Europe's Bees - "recovery zones" are being proposed

2 Comments

Comment by NaTasha Shastan Bertrand on November 26, 2008 at 9:35am

Hi Jeffrey,

I bumped into this earlier today, about how super-sized artificial honeycomb being pushed and used in the industry is one of the major factors in the bees being susceptible to mites. If the bees have natural sized cells, their development is shorter and fewer mites have a chance to infest.

This is off of the front page of Bush Bees : Beekeeping Naturally


Most of us beekeepers spend a lot of effort fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to say my biggest problems in beekeeping now are things like trying to get nucs through the winter here in Southeastern Nebraska and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

This change in beekeeping from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage by beekeepers results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. This 4.6mm comb was drawn by a hive of commercial Carniolans and this 4.7mm comb was drawn on the first try by a package of commercial Carniolans. What most beekeepers use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions, instead of one, that produces a bee that is about half again as large as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day and shorter post capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells and less Varroa reproduce in the cells. I have mostly done this either with wax coated PermaComb (fully drawn plastic comb) or self drawn comb on foundationless frames or frames with blank starter strips. 4.9mm foundation is available from Dadant and Sons and from Brushy Mt. This size(4.9mm) has been found sufficient to resolve the mite problems.

Thanks for posting this! "The Candle Stick Maker" down the street from me, here in France, has 17 different kinds of local honey (at last count). There is a lot of both lavender and borage all over the city and the countryside, as well as a lot of fruit and nut trees. The honeybees that do come to my 8th floor balcony garden are much smaller than the ones I remember in California. They cover my lavender, borage, thymes, and rosemary.

Best,
NSB

Comment by Jeffrey V. on November 26, 2008 at 10:01am

Thanks for the information NSB - we have Lavender, Thyme and Rosemary in our garden and the bees really go for them here in NM too.

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