Do pesticides impact pollen and bees?

On Friday, May the 4th, these two light saber- vacuum-wielding grad students came to Prairie Blossom Bee Farm to harvest some bees from our hives -- about 100 bees total. They set up a piece of screen to increase their chances of capturing bees before they slipped into the hive with their baskets full of pollen.

Nice bee vacuum!

I wonder how they found us?

Thanks, Harry & Angus! ;-)

 My understanding is that they are going to test the pollen our bees gather now, and then test again later in the summer, to check the pesticide load in the pollen.

I'm excited that MSU is conducting research on this important topic. Hopefully their findings will help bee colonies all over America thrive.

Even Pansies Have Pollen

I took this photo today. The porch bees loved the warm weather. I saw a small patch of aster still blooming -- it's lasted much longer than usual, which is good news for the bees.

We hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. We enjoyed time with Mark's dad Bert and his wife Betty. This morning, some of us ate our honey and peanut butter on top of sweet potato pancakes.  Now that's what I call breakfast.

If Honey Contains No Pollen . . . It's NOT Honey!

I hope I get to meet Richard someday.  He has yet another thoughtful post on what real honey is on his blog.  He also has a link to an article on food safety that describes how three-fourths of honey sold in grocery stores does not fit the definition of honey. It has been filtered so extensively it has no pollen. Thus, it cannot be traced back to its country of origin . . . you see where I'm going with this. Honey from China and India has been found to be contaminated with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals.

Folks, if you click on that food safety link, you will see that they name names.  I love that.  I also like confirmation that those $1.99 honey bears we saw at Kroger were exactly what we thought they were: glorified supertreated liquid sugar, called honey.

"Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and "natural" stores like PCC and Trader Joe's had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen. "

Buy local! ;-)

FYI: our honey, especially the cotton blossom honey, is starting to sugar in this cooler weather. On Sunday we put on a big pot of water, heated it on low, and put our various partial jars in to slowly liquefy. It worked just fine. We suggest you to avoid microwaving your honey (it kills the beneficial enzymes) or boiling it rapidly.

Photos from a mid-September Inspection

It had been so long since it felt like a hobby!  On a cooler Saturday, Mark and I went to Bee Hill to do a brief inspection.

With the honey harvested, the pressure was off in terms of making many notes. We just opened each hive, made sure there was evidence that everything was in proper order (queen right, no infestations of mites or beetles), and closed it back up again. 

Can you see the almost mature bees' faces? They're still being fed, not yet closed up. You can also see the drone brood poking up above the level of the worker brood.

I noticed dark orange and golden pollen in the pollen baskets of many bees, but without a major nectar flow or the super hot temperatures of summer, the bee yard seemed calm.

See the rows of dark pollen stored for winter?

No masses of bees bearding on the fronts of the hives for the most part. No aggression (until Hive 1, the meanest bees in our yard). Just a pleasant time in the bee yard. I'd missed it.

Introducing a New Bee Yard and Hive: Barhams' Bees 1

We're blessed with fabulous friends who support our passion for bees.  Eldon and Frances Barham let us set up three "Back Saver 1000" stands on the opposite side of their lake in the middle of March (and I have an entire post of pictures to share about that process eventually). Remember that swarm call on March 22nd? Those bees ended up with lakeside accommodations, with both ag fields and one of the finest gardens I've ever seen near enough to supply their every need.

Waterfront Property for the Bees.

We paid the bees a visit this afternoon to check and see how they were doing.  Mark has fed them bee tea twice, and today the jar was empty.  He traded the jar for a round feeder he picked up last week at Rossman (that's another post too!).  But before we put it on, we decided to check and see if we could see wax, brood, etc.

So, here is BB1 as Frances and I decided to call it.  

Above the deep hive body there is a feeder board that has an entrance hole so bees can go in  at the top or bottom or the hive.  We noticed the yellow stain from pollen hitting the board as they fly in. The bee on the right is loaded up with pollen.

Eldon Barham, who really wants to get closer to see what is going on.

