Kirk Webster Healthy Beekeeping: Now and in the future part II
ln the development of my apiary, I have I been strongly influenced by a Japanese I man named Masanobu Fukuoka. He wrote two beautiful and important books called The One Straw Revolution atd The Natural Way of Farming. In these he describes the evolution of his methods for growing good crops of rice, barley and mandarin oranges without agricultural chemicals or fossil fuel. His orange trees are pruned very little or not at all and in one of the chapters about them he describes how his early attempts to grow oranges failed because he was unaware of the true natural form of the mandarin orange tree. All orange trees in Japan were carefully pruned, and there was nowhere to observe the tree's natural growth habit and shape. Only when he was able to grow his own seedling trees, with little or no pruning right from the start, was he able to see the tree's natural form and develop a method of growing the fruit without pesticides or pruning.
In the same way, northern beekeeping has depended on queens and package bees from the South for so long that the true "form" of a self-sufficient northern apiary is largely a mystery today. I suspect such apiaries did exist and were evolving before the southern package and queen industry really took off. If you look long enough in the old journals between 1880 and 1930 you can find evidence of almost anything to do with beekeeping. But the easy availability of queens and package bees from the South caused us to drift away from fully northern based beekeeping systems. My own experience over the last 20 years has convinced me that this was a big mistake even before the problems of mites and Africanized bees reared their heads on the horizon. I now believe that the "natural form" of a northern apiary has not yet been fully defined or utilized in this country and that the search for this form has an enormous potential for improving beekeeping and beekeepers' lives in the Northern U.S.
Pressure from the tracheal and varroa mites have made it harder to overwinter bees in cold areas where they must endure long periods of confinement. Many northern beekeepers adapted by making even greater use of southern bees by buying more packages, or by migrating to the South and making their own increase during the winter. But for those of us who stay year round in the North and who want to raise their own bees and queens, there are opportunities just as worthwhile and productive. And, I think it's good to work on simpler and more regional solutions to our problems those solutions will hold up better when we have to watch our wasteful and self-destructive economic system start to crumble and collapse.
Based on what I have seen here in Vermont, the northern states could not only be self sufficient in bees and queens, but could export large quantities of both to the South, if need be. In making the transition from bee importers to self sufficiency to bee exporters, the key is in looking for and focusing on that "natural form" making optimum use of our pollen and nectar resources, and all four of our seasons; especially the winter. The constant testing, selection and propagation of stock in the home environment is the other indis- pensable element.
I have described in previous articles many aspects of my search for the best way to use queen rearing in this environment (Feb. '88; March '89; Feb. '90; Jan. '91; and Ian. '93), and I will try not to repeat too much of what I have already published.
With more experience I can speak with added confidence and supply a few more details. I know now that a totally northern based beekeeping, which includes the production of surplus bees and queens, is possible and highly productive. The techniques required are not exotic or new; they just need to be put together in the right order and viewed in a different light. The single most important point is to stop focusing on freshly mated, untested queens and package bees available in April; and organize your management around queens mated in summer and main- tained through the winter in nucleus colonies. This is the key to everything. The simple practice of splitting up 20-frame colonies in June and July into 4-frame colonies provided with my own cells or mated queens is what enabled me to expand my apiary (without buying bees) during the worst years of tracheal mite damage, and become a full-time beekeeper without any other source of income. Now that my apiary has reached what I consider to be the optimum size, I am selling nucleus colonies in the spring, as well as honey in the fall. I also started selling queen bees again this year (1995), though only in mid summer.
My plan for the apiary 10 years ago, was to produce and sell queen bees only. At first I was catching them all from standard frames, but I could see that I would eventually need to build some kind of baby nucs with small frames in order to produce the queens efficiently. When the tracheal mites arrived I had to stop selling queens, and it gave me a good long time to decide what kind of baby nucs to use. After watching the success of my four-framenucs, and thinking about it for quite awhile, I decided to use combs that were full hive body depth, but only half length. This means a standard hive body will hold 4 nucs, and I use feeders similar to those which divide the standard frame nuc boxes. The 4 entrances are built into the bottom boards. These nucs are slightly larger than the optimum size for catching queen bees, but I decided to go this way because they can be maintained year-round in this environment. The potential is there for catching queens continuously from them starting in late April and going right through August. But for now I am using overwintered queens from the baby nucs to requeen my honey producing colonies, and selling queens only from mid June to early August. This is the optimum time for making up nucs to overwinter. With warm temperatures, abundant nectar and pollen, and peak numbers of young bees available, this is also the best time for raising cells and getting queens mated.
