Spring build-up is in the second month in Los Angeles!

I live in Manhattan Beach CA with 28 colonies of feral bees sourced from structural cutouts and swarms.   They are foundationless and never treated or fed.   In the Los Angeles basin we can have swarms in December and usually have drones in the hives all year 'round.  
    Our 7 years of drought (we had only 4 inches of rain all of last year)   has been broken by good rains that began in early November, 2016.   They have been well spaced and gentle most of the time, so the accumulation is now over 14 inches!!    This is spectacular for the bees and deep watering for the trees.   I expect many swarms this Spring as feral hives all over LA pour forth their abundance.   Already, the rosemary, echiums, grevilleas,  Bermuda buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae) and some eucalyptus have been blooming wildly.  
     Many of my colonies have been building up their broodnests since the middle of January, even with days of rain when they can't go out.   Lots of drones are being raised, as well.    I have started to monitor the faster ones and move frames of brood into new boxes, to create open space,  so as to prevent crowding and fend off swarming.   In urban LA, swarming bees from one's apiary is frowned on by the neighbors, so we have to be diligent.   Also, watching how much of the box of honey above the brood nest is filled up is important to stop swarm initiation.   I take out a few honey frames to open it up, too.   Most of the hives are starting to lay in nectar again (though I take honey sometimes even in Winter) so taking off honey at this time is allowable.
    Much of the country is still in deepest Winter, but if you are in Southern states, you will want to be monitoring the brood nest closely from now on.
     

Engaging "Big Green" regarding some of the real issues.

You are probably aware, no matter who you are or how environmentally engaged, that the mantra of "all the bees are dying"  and "science does not know why"   and "CCD is the modern scourge of Apis mellifera" turns up as a topic by major media and Big Green enviro groups as a constant refrain.
   I am a long time donor to EarthJustice, a cabal of attorneys who fight for environmental causes, endangered species, and against the corporatacracy that seeks to appropriate everything on Earth for humans.    I get a lot of mail asking for donations to fight the cause of dying honey bees.  
   Recently, a invitation appeared at my inbox, described this way--

Our country is changing, and many important issues are on the table. But what about what’s on your table? Join Earthjustice for Pollinate LA, a special “hive to table” dinner at Craft restaurant in the heart of Los Angeles. Craft’s Executive Chef Andrew Gavalla and Pastry Chef Shannon Swindle will create a delicious menu of foods that would not exist without honey bees—the powerful force behind 1/3 of the food we eat. Guests will learn about the importance of protecting these critical pollinators and how we can all create a more sustainable food system from Peter Lehner, Senior Attorney for the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Program at Earthjustice.

I was intrigued but also skeptical that some of the most important issues would NOT turn up in the presentation.   I am finding many of the Big Enviros and the major media prefer to focus their blame for the annual 44% loss of honey bee hives on the chemicals applied to crops.    Lack of forage diversity, lack of genetic diversity, trucking long miles in migratory pollination circuits, feeding HFCS and fake pollen are rarely mentioned as contributing to the demise of colonies.   But especially galling is the lack of disclosure regarding beekeepers routinely TREATING their bees with chemicals  IN THE HIVES.   This almost never is articulated.   So, I decided to write the presenter, Mr Peter Lehner, to find out exactly what he did or did not know about these issues and the impact on the industrial honey bee.  Below is my letter.

Other considerations and impacts driving the loss of honey bees

Inbox

x

Susan Rudnicki <susanrudnicki@gmail.com>	Jan 20 (10 days ago)
to plehner

Hi, Mr Lehner---my hope for your presentation in LA is that it carries a more nuanced message regarding the decline in commercial honey bees. The hybrid population of Apis mellifera ligustica are THE commercial strain kept by not just industrial pollination outfits, but  also almost ALL hobbyist beekeepers buying bees from breeders.   The discussion of impacts has lacked disclosure of the other major chemically based abuses suffered by these bees.    Major media almost never reveals (including the Summer 2014 E J quarterly, "Why Bees Die") ---that in treating for Varroa destructor (the exotic mite related to V. jacobsoni from SE Asia that lives in stasis with its original host, Apis cerana) ---  the beekeepers are routinely treating colonies with various acaricides which affect the queen's fertility, affect navigation of forager bees, and affect brood development.  These acaricides are lipid soluble, so they concentrate in the wax of combs, and have synergism with other chemicals and so-called "inert ingredients" in chemical formulations-- ( inert sounds benign, eh?)    These chemicals are becoming rapidly ineffective as the mites develop resistance to the treatments. 

