Felix, I hope that I can answer your questions suitably for you. 1. Having a large populous colony that can form a good cluster and keep themselves warm during winter, relatively free of pests, predators and diseases and having 60+ pounds of stored honey and several frames of bee pollen are the general criteria. If you can meet these requirements in a 1 1/2-story colony, then you are 90% there. It’s the 10% that you have to be careful of in that you don’t know what it may be that can cause the loss of a colony.

2. It depends on when the split is made. Is it on foundation or drawn comb, how good is the queen, how is the weather, are there lots of nectar and pollen sources? In Iowa it can be 0 to 100 pounds.

3. Honey bees are efficient and will always choose beeswax foundation over something that is not. Honey bees can pull, mold, stretch and otherwise manipulate beeswax foundation into the cell shapes they need and require. Then, they do not have to produce as much beeswax and they save energy. Plastic foundation that is not coated with beeswax requires honey bees to make beeswax and this is resource-intensive.

4. There is no pure breed out there. Picking something with hygienic qualities and crossing your fingers on the other traits is a good place to start.

5. Just restrict the entrance down to about an inch and seal up any other openings when you install your package at dusk and everything should be okay if you haven’t allowed the colony to be robbed recently. Move the colony into some secure area for a few days before installing the package if you need to.

6. Natural pollen is more nutritionally complete than a pollen substitute. However, if natural pollen is not available, then a pollen substitute can help colonies continue to grow until natural pollen is again available.

Hi, Jerry: I’m planning on traveling to Europe (Lithuania) this summer and I’m also planning to bring several queens with me. How should I handle this so the queens will not die? Thank you for any help on this.

Charles, your email greatly concerns me! You need to check with the Lithuanian Department of Agriculture. I am sure there are numerous forms, permits and requirements for bringing any kind of living creature into their country. Beekeepers traveling with queens in their pockets is how we received some of our most notorious ‘gifts’—namely, varroa and possibly other beekeeping pests as well, such as the recently discovered Nosema ceranae. Lithuania probably has queens that are great for them and we should keep ours to ourselves. Go, but only give and receive knowledge, not queens!

Dear Mr. Hayes, I am a science journalist in Cologne, Germany, and I’m working on a television report about the mystery ailment that strikes honey bees in the USA, respectively, the phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

A lot of reports have been published during the past few weeks in Germany. There were headlines to read like “AIDS in the beeyard” or “USA loses nearly 80 percent of the honey bee population”. This sounds dramatic or hysterical? In Germany it seems that the topic disappeared from sight as fast as it came up. I haven’t found any article for one week.

So, this is for me the moment to ask for the state of affairs with regard to CCD. Was it just a momentary hysteria or is there really a completely new ailment that strikes honey bees? Are the data (70-80% of honey bees vanished in parts of the USA) correct? Some scientists in Germany think that Varroa destructor is the main reason. Was there ever a similar case in the USA? Does the decrease of honey bees correlate to increasing monoculture or genetic engineering? In Germany beekeepers report that it got much harder in the past years to keep the bees as they have become more vulnerable to pathogens. Is this similar in the USA? It would be great if you could take some time to answer these questions.

I’ll try to answer your questions if I can:

1. It appears that we in the US are on course to lose 600,000 to 800,000 colonies out of a total 2.4 million.

2. Hysteria has certainly preceded science, but this is human nature when your business world is collapsing around you.

3. A malady called “Disappearing Disease” is noted in the literature appearing several times since the late 1800s. What we are calling CCD seems to be somewhat different in that the colonies that dwindle to nothing have immune systems which have been compromised, allowing normally occurring organisms to flourish, fungus especially. And, the colonies that are now devoid of honey bees are not being taken over or used for reproduction by the small hive beetle or wax moth immediately. These predators in the tropical/sub-tropical climate of my State of Florida are always present and take over weak colonies quickly. In CCD colonies, they do not take over until 3-4 weeks after the colony collapses. It is as though the colony has to ventilate or air out before they move in, and then it is tentatively. If one takes the dead (now empty) boxes with frames and comb and places them on good strong colonies, those colonies die in a few weeks. I think CCD is different from historical reports of disappearing disease. An analogy may be if you cough, is it because of a cold or the flu or is it TB or AIDS or an allergy to pollen or cancer? The outward symptoms may be similar, the cough, but the cause can be quite different.