My dear friend Frances, who sat in Mark's truck to watch the proceedings. Eldon was stung once years ago and had a terrible reaction, so she's not thrilled with Eldon's fascination with the bees at this point, but thinks they're far away enough from the house to be permitted to stay.

Mark fired up the smoker, just in case. It was sunny but very windy, and the bees have stung him repeatedly both times he's come out to feed them.

A bonus bug sighting! This grasshopper was soaking up some sun on the metal cover.

This is the first frame we pulled out.  The bees are grouped around open, uncapped honey/nectar. Notice the yellow pollen stains on the tops of the frames closest to the entrance!

I backed up to get a shot of Mark working and was excited to see so many bees and some solid yellow, capped brood.

This is when we got really excited.  That appears to be solid capped brood, with uncapped brood just below it (the white mushy stuff is bee larvae!).  They're also storing pollen around the edges of the brood (the gold stuff on the bottom).  Mark said, "I bet this is one of our high dollar queens who swarmed off."  Often when a swarm leaves, the queen is older and needs to be replaced. But this one is doing a fantastic job.  I saw her before Mark did, which always tickles me. I love finding the queen! (If you click on any of the photos, you should be able to see larger versions of the pictures.)

It's no big surprise these bees are thriving, because everyone who comes to the Barhams' house is pampered and fed well.  Eldon wanted us to take home some frozen figs and corn, but we knew we weren't going home soon, so we had to turn him down. 

We spent the next several hours on bee-related tasks, but that's a story for another day, as we were putting up swarm traps and looking at a tear-out in someone's house.

Saturday's Hive Inspection

While on a Saturday morning walk, we took a peek at the bees. The bees were coming and going from all of the hives, their pollen baskets loaded with bright yellow pollen. Henbit is starting to bloom along the roadsides, and we may have maples blooming, but the pollen surprised us. What we saw inside the hives -- masses of bees on the tops of the frames -- *seemed* to be the common signal that the bees were out of honey and couldn't climb any higher in their search.  In the hives where we'd put a pollen patty, they were covering the supplemental food source. Of special concern was Hive 1, our strongest hive thus far.  If they didn't have any food, we'd lose our top hive to starvation.

We rushed back to the house.  I started cooking up bee tea, Mark stared loading the 4-wheeler with feeders and related equipment, and we grabbed all of the gear we have so our weekend guests, Michael and Michele Rainey, could join in the fun.

Since the weather was so incredibly beautiful (in the mid 70s!), we decided to do full inspections so we could see if we had brood, what the remaining honey and pollen stores were, and to make sure we hadn't gotten any pests.

Hive 4 had eaten one entire candy patty, and the warm weather had turned the second one to a gooey mess. Surprisingly, they had honey and pollen, though few frames had full amounts of drawn comb.  The bees were few in number, but there was some capped brood, and they weren't aggressive. 

Hives 2 & 3, started from the nucs we'd bought, had medium populations.  We saw the queen in both, little to no brood yet (though we didn't inspect every frame), and some full frames of honey, along with pollen stores.Michael and Michele took turns wearing Mark's extra shirt, veil, and gloves so they could see what was going on. They couldn't believe how heavy one frame of honey was.

Then we got to Hive 1.  Mark was working without gloves, and to this point had no problem.  Of course, as I reminded him, Hive 1 is our most aggressive colony, and he had pulled a medium super full of honey, plus about 2 frames on the deep brood box before they started stinging his hands. They appear to have loads of honey, and may be "honey bound" meaning they don't have room to reproduce.  Mark may put a deep super underneath the current set in hopes that they'll expand into the space, avoid swarming, and have room for the queen to lay eggs.  We closed up Hive 1 without inspecting too much, as there was a lot of brace comb sealing the frames together, and Mark's hands were under attack.

We didn't have a camera to take any photos, so here is a photo from a beekeeper in Scotland, who blogs at Border Bees Diary.  This is what our bees looked like.

The bee tea is in the refrigerator, just in case we need to feed in the next week or two.