Florida melitto files Bee Involved: Learn to Keep Solitary Bees and Wasps july – sept 2012 IF YOU are reading this, you are most likely already a beekeeper with an appreciation for honey bees. You probably know that we rely on bees to pollinate our crops and that a third of our food is made possible by bee-mediated pollination. You are also undoubtedly aware of the many problems facing honey bees such as pesticides, pathogens, pests, diseases and colony collapse disorder. We would have never known about many of these bee ailments without beekeepers like you. ere are an estimated 20,000 species of bees worldwide, 4,000 in North America, and and nectar or prey. She lays an egg on the provisioned food and then seals off the cell. She may create a series of cells in a hollow reed capped with leaf pieces, a cluster of cells sealed with grass in a hole made by a woodpecker, or any number of niches, depending on the species of bee or wasp. Aſter sealing the final cell, she will leave her brood to care for themselves and fly off in search of another suitable nest location. e solitary female will likely die before her offspring develop into adults. Independently, the larvae hatch from their eggs, eat the food in their cells, and grow substantially larger until they develop into pupae. When adults emerge they chew their way out of their cells, and each flies off in search of a mate. How do you become a solitary bee or wasp keeper? Simple — you just need to provide nesting habitat. Nesting habitat can be as simple as an untreated 4×4 with holes drilled into it, or a bundle of bamboo. e habitat can be as creative as you like. Any series of holes or tubes that have an inside Continued on page 8 Jason Graham — Ph.D. Student, University of Florida HBREL over 300 species of bees known in Florida. We manage only about eight species of bees, and only three of these are native to North America. e majority of bees are solitary. Solitary bees are important pollinators, and they do not sting to defend their nests. Solitary wasps also do some pollination and provide pest control by collecting caterpillars, grasshoppers and other garden pests as prey. We recently created a website to help you learn to keep solitary bees and wasps. UF Native Buzz is a citizen science project through which participants like you can contribute to our understanding of solitary bees and wasps by monitoring nesting habitat in your backyard, garden, apiary or other natural area. e goal of the project is to learn more about the nesting preferences, biodiversity, and distribution of solitary bees and wasps and to identify new species and potentially manageable species. e solitary female bee or wasp finds a suitable nesting location and collects and provisions the nest with pollen Joint publication: Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services University of Florida/ Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences VOL 6 | ISSUE 3 News for bee lovers A solitary bee explores a bamboo nest. Jason Graham, UF/IFAS Visit www.ufnativebuzz.com today!
Transcript
Floridamelitto
files
Bee Involved:Learn to Keep Solitary Bees and Wasps
july – sept 2012
IF YOU are reading this, you are most likely already a beekeeper with an appreciation for honey bees. You probably know that we rely on bees to pollinate our crops and that a third of our food is made possible by bee-mediated pollination. You are also undoubtedly aware of the many problems facing honey bees such as pesticides, pathogens, pests, diseases and colony collapse disorder. We would have never known about many of these bee ailments without beekeepers like you.
There are an estimated 20,000 species of bees worldwide, 4,000 in North America, and
and nectar or prey. She lays an egg on the provisioned food and then seals off the cell. She may create a series of cells in a hollow reed capped with leaf pieces, a cluster of cells sealed with grass in a hole made by a woodpecker, or any number of niches, depending on the species of bee or wasp. After sealing the final cell, she will leave her brood to care for themselves and fly off in search of another suitable nest location. The solitary female will likely die before her offspring develop into adults. Independently, the larvae hatch from their eggs, eat the food in their cells, and grow substantially larger until they develop into pupae. When adults emerge they chew their way out of their cells, and each flies off in search of a mate.
How do you become a solitary bee or wasp keeper? Simple — you just need to provide nesting habitat. Nesting habitat can be as simple as an untreated 4×4 with holes drilled into it, or a bundle of bamboo. The habitat can be as creative as you like. Any series of holes or tubes that have an inside
Continued on page 8
Jason Graham — Ph.D. Student, University of Florida HBREL
over 300 species of bees known in Florida. We manage only about eight species of bees, and only three of these are native to North America. The majority of bees are solitary. Solitary bees are important pollinators, and they do not sting to defend their nests. Solitary wasps also do some pollination and provide pest control by collecting caterpillars, grasshoppers and other garden pests as prey.
