Re: Follow-up to Re: Beekeepers’ Meet-up (tonight at 6:30pm)

[Jillian Ruhl]

Hi Peter,

I also must apologize for the late reply! My new position is consuming my sit-down time and this weather has my legs yearning for the lake! I've cc'd the core group in case they'd like to continue the conversation with us for any of these wonderful ideas! 

I agree, Stan's experience was so interesting to hear! If there is an easy way to control swarms, I am in! That said, I find his method of being so hands-off a little gut wrenching, especially when it comes to spring inspections! We will certainly have to learn more from him (and perhaps convince him to do a workshop or two).

As for the 3 deep method, I've tried this during the early years of beekeeping and found that the queen prefers to lay in medium supers ... at least my queens. It's also much easier to lift full mediums later in the season! It's almost worth having them swarm than hurting my back!

Here is the HHBS website: https://halifaxhoneybees.wordpress.com/

I believe we maintain it for $25/year ... It's a simple Wordpress site with basic options for formatting and functions.

The Facebook handle is Halifax Honey Bee Society. Would you like me to add you as an administrator? It'll allow you to post on the main wall and respond to messages on behalf of the society. There's a handful of us who are the admins and we can see who and what each other posted.

Oh my, the Zombie bees ... like something from a sci-fi novel! I took videos and photographs, then sent them to Jason. I also put the data point into the Zombie bee watch group (I think I was the 4th data point in the Maritimes). I never received a response from Jason which was a little sketchy. Others have said the same thing. It doesn't seem to be an issue taken seriously in our province at this time, but it concerns me on how unnoticed it can go and I question how it is spreading to other species of bees. Historically, it was a virus among bumblebees and only recently discovered in honey bees. I just captured the bees flying at night on my deck porch into a mason jar with some holes. When they died, approximately a week later the zombie fly larvae emerged (little brown football shaped egg and then the fly). Hopefully the prof from Dal who I am collaborating with will do something with the samples in the future and make this a bigger deal later.

For your #2 and #3 ideas - love it! We could start a group on iNaturalist specifically for native bees. This way, it would be the naturalists, ecologists, garden enthusiasts, etc., that also input observations that we can benefit from tracking. Would you like to bring these ideas forward to the core group or larger membership? I will make you a member of the core group so you can email us anytime! Similarly, this could be used to track pollinators on various plant species ... but I'd have to check if there's a double function to record the plant species and the pollinator species of the same data point ... I think it may only allow one at a time.

Cool update: Duncan from NSBA followed up and it looks like the city is going to grant us land for an Outyard! 

Very glad to hear that you aren't scared away but, in fact, ready to tackle on these difficult issues with tangible solutions!! 

Would you like to get together to inspect the Mount bees or your bees sometime next week? I can see if anyone else from our listserver would like to join as well for an impromptu workshop/keep together.

All the bee-st,

Jillian

On Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 10:19 PM Peter Hurley <peter.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jillian: Sorry not to answer sooner but life has been very busy the last month or so. It was a great pleasure to be included in the meeting last week. I enjoyed listening to Stan especially, although I do question some of his suggestions about bee behaviour; it would be great if some of them could be tested. I was particularly interested in the concept of 3 deeps preventing swarms; I did google that and read a couple of old reviews but they weren’t from Nova Scotia so I’m not sure how relevant they were. I would like to talk with some others with more experience and consider trying it as a serious experiment (likely not this year, I think I would have had to approach building up my hives differently; but it would be great to have another option to swarms, or splits, or inspecting for swarm cells.

I didn't know there was a HHBS website or a Facebook group. The things you don’t know about if you don’t ask. I haven’t had time to check them out yet but look forward to doing so.

My thoughts about some possible citizen science projects that HHBS might consider are:

1-Zombie bee tests

• zombie bees present in NS, how widespread, how abundant, how prevalent are they?

When you first mentioned Zombie bee to me a few years ago, I looked them up and was intrigued. I don’t think that there were many positive records on the San Francisco State U Zombee Watch website then but there are now 6, I think. If I recall correctly, the phorid fly Apocephalus borealis was first reported from Nova Scotia in the late 1950s. So it’s been around. I have been meaning to make an experiment with my bees; we have a neighbour with lots and lots of lights in their backyard, one on their shed is particularly bright and I was concerned about how bright it was when they installed it and that it might attract my bees at night, certainly if we leave an outside light on for any amount of time, bees will be attracted to it. But I haven’t tested for Zombie bees either at our deck light or their shed light as I have intended. So my intent is to ask to collect bees at their shed light, to test for zombie bees but also to see if their light is attacking my bees at night. But I want to keep it friendly. I’m curious how you collected your bees for your sample? And whether you reported it on the SFSU Zombee website, and whether you sent material to them?

