Varroa and Marked Queens with Anne Frey (189)

Episode 189 – Varroa and Marked Queens with Anne Frey

[music]

Jim Tew: Listeners, I've got a special treat for me at least and I hope for you. Anne's with us here. Anne is a professional beekeeper and I'm going to have her introduce herself the way she wants to be introduced at this point. Go Anne.

Anne Frey: This is Anne Frey from Betterbee up in Greenwich, New York.

Jim: I have been waiting patiently to talk with Anne so we could talk with the listeners about all the things you've been doing with all those beehives as you experiment, research, work, split and divide, and do what it takes. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew and I'm with Anne Frey. She's from Betterbee and I'm from Honey Bee Obscura. We're coming to you today where we talk of something about bees every week, and this week, we're going to talk about multiple things.

Anne: We've got a lot of different things that have been going on at Betterbee. I just threw that short list at you, Jim, and I hope you like it.

Jim: Yes. We're going to follow that list. I'll get into it here.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: Anne, you sent me that list, and instead of saying these are all topics, I wanted to do them all at one time. It's like a Chinese [unintelligible 00:01:44] board where there's a lot to choose from here. You mentioned the mites right away. What's up with mites being here too early this past spring?

Anne: Well, I think that because mites breed in the bee brood and our winter finished off pretty nicely, the best explanation is that there was probably one or one and a half more cycles of brood by the point in the summer where we usually see the right amount of mites to start treating. We actually started seeing that number of mites and it was disturbing us and we were saying, "Why is this a month early?" Well, why worry about why? We better treat. We did our tests and that showed us it was time to treat even though it was a month early.

Jim: First of all, what numbers were you looking at?

Anne: We do an alcohol wash on the 300 bees. 300 is a half cup. We don't want to see 6 or more. That's 2% of the 300 makes us say, "Whoa. Time to treat."

Jim: You were seeing that number more than 2% earlier than you were seeing it in years past.

Anne: Yes. I only remember one other year when we saw it this early and I think that was 2020, in my experience, at Betterbee. It was similar, one month early. I don't remember what the winter was like that year though, but we always do our tests.

Jim: May I assume that you were using multiple control procedures or do you have one favorite that you would say or could you say or should you say since you sell multiple control systems?

Anne: What we normally use for the nucs is Apivar, though occasionally we have used HopGuard or Apistan. For the hives, we usually use Formic Pro around July 4th, and then again, around Labor Day. Then for everybody in the middle of winter around New Year's, we use oxalic acid vape.

Jim: Vapor, okay. Did I understand there's three treatments per year? Yes.

Anne: For the hives, yes, but for the nucs, Apivar is such a long treatment. It's on for 56 days in the summer, and then they don't get treated again until the middle of winter.

Jim: This is an overall good program for keeping Varroa suppressed. It never eradicates anything. I'm sure the listeners know that it's a constant ongoing battle and that keeps them suppressed well enough until you find out that they're attacking the hives earlier, then you have to change all your battle plans.

Anne: It's never going to kill all of them. Everybody has Varroa. Occasionally, we discover in the fall that things that we thought, hives or nucs that we thought were doing great, they did suddenly succumb to Varroa. My feeling then is that they must have gotten something from the woods, some untreated bees, or some beekeeper near us that didn't treat. They just got into the same area and reinfested our bees from drifting, et cetera.

Jim: Hey, listeners, did you hear that? Even the best-laid beekeeper plans don't always work. For those of you who think that there's some silver chemical bullet or a procedural bullet, even then, sometimes you're going to lose. Before Varroa, Anne, we had winter kills. They were not anything like today, but 8%, 10%, 12% winter kill. They were mainly starvation and just going into winter bad but winter kills have been here and they will stay here. Well, it seems like the Varroa thing. Would you have any final closing remarks for admonishing, suggesting, recommending for people listening?

