Harmony Hollow Apiaries

Disturbing Genetic Modification Technology – Honeybees

This month I attended a beekeeping conference in which disturbing advancements in technology have been announced.

An employee of Monsanto, who works for acquired company BeeLogics indicated their intent and research into modifying the genetic makeup of honeybees by means of RNAi protein control.

RNAi – when performed naturally by the body happens from the moment we are conceived until we die. It’s the body’s mechanism of producing different proteins for different purposes for the body. the “i” of RNAi stands for “interference”. New biological technology allows for the modification of the sequences that create proteins by turning sections of protein receptors/generators on and off.

According to the Monsanto employee, the use for honeybees will be to develop a resistance to varroa mites and other pests to the honeybee.

Here’s a truth as we know it…. Monsanto builds “bt” into their crops. This is to increase yields of their “licensed” crop seeds by inserting / building insecticides into the genetics of the plant themselves. This bt is built into the DNA sequencing of the plant itself – so it’s replicated by both mitosis and meiosis. It becomes a part of the plant body cell production, as well as into it’s reproductive cells.

Pollen is the male-portion (sperm) of a plant’s reproductive system, and is carried by honeybees as well as other pollinators. This bt-laced “food” or protein source for the bees will affect their ability to reproduce…. After all – bt is used as a larvacide to interrupt the life cycle of pest insects to the crop. Unfortunately – bt also affects beneficial insects.

My prediction is that Monsanto and BeeLogics intent is to alter the DNA sequences of the honeybee – so that it can be tolerant to the bt toxins that are already built into their seeds. They benefit by having increased pollination, and potentially lower losses of honeybees. As well as the “press” that they are providing a fix for losses of bees by CCD.

The problem (to me) – is that these bees would NEVER have developed these gene sequences in the normal and natural process of evolution. They are developing a new animal – that is “Monsanto BT-ready” – and will likely have to be licensed (and costly) to beekeepers to perform a pollination service.

This is all disturbing… Very disturbing. My prediction is the “FrankenBee”.

Monsanto Beelogics RNAi GM Honeybee

When asked about the safety and security and potential side effects of this “control of a natural process” – his response was that “We just don’t know the long term effects”.

What does that mean? That means that there is the potential for these genetic codes to alter more than BT resistance (or varroa tolerance / hygienic behavior). It’s unknown (as far as we know) what side effects may occur. Will traits be passed on from the eggs of a fertile queen to the worker brood? How about to the drones that provide genetics to new virgin queens that they mate with? What behavioral changes might be affected by the bees? Aggressiveness? Lazy bees? Will they continue with the symptoms of neonicotinoid poisoning? (forget where they live, and not return to their hives?)

The mantra that was repeated over and over by the Monsanto employee was that the control of RNAi was a “normal and natural” thing. Bullshit. Yes – the body performs RNA control from the moment we are conceived until we die. But this is not CONTROLLED by people with agendas and profit margins. It’s controlled by the body in response to internal and external environment. When individuals representing corporations start making these changes – there can only be one reason. Financial. Corporations exist to make a profit. Therefore control of food, seeds, and the processes and distribution of food is for financial goals.

Does this seem cynical and fear-based? You bet. But guess what? This is a REALITY that we’re about to be dealing with as beekeepers and food producers.

What can you do? Let your lawmakers and policy makers know that you will not re-elect them if they continue to pander to the corporate whims of Monsanto (and similar companies) that develop and promote genetically modified plants and organisms. Urge food producers to discontinue use of GM products in their ingredients. Buy locally – from farmers and food preparers that you KNOW and can personally verify their production processes.

Be involved, and be informed.

Here’s a link to the video that I recorded. It’s about an hour long, and is kind of dry – but here’s the info that they are trying to “sell”.

False Swarm… and Bees Coming Home

We’re in the first week of February – and today was in the low 70’s (F). One of my nuc hives that I overwintered had an unusually high amount of activity around it today.

I noticed a LOT of bees circulating around a spot that where the nuc had originally placed at about 3-4 weeks ago. So many – that I thought that the bees were swarming – so placed a nuc within a foot or two of where the bees were flying. Some started to enter the nuc (which had a frame of old-comb in it) – but the swarm decided to move on. A few minutes later – all the activity was back to the original box that they came from.