    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009754

High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health

Fluvalinate has been considered a relatively “safe” material for honey bees by the beekeeping industry; however its history is unclear with potentially significant implications for honey bee health. The original formulation of fluvalinate had an established lethal dose that killed 50% of the tested population (LD50) of 65.85 µg/bee for honey bees, which is considered relatively non-toxic [27]. Surprisingly, EPA in 1995 reported the LD50 of fluvalinate as 0.2 µg/bee, a level that is considered to be highly toxic [70] to honey bees. This is 330-fold more toxic than indicated by the original LD50, a value still quoted in current literature [e.g. 8]. Extraordinary enhancement of toxicity has been found with addition of commercial synergists to fluvalinate, where a topical LD50 of 0.00964 µg/bee, a 980-fold increase to their reported 9.45 µg/bee without the additive, occurred if 100 µg of piperonyl butoxide was applied 1 hr prior to the pyrethroid [71]. Centrally-acting neurotoxicants can sublethally impact a social bee more than the targeted pest due to the complex communication and sensory-based behaviors required to maintain community organization.

Widely-occurring Varroa mite resistance to fluvalinate, coumaphos and now amitraz may have developed rapidly as a result of their constant exposure to miticide-impregnated wax comb. Removal of these residues from wax may extend the usefulness of these or future miticides, by reducing this high selection pressure. It is generally agreed that the mite, Varroa destructorAnderson & Trueman, is playing a key role in the demise of honey bee health, and that intensive use of miticides for their control has led to evolution of wide-spread mite resistance among European strains of honey bees [72]–[75]. Fluvalinate and coumaphos, but not amitraz, are highly persistent in the hive with an estimated half-life in beeswax of 5 years [43]. Fortunately, a broad sampling of U.S. honey showed frequent but very low levels of coumaphos and fluvalinate up to 12 ppb, and only a few detections of lesser amounts of four other pesticides [76].

   What is to be done?

    First, genetic diversity in the breeding of bees must be recognized as the strategy Nature uses to develop resilience and resistance to pests.   This is known as Darwinian concepts of selective pressure.  For years, there has been the assertion that "there are no wild bees left---they all died from varroa"  And my personal favorite from the conventional folks "you can't keep bees alive without chemicals !!"     It is simply NOT true.  

       I have 28 hives of feral survivor stock bees from the "wilds" of the Los Angeles basin, never treated, not kept on foundations, never fed artificial diets.   All over the world and certainly all over the US, there are thousands of us using the bees that survived the Vd invasion, continue to survive and live in all localities from the most tropical to the most severe.    For too long, the research and scientific community have had as their goal to microscopically tease apart where on the bee genome the "resistant trait to V.d. resides"   and artificially select for that.  Why do they look for this trait if none of the bees they work with are resistant?   Because the fact is as I wrote above---Apis cerana lives with the pest as a background stressor, and treatment free beeks (like ME) keep bothering them to say they are ignoring basic biological adaptive models.  As well,  the issue of marked resistance to chemicals in the mites is pushing beekeepers and researchers into a dead end. 

      Unfortunately, as we know from the example of "puppy mill" dogs (a example most people understand...) when we artificially select for human desired traits, we often saddle the resulting organism with all sorts of undesirable weaknesses---respiratory, joint, teeth, skeletal, and organ maladies which purebred animals are well known for.    We see these  genetic selection weaknesses in  the Cornish Cross chicken and other industrial animal breeds.  