It should be fairly simple to set up a collector, I didn't want to get as complicated as building a proper light trap, but perhaps that would be better if a number of people were going to use it.

The question would be how widespread, how abundant, and prevalant is the phorid fly in Nova Scotia.

2-backyard bee count, like bird census counts

• your yard, your neighbours yard, a yard one block away
• do honey bees affect native bee populations

This one might take a bit of work because we would need to make material available online for users to consult to know how to identify native bee species. Again this is something that I’m interested in but don’t know much about native bees myself. 

3-what bees species use what flowers

• What plant species are your bees foraging on
• are there differences in forage species between bee species

Again one might need to make plant ID material available to help users, in addition to bee identification material. The second question might be more difficult to design as a serious research question.

I’m sure that there are other questions that will come to mind that could be of interest. I must admit that I’m a fisheries biologist by training, marine biologist, zoologist depending on which degree you check. I don’t know much about bees but I’m trying to learn. And I’m not much of a botanist but there is a naturalist or natural scientist that lurks inside me that is fascinated by bees. I had talked with Stan at an event at Loraine’s place a few years ago about his analysis of bee pollen loads. It fascinated me and I asked him about it on the Zoom call because I wasn’t sure who else on the Zoom call might have heard him talk about it before.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I hadn’t been scared away. I mostly listened because I’m new to the group and new to what HHBS has done previously.

I havne't met Michelle McPherson yet. I look forward to being able to sometime. I expect she knows a lot about these sorts of questions. I haven’t researched them, I’m sure that there have been a lot of studies on these questions elsewhere, but perhaps not in Nova Scotia. And while none of them might lead to a primary publication, I’m sure that they would engage a lot of our hobby beekeepers, especially those without a science background. On the other hand, if there was enough interest, it might me possible to enlist an honours thesis student at least to help analyze some of the data.

Just some thoughts.

When were you thinking about inspecting your hives? Inspections are very weather dependent; but it would depend on your schedule too whether it would be a particular day or time of day, how much pre-planning you might need. I have read and believe from experience that a deep inspection is usually best done in the morning while most of the foragers are out. But I have done inspections at all times of the day.

Sorry this was so long. If your schedule was open enough, maybe we could just meet at the hives and have a coffee and just talk about bees. And HHBS. 

Cheers, Peter.

ps. My cell number is 902-495-7274

On Jul 11, 2022, at 8:49 PM, Jillian Ruhl <jilli...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ah! Oh my goodness, I am so sorry I interpreted that all wrong! I read that email with a sense of panic since I’m on my probationary period and would be so nervous if there was an injury or issue from someone external (yessir, finally a full time position!). Haha, oh dear! 😅

I’ll have to fill you in about troubleshooting the campus hives this season! One is ferocious, one has been a struggle to build up. Funny how different the personalities and productivity can be with just one wee queen!

So glad you’ll be at the meeting with new ideas and lots of energy!!

See you online then and in-person in the near future!

Jillian

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 11, 2022, at 12:03 PM, Peter Hurley <peter.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Roger Croll]

Jillian and Peter,

  Thank you for your recent posts.  A lot of material was covered and it will probably require several posts for the membership to respond to the many issues that you raised/discussed. Most importantly, however, I think that your discussions are helping to rejuvenate HHBS by mentioning topics of concern to all of us.  A few follow up points:

