Twelve days since the last post and so much has happened, I’m sure I’ll forget the majority of it.  I should have been making little journal entries each day.  You’d think I’d learn this lesson already, as many times as I do this but no…

Most exciting is that Susie, one of our Kinder does, had quads!!  They’re all bucklings which kind of stinks but I think we should be able to find homes for them.  We are allowing Nellie to keep one as a wether since it’s her first batch of babies.  The others will be sold as either bucklings or wethers, depending on the interest.  I’ll get some pics of each one and post them on a for-sale page in the next few days.  One of them is much bigger than the others and came out ready to take on the world.  Two were born with good strength.  Those three are all nursing well on Susie.  The fourth was the runt and weak.  Nellie has named him “Band” because of a white band around his belly.  We are having to bottle feed him but he’s doing pretty well.  I think Band is the one she’ll end up keeping since he’ll be so attached to her from the bottle feeding.

Those dozen Icelandic chicken eggs I got in the mail and put in the incubator?  Only two hatched out.  The lady I bought them from packaged them very, very well so it’s not her fault.  The box was labeled “handle carefully”, “fragile”, and “live embryos”.  I’m imagining some disgruntled postal employee taking out his frustrations on my eggs and scrambling them.

In the incubator now are a couple dozen guinea eggs, seven Red Bourbon turkeyssssss eggs, and 17-ish chicken eggs.   There are a couple of pretty green ones but the rest are a beautiful deep brown.  We have one chicken — and we still don’t know which one it is — that started laying this year, the dark egg pictured below.  It’s such a gorgeous color, I’m hatching some out to see if I can get some more dark-laying girls.  Of course, most probably won’t lay that color but I’ll see if I can keep a couple of them going.

The garden…  Oh, boy.  I got all of those wonderful tomato and sweet pepper seedlings from my friends over at Terripin Farms.  After studying the forecast, I decided it was time to plant out the tomatoes.  Ha.  The night before last, May 11/12th, we got a nice, thick coat of frost.  It’s not pretty.  I’m giving them a few days to see how many of them can shake it off and regrow but then I’ll have to start hitting up the farm stores to buy replacements and replanting.  Yay.

The pepper plants were brought inside as I know better than to plant them out that early but, last night, temps got down to 39-ish and they were not brought inside.  I was getting kids in bed and asked Cody to bring them in for me.  Well, he forgot and I just assumed he did it.  Crap.  They’re alive but peppers exposed to temps that cold are generally not very productive, ever.  I don’t yet know what I’m going to do about the peppers.  Maybe I’ll just plant them anyway and treasure what I do get out of them.

Other than that, the lettuces are doing well and we should be overrun with it in a few short weeks.  Neighbors, beware!  I’ll be hanging bags of lettuce on doorknobs every other day.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the fruit trees this year.  We’ve had a couple of frosts after they’d blossomed and/or set fruit.  I guess it’s another wait & see deal.  At least our trees are still young and we were not expecting a whole lot out of them yet.  I have progressed further along my “Holistic Orchard” road, planting (clearanced cheap!) daffodils, lambs ears, and that sort of thing in the mulch around the trees.  I’m going to work on planting some comfrey and walking onions under them this week, along with some (also clearanced cheap!) hostas I snagged from the frostbite damaged table at the farm store a few days ago.

Bees!  Last week, Tracy (a friend of mine and new beekeeper) and I went over to Janet’s (a fellow beekeeper at the same level as me) house.  Janet has three hives — three very strong hives that overwintered.  We went through them all, trying to decide which one to split because she only had enough extra equipment for one more.  One hive was huge and had lots of queen cells.  The smallest hive was looking good but still had a few frames to fill and was perfect for putting supers on.  The middle one looked, to me, textbook ready for a split.  So that’s what we did.  We did an even split, dealt like a deck of cards, ala Michael Bush.  I really think they’ll do well but only time will tell.