    Keep in mind, for eons, the relationship of humans to bees was not by purchasing bees from a breeder and shipping them, often from hundreds of miles away, but by using LOCAL SURVIVOR STOCK.   The aim to discover the genetic "key" to V.d. is, in my opinion, largely driven by this desire to own the "product"  Survivor bees that folks gather from their local environment is anathema to a business selling a product.   (for a simple presentation of the concepts of adaptive pressure evolution in Apis mellifera, see this piece from National Geographic, May 2015---pay particular attention to the last 5 paragraphs, quoting Phil Chandler of the UK

      http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/building-bees/mann-text

   The commercial bee world has been slow to accept that they are in a bind with their weak, medication-dependent bees (there are supposedly only some 600 queen lines used in the US)  but I am not the only one pushing this idea of allowing more natural selective pressure models to get the weak bees out of the picture.   Tom Seeley of Cornell University (eminent researcher of Apis mellifera and writer of many books, most famously, "Honey Bee Democracy")    

  A short video of his summary presentation at the BeeAudaciousConference in December in California is a good introduction to the principles---

https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/darwinianbeekeeping?source=feed_text&story_id=1523752917653651

           Now, I know I have dumped a lot out of the bucket here, but I tried to be organized in a very technical subject area.   My three main concerns are these: 

    1)   the regular use of chemicals IN THE HIVES, by the commercial pollinator companies is a significant, but rarely examined stressor for the migratory bee colonies.   MOST hobbyist beekeepers are also using this treatment regimen with their breeder bees.   The bulk of the attention is on Ag chemicals applied to crops and  the residues encountered by pollinators

    2)   the lack of genetic diversity, the heavy manipulation (even Artificial Insemination of queens) of the breeder bee stock has resulted in extremely deficient resilience/fitness  to the varroa mite and its vectored diseases.   This is only getting worse using the typical management practices.   

   

   3)   Feral survivor stock, such as the bees I catch and keep in Los Angeles and  that  others are keeping worldwide, represent the best hope for the defeat of scourges that are plaguing Apis mellifera.   

             I hope I have enlarged your understanding of the issues we are facing in the honey bee "crisis"   Certainly, Ag chemicals, loss of diverse habitat, trucking, feeding HFCS and fake pollen, and GMO monocultures are significant insults.   But these others are very important too, and rarely articulated.   

          

            I would appreciate a response.             Susan Rudnicki, Manhattan Beach CA    keeper of feral honey bees, rescue bees from structures, teach, sell honey

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Mr Lehner wrote back this response after a few days, CLEARLY not understanding the issues I was trying to point out

Susan,

I’ve now had the chance to rad this a bit more and ask around, including several beekeepers (including my brother in law). The beekeepers I’ve talked to manage hives for honey production, not pollination, and are much smaller than the big California ones.

All agree you make some good points and that genetic diversity, in-hive pesticide use (the ones I talked to never do that), and food source are all important as well as pesticides on the crops that the bees are pollinating.  Thank you for increasing my understanding.

Best,

Peter

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So, I attempted to bring the discussion back to the issue of chemical acaricides routinely used in hives by the people growing the food that would be the focus of his presentation address----not his brother-in-law or others he spoke to.

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OK---thank you.               But may I point out, the  hive loss data and statistics cited by the media and the enviro groups in their campaigns do not refer to the individuals you talked to---those stats don't relate to me either.   The presentation at Craft is going to be referring to the big commercial pollinator operations and THEIR losses  since the overwhelming majority of crops grown in the US that require pollination are using migratory operations to service the crop.       All the insults I described are impacting THOSE bees, but the media and Big Green fail to mention them.   There is a lack of disclosure of significant insults.

              Just some clarification.            Susan

Hive Poisoning---it happens!

Hive poisoning occurs in urban environments, but probably even more in the rural areas where crops are routinely sprayed on a calendar basis.   In other words, the spraying is not in response to a assessment showing a pest or problem, but on a schedule.   Poisoning happens in the city because homeowners do not read labels carefully and the labels hide the information about toxicity to bees in small print deeply embedded in the directions.   By now, just about everyone has been made aware, by media coverage, of the crisis in losses of commercial honey bee colonies.   But, people are still buying a LOT of toxic chemical answers to their perceived "bug" problems and spraying a shrub, tree or flower bed with these chemicals during visitations by honey bees and this can cause a huge amount of death.   

