Serving beekeepers and the public in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley

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Honey Bee Health Coalition

Here is the link to the Honey Bee Coalition it can also be found under our resource tab here on our website. 

https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/

COALITION MISSION

Our mission is to collaboratively implement solutions that will help to achieve a healthy population of honey bees while also supporting healthy populations of native and managed pollinators in the context of productive agricultural systems and thriving ecosystems.

COLLABORATION IN ACTION

We’ve formed the Honey Bee Health Coalition to bring together beekeepers, growers, researchers, government agencies, agribusinesses, conservation groups, manufacturers, and consumer brands to improve the health of honey bees in general and specifically around production agriculture. We’re taking collaborative action to improve honey bee health by addressing multiple factors influencing bee health, including hive pests and disease, forage and nutrition, and exposure to crop pesticides.

BEE FEST This Saturday June 16, 2018

A Celebration of Pollination!
Bees, butterflies, birds and other pollinators – and the flowers they love.

Presented by CATALYST Magazine Slow Food Utah and Wasatch Community Gardens

FREE! 9am-2pm @ the Wasatch Community Gardens’ Green Team Farm: 622 W 100 S, just west of the Gateway)

Workshops
Meet the Experts
Marketplace – ART, CRAFTS, etc.
Plant Sale
Entertainment
Honey-based bake sale
Honey tasting
Kids activities
Pollinator costume contest
More!

Special Guest Speaker Katie Wagoner will speak at our WBA meeting on 4/19/2018 7:00 P.M. Sharp

We are honored to have Katie Wagoner from Utah State University She is a Horticulture Extension Assistant Professor at Utah State University. She works extensively with the Master Gardener Program through USU. She will be speaking on Planting for Pollinators. She plans to have a power point which hopefully we can upload to our website following this presentation.

Also following her presentation, David Bench will talk about splitting hives. Things to look for before splitting and how to do a split. He will bring some empty boxes to show. Hopefully we will have some photo’s to go along with his presentation.

James Strange Presentation from the last WBA meeting

Honey Bee Spring care and nutrition

Useful Videos Including Package Install and more

Learn how to install a package from the comfort of your own home. Under the resource tab above there is a link to several useful videos including Package install and much more.

Jamie Strange will be our Special Guest Speaker for the March 2018 meeting

Jamie Strange will be our guest speaker for the March 2018 meeting. He will be discussing the correlation between honey bees and bumble bees.

My research interests include basic aspects of bumble bee (Bombus) biology and practical aspects of bumble bee culture for pollination.  Several species of bumble bees are being screened for traits that contribute to pollination of greenhouse crops: colony size and longevity, defensive behavior, disease susceptibility and the ease of culture.  Currently, we are rearing colonies from wild-caught queen bumble bees from several western US species (primarily Bombus appositusBombus bifariusand Bombus centralis) to evaluate them as potential commercial pollinators.  I am also looking at the efficacy of using these species in greenhouses and plastic structures.

I am interested in several areas of bumble bee ecology.  One area is the reproductive biology of bees including issues related to polyandry and colony fitness, and dispersal of gynes and males for mating.  Currently, I am using molecular tools (primarily microsatellite DNA) to evaluate the natural mating frequency of several species of bumble bee queens.  Additionally, I am participating in a study of the foraging range of bumble bee colonies and the contribution of wild colonies to pollination of agricultural fields.

Finally, my lab is cooperatively working with researchers at the University of Illinois and the Illinois Natural History Survey to investigate the decline of several North American bee species.  My lab is focusing on the range contraction of B. occidentalisin the western US.  We are investigating the extent of the range contraction and hope to discover the underlying causes of the recent species decline.

Bees head-down in cells: did they starve?

Bees head-down in cells: did they starve?

When you find circles of honey bees head-down in cells, does that mean they starved? Were head-down bees licking the bottom of the cells to get every last morsel of honey?

A reader raised these questions a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve asked many established beekeepers for their thoughts and observations. To my surprise, I then found a post I wrote back in 2011 that answers my own queries. Forgetfulness is embarrassing, so I wrote this two-part series to refresh my own memory.

My most recent post, “Did your bees die of cold or starvation?” was the preamble to this one. Today I want to review some other details of the winter cluster.

The wizardry of warmth

As I said before, honey bees are wizards at keeping themselves warm. According to Jürgen Tautz in The Buzz About Bees, workers have the ability to “uncouple” their wings from their flight muscles. By rapidly quivering those muscles, the bees produce heat which is used to keep the brood and the clustering adults warm.

