[susan rudnicki]

Nan—I know they do not make it very clear how the situation works, but it is NOT the structure holding the weight of elephants. It is the natural dislike elephants have for bees, and the strong avoidance of areas where bees are placed!

[susan rudnicki]

kayla—on our website under “Support” there is a tab for “Resources” which lists several companies, both on line and retail establishments, where you can buy suits, jackets and veils. Many of these outfits also help you with understanding the various advantages/disadvantages of different styles, cloth, and price. You just need to do some exploring. Susan

[susan rudnicki]

I have about 30 pounds of rendered beeswax. I am at 310-374-4779 NO cell phone, landline only Susan

[susan rudnicki]

I have a gallon—one gallon in a single jar or 4 qt jars. $160
Susan 310-374-4779 (no cell)

[susan rudnicki]

Dana has relayed the document she received from the Dept of Ag regarding this Spinosad application. It is deficient in recognizing the potential effects on pollinators or managed honey bee colonies. I called the Dept 800 number and here is the upshot—to all of you, please do not think that this will not affect you if it is not in your district. Bees DO NOT recognize human boundaries or city limits.

HI, Dana—just called the 800 number and spoke to a operator regarding the lack of recognition to poisoning of pollinators with Spinosad while wet. I had to get a bit stern, as she wanted to narrow the focus to issues they already address (laundry, dogs, etc) and not understand the foraging behavior of bees miles from their home hives. Bees can be poisoned whether the spraying occurs right by their site or not. Many more hives are potentially going to be part of the background population, now that the new ordinance has passed, but the agency does not recognize this. She wanted to know if my hives are registered—they are—and she said they work with the county apiary inspector to notify beekeepers in those areas. It would appear to me there is not a full accounting for the oversight in this case. By the way, do you have your hive registered?? I highly recommend you do so—it is only $10 a year, regardless of the number of colonies, and gives you a air of legitimacy with authorities.
The secretary told me she will have someone from their main office, a technical adviser, call me, though it may be a couple days, due to the holiday. She was clearly not prepared to deal with this subject at all, and got a bit huffy. I tried to emphasize the need for the agency to recognize and properly deal with the impacts to managed honey bee colonies, which this notice does not at all.
I have recently had a bee kill on 2 colonies at my home, probably from pesticide poisoning (the whole story has been running on the Forum, which I do not know if you follow….) so I am particularly sensitive to this poisoning problem right now. I have submitted pollen samples to a lab ($576) for testing for 177 chemicals. Susan

[susan rudnicki]

Thanks a lot for this answer—I will relay your info to my client

[susan rudnicki]

Dana! I have been talking to my client in Westchester about the hive in his garden. He did not get this notification you mention.
I would REALLY like to know—who notified you? How did you learn of this spraying plan? Is there a mechanism for your request for postponement to be honored, or did they proceed as planned? How widespread is the application? By helicopter? by truck mounted sprayer? limited spraying by hand?? Spinosad is definitely acutely toxic to honey bees when still wet. Is the agency doing the spraying showing any concern about your bees?

[susan rudnicki]

I am concerned also, as I have a client hive on El Manor in Westchester and have only now read this information you send—12/23. I found this below information on the web at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15366583
What kind of information does the agency doing the spraying offer??
How did they notify you? I do not expect my clients know, or they would have told me. My hive with them is 2 deeps and 3 mediums, so not easily moved!

“This research has clearly demonstrated that spinosad residues that have been allowed to dry for 3 hr are not acutely harmful to honeybees when low-volume and ultralow-volume sprays are used. Further, glasshouse and semifield studies have demonstrated that dried residues are not acutely toxic, and although pollen and nectar from sprayed plants may have transient effects on brood development, the residues do not overtly affect hive viability of either the honeybee or the bumblebee. Field studies in which typical application methods of spinosad were used on a variety of crops have demonstrated that spinosad has low risk to adult honeybees and has little or no effect on hive activity and brood development. The collective evidence from these studies indicates that once spinosad residues have dried on plant foliage, generally 3 hr or less, the risk of spinosad to honeybees is negligible.”

Please reply Susan Rudnicki

[susan rudnicki]

Update—it has been 6 days. I was in the nuc to take out a frame to submit a sample for pesticide testing of honey/nectar/beebread. The queen is still there!! Only a few hundred left of her retinue, but it has been very cold, and rained last night, yet she persists. There is a small amount of activity at the entrance.

[susan rudnicki]

Update—this is obviously a different toxin than the July ’14 event. Bees continuing to exhibit poisoned behavior, falling off the frames, dying out front and on the bottom board. The nuc is going to fail—almost no bees, just the queen and a few hundred workers that show erratic behavior. Brood is dying or dead. I think the big hive will weather the storm.

[susan rudnicki]

And by the way, checked my 17 hives at the Public Works yard and they all looked great!! Yea!!

