BEE NEWSLETTER. Inside This Issue. Contact Us. March Henderson County Beekeepers. Marvin A. Owings, Jr., County Extension Director

Transcription

1 BEE NEWSLETTER Henderson County Center March/April 2012 March 2012 Inside This Issue To: Henderson County Beekeepers From: Marvin A. Owings, Jr., County Extension Director What: Next meeting When: Monday, March 19, 2012 from 7-9:00 p.m. Where: Extension Office (Jackson Park) Apiculture Update Master Beekeeping Bee Informed Bears Destroy Beehives... 4 Important Dates Contact Us Henderson County Center 100 Jackson Park Road Hendersonville, NC Phone: Fax: This newsletter written and/or edited by Marvin A. Owings, Jr. Distributed in furtherance of the acts of Congress of May 8 and June 30, North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T State University commit themselves to positive action to secure equal opportunity regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, religion, sex, age, veteran status or disability. In addition, the two Universities welcome all persons without regard to sexual orientation. North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T State University, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and local governments cooperating. Dear Beekeeper, I want to thank all our beekeepers who helped put on our annual Winter Bee School. It was another very successful school. The overall quality of the training was rated very satisfied. According to local beekeepers, the honeybee population and health looks good, as long as the weather holds (no cold injury). Over the past few weeks bees have been bringing in pollen and nectar from Alders, Willows and Maples. Bees are usually active around depending on weather conditions such as wind and moisture. You should be building empty swarm boxes to include frames and foundation. March in Your Beeyard: Inspect colonies twice for stores, queenright, diseases, and mites. Move brood nest down and replace bad combs. Put out swarm boxes with phernome lures. Look for pollination contacts. April in Your Bee yard: Inspect colonies twice for congestion, queenright, stores, diseases, mites, brood pattern and queen cells. Prepare for swarming. Divide colonies or requeen. Install packages. Remove all drugs at least 4 weeks before the honey flow. Prepare supers for honey flow. Advertise for bee removal service.

2 North Carolina Cooperative Extension Apiculture Update Dr. David Tarpy, Department of Entomology, NCSU There has been a big story in the media concerning a new pest of honey bees. The Pararitia Fly which has been gaining traction and (unfortunately) has been equated with Colony Collapse Disorder. These so-called "zombie flies", more technically the phorid fly Apocephalus borealis, was just reported to be parasitizing honey bees (in addition to their previously known host, bumble bees). While this is an interesting development, I believe that more evidence is needed before making any strong inferences concerning the phorid fly as a significant management concern. First, honey bee infestation is a relatively newly described phenomenon, and early screens of CCD samples (both by physical autopsy as well as genetic microarray analysis) did not reveal any evidence of this parasitoid. That said, since the fly seems to preferentially attack foragers, and the early CCD samples were taken from hives (and thus more likely to be younger bees), it is possible that the flies may have been missed by sampling error. Second, in reading the original study, the parasitism rates of active foragers was actually quite low (~5%), so it is unclear how prominent a phenomenon this might be under natural field conditions. Infestation rates of "stranded" bees, those captured at lights during the night away from their hives, were much higher (~50%). It remains unclear, however, if these rates of parasitism are consistent with the rapid population declines of colonies that is the hallmark of CCD. We are currently working with collaborators in CA to see if we can perform the same light-trapping technique as described in the original study and detect any phorid flies in other areas. I've copied our State Apiarist, Don Hopkins, to see if he may be interested in doing the same in NC. I will keep you apprised of any significant developments concerning this issue. Master Beekeeping Program Steve Langefeld, NC Beekeepers Association If you are interested in the Master Beekeeper Program.go to click on "Master Beekeeper" on the home page and review the changes to the program. If you have individuals in your club seeking to take the Journeyman or Master Beekeeper test and hope to do that at the spring meeting, please contact Greg Clements at or gclements@worldpatents.com. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions and I will do my best to help navigate this new process. Attached (see page 3) you will find a resolution passed by Wake County Beekeepers. Please review it and present it to you local chapter/club. Please feel free to use it as a template for a similar resolution or simply endorse the present resolution. It is the hope that having as many of the local chapters endorsing it will provide The Honey Board of the NCSBA a greater voice and presence with the Dept. of Agriculture and in turn begin to change the sale of honey that in misrepresented and sold at the Farmers Markets across the state. If your chapter endorses the resolution, please get a signed copy by your club president back to me as soon as possible. Bee Informed The Bee Informed Partnership is an extension project that endeavors to decrease the number of managed honey bee colonies that die over the winter. Since the winter of , overwintering colonies in the US have died in large numbers. Affected beekeepers span the entire spectrum of the industry: migratory beekeepers to stationary beekeepers; and commercial beekeepers, part-time beekeepers, to backyard beekeepers. Migratory and stationary beekeepers alike have, on average, lost 30% or more of their overwintering colonies over the last several years. These losses are unsustainable. If they continue, they threaten not only the livelihoods of beekeepers who manage bees, but the livelihood of farmers who require bees to pollinate their crops. continued on page 5 2

3 A Resolution Pertaining to the Sale of Mis-labeled Honey at North Carolina Farmers Markets Whereas, honey bees are essential to the North Carolina agricultural economy, and Whereas, honey produced by North Carolina s some 10,000 beekeepers provides an important source of their income, and Whereas, the value of honey bee pollination to North Carolina agriculture crops is estimated at nearly $200 million annually, and Whereas, honey bee pollination is essential for one third of all the food crops we eat, and Whereas, in order for honey to continue to be an important food product, it is important that consumers trust the quality of honey products they buy, and Whereas, to promote and protect the quality of honey sold, the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association (NCSBA), in cooperation with the North Carolina Farm Bureau and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDACS) spent a year developing a standard of identity for honey, and Whereas, a standard of identity for honey is important in that it gives confidence to consumers that when they buy a product labeled honey in North Carolina, they can be assured it is just that, pure honey, nothing less, and Whereas, to enforce the honey standard the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association was asked to create a Honey Board to investigate complaints and potential violations of the honey standard, and to report potential violations to the Food and Drug Division of the NCDACS, and Whereas, the NCSBA has identified a significant violation of the honey standard by a vendor operating as Smokey Mountain Honey House with his base of operations on the premises of the Asheville Farmers Market, a facility funded and owned by the citizens of North Carolina, and Whereas, products by Smokey Mountain Honey House are distributed widely throughout North Carolina; the three samples tested as part of this investigation were purchased at the Raleigh Farmers Market, and Whereas, in September of 2011, three products labeled as Pure Sourwood Honey, marketed by the Smokey Mountain Honey House were purchased at the Raleigh Farmers Market, and Whereas, these products when tested by the Palynology Lab at Texas A&M University were found to have zero content of sourwood pollen. One sample tested 87% basswood pollen, a second sample tested 75% holly pollen and a third sample tested zero pollen content of any kind. Under the criteria of the honey standard, to be labeled as to a specific floral source, honey must contain a pollen count of at least 51% matching the labeled honey, and Whereas, sourwood honey is considered to be a premium product and thereby commands a premium price while ultra filtered honey with pollen removed is used primarily as a baking sweetener and when properly labeled sells for only a fraction of what premium honey brings, and Whereas, the Texas A&M Palynology Research Laboratory is a highly respected and nationally acclaimed lab. Among its diverse clients are: the CIA, FBI, U.S. Homeland Security Department, the Federal Drug Administration, and most state departments of agriculture, now therefore Be it Resolved by the Wake County Beekeepers Association, that the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services remove from its premises all mis-labeled products by Smokey Mountain Honey House and those of any vendor found to be mis-labeling honey, and Be it Further Resolved that the Department ban the sale of honey found to be mis-labeled as to its floral source at all Farmers Markets operated by the Department, and Be it Further Resolved that the North Carolina Board of Agriculture adopt a standard of identity for honey. Date: January 10, 2012 Signed: Andrew S. Currin President Wake County Beekeepers Association

4 Bears Destroy Beehives A family of bears tore apart a Southwest area beehive colony this week looking for honey and bees to eat, according to a local beekeeper who says he is out more than $15,000. Julian Wooten, who has been keeping bees for more than 50 years, said he has never seen a bear attack on a beehive like the one that happened this week. I ve been farming bees all my adult life, my first ones when I was 15, he said, adding that he s seen a couple of bear attacks over the years, but nothing on this scale. The bears a mama and two or three cubs, judging by tracks, claw and teeth marks destroyed 30 bee colonies, Wooten said. Wooten, who sells his honey at the Southwest Strawberry Farm on Pony Farm Road, says he operates around 600 bee colonies, most of them in Florida with a few in California for almond pollination. The setback caused by the bears is costly, he said. The colony destroyed by the bears Wednesday night or Thursday morning is the first time in 15 years that bears have literally eaten Wooten s profits. The bears had a rare and expensive meal. The colony that was eaten was made up of a chemical-free survivor stock that Wooten has been breeding for 12 years to select queens from. This is a major blow to my business, he said. Wooten said he knew there was and always is a possibility of a bear attack, but he hadn t previously had a problem with them in the Southwest area. The Daily News reported on a black bear strolling through the Brynn Marr neighborhood in 2010 and N.C. State Wildlife officials said black bears can be found anywhere in Onslow County. Due to the extra warm autumn, bears are still active right now in North Carolina, according to the N.C. State University Wildlife Extension. Wooten said he believes the bears stumbled on the beehives because they are out and about looking for food at a time of year when they would normally be in a deep slumber. Wooten said he realizes it s his fault because he hadn t been out to check on the hives in two weeks. When he drove down the trail and couldn t see any bee boxes standing tall in the distance, Wooten said his heart sank. The colony was torn all to pieces and there were bear tracks everywhere, he said, adding that he could tell by the claw and bite marks everywhere what had caused the damage. He said the bears left nothing that could be salvaged. Bees are in a winter time, low management state right now, he said. They cluster up in the box and don t come out until it gets 60 degrees. They have to keep the temperature around the queen at 95 degrees. He said that is what bears are after when they attack a hive. They eat honey, but what they are really after is the cluster of bees deep in the hive, Wooten said. To stave off the starving bears in the future, Wooten said he is considering solar-powered electric fences, which he is already using around his Florida colonies. Anyone who sees a bear and feels uncomfortable or threatened by its presence should call the Wildlife Resources Commission at CRITTER. Lindell Kay - Daily News staff with JDNews.com, Jacksonville, NC

5 Continued from page 2 But there is good news! Not all beekeepers are losing 30% or more of their hives each winter. About a quarter of all beekeepers responding to last year's winter loss surveys lost fewer than 15% of their hives - an acceptable rate. Sadly, however, another 25% of all beekeepers lost over 55% of their colonies. So what's the difference? Why are some beekeepers losing a few colonies while others are losing so many? That question, in a nut shell, is the main question that the Bee Informed Partnership is trying to answer. All beekeepers know that keeping bees healthy and productive is a complicated endeavor. There is no "one right way" to keep bees. What works for a backyard beekeeper in Florida may not work for a backyard beekeeper in Minnesota, and a part-time beekeeper that pollinates a couple of acres of apples in Pennsylvania will need to do different things at different times than a beekeeper that makes honey in Oregon. To make things even more complicated, keeping colonies alive is not always about what beekeepers do, but where the bee colonies are located. Colonies foraging on meadows of wildflowers in Ohio may survive differently than colonies foraging on a field of cucumbers 5 miles down the road. Given these many complex factors, how can we hope to figure out what practices and strategies are "best"? Thankfully, there is a whole field of science that has developed tools to help make sense of complicated questions like this - epidemiology. This project will adapt the tools developed by human epidemiologists to study complex human diseases (such as cancer or heart disease) to study honey bee colony health. However, this project will be slightly different than traditional "community health" initiatives in a couple of important ways: 1. Its focus will be to identify management practices that keep colonies alive (rather than just looking for factors that increase the risk of mortality) 2. Findings will be shared rapidly, transparently, and in ways that will enable beekeepers to make informed individualized decisions At its core, the Bee Informed Partnership is motivated by the conviction that beekeepers, when presented with beekeeper-derived data that objectively shows which management practices worked and which did not, will adopt the more successful practices. This, in turn, will reduce colony losses. How do we propose to do this? In essence, by asking beekeepers what they do and how their colonies respond. To start, in 2011, we will not only continue to conduct our winter-loss surveys, we will also initiate a survey asking detailed management questions. We will then summarize these findings and present them in unbiased ways as soon as we are able. In future years we will automate this process and develop tools that will enable beekeepers to interact with the results so they can compare their own practices and successes with others in their region or operational size. We will also expand and develop other levels of the survey so we can assess and present the economic costs of treatment strategies in real time over the course of a year. By compiling a comprehensive honey bee disease data base, beekeepers will eventually be able to compare their Varroa mite and Nosema infection levels with historical levels and with other beekeepers in their region. In short, this project will try to give beekeepers the tools they need to make well informed, data-driven decisions. But for this to work, we need beekeepers to participate. The more the better. We need as many beekeepers from as many places as possible to answer online surveys, give feedback, volunteer to beta-test survey design, and to spread the word and encourage other beekeepers to participate in t he surveys. The Bee Informed Partnership is all about beekeepers telling other beekeepers what works and what doesn't. Most everyone would agree that we need to stop losing as many bees as we do every winter. As a community, beekeepers have many answers; we need to tap into that communal knowledge, and for that to work we need as many beekeepers to share their stories as possible!

6 Important Dates: Henderson County Beekeepers Association - Regular monthly meetings are held on the third Monday of each month March - October, at the Henderson County Extension Center, 100 Jackson Park Rd. (in Jackson Park) from 7-9 pm. Our holiday celebration is scheduled in the month of November (date to be announced). For more information, please call the extension office at Did you know you can receive this newsletter via ? If you would like to sign up for the version, please contact the Extension Office at or ivy_olson@ncsu.edu. ****************************************************************************************************************** Every effort has been made to provide correct, complete and up-to-date pesticide recommendations. Nevertheless, changes in pesticide regulations occur constantly and human errors are possible. These recommendations are not a substitute for pesticide labeling. Please read the label before applying any pesticide. Persons with disabilities and persons with limited English proficiency may request accommodations to participate in programs mentioned in this newsletter, by contacting Marvin Owings at or in person at the County Extension Office at least 4 days prior to the event. 225 copies of this public document were printed at a cost of $ or $0.50 per copy. Henderson County Center 100 Jackson Park Road Hendersonville, NC 28792