Then, this week, the gals came over to my house.  Friday, we went through my hives.  The packages are looking good with brood and stores in each but were not yet ready for a second box.  One of them might be ready this week so I’ll be sure to check them soon.  We did notice supersedure cells on both of the packaged bees so I take it they didn’t like their queens.  I’ve read that it’s fairly common in packaged bees.  We spotted the queen in one of them — a big, beautiful girl!  And we saw some bees with droplets of nectar on a back leg, transporting it somewhere.  That was pretty cool to see but I’ll have to do some reading to find out what’s behind that particular activity.

Charlie’s overwintered hive, while not as crazily huge as Janet’s, was doing well so we decided to do a split on it.  We did the same even split as we did at Janet’s, except ours are in mediums only, whereas hers are in deeps.  We split the bottom box evenly and the top box evenly so that we now have two hives, two levels deep.   One will have the old queen and the other will raise a new queen.  We hope…

I have trouble spotting eggs.  As in, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen eggs in my own hives.  That’s pretty bad.  I know there are eggs because there’s brood every time.  I just can’t see the suckers.  If I can get to where I can spot eggs, I’d like to make some nuc boxes up and then start making nucs myself next year.  Anyone know the secret to spotting eggs??

Oh, I ordered a nuc!  We’re pretty excited about it since we’ve only had packaged bees, swarms, and cutouts before.  We should be picking up any day, I think.  This will put us up to five hives if that split takes.  That gives us some much-needed buffer for losses.  That reminds me:  We saw no mites whatsoever on my hives.  Very cool!  I know they’re still there but at least the levels aren’t so high that they are easily seen, as we did at Janet’s.  I was looking pretty hard at the drone comb and saw nary a one.  I think I’ll get out there and do an alcohol wash once the splits have had a chance to get going and see what the mite count is.

A local photographer has started a new photography project:  Through the Eyes of Autism.  A quick blurb from the project’s Facebook page reads:

Exploring photography as a form of communication for those with autism. “Through the Eyes of Autism” is a community photographic art project by Wesley Knapp.

Cody, our oldest, was fortunate enough to be asked by Wes to participate.  Cody was loaned a camera for a week or two and took photos of… well, anything.  I am simply amazed at the photos I’m seeing Wes put up on the project page.  I cannot wait to see how the project evolves and, most especially, see all of the photos from the participants.

If you know an autistic person who might wish to participate, head on over there and get in touch with Wes.  It’s cool stuff!

FYI:  I was asked to grab a pic of Cody with a camera for the project.  Not so easy with photobombing goats!

It’s a chicken coop, an outdoor dining room, a bike garage, a storage shed, a Christmas light wonderland, a manure collector, a greenhouse, a butcher shop, and a wood shop.  I struggle with trying to keep it clean but, really, I’m happy to have such a hard working porch.  Just watch  your step whenever you come to visit!

I dare you to find another title on the internet like that.

So last night was our big, end-of-year homeschool shindig.  The kids sang and played music for us and we got to look at all of their artwork.  Now I have not a single artistic bone in my body so I’m am always downright amazed at the things accomplished!  And the teachers?  I’m pretty sure they’re the most amazing women on the planet, always coming up with new ideas and then actually herding the kids in the proper artistic direction while still allowing them to do their own thang.   I have no idea how they do it.  I was completely skipped over when that mommy gene was handed out.  Me no grok.

So how do I contribute to the homeschool coop?  Ah, see, my great talent is sitting in the nursery doing nothing but watching some really stinking cute young kids for a couple of hours each week.  That’s it.  I sit.  I flap my jaws at a friend who is in there with me.  I giggle at the kids’ antics.  And that’s it.  So what does one of these amazing superwoman teachers do?  She bought each of her kids’ teachers a big, ol’ potted plant with gorgeous flowers.  And she bought on for me, too.  Can you believe that?  I’m still in shock — in a good way.  It completely made my day.  She does all of these great things for & with my kids and she bought me a flowery gift.  I’m a loser and never think of doing thoughtful things like that — but I’m a happy, grinning, giddy loser.    I LOVE my flowers and will get warm fuzzies forevermore when I gaze upon them.  Once it warms up, I think I’ll hang them on my front porch.

