Plain Talk: Old Hives, New Bees (275)

Episode 275 – Plain Talk: Old Hives, New Bees

Jim Tew

Listen, I'm getting a hat. Got it on. It's a gem here. Want us to walk back to the bee yard. As is become some bizarre thing I do. Since the weather affects everything. We had a horrific wind yesterday. I'm walking through tree limbs, branches. Horrific. I mean across Ohio there's people without power and American Electric Power sending out notices to be patient that they got 2,700 people working around the clock, They know you want your power back. So let's go back and see if I've got beehives blowing all over the world And then I may discuss some harebrain ideas with you.

Listeners, I'm Jim Tew. I come to you here once a week at Honeybee Obscura, where I always try to talk about something you do with. Just plain talk beekeeping.

Introduction

Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide Through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper, are just getting started. Get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim Tew

By now you all know the barn or the shed, whatever it is. Gotta get this tractor serviced. It's been over a year. Okay, hold your breath. The two package colonies are up. It's just about too cold to fly. Well listeners, everything is okay except one top is blowing off I had a brick on it. That didn't matter. There's bees looking at me. I suspect they want their top back on. It's wet and heavy. Put the brick back on it. That is really minimal damage.

There's a tall colony here that leans like the Tower of Pisa. But it was leaning into the wind. I hope that helped So good good I had come back here expecting or accepting the possibility that I would have bees sprawled everywhere and Weather is not good today. They can just barely fly, but I bet you there's nothing in bloom. It's about 42 degrees.

So good job. I lucked out. Got some trees right next to my house My daughter called me and told me to go sit in the basement, but kinda turned into a philosopher and I thought, well, if it's time, it's time. I'm not gonna sit in the basement for how long? Hours. So the trees took it. Well tell your story. I've already told you before, no doubt, because this story had a profound effect on me Many, many, many years ago, I had an international bee program at Ohio State. And at the time, it was it was really enjoyable. I'd got to travel all over. I went to Myanmar and to Indonesia and China. Thailand, I really saw a lot of bees, a lot of different places, and a lot of different beekeepers. And then as as time passed, Those people, some of those students would come and matriculate in my program. So you know they had their own style of beekeeping.

So in many instances I would get them and provide the equipment and we would build beehives. That were like what they used. I'm going back in the shop. It's cool out here and sound like I just got one long trying to walk and talk to you. So we set up this yard. A brand new yard. Way outside of town on the back of one of the university's cornfield plots. And at the time it was not just top bar hives. This is so long ago they were known as Kenya top bar hives. And that'd be a full segment to go into that, so I'm not going to do it. And we put those Kenya hives up and we put them just like the just like the Kenyans did. We had them suspended with with uh on each corner with a cable that attached to two post, one on either end of the top bar hive, so that the hive was hanging on cables. Would gently sway in the wind.

We had a botswana long hive. We had this thing I called a pod hive. It's a huge hive. The frames must have been 24 inches deep from somewhere in Eastern Europe. We just had all these things out there. We had some very, very early expanded polystyrene. And Just because it would kind of seem to fit in, we put eight-frame equipment out there that had four four eight-frame deeps, bottom board and the top. That was it. Everything had bees in it. And we would take international students out. We would take visitors out and let them look at this menagerie of hives and different styles and designs.

And you know how life is, it never stands still. We we were getting funding from USAID and from other agencies like that to maintain this program, and bit by bit, people to people and The Heifer Project and all these things that were providing funding for us began to get weaker and weaker funded. And I gotta tell you the truth, right about then, Africanized bees really became all the rage. And Varroa Mites was killing everything in sight. So the funding dried up, the international program dried up. At some point I asked my technician to go out to that yard and break it down. And he said he did. And I believed him, but those all those bizarre hives, you know, there's just no reason to really maintain them just for the occasional tourist now. They required extra work and unique work. And we didn't destroy them. We stored them in the in the barn. That subsequently blew away, and with that tornado that blew the barn away, all those unique uniquely designed hives were destroyed too.

But here's the story. Because it was an eight-frame standard hive, he left that one there. And I remember telling you this early on. I'm sorry to repeat it, but I'm trying to get somewhere by retelling this And when I would drive down the highway, I'd look across that cornfield, back into the edge of that forest. And when the win when the winter leaves had gone, had dropped From about a thousand yards away, maybe maybe fifteen hundred yards, I could just barely see into the trees, and I thought, that looks like a beehive. And listeners, this was five, six years later. So the summers would come, summers would go, another year or two passed, and it was winter again, you drive by and you think that really looks like a beehive back there. But that yard has been closed down for years and that program shut down.

And so one day I locked in the front hubs on that old four-wheel drive truck I had, went down the farm path. Made the short turn and went back to that cot to that location. And it was the land that time forgot. There were the post, there were the hive stands. Hives were all gone except For that fourth deep eight frame colony. The top was 80, don't exaggerate, the top was 60% rotted away. and the bees had filled in that rotted space with propolis. The bottom board and the landing board had essentially was ninety nine percent rotted away, and the hive was just sitting on two railroad timbers that we were using. And it was full of bees and had been there by itself. for around all total probably 10 to 12 years. Nothing ever done to it, nothing whatsoever. It had never been treated for mites. I'm sure it had mites, but it never been treated, never been re-queened, nothing. It just sat there rotting away. And I I want to tell you that the equipment The boxes were oddly okay.

Now I don't know if you know how long bees can maintain the outside of wood, but they definitely kept the inside. under control. It was a motley hive. If I can find the pictures and Jeff can be patient with me, I'll try to put up a picture of this thing. Here's what I'm trying to get to. I ask you, in my articles that I write, what should I do with this colony? Should I put it in new equipment and refurbish this thing? It had taken care of itself, let's just say 10 years to keep from exaggerating too much. It had taken care of itself for ten years and had seemingly been doing a good job of it.