We recently created a website to help you learn to keep solitary bees and wasps. UF Native Buzz is a citizen science project through which participants like you can contribute to our understanding of solitary bees and wasps by monitoring nesting habitat in your backyard, garden, apiary or other natural area. The goal of the project is to learn more about the nesting preferences, biodiversity, and distribution of solitary bees and wasps and to identify new species and potentially manageable species.
The solitary female bee or wasp finds a suitable nesting location and collects and provisions the nest with pollen
Joint publication:
Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services
University of Florida/ Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences
VOL 6 | ISSUE 3News for bee lovers
A solitary bee explores a bamboo nest.Jason Graham, UF/IFAS
Visit www.ufnativebuzz.com today!
FDACS/DPI
David Westervelt, FDACS/DPIAsst. Chief, Apiary Inspection
FROM THE DESK OF
DAVID WESTERVELT
What’s in a Name?Have you ever thought about what is in a name? FDACS/DPI / BP&AI/AIS is known to most of you as the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services/Division of Plant Industry / Bureau of Plant and Apiary Inspection/Apiary Inspection Section. All you re-ally need to know is that we are Apiary Inspection. If you think that, you may be missing out on some wonderful resources our department has to offer.
Have you ever thought about the rest of the name? What is the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services? Aren’t they the people that have the “Do Not Call List,” the auto “Lemon Law,” or lemons? I guess they could have a small part to do with honey bees.What is the Division of Plant Industry or the Bureau of Plant and Apiary Inspection? What do they all have to do with beekeeping?
When you dissect the name it might give you a better under-standing of what you are getting when you call for an apiary inspection. First, the inspection team has 400 combined years of keeping bees and over 180 years
in inspection of bees, which is the most important thing a beekeeper needs during hive inspections — experience. But what if you call your inspec-tor because of something else: a new insect you found in the hive, a plant you found bloom-ing, or your hives are dead with dead bees all around them, or honey that doesn’t look right at the farmer’s market. Your inspector can help you connect to the rest of the network which provides an array of services.
Here is how the rest of the name comes into play. The Florida Department of Agricul-ture and Consumer Services = 19 divisions and offices. Here are some divisions and their associated bureaus that are very important to beekeepers: Agriculture Environmental Services
(AES): Works with pesticides, from registering to misuses; runs the statewide mosquito control program.
Fruit and Vegetables: Inspects and regulates all pollinated fruit in Florida.
Marketing and Development: Up-to-date blogging. For those that are computer proficient, you can keep abreast of everything that involves agriculture.
Forestry (Florida Forest Service): Helps to obtain apiary locations.
Data Processing Center: Current computer programs with website updates, updated computers and equipment with GPS capabilities, and soon to be implemented, on-line payment capabilities to expedite inspectors services to expanding beekeepers.
Florida Melitto Files | News for Bee Lovers
Plant Industry: We are a part of this — the Bureau of Plant and Apiary Inspection. When it comes to knowledge of honey bees, this is where it is most obtainable for beekeepers, as well as other Florida consumers.
j Bureau of Entomology, Nematology & Plant Pathology (and Botany) • Entomology: Small hive beetle
(SHB), pollen beetles, Varroa mites. • Nematology: Nematode control of
the SHB.• Pathology: Identification of
American Foulbrood (AFB), European Foulbrood (EFB), Nosema, and other emerging pathogens.
• Botany: Identification of all plant material, honey plants and bloom information.
j Bureau of Methods and Develop-ment & Biological Control Research on products for the control and eradication of honey bee pests, including new mite treatments.
j Bureau of Technical Assistance African honey bee educational materials, educational fair handouts, videos, accurate press releases.