Wanna see them?

Violas.  I know nothing about them, other than I love, love, love looking at them.  I’ve always wanted some!  I’ll have to do some reading up on their care so I don’t kill them.

Wait a minute…  What is that the violas are sitting on?  Hmmm….

Yeah, you caught me.  I bought chicks.  I happened to be in the feed store yesterday and noticed they were clearancing out their chicks.  Bam.  Ten Buff Orpingtons hopped in my cart through no fault of my own.  Once I managed to break the news to Steve, he weakened and suggested we might go back after the kids’ concert and see what was left.  Bam.  Eleven more Buff Orpingtons jumped into our cart, through no fault of my own.  So we’re now the proud owners of 21 Buff Orpingtons, supposedly all pullets.  Because we don’t have enough birds.

Which is why I also fired up the Pokebator.  Fifteen Icelandics are working their way towards hatching.

Birds are cool and you can’t have too many.  If you’re lucky, you, too, might end up with a Porch Chicken.  That one bird who flaps to her own beat, refusing to go into the coop each night.  Instead, she perches on random crap you leave on your porch.  And poops.  All night long.

Then you’re forced to leave the piles of crap on the porch because, if you move it, she’ll have no place to roost.  And then the other birds that still free range, during the day, figure that the porch must be quite the cool place to be and decide to hang out there as well.  Pooping all day long.

And people have this romantic idea of free range birds.  Ha, I say.  Ha.

I composed this post on Tuesday but, apparently, I hit “save draft” instead of “publish” so it never got sent out.  Oops.  Thanks to Duke for pointing it out to me (and reading over my shoulder when I’m typing even though he knows it drives me crazy!).

‘Tis the crazy season.  On the bright side, that means it’s spring!  And, good gravy, has it really been three weeks since I last posted??  I don’t even know where to start.  I have a buttload backup of pics to upload for you but I think, for today, I’ll just do a quick catch up on what’s been going on and then work on putting up pics bit by bit over this week.

In the garden, not much has been happening.  It’s been cold and wet and, well, nothing much has been done.  I still haven’t planted out the onions that arrived back in March.  I’m not even sure they’d do anything at this point.  They’re probably mostly dead.  I’m a bad onion mommy this year!  I did get a bed of lettuce planted, however, and it should be up by now but I’ve not been back that way to look for a few days.  Also, a friend, Patty, let me come over and dig up a giant load of her thornless blackberries.  Yay!  We already had a few but they met with some misfortune not long after planting and haven’t done terribly well.  The new ones have been planted in front yard beds where I can keep an eye on them and dig up starts to plant elsewhere and/or share each year.  While planting the lettuce, I did notice the raspberries are coming up with new starts like crazy.  I’m very excited about that!  We love berries very, very much.

The birds are all doing well.  We’ve started getting turkey eggs and, after giving the mailman a few to try (we have the greatest mailman in the world!), we’re saving them up for hatching.  Maybe I won’t kill them all off this year, huh?  Heh.  The tractors are serving their purpose well.  Nothing in tractors been killed but I think a few of the still-loose chickens have been offed.  (Besides the usual suspects, we now have a bobcat on the scene.  It was over in the treeline a few nights back, snarling like a demon.)  The chickens and ducks are all starting to lay full speed ahead now.  We’ll soon be buried in eggs.  Oh, and I have 15 Icelandic hatching eggs in the incubator!  I’m so excited about the Icies and can’t wait to see how they do for us!  They’re due to hatch the second week of May.

We’re now entering our big kidding season.  ShowTime, our beautiful black Kinder, kidded one very beautifully colored doeling a few days ago.  She had a defect in her eye and was terribly weak.  ShowTime rejected her so we brought the doeling, named Redeye, in the house to warm up and feed.  Unfortunately, she died that evening.  I’m now milking ShowTime three or so times each day.  She’s a first freshener so I’m training her to the milkstand and working with little itty bitty teats.  Fun.  I got a couple of ice cube trays of colostrum put back in the freezer for my trouble in case we need it down the road.  And now her milk has come in, she’s putting out quite a bit of milk considering.  I think next year, she’ll be a great milker.  Other than the tiny, first-timer teats and being impatient on the milkstand as she trains, she milks out very easily.  We still have three does left to pop — Susie (who is HUGE!), Maisy, and Missy, all Kinders.  Susie is an experienced mom but Maisy and Missy are both first fresheners.  Hopefully, we’ll have no more troubles.

