Pollen

Pollen

Ben had notice last week that the honey bees were not bringing as much pollen as we were used to see in the past seasons. We started thinking about why this would be the case this year. I thought that it had been really hot for us in Minnesota, and thus maybe the honey bees preferred nectar? However, it has been relatively humid, so plants have both nectar and pollen. Maybe the bees are busier cooling the hive? I know that when it rains, the pollen is washed down from the flowers and lands on the ground,  honey bees don't collect from the ground. So? I was curious and looked into it! This is what I found.....fascinating!

First a good definition of pollen is needed. Of course everyone knows that it is the powdery stuff inside a flower but actually there is more to it! It is really the male germ cells produced by plants. When male pollen is brushed with female pollen, there is pollination. We know that! Pollen is a very important source of protein, vitamins and fat.

Bee pollen has been considered to have the following nutrients:


Vitamins: Provitamin A, B-1 Thiamin, B-2 Riboflavin, B-3 Nancin, B-5, B-6 Pyridoxine, B-12 (cyanocobalamine), Pantothenic acid, Vitamin C, F, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin H, Vitamin K, Vitamin PP, Folic Acid, Choline, Inositol, Rutin.

Minerals: Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Iron, Copper, Iodine, Zinc, Sulfur, Sodium, Chlorine, Magnesium, Manganese, Molybdenum, Selenium, Boron, Silica, and Titanium.

Other: Amino Acid, Carbohydrates, Fatty Acids, Enzymes & Co-Enzymes, Fats.

Bee Pollen contains at least 22 amino acids, 18 vitamins, 25 minerals, 59 trace elements, 11 enzymes or co-enzymes, 14 fatty acids, 11 carbohydrates and approximately 25 % protein. Bee pollen is extremely rich in carotenes, which are metabolic precursors of vitamin A. It is also high In B complex and vitamins C, D, E and Lecithin. Bee pollen contains over 50 % more protein than beef, yet its fat content is very low. It is also an excellent vegetarian source of protein typically possessing more of the essential amino acids, pound for pound, than animal proteins like meat, eggs, and dairy products. (Enviro Bee Products Disributors)

Who  eat pollen? Very young bees eat the largest amount, although some adults will consume some. After the third day in the life of a "bee egg", the larva is fed mostly pollen and honey.

Honey bee larvae in royal jelly and eggs

Who collect pollen? Forager bees have this duty; they are the oldest members of the colony. As they are more experimented, they fly out every day relentlessly until their death.

Notice the heavy pollen load on legs!

While foraging, the bees become sometimes completely dusted with pollen. The grains stick to their hair by static electricity!

                                                                          

                                                                                            All covered in pollen!

Digging for pollen

Pollen well organized in hive

To pack the pollen in their "baskets", the bee sticks her tongue out spitting some of the nectar she had collected previously and applies it to her forelegs. Then she starts brushing/combing her



head, antennae, and front thorax to clean up the pollen. The back of her thorax is cleaned by her middle legs! She cleans the rest of her abdomen with her hind legs, just like a dog scratching his belly. This  specialized set of legs helps also pack, shape and mold the pollen grains into a little kidney bean shape. So helpful to have 6 legs!

However the honey bee is not done. Now that she has gathered her pollen, she needs to fly back to her colony. She will have to be brave. In her flight back home, many dangers lurk: she could be eaten by a bird or hit by a truck.

After arriving at the hive, she grooms herself, and starts looking for a cell to deposit her loot. The cell can already have some pollen, or be  empty.  After finding the right spot, she lowers herself backward, and with her middle legs she dislodges the pollen. She also remove any pollen grains that are still on her tiny body...wasting nothing. Another bee  pushes and packs the pollen with her little face and front legs. Some enzymes and other substances are added helping the pollen to go through a lactic acid fermentation period. Before leaving again to gather more, the forager bee looks for another bee to give her some honey (carbohydrate) before returning to the flowers. As you can see the foragers are working extremely hard, from sunset to sundown. It will be their last task before perishing of exhaustion.

Now to come back to our question: Why our honey bees don't seem to collect a lot of pollen? I found an explanation. Pollen collecting is driven by the colony's needs! Is it not fabulous? " A correlation exists between the amount of brood in a colony and the number and proportion of pollen foragers, also pollen foraging increases with higher egg-laying rates of the queen. " (The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture). It is speculated that the queen's pheromones play a role in this event.  So now we know!

Next time you see a honey bee, just smile!

Native Bees Survey in North Dakota

Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, ND one of the 18 sites!

