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How to Find the Queen Bee

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Do you struggle with finding a queen bee?  Don’t be too hard on yourself.  Even here at Wildflower Meadows—with all our experience and years of beekeeping—we occasionally find ourselves scratching our heads, wondering why such a simple task can sometimes be so challenging.

Before you set out on your search, make sure you even need to find the queen. As a beekeeper, unless you are working for Wildflower Meadows or raising queens, you don’t have to look for a queen that often. The main reason for having to locate a queen is when you wish to requeen. In that case, you have no choice but to find the old queen to remove her.

Another possible reason to find a queen is when you want to divide a colony or transfer frames of bees from one colony to another. Surprisingly, even when dividing colonies and transferring frames, you don’t always have to find the queen. So, for example, look at this video, and you will discover a straightforward way of dividing a colony without even having to look for the queen.

Patience, persistence, focus, and relaxation are the key to finding a queen bee. When searching for a queen, the first tip we suggest is to be patient with yourself. Finding a queen is a skill that a beekeeper develops over time.

A helpful strategy is to play the odds. The queen will most likely be near the center of the brood nest, particularly on frames with open cells for her to lay in. That’s her preferred area because, after all, she’s the one laying the brood. However, always keep in mind that queens do move around. Sometimes you will be surprised to discover your queen bee in the strangest place – on the lid, walking on the honey, or cruising around inside the box. She can wander anywhere. However, more often than not, odds are she’s hard at work laying eggs in the general brood area. Why not start there?

Nevertheless, before diving into this promising brood area, it’s best to remove and inspect a frame or two at the ends of the hive. Start with a quick check of the end frames (not to mention the lid) and set those aside. Why? By doing this, you will free up some working space and gain space to comfortably separate the remaining frames in the hive. Now you can focus on the high-probability areas.

You want to relax your vision. A soft and relaxed vision will enable you to spot something that looks just a little different. Also, remember that sometimes, your eyes will pick up the unusual pattern of the queen’s retinue, which will naturally direct you to the right spot. If you’re a beginner, after checking each side of a frame, pause, take a quick break, then give both sides of the frame a second look. This saves time in the long run because missing a queen right in front of you will waste time when you fruitlessly look through all the remaining frames.

Keep a routine going. Have a systematic approach to each frame, so you don’t overlook areas. For example, you can begin at the top of the frame, scanning down the frame from left to right. Or you can start at the left of the frame and scan up and down across the frame. Just be thorough and consistent.

Be mindful of the conditions around you. This is crucial since you will hold the frames outside the hive for some time. If there is robbing in the apiary, use a robbing cloth. If the weather is chilly, you must work relatively quickly to keep the brood from chilling. If conditions are sunny, be mindful of keeping the frames exposed to direct sunlight for too long, as prolonged sunlight can dry out the larva and damage the brood. Also, queen bees tend to avoid the sun, so holding a frame up to the sunlight can encourage a queen to run to the other side of the frame, and you can miss her altogether.

Understand that there will be times when you just can’t find the queen bee and strike out. This is normal and happens even to experienced beekeepers. We would advise that you probably don’t want to disturb the colony after two rounds of searching. It is best to call it quits, put everything back together, and come back another time.

The Relationship Between the Beekeeper and the Bees

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The history of beekeeping is closely tied with humanity’s love of honey and people’s desire to produce as much of this delicious food as possible. People have been keeping bees since ancient times, almost always with the purpose of harvesting honey or other bee products for human consumption.

The relationship between the beekeeper and the bees, throughout history, has been largely an exploitative one, sadly often leading to the demise of the beehive. For example, before the invention of the Langstroth hive in 1851 with its removable frames, harvesting honey meant destroying the entire hive of bees.

The invention of the Langstroth hive in many ways led to birth of modern beekeeping. By utilizing this new equipment, which allowed for removal of the frames of honey without destroying the beehive, beekeepers became incentivized to learn how to manage a colony of honeybees over the long term. Instead of providing a single honey harvest, a managed colony could provide multiple harvests of honey over years—theoretically indefinitely.