In addition, there are some small but very important behind-the-scenes sections like person-nel, training, fiscal, mail room, maintenance, and administration sections, and without them we could not get the job done. But don’t forget! The most important person in apiary is you, the regis-tered beekeeper! Without you we would just be inspectors.
Please remember you are the keeper of the bees; with time will come knowledge. As a good keeper you should share your knowledge and expertise, so please be a mentor and pay it forward to feed our nation.
july – sept 2012
AS BEEKEEPERS, we are all aware of how unique and amaz-ing the mating process is for the honey bee. Most of our interest and wonder tends to focus on the queen. As we know, a virgin queen leaves her home colony during her first weeks of life for a series of mating flights. But where does she go?
She is on a mission to find drones, and will mate with upwards of 20 over the course of her mating flights. Drone honey bees are not continuously distributed in the environment; they clump at specific congrega-tion areas. These Drone Congre-gation Areas (DCAs) were first identified in 1958 and are still, in some ways, perplexing research-ers today. In general, drones fly on calm, sunny afternoons dur-ing the breeding season to con-gregation areas in hopes of mat-ing with a virgin queen. DCAs occur at 10-30 meters above the ground and are formed whether a queen is present or not.
Drone congregation areas oc-cur in the same location day after day, season after season, over the course of many years. It is still unclear how drones find these areas, and even more perplexing is how the first drones to emerge in the spring are able to locate the previous year’s congregation areas. Moreover, if a colony is moved to a new area the drones can immediately locate the re-gional congregation areas.
Drones do not simply fly to a congregation area and wait for a queen. Flying to and within the congregation area uses a lot of energy. This could mean starva-
tion for a drone in a matter of just 30 minutes. Consequently, they prefer to visit closer congre-gation areas (within 0.5 – 2.0 km from their colony) making mul-tiple trips in one day, returning to their colony often to be fed.
Furthermore, a drone may not always visit the same congrega-tion area, and may visit several DCAs in a single day. Drones appear to prefer to frequent the most popular congregation areas. They will leave a congregation area with only a few drones in favor of one with many drones.
The suspected purpose of large congregation areas is to ensure genetic diversity in the honey bee population. Each colony sends drones to several nearby congregations and in regions with many managed colonies. It has been estimated that there are up to 16,000 drones from over 200 colonies represented at a single congregation area. The benefit of such a large drone presence is that it reduces the likelihood that a virgin queen will mate with a drone produced by her own colony.
When a virgin queen enters a congregation area the drones are initially attracted to her man-dibular pheromone. However, once the drones get close they orient themselves with the queen based on vision. The drones chase her in “comets” of 20–40 drones jockeying for position to mount the queen. Vision is such a strong cue for the drones that they will mistakenly chase other insects, inanimate objects, or even birds once they have detect-ed the queen’s pheromone. Many
Ashley Mortensen observes a drone trap.
predators become overwhelmed by the drones chasing them and leave the area. Researches think that by chasing away predators drones may be inadvertently keeping the queen safe from predators during breeding.
When the queen is ready to return to her colony she can terminate her mating flight by simply flying out of the congregation area. Drones appear to be more strongly at-tracted to the actual location of the congregation area than to the queen herself. Once she has flown beyond the boundary of the congregation area the drones pursuing her will stop and re-turn to the central region of the congregation area, allowing the queen to quickly return to the safety of her colony.
Despite not knowing exactly how drones choose and locate congregation areas, DCAs have proven to be extremely informa-tive in research studies. Since any colony that is strong enough to swarm produces drones, trap-ping drones in a given congrega-tion area effectively samples all managed and feral reproductive colonies in the region. From that sample, drones can be collected and genetically analyzed, giving us as researchers a unique op-portunity to analyze the popula-tion. This is a component of what I am working on for my Master’s thesis at the HBREL, and I hope to be able to share more with you as my research progresses!