Anne: I want to just say, again, we seem like we're always saying this to students in our classes and to customers that they can't wait until early fall to treat for Varroa. It's been too long with the bees getting some viruses from the mites all summer and late spring. They can kill the mites in the early fall and the bees have already started to sicken from the viruses. They're going into winter somewhat sick, even though there's a layer of dead mites on the bottom board.

Jim: Listeners, that was a very polite way of telling you to get up, right now, and go out and do something about mites because you got to close the door before somebody steals a horse [laughs]. All right. Hey, you talked about this color thing that you've been working with. You mentioned-- and this is completely different now. Listeners, change gears.

Anne: Warning.

Jim: Warning, we're changing subjects here. What's with this neon green marker you were talking about?

Anne: The queen marking pen, this year, the international color is green. We've gotten boxes and boxes of 12 markers, and they're neon green and it looks so bright. Then about a month later when we see those queens again, we're like, "What is that?" We almost think that it's gray. We're like, "Where's this gray mark?" We look in kind of imagination. You could say that used to be green. At least it's a mark and it catches our eye but it's not neon green after a while goes by.

Jim: I'm an old paint guy. Maybe you needed more than one coat [chuckles]. Listeners, she's holding up the pen [laughs]. Maybe you should have to mark that queen three times. How is that for labor intensive?

Anne: Sounds good with the proper amount of drying. That's one thing. I know we have another queen producer who has a Kelly Green kind of a paint pen and his are so clear and sharp even months later. We're going to talk to the purchasing people here for, this is my five-year plan. Five years from now, we'll have a good green.

Jim: Good. I'm glad to hear it. In the meantime, you've got a really good bargain on getting rid of these pens that don't hold up, I'm sure. Just check in.

Anne: Hey, I'm probably going to get in trouble for mentioning any of this.

Jim: Well, don't get in trouble. It's all in good fun.

Anne: I know some people that they don't even use the color of the year. I know someone who makes like a little-- They make a large dot in pink and then they put a blue dot in the middle. They just want to decorate. They got the whole kit when they bought their paint pens.

Jim: Okay. Those people are not 76 years old with other things that need to be done.

Anne: No, 16.

Jim: Let's take a break and hear from your boss. He'll be talking about the Betterbee company.

[music]

Betterbee: Just a quick reminder, Varroa mites might be lurking on your bees even if you can't see them. Protecting your colonies means actively combating these mites, the leading cause of colony death. The good news, there are plenty of natural methods and treatments available to keep those mite counts in check. Learn about different monitoring techniques at betterbee.com/mites.

Jim: You do mark queens. As a matter, of course, you mark queens all the time.

Anne: Yes. Anytime we see a queen that's not marked, a mated queen, not a virgin, we mark her. Because amost all of the things that we do, either getting a nuc ready to sell or breaking down a colony to create nucs, we have to find the queen first. We're just trying to make it easier on ourselves and the customer to have a marked queen.

Jim: I used to mark queens a lot. It's the old adage, practice on a drone. I use a really small stick. I used to use camel hair brushes and I painted the wrong thing too often, so I just use a solid probe now when I do mark. Anne [unintelligible 00:09:52] this is off the cuff and you're not prepared for it, but when are we going to have marking dots that have some kind of electronic capability about them, can send out a Wi-Fi signal on where my queen is in the colony or how to find that she's in the upper deep. They got all this GPS, miraculous system. Why don't we have some kind of queen GPS system? Why isn't there a dot that's charged? Sorry, you can just set off the charge, kill the queen when it's time to replace her-

Anne: Oh, my gosh.

Jim: -and not have to find her. This could be a lot more than just marking a queen.

Anne: Just like a tiny little electrocution or bomb. Oh, that's horrible, Jim.

Jim: Well, okay. All right.

Anne: The idea of finding her, though, I think when you have the GPS thing that it's within a few feet, they found your car within a few feet or you can find the keys are within 20 feet of yourself if you put something on your keys. I don't know if the beehive is big enough for that to work out.

Jim: That's true.

Anne: I bet it's coming.

Jim: There's a group, and it's not a small group, that's concerned about these energy waves anyway and the effect it has on bees and animals and their orientation and that kind of thing. Maybe. I am really barking up the wrong tree.

