California Bee Keeping – is a Year Round adventure with nature – a crapshoot / expensive and frustrating, rewarding and enjoyable, hard labourious days and short nights.
The honey flow is NOT year round as many think – the honey ONLY flows IF there has been rain. One may see an abundance of flowers everywhere and think HONEY but without water there is none. RAIN = NECTAR = HONEY. It is that simple. No nectar NO HONEY>
Bee keeping techniques haven’t really changed all that much – the pests, the diseases, the travel, the expenses, and the return on the work – all that has changed. With the oncoming of the Africanized bee and the lack of understanding of the situation – the fear that caused so many ‘city fathers’ to ‘dissuade’ local bee keepers from keeping hives in backyards cut the control factor of marauding bees which could have been eradicated in part by informed bee keepers…. So instead we are inundated with this very territorial creature – one never quite knows when one’s hive has been ‘taken over’ as it were. The once backyard beekeeper without proper clothing no longer exists. Gloves, boots, suits one cannot do without here in California.
And importation issues of bringing in European bees (a milder creature) has stifled the gene pool expansion, which has diminished at an alarming rate here in the United States. Nature seems to be fighting back with the issue of sterility in males – both animal/insect and human with a rise of 18% in humans – something that is already seen in the queen bee who has to be replaced 2 and 3 times a year as she is continually superseded, or killed on sight/site or simply flies away.
The lack of education in schools of basic agriculture has created a widespread ignorance of just how important the bee is to pollination – no bee to pollinate the almond = no almond; strawberries would be white and hard…. (THE SILENCE OF THE BEE – video) ought to be a source of information for both the media and the layman as without the bee man is no long on this planet. Over population has put an impossible increase on food output, causing agriculture to change its focus to meet demand resulting in mono-crops (where once there was diversification ie. cotton, alfalfa etc there is either one or the other or none; hence nothing for the bee to live on - cotton is genetically altered and is deadly to the bee while alfalfa is slowly, though in some parts, all too quickly being replaced by switch grass, originally planted as bio fuel but replaced by corn, another genetic food deadly to bees so switch grass is now fed to cattle - there is no flower it is simply a fast growing grass with health benefit for animals still up for debate. Pesticides whether currently used or not have caused systemic damage to ground and water supply, genetically engineered product, an increase in air and noise pollution, viruses, pests, mites, transportation issues….. An endless array of living in the 21st Century.
Varroa mites are external honeybee parasites that attack both the adults and the brood, with a distinct preference for drone brood. They suck the blood from both the adults and the developing brood, weakening and shortening the life span of the ones on which they feed. Emerging brood may be deformed with missing legs or wings. Untreated infestations of varroa mites that are allowed to increase will kill honeybee colonies. Losses due to these parasitic mites are often confused with causes such as winter mortality and queenlessness if the colonies are not examined for mites.Stop dancing! - (National Geographic)
Bees do their famous waggle dance when they want to tell hive mates where to find a good source of food and other resources. But what do they do when they discover that their co-workers may be buzzing off into a trap, such as a spider lurking at the food source?
They break up the waggle dance by butting their heads into the bees dancing, according to research published yesterday in the journal Current Biology.
The waggle dancer (at center with yellow and pink paint marks) is frozen when receiving a stop signal from a bee marked "S" to her left.
Photo courtesy of James Nieh
A biologist at the University of California at San Diego has discovered that honey bees warn their nest mates about dangers they encounter while feeding with a special signal that's akin to a "stop" sign for bees, the university said in a news statement.
The discovery resulted from a series of experiments on honey bees foraging for food that were attacked by competitors from nearby colonies fighting for food at an experimental feeder, the university explained. "The bees that were attacked then produced a specific signal to stop nest mates who were recruiting others for this dangerous location."
Honey bees use a waggle dance to communicate the location of food and other resources. Attacked bees directed "stop" signals at nest mates waggle dancing for the dangerous location, scientists say.
NGS stock photo by Bianca Lavies
James Nieh, an associate professor of biology at UCSD who conducted the experiments, said this peculiar signal in bee communication was known previously by scientists to reduce waggle dancing and recruitment to food, but until now no one had firmly established a "clear natural trigger" for that behavior.
"The stop sign is a brief vibrating signal made by the bee that lasts for about a tenth of a second with the bee vibrating at about 380 times a second. It is frequently delivered by a sender butting her head into a recipient, although the sender may also climb on top of the receiver," Nieh said.
Bee researchers originally called it a "begging call," because they believed the signaling bee made it to obtain a food sample from the receiver, UCSD said.
"But Nieh discovered in his experiments that one trigger for this signal---which caused the waggle dancers to stop and leave the nest---was attacks from bee competitors and simulated predators. The more dangerous the predator or competitor, he found, the more the stop signals bees produced to stop other bees from recruiting to that location," UCSD said.
"This signal is directed at bees who are recruiting for the dangerous food location and decreases their recruitment," explained Nieh. "Thus, fewer nest mates go to the dangerous food site. This is important because an individual experiences danger and stops recruiting, but the stop signal enables her to 'warn' nest mates who have not yet experienced danger and are still recruiting. The end result is that the colony will reduce or cease recruitment to the dangerous food patch in proportion to the danger experienced."
Nieh found in his experiments that during aggressive food competition, attack victims significantly increased their production of stop signals to nest mates, some by more than 40 times. Bees foraging for food that attacked other bees or experienced no aggression did not produce stop signals. But bees exposed to a "bee alarm pheromone" increased their stop signaling by an average of 14 times. Those whose legs were mechanically pinched in a simulated bite increased their stop signals by an average of 88 times.
Honey bees from different colonies fight for space at a crowded feeder.
Photo cortesy of James Nieh
Nieh said that cooperation within and between cells in an organism relies upon positive and negative feedback. "Superorganisms," such as honey bees, are like a multi-cellular organism because each individual bee, just like a body cell, acts for the good of the whole, the colony. Superorganisms use many types of positive feedback signals, but there are few known examples of negative feedback signals.
What's interesting to biologists about the discovery of the stop sign, Nieh said, is that it's an example of a negative feedback, in which the colony's actions are stopped for the good of the colony.
"This is only the second example of a negative feedback signal ever found in a superorganism and is perhaps the most sophisticated example known to date," he said.
Nieh was assisted in his experiments by UC San Diego undergraduate volunteers working in his laboratory. His study was supported by the UC San Diego Opportunities for Research in Behavioral Sciences Program, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. ORBS is a program for high school students and undergraduates that provides research experience for students who are traditionally underrepresented in the sciences.
