Honeybee Update: Pesticides

We arrive at the end of June and Tumbledown has not seen more than a few honeybees in the garden--and those only on a couple of different occasions this whole season--despite continuing efforts to attract them with sugar-water syrup, honey, and swarm catch attractors--and despite the constant provision of fresh water and flowering plants. The blackberry and raspberry blooms, which are hardly ever absent a honeybee in an average year, have hardly been visited at all in 2007.

You have no doubt followed the various news updates of the investigation into Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the results of which (for now) seem to point increasingly toward a complex syndrom rather than a single factor, chemical, pathogen, pest or otherwise. The use of pesticides is often cited as a contributor to the CCD syndrom, especially pesticides in the Neonicotinoid class. Bayer and other producers deny (of course) that their products are the cause, even a contributing cause, and claim that nonchemical causes are to blame.

Maybe the causes of CCD are nonchemical, but the question still remains, why are we addicted to pesticides?--especially when the current chemical regime has proven ineffective? Tumbledown has been reading an essay by David Pimentel ("The Pesticide Question," Ecology, Economics, Ethics) that makes the point: "Corn and cotton account for about 60 percent of the total insecticide use in agriculture" (1991). For Indiana, make that corn, almost exclusively. "During the 1940s, little or no insecticide was applied to corn, and crop losses to insects were only 3.5 percent.... Since then insecticide use on corn has grown more than a thousandfold, and losses due to insects have increased to 12 percent." The major reason for the increase seems to be the abandonment of an important (vital?) aspect of traditional farming, crop rotation (p. 64).

What does this have to do with Colony Collapse Disorder and the bee die off? Maybe nothing. But in the concluding table, Pimentel estimates the unintended cost of pesticide use at $955 million (1980), $150 million of that due to honeybee poisonings and reduced pollination. Hmmm. Maybe that should be increased a thousand fold this year?

Meanwhile, with no chance of a swarm on the horizon, Tumbledown has decided to buy his bees next year. Maybe they'll survive the pesticides poured onto the fields that lie just beyond the suburban sprawl--and survive the pesticides poured onto suburban lawns. ...or maybe they'll suffer from Colony Collapse Disorder, even though he plans to keep them according to the ancient instructions of Varro (On Agriculture, III, XVI). Tumbledown recently discovered a blog that suggested CCD may be nothing new and appears in fact to have plagued the ancient Romans, based on a description of ancient hive disruptions found in Virgil's Georgics. Or maybe it is entirely new--a twenty-first century problem; maybe all those cell phone signals are playing the Pied Piper to our honeybees. If that's the case, Tumbledown's bees should fare well. He doesn't own a cell phone.

Tumbledown Farm

Top Bar Beehive: A Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary for Disappearing Honey Bees

Save the vanishing honeybees! Tumbledown acted quickly on his decision to create a honeybee haven. As promised, here's the story of how he constructed a top bar beehive for his back yard in the form of simple instructions and construction plans, so you can do the same. Let's lessen the impact of colony collapse disorder by creating a sustainable network of localized and diversified apiculture.

Here's a start.

Parts list:

1 1X6 -71" standard pine ($2.59)

2 1X12 -8' standard pine ($8.49 each)

2 8"X8"X16" concrete blocks ($1.34 each)

1 19"X47" plywood cover (from leftover scrap)

8D siding split galvanized nails ($.50?)

2" deck screws ($.50?)

1 lb. cake/block of yellow beeswax ($4.61)

Total: $27.86 + tax

Tumbledown's beehive construction plan is an adaptation of the Kenya style (sloped sides) hive detailed at the Bush Farms site.

Step One: Board Cuts

Cut the 1X6 to 47 1/4" (bottom).

Cut each 1X12 into one 47 1/4" length (a side) and one 15" length (an end piece).

Cut the remaining sections into top bars for brood nest (1" X 1 1/4" X 15") and top bars for honey (1" X 1 1/2" X 15").