It is in the nature of bee foragers to tell their sisters of strong sources of nectar and pollen so that a source may be exploited with efficiency.   If the  plants have been sprayed, the bees will ALL be collecting poisoned nectar and pollen and taking it back to the hive to off-load to the house bees---which poisons those bees, as well.   

It is a devastating experience. I have had a nuc, full to the brim and ready to sell, be stricken by poisoning till the colony population fell to about 200 bees and the queen. I boosted them with frames of capped brood and they recovered in 2 months.

All my 28 colonies are feral survivor stock. They start working early and are still coming back after dark.  One tall stack, kept at my house, has actually had TWO incidents of pesticide poisoning—July of 2014 and December of 2015. Both times, the pool of dead bees out front, the dead on the bottom board, the bees dropping off the frames and flipping around on the ground were the cardinal signs of acute poisoning. All signs became clear over the course of a day, but the initial recovery—the continued acute dying—took about 10 days to run its course. I do not think this colony would have survived but for their bulk size—3 deeps—contributed to a larger population to absorb and dilute the poisoning. The queen was not poisoned either time, and I attribute that to the fact that bees handing off any food to the queen are not the usual bees receiving nectar as it comes in.

In most cases of poisoning, the situation can't be fixed, so much as, it has to run its course.   I do not re-queen bee hives, so the main thing is to reduce their hive space appropriately to the number of bees left after the incident concludes.   You may have to remove entire hive bodies and save back those combs.   (I put those in the freezer for three days to kill any hiding hive moth eggs before I store them in a air tight crate)  

If the hive was not very large to begin with, such as a nuc, adding in frames of capped brood with nurse bees (not open brood or eggs---you want the surviving bees to have to do the least work possible)  can help them come back up faster.   

What can you do about this awful disaster?   The first time it happened to me, I had no resources to direct me, but by the second time it happened, I had been learning about the Pollinator Stewardship Council and their "super-advocate", Michele Colopy.   She is intensely involved in all types of research and monitoring of pollinator protection and the often-times poor oversight by our government agencies in policing chemical applicators and users and manufacturers.   She has a newsletter which I highly recommend you subscribe to.  Beekeepers should join this organization that is working for us to  affect regulatory processes of pesticide risk assessment, labeling, and enforcement.  

And if you find a colony you are keeping that you suspect was poisoned, I strongly urge you to make use of Michele Colopy at the Pollinator Stewardship Council in her effort to collect and report poisoning incidents to the government agencies. All you have to do is submit some photos of the carnage, a description of what happened.   Michele does all of it for you---the filing of the official reports to the Dept of Pesticide Regulation in your state and the report to the Environmental Protection Agency.  If we do not make the effort to report these bee kills, it is the common tendency of the agencies to say “nothing is happening”
This kind of attitude does not help our cause to rein in pesticide usage.    

Here is the note she sent me after I wrote her of my hive’s second poisoning----

Dear Ms. Rudnicki,

The Pollinator Stewardship Council has been encouraging beekeepers to report their bee kills (not winter losses, that is BIP’s work) since 2013 http://pollinatorstewardship.org/?page_id=934 . We worked with the Honey Bee Health Coalition in May 2015 to create a guide on how to report bee kills due to pesticides. The attached article was printed in Bee Culture magazine, and the attached Quick Guide PDF was there as well. Beekeepers can request a laminated copy of the Quick Guide at http://pollinatorstewardship.org/?page_id=3292

Thank you for your due diligence in reporting your losses. It is only through awareness and data collection that we all can gain a better understanding of all of the factors (pests, pathogens, pesticides, and poor forage) affecting our honey bees whether it is 2 hives or 2000 colonies damaged or killed.