4. Causes: Varroa can be a problem and it does compromise honey bee immune systems. But, we have Varroa control products and they are used to control varroa to low levels. Beekeepers with CCD certainly had varroa, but in low numbers. Miticides: Beekeepers put miticides in their colonies to control varroa. We are trying to basically kill a bug on a bug and these chemicals cannot be good in the long term in a bee hive.

Environmental toxins: Honey bees can forage efficiently in a 2-21/2 mile radius of their colony. There are a lot of “pollutants” that they are exposed to and can pick up and bring back to the colony.

Agricultural Toxins: GMO crops and the toxins expressed in nectar and pollen from them can be collected and the bees feed on them over time. Pesticides such as the neo-nicotinoids like imidacloprid that are used systemically can be translocated to the nectar and collected in sublethal doses and used over time.

Genetics: We have a shallow genetic pool. Is this expressing itself in specific weakness?

Tracheal Mites: Certainly a stress

Small Hive Beetle: Another stress

Antibiotics: Used too much to control bacterial diseases, these can stress the bees by eliminating gut flora and fauna that digest food. Bacteria that are added to pollen to start the fermentation process to make bee bread, the bees’ only usable food, is not as easily available when bees are fed antibiotics.

Nutrition; See above. And, honey bees may be fed substitute diets of nutritionally incomplete materials, which affect honey bee longevity.

Moving: Now load honey bees on a truck and ship them 3,000 miles.

New Pathogens or common pathogens that have now become more pathogenic. Beeswax is a chemical sponge. It can store all chemicals that the bees bring in or are exposed to and serves as a reservoir of toxins that the colony is exposed to 24/7/365.

There may be other things as well. I am not sure what honey bee stress is but all these things together certainly look like stress to me. If you and I were stressed by chemicals, poor diet, antibiotic therapy, parasites, travel and our house was a reservoir of pollutants I can guarantee you that we would get sick.

Are honey bees a very small but significant environmental sentinel that is trying to tell us something about them or the environment they live in? Should we be paying more attention? If the poultry or cattle industry experienced 30%-40%-50% or more losses, we would have people stumbling over themselves to find out why and fix it. The honey bee industry has always been the neglected stepsister of agriculture and it continues. At some point, it may be too late unless we do not care about where or how our food is produced. Then, it is a moot issue.

Jerry, just got my April ABJ, and, as always, the first thing I turned to was “The Classroom”. Liked your comments on infant botulism and loved your reply to HO (CA) on imidacloprids.

Now, after an introductory like that, don’t you always hunker down for the inevitable “but” or “however” (like you often see in book reviews)? Well, here it comes: But I have to disagree with your statement
(p. 297) that “Strong, robust, vital, active honey bee colonies are rarely found in commercial beekeepers’ operations.” I can show you thousands of strong robust colonies in California citrus groves at this time. The best were strong during winter almond pollination, certainly not as strong as they are now, but plenty strong for winter bees. Maybe, if I came to Florida, I’d change my mind.

Certainly, overall colony strength is not nearly what it was pre-mite, and probably never will be. The key (in my opinion) is on p. 308 of the current ABJ: “We know that when Varroa mites feed on EHBs, it shuts down the bee’s immune system.” Our bees have AIDS and probably always will.

I had the privilege of spending some time with Marla Spivak in Berkeley earlier this week. Marla told me something I wasn’t aware of: That the preliminary results from the bee genome research indicate that honey bees have only 3 or so “immunity genes” (not her words, but the way I interpreted them), far less than other “animals”. (Marla feels that the anti-bacterial-viral properties in propolis have compensated to a certain extent for this impaired immunity defense).

Beekeepers who have gone to great lengths to keep their bees “healthy” have less CCD than others. I agree with Dick Marron’s comment (p. 300): “Anyone who thinks this is due to sloppy beekeeping or not keeping on top of the mites, leave the room now.” But, I’d add that beekeepers, who take extraordinary measures to keep their bees healthy, have stronger colonies than those who don’t.