Drone Congregation Areas:Love is in the AirAshley Mortensen, M.S. Student, HBREL
Ten Tips from a Backyard Beekeeper Michelle Peterson, President, Treasure Coast Beekeepers Association
AS AN AVID gardener, I became interested in beekeeping after noticing an absence of honey bees around my home and later learning about colony collapse disorder. My husband, Herbie, and I attended a CCD lecture at Oxbow Eco Center, a local envi-ronmental learning center in St. Lucie County. The speaker urged everyone to become backyard beekeepers — and we did. Now, four years later, I’ve come up with some tips that might help future backyard beekeepers manage their new hives safely and efficiently.
Tip 1: Tell your immediate neighbors that you plan to start beekeeping. You may wish to keep it a secret, but they’ll find out anyway. Once you don your veil and fire up that smoker, the cat will be out of the bag. Be prepared to educate them about the benefits of bees.
Tip 2: Determine your purpose for keeping honey bees. Is it for pollination? Or do you want to harvest honey? Knowing why will help you decide upon the type of hive you set up. If you are only seeking the benefits of pollination, a top bar hive may be perfect for you. It can be fairly compact and will not require the lifting of heavy supers. However top bar hives can be a bit challenging when it comes to honey harvest-ing and swarm control. If you want to bottle the sweet stuff, the traditional Langstroth hive may be the better choice.
Tip 3: Be considerate about hive placement. Place your hives as far from neighboring property as possible. Although it’s better to face your hives east or south, do what is best for your neighbor-hood. Consider placing the hive
entrance within a few feet of a privacy fence, a tall/wide shrub, or other flight obstacle. This will force the bees to fly up and over, well above the heads of local residents.
Tip 4: If you choose the Langstroth hive, choose a size that will be easy to handle. For many with limited upper body strength or bad backs, beekeeping ceases to be fun when you drop a 60- or 70-pound super. If I had to start all over again, I would choose all eight-frame mediums. First, they are easy to manage. Second, having just one size super makes life simple.
Tip 5: Provide a nearby source of water. We’ve all heard stories about bees flocking to the neigh-bor’s swimming pool for a sip. I place an entrance feeder with wa-ter at each of my hives, and keep them filled all summer long. Do whatever is easiest for you, but it is best to a have a constant source of fresh water on your property.
Tip 6: Limit your use of pesti-cides. What you use to kill a weed or a pesky bug may also kill bees. If the product is toxic to honey bees it will be printed on the label, so always inspect all labels carefully. I recommend choosing products that are nontoxic to honey bees and water-soluble rather than granular, which bees might mistake for grains of pol-len. To avoid exposure to foraging bees, spray plants before they are in bloom and make a point to treat in the evening.
Tip 7: Be prepared for swarm season. There is nothing that will panic neighbors more than seeing a swirling swarm soaring from your bee yard into their tree. So schedule more time to work with
your hives one to two weeks prior to heavy nectar flows, when the bees are typically preparing to swarm, as well as every 7 to10 days during the flow. Otherwise, you may get a knock on your door with a request to remove “your bees” from a tree next door.
Tip 8: Alert your local mos-quito control program about your hives. Many municipalities do regular mosquito spraying, and the insecticides that kill mos-quitoes may kill your bees. With notification, the agency may stop spraying in your neighborhood as they did for me, spray at night, or contact you prior to spraying so that you can move your hives or provide additional protection for your bees.
Tip 9: Become a registered Florida beekeeper — it’s the law. Becoming registered will not only keep you in compliance with state statues, but it will be a great investment in your beekeep-ing education. Your state apiary inspector is a wealth of knowledge and information, and you will learn more and more with each inspection visit.
Tip 10: Join your local beekeep-ing club or association, as well as the Florida State Beekeepers Asso-ciation, which envelops all clubs. Support, mentoring, education, hands-on learning, networking — these are just a few reasons why joining is such a great idea. There is no better experience than being part of a community of individuals who share a passion for honey bees.
Follow these tips (and I’m certain you’ll soon add a few of your own), and you’ll keep your neighbors and your backyard bees quite content.