Even though EPA has stated they do not like to accept “second-hand” reports, such as from the Pollinator Stewardship Council; EPA doesaccept “second-hand” reports of pesticide incidents that were reported to pesticide manufacturers. When you and I spoke about your bee losses, I simply wrote down what you told me; you reviewed and approved the report, and gave me your permission to email the reports to CDPR and to EPA with your name and contact information in the report. (beekeepers can report their losses anonymously, and we will respect a beekeeper’s privacy to do so.) The Pollinator Stewardship Council is here to assist beekeepers in the reporting process. Our goal is to listen to beekeepers, explain the reporting process, and help them document their losses.

At this time the Pollinator Stewardship Council is part of a committee, along with other concerned nonprofits, working with EPA to revamp their incident reporting data collection.

Through more than 50 presentations around the U.S. the Pollinator Stewardship Council has provided information about reporting bee kills due to pesticide exposure, and encouraged beekeepers to report their losses. We need all beekeepers to report their losses (winter losses to Bee Informed Partnership as that data collection is important), and losses as a result of pesticide poisoning to the Pollinator Stewardship Council, EPA, and the beekeeper’s state EPA as this data is just as important in helping to improve the health of our bees. See reported losses athttp://pollinatorstewardship.org/?page_id=1428

I am very sorry for the losses you have experienced. Thank you for taking the time to report this incident. Please feel free to share this information with your beekeeping network.

Michele Colopy
Program Director
Pollinator Stewardship Council, Inc.
P.O. Box 304
Perkinston, MS 39573
832-727-9492
progdirector@pollinatorstewardship.org
http://www.pollinatorstewardship.org

Bee Informed Partnership Hive Scale Project

via HoneyLover Susan RudnickiHave you ever wondered how our local, LA Urban beekeeping differ from other areas of the country? I just read the other day that beekeepers in Wales expect about 25 pounds of honey per year on their hives—33 pounds is a bumper crop!   This does not seem like much. Our bees are active year ’round, making brood, honey and drones. This growth is very different from temperate climate bees and, as well, we are using Africanized hybrid ferals—a relatively rare population to survey. We now have a opportunity to participate in amassing data on our specific niche by the generosity of HoneyLove who purchased the SolutionBee Hive scale for me to monitor a hive in my backyard garden.

The project is managed by BIP (the Bee Informed Partnership)  and the hive data is automatically sent to their website as well as the SolutionBee team, the manufacturers of the hive scale (purchased from Brushy Mountain). The colony I selected came from a large swarm hived on April 27, 2014 which has proven to be super productive and nicely behaved. They now occupy 3 deep boxes and 2 mediums after seven months and have produced 60 pounds of honey.  I have also raided their brood nest for frames of brood for weak nuc hives. They are VERY strong bees and a pleasure to work.

The goal of the project is summarized below, as taken from the initial offering to participate sent out by BIP. I am having great fun with this, watching my bee’s growth graph going ever upward in weight gain. For the first time I am also having to learn how to use a cell phone—my son’s iphone—as the data recording and uploading device. Arghh!  —this is not my strong suit.

The Bee Informed Partnership is dedicated to helping beekeepers make informed data-based management decisions. Monitoring weight changes in colonies has huge potential to help us understand disease and parasite population growth, as well as the timing of management practices. We are seeking some innovative beekeepers who are willing to help us develop and beta test the hive scale tools’ ability to develop a system that will provide the best regionally specific management practices based on real time data. We are collaborating with NASA’s Honeybee Net, under the direction of Wayne Esaias, to test this exciting effort.

Why hive scales?

Hive scales weigh individual colonies at regular intervals, keeping track of strong nectar flows, swarming, and other conditions that affect management decisions.  Beekeepers may respond to rises in weight by putting supers on, inspecting colonies for swarm cells, and extracting full honey supers. Conversely, weight loss may indicate a need to feed colonies, robbing or indicate the colony has swarmed and is at increased risk of becoming queenless.

With new digital hive scales, beekeepers can track the weight of colonies without having to do a hive inspection. The scale we are using for our beta testing will utilizing Bluetooth with an Android device (e.g., Android phone or tablet), and a visit to the apiary is required to read the data. The data can be viewed on the device or be uploaded via cellular or WIFI communication. However, in the future these same scales when used with a data collector will allow for data to be automatically uploaded via cell phones or cell phone service data plans that allow for remote monitoring.