The “Einstein quote” ended your CCD reprise (p. 297). This quote has been ubiquitous recently. Singeli Agnew, a grad student in Berkeley is doing a documentary film on honey bees (should be a good one; out in June so she says). Both Marla and I talked with Singeli. Her thesis advisor is the renowned Michael Pollan (author of Botany of Desire and the recent Omnivore’s Dilemma) who is a visiting journalism professor at Berkeley. Pollan advised Singeli to source the quote and I agree 100%. If honey bees are essential to human society, how did the Indians survive before the Europeans invaded N. America? I greatly admire Pollan’s writing skills—he’s a better writer than I’ll ever hope to be—but he makes me cringe with some of his conclusions, which are a bit off the wall (as are many in the organic “movement”). His writing is so seductive though, that one rarely steps back and says, “Now wait a minute here.” He does make many good and valid points, but mixes in a lot of questionable stuff with it.

Joe, thank you for your comments and your insights. I guess what I meant from my statement is, just as you alluded to, there is sometimes tremendous inconsistency in colony “health” and vigor. Sometimes they are strong, sometimes they aren’t, and many times everything in between. And, this variability can occur throughout the season. Varroa is a big culprit and everything that is used to control it. Add in environmental toxins, agricultural toxins, poor incomplete supplemental nutrition, etc., and honey bees may be the canary in the coal mine.

Marla is absolutely right that the honey bee’s immune system, genetically, is pretty shallow. Not only propolis, but also beeswax is an important component. Beeswax in this highly developed communal insect system is a chemical sponge. A poor analogy would be the liver in humans. But, when this sponge fills up, then what? I think we are filling the beeswax comb up pretty fast and it can’t handle the load. So, the colony is exposed to stuff 24/7/365 in synergistic ways and it is not good.

The Native Americans did not have 500 acres of European foods that need honey bees as pollinators. They had small acreages of native insect-pollinated and wind-pollinated foods and native pollinators like squash bees, bumble bees, solitary bees in a vast unspoiled (by chemicals) environment with lots of nesting sites to pollinate. Pollan is a good writer and thinker and, yes, he is out there a bit. Sometimes we need these people who operate on the edge to help us see in different ways.

Isn’t it interesting, fun and a little scary to be able, at our ages, to look behind and then extrapolate to the future. We can see what is coming, but nobody listens to us because it is too uncomfortable. Fascinating.


	The Classroom (cont.) by Jerry Hayes Please send your questions to Jerry Hayes, 17505 NW Hwy 335, Williston, FL 32696 Email: gwhayes54@yahoo.com