This led to a focus on how to keep bees healthy and strong for the long run, which to this day continues. It has also led to a closer relationship between the beekeeper and the bees. Beekeepers in the twenty-first century, as opposed to early generations of beekeepers, are less abusive toward the bees and act more like attentive stewards, carefully managing and caring for their bees.

Today, this level of care is critical for the well-being of honeybees. With current-day adversities such as mites, parasites, pesticides, climate change, etc., honeybees face a world that is much more challenging than in the past. They need help.

This dynamic has led to relationship now where the beekeeper is almost a key part of the colony itself. A beehive greatly benefits from a caring beekeeper that provides it with timely feeding, nourishment, supplements, medications, protection against robbing, ants, beetles, etc., and other adversities.

At Wildflower Meadows, we like to think of our beekeepers as liaisons or concierges between the bee world and the human world. Most people in the outside world have no idea how to relate to bees, and the bees have little or no way to relate to people. The beekeeper bridges this gap by taking care of the bees so that they can live in a human-dominated world—and, by doing so, enables bees to deliver the benefits of pollination and food production that humans so greatly need.

Keeping Honeybees is About More Than Just Honey

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Beekeeping is more than just about honey (although it’s a fantastic perk). People who keep honeybees—if they are humane and respectful to their bees—are serving nature and humanity by building the number and strength of pollinators available.

Honeybees are essential for the reproduction of many plant species and food crops. From the ecosystem perspective, bees are more valuable as pollinators than honey producers. This is because pollination sustains the reproduction of countless plants. In contrast, honey production is generally only valuable to the bees themselves (as well as any other species that eats their stores, such as bears and humans).

It is estimated that one out of every three bites of food we eat is made possible by pollinators. This percentage is even greater when focusing exclusively on fruits and vegetables, as honeybees make up 80-90 percent of global fruit and vegetable pollination!

Without honeybees, our world would look very different. The loss of bees would likely have a ripple effect on the entire ecosystem, as plants and animals that depend on each other would no longer be able to thrive. Many plants simply would not be able to reproduce. As a result, humans would lose a massive amount of the fruit, vegetables, and nuts we rely on for food.

This is not to deny that bees also produce honey and beeswax, which are valuable commodities in their own right. Before the European discovery of the new world, honey was practically the only sweetener available to people in medieval times. This changed, however, with the European discovery and colonization of the Americas. Vast sugar cane plantations gave rise to a global sugar trade, along with cheap and abundant sugar supplies. As a result, sugar has crowded out honey as the world’s primary sweetener.

Similarly, the development of the petrochemical industry in the twentieth century gave rise to paraffin, which has almost completely replaced beeswax as the preferred wax for candles. As a result, honey and beeswax have become specialty and niche products these days. This leaves pollination as the most valuable service of honeybees by far.

As beekeepers, it is our job to ensure that honeybees continue to play a vital role in our world. The decline of pollinators is an ongoing worldwide crisis. Pollinator populations have been taking a nosedive in recent years due to various factors, including habitat loss and pesticide use. This is a serious dilemma, as pollinators are crucial for the health of our planet.

The modern agriculture industry needs to feed 8 billion people—this number continues to grow each year. Keeping honeybees is primarily about helping to ensure the health of our ecosystems. One of the most important things you can do as a beekeeper is to take care of your bees healthily and humanely. You can also do your part by planting native flowers and trees and avoiding pesticides.

 

Why Do Beekeepers Feed Sugar Syrup?

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Some beekeeping purists and animal advocates have argued that feeding bees sugar syrup is contrary to their authentic nature. After all, bees in the wild live off of flower nectar, which is certainly more natural and very likely more nutritious for them.

In theory, a wild beehive collects honey during the productive months, enabling the bees to store natural and nutritious honey for the off-season. In the wild (or in a managed situation where a beekeeper does not intervene), a beehive must preserve and consume its stored honey provisions. If enough honey is stored, then the beehive does not need sugar syrup. If not, then the beehive is in trouble.

In today’s world of modern agriculture, pesticides, and a planet of over 8 billion people, this hypothetical situation of bees sustaining themselves is becoming less and less realistic. Wild honeybees scarcely exist in many parts of the world. Most honeybees are kept by beekeepers responsible for their well-being.

