Category Archives: Problems

Munchity crunchity

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Synopsis : 5%, 40%, 80%? What proportion of the Asian hornet’s diet is honey bees? It depends where and how you look, but we need to know to help mitigate the impact of the hornet invasion.

Introduction

Munchity crunchity are the words that usually come to mind 1 when I watch a dragonfly chewing on whatever hapless insect it has just caught. There’s the crunching as the chitinous exoskeleton is pared away and discarded and the munching through the soft abdominal tissues and thoracic musculature 2

Golden-ringed dragonfly

I’m not sure whether munchity crunchity is onomatopoeic 3 or possibly just a phonestheme 4.

Whatever it is, it’s a term that nicely describes the sight – and sound if you’re close enough – of eating something crispy on the outside and squidgy in the middle, like a dragonfly eating a wasp, an otter eating a sea urchin, or a dinner guest scoffing the last of the dark chocolate pralines.

Munchity crunchity is not ((Yet.)) the accepted technical term describing how an Asian hornet (Vespa velutina) worker dismembers a honey bee to prepare a protein-rich pellet to take back to the nest to feed the developing larvae, but perhaps it should be?

Although most of the press coverage (and inevitably most of the beekeeping coverage) has been about the decimation of honey bee colonies by Asian hornets, their success as an invasive insect is because they have catholic tastes and are opportunistic predators.

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Asian hornet week

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Synopsis : The Asian hornet is here, perhaps to stay. Be vigilant and report any sightings as it will have a big impact on our bees and beekeeping.

Introduction

Beekeeping involves observation, and good beekeeping requires good observation.

As the late, great, Yogi Berra said:

You can observe a lot by watching

It’s not just a case of looking, you have to see and interpret things as well.

What’s happening in the hive?

What’s not happening that should be happening?

Is anything significant new or unusual?

And these observations should not just be restricted to the times you are elbow deep in the brood box. Start on your way to the apiary … in fact, keep an eye on things all the time. What’s flowering, is it early or late? Have the migrant birds arrived (or left) yet?

I’ve mentioned phenology previously and, if you apply yourself, you get to appreciate the rhythm of the seasons.

And sometimes you see completely new things … to you or your environment. These probably indicate gradual – or potentially dramatic – changes to the environment that your bees share.

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Apiguard advice

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Synopsis : Apiguard activity is temperature-dependent but the instructions are vague on the minimum temperatures needed for high efficacy. Is Apiguard appropriate for the bees in your area? How might you determine this?

Introduction

A few months ago I discussed the instructions supplied with some formic or oxalic acid-containing miticides beekeepers use to control Varroa. The post was titled ’Infernal contradictions’ reflecting the state of the documentation provided, either with the purchased products or via the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) database of approved treatments.

Are the instructions clear, unambiguous, meaningful, accurate and helpful?

Sometimes … but not always 🙁 .

Apiguard

This time I’m turning my attention to Apiguard, a thymol containing miticide that – used properly – is very effective at reducing Varroa levels. It’s an organic treatment and there is no evidence that mites can become resistant to the active ingredient.

Effective and no resistance … what’s not to like?

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Poly nucs and winter losses

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Synopsis : Save money. Take your winter losses now. Unite weak colonies or those headed by dodgy queens … and some thoughts on poly nucs for overwintering.

Introduction

With apologies to Winston Churchill:

“Now this is not the end. It is perhaps the beginning of the end.” 1

And even a cursory look through couple of colonies will confirm this. They are shifting from their summer labours to the late summer preparations for winter.

The signs are easy to spot.

Colonies with ample super space are beginning to backfill the broodnest with nectar. You can see it sparkling in the sun.

Backfilled cells (and a drone or two)

You also see this when the colonies have nowhere else to store fresh nectar, but my supers are disappointingly full of space this year 2 ) so they’re opting to keep it close. The brood pattern can look a bit spotty, but the queen is ‘missing’ the cells because they’re already full.

Most of my east coast colonies have stopped, or almost stopped, rearing drones. There are still plenty of drones about but they’re not producing any more this season.

This makes sense. Drones are ‘expensive’ in terms of the resources (pollen, nectar, time, workers) needed to rear them and the chance that they will successfully complete a mating flight this late in the season is limited.

They’re not chucking them out yet though. On a warm afternoon the distinctive sound of a thousand drones going out ‘on the pull’ fills the air.

Ever the optimists 😉 .

Colonies are still strong and busy. They contain a lot of brood, but the laying rate of the queen is slowing and – presumably 3 – they will very soon start rearing the long-lived winter bees that will take the colony through to next spring.

Take your winter losses now

And, as the colonies segue from producing summer bees to winter bees, I’m also starting to plan for the winter. This involves preparing the colonies I want and getting rid of (i.e. uniting) those surplus to requirements or underperforming.

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Coffee, constancy and fidelity

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Synopsis : Why do bees collect pollen of only one type when foraging? Why do they forage repeatedly in the same area? What has coffee got to do with this?

Introduction

Foraging is what my bees should be doing now. The summer nectar flow should be strong – lime, blackberry, rosebay willow herb (RBWH, fireweed) then heather – it’s bonanza time.

But note the qualifier ’should’.

So far, it’s not looking promising.

The lime was hopeless, the blackberry flowered well but doesn’t appear to have yielded much, the fireweed is nearly over (early) and the heather … well, let’s not prejudge anything, but I’m not hopeful.

Going, going, gone … rosebay willow herb, mid-July 2023

Not only do those four plants/trees yield nectar, but they also produce pollen and you can often tell what the bees are foraging on by the colour of the packed corbiculae on the hind legs of returning workers.

Despite their overlapping flowering periods the pollen baskets are almost always a single colour. For example, you don’t get deep purple pollen baskets from RBWH speckled with much paler borage pollen, despite the fact you can find both flowering – in a field and its margins – simultaneously.

This is because honey bees tend to forage on one plant species 1 on any foraging trip. This feature of the foraging habit of honey bees is termed constancy.

If you marked a foraging worker on a patch of RBWH, watched it fly off to the hive and waited a bit you might well see the marked bee return to the same patch of RBWH and start collecting pollen or nectar again.

This is not constancy but is instead termed fidelity.

Both fidelity and constancy have consequences for plant pollination. It’s therefore unsurprising to discover that some plants have evolved to influence these foraging habits of bees … which is where the coffee comes in.

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