I got to go a sheep & goat class offered by the local adult ag program.  This was a month or two back and was nothing earth-shattering but I learned quite a bit.  The main thing that struck me is what the fella said about timing kidding in relationship to worm loads.  In a nutshell, kids who are born early (in winter), stand a much better chance at parasite resistance.  They are born before worm loads are high and get exposed to them very gradually, building up resistance and, by the time worm loads are high, in summer, they stand a good chance against them.  On the other hand, kids born in spring and summer never get that same chance to gradually build up that same resistance.  They are born when parasite loads are at their highest (or soon before).  It’s like being born in the middle of a very active battlefield.  They are never as healthy, for the rest of their lives, as the early born kids.  Very interesting, don’t you think?  I’d never thought of it from that angle, only from the “Brrr, it’s too cold in winter to mess with kidding!” angle.

And bees!  We picked up our two packages of bees the first week of April.  The install went smoothly and, miracle of miracles, they’re still there!  I inspected the hives again yesterday and saw plenty of brood, larvae, pollen, and nectar.  They look like happy bees.  This year, due to just using what was handiest to grab, both packages went into deep bodies with already drawn out foundation.  I’ll work on switching them to foundationless mediums as I can.  The old hive that overwintered is also doing well.  It’s currently in two medium boxes with a mix of foundation and foundationless.  I’m really, really hoping to be able to do a split from them at some point this spring.

Th-th-that’s all, folks.  At least as far as a quickie overview.  We’ve been hit with two separate varieties of crud over the past month and Josie is still sick.  The poor thing climbed up on my lap after I started typing so this will have to suffice for now. 

The bees arrived late, late at night on April 5th.  I think it was somewhere between 10 and 11 at night.  *yawn*

Needless to say, we left the installation for the following day.  It went smoothly and, very lucky for us, we had some friends over to document the day.  Rhonda and Wesley, her talented photographer husband, wanted to see how it all went down.  We also had some neighbors from up the road come over.  Three sisters who are  in 4-H and just getting ready to begin their beekeeping journey.

A huge thank you to Wes for sharing his beautiful photos with me and another thanks to the girls for allowing me to post their faces here!

Dumping the bees.

The still-caged queen.

Charlie showing the bees who’s boss.

We pulled the remaining honey from the deadout hive.  Most of it went into the other hives but we snuck two frames into the house and harvested.  Yummy, dark honey — my favorite!

Of course, the bees weren’t the only ones getting extra attention that day.

How stinking cute is she?!?!

Again, thanks to Wes for braving the bees to take these photos and then sharing them!!

We’re still working on getting tractors built for the rest of the birds but we’re gaining on it.  We also started putting together tractors for the goats so we can move them around the yard easily.

Here’s the first goat tractor, holding Blue Cotton and her two doelings.

Like good rednecks, we stuck it smack in the middle of the front  yard to begin.

That pen contraption just beyond the goat tractor?  That’s our temporary holding pen, where we are putting birds we no longer want as we sort through this spring’s poultry assortment.  We’re holding some for our friend,Hollie, but the rest will go to freezer camp.

Hollie, I know you want the two geese.  Right now, there are five roosters in there — which ones would you like me to hold for you?  Once we kill off the excess roosters, we’ll start putting hens and ducks in there for you.

Then our Ancona collection — six ducks and one drake.  We’ll probably add another drake to the mix and divide them into two tractors once we get more built.

And, lastly, the two breeding pairs of Muscovies who will also be divided once more tractors are finished.