Most commercial beekeepers, and many other smaller-scale beekeepers, maintain apiaries consisting of large numbers of beehives—sometimes 100 or more in a single location! This crowding creates high competition for nearby flowers. Often, the surrounding food is not enough to sustain such elevated concentrations of bees. Beekeepers fill the gap by feeding supplemental sugar syrup feeding

In addition to beekeepers who manage large apiaries, most backyard and hobby beekeepers supplement their beehives’ food stores by feeding sugar syrup – a mixture of sugar and water.  Beekeepers have many reasons for this, but the most common are:

  • To prevent the beehive from starvation
  • To allow the bees to have more honey than they need, providing a buffer against future shortages
  • To build up the population during early spring or right before a honey flow
  • To build up heavy stores before winter, which provides not only food but insulation against the cold
  • To assist with the queen’s introduction
  • To deliver medicine (through the feed)

Sometimes beekeepers are forced to feed sugar syrup when they over-harvest honey. This situation seems rather ethically wrong. A conscientious and responsible beekeeper will nearly always leave enough natural honey stores, so the colony does not lose all the fruits of its hard work. Fair is fair! Plus, the honey is likely healthier for the bees and contains some of the trace minerals of plant nectar. Ideally, a beekeeper wants their hive to prosper.

How Many Hives Should a Beekeeper Have?

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The right number of hives depends on your goals as a beekeeper.  If you are a beginner, you may want to start small at first, as you learn about their bees and gain skills along the way. Whereas a skilled beekeeper may want to build his or her hobby into a business that can scale over time. In the end, you as a beekeeper must decide how much time and money you wish to invest – more hives mean more equipment, maintenance, space, and of course time after all.

There are many advantages to keeping multiple hives. Most experienced beekeepers recommend that even brand-new beekeepers maintain at least two hives. Investing in two hives up front may seem like overkill, but it will almost certainly prevent potential stress down the road and likely save money in the long run.

Countless unexpected situations can arise within the first year of keeping bees; and with only one hive you have nothing to fall back on if things go bad.  This leaves you and your hive vulnerable to being completely wiped out. For a new beekeeper with only a single colony, a rough winter could mean starting over completely from scratch in the spring, which can be costly because having to buy bees can be expensive.

Having two beehives not only ensures there are extra resources on hand to share between hives – such as brood, nurse bees, worker bees, or even pollen and honey – it’s also a safeguard in the event you lose an entire colony. It is common for new beekeepers with little experience to lose all, or part of a colony within the first year, especially over the winter. Starting with multiple beehives means it’s possible to share bees among your colonies if some do inevitably die.

More experienced beekeepers may want to keep even more than two hives to increase their odds of success.  If there was an ideal number of hives for a backyard beekeeper, most beekeepers would estimate that 2-5 hives are optimal.

Of course, you will also need enough space. Each beehive takes up about 22-inches by 16-inches of space and can be placed as close as 6-inches together, but more space is always better. Plenty of space is needed surrounding your hives as well, both for maintenance and security. If beehives are kept too close together, it can sometimes cause them to “drift” into a hive that’s not their own. Over time this can affect the bees’ populations – strengthening some hives while weakening others.

Ultimately, when deciding how many hives you’d like to keep, you must consider how much space, time, and money you have available to invest. If you want to make a business out of beekeeping, you’re going to need a lot of hives, and likely more than one apiary. A smaller scale operation that runs part-time with a responsible beekeeper can manage around 100 colonies. This size business isn’t likely to earn enough income from honey, pollinating services, or selling bees to live off, but it can be a solid source of extra income.

Commercial apiaries, however, can have anywhere from 500 to 2000 beehives each. Here in California, as well as in other parts of the US, some large established commercial beekeepers have upwards of 10,000 or more colonies. California beekeepers rely heavily on almond pollination for their income, and are paid per colony, meaning more colonies equals more money – and professional beekeepers need it! Maintaining a business of this size requires a major investment in equipment, labor, storage, and logistics.

What Color Should You Paint a Beehive?