Most of this work can be done after honey supers are put on, and before extracting begins. It does shorten the time available for a mid-summer break or vaca- tion; but it makes the spring and early sum- mer easier and more interesting. Both the baby nucs and standard frame nucs spend the winter outdoors. By the time fresh pollen and nectar are available from the soft maples in mid April, they have been subjected to most of the stresses they can encounter here (with the notable exception of tracheal mites) and are showing clear differences in their response to these, and to the first nectar flow. It's a simple matter to inspect and rank them at this point. The weakest 25% have either failed during the winter, or are retained to provide brood for the next crop of nucs. The rest have already proven themselves to be well adapted and vigorous in this environment, and can be used in the home apiary to replace winter loss, to expand, or as a source of queens and brood for 2-queen colonies. They make a superior product when offered for sale.
Until 1995, most of my nuc customers were hobby beekeepers, but last spring commercial beekeepers started buying them too. They all agree that the low failure rate experienced with these nucs more than compensates for their higher cost over package bees. A few ofthese nucs went to Pennsylvania. They were transported in an open truck in March, two weeks before package bees were available fromAlabama. The cost was greater than for package bees, but again the beekeepers felt it was justified by the performance of the colonies during the first summer. It finally dawned on me that surplus bees can be supplied from this environment virtually.
every month during the year though they would probably need to be moved in closed trucks during the coldest weather.
Through all this I have been forced to change completely my attitude about winter and winter loss in the apiary. I now consider winter to be one of the most important beekeeping seasons, rather than just an unfoftunate circumstance to be endured. Winter tests all my new queens before they go into the honey-producing colonies, and it's this period of"cold storage" that allows me to maintain large numbers of colonies on 4 combs for 9 months, and have the potential to sell them throughout the year. After years of working with a northern api- ary based on stock selection and nucleus colonies, I now consider the ideal wtnter loss to be between 20-30%. I still can’t help hoping that all the bees will survive, but the whole thing works better and more easily when the performance ranking of colonies is sharply defined in late April, and when empty combs and frames of honey are easily available for making up the next crop of nucs. Getting the best of each generation of stock established in the honey producing apiaries is easiest when winter loss is in this range.
Working on the strucfure or "form" of my apiary has also forced me to change the way I view bee breeding and stock selection. There is a lot of interest now in selecting bees for a few specific traits such as mite chewing, hygienic behavioq and chalkbrood resistance for example. Sometimes I thint the real goal is to find or breed bees that can read and fill out the data sheets for themselves. People who make their living from bees and are around them all the time want bees that are a pleasure to be with, produce good crops of honey and pollen, and can thrive on their own without chemical treatments and excessive manipulation. Bees in my environment need a combination of many traits, known and unknown, in order to survive and thrive. Only by testing large numbers of colonies in their total environment, and repeating the process through many generations, can really good, vigorous stock be developed and maintained in the long run. With the income-producing api- ary organized around this goal, stock selec- tion becomes a natural pafi of the everyday work, and little record keeping is neces- sary. Looking back, I can see now that searching for the right "form" or structure for the apiary is what enabled me to survive and expand during the worst of tracheal mite damage. Most of the record keeping I did tumed out to be counter productive. But I'll be the first to admit that I was lucky to find a system that worked so well. With varroa mites we are up against a more serious problem, and I can't make much comment here because I don't have enough experience yet. Focusing on a few traits like mite chewing and hygienic behavior maybe helpful in deveioping varroa resistant bees, but populations of such bees, which are genuinely useful, will only result from a large gene pool continuously tested and weeded out in the total environment, generation after generation. This is what I am hoping to do in my apiary in the future; but only time will tell. And what about the optimum size for an apiary? This question, for me always leads right into the very deepest water.
In my area beekeeping follows directly in the footsteps of dairy farming, and I have watched with great dismay the destruction of dairy farming as a decent way of life by falling milk prices and the expansion of farm size. Now most of the milk is produced by a very few people, usually migrant workers, with low paying, factory type jobs. They spend long hours inside vast steel buildings or operating huge machines. Looking at this a1l the time, I would ask myself, "Can we call this farming anymore?" When I decided the answer was 'No", I began looking for a good definition of what farming really is. In the end I had to agree with Mr. Fukuoka, who says: "Farming is the cultivation of better human beings." If you look at things this way, you are forced to admit that farming has almost disappeared in this country It,s a shame because farming or beekeeping can be a great way of life if you can think for yourself and ignore all those who are constantly telling you how to spend your money. By keeping the apiary small and focusing on skills and a simple life style, farming (and beekeeping) could once again come alive as a way of life.
I'm keeping 300 colonies of bees now for honey production, and try to have 100-300 nucleus colonies available for sale each spring. This year there will also be queen bees for sale. I do the work myself, except a small amount of help catching the queen bees and extracting. l consider this to be the optimum size for an apiary of this soft in my area. It provides enough income for a simple life style, and leaves time available for gardening, study, visiting and other interests. I still have plenty of things to struggle with, but I feel very fortunate to be making a living this way. By looking for the natural form of a northern apiary, I learned that it's still possible to have a nice way of life as a beekeeper. It requires patience, hard work, and a genuine desire to be part of the natural world. But it's well worthwhile, and the obstacles are largely in our own hearts and minds, rather than the productive capacity of land or honey bees.