One more large tractor is providing current housing for our pregnant sow.  The rest of our poultry are still in the back pen which also includes my garden right now.  Steve’s going into hyper-build mode right now so we can get the rest of the birds out of there and I can start planting!

I don’t know if all of these tractors will end up being a permanent thing but it sure is handy right now!  They’re so easily moved around to fresh patches of grass & bugs, keeping up rotational grazing/browsing, lowering worm & other pest loads, I’m thinking we’ll always have at least a few tractors.  If we keep a good portion of the critters tractored in the spring & summer, that gives the big pens a chance to rest and regrow for fall/winter as well.

As always, there will be more tweaking as we go along.

The ol’ Duggar family van that we’ve been driving has been wonderful. We’ve hauled all sorts of things in it, people and livestock included. It runs like a champ and starts dependably through it all. But, man, does it suck down the gas.  With all ofthe running around I do taking kids here & there and the cost of gas these days, it was pretty painful.

Enter the “new” van:

Looks rather tiny, doesn’t it?  Boxy and ugly, as is the norm for Aerostars.  (Astrovan!  It’s an Astrovan.  Man, that’s been irritating me all day.)  Ah, but once you step inside…

It seats eight!  And has fold down seat dividers so, when I don’t have all of the kids with me, there’s some separation.  “Mom, he toooouuuuccceeddd me!”  Yet there’s still a bunch of room in the rear for groceries (or goats)!  I seriously don’t know how they squeezed all of that interior space into such a small exterior.  Henceforth, this van shall be known as the Tardis Van.

Now, who wants to buy the Duggar family van?    The kids and I will spend this weekend getting it all cleaned up and sticking a For Sale sign in the window.  It will be sad to see it go (I love that van!) but we don’t need an extra van sitting around, just taking up space.  *mournful sigh*

The monthly meeting of the MVBA last night was huge.  HUGE!  It was wonderful to see so many new faces there, getting started in beekeeping.  There were lots of great questions and we had a nice presentation on how to set up new hives & install packaged bees.  Our bees are due to be delivered April 5th and I’m betting that there will be a last–minute frenzy of questions.  I’m going to work on getting a few links together that explain the basics and post them here in the next couple of days.  That first year, in those last few days before your first bees arrive, is a time of information overload and panic for many — or was that just me?  Heh.

Speaking of bees, Charlie & I checked our two remaining hives a few days ago.  One, the swarm we caught in our yard, is doing great.  We do need to switch the brood boxes around and we would have done that then but we couldn’t find out smoker.  Doh.  I’ll make that one of today’s priorities — finding the stupid smoker.  And, yes, it is stupid.  I call it much worse names in person but, since this is a family blog, I’ll refrain from sharing those.  We went ahead and fed the bees while we were out there because, well, they needed it.  I fed them ala Michael Bush and just dumped a bag of granulated cane sugar on top of some newspaper and spritzed it with some water, inside an empty super.  The other hive?  Gone.  Well, not gone.  Dead.  I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure I can take the blame for this one — it looked like starvation.  We just didn’t get out there soon enough to check on them.  I’d knocked on the hives not long ago and, hearing a buzz in response, knew they were alive.  But I didn’t crack the lid and look in.  We’ve been so pressed for time lately, too many things have been overlooked.  *sigh*

So we’re down to one hive to start off the 2013 season.  We ordered two packages of bees with the club so that’ll put us up to three.  This year, I’m determined to see some increases in the bee yard.  I’ll have those three, plus I hope to catch swarms whenever the opportunity presents itself.  Finally, I’m going to do splits.  I don’t care if I don’t get any honey this year.  I want to go into the winter with plenty of extra hives.  I’ve had a couple of years now to get accustomed to being a beekeeper.  I’ve become comfortable with them, made lots of mistakes, and done a freakishly large amount of reading on the subject.  So I’m bumping up my game from Holy Crap, I Have Bees! *Twitch*Twitch*   to  I May Or May Not Know What I’m Doing But I’m Going To Do It Anyway.  While I want to stick to my 100% natural dreams, I have decided to allow myself to feed these hives as needed while getting them all established, strong enough to make an attempt at wintering.  If I end up with enough hives from this, I’ll go back to the not feeding except in emergencies next year.  Hopefully one year soon, I’ll actually get a decent harvest of honey and can save some of that back for the bees.  Dreams are good, right?

