Reflections - 2010

Reflections - 2010

Hey, beautiful souls! ✨ Time for a little reflection on the past beekeeping season.

This has been the wildest ride in my beekeeping journey. And believe me, I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs.

But guess what? This marks the first rough patch since I embraced the natural way over a decade ago. When everything is buzzing along smoothly, it’s so easy to get a bit too comfy. Yet, in beekeeping, just like in the rest of agriculture, each new decade brings a fresh set of challenges. Get too comfy, and boom — surprise central!

Three

Looking back, my troubles didn’t kick off in 2010. Nope, it all began four seasons ago when I nestled my bees in a friend’s commercial beeyard for safekeeping. Fast forward a couple of seasons, and after my stint in Wyoming, I brought my bees back home. Despite that year’s meager forage, rampant drug-resistant foulbrood, and mites with a resistance to pesticides in my friend’s commercial bees, my bees looked average, with no foulbrood and low mite counts. I was feeling pretty good.

However, I failed to see the storm brewing. More than just mites and foulbrood hitchhiked from the Almonds to Wyoming!

Oh, how I wish I’d left those bees with my commercial buddy and started fresh with new package bees.

Two

The following season, my bees were back in their own yard. It wasn’t the best forage year, and the best hives were only mediocre. About half of them were on the smaller side, and none seemed to be thriving. That was a weird scenario. Back in the day, before my Florida adventure, I always had more natural bees than equipment. So, I fed them all and treated the slower ones with a bit of kombucha. Surprisingly, that seemed to kickstart them, and they ended up producing more honey than the hives without the kombucha.

But my bees were ailing, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. No foulbrood or mite issues, and the typical virus symptoms were nowhere to be found. I chalked up what I observed to the poor forage and aging queens, even though I’d let them manage their own queen replacements for a solid decade without issues.

These bees were on decade-old small-cell comb used in testing out small-cell hives. I had a comb replacement plan ready to roll, but it got shelved because the bees didn’t thrive as expected.

Wishing those package bees had started on a clean comb slate.

One

Fast forward to this last season. Wintering was a disaster, with only a handful of hives coming through with decent strength. The rest were either weak or barely holding on. So, I decided to feed, clean up the yard, requeen, and give things a fresh start. Little did I know that this seemingly foolproof plan was heading straight for disaster. My bees were in deep trouble. Despite low mite counts, no crawling bees, and zero signs of brood disease, they:

  • Barely touched the sugar or pollen feed.
  • Failed to expand, only producing enough brood to maintain populations.
  • Failed to forage during one of the best forage years in decades.
  • Developed strange foulbrood-like symptoms by midsummer.
  • Clustered (or, more accurately, clumped) away from the core of the brood nest.

And then it hit me! A huge shoutout to Randy Oliver and his “Sick Bees” series in the American Bee Journal.

My bees were in trouble. Despite all my efforts and the dent in my bank account, there was nothing that could turn this around. They’d been ailing for years, and the chances of them surviving the upcoming winter were next to nil.

They were on life support throughout the season. Should I have pulled the plug and let them go? I chose not to.

So, I moved them, kept feeding, and administered a round of antibiotics. Yes, there’s a time for treatment — for people, for children, for animals, and yes, even for our beloved bees.

After the antibiotics, they slowly started foraging on late alfalfa, took some of the sugar and pollen feed, and even endured a malathion spray.

Wishing I’d used antibiotics sooner and relocated my bees to a pesticide-free haven.

Zero

And here we are, gearing up for a fresh season. What’s in store for my bees? Only time will spill the tea.

Natural beekeeping isn’t a magic potion for immortal, trouble-free bees. Let’s face it; that’s just not the bee’s knees. 🙂

But natural beekeeping provides a framework that lets the bees do what they do best: survive and thrive in the face of new challenges. When you keep bees naturally, you can tap into nature’s resilience and bounce back quickly from setbacks.

That’s been my vibe in the past, and with this new virus soup situation, that’s my hope for the upcoming year.

I can’t say if all my past wishes could have prevented this season’s rollercoaster. Maybe the wild bees, also facing hard times, were the disease vectors for my bees. Yet, I suspect it might have been the other way around. Recent [ research](https://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind110

1&L=BEE-L&F=&S=&P=6765) hints at the possibility.

It’s one thing for me to lose my bees, but it’s a whole different buzz for the wild bee population to suffer because of my bees.

I really wish it hadn’t happened, but the damage trail is crystal clear. California almonds to my friend’s commercial bees, his bees to mine, and ours to the wild ones. It says a lot about how we humans understand and manage things!

It makes me cringe. I hope the transported RNA doesn’t linger. I hope it truly is a vanishing disease.

And here’s one final wish: May you and your bees have the absolute best season ever next year. The way things roll with bees, I’m sure we’ll have plenty to chat about.

✨

Cheers, D 🌴🌊