Anne: I don't know. I thought that was debunked.

Jim: It's probably debunked. I don't know.

Anne: I do know somebody who used to lay out and sunbathe under the power lines because he said it made him feel good.

Jim: Okay. This is just really going down [laughs] a rabbit hole pathway here. I'm not trying to one-up you, but I've a beekeeper, years ago, he's gone now.

Anne: You started it.

Jim: I did. I started. He said that when we have metal grid queen excluders on our colonies, that those things would pick up an atmospheric charge, that they weren't grounded because the wood served as a buffer and all these bees would come back with a positive charge. Then they would charge that queen excluder, and then that would have atmospheric effects. Here's the deal and then we'll move on. He grounded all his queen excluders, and he said the bees were much happier that he didn't get these extraneous stings from angry bees.

You know, Anne, I did not make a picture of the only grounded beehives that I've ever seen, and I didn't snap a picture. We got a limited time here, and we're off chasing every rabbit I've ever seen. I'm not going to be lying under high-tension power lines, and I probably won't be grounding my beehives. Let's move on to your swarming.

Anne: All right. The crazy swarming hives. Yes, we repeatedly, this year, and I have never seen it before this, have found hives that are quite depopulated with just an amazing number of queen cells that have been used. The bees, the queens, emerged from them. I only could think, "Did they just swarm repeatedly, repeatedly, and depopulate themselves?" What do you think?

Jim: I want to support you in that. I'm not a wise old guy, but I have seen colonies that were just swarming stupid. I don't know what to say about it. They just--

Anne: Stupid bees.

Jim: Stupid bees. What are you doing? You're not even allowing the queen to reestablish. They're just keeping-- first, the instant a queen emerges, sometimes they're leaving with unmated queens. They were just hyper-swarmers. Is that some genetic stock for the moment, or is there some sense of genetic survival, statistically, by having 9 and 10 small swarms from one colony? I don't know. I don't see it now, but in the past, there have been colonies that were annoying with these softball-sized swarms that they just kept belching out.

Anne: Yes, we didn't actually see small swarms this year. We just saw the evidence after the fact that there was two deeps and some supers and enough bees that you wouldn't even think would fill a nuc. We just disassembled it, used that hive stand for something else. Couldn't even picture putting a new queen in it or giving them some brood. It was so, so small.

Jim: There's all kinds of beekeepers, and you have a lot of hives and a lot of responsibility, and you've got monetary expectations on you. If you just had four hives of bees and one of them was a crazy swarmer, I can guarantee you that there's people, there's beekeepers who will go through extraordinary means, like you've got a runt puppy or something, to try to save that swarm. It is entertaining. I'm giving you this story because I've got one right now in my yard.

I've got a swarm that was hardly the pound in size that moved into a colony that was a-- winner or killed, that was mostly an active wax moth colony. You want to ask that little swarm, "What are you thinking survivally when you take on fighting these big fat wax moths?" You know what I did? I stood there and picked out wax moths like I was collecting fish bait. Trying to kind of level the playing field, and it was completely a waste of time. It generates questions. I just did an article for it, and I want to know if all that frass that those wax models develop, is that a defensive structure. The larval stages that they make when they have all this silky, morass frass.

Anne: That stuff that it shows where they had gone, like the trail behind? Okay.

Jim: Well, there's some too on the bottom board. When the bees clean it up, there's all this-- I don't know what it is. I can't tell if it's silk. It's just this stringy seaweed-looking thing.

Anne: Yes, it must be silk and a tangle. The only other thing they produce is droppings.

Jim: Yes, it's not the droppings. Now, the droppings are on the bottom board, and the swarm is dealing with that because then you got a second level of wax moths down on the bottom board. They don't really get to be big, nice wax moths. Then there's all the other opportunistic invaders, the beetle larvae that are degraders there, and earwigs and all the other things that rummage through that.

