Is This The Stink of Nosema?

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I have reason to believe that the hive I found full of poop recently might not have Nosema, but I’ve been dealing with it, just to careful, as if it does have Nosema. Here’s a long video of me digging into the mess and dealing with it by knocking the colony down to a single medium super. I may update this post with more information later. I’m kinda busy at the moment trying to become an expert on Nosema. (Update: In the video, I leave an open feeder full of thin sugar syrup so the bees could clear out their guts of possible Nosema spores, but I changed my mind and removed it the next day. The risk of spreading Nosema through the syrup seemed too great. Maybe the risk is low, but I don’t want to take any chances.)


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Syrup as a Medicine?

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So…

The specks of poop in the sugar could be signs of nosema, a mild case of it. (April 4th, 2022.)

I think I may have discovered Nosema, possibly a fatal case of it, in at least one of my colonies — and I’m not posting a photo of that one just yet because it’ll make you barf. When everything inside the hive is covered with feces as if the bees were locked inside and couldn’t get out for cleansing flights, even though the front door is about two inches away from the cluster — that pretty much screams Nosema with a capital N. It could be dysentery, which is also gross and not as troublesome as Nosema. Still, everything points to Nosema at the moment.
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These Bees Are Goners

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So I have a teenie tiny colony that’s pretty much toast. I knew going into the winter it wasn’t in great shape. It was result of a late season queen that was mated sometime in September, which is not good for all kinds of reasons I won’t go into now. But essentially it was (is) a small colony with a poorly mated queen that I should have combined with a strong colony before winter set in.

In any case, Marc Bloom, another beekeeper here on the Isle of Newfoundland going all-in like me, because, come on, there’s no turning back now, dropped off a 5-frame medium nuc box for me the other day and I thought now would be a good time to dig into this dying colony, transfer it to a smaller, probably dryer hive box, and maybe give it a fighting chance. So that’s what I did. Here’s the video, including a sort of post-mortem looking through the dying colony’s old frames.


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Beekeeping with Google Maps

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Here’s a quick video I made over my lunch break yesterday that shows how I use Google Maps to figure out where my bees might be flying.

Honey bees have been known to forage as far as 13km (about 8 miles), but the usual number that’s thrown around is the 5km maximum (about 3 miles). As with almost everything in beekeeping, there is no one precise answer because there are about 10 billion factors to consider first, most of them having to do with the local climate. Honey bees won’t fly 5km if they can find everything they need close to their hives. A 1km forage radius or less is not uncommon in areas with plentiful forage. However, 1-3km seems to be the average, or so most of the big textbooks tell me.

So here’s how I use Google Maps to calculate the approximate forage area of my bees (if you didn’t watch the video):
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The Lazarus Effect in Honey Bees

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Honey bees can’t fly when their tiny wing muscles are too cold to move. When the sun shines on them in the winter, sometimes they warm up enough to fly. But the cold air can get to them while they’re flying and suddenly they drop out of the sky. I often find dead-looking bees like this in the snow throughout the winter. Sometimes, just for fun, I pick up the frozen bees and warm them up inside my house where they come back to life.

It’s not necessary to save bees in this way. Most bees will come back to life once the sun shines on them again. But even the ones that die often die for a reason.
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The Sugar Express

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What can I say? It cost about $3.00 to make a brick of sugar that has the potiential to save my bees if they run low on honey when I’m not around to save them. So here we go again.

Two colonies got only sugar bricks. Another one got a protein patty and a sugar brick. I’ll say this, though, these three colonies seem to be in good shape. They’re full of bees and I can still see frames of capped honey up top.

Last year some of my colonies didn’t break above the top bars until April. This year, all of them except one (out of 10) have broken above the top bars. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re running low on honey, but, like I said, a few dollars worth of sugar ain’t no thing to make sure they’re okay.

Feeding Bees Again

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Honestly, I’m not out to publicly shame natural beekeepers who believe that sugar is bad for honey bees. I just happen to be dumping sugar into some of my hives because some of my colonies might run out of honey before spring. Here’s a 3-minute video that demonstrates how I dump sugar into my hives when I’m too lazy to do anything else. (I also posted a 20-minute version of this video too.)


I could have sprayed the sugar with water to harden it up, but I didn’t. Some other thoughts off the top of my head:
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A Sugar Board

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I dropped a sugar board over one of my weaker colonies today. Here’s a 3-minute video to prove it.

I gave the bees some protein patties too. Hopefully it’ll keep them going until spring. An 11-minute cut shows up after the short version for anyone with the time for a deeper dive.
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Why do honey bees hang off each other like that? (Festooning)

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Honey bees festooning, hanging off each other in chains that eventually seem to fill with beeswax that becomes honey comb.

I narrated — not exactly the word for it, but let’s just go with it. I narrated a 5-minute video today where I provide my best off-the-cuff explanation of festooning, that thing bees do when they hang off each other in chains and won’t let go.

This explanation should have taken 60 seconds, not 5 minutes, but that’s how I roll sometimes.

Secret Hives Update (February 2022)

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I plan to place at least one more beehive in my secret location sometime in the spring because my colonies there are always in the best shape, better than any of my colonies anywhere else. Unlike most of my hives in other locations, including the hives in Flatrock next to my house, my secret hives don’t get much special treatment.


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Beeyard Update, Feb. 09, 2022

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A beeyard update I recorded on my cell phone on the way home from work.

It includes what I’ve been told is public domain music by Duke Ellington. In the past two years, I’ve become more of an aficionado of his 1950s and ’60s records, but only in the E.U. are those recordings in the public domain. I’d fill all my videos with that music if I could. I love it. But for now, I’ll test the copyright waters with these early recordings from the 1920s. Oh yeah, and I also check on how well the bees are consuming some sugar bricks I added a few weeks ago and a few other things.