[susan rudnicki]

I have 4 full size hives (3-5 deeps) at this site, my home, and the one nuc. The Jacaranda hive (3 deeps and a med. that I took honey off last week) which suffered a massive kill last July, had a much smaller hit this time—-though I have not gone into the bottom box to see what is on the floor. The Nuc is much harder hit. When I went out at 6 am, still somewhat dark, I thought it looked odd that so many bees were on the porch of the nuc, as I walk by it all the time to let the ducks out of their night quarters. Once it was light, I could see the real situation—the bees were all dead and more on the ground. You see the photo of the inside of the nuc. I transferred them into a different nuc and saw the queen, though we shall have to see if she is affected. I am hoping the poison got the foragers and the house bees so quickly, the Queen would not have a chance to be fed anything bad.
Here is the dismal note I got from the Apiary inspector, Conrad Burton.
Susan-
Unfortunately use of pesticides is common throughout LA. If you happened to see an application or have evidence of the agency or company that sprayed pesticides in the area our Pesticide Regulation Division could look into it. Hopefully you caught the problem before it completely desimates the hive.
Pesticide Regulation Division – (626) 575-5466.
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Here is the more helpful note I got back from Bill Lewis, of Bill’s Bees
Hi Susan,

This is a sad sight. The remaining bees will need to be fed or the rest will starve to death. The house bees will eat up all the food stores since there will be very few field bees bring in food and you want to keep what is left of the house bees home for a while so they don’t get into whatever the forager bees got into.

Where is this hive location? I would like to google map the location to see what else is around and maybe determine what might be the source of the pesticide.

This does not look like a systemic pesticide kill to me, it is something worse designed to kill a lot of bugs quickly. Could be Fipronil which is used to ground drench for termites and ants. I had an apiary of 100 colonies look like this because Fipronil was sprayed on the ground to kill ants. Not even on blooming plants. Wind put dust in the air that contained Fipronil and piles of dead bees was the result.

You should definitely file a report with Conrad Burton.

Sorry for your loss,

Bill

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Kim—I am the moderator, but was away for the Holiday, so just seeing your note now. I will try to answer within your note—this is a huge and complex question, so my remarks will only skim the surface.

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I am wondering if someone can explain what happened to my hive and what I should do next.
I had a bee hive for about a year and half. We check the hive for every two to three months to see if there is any honey to harvest.

This interval is much too long and cursory. The proper inspection should be very concerned with assessment of the brood nest, to look for eggs, open brood, the brood pattern, and food stores. Taking honey from the hive can not be fairly done (fair to the bees and what they need to survive)
if you do not know what is really going on.

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We are not experienced enough to check the queen and the brood frames. Most of time, we just leave them alone. If we harvest honey, we only take out only one frame.

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Unfortunately, this is not beekeeping. I urge you to come out to some of the mentoring sessions HoneyLove conducts at the Moorpark learning site and come to some meetings at the Sunday monthly meetings—-you need guidance. Our website also has some very good links for basic books to read. It is very important to learn the skills to check the brood frames (it is NOT necessary to find the queen, but the evidence of her work—-the eggs) One other important reason to be able to assess the vigor of the broodnest is to avoid swarming of the colony in the urban environment. If you live in the city (you don’t say where you are) the majority of citizens are not beekeepers and do not appreciate bee swarms emanating from other people’s gardens. To keep good neighbor relations, you must manage your colonies appropriately. This means no “leaving them alone”, which is called negligence by responsible apiarists.
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About a month ago, we noticed something unusual around the hive. There weren’t many bees going in and out of the hive and some bees seemed to hover around the hive and not go in. We thought maybe they are robber bees. A couple of days later, we then noticed hundreds of dead bees next to the hive, near the entrance. There were some bees flying around the hive but they seem to be robber bees and not the members of the hive.

It’s been a month since and I don’t see any bees around the hive any more. I do see some ants trails into the hive.

My question is:
1) Anyone has an idea what happened to my hive and why they were dead bees around the hive?
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It is a good guess that they had a queen problem, and since your management skills are rudimentary, the signs that would have alerted you and allowed a remedy, were missed. It is also possible they absconded.
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2) what should I do with the hive? Specifically, what do I do with the frames in the hive? is it OK to leave the frames or do I need to clean and/or store them outside the hive? Do I have to worry about something spoiling inside the hive? (leftover honey, nectar, eggs, dead bees…etc)
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You should open the hive and see what can be learned from what is still there. I recommend you get a experienced bee mentor to help you do this assessment and pay them for this service, since you are learning a skill that requires time and committment and can not be done quickly. In general, the experienced beeks here believe it takes about 2 years of concerted time and effort to become a competent beek, with good problem solving skills.
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Would like to know if anyone had a similar experience.
———————–
YES, this happens all the time. We here at HL are a resource to help new beekeepers learn and advance and network with others. Stay in touch with us!

Thank you for reading this.

JK

[susan rudnicki]

Image for Costco bee kit display

View post on imgur.com

[susan rudnicki]

OK, beeks, seeing as how there was no answer to the above post I made, here are the guidelines established by H—

For all posts regarding the sale/donation/trade of honey bees or beekeeping equipment, please use our new “bulletin board” forum and give full descriptions of your situation (i.e. How many boxes, deeps and mediums? Brood nest and honey storage areas? How old is the colony? Is it from a swarm, cutout, other? How often have in-hive inspections been done? What would be your assessment of the colony’s attitude to inspection in the brood nest? With proper smoking and preparation, of course).

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