They were very long days. Starting at 5:00am wake up call, a very large breakfast by my standards, then driving to 18 sites twice a day (morning and afternoon surveys), trying to catch as much native bees as possible with hand nets! In addition, we had to survey the plants in a 1 meter square...and count every flowers on each species...do you want to know how many flower are on a Sweet Colver? No you don't! 750 and +. We would come back to a home with no AC around 8:00pm each evening,(inside temperature:85F).  We would cook together, and eat. Then we would try to ID some native "weeds" that were not easy to distinguished, or get ready with paperwork and equipment for the next day.We were hot, sweaty, and dusty but I enjoyed every minute. Needless to say that on average each of us  would catch 3-4 native bees per day, and release all other insects!

Honey bee on Yellow Sweet Clover

Karine "at work"!

July Honey Bees!

July 17, 2012

Benoit starting the smoker!

Benoit looked after our honey bees last week as I was helping a grad. student survey the native bees in North Dakota!

Chanhassen: The four hives are doing well. The bees still looked healthy, and were busy foraging, nectar and pollen. They all have supers (our surplus honey), but don't seem too interested in sharing. Few bees are walking on the foundation, making a very small amount of wax, and not putting nectar in the waxed cells. But we have to remind ourselves that "usually" packaged bees don't make any surplus as they are focusing on surviving, increasing the bee population, bringing their own food for the winter and caring for each other.

Carpenter bee

Because of the unusual prolong warmth, Ben put more water in the containers surrounding the apiary. He also noted that a native bee was trying to enter a colony by herself. It happens to be a Carpenter bee! She was showing a very odd behavior, as they are solitary bees and either nest in holes in the ground or in dead trees. For the honey bees of course she was an invader, and they pushed her away.


Shakopee: Our 2 oldest colonies are fantastic! One has 7 supers, the other 5. We WILL have honey...and plenty. It towers now over Ben's head. I can't reach the top anymore to even put the rocks on the lid! We are seriously thinking about harvesting soon.

I talked to many beekeepers and all agree that we should have a very good season :)

The Russian Bees: After loosing 2/3 of the population, in the last 3 weeks we have been giving them a frame of brood a week to help increase the bee population. We take a frame in our strongest hive, brush all the bees off, and drive to the Russian apiary, placing the frame in the brood box. The Russian nurse bees then take care of the capped brood until they are born, becoming themselves nurse bees. Older nurse bees become foragers. The colony is healthier, and activities are resuming for the bees. We will keep a close eye on them :)

Benoit and a good frame of brood(brown coloration:capped brood)

Brood frame before brushing bees off

Good News and Good Faith!

Shakopee hives are now taller than I!

July 9, 2012

Shakopee
Ben and I went to see our bees in Shakopee yesterday late afternoon (July 8). First, it was a "jungle"; since last week the wild plants had grown tall than expected, thanks to the hot and very warm weather! We were stopped in our tracks...however I had anticipated the possible outcome ,who's clever now? :) So Benoit got to work, braving the warmth, he decided not to wear his bee-suit, only his veil. He started the trimmer; I was a little worried and was standing by in full suit with smoker handy. He was swinging the garden power tool right and left, and to my surprise (maybe his too!) the bees were behaving. He then trimmed around the hives, waiting and stopping from time to time, and I was "puffing" a bit of smoke here and there...more to reassure myself than anything else. However I do not encourage visiting bees without a proper outfit and a smoker. Now I do have to wear a full suit, hiker leather boots, gloves and veil because I do react more and more to bee stings. However Benoit has more reaction to mosquito bites than bees'...go figure. Anyhow, he made a nice path which eased our stroll to the colonies.

Both hives are doing well, bringing in a lot of nectar. The supers are heavier by the week. They are piled up so high that we are thinking that we may need to do a first harvest soon. That's a bit crazy. I thought that this happened only in very warm locations like Florida, Alabama and Virginia. Well maybe it is a good thing, or a new trend.

Wild flowers on Russian lot

Chanhassen
Since we have more colonies than when we started a few seasons ago, we visit them over a 3-days period. That way, I feel  it does not become a "chore" but something I look forward in doing each day.

Our 4 hives have increased in bee population, all queens are laying relatively well, and the workers are busy bringing pollen and nectar. So far, even though we placed 2 supers on each colony in anticipation of the nectar flow. The honey bees are only foraging for themselves  , and don't seem very interested in filling the supers for OUR consumption! Well, it is ok with us, after all they were just packages only 3 month ago, and besides the "golden rule" is : Don't expect any honey the first season with new bee packages... So we are happy that they are all doing just fine.

Hive No.1 has provided us already with 2 beautiful frames of brood that I have been giving to our dear Russians, to help the queen and the colony live.

This is all is left of the Russian bees, less than 1,000 bees.