1. Cool about the Zombie bees (at least from an academic perspective).  I knew nothing about them being in NS.  It has been a fairly hot topic in the scientific literature over the last several years, where we have gone from thinking of parasites as simply passive metabolic loads to now thinking of them as actively high jacking the host to do the will of the parasite.  Jillian, who are you collaborating with at Dal?  Certainly Dal has some good general honey bee biologist, like Chris Cutler, in Truro, but it also has one of the early pioneers in the field of parasitic control of hosts:  Shelley Adamo  https://scholar.google.ca/citations?hl=en&user=MwOMwyUAAAAJ
2. Thank you for your initiatives on native pollinators.  I like Jillian’s earlier comments about honey bees being the gateway species to appreciating all pollinators.  I really like the idea of HHBS serving as an educational tool for appreciating the need for ALL pollinators and from there appreciating biodiversity in general.
3. I would love to hear move about this idea that the city may provide land for an outyard.  I see this as essential to have a permanent place for 1-2 hives.  I really think that this is a better solution than relying only on backyards to hosting members.
4. Is there any chance for an extraction workshop this year?  In my experience, the two most popular/appreciated workshops from HHBS in the past, were introductions for newbies, and extraction workshops to see the pay offs of our efforts.  This weekend, I will  evaluate the strengths and stores in the Society hive that I have been hosting.  I MIGHT have a few frames that we could extract and perhaps other members could bring their frames for a communal event.  I will let you know.

  As I said, we are covering a lot of new ground,  Perhaps I should open the letter for discussion....

 

 

Roger Croll

Hammonds Plains, NS

Canada

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[LJ SY]

Hello, 

I am not sure if you remember Jill, but I reported “zombie bees “ in my hives on Burns Drive and plotted them on the map of Nova Scotia.

I had found bees around my indoor lights and captured them and found them dead the next day. Then the larvae. It was zombie bees for sure. 

Jim saw them also. 

I reported it to Jason Sproule. 

He called me personally and asked me NOT to call the media about it. 

How do you like that?? 

This year he showed up a solid year late to inspect my empty hive boxes. I had emailed  him spring of 2021, to request a hive inspection. Pretty lame.  It was pretty much too late in the season to sell much.  Truthfully, 

I think the Department of Agriculture does not want the headache of zombie bees exposed. It’s like Lyme disease. There is no vaccine so let’s pretend it is non existent. Very frustrating to say the least! 

Lorraine 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 26, 2022, at 9:34 PM, Roger Croll <roger...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jillian Ruhl]

Hi team,

Do you think it’s worth asking the Nova Scotia Beekeepers’ Facebook page about their experience with Zombie bees? I’m so curious to know more!

Roger, it is Shelly at Dal that has an interest in her invasive viral work. She may have a future grad student to take on this project. If anyone encounters this, same your specimens in the freezer for her!

It would be great to have a honey extraction workshop. I could spare a few frames but we’d have to have at least 10 frame to yield a good amount to drop through for everyone. Perhaps after the goldenrod yields, we can see what everyone has to extract?

I’ll keep everyone posted once we hear more about from Duncan on the outyard!

If I have time this week, I’ll tinker around with iNaturalist and put a group together.

Jillian

> On Jul 26, 2022, at 10:10 PM, LJ SY <lorrain...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Dr Tara Lapointe]

Very interesting about the Zombie Bees, I've always had a handful of bees buzzing at night to my backyard light and wondered if we had it here. 

Jillian, Dave Shutler at Acadia was my old honour thesis advisor, he's shifted his academic focus to bee parasites. MIght be worth reaching out to him as well!

http://www.acadiau.ca/~dshutler/PRes

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[Michelle McP]

Hi all,

We'll need to have some good discussions about the purpose and use of the outyard.  My idea was that it would be a place for people to bring unwanted splits and swarms, and then a few of us would tend them, check for disease, have them inspected, and sell them as nucs to people who have their beekeeper registrations competed.  Selling them would be necessary to pay for the nuc boxes, frames, supplemental feed and possible treatments, and then the extra money could be used for something else (maybe seeding pollinator patches on city property?)

It could turn into a big project and will be a lot to figure out logistically, but it would give people more incentive to capture their swarms and do splits in the spring, knowing that they wouldn't have to keep another colony. 

The outyard wouldn't be suitable for keeping the society hives, because we would have to assume that some of the splits/ swarms would have diseases (Nosema, AFB).    

I look forward to getting this going!

Michelle

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Apiculture + Ecology + Education

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A World for Bees

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[Jillian Ruhl]

Thanks, Tara! I hadn't heard of Dr. Shutler's work yet! He'd be a great addition to the Insect Research Group that collaborates every second month between SMU, Dal, and MSVU! We eat pizza and talk about bugs, if anyone wants to join! Some of the talks are beyond my biology comprehension (e.g., synthesis of chemo agents from fruit flies), but still pretty cool to see the innovative research!

Michelle - I agree, it'll be interesting to see how an outyard can work if we have a clear scope and guidelines. It's a totally new concept for me!

Jillian

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