And I was really surprised that most of the r of the well by far, most of the readers Wrote back and said, Leave it alone. That that hive was the master of its fate and it was the captain of its soul. It deserved its independence and it free and its freedom I mean, nine people out of ten, ninety percent, said leave it alone. So I did. I didn't do anything to it. I left it just like I'd found it, and then for the next year or two I'd drive up and down. And I'd look over there at that hive and see it sitting there and know that it was still hanging on. So how does the story end? Let's just take a break, and when we come back, I'll tell you all about it

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Jim Tew

Uh maybe two to three years later, I decided I'd go check on that unit again, and I'd noticed that it was not as visible as it used to be, but maybe the forest has changed over the decades So maybe three years later, it's been about 13 years now, I drove down there and the colony was was still alive. A straight wind had come through and ripped up a big maple tree, and when the tree went up, the root system flipped up that hive and laid it on its back. But it was still alive. I mean the bees were just, you know, bizarrely in a difficult situation with their comb orientation all the wrong way. So without thinking I set the hive back up and just a short distance away on the same timbers, and as I'm inclined to do, I wrote about it and I was admonished. I had bothered that hive's fate. I had stepped into its destiny.

But at the time, it's like, you know, putting an animal out of its misery or trying to help a bird with a broken wing I did it almost spontaneously. The hive was not in great shape. And when I went back later, uh, this time it was just a few months. It was dead.

So in keeping with the program and the protocol that I've been following, those four deeps are still out there, and the last time I went, they had collapsed into a heap and were rotting away. So that's where the story ends. Hmm Kinda now for now.

Why did I put you through all this? Well, I don't want to keep bringing it up, but it was such a profound effect on my life, on what I just went through with my wife. and the f the sabbatical that I had to take during her illness years. And I've told you time and again that I just went back to those seven or eight hives in my backyard and said, you guys are on your own I'll come back and talk to you periodically, but I'm doing it just from my mental sanity.

But I'm not gonna be opening colony, smoking, control control, requeaning. I I thought they'd die. I thought they'd die the first year Now, listeners, don't try this at home. This is not proper beekeeping. It's not even logical beekeeping, but I was in an illogical place. But for four years. For long years, those colonies managed themselves. I'm just going to ask you this time. Should I go back and work on those colonies, or have those colonies essentially because of my lack of attention, have they been freed from my maintenance?

You see where I'm trying to get to with this question, I've ordered five packages and I was considering trying to find the different yard. and put those packages up because I don't know if those bees have set up some kind of protocol, some kind of natural resistance or s whatever I'm kind of comfortable saying with not a shred of science, and I've said this in other podcasts, that I bet you That the bees are more traumatized by us opening the colony than we realize. But others could say, Jim, that is highly anthropomorphic and you're just getting all carried away.

So who's to know right now how you measure the mood and the response of what's going on? But I was actually considering just an observation. If see if I put the packages in the same yard, then I bring in outside genetic material. And I I don't know what they've done. Listeners, maybe they've done absolutely nothing, or maybe they have suited themselves. In ways unknown to me that's helped them stay alive during times when I really thought they would be hammered dead.

I need to insert a caveat here now. I'm not suggesting anybody try this. And I'm not suggesting abandoning your beehives as being a traditional standard way of living with bees. But I am intrigued and I do have a unique situation where I've got six colonies that have not been opened by anybody else in about four years. Well, you know, I'm close to five years now So I need to add a year to that because time has been passing while I was telling this story.

So I'm considering trying to find a separate yard and s and absolutely I really want to set up an observation hive. And I want that to meet most of my needs and my concerns for my beef fixes and whatever. And I guess I wouldn't mind if you write and tell me. Should I should I get off my pity party horse and Start working bees again or is this a situation where I was just absolutely lucky and the bees were lucky for not dying? I don't think I found some miracle cure for anything.

But it's just a strange situation because of the the the position that my life went into So I'll put you through that whole first story about that abandoned beehive and how it too didn't die, even with Varroa present. Now why don't you write me and tell me, hey Jim. That may have been the f the eighth swarm in that equipment, and that would be a valid statement that maybe the colony routinely died, and maybe swarms just refilled it. So maybe it was not the same bees.

I've told farmers time and time again who said, yep, yep. There's been bees in that tree back there for 40 years. Well, it's not the same colony. They would be gone for a while and then the the system would work and the wax moths would do their thing and the squirrels would move out and the bees would move back in. So maybe that's all that happened.

And I do I do need to tell you, for perfect clarity, that two of those colonies did die and they they were replaced with swarms. So when I told you this story before, I remember saying that maybe by having swarms that and those colonies swarming Maybe that knock the mites down. Maybe, maybe, maybe. What if, what if, what if?

I'm just guessing like crazy here because This is a strange situation. I'm thinking about it. If you r if you mob me with or have you lost your mind kind of responses, I'll probably slap myself on both cheeks and Put the colonies back there. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm just playing.

I'm at a point in my beekeeping life where I'm curious As I've always been about bee behavior and bee biology, but I am seriously opposed to any heavy work and stern responsibility. I like to be laid back and just be an old man having a nice time. If you're so inclined, let me know what you think. I don't yet know what I'm going to do.

I can still cancel the packages. That one colony needs to be straightened up. It is going to fall over. So it it needs to be leveled out. It's on a a plastic hive stand.

I gotta stop talking. I I enjoy talking to you. I really do. I enjoy talking to you, and I really deeply appreciate you listening. Thanks so much, and I'll talk to you again next week.

Bye-bye.