Did I tell you we now have Muscovy ducks?  We bought two breeding pairs a week or two ago and have them in tractors in the front yard.  Also in tractors now are the turkey breeding pair, and some white silkies.  We’ve decided, for now, to put all (most?) of the birds in tractors and then fence the entire yard to let the dog run patrol around them.  After losing the majority of our flock to predators last summer, we’re in lcok-down mode.  After we give a bunch of birds to a friend, we’re going to try to stick with mainly Muscovy & Ancona ducks and Icelandic chickens, maybe keeping a few random dual-purpose chickens as well.  And a few White Silkies just because.  But, really, you should see our front yard.  It’s starting to look like some sort of zoo with all of the tractors and pens.  Once you look into the side & back yards?  Your suspicions are confirmed.

Other than that, same ol’ thing.  My onion plants did arrive but the garden is currently snowy soup so they’ll have to sit for a bit.  How are everyone else’s gardens?

Part 1 here.  Part 2 here.  Part 3 here.

Fingers licked.  Cookies out of the oven.  On to Part 4!  On this one, I had to try really hard to keep my mind open.  Jerry Hayes recently went to work for Monsanto so my kneejerk reaction is to throw rotten GMO tomatoes at him.  I’ll try to give an objective report of his presentation below.  Don’t throw rotten GMO tomatoes at me since I’m just the messenger, okay?  FYI:  Dadant who put on this whole weekend — and whose staff I love and respect, is now in bed with Monsanto as well. 

Jerry Hayes is a well known bee dude, authoring the “Classroom” in the American Bee Journal for oodles of years.  Read his short article on his new job with Monsanto here.

The apiary industry is under siege from pests, disease, and CCD.  Many of these are newly introduced and our bees are unadapted.  Some stats on colony mortality rates in recent years:

• 2006-2007:  32%
• 2007-2008:  36%
• 2008-2009:  29%
• 2009-2010:  31%
• 2010-2011:  30%
• 2011-2012:  25%

And, while the final stats are not yet official, he said the 2012-2013 mortality rate is estimated to be at 40%.  Wow.

We’ve now reached a tipping point:  Ag-planted pollinator crops now outpace available pollinators.

Colony Losses

Much is due to the globalization and homogenization of pests.  Production ag and production beekeeping add to the problems.  (Nutrition diversity used to be a given.  Now big ag with its monocrops have taken much of that away.)  Pesticides are misused by consumers.  Productive hive locations are being eliminated.  Entomophobia is a factor.  Low honey prices and low pollination prices mean less beekeepers.

Parasitic varroa mites are 70-80% of the problem.  They came to the U.S. 30 years ago.  Varroas to bees are like fist-sized ticks to you.  (Yikes!)  Varroas are like the dirty needles of the bee world:  The transmit diseases and leave open wounds to become infected, etc.

Beekeeper Chemicals

Before varroa mites, beekeepers were against using chemical on their hives.  Once varroa arrived, the beekeepers began welcoming chemical treatments.  However, using chemicals to treat the problem is “trying to kill a small bug on a big bug”.  Beeswax is a big sponge and soaks up the beekeeper-introduced chemicals.  That leads to the chemicals being not only in the wax but the honey and bee bread stored in the wax, as well as the brood raised in the wax.  The bees are then exposed to the chemicals 24/7.

Bee Health Challenges

Primary stress (such as moving hives), varroa, secondary pathogens, management, pesticides, nutrition, nosema.  Honeybee health is very complex, interrelated, and intertwined.  When something gets out of balance, it all becomes a mess.

Ecosystem Stability

There is a complex relationship, all interconnected between soil, organisms, and water.  If the system is healthy, it can rebalance itself as needed.

Bee Ecosystem

The bee ecosystem is not rebalancing itself now.  It is very important that we help it do so because bees are valuable to everyone, not just beekeepers.

