The More I Learn, the Less I Know

Wow, how time files! It's mid-July already and my girls are chugging right along.

The week before last was the annual conference of the Heartland Apicultural Society, which is the end-all, bee-all for Midwestern beekeepers. All of the bee gods were there. In fact, I've never seen more Ph. D.s in a square mile before. Turns out my bee teacher is among the revered. Her talks were packed to the gills, standing room only. How lucky I am that I get to learn from her!

The sessions ranged from super-basic info for pre-beginners, through the presentation of a multi-year research project to measure the antibiotic effects of propolis inside a hive. There was one Ph. D, Dennis VanEnglesdorp, who presented his findings on varroa mites which was a real eye opener. Varroa are to bee disease as mosquitoes are to malaria and fleas are to the plague, and varroa are EVERYWHERE.  Those who don't treat for them are spreading them to beeks who do treat, and it's becoming a big mess. As much as some folks want to remain chemical-free in their hives, and I can completely understand that, it's just not practical to let a colony become infested with horrible viruses. If your kid or dog had an infection, you'd treat it, right? You wouldn't just let them suffer. Same goes for bees. They're livestock in our care, and we wouldn't just let a cow become infested with parasites, would we?

Ok, enough soap box.  

The "thing we can do", however, is test for mites, and report our findings. Dr. VanEnglesdorp, in conjunction with my bee teacher, Meghan Milbrath, and another person from University of Minnesota whose name escapes me, have put together mite testing kits for backyard beekeepers. Everything you need is in the kit, and you just have to report your mite numbers to their website, where they're gathering tons of data about mites, which will help us in the fight against them. 

For the beeks who are reading, here is where you can order a kit: Citizen Science Project Mite Test Kit 

Meanwhile, I was able to pick up a five frame medium nuc kit from the vendor room. A nuc is short for "Nucleus Colony", which is just a smaller hive kept in order to support the larger hive, or a way to start a larger hive. You take frames of brood, pollen and nectar from a large, strong hive, and put it in the smaller box. You also move a bunch of bees there too, to take care of the brood, and don't forget a queen! If you take the queen out of your main hive, the bees will build themselves a new one. It's actually a good idea to break the brood cycle in your main hive while they're building a new queen, as it helps curtail the spread of varroa.  By the time the new queen is hatched, mated and laying eggs an entire generation of workers will have come and gone and with them went the fodder for mites. 

Anyhoo... I was thinking about making a nuc off of Maud to have another set of bees to go into winter with.  I really want my girls to survive, but they odds aren't in their favor. Meghan, our teacher, says that overwintering nucs is a good way to have bees in the spring. (They're smaller, easier to manage, and don't require as much food.) Once I got my nuc boxes built, I'd either look for a new queen from a reputable breeder, (read: Meghan) or have Maud's girls build a new one.  The best time for this is right about now.

A fancy Nuc. The beer's not too shabby, either.

The rest of the conference was filled with lots of different activities.  There was a night hike through a nature center which was pretty darned cool.  We called owls and they answered! There was a barred owl following us around. We also saw the coolest bio-luminescent fungus.  Did I mention we didn't use flashlights?  Yep, it was super dark, but our eyes adjusted and we were able to see just fine. I highly recommend it, especially for the all the wildlife sounds you'll be able to hear. Also, if you crunch wintergreen lifesavers with your mouth open, in the dark, you can see sparks. Quite cool.

We also had an ice cream social one night, and the next night there was a barbeque, folk band and a delicious mead tasting.  There were about 9 or 10 different mead makers there with several types of mead available to taste.  I had no idea there was so much variety! Most of it was pretty sweet, but I found a couple I really liked, including one that was made with hops. Note: Mead is high in alcohol content.  

The band, "Behind the Times"

Say hello to my little friend.

...and then there was a queen auction!  A smooth move on the part of the Apicultural Society; get us tipsy then auction off some really amazing queens. They even had some of the "ankle biters" from Purdue's breeding program.  For those not in the know, these queens are the superstars of the genetics world. Northern survivors, with some amazing hygienic behavior. They attack any mite they see and bite its legs off. End of mite.  There were also some of Meghan's queens, as well as some other 'famous' stock from Vermont.

Ladies and Drones... I give you Jenny! She's one of the fine gals from Vermont. 

Jenny, short for Genebeeve. She has the blue dot.

Yep. I won a queen in the auction. I guess I'm going to make that split a little earlier than I thought, but at least I have Myrtle's old equipment handy, and I have plenty of time to build her and her girls up before winter. 

The main thing I learned from the 2.5 day conference is that there is so much to learn, and 2.5 days isn't enough to cram terabytes of information into my gigabyte head. 

Here's to a lifetime of discovery!