Other hives…

The ‘lang’

The ‘Lang’

• Like a filing folder • Wax foundation • Supers

Horizontal TBH

hTBH

• PROSLess invasive

Free to wanderNew comb each seasonNo SupersInexpensiveLess hardware to storeExtract smaller batchesKill less beesEasier for bee-ginners

CONS

More frequent inspections

No standardisation

Less honey

A permaculture beehive design

• Ethics – What is important? • Principles & patterns – What principles &

patterns in nature inform our design? • Strategies &Techniques – What are

appropriate responses to the above?

Permaculture Pyramid

c ETHICS

PRINCIPLES & PATTERNS

TECHNIQUES

REGENERATION

NATURAL SELECTION

MINIMAL INTERFERENCE

Minimising treatment

Ecological interconnectedness/ co-evolution

FAIR SHARE

OBSERVATION: bees in nature

& TRUST

‘GREAT MYSTERY’

Mesh bottom-boards

Trapezoid cavity

Natural comb building

Small apiaries, but enough for genetic diversity

Diversity is health (genetic, environmental)

Let bees requeen themselves

HONEYBEE HEALTH

What are the health problems bees face today?

Parasitic Varroa destructor• Co-evolution w apis

cerana• Jumped ship in 1963• Sucks bee-blood AND

introduces viruses• First detected in NZ in

2000• Beekeeping in NZ will

never bee the same

Principles…

• Mites need brood to reproduce, and they mostly live in brood.

• Show 8x preference toward drone brood than worker brood (capped longer + more space?)

• Mite pop. growth is exponential

Short-term ‘solutions’• Apistan, Bayvarol, Apivar• ‘These pesticides should be

considered hazardