The carnage wrought by new beekeepers!

[Allen Dick]

Check out Tuesday April 4th, 2000

http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/2000/diary040100.htm

[karen]

Installing packages is such a great experience for beginners. Getting the bees to live through 30 F nights and 50 F days is another thing. Some just do not get good information on feeding. I suggest they have two feeders and swap the feeders out morning and night so the bees get a chance at syrup that is not to cold. These hives are right outside their door and at most they may have 3 hives so it is not a huge job. Have one feeder it in the house so it is room temperature and rotate the feeders. The other choice is baggie feeders so the bees can cluster under the baggie and keeping the syrup warm. Baggie feeders scare most beginners. In the class I recently taught I set up a big tub and filled baggies with water and sliced them, the students thought it was a great activity. They learned how much was to much and how to refill the baggies while still on the hive.

Then there are prophylactic treatments. My bee club has an email list and there has been a back and forth on it for a few days on the use of Fumagilin-B for hives coming out of winter and packages. I had to add my 2 cents in the end. I feel some think I am picking on beginners but really I am trying to get them to think, maybe I spur their brains a little to sharply but in the end they appreciate the lessons. I once was talking to a woman that does a lot of mentoring and she was telling me that she tells the beekeepers she helps what mite treatment to use. I asked her why tell them. Give them some information so they can do their own research and learn from it. Then they are not dependent on you to tell them what to use the next year, they need confidence, spoon feeding doesn't develop that. She told me a month later that she was now making her mentee's choose their own treatments and she was happier not making that decision for them.

This is from the email list:

With regards "to F-B or not to F-B" I've become really torn on what to do. I've been pouring over all of the literature, blogs, and peoples comments on the internet and the field is clearly divided. People even become a bit zealous about not using F-B...and vice versa.

How about if you only treat when you know your bees have a problem? To know you have a problem you would need a microscopic nosema count. Knowing the count takes the guessing out of whether to use fumagilin or not. Beekeepers do not need to take sides about this drug, they need knowledge about how to test their bees for nosema or where to send bees for testing. Your not going to learn this from the internet, your going to learn this by looking at bees under a microscope or mailing a sample of bees to the USDA or our state bee inspector for testing.

Beltsville Lab - http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=7472

Tony J. - http://mainebeekeepers.org/beekeeping-r ... inspector/

Microscope class - http://newmoonapiary.com/events.html

Or treat prophylactically - Randy Oliver: "Does The Crushing of Bees Affect Colony Health?." "American Bee Journal" March 2015: Pages 285 - 289 "Practical application: don't waste your money on fumagillin if you haven't determined by microscopy that your bees are actually infected. Fullagillin is an immune suppressor, and you may not only be throwing money down the drain, but actually harming your colonies."

The best thing you can do for your bees is go by what you see not by what you think,

Karen

[Allen Dick]

Installing packages is such a great experience for beginners. Getting the bees to live through 30 F nights and 50 F days is another thing.

Not a problem if the packages are installed on drawn comb with honey and pollen, as IMO, they should be without exception. Feeders are not required and survival is never in doubt.

Advising beginners to start on foundation is IMO irresponsible, but seems to be fairly universal and sets them up for difficulties.

This is a practice that has been promoted by equipment and supply manufacturers and dealers. Through ownership or support of publications, clubs and extension efforts, they have managed to insert this fallacy and make it part of popular unquestioned beliefs.

Then there are prophylactic treatments. My bee club has an email list and there has been a back and forth on it for a few days on the use of Fumagilin-B for hives coming out of winter and packages.

Follow the money. It is a distraction from the real answer: better beekeeping last year.

How about if you only treat when you know your bees have a problem?

And learn how to not have that problem in the first place.

Beekeepers do not need to take sides about this drug, they need knowledge about how to test their bees for nosema or where to send bees for testing. Or treat prophylactically - Randy Oliver: "Does The Crushing of Bees Affect Colony Health?." "American Bee Journal" March 2015: Pages 285 - 289 "Practical application: don't waste your money on fumagillin if you haven't determined by microscopy that your bees are actually infected. Fullagillin is an immune suppressor, and you may not only be throwing money down the drain, but actually harming your colonies."

Once again, Randy drives a stake through the heart of another ubiquitous stupidity.

The best thing you can do for your bees is go by what you see not by what you think,

People keep telling me that and I think I am getting it, but my imagination is very seductive..

[karen]

Not a problem if the packages are installed on drawn comb with honey and pollen, as IMO, they should be without exception.

Beginners do not have drawn comb and I don't know any one around here selling it. The people teaching the classes would have a fit about that one, they are very dis-ease about disease. Even when beekeepers have drawn comb they want to throw it away and start new bees on new comb, you do not want to know how many I have talked out of doing that. They think they are benefiting the bees by giving them foundation. If their hive lives they rotate out perfectly good drawn comb because they are taught that in class.

I never have to worry about rotating comb because when I sell nucs I am constantly rotating out frames as I split hives. I could ask them to rotate the throw away frames my way. I can always use drawn comb and they toss them just when they are getting good.

People keep telling me that and I think I am getting it, but my imagination is very seductive..

I like to imagine too but it never matches up with what is right before my eyes. To bad.....

[Colino]

Beginners do not have drawn comb and I don't know any one around here selling it.

You could try getting those beginners to contact commercial beeks in their area and see if they have any culled honey comb. I have one that sells me his and they only take a little bit of TLC to use . With a couple thousand hives he can't be bothered to spend the time refurbishing them. Sometimes it takes a pass through the table saw to trim the bottom bar straight or replace the top bar, but most times it's just scraping off the built up gunk to make them fit in the super. Also some of them the queen had come up and laid in the honey super so they have a good patch of black comb in the middle.

[Countryboy]

Installing packages is such a great experience for beginners.

Some just do not get good information on feeding.

Packages come with a can of feed. How many people tell beginners to put that can on top of the top bars sitting on a couple twigs if they are hiving a package on foundation? Put an empty super around it and close the hive up. That way the bees can cluster under the can, and have access to food for the first couple days.

I once was talking to a woman that does a lot of mentoring and she was telling me that she tells the beekeepers she helps what mite treatment to use. I asked her why tell them. Give them some information so they can do their own research and learn from it.

It depends if you are dealing with beginners or someone with a little experience under their belt.

I absolutely 100% agree with suggesting to beginners what effective mite treatment to use. Beginners are under information overload. Why bog them down at the start trying to figure out unnecessary info?

I use Apivar in early spring, and MAQS in late summer.

Besides, if I leave it up to beginners, they may go talk to the local package bee supplier and bee equipment seller. The last I knew, he was still telling people to put vegetable oil on paper towels, and put the towels between boxes to kill mites. Or sprinkling powdered sugar on the bees.
Hey, that family used to have 450 hives, so they must know what they are doing, right? What they don't tell people is that all their hives died out from mites because they couldn't keep the mites under control. They make enough money selling packages and equipment they stopped keeping any bees 6 or 7 years ago. They still supply several stores with "local" honey with their label on it...they buy barrels of honey and resell it. They try to buy honey from Ohio beekeepers, but sometimes have to buy from surrounding states. They consider it to be "local", and most local consumers think it is local honey since it has a label of a local "beekeeper."
Their son is the county inspector. He admits that his method of looking for mites is to visually look for mites on the bees...and if he can't see mites with his naked eyes, he marks "no mites seen" on the report.

But I digress...

Then they are not dependent on you to tell them what to use the next year, they need confidence, spoon feeding doesn't develop that.

I view beekeepers like children. Some are infants and need to be spoonfed. Some are older and can do more for themselves. Some can pretty much do everything on their own, but may ask for advice now and then. The mentor needs to be able to judge what stage the beekeeper is at that they are helping.

You could try getting those beginners to contact commercial beeks in their area and see if they have any culled honey comb.

Around here, there are no commercial beekeepers. (unless you drive a few hours away.) We do have one local family that used to keep 450 hives. They never learned how to deal with mites and the bees got wiped out. Now they sell 2000-3000 packages a year and bee supplies.

I offered to buy their used equipment a couple years after they stopped keeping bees. They refused to sell. They "might" get back into bees, and they were really worried about spreading foulbrood. (So now the equipment sits in yards, with no one ever checking it.)

A few years ago, there was a commercial beekeeper who was retiring in far eastern West Virginia. (Divorce and his shoulders were shot.) He was selling off all his shallow honey supers with drawn comb for $8 each. I contacted the local bee club and beekeepers I knew, and offered to pick up supers for them when I went down. (I think I was charging $10 each.) I think I had local beekeepers want a total of 6 supers. A new shallow box with no frames was $10, and I couldn't get local beekeepers to buy honey supers with drawn comb for $10.

[karen]

It depends if you are dealing with beginners or someone with a little experience under their belt.
I absolutely 100% agree with suggesting to beginners what effective mite treatment to use. Beginners are under information overload. Why bog them down at the start trying to figure out unnecessary info?

I think it is very necessary info. I would give them choices and have them choose. We do it every day as consumers. We learn, we are given or find information on what is available and make an choice. They will be better beekeepers in the end by learning how to find information and use it. I never mentor and it may be a good thing because I would not make decisions for people, I would make them do the leg work. I wouldn't let them totally screw up by fuming a hive with mineral oil or something but I would require reading about miticides and have them make a choice. When someone is a mentor they are there to answer questions and should know the pros and cons to aid in an educated decision.

When I teach classes I require research so people learn how to find the information they need and make decisions from that information. We also talk about how to do research and knowing that your information is coming from a reliable resource, learning how to learn and where to learn from. Most people know how to learn so it is not hard to set them on the right track to research a few miticide choices or other information to do with beekeeping.

As with beekeeping itself we all have our ways. If I were a mentor the new beekeepers would have their work for their information. I would at least offer the places to find the answers to their questions, which would be more work on my part but they would learn when doing the research. I stay away from mentoring which is probably a good choice.

[Allen Dick]

I can see we have a difference of philosophy, but it may more in how we talk about what we do than in what we actually do.

A lot depends on how much time we expect to spend with the student, what the base level of knowledge is, and what the student's ambitions happen to be.

I am currently dealing with a mix of people, from those who just want a beehive in the yard and a bit of honey, those who want to save the Earth, some who just want to mess with bugs, right up to a fellow who wants to become commercial and is starting with a fairly large yard of bees.

It seems obvious to me that to overburden the casual beehaver with a lot of detail at this point is going to be a waste of everyone's time and the same is even true, to a lesser extent, of the more ambitious beekeeper. At this point, for over half of them, too much info is worse than too little. KISS is the rule.

IMO, the initial lessons should be simple and include only basic, essential matters and concise, idiot-proof instructions, along with an admonition not to get creative at this point. A date should be set to work together over an actual beehive and to get into more complex matters.

The more actual demonstration sessions working over a hive, the better, keeping in mind that there is probably no good reason to open a hive for any reason other than to feed or harvest, more than five times a year.

A good starter book should be chosen and used as a guide, one without complex decisions and distractions.

Once people have had bees around for a while, and gone thorough a season, then they are ready for more heady questions and more advanced concepts.

IMO, what bee-ginners need is basic instructions and the knowledge that they can consult an expert when they need to and that someone will inspect their hive with them at least several times a year.

Not everyone who drives a car wants to be a mechanic.

[karen]

I am not trying to be argumentative. I just think adults are capable of critical thinking. I taught high school and college level veterinary technician classes and teaching critical thinking was important. May be beekeepers don't need to think....

This is probably why I stick to only teaching people that have a few years experience. I want people to not be dependent on others, the information is out there it does need filtering and I do help with that but don't ask me to hold your hand through it.

I'm I being to tough.... who knows. I sure get asked a lot to be someones mentor. I just say I do not have time and I really don't.

[Allen Dick]

> I am not trying to be argumentative.

Disagreeing is not necessarily argumentative, and discussion often reveals there is less disagreement than it might first appear.

> I just think adults are capable of critical thinking. I taught high school and college level veterinary technician classes and teaching critical thinking was important.

That is true for complex topics, but not to just own a hive or two of bees. IMO.

Used to be that to drive a car, you had to carry a toolkit and extra tires -- and know how to use them. Now you just need AAA, a cellphone, and the sense to know that something is wrong. People don't even change their own flats anymore.

> May be beekeepers don't need to think....

Some do, others, not so much -- as long as they are willing to pay a bee serviceman.

These days, many people are happy to pay for things you and I would never pay for.

> This is probably why I stick to only teaching people that have a few years experience. I want people to not be dependent on others, the information is out there it does need filtering and I do help with that but don't ask me to hold your hand through it. I'm I being to tough.... who knows. I sure get asked a lot of be someones mentor. I just say I do not have time and I don't.

Maybe you do. Just say, "Sure, I do bee work and charge X$ per hour including travel , materials extra. You can watch, or not, your choice."

Apparently some beekeepers have paying customers.

[Countryboy]

This is probably why I stick to only teaching people that have a few years experience.

That's a really good point. If I all dealt with was folks who had a few years experience, I'd let them decide what mite treatment to use.

My goal with beginners is to teach them the basics of how to keep bees like me. If they do everything my way, the results are fairly predictable, and I can "usually" figure out pretty easy what went wrong. When I let them decide how they want to do things, inevitably they make decisions different than I do, and then they wonder why they don't have the results I do. I'm one of those guys, I not only tell beginners what mite treatment to use, I tell them what target dates to use it.

Once folks have a few years in, I let them spread their wings a little, and I stop trying to tell them how to do things.

Apparently some beekeepers have paying customers.

Last spring, I had a guy contact me, He had installed a package of bees, but they weren't drawing combs on the frames. He asked me if I would come figure out what was wrong.

He had removed the lid and syrup can from the package. He removed 5 frames, and set the package inside the hive. He placed the queen cage on top of the package near the hole for the can. When I pulled the package out, this is what I found.

0607140856a.jpg

0607140856b.jpg

The queen cage had fallen back into the package cage. He never removed the cork from the queen cage, and the queen was still in the queen cage! Amazingly, she was still alive.

I got paid $100 to release the queen and shake all the bees out of the package cage. (I cut the cage open.)

[Allen Dick]

He had removed the lid and syrup can from the package. He removed 5 frames, and set the package inside the hive. He placed the queen cage on top of the package near the hole for the can.

Amazing, but not all that untypical. "instructors" still teach that method of package 'installation' and it a appeals to the sort of people who should proabably never have bees because they never have to touch a bee.

As for mentoring, I expect the newbee to do as I instruct as best as he/she can and if the newbee insists on 'thinking' and departing from my instructions, they will be the end of mentoring and I make that clear from the beginning. How can I lead someone who will not follow. My way is not the only way, but it works reliably.

A system is made up of compatible, interlocking ideas assembled by someone with experience and not a jumble of incompatible and conflicting concepts that appeal to a naive tyro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWHniL8MyMM

Of course, once I see that they are comfortable with bees and have observed them a while I set them free to gather other ideas, but suggest they run them past me before implementing them.

[Biermann]

Hello & Happy New Year to you all,

I hijack this thread and like to ask Charlie about his experiment on this:

Speaking of experiments I was thinking I would do a super of the "green drone comb frames" this summer to see if extracting is any easier. The bigger cell size should make the honey flow out much faster... at least in my 4 frame hand cranked extractor.

How did you make out with the 'green drone frames'?

Did you get any wiser? Particularly, did you get honey from the drone frames?

Thanks, All the best, Joerg