Armed with data from hive scales and other disease monitoring efforts, the Bee Informed Partnership hopes to make predictive models of honey flows and disease population growth. These models will help us develop an “alert system” that will make management recommendations based on real-time and regionally specific data.

As to my particular case,  I don’t expect the disease/pest monitoring aspect will be so relevant to my bee population. The varroa mite has not been a great destroyer of my bees in the past and they seem to manage the pest well on their own. When Spring comes, it will be interesting to observe the growth of the brood nest and respond with management techniques to overcome swarming tendencies.   One thing is sure—that time will be sooner than any other part of the country.

Bee colony rescue from under a cargo container!

Eduardo, my student, and I got this interesting job to remove a colony that had been occupying the underfloor area of a  cargo container for 10 years.      The owner of the property was moving and had sold the container, but needed to have the bees taken out first.   So, a large tow truck lifted the container for us to gain working space, we vacuumed the flying bees and nurse bees and took 11 medium frames of beautiful brood!  The combs fit perfectly in medium frames due to the spacing available to the bees between the floor and the dirt.  The final photo shows us dumping the loose bees back into the hive with the brood combs.   All went well and the queen was up and laying right away.   

The new beekeeping code for City of Los Angeles---passed Jan 2016

It is now official!   As of January, 2016, the full city council of Los Angeles unanimously endorsed the new backyard beekeeping code in a 15 to 0 vote. Mayor Garcetti set his signature to clinch the new law, and now we have the largest city in the country covered for keeping backyard hives.   

Be careful that you know if your specific part of the basin is part of Los Angeles CITY, or its own municipality with regulations against beekeeping.   As it happens, codes either do NOT exist in Manhattan Beach (where I am a beekeeper) or allow beekeeping with certain restrictions in the form of certification by a city codes inspector and the filing of a permit application---Torrance and Redondo Beach.   Other cities codes are not known to me, so it is the burden of the keeper to discover what their city codes are allowing.        

In case you do not know the specifics set in the Los Angeles City code, you may see them here—https://www.dropbox.com/sh/d9zhgb1wy9v9lfv/AADXk9qo_P9w_wSyPpavtiBHa?dl=0

The new rules do not specify what sort of bees we may keep nor what kind of hive we must use. The language is concerned mainly with lot line setbacks, alignment of the flightpath and enclosing walls or fences—in other words, land use issues. But with privilege comes responsibility, and one of the very important things to remember is that most of the folks around us will not be keeping bees. Annoying the public will lead to nuisance complaints. We must manage our bees well, giving them regular inspections for space assessments, health, temperament, and  queen viability. Joining up with other members of bee clubs and keeping up with educational advancement will be very important aspects of setting the best impression for calming worried citizens who are not so sure about this new allowance for backyard hives.

There is one part of the code that requires the beekeeper to interact with the officials, and that is this—-The applicant is registered as a beekeeper with the County of Los Angeles Agricultural Commission. Registration is easy, costing only $10 per year per beekeeper. The fee is payable every year in January---if you register in July, you will still get a renewal in the following January.   There has been some confusion about this, where people complain of not getting a full 12 months on their fees.   The current apiary inspector, Conrad Burns, is a likable, friendly guy. He is going around to all the backyard beeks to make contact, assess beekeeping knowledge, and trying to help with the success of our model. Please do not neglect this aspect of responsible urban beekeeping—get your hives registered. It creates a impression of legitimacy with the public and can only work to everyone’s benefit.

We have the downloadable form on dropbox for you here—
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5tr9ljcy5zsapkw/AAAHSuE3fqpAlDAgLFF7Lzgwa?dl=0

Send it in and make a renewed pledge to help establish the most vibrant, connected beekeeping community in the country—Los Angeles. Get involved with your local bee clubs such as HoneyLove and join the CleanBeesAlliance, fostering a model of treatment free beekeeping and education.   Make the networking of a like-minded group help you with your beekeeping challenges as well as contribute to our ever present need for folks to help us spread the message. We really need our members to contribute in substantive ways to continue to accomplish the goals.

Thanks!