If you've been following this blog, you know that I, like most other beekeepers, am struggling to keep my bees alive. After pulling and extracting this season's honey from my hives and helping of a couple of friends extract theirs, I am closing the honey house for the year. As I rinse out the extractor, clean capping tanks, buckets and hot knives, I wonder whether I will get to extract again next year?

I pulled less honey that I did last year, but more than I expected given my losses. Until this year, I have always made nucleus hives to replace those losses. But this year when the time came to make nucs, none of the hives was strong enough. So the hives I may lose this year cannot be replaced. Forty-four percent of US hives died last year. The year before that, it was 42%. 

As I flounder about for hope and any inkling that things will get better, I've learned a few more things. The pesticide and herbicide companies say that honeybees will learn to avoid plants that have been sprayed. Even though it seems these days that scientists will say just about anything they're paid to say, I'd really like to believe that one. But almost as soon as I read that article, I found another study that reported bees actually are attracted to neonicitinoids! Arrrrgh!!

Then I learned that bees are loyal to flowers. "They remain faithful to a productive plant species until it stops flowering. Bees are also loyal to locations. They recruit other bees in their community to fly to the chosen food sources using their dances." Could this be why some of my hives thrived and did well while almost half of them died? Was it because they went to different locations to forage?

If so, will they pass on this location loyalty to their hive mates for next year? I know, wishful thinking.

Swarming is what healthy hives in the wild do. It's how they reproduce themselves into new colonies. Soon after the spring flowers begin blooming, the old queen will leave the hive with a goodly number of bees to go off and start a new colony. Young queens will hatch out soon after and vie for the monarchy of the old hive. This is good for the bees and good for the natural world, but it is not so good for beekeepers. Half of a colony's bees and most of the beekeeper's current year's honey crop can fly off in one swarm.

I have been out on three "swarm calls" in the past week or two here in Middle Tennessee. Since I (like most of the nation) have suffered heavy colony losses this past year, I am ecstatic when asked to go gather up these swarms. I love, love, love, collecting swarms!

Swarms usually occur on the first sunny spring day after the bees have been cooped up during rainy weather. As a beekeeper, I've always tried to observe, learn from, and work with the bees' natural swarming tendencies. My goal is not to thwart this natural process, but to work with the bees--a winning endeavor for both of us.

I have learned that bees begin preparing for swarming almost as soon as the queen resumes laying eggs in late winter/early spring. If a colony is strong and has plenty of honey to get through the winter, it will begin swarm preparation at the time of the first available pollen. In my area, that means the availability of elm and maple pollen as early as February.

Beginning in February, I will watch for the first warm, but temporary, break in the weather--when temperatures approach 70 degrees. That's when I check my hives. If the bees have moved up into the second deep box, leaving the bottom one empty, I will reverse the boxes--so they have room to move up. This is tricky, depending on the weather. If the bees are still divided between the two boxes, you do not want to split up the cluster and expose the brood to chilling temperatures. If all of the bees have moved up into the top deep, you can safely reverse the hive boxes.
 
The second part of this late winter/early spring management is to break up the honey dome. I always leave one shallow super of honey atop the two deep boxes. If the bees have eaten all of this reserve, I will give them frames of honey from other hives or from what I have saved in my freezer. If this box is still full, it becomes a "honey dome," and makes the bees think they are running out of room. They prepare to swarm--they have plenty of honey and nowhere to store new honey. Breaking up this honey dome is key to preventing swarming later in the season.

Breaking up the honey dome involves a procedure called "checker boarding." Every other frame of honey is removed from the top super and replaced with empty comb or foundation. A second shallow box is added above to house the frames removed from below, alternated with empty comb or foundation--thus the term "checker boarding." You have relieved congestion,and the bees have room to expand within the hive. An added bonus is that you know this hive will most likely produce two or more supers of honey for you once the nectar flow begins.

For many hives in these times of travail for the bees, these manipulations will be enough. The bees have room to work and expand, and you get to keep your bees and your honey harvest. For very strong hives, as in days gone by, you will need to "artificially" swarm them later in the season--take a nucleus hive or a split to relieve congestion. The best timing for this is at the beginning of or just after the spring bloom or nectar flow--just before the sisters can do it for themselves! Take three or four frames of bees, eggs (less than 3 days old), pollen, and honey and move them into a new hive. Seven times out of 10, they will make a new queen and build up a new hive. The main colony will think they have swarmed and will settle into making honey, and you will have a brand new colony as well as the main colony and it's honey crop. Everybody wins!

These days I have more bee hardware stacked in the barn than I do in the fields. My heavy losses started in 2013, the same year my farming neighbors went corn crazy. The price of corn went up, so pastureland was plowed under and corn popped up all over like, well, like popcorn on a hot griddle. Along with the corn, soybean, and wheat rotation came herbicides and pesticides galore. I like to run about 25 to 30 hives, but these days I'm lucky to keep 10.

What's a beekeeper to do? I'm going down but not without a fight. I contacted the EPA who sent two Tennessee Department of Agriculture agents out to "investigate." They questioned me for a bit, and I could tell from their questions that they were looking to pin the losses on me, on varroa mites, on hive beetles...on anything but current agricultural practices. Satisfied that I was not killing my own bees with shoddy beekeeping practices, they concluded that they were "confused."

At my request, they took samples of my honey to test for Roundup, 2,4-D, and imidacloprid (a neonic). This will tell me only whether my honey is contaminated and won't be definitive for what is killing the bees. I checked into having the tests also done by an independent lab, but they charge $100/sample. With dozens of possible suspects, that is beyond my means. If the Tennessee DOA test come back positive, I will quit selling my honey.

Ever the optimist, I provided the Ag agents with copies of university studies and made a very good argument, I thought, for why the agricultural chemicals now in the water, air and soil, and are killing the bees and can't be that good for the rest of us. They stonewalled me and promised to send me the results of the tests. I'm waiting but I'm not holding my breath.

Maybe conventional agriculture will kill itself? The price of corn has bottomed out. More conventional farmers are going out of business, and the only people getting rich are the chemical companies and input sellers. But there is hope. Some conventional farmers are switching over to more organic practices with fewer costly inputs. They're learning that people don't want to eat their pesticide-laced crops no matter how many Monsanto scientists and USDA agents say they're safe. Sure, first we'll have to import enough organic food from places like Denmark and Russia to fill the growing demand, but at some point the lights will go on and the scales will tip. Now, if my bees can only hold out until that sweet day.