Anne: The cleanup crew earwigs. People hate earwigs, but I'm just telling them, they're just cleaning up little bits. They don't do anything bad. Wax moths, no way. Are you taking pictures and documenting the downfall of this little colony?

Jim: You know I am because I document all my downfalls, which are numerous. People have told me in the past, "You're a bit of a negative writer." No, I'm not a negative writer. I just write about things that don't work instead of boasting and gloating about the things that I've done that did work [laughs]. Go with that. I will show pictures sometimes of this. Just for those who do care, we will post on the web page. This international queen color code is commonly available, but we'll stick that for any new people that's here.

Anne: People should understand if they're not a queen producer selling queens, they can do whatever they want.

Jim: You can do whatever you want. You can use--

Anne: Stripes?

Jim: I don't know about the multi-color thing. That's interesting.

Anne: Well, yes. You could do bright pink. You could do a solid circle of any color you want. The stripes takes a fine detail and eyesight. What's the stick you were talking about? Was it a matchstick poked into a jar of paint?

Jim: I used to use round toothpicks. I'd take my knife and I'd cut it right in half. That was the dimer that I wanted to stick in the lid, not in the bottle, stick it in the paint, in the lid, and so you had a natural limit to how far the stick would go into the paint. Then I would just go touch the thorax of the queen, and it was a good, clear small dot. It may take two dots, and that was it. Then when you're done, you throw the stick away because I got a whole box of toothpicks over there. This is magnetic. We shouldn't go into that, but there have been magnetic markers.

Anne: We're going off on a tangent. It's all right, though.

Jim: We've been on tangents all day. That's what happens, I guess when you have a multi-topic discussion. Now, you and the listener should know, I didn't go on every tangent that my mind came up with. I did stay reasonably well on topic. We're winding down, and the last thing you said was that you've had a lot of rainstorms, and it was followed by robbing. We were wondering, what's up with that?

Anne: I was wondering because it was distinctly different from one day to the next. We had had an afternoon rainstorm and then a night rainstorm. The next day, they were just so fast to jump onto the frame, the first frame you pull out, and you just set it aside. They were going crazy on those for all three of us workers. I just started thinking, is this because all the flowers out there are rinsed completely clean and they're just still covered with raindrops or nothingness? There's no sweetness in them? What do you think?

Jim: I like that hypothesis a lot, especially if you know you had any interest in the science of it. Is it this way throughout the day? As the day changes and as the world dries and warms and those blossoms are photosynthetically powered, reproduce more nectar, do the bees then move over again to the natural sources?

Anne: When I saw this, it was morning, so I could see where you're heading there. Luckily, we finished all our bee work today before it got real hot, but I could go back out and throw a frame down in that same yard in the afternoon and see what happens for science.

Jim: I've become a real supporter of robbing. It's a very normal, logical thing for colonies to do. I mean, this is not a, "let's go make friends and help each other in the great ecosystem". No, it's every colony for themselves, and they'll do whatever it takes to be the colony that survives.

Anne: It is funny because sometimes people hold the beehive or the bee colony up as an example of cooperation and everything's wonderful, but like you say, they see somebody out there, there's some other colony that's weak, they're going to pounce on it and tear it to pieces. People don't see them as robbers because the ones that stand out are yellow jackets. They don't realize the robbers are probably, oh, they're honeybees.

Jim: We've already talked about was moths and then they show up. Everything about this is just a scorched earth policy.

Anne: You know you got to stay alert.

Jim: Anne, we're done. I enjoyed talking with you and it was insightful.

Anne: It sometimes was.

Jim: [laughs] Even though we went off on tangents, you made me feel guilty about that, but I like tangents.

Anne: Ah, sorry.

Jim: I thought they were conducive. Can we do this again sometime?

Anne: Yes, sounds good. We can ricochet and tangent and ping pong round.

Jim: Well, I've never heard of all that but that'd be a fun thing to do. We'll call more when you come up with more information. Anne, thank you for your time, which is always valuable. I do appreciate it.

Anne: Thanks, Jim. I'll see you next time.

[music]

[00:21:20] [END OF AUDIO]