This particular nuc has tended to be one of the more aggressive colony of bees of all that I have in this particular spot. I opened up their box yesterday to check as to whether a queen was present, and if so – if she was laying eggs/brood yet.

After pulling the first frame, both hands had about 100-200 bees on EACH hand. Stinging – not just warning me. Glad I was wearing my 9-mil industrial latex gloves! I’ll feed some nectar tomorrow – and will hopefully have more mellow bees the next time I fire up the smoker to check on them.

In other apiary news – I’ll be bringing all the bees from one of my out-yards back to the city. I’ll be doing some queen-rearing on my own to increase the number of hives in my bee-yard, and it’ll be convenient to have the eggs, larvae and brood at quick arm’s length to do the work.

Pollen is coming in!

January 28th – A red-letter day for the 2013 year. Pollen is coming in from at least three local sources. I witnessed bees bringing in pale yellow/white as well as orange and a dark red pollen. The dark red is most likely henbit pollen. The other two – unknown – but VERY welcome to be brought into the hives.

I’m looking forward to a productive year of growth and prosperity with the honeybees!

Warming up

I know that we’ll have a few more cold spats before spring is *really* here – but here’s today’s update from the bee-yard.

After our freezes over the holidays. The 2 youngest nucs (which were rescues) did not survive the cold. The other nucs that were started earlier in the fall – doing fantastic! It was warm enough to do open feeding in the bee-yard today.

On another note – I’ve already started receiving calls for honeybee removals. Unless a homeowner absolutely HAS to have the bees out now – I try to schedule for either (a) the warmest day possible – preferably above 70 deg. F. (21c) or (b) later in the spring when nighttime temps are consistently above 50 deg. F. (10c).

Heat retention in the hives

Can you guess where the cluster of bees is in each of the boxes shown? The lids in the outer two nucs are pretty thin, so there’s heat loss through the wood from the bee cluster. I’ll spend some time this week re-making some lids with thicker wood, then will wait til a warm day to swap lids.

December Honeybee Rescue

Another late-in-the-year honeybee rescue/removal performed yesterday – just as the rains and cooler weather came through. The NTTA needed the bees removed from an irrigation valve box near the Addison Airport toll tunnel.

They had called an exterminator that uses “Bees” in part of their company their name to imply that they are beekeepers. They are NOT. And they had quoted an outrageous price to come kill the bees. The NTTA folks were concerned for the bees, and decided to call me to perform a live bee removal. I’m glad they did!

The hive was a recently moved in colony. There were only 2 large pieces of comb, plus several smaller pieces. With the rain coming, and the small amount of bees in the irrigation valve box – I had the entire removal completed in less than 15 minutes, and was on my way.

Sassafras Harvest

In the past, Sassafras root had been used as the colorant and flavoring in Root Beer. This isn’t the root beer that is based on the sugary syrup carbonated beverage we have become accustomed to in America. This was the real, genuine “root beer”. But what was it? It was actually sassafras tea. Cleaned roots, with hot water poured over them and allowed to steep. What genuine frontiersman wanted to be known for drinking tea while en route to new explorations of a big land? No – these explorers had to change the name to something a bit more rugged for the frontier. How about calling it beer? Yep. Root Beer was actually sassafras tea.

Note – After the original writing of this article – our friend Tim Hall wrote to let us know that:

“… the term “beer” might not be entirely incorrect. It was very common “back in the day” to make what was called “small beer.” This was often made with roots, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, spruce, maple, etc. It was basically a very low alcohol beer, brewed so it was often safer to drink than water and would keep for a while.

“Root(s) beer” was most likely a small beer, probably less than 1 or 2% alcohol.”

When we moved to our little utopia, otherwise known as Harmony Hollow, we noticed an abundance of sassafras saplings and three good sized ‘mother’ trees. Score!

Fall is the best time to harvest Sassafras. When its leaves begin to turn beautiful red, you know the energy of the plant is returning to its roots in preparation for the winter’s sleep. Harvesting on a waning, or ideally new moon further accentuates this. Just as the moon pulls the tides of the ocean, it also pulls the sap of plants to the light of the sun when full and to their roots in the darkness of the earth when new. We chose a drizzly Sunday afternoon, two days before the new moon for our long awaited harvest.