Step Two: Assembly of Beehive Body

Nail the sides of the hive to the bottom board.

Center the bottom edge of the 15" hive ends on the bottom board of the hive body and attach each end to the hive body at the center point with a deck screw.

Spread the sides until the top corner of each side touches the top corner of each end. Attach each corner with a deck screw, then add screws at intervals sufficient to secure the ends to the sides.

Fully assembled top bar beehive body:

Step Three: Finishing Top Bars

Tumbledown took the easy way out (again) with the creation of his top bars. Rather than deal with the complications of inserting, gluing, and nailing a "beveled comb guide," Tumbledown simply measured 1 1/2" from the end of each 15" top bar and marked these points as the outer limits for a 12" center cut with a keystone shaped 1/4" router bit.

Into these center cuts Tumbledown poured beeswax melted in a makeshift double boiler (a 4 quart pot filled 1/8-1/4 with water heated to the low boiling point, enough to float a coffee can that has been squeezed to make a pouring spout).

Below is a view of the top bars with one layer of wax poured into the center. Another layer is added after the first layer cools so that the finished bar includes a line of beeswax embedded in the top bar, but also extending well above the surface of the bar (to provide a guide for the bees as to the direction for constructing the comb).

Step Four: Placing the Beehive

This is perhaps the greatest challenge, finding a suitable place well out of the line of human traffic. The results will be monitored closely and the hive moved if the bees prove too great a challenge. Tumbledown chose the least busy corner of his back yard and fenced the area completely with a temporary fence to prevent inadvertent visits by the merely curious. (Climbing over a 4-foot fence is not inadvertent. If you do that, you deserve to get stung.) Notice in the photo how the blocks have been coated with a 3"-4" band of used motor oil all around (to discourage ants). The ground all around the hive has been planted in grasses and clovers. Peas and other climbing vines will provide a screen around two sides.

Tumbledown also provided a ready water source.

Tumbledown also purchased two vials of "swarm catch" with Nasonov from the Dadant company ($6.75 for two) that's where the beeswax also originated). These are fixed to the inside of the hive on the end that serves as the entrance. The entrance to the beehive is created by placing the first bar (the bar nearest the end) at least 3/8" from the end. This creates a gap of approximately 3/8" wide X 3/4" high at two sides on one end for the bees to use as an entrance.

Already, in early April, bees were seen buzzing near the hive. (On 70-80 degree days. But, of course, for the last few days, we've had an unusually late and hard freeze with low temps in the teens and 20s and the daytime highs barely climbing above freezing. ...so, no bees to be seen and worries aplenty about newly planted fruit trees and the like.)

Tumbledown hopes to see a swarm take up residence in his beehive this spring. He would like to see a remarkable increase in the pollination of his garden, and in a year or three to take a bit of honey from the hive. Stay tuned to the blog for occasional updates on the whole adventure--and when "success" is finally within grasp, Tumbledown will add a bee page to his "how to" list on the web site.

In the meantime, visit the historic bee page at Tumbledown Farm ("Bees in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, vol. III) and here's hoping for a "resurrection" of the honeybees on this Good Friday 2007.

Tumbledown Farm

Where Have All the Bees Gone?