Because wing muscles are attached to the thorax, close-up thermal images of nurse bees reveal some with glowing thoraces. These hot bees are known as “heater bees.” Where capped brood is present, a single heater bee presses her thorax down on a wax capping, transferring her heat to the developing pupa, one-on-one.

Large areas of brood are punctuated by a certain number of empty cells, usually about 5-10%. In a clever adaptation, these cells are used by heater bees to warm even more of the surrounding brood. The bees climb into the cells head-first and quiver their muscles.

In the past, the bees in these cells were thought to be cleaning or resting, but with the aid of infrared photography, you can see that the bees are producing large amounts of heat. According to Tautz, other bees, sometimes called “retrievers,” search the hive and bring back honey to feed the exhausted heater bees.

Bees head-down are normal

When temperatures are unusually cold or the cluster is dangerously small, many more bees will go head-down into the brood cells. When brood is not present, the nest is kept at a lower temperature, and the head-down bees don’t work as hard. Additional layers of workers cover the head-down bees and provide insulation to trap the heat.

Head-down bees are not trying to find honey. The tight grouping of head-down bees covered by insulating bees is a heat-conserving and energy-efficient design that is continually fed by the retrievers that bring food (fuel) to the quivering bees. Retrievers are adept at what they do and can collect honey from distant areas when conditions are right. Healthy, well-fed, head-in-the-cell bees are a normal part of a winter cluster.

When things go wrong

But things can go amiss. As I mentioned earlier, you may have illness due to disease or parasites, malnutrition, queen failure, poor genetics, predation, or any number of mishaps. If the colony gets too small to generate enough heat, it will die regardless of food availability. Cold bees enter a state of torpor such that their muscles no longer work. When the bees are that cold, they simply cannot operate.

A beekeeper finding circles of head-down bees may claim his bees died of starvation. While that may or may not be true, it’s virtually impossible to separate the effects of cold and starvation. It’s more of a cold/starvation complex, where each condition exacerbates the other. Were they cold because they couldn’t get food? Or did they starve because they were too cold to move? As one beekeeper explained, the only thing you know for sure is that your bees died while clustered.

Looking for other clues

When you see a pattern of dead head-down bees, especially with food nearby, you know something went wrong in the colony. The head-down bees died while trying to keep themselves warm but were unsuccessful. At this point, it’s the beekeeper’s job to do the postmortem and figure out why the colony wasted away.

Start with DWV

Although certainly not the only cause of colony death, deformed wing virus is a major player and the one I most often suspect. Collapse from deformed wing virus, spread by varroa mites, has such a recognizable pattern that it’s hard to miss.

  • The colony was one of your largest
  • The remaining cluster, if any, is small like a grapefruit
  • You may find a small circle of head-down bees, sometimes covered with a fistful of other bees
  • Only a small amount of brood, often with punctured cappings, remains
  • You find few dead bees anywhere else in the hive
  • Partially-emerged bees, some with tongues protruding, are scattered in the brood area
  • It appears your colony absconded
  • Guanine deposits cling to the ceiling of empty brood cells

The reason matters

Trying to determine the cause of colony death is more than pointing a finger at starvation or cold. Unfortunately, beginners often see the head-down circle of bees and instantly conclude that their bees died in a cold snap, and this relieves them of all responsibility for parasite/pathogen management. But when we fail to pinpoint the real problem, we are bound to repeat the mistake. It’s important to ask yourself why the colony was so small or weak it couldn’t take care of itself.

When you see dead head-down bees in their cells, just remember that live head-down bees are a normal part of a winter cluster. They do not enter cells to lick the bottoms but to maximize their chances of keeping the colony warm. Why they didn’t succeed is for you to figure out.

Source https://honeybeesuite.com/bees-head-down-in-cells-did-they-starve/

Utah State Beekeeping Association Annual Meeting 

February 23 & 24:
Utah State Beekeeping Association Annual Meeting *
Location is at the Hyatt Place Hotel in Lehi Utah
Cost is $20.00 which includes membership in the Utah Beekeepers Association.
Dinner is an extra $25.00
*This is NOT included with your WBA Membership

Beekeeping Beginner Class 1/18/2018 at 6:30PM

Beginning Beekeeping Classes*
1/18/2018 6:30pm
Salt Lake County Council Chambers
2001 South State Street N1100, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115
What your equipment looks like and what it is called
Plan where you are going to put your bees
Constant water source
What will they forage on
Sign up to be a member for only $20 a year at the event.
This class is for members only*

Your 2018 Association Dues are now due

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