Enter Beeologics

Jerry referred to this as “natural technology”, a product that will dive into DNA/RNA arena.  “Remebee” works with the RNA to turn off/on disease  — basically RNA interference to control expression of certain genes.

Monsanto is a Good Guy

Jerry told us that Monsanto has done great things.  They’re just really bad about telling us about these wonderful things they’ve done for us.  Jerry is the only honeybee guy at Monsanto.  He joined up with them to help work for a way to get away from chemicals, supporting the use of RNAi instead, for a number of issues.

Project Apis m.

The almond crops out in California need the bees but the lack of nutritional diversity is doing them harm.  The object of Project Apis m. is to increase that nutritional diversity, let the bees have at natural foods, by planting acreage in California.  Why is this important to the beekeeping industry?  Because bees are important, as are their losses.  Monsanto supports the beekeeping industry.

30% of our bees have been lost in the last five years.  By 2030, our human population will further increase and we will need more productivity, more efficiency.  Why does this matter?  Because people just assume that the food supply will be there.  But it will not.  40% of veggies will be from non U.S. sources, according to a USDA projection.  The U.S. will be a net food importer within 50 years.  Food security, food independence, is a worthy goal.

Blech,  Sorry.  I had to spit that out quickly while holding my nose.  Heh.  Shall we cleanse our blog palates by looking at the giant piles of attendees?

To my right:

To my left:

And there were a gazillion more people behind me.  At the pre-registered portion of the weekend alone, there were 800 attendees.  I don’t even want to guess how many more attended the ope-for-all tours.  And guess how much all of this cost us?  Nothing!  Dadant gave tours, goodies bags, door prizes, meals & snacks, and all of the other things that went along with the weekend — for free. 

Okay, I have to put this last pic in.  Leann’s going to kill me but I think it’s funny because I was there for the $64,000 conversation.    (Inside joke, sorry.)

Okay, back to the next presentation?

Randy Olive hit the stage again with “Concepts in Practical Management of Varroa”.

Bees have the highest recombination rate of any organism so they evolve & adapt very quickly.

Varroa Management for the Long Haul

Understand the varroa population dynamics!   The mite levels stay (relatively) static while the bee population waxes & wanes.  The bee population peaks the first of July (in his location) and that means the bee:mite ratio is a good one.  Once the bee population declines, the relative ratio explodes and problems set in.

Varroa are not the big problem themselves.  It’s that they vector viruses.  Our purpose, as beekeepers, should not be to control disease but to control the vectors.  Once you get above 5 mites per 100 bees, viruses go epidemic.  Less than 2 mites per 100 bees, and life is good in Bee Land.  Then there’s that middle ground between 2 and 5 mites per 100 bees — the Danger Zone, if you will.

Do not limit yourself to just one “fix”.  Use IPM (integrated pest management), using pesticides as a last resort.

Breed for resistance.  Dr. Tom Rinderer now has two lines of bees bred that require no treatment.  (Interesting article here on Randy’s website.)  Feral and survivor bees hold hope, surviving with no treatments.  Mite-resistant bees need little-to-no help with mites and need little virus help as well.

Varroa has an easily disturbed life cycle.  Mess with its birth rate and/or death rate, any step of varroa reproduction, and you stay one step ahead of them & trouble.

You never have to kill all the mites.  You shouldn’t.  Some will always survive — survival of the fittest and that will breed resistance in the mites.  You should knock them back little by little.  He had some fancy charts here with pretty little numbers on viable offspring, reproductive success, and “safe zones”.  I’ll have to see if he has those available on his website.

Produce locally-bred and -adapted queens.  Breed from the healthiest colonies.  Slowly drop those mite limits from year to year.  That 2 mites/100 bees is good thing from before?  He’s gotten it down to nearly zero after working on it for some time.

Cultural methods:  Keeping hives in the sun and away from trees helps with many diseases.  Use drone brood trapping — check for mites first and, if high numbers are seen, toss those drones to knock back the numbers.  Powered sugar dusting that seems to be common these days?  He says it works to some extent but not really that much.