HISTORY

Sassafras has long been touted for its healing properties. Most commonly, it was used to treat the common cold, flu and bronchitis. Upon research I discovered it was considered an antiseptic and pain killer and was considered an effective treatment for a multitude of aliments such as urinary tract disorders, kidney problems, rheumatism and arthritis, painful menstruation and recovery from childbirth, high blood pressure, tooth ache relief, bruises, swelling, insect bites and lice. Additionally, it was added to soaps, perfumery and toothpaste and the twigs were even used as toothbrushes!

With the advancement of modern medicine, the primary active constituent in sassafras – safrole – was found to be toxic and ‘not safe for human consumption’. Despite its long history of miraculous healing powers which date back to Native American practices, sassafras has been reduced to an artificially concocted flavoring added to our carbonated infused corn syrup elixir, Root Beer, and ‘the little tree that could’ is now considered a cancer causing nuisance.

DESCRIPTION

The plant has three distinct shapes of leaves. One of the leaves is often referred to as looking like a mitten. The second is elliptical in shape, with “almost pointed” ends – like a thin football, and the third type of leaf is a fully symmetrical leaf – like the thumb-side of the mitten.

All three are shown in the picture below.

HARVEST

When scouting, it is easiest to look for a large ‘mother’ tree. While sassafras does propagate from seed, it reproduces more prolifically from rhizomes, so typically you will find an abundance of saplings under the larger trees just as we did.

Second year saplings are the best to harvest. They will typically be 18″ – 2′ in height and be no bigger around that a No. 2 pencil. We found a sharpshooter shovel works best for getting under the roots. Before you start digging, you want to remove the top soil and leaf matter away to expose the direction of the root as best as you can. The root, several inches under the surface of the soil, makes a sharp 90 degree turn and has a feeder root growing in the opposite direction.

This series of saplings was carefully unearthed to reveal that they were in fact one tree root system that was growing into individual trees.

A nice harvest for the year, we are ready to clean our roots up a bit! Don’t forget the leaves can be placed in a paper sack to dry, then crushed and used in gumbo. No gumbo is complete without file powder!

Shake off as much dirt as possible and remove the above ground portion of our trees. You can smell a huge difference between the tree and root portion. When trying to determine where to cut and what to keep, the nose knows! Give your roots a good rinse.

The thin stringy portions of the root tends to also hold dirt and should be removed. We used a pair of utility scissors or diagonal cutters to remove them. For faster drying, the roots should be cut into lengths of approximately 4 to 5 inches long.

At this point your roots can be placed in an open, airy location to dry or can be used immediately for tea.

A few things that I would like to mention at this juncture:

One – I was originally taught to boil the roots once and discard the first round of tea, probably due to the aforementioned toxicity associated with the oil, safrole. However, by doing so you lose some of the flavor and likely most of the healing attributes the plant has to offer. If you lean to the side of caution and are just after a flavorful, natural and native tea then this is the best mode of practice. Personally I am of the opinion that in small portions, used as a medicine should be, the first boil is perfectly safe for consumption. Regardless, your roots can and should be used more than once.

Two – Before storing your roots in any form of sealed container make sure they are dry, dry, dry. I have enjoyed collecting and using old glass canning jars to store my herbs and thought nothing of putting my ‘dried’ sassafras in one. But I have to tell you, there is nothing more disheartening than returning to find your sassafras was not as dry as you thought and is now covered in mold. So sad, and such a waste! Paper sacks and colanders are your friends. When in doubt, leave them out and let them dry longer.

TEA TIME

Place the roots in a pan and cover with water. Bring to boil for approximately 15-20 minutes.

Sassafras tea can be bitter, especially on the first boil. A little honey will sweeten it up quite nicely…of course we never miss an opportunity to use honey from our apiary.

Cheers!

Leave them bee!

As we approach December of 2012, I wanted to remind folks that if temperatures are lower than about 75 degrees outside, then try not to open up your hives at ALL.

