there was plenty of pollination going up until that time. As far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong, the biggest honey producers on this side of the pond were in Mexico? There are plenty of other kinds of bees that do a lion's share of pollination. Solitary bees are responsible for tomatoes so Joseph's apartment complex is the sum total of labor involved in encouraging their population near your home.

Also, honey bees have disappeared completely in certain places. There was a PBS special and they showed a family, Chinese or Japanese I think? Long time pear farmers and when the bees disappeared they took to hand pollinating their fruit. Much more labor intensive of course but still possible.

[sandbar]

Joseph, do I see different diamater holes in the wood block?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Feb 8, 2011 0:08:23 GMT -5 sandbar said:

Joseph, do I see different diamater holes in the wood block?

My local leaf cutter bees tend to like holes about 15/64". My local mason bees like holes a bit larger than that around 5/16". The first photo I uploaded is targeted toward these bees with holes a bit larger and a bit smaller as well.

I also make a more general type of bee board in which I drill holes from 1/8" up to 1/2" as deep as my bits will go. I have a tiny local wasp that likes 1/8" holes. (I wonder if it feeds aphids to it's babies?) Large black scary wasps that love onion blossoms like the largest holes. This is a new field for me and I wanted to create plenty of opportunity. Next time I make a bee board for this field I will drill more holes that are sized close to the most popular sizes.



There are lots of leaf-cutter bees nesting in the barn where nails have been pulled out. That would be a good place to fill a board for transplanting to the field later on.

There are soil nesting bees as well. I don't know how to culture them.

[grunt]

With great care = them suckers HURT.

[robertb]

I can't speak for the US - honeybees weren't there until Europeans introduced them, old bee books talk about swarms and feral colonies flourishing, but I've never been there. In the UK, feral colonies almost disappeared after varroa arrived in the 90's, a lot of beekeepers dropped out, and it's become a lot harder to keep colonies alive. Bumblebees are definitely declining badly, but I haven't seen anything on solitary bees.

[mnjrutherford]

Feb 8, 2011 8:36:39 GMT -5 robertb said:

I can't speak for the US - honeybees weren't there until Europeans introduced them, old bee books talk about swarms and feral colonies flourishing, but I've never been there. In the UK, feral colonies almost disappeared after varroa arrived in the 90's, a lot of beekeepers dropped out, and it's become a lot harder to keep colonies alive. Bumblebees are definitely declining badly, but I haven't seen anything on solitary bees.

You know, I've never given any thought to the presence of solitary bees in Europe. I simply presumed they were there.

Considering that there are vastly more "other" pollinators than honey bees, what do you think the realistic damage will be to agriculture should they become extinct? I would imagine it would be drastic, though I don't think it would be as devastating as some are projecting. I am also thinking that the loss of honey as a food/medicinal stuff would be the greater issue short term. Long term issues are beyond my imagining but I'd be willing to bet that the worst scenarios will not show up for a long time.

[grunt]

Jo: Figure a loss of over 50% of crops requiring a pollinator, if bees go and they find nothing to replace them. Then chase that loss down through everything that requires the affected crop as feed, and you begin to see how much trouble we are getting into if we don't find a fix for CCD.
There may be vastly more pollinators out there than honey bees, but they do not necessarily have the numbers required to take up the slack, which is why honeybees were introduced in the firt place. The value of the honey recovered is far less than the value of the crops that result from their presence.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

One time I watched the flowers on a tamarisk tree for 1/2 hour. There were something like 50 species of pollinators that came to visit. My biology vocabulary is totally incapable of naming them, but there were flies, and wasps, and bees, and things mimicking bees, and moths, and butterflies, and ants, and damsel flies, and small bugs, and medium sized bugs, and beetles, etc...

I think the problem is not so much a lack of pollinators, as it is the monoculture mentality which sprays the heck out of an orchard in which natural nesting sites are systematically removed. By the time you get done you have one species, a fruit tree, left standing and the species it depends on for reproduction have been removed so you have to bring them in from elsewhere.

As far as honey bees go... I suspect that they will eventually become immune to whatever pesticide residue, or pest is currently harming them, or they will thrive in some refuge areas where those things are not a problem, or the cause of their demise will be found and banned, or we will learn to live with a 30% loss of hives each winter, or some combination of these.

[robertb]

Pollinators often go for specific types of flower. Very open flowers with the nectar exposed attract all sorts, as they can be pollinated by anything. At the other end of the scale are plants with very long nectar tubes, which can only be pollinated by moths with equally long tongues. Honeybees have short tongues, and are major pollinators of flowers with short tubes. Some bees have shorter tongues, some longer, but none are very long. Then some solitary bees are far more efficient pollinators than honeybees. It's not really possible to produce an estimate, but the damage would be severe.

I'm convinced honeybees will eventually become resistant to the varroa mite, and we're already seeing strains which are more susceptible to the viruses it carries dying out. I'm not convinced they can adapt to cope with pesticides though.

[mnjrutherford]

Time answers all questions. No wonder it is said that patience is a virtue... ::drumming fingers, waiting::