Talking about Russian bees; after consulting with an entomology Professor from the University of Minnesota and Judy Wu, a grad student and bee expert ; Ben and I have decided to do the following to help save our bees: Every week we will give the colony a frame of healthy brood taken from our best populated hives. Then because we are trying to rescue this Russian colony from a certain and eminent death, we are feeding them sugar syrup and pollen. In addition we will be giving them an antibiotic (Terramycin:  approved by FDA and EPA) to boost their immune system, helping them fight any bacteria that they may have  encountered. It was never our intention to use any antibiotics in any of our colonies but we have decided to do all we can to save our honey bees as we care very much about them all; they are our pets just as our cat, dogs and lizard.

New frame given to the strong hive a week ago. We can see nectar and eggs!

By adding a frame of brood per week to the very weak colony will over time increase its population; nurse bees will become foragers, and they will bring food to the hive, "reassuring" the queen that she can lay more eggs and so on.

In the meantime, the healthy queen in the strong colony has more room to lay even more eggs. When I take a frame of brood, I replace it with a completely new empty frame. Already in a week the queen had found the new place and had laid eggs.  In any case that's the theory. We will keep you posted!

The Strange Disapearance of the Russian Bees

June 25, 2012

Russian Bees Inspection

I had left the Russian hive full of bees, from nurse bees to foragers, lots of eggs, and different larval stages. The colony as a whole seemed healthy, smelled like flowers. They had lots of honey, and had collected plenty of nectar and pollen. The hive had grown from a package of 3,000-4,000 bees to a healthy 40,000 to 50,000 bees. they were vigorous and busy. The queen was laying well, and the brood pattern was even and beautiful.

Then horror and despair hit me. I was on my routine hive inspection mid morning, warm and sunny...a perfect day....until I approached the Russian hive. Not a bee could be seen, not a bee could be heard. Right away in my mind, like a slow movie, scenarios were unfolding. But my brains could not process it all. I opened the cover, removed the inner cover...no sounds, no bees. I then removed the 2 supers that I had placed on the colony the week before because the nectar flow had started and I did not want to miss this opportunity to get honey. Both completely depleted of bees, no one was working! I was starting to panic, where are my bees? I looked through each frame of the top hive box, which was full of busy bees, and brood the week before. Nothing, only this unfamiliar silence. I removed the top box as I could hear a faint almost imperceptible and soft buzzing. At last MY bees crawling on 3 rather empty frames, where the brood was reduce to the size of a fist. No adult bees or foragers could be seen, they were gone! As if to acknowledge my horrified presence... the Russian Queen (painted, so my original queen) walked across the top bar, looking rather mystified, seemingly not knowing what she was suppose to do. Beside looking a bit lost, she looked terrific, plump, and healthy. It was comforting for a brief instant...because where were my bees? They could not have starved to death, the hive is full of pollen, nectar and honey. In addition there were only a handful of dead bodies, 5-8 dead bees on the bottom board. So they did not die either. Where were they then? I ruled out swarming almost right away, because usually a swarm of bees leave with the old queen( in my case my painted Russian but she is home!), leaving the newly emerged queen and a good population in the hive. I did not see one mite, so Varroa was dismissed as a culprit. I looked in trees to see if they had decided to swarm anyway...nothing. I looked all around the hive looking for dead bees...still nothing. I was dumbfounded. Of course, I knew about the disappearance or vanishing of the bees in Europe and in America but still. I read a lot on the subject, scientific papers, new studies, even work with researchers who are trying to explain the phenomenon. But this happens to others, certainly not MY bees. Somehow, I did not want to believe it, to acknowledge what was happening. I was in complete denial. For goodness sake! I read about it, I am not suppose to experience it. This is what I wanted to believe, they left but they will be back...soon, very soon and everything would be all right and perfect again. My perfect little world of bees. However I knew at about 98% what had happened, but who likes bad news?

After a couple of email exchanges with one of the best experts in the world, the sober truth was unraveled. I was just experiencing all the symptoms of Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD. A deep sadness came over me, and strangely enough not totally because of my own colony succumbing to this mysterious disappearance, but because I was at that instance remembering a now "famous" commercial beekeeper who experienced this phenomenon few years ago. In 2006, David Hackenberg from Pennsylvania, lifted his wooden lids and did not found a single walking, buzzing honeybee anywhere. In my head I could see him opening his hives, one by one, and being frantic. That year he had lost 2,000 colonies or 80% of his apiary.

CCD is reported around the world. It can only be called CCD when the colony is devoid of adult bees but no evidence of dead bees are around, and that's a blunt reality.

It is always easy to read about something, but to experience it...that's another story.

So to help my colony, I have decided to feed the honeybees again sugar syrup and pollen. I am also giving them a frame of healthy brood with no bees from my other healthy colonies for the next three weeks. That's all  I can think of doing to help them hopefully rebound...since I still had a queen and  a few home.