Florida Melitto Files | News for Bee Lovers
For more information, visit www.floridabeekeepers.org
Dr. Jamie EllisUF Assistant Professor
july – sept 2012
uf/ifas
I WRITE this article after five long months of abnormal heat; it has been hot since January. While many people move to Florida so they can enjoy the long period of warm weather, the perpetual heat has an unknown impact on European honey bees and those who work with them. Recall that the honey bees beekeepers manage in the U.S. are derived from stock im-ported from Europe. These bees are temperate-race bees, i.e., they “need” a winter dormant period that allows the colony to reset itself.
Honey bee colonies in Florida rarely get time off. Bee-keepers feed bees beginning in December, getting them ready for the pollination contracts that can begin as early as late Janu-ary. Many honey bee colonies in Florida go to California to pollinate the almond trees that bloom in February and March. My colonies in north central Florida have made almost a super of honey by the time Feb-ruary is over! Our Florida bees do this through spring, summer, and through fall in most cases. The “down time” for most honey bee colonies in Florida is from Thanksgiving to December, depending on where you live.
Honey bees are known for working hard. After all, the slogan “busy as a bee” perme-ates our vernacular. However, is it possible that we are working our bees too hard, expecting too much out of them? Of course,
that is entirely possible. Most people do not know that honey bees do in fact “sleep.” There is a period of rest for most bees at some point during the day. I have spent countless hours doing research on observation hives. The thing that always amazes me is how many bees in a colony are doing NOTHING, or seemingly nothing, at any given time. These bees just stand there with their eyes open — no, they could not shut them even if they wanted to. Bees do need rest. I suspect the same is true of colonies.
We have had a very warm spring in Florida. This got the bees up and out of their colonies in January; they have been working ever since. Yet, the im-pact of long, warm years on bees also affects bee pests and patho-gens. I have lived in many places and seen beekeeping all over the world. I honestly can say that keeping bees strong and healthy in Florida is as difficult as it is to accomplish anywhere. Our bees never sleep — neither do their pests and pathogens! Florida colonies rarely go dormant, thus supporting year-round populations of varroa, small hive beetles, foulbrood diseases, etc. Florida bee colonies have Nosema — supposedly a “cold climate problem” — as badly as bee colonies in the northern-most United States.
Perpetually working bees also means perpetually work-ing beekeepers. Beekeeping
is a 24-hour-a-day enterprise in Florida. Beekeepers work around the clock, most days of the year. I am constantly in-trigued by the amount of effort it takes to keep bees commer-cially in Florida: late nights, hot days, long hours, scorching sun, and oh yeah, stings.
My team and I even feel it in the bee research world. Many of my colleagues get the benefit of having abbreviated field re-search seasons — though many of them say that is a negative. The field season never stops here. In a way, this is good. We are able to do a lot of work and have access to what we need most of the year. On the other hand, we do not get enough winter break to pour ourselves into working on manuscripts, repairing equipment, etc.
What is the conclusion of the matter? Honey bees, beekeep-ers, bee inspectors, and bee researchers in Florida work hard! We all are presented with a unique set of challenges that make keeping bees in Florida difficult, but very rewarding! Please contact me or members of my lab if there is anything that we can do to help you. We are all in this together!
SUMMER – the season of WORK
FROM THE DESK OF
DR. JAMIE ELLIS
This article first appeared in Melitto Files Vol. 5, Issue 3
&DACS-P-01492
David Westervelt
Bureau of Plant and Apiary InspectionDivision of Plant Industry
Preceding the annual Florida State Beekeepers Convention
Tampa, Florida
Registration and details to follow at www.ufhoneybee.com
FSBA information at www.floridabeekeepers.org
Registration opens October 1, 2012
diameter of 1/8" to 3/8" and depth of 3" to 8" will work. Examples of nests, building plans, identification guides and more can be found on the UF Native Buzz website. After you set up your nest, you can then monitor it by looking for holes capped with different nesting materials that indicate the nest is being used.
We have methods online to help you collect and identify the solitary bees and wasps nesting in your site. You can share that data with us and other participants worldwide. Whether you are an experienced beekeeper or are just getting started, consider trying out solitary bee and wasp keeping, and help us learn more about the other buzz in your backyard.