Do splits to reduce mite loads.  Splitting breaks that mite reproductive cycle, the bees take a break from drone rearing, and you have a new, vigorous queen.  That means an explosion in bee population — which outpaces the mite population.  Keep ahead of that curve.  (Graph would be helpful here.  Argh.)

Protein favors bees.  Promote broodrearing in late summer.  I assume this meant to supply pollen substitutes if necessary?  My notes are not clear here.  Must have been an interesting discussion at the table. 

You may not see mites but you may see viruses.  Dead/dying bees will be out of the hive but you might see DWV.

Monitor to prevent overpopulation of mites.  Sticky boards are unreliable methods of monitoring mite numbers.  Instead, use an alcohol wash.  (Shake off bees into a tub.  Older bees will fly off.  Younger bees and the queen will remain.  Take a 1/2 cup of bees (not the queen!) and pour rubbing alcohol over them.  The mites will fall off and sink to the bottom.  Use a clear jar to do this and you can count the mites you see.  There should never be more than six mites per 1/2 cup of bees.)

Don’t let mite numbers get high.  Prevent that before it gets too high.  As few as 1 mite per 100 bees in the spring will suppress your honey production.

Times to monitor:  In the spring — look at the drone comb.  Look again before putting supers on.  Monitor often while you’re harvesting honey.

Watch the weather.  If you’re having a stretch of warmer weather, the mite population will increase.  (Warm weather = brood rearing = more mites.)  If it’s a cooler time of year, there will be less mites.

Be proactive.  Figure out the timing and work with it.

For Randy, mid-August is the most critical time, the bees begin prepping for winter.

Use appropriate treatment when necessary.  First, do no harm (such as persistent residues).  Most treatments are hard on the bees.  All miticides increase adult bee mortality & some larval mortality.

Beware the delayed “legacy” effect of mites –> viruses –> CCD.

Knock the mites back, don’t try to knock them out.  Multiple, low-efficacy treatments are easier on the bees than fewer high-efficacy treatments.  The high efficacty treatments breeds for resistant mites and the population bottlenecks –> you end up with super mites.  A reasonable (mite) kill rate in this context is about 50%.

Treatment works best in the brood area where the mites are located and the temperatures are consistent.

Do not trust uproven concepts (“But the internet said…”).  Synthetic miticides = smart pesticides for dumb beekeepers.  Natural  treatments = dumb pesticides for smart beekeepers.  Essential oils (thymol most effective) and organic acids are natural treatments, according to Randy.  Use a half dose of what is recommended.  (Knock ‘em back, not down & out.)

Organic acids:  Formic acid is vaporizing and can be used with supers on.  Use a single strip between brood boxes.  Oxalic acid (not registered in the U.S.) doesn’t vaporize.  Hops beta acid is the third organic acid choice, called Hopguard.  Works best when there is no brood, early Nov/Dec for Randy.  It’s a byproduct of hops, works best when the colony is broodless, and needs three treatments to be effective.

Rotate treatment.  Randy uses oxalic acid, then thymol, then formic acid.  Choose the best treatment for conditions:  Oxalic in winter, formic during the main flow, and thymol in fall.

Mites can migrate 1-2 miles so, even if your hives are clean, your neighbors’ mites may still find their way to your bees.

Make life miserable for the mites.  Do spring splits, rotating natural treatments, and whatever it takes to break the mite and virus cycle.

Randy then went into treatment windows for nucs but I completely lost him here.  This is another thing I’ll have to look for on his website to see what in the heck he meant with theses crazy numbers & words in my notes.

Honey Bee Healthy is not a good choice, in his opinion.

Then there were three other presentations:

Setting up a Honey House, by Kent Robertson

Honey & Hive Product Marketing, by Charles & Karen Lorence

Queen Rearing and Making Spring Splits, by Ray Latner

Those three presentations were pretty quick & basic and, by then, my brain was shot and my hand was cramped into a jagged fist.  No more notes.  Zzzz….