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As a beekeeper, you’ve probably noticed that bee boxes tend to be painted in different colors.  Many beekeepers, especially commercial beekeepers, tend to paint their boxes a standard white color.  This is the most familiar look for a beehive and is perfectly acceptable.  However, some beekeepers – particularly backyard hobbyists – prefer to let their artistic side run wild! Either choice is fine; but as always in beekeeping, there are a few basic guidelines to consider.

Should you even paint your beehive? The answer is yes.  There are several reasons why bee boxes should be painted—for both, the benefit of the bee colony and for the beekeeper.

Paint helps your boxes last longer. After a season or two exposed to the elements, you can expect your bee boxes to experience some wear and tear. Environmental forces like sun, rain and temperature changes can warp, crack, rot, or otherwise deteriorate the wood. A good layer of paint will help protect the wood by minimizing damage from weather, keeping your bee boxes looking great for longer.

Painting your bee box can also help with temperature regulation. Light paints, such as white, can help reflect sunlight and keep the hive cooler in hot temperatures. Dark paints can help absorb the sun’s warmth and keep the hive warmer in the winter. Depending on the climate you live in, you may wish to choose either light or dark paint for your bee box.

Sometimes beekeepers choose to be discreet about their beekeeping endeavor – not all neighbors are a fan of bees after all.  Painting the beehive the color of the surrounding buildings or environment can help camouflage it from unwanted attention from neighbors, vandals, or other prying eyes.

There are a lot of options for painting a beehive when it comes to color. You may wish to stick with plain white, or you may prefer to get artistic and paint fun designs on your bee box — anything goes! If you prefer the beauty of the natural wood grain, you can also use a clear coat to protect your bee box without changing its color.

While the choice of color is solely up to each beekeeper, we do have a couple important recommendations. For instance, sticking to light pastel colors or white will help keep your hive cool during warmer months.

Also, painting different colors may be helpful if you are raising your own queens, and are painting two-way or four-way queen rearing boxes for queen mating. Using different colors, one for each side of the box will assist with the mating process.

Whichever color you choose for your bee box, make sure the paint you choose is safe for the health of your bees. It’s best to use a non-toxic, water-based paint that is low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs ) – which are toxic chemicals that can release as the paint dries. Since the box will be outdoors, be sure to choose an exterior-grade paint that is meant for outdoor use. Always allow enough time for the paint to fully cure before introducing any bee colonies to the box. This will prevent your colony from encountering any VOCs or sticky wet paint. Finally, and importantly, only paint the exterior of your bee box. Never paint areas where the bees will walk or live, which includes the inside and entryways to the box.

Is it Better to Keep Bees at Home or in an Outside Apiary?

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As an aspiring beekeeper, you can choose to keep your honeybees at your home, on your property in places such as your backyard or rooftop (depending on your local laws). You can also choose to keep your bees on a hosts’ property at an outside apiary.

Which is right for you? Home apiaries are not only very convenient, but the proximity allows you to closely monitor the bees and protect them against pests such as ants. It also allows you to regularly enjoy the bees and work with them on your own schedule — whenever you’re free or whenever the feeling strikes.

While it can be great to have the bees on your property, some aspects of at-home apiaries are less enjoyable. There may be issues with local zoning laws that prevent you from beekeeping how you’d like, depending on your location. Neighbors and house guests may worry about having the bees around, and you’ll need to be vigilant if any children or pets visit your home so that no one gets stung.

Outside apiaries are an alternative to at-home beekeeping. Setting up your apiary in the countryside can provide you with a beautiful destination, along with a built-in an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy nature.  Outside apiaries can be located away from people, so there is less reason to worry about upsetting neighbors or anyone being stung by the bees.

Since you must travel to an outside apiary, however, you must plan more and have an organized way of transporting your supplies. An offsite location may require you to have a truck, especially for loading supers of honey. Moving honey from an outside apiary can often be a heavy, messy task that requires more work and investment than when you are at home. Outside apiaries can also require tenants to provide an appropriate amount of honey to the owners about once per year, in exchange for use of their land.