My father-in-law once asked me if I had noticed that the bees were all disappearing. At first I thought he had lost his mind. Later, I thought that the "difference" I notice could be attributed to the difference between playing outside--among the bees--all day and sitting inside at a desk in front of the computer screen. Of course the bees had disappeared from my view. But my father-in-law worked outside a lot, and he had read the National Geographic Magazine (authorities on such things), and he had a longer view of the past (as a WWII veteran pilot) than I have. So, before you laugh at Tubledown for reviving his father-in-law's question--or for thinking that there should be bees buzzing around in March in Indiana, take a look at what the New York Times has been saying ("Losing their Buzz," by May R. Berenbaum, Dept. of Entomology, U of Illinois, March 2, 2007; "Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril," by Alexei Barrionuevo, February 27, 2007). Berenbuam, Barrionuevo, and many other news outlets have begun to report at length about the "sudden" (since fall 2006) disappearance of millions of bees: "This winter, in more than 20 states, beekeepers have noticed that their honeybees have mysteriously vanished, leaving behind no clues as to their whereabouts. There are no tell-tale dead bodies either inside colonies or out in front of hives, where bees typically deposit corpses of dead nestmates. What’s more, the afflicted colonies tend to be full of honey, pollen and larvae, as if all of the workers in the nest precipitously decamped on some prearranged signal" (Berenbaum). They are calling it "colony collapse disorder" (though it was previously termed Fall-Dwindle Disease). As of today (03/17/2007), Tumbledown's Google search returns 76,300 hits for the new term--there's plenty of buzz alright.

But not to fear! The feds and the academic community are all over the disaster like honey sauce on chicken strips. A CCD working group has been formed to get at the heart of the swarm (or lack thereof; see the very informative Purdue page and related links). And guess what, as hinted by the Times coverage, the preliminary report is pointing a finger at the "business" end of "agribusiness"--the beekeeping "industry." In interviews with affected beekeepers, the working group discovered that "All were migratory beekeepers. All had moved their colonies at least 2 times in the 2006 season, with some colonies being moved as many as five times." The report then states the obvious: moving stresses bees (10%-30% die), and spreads disease, and the pollination of some monocrops (e.g., blueberries) is insufficient to sustain a colony.

Who knows what the working group will recommend in its final report, but Tumbledown would wager that the recommendation will NOT be to increase the number and diversity of beekeepers, nor to stop moving the hives cross country--twice, five times--just to polinate monocrops on huge farms and orchards.

But that should be the recommendation. Fix the root of the problem, the unsustainable agricultural economy. Sustainable agriculture, sustainable apiculture, means local agriculture and local apiculture. In other words, it means beekeeping without diesel trucking. It means beekeeping without moving the hives. (And thus without transporting the pests--the mites and beetles--that require apiary registration and inspections by the Department of Natural Resources.) It means that farmers--not just the "bee farmers," but every farmer, and perhaps every significant landholder--is a beekeeper. In other words, sustainable farming is diversified farming. It is local and decentralized.

Where have all the bees gone? They are being carted around the country by fewer and fewer beekeepers, carrying diseases and pests with them every poluting, energy consuming, globe-warming mile. The've gone the way of the woodlots, eliminated by the tens and hundreds of acres at a time to make way for houses so close together that there isn't room for the flowers it would take to support the bees and their hives (if there were hives). The bees are killed by insecticidal overspray, and by mosquito control.

Tumbledown has decided to do his part for localized beekeeping, in part because Tumbledown has embraced Cobbett's truism about "every farmer"--"he ought to pay for nothing in money, which he can pay for in anything but money" (As quoted by John Seymour, Farming for Self-Sufficiency : Independence on a 5-acre Farm). If nature (the bees and flowers) will provide sugar (or honey, which is better for you than the processed stuff) for free for the taking, who is Tumbledown to argue? And what about the exorbitant cost of hives and beekeeping paraphernalia? Tumbledown has decided that there must be a way to raise a hive of bees without filing for bankruptcy. So, perhaps a Top Bar Hive is the way to go. Tumbledown has done the math. A hobby kit from Dadant for $125 (the way Tumbledown would have started a few years ago) or a "do it yourself" experiment with 1X6 and 1X12 boards from the local lumberyard (less than $25 if Tumbledown's math is right). Keep an eye on the blog for a recounting of the adventure!

[Illustration from "Bees" in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, vol. III]

Where have all the bees gone? Tumbledown hopes that the answer to that question is "to my back yard" this summer. So, I guess I need to build a hive and find some sugar. What's that old saying, something about attracting more bees with honey than vinegar?

Tumbledown Farm