		A Felix, I hope that I can answer your questions suitably for you. 1. Having a large populous colony that can form a good cluster and keep themselves warm during winter, relatively free of pests, predators and diseases and having 60+ pounds of stored honey and several frames of bee pollen are the general criteria. If you can meet these requirements in a 1 1/2-story colony, then you are 90% there. It’s the 10% that you have to be careful of in that you don’t know what it may be that can cause the loss of a colony. 2. It depends on when the split is made. Is it on foundation or drawn comb, how good is the queen, how is the weather, are there lots of nectar and pollen sources? In Iowa it can be 0 to 100 pounds. 3. Honey bees are efficient and will always choose beeswax foundation over something that is not. Honey bees can pull, mold, stretch and otherwise manipulate beeswax foundation into the cell shapes they need and require. Then, they do not have to produce as much beeswax and they save energy. Plastic foundation that is not coated with beeswax requires honey bees to make beeswax and this is resource-intensive. 4. There is no pure breed out there. Picking something with hygienic qualities and crossing your fingers on the other traits is a good place to start. 5. Just restrict the entrance down to about an inch and seal up any other openings when you install your package at dusk and everything should be okay if you haven’t allowed the colony to be robbed recently. Move the colony into some secure area for a few days before installing the package if you need to. 6. Natural pollen is more nutritionally complete than a pollen substitute. However, if natural pollen is not available, then a pollen substitute can help colonies continue to grow until natural pollen is again available. Q You’re Joking Right? Hi, Jerry: I’m planning on traveling to Europe (Lithuania) this summer and I’m also planning to bring several queens with me. How should I handle this so the queens will not die? Thank you for any help on this. Charles A Charles, your email greatly concerns me! You need to check with the Lithuanian Department of Agriculture. I am sure there are numerous forms, permits and requirements for bringing any kind of living creature into their country. Beekeepers traveling with queens in their pockets is how we received some of our most notorious ‘gifts’—namely, varroa and possibly other beekeeping pests as well, such as the recently discovered Nosema ceranae. Lithuania probably has queens that are great for them and we should keep ours to ourselves. Go, but only give and receive knowledge, not queens! Q Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) Question from Germany Dear Mr. Hayes, I am a science journalist in Cologne, Germany, and I’m working on a television report about the mystery ailment that strikes honey bees in the USA, respectively, the phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). A lot of reports have been published during the past few weeks in Germany. There were headlines to read like “AIDS in the beeyard” or “USA loses nearly 80 percent of the honey bee population”. This sounds dramatic or hysterical? In Germany it seems that the topic disappeared from sight as fast as it came up. I haven’t found any article for one week. So, this is for me the moment to ask for the state of affairs with regard to CCD. Was it just a momentary hysteria or is there really a completely new ailment that strikes honey bees? Are the data (70-80% of honey bees vanished in parts of the USA) correct? Some scientists in Germany think that Varroa destructor is the main reason. Was there ever a similar case in the USA? Does the decrease of honey bees correlate to increasing monoculture or genetic engineering? In Germany beekeepers report that it got much harder in the past years to keep the bees as they have become more vulnerable to pathogens. Is this similar in the USA? It would be great if you could take some time to answer these questions. With kind regards, best wishes Dirk Gilson A I’ll try to answer your questions if I can: 1. It appears that we in the US are on course to lose 600,000 to 800,000 colonies out of a total 2.4 million. 2. Hysteria has certainly preceded science, but this is human nature when your business world is collapsing around you. 3. A malady called “Disappearing Disease” is noted in the literature appearing several times since the late 1800s. What we are calling CCD seems to be somewhat different in that the colonies that dwindle to nothing have immune systems which have been compromised, allowing normally occurring organisms to flourish, fungus especially. And, the colonies that are now devoid of honey bees are not being taken over or used for reproduction by the small hive beetle or wax moth immediately. These predators in the tropical/sub-tropical climate of my State of Florida are always present and take over weak colonies quickly. In CCD colonies, they do not take over until 3-4 weeks after the colony collapses. It is as though the colony has to ventilate or air out before they move in, and then it is tentatively. If one takes the dead (now empty) boxes with frames and comb and places them on good strong colonies, those colonies die in a few weeks. I think CCD is different from historical reports of disappearing disease. An analogy may be if you cough, is it because of a cold or the flu or is it TB or AIDS or an allergy to pollen or cancer? The outward symptoms may be similar, the cough, but the cause can be quite different. 4. Causes: Varroa can be a problem and it does compromise honey bee immune systems. But, we have Varroa control products and they are used to control varroa to low levels. Beekeepers with CCD certainly had varroa, but in low numbers. Miticides: Beekeepers put miticides in their colonies to control varroa. We are trying to basically kill a bug on a bug and these chemicals cannot be good in the long term in a bee hive. Environmental toxins: Honey bees can forage efficiently in a 2-21/2 mile radius of their colony. There are a lot of “pollutants” that they are exposed to and can pick up and bring back to the colony. Agricultural Toxins: GMO crops and the toxins expressed in nectar and pollen from them can be collected and the bees feed on them over time. Pesticides such as the neo-nicotinoids like imidacloprid that are used systemically can be translocated to the nectar and collected in sublethal doses and used over time. Genetics: We have a shallow genetic pool. Is this expressing itself in specific weakness? Tracheal Mites: Certainly a stress Small Hive Beetle: Another stress Antibiotics: Used too much to control bacterial diseases, these can stress the bees by eliminating gut flora and fauna that digest food. Bacteria that are added to pollen to start the fermentation process to make bee bread, the bees’ only usable food, is not as easily available when bees are fed antibiotics. Nutrition; See above. And, honey bees may be fed substitute diets of nutritionally incomplete materials, which affect honey bee longevity. Moving: Now load honey bees on a truck and ship them 3,000 miles. New Pathogens or common pathogens that have now become more pathogenic. Beeswax is a chemical sponge. It can store all chemicals that the bees bring in or are exposed to and serves as a reservoir of toxins that the colony is exposed to 24/7/365. There may be other things as well. I am not sure what honey bee stress is but all these things together certainly look like stress to me. If you and I were stressed by chemicals, poor diet, antibiotic therapy, parasites, travel and our house was a reservoir of pollutants I can guarantee you that we would get sick. Are honey bees a very small but significant environmental sentinel that is trying to tell us something about them or the environment they live in? Should we be paying more attention? If the poultry or cattle industry experienced 30%-40%-50% or more losses, we would have people stumbling over themselves to find out why and fix it. The honey bee industry has always been the neglected stepsister of agriculture and it continues. At some point, it may be too late unless we do not care about where or how our food is produced. Then, it is a moot issue. Q California Questions Jerry, just got my April ABJ, and, as always, the first thing I turned to was “The Classroom”. Liked your comments on infant botulism and loved your reply to HO (CA) on imidacloprids. Now, after an introductory like that, don’t you always hunker down for the inevitable “but” or “however” (like you often see in book reviews)? Well, here it comes: But I have to disagree with your statement (p. 297) that “Strong, robust, vital, active honey bee colonies are rarely found in commercial beekeepers’ operations.” I can show you thousands of strong robust colonies in California citrus groves at this time. The best were strong during winter almond pollination, certainly not as strong as they are now, but plenty strong for winter bees. Maybe, if I came to Florida, I’d change my mind. Certainly, overall colony strength is not nearly what it was pre-mite, and probably never will be. The key (in my opinion) is on p. 308 of the current ABJ: “We know that when Varroa mites feed on EHBs, it shuts down the bee’s immune system.” Our bees have AIDS and probably always will. I had the privilege of spending some time with Marla Spivak in Berkeley earlier this week. Marla told me something I wasn’t aware of: That the preliminary results from the bee genome research indicate that honey bees have only 3 or so “immunity genes” (not her words, but the way I interpreted them), far less than other “animals”. (Marla feels that the anti-bacterial-viral properties in propolis have compensated to a certain extent for this impaired immunity defense). Beekeepers who have gone to great lengths to keep their bees “healthy” have less CCD than others. I agree with Dick Marron’s comment (p. 300): “Anyone who thinks this is due to sloppy beekeeping or not keeping on top of the mites, leave the room now.” But, I’d add that beekeepers, who take extraordinary measures to keep their bees healthy, have stronger colonies than those who don’t. The “Einstein quote” ended your CCD reprise (p. 297). This quote has been ubiquitous recently. Singeli Agnew, a grad student in Berkeley is doing a documentary film on honey bees (should be a good one; out in June so she says). Both Marla and I talked with Singeli. Her thesis advisor is the renowned Michael Pollan (author of Botany of Desire and the recent Omnivore’s Dilemma) who is a visiting journalism professor at Berkeley. Pollan advised Singeli to source the quote and I agree 100%. If honey bees are essential to human society, how did the Indians survive before the Europeans invaded N. America? I greatly admire Pollan’s writing skills—he’s a better writer than I’ll ever hope to be—but he makes me cringe with some of his conclusions, which are a bit off the wall (as are many in the organic “movement”). His writing is so seductive though, that one rarely steps back and says, “Now wait a minute here.” He does make many good and valid points, but mixes in a lot of questionable stuff with it. Joe T A Joe, thank you for your comments and your insights. I guess what I meant from my statement is, just as you alluded to, there is sometimes tremendous inconsistency in colony “health” and vigor. Sometimes they are strong, sometimes they aren’t, and many times everything in between. And, this variability can occur throughout the season. Varroa is a big culprit and everything that is used to control it. Add in environmental toxins, agricultural toxins, poor incomplete supplemental nutrition, etc., and honey bees may be the canary in the coal mine. Marla is absolutely right that the honey bee’s immune system, genetically, is pretty shallow. Not only propolis, but also beeswax is an important component. Beeswax in this highly developed communal insect system is a chemical sponge. A poor analogy would be the liver in humans. But, when this sponge fills up, then what? I think we are filling the beeswax comb up pretty fast and it can’t handle the load. So, the colony is exposed to stuff 24/7/365 in synergistic ways and it is not good. The Native Americans did not have 500 acres of European foods that need honey bees as pollinators. They had small acreages of native insect-pollinated and wind-pollinated foods and native pollinators like squash bees, bumble bees, solitary bees in a vast unspoiled (by chemicals) environment with lots of nesting sites to pollinate. Pollan is a good writer and thinker and, yes, he is out there a bit. Sometimes we need these people who operate on the edge to help us see in different ways. Isn’t it interesting, fun and a little scary to be able, at our ages, to look behind and then extrapolate to the future. We can see what is coming, but nobody listens to us because it is too uncomfortable. Fascinating.

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