If you are considering keeping your bees at an outside apiary, here are some questions you should consider to help you decide:

  • Is the apiary accessible by car?
  • How long is the drive to and from the apiary?
  • Do you have the time to make the drive regularly?
  • What are the wind and weather conditions at the apiary location?
  • Will bees be safe from predators or possible vandals at the apiary?
  • Is the apiary located in an area with sufficient flowering plants?

What Happens When a Honeybee Stings?

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One of the anxieties for almost all new beekeepers is being stung, and while it’s a valid concern, it’s one that experienced beekeepers hardly think about. When it comes down to it, getting stung is inevitable. If you participate in beekeeping, you will eventually experience a bee sting – probably more than once. The sooner that you embrace and accept this inevitability, the more comfortable you will become.

So what exactly happens when a honeybee stings?

A honeybee stinger is hollow and barbed in shape, meaning once the stinger goes in, it doesn’t come out – it’s stuck and embedded into the skin. The real damage happens when the honeybee attempts to remove its stinger. When the bee pulls away, it leaves its stinger behind, along with its venom sack, and other internal structures – ripping them violently from the bee’s body and ultimately killing the honeybee.

There’s a method to this madness believe it or not – and it’s not so great for the person, or animal, on the receiving end. The muscles attached to the bees’ venom-filled sac continue to work the stinger in deeper, increasing the amount of venom being released with each passing minute. If you’ve been stung, you’ll want to remove the stinger as quickly as possible, but be sure to scrape the stinger away – don’t pull it out.  Pulling the stinger out requires you to squeeze the venom-filled sac, which ends up pumping even more venom into your body.

A sting will cause immediate pain at the site that will last for several minutes while becoming red and flush. The site may begin to swell, however, the rate and severity of swelling will vary case by case. Luckily, there are many ways to help minimize the effects of a sting. To help reduce pain and itching, apply ice to the area. You can also take an antihistamine like Benadryl to help with itching and suppress the overall reaction.

Each person reacts differently to being stung, and while most people have little to no reaction at all, occasionally the effects can be serious.  There are two kinds of reactions to bee stings – normal and anaphylactic.  Normal reactions, while often painful and uncomfortable, are of far less concern than the other type of reaction – anaphylactic. The majority of people, fortunately, experience normal reactions to bee stings.

Unfortunately, a small group of individuals may experience anaphylactic reactions to bee stings.  Anaphylactic reactions are systemic reactions, meaning that areas of the body far removed from the actual sting respond adversely.  For example, a person experiencing an anaphylactic response to a sting will sometimes experience difficulty breathing and speaking due to swelling of the tongue or throat, itchy, red hives, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting, or even loss of consciousness. An anaphylactic reaction is an extremely dangerous situation that can potentially lead to death.  People experiencing an anaphylactic reaction need to seek immediate medical attention.

Protecting Beehives From Extreme Heat

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Bees are surprisingly adaptable to most weather events.  They know how to stay dry during rainstorms, stay cool during summer heat, and even survive the most brutal of winters, such as those in Russia and Canada.  However, when the weather becomes dangerously extreme, bees – like all living creatures – can be challenged to survive.

Recently, Wildflower Meadows’ experienced a powerful heatwave that affected most of our apiaries.  The temperatures in many of our apiaries surpassed 105 degrees.  Yet our bees survived.  How were they able to do this?

The answer is simple: shade and nearby water.  Our beekeepers were concerned about the safety of the colonies heading into the weekend, because bees can’t really survive extended periods of extreme heat without the benefits of shade and close water.  The bees need shade during times of extreme heat, because the sun beating down on the lid of a hive can heat the upper portion of a beehive to dangerous and possibly lethal levels – in some cases even above the melting point of beeswax!  We all know that bees also need a reliable water source; but more importantly during extreme heat, they need their water source to be nearby.  When the temperatures reach near 110 degrees, bees generally stop flying.  Only a few brave foragers will dare to head out for water in that kind of heat, and they won’t be able to fly far.  If the water supply is too far away from the hive, the bees will not be able to access the water that they so desperately need in order to survive.

