"Second thoughts about the sustainability of bees" - a response

[Jono]

I just finished listening to episode 161 (March updates from the homestead).  I really enjoy these podcasts - much like the other feedback Jason's been getting.  It's always nice to hear from others who are doing similar things, their plans and triumphs help me refine my own actions, and their failures make me feel a little better about the many failures I too experience regularly.

I wanted to address your remark about the sustainability of bees though.  Initially I was going to send an email, but decided that the forum may be cool for getting other discussion on my thoughts as well.

Full disclosure - we currently have a single hive that overwintered last year.  We had started a second hive last spring, but had an 11 day period of rain.  We didn't provide supplemental feed to our new hive, and it starved - so I'm certainly no expert... but we're learning.  We have 2 more nucs ordered, and will be picking them up in a couple months.

I can certainly understand the frustration many people have about bees.  While there are many rules of thumb out there - there aren't too many facts.  Bees are one of the more feral of the creatures we like to think of as homestead critters.

Sometimes this has benefits - in the most laid-back approach you really just provide a shelter, and hope that they do ok... sometimes you're rewarded for your patience with honey, and a thriving colony.  On t he other hand there are some times where your hive will abscond, or starve, or swarm - and there's nothing you can do about it.  At the course I took they used to joke that "You ask 3 beekeepers a question, and you'll get 5 separate answers."

That being said - I recently attended a seminar about queen rearing - and while I'm nowhere near confident or knowledgeable enough to attempt this sort of thing yet - it kind of helped me put out my roadmap for 'sustainable bees' - at least on our homestead.

We live on 4 acres - and a while back had decided that we were going to have a maximum of 4 hives.  This will help us get through the 50% winter mortality that's been reported for the last couple years in our area, but won't be so much that they're difficult to keep track of - or take up an entire day to inspect.  We likely won't be up to the 4 hives at the end of next year at the earliest - at which point we'll have 3 years of bee management under our belts.  We've been advised at another seminar to not keep the hives too close together, so we'll likely spread the four of them out a bit - although not so far as to make managing them a headache.

I've realized that it's easier to not think of bees as perennials - they're not like a tree that requires planting and care over the first year or two, but ultimately needs nothing but a harvest and a prune from time to time.  Neither are they annuals though - absconding our dying every year to be replaced the next.  Still - the comparison helps me out.  Talking with other beekeepers it is normal to lose some of your hives each year.  A number of our local ones just order new packages - but that doesn't strike me as overly sustainable either.

My plan is to get our 4 hives going, and then as colonies abscond, winter-starve or die in other ways I will replace them with a queen from another of my own hives.  This will have an effect much like seed saving... even though my queens may be fertilized by wild or other domesticated drones, over the years I'll be setting up my colonies with proven local survivor bees, and ones who are uniquely suited to our area, and even my management style.

To me this is still sustainable.  It's certainly  not a zero management approach - but despite our efforts towards that there is very little that we do that's completely zero management.  Paddocks need to be shifted, gardens need to be mulched, fences need to be repaired... and it seems to me that this is no worse than many other livestock chores.  There are no new inputs required, equipment can be re-used, queens are being raised in-house, and the bees are foraging their food, and just as important - there is no additional yearly cash outlay.

I'd love to eventually go to a foundation-less system, and really push to get my bees back to a more natural existence - but like everything we do at our homestead it has to be done in stages - and right now the big effort will be to have our 4 hives by the end of next year, and to be rearing queens as needed starting the spring following.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this Jason - if this at all addresses your concerns about the sustainability of beekeeping, and would love feedback from anyone else who's tried this type of approach, or even just kept bees longer than I have and has their own ideas.

Jono

[Jason Akers]

Jono

Great thoughts, and well said.  I commend you on this post you are absolutely right.

As soon as I wrapped up this show (as often I do) I thought - why the hell did I say that?  Are they sustainable?  Yep.  But you are right they certainly aren't a reliable "perennial" although often they become one.  Here I am advocating learning how to propagate perennials because eeven they aren't permanent and I said nothing of bees but bad stuff.  But me saying that got ME thinking and it got you talking so for that I am happy I said it!

Plus my good friend Jason (another one) sent me a feral bee trap that I'm really excited to try out.  THAT makes em sustainable as well.  Really have to look into queen rearing though.  Great point!

On a side note - how far are you spacing your hives?

Jason

[Jono]

The speaker recommended a minimum of 100 feet.  We'll probably start with something like that, and see how things progress.  I was going to move them further apart, but I've found there are advantages to having them relatively close to the house.

His philosophy was that beekeepers were one of the worst animal husbandmen out there.  He used as an example how we keep flocks of chicken apart, and yet have bees right next to each other's hives, or how we will clean out a chicken coop in preparation for populating it with chicks, and yet it's completely normal to install bees on drawn comb from a hive that had died and may be contaminated and switch frames, feeders and sometimes even boxes between hives without cleaning them, and otherwise just be messy with management.

I have to admit, I found him pretty compelling.  His argument was that you can re-use boxes and such, but should probably dispose of frames whenever you have a hive die and don't know the cause - or know the cause and it's transmissible through wax.  While it goes against my frugal (my wife would say 'cheap') streak, I can see the wisdom in that.

We'll see how things develop, but I'm going to start out with keeping each colony separate, and not transferring frames between them - and I'll work from there.

[Jim]

Jono & Jason this is a great topic.

The only thing this newbie bee keeper might add is a self-sufficient bee keeper absolutely should be ready for a loose swarms.  Our bigger bee keepers here always compete to go get a swarm and make sure the pest and animal control folks have their phone number when the time comes. 

We are in year 2 of our top-bar hive, and we fortunately are still going, tho the reserves were pretty low.  We should have left more honey than we did, but thinks do look okay.   In fact, last weekend we re-positioned it (took it all apart), and re-set it onto a better foundation of properly set pavers to ensure level fit.  I was a bit uneven as the hive got heavy and the area settled a bit.  Now we are ready for a heavy season if we are lucky.

[Mil]

We lost a hive over the winter, but I think it was more due to our error rather than the bees.  That said, I've found keeping bees a steep learning curve in that a one size fits all advice does not apply in all cases due to locale and the bees themselves.  I've noticed in my hives their various strengths and weaknesses and figuring out how to find the right balance with management is the tricky part. I've heard so many beekeepers talk about, even the masters, how many mistakes they've made with their bees. Let me tell you, we've made many, but the bees live despite me.

Sustainability of bees? I wonder about that too, but to me, the bigger question is, if they can't make it, can we? Are they a canary in the coal mine? Can we sustain ourselves through all the problems the bees are having trouble with?  I'm not sure we are making it when I look at how unhealthy our population is.

Foundationless: We have tried to go foundationless by putting a wax starter strip down and placed it in the box. Our super wax building girls made the craziest comb that looked like stairs connecting two frames. We got discouraged and thought it wouldn't work. Luckily, we heard that if we put the foundationless frame between two frames that are already capped, as in brood or honey, you have more of a chance that the girls will build out the frame straighter.

I will sometimes re-use frames. We make sure not to use comb that is two years old. I knock it out and put it in the solar wax melter. With the frames, I will flame it with on of those torches to kill all the microbes.

Great topic!