I am not afraid to stand corrected on my last post: people 'round these parts are against treating honey bees because they want the bee progeny to have the genes and therefore the traits of a colony that survives. (I've read that gene expression can actually change based on environmental cues, but that's for another time.)
Also, during last week's local beekeeping meeting, I learned that some honey bees in the southern U.S. have evolved and/or been bred to have the trait to groom each other incessantly for varroa mites, remove the mites, and actually use their mandibles to cause severe damage to the mites before discarding them. Most of the people I've met who firmly do not treat their bees have the time, money, and space to keep over a half-dozen hives. I don't feel that this is apples to apples as compared to me, since they have the luxury to know that even when they lose up to or over half of their colonies from not treating, they'll still have some hives.
It will break my heart when I lose this colony, which is inevitable, realistically. Typical reasons for colony loss:
To avert my potential heartbreak, I see only one solution...
Get another!! I would love to try to catch some local bees, if not via collecting a swarm from someone's yard, then through baiting an empty hive on my back porch with the fresh aroma of lemongrass oil, and voila!
Also, during last week's local beekeeping meeting, I learned that some honey bees in the southern U.S. have evolved and/or been bred to have the trait to groom each other incessantly for varroa mites, remove the mites, and actually use their mandibles to cause severe damage to the mites before discarding them. Most of the people I've met who firmly do not treat their bees have the time, money, and space to keep over a half-dozen hives. I don't feel that this is apples to apples as compared to me, since they have the luxury to know that even when they lose up to or over half of their colonies from not treating, they'll still have some hives.
It will break my heart when I lose this colony, which is inevitable, realistically. Typical reasons for colony loss:
- as the queen gets older, the honey bees will try to replace her (supercedure), but do so unsuccessfully;
- the colony will run out of space in the hive and the workers will leave with my fertile queen in a swarm, without raising a successfully-mated queen for me; or
- they'll eventually succumb to diseases/pests/colony collapse disorder/ what have you.
To avert my potential heartbreak, I see only one solution...
Get another!! I would love to try to catch some local bees, if not via collecting a swarm from someone's yard, then through baiting an empty hive on my back porch with the fresh aroma of lemongrass oil, and voila!
Let me tell you a little bit about swarms.
If honey bees run out of space in the hive, they will plan to swarm for at least a week before they leave. During the packing of their bags, they feed their queen less, to slim down that glorious fatty so that she'll be able to fly. Worker bees also build queen cells through constructing comb that looks like peanut shells at the bottom of the frames, in which they raise baby queens to replace their current beauty for when she leaves. To raise a queen, they feed fertilized eggs (that would normally grow into worker bees) royal jelly, which essentially is a protein-dense bee food. Just the difference in diet changes the bees morphological development into a queen. If only such was true for humans. Once the baby queen bee "swarm cells" are capped for the virgin queens to start pupating, the colony somehow divvies up into a 50/50 split.
Half of the worker bees escort the queen out of the hive, all high on her pheromones, and they cluster around her within ~30 feet from the hive on a shrub, tree, or whatever will do. This is the most defenseless the colony will ever be. The bees have no home or brood to protect and they're doped up on queen musk. While the colony is clustered in their swarm ball, scout bees search locally for a proper home before they all relocate together. If you ever find a swarm, find someone to collect it by Googling "honeybee swarm collection" for your area! These bees need a decent home and if left to themselves to find one, can very easily become a nuisance and set up shop in someone's ceiling or wall.
There are some pretty cool videos online of people catching swarms via baited swarm traps, where the honey bees just one day show up. Someone in my county caught a swarm last week using a swarm trap. I will probably pee my pants if this actually works for me.
If honey bees run out of space in the hive, they will plan to swarm for at least a week before they leave. During the packing of their bags, they feed their queen less, to slim down that glorious fatty so that she'll be able to fly. Worker bees also build queen cells through constructing comb that looks like peanut shells at the bottom of the frames, in which they raise baby queens to replace their current beauty for when she leaves. To raise a queen, they feed fertilized eggs (that would normally grow into worker bees) royal jelly, which essentially is a protein-dense bee food. Just the difference in diet changes the bees morphological development into a queen. If only such was true for humans. Once the baby queen bee "swarm cells" are capped for the virgin queens to start pupating, the colony somehow divvies up into a 50/50 split.
Half of the worker bees escort the queen out of the hive, all high on her pheromones, and they cluster around her within ~30 feet from the hive on a shrub, tree, or whatever will do. This is the most defenseless the colony will ever be. The bees have no home or brood to protect and they're doped up on queen musk. While the colony is clustered in their swarm ball, scout bees search locally for a proper home before they all relocate together. If you ever find a swarm, find someone to collect it by Googling "honeybee swarm collection" for your area! These bees need a decent home and if left to themselves to find one, can very easily become a nuisance and set up shop in someone's ceiling or wall.
There are some pretty cool videos online of people catching swarms via baited swarm traps, where the honey bees just one day show up. Someone in my county caught a swarm last week using a swarm trap. I will probably pee my pants if this actually works for me.