The only exception that I can think of at the moment would be to add fondant for feeding – and then it needs to be a FAST open, set it in, and close. See my post from back on November 18th for a recipe and directions for making bee-candy – or fondant. ( recipe HERE )

When doing this – you can either set the candy directly on top of the frames, or on top of an inner-cover that has a hole in the top of it to allow the bees to come and go at-will. Either way – you may need to set a reduced-size spacer on top of your current setup in order to allow room for the candy. Note, though, that you don’t want too much space, as this adds to the volume of airspace that the bees will have to overcome when generating heat to keep their cluster warm. My suggestion would be to use an inner cover – that way their heat is maintained in a more consistent manner. – and any propolizing that is done to seal up cracks does not have to be broken. Then place a spacer board on top of the inner cover. The spacer can be 1x lumber (which is really 3/4″ in thickness) – and possibly 2 to 3 inches in height to offer space for the candy. You may want to add soy flour or pollen substitute to the candy. If they don’t want or need it, then they won’t take it. It’s better to have it available for them, though.

One of my hives has propolized their entrance down to about a 3/8″ hole. If you don’t already have entrance reducers in place – depending upon your temperatures – it’s probably past time to reduce them down. This is also an effective method of retaining their heat. If you use a screened bottom board, then you can slide in a thin sheet of plywood, or a sheet of appropriately sized (cut) coroplast sign. These are the material that the coroplast signs are made of. Check right after an election with someone who ran for office for extra signs to use. Otherwise, maybe a sign shop has misprints or culls that they could donate for your cause.

A jar of honey can go a long way in bartering for materials. 😉

In all – remember these things:

Bees try to maintain about 95 deg. F inside their hive. If you open up their hive unnecessarily, or when it’s too cold, they may freeze to death.

Condensation can form inside the hive if there is not a little ventilation to allow it’s exit. This condensation can freeze, and make your winter cluster of bees a frozen clump of bees.

If you can prepare for the worst, and offer your bees the environment that best suits their needs for survival, then you should have bees in the coming spring.

November Swarm

Late swarms sometimes happen.

I received a call Friday morning about a swarm that occurred – most likely from another beekeeper who was out of town for the day. A neighbor contacted him about a swarm that had been found in her yard – behind his home. They found them while their tree-trimmers were working – and wanted them to be removed so that the tree workers would return.

Note the propane cylinder in the yard. That is/was a bird-house. Note also that there’s wax comb in the bird-house. It’s not a bird-house any more. (There were no bees occupying it either, BTW) I suspect a swarm may have left the original hive in the neighborhood. Taken up residence in the propane cylinder, and then vacated when they realized that they were in a home too small.

I shook the swarm that was in a crape myrtle tree – into a 5-frame box, and let them orient to the box.

Once I got them back to my city bee-yard, I added in 3 combs of old comb from other removals I’d performed. The bees immediately swarmed again – and I thought I’d lost them. They re-clustered on my box, though – and marched back inside. I now have a queen excluder over the entrance for a few days – and I’ll feed the bees for a few days as well.

Winter Removals – Why not to do them

I’m often asked by a homeowner to perform a honeybee removal in the winter. My removals are “live” removals – and I do not kill the honeybees to remove them.

Education about aspects of the honeybee’s lives is essential to let homeowners know why I generally choose to NOT remove bees from someone’s home, tree, or utility box when the “timing is not right”.

Honeybees try to maintain a temperature within their hive at approximately 95 degrees Fahrenheit. During the summer, they will bring water into the cells of their hive and fan their wings to create a natural method of evaporative cooling.

During the winter, the honeybees consume their stored honey as a carbohydrate that allows them to shiver, and this generates heat from their cluster – to also maintain about 95 degrees Fahrenheit within the cluster of bees. Early in the fall/winter this cluster of bees also happens to be keeping the eggs and larvae warm. These last eggs and developing larvae are the bees that will get the colony through the winter – so their survival is essential to the success of a honeybee colony.

Imagine if you will – if your home was set at a comfortable heated temperature for us humans. Say about 70 degrees in the winter. But then, a natural disaster may hit and remove the roof of your home. Suddenly, you can no longer maintain 70 degrees outside, and you are subject to exposure to the elements and temperature of the outside. If it happens to be 40 degrees F. outside, then you may be subject to hypothermia. The same applies for the bees. The eggs and larvae must stay at 95 degrees in order to survive in their honeycomb cell long enough to hatch and join their colony.

When a hive is opened up, this allows the bees’ generated heat to escape. The honeycomb is exposed to the air temperatures that are present, and the brood can experience what’s called “chilled brood” – and they may die.

That, my friends, is why we don’t perform live honeybee removals in cold weather. Night time temperatures need to be well above 50 degrees F., and it’s preferable to have daytime temps above 75-80 deg. F.