Fortunately, our bees were able to survive the heat because we took precautions to protect them before heading into the weekend.  As the majority of our apiaries are out in the open and have no shade, we provided makeshift shade to each and every colony by placing a second lid over the first.  This setup not only provided shade, but also produced relatively cooler airspace over the colony, significantly reducing the risk of overheating.  And, it worked!

If you are trying to shade your bees and don’t have extra lids, any piece of plywood will do.  Some of our commercial beekeeper friends whose bees are on pallets often place empty pallets over their bees to provide the same effect.

The second precaution is for you to be sure – absolutely sure – that your bees have access to plenty of fresh water, as close to the apiary as possible.  You also need to keep your eye on the water level, because when the temperatures rise, the bees will consume a lot of water.  The colonies in our queen rearing yard went through nearly 70 gallons of water in just two days!  That is a lot of water for bees, but it saved their lives.

And finally, if you are fortunate enough to have running water and a hose nearby, the bees always appreciate a cool shower or two.  The benefits are twofold, because the water not only cools the hive, but then the bees can later drink up the drips without having to fly far.

Small Hive Beetles

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In the world of beekeeping, there seems to be no end to pests and adversity for both bees and beekeepers alike. Here at Wildflower Meadows, it seems to us that exotic pests and parasites really took hold in American beekeeping sometime during the late 1990s and early 2000s.  First came tracheal mites, then varroa mites, then African Bees.  Subsequently, at some point came colony collapse and along with it a multitude of exotic viruses that practically no one had heard of before – and virtually few still understand today.

In the midst of all this, it can be easy to forget about the small hive beetle, which arrived roughly around the same time. The small hive beetle, also known as the Aethina tumida, was first found in South Carolina in 1996 – though, it’s thought to originate from Southern Africa. A few years later, scientists discovered this new pest in Florida, where the beetles are believed to be responsible for killing thousands of honey bee colonies. Although it’s unclear exactly how the beetle made it to the United States (though public transport may be to blame), we do know that it has wreaked havoc ever since.

Beekeepers often see adult small hive beetles around the lid or bottom boards of colonies.  The adult hive beetles themselves are not much of a problem to beehives – they are really more of a nuisance.  While adult small hive beetles can be easily spotted by beekeepers and controlled by strong beehives, their disgusting larvae are actually much more dangerous and troublesome.

Adult beetles lay their eggs in the small cracks and gaps of a beehive.  When the subsequent larvae emerge, they track through the hive, eating honey, pollen, and pollen substitutes. As they burrow through the comb they defecate in the hive, which destroys and ferments honey.  This fermented honey becomes foamy and takes on the odor of rotten citrus fruit, often leaking from the comb and creating a horrible mess.

Many commercial beekeepers have come to refer to this revolting damage simply as “slime.” This mess can happen inside the hive or in the beekeeper’s stored equipment.  The potential damage of the small hive beetle larvae to the beekeeper is three-fold – loss of comb, loss of honey, and potentially loss of bees.

Not all beehives suffer from the presence of small hive beetles however.  Much of the time, strong colonies can control and corral the adult small hive beetles and limit their population inside the hive, thus limiting their egg-laying and subsequent larvae damage.  It is the weaker and less populous colonies that generally suffer from the small hive beetle.

Since these weaker colonies don’t have the strength of numbers to control the adult beetle population, they suffer the effects of too many larvae.  Conditions inside these hives can sometimes deteriorate past the point of no return, creating too much damage and fermented honey.  This can cause the bees in the hive to abscond, leaving nothing but a slimy mess inside the equipment.

At Wildflower Meadows, we first started noticing the occasional small hive beetle around 2012.  However, small hive beetles have never really gained a foothold in most areas of California, including ours – thankfully.   Around here, small hive beetles sometimes appear for a month or two during the wet season, never causing damage, then disappear for months, or sometimes years at a time.  If the small hive beetle has a vulnerability, it is that the larvae eventually must leave the hive to burrow in the ground and pupate. Here in California our ground is generally dry and hard for a long portion of the year, and the hive beetle larvae can’t flourish under these conditions. Thank goodness for our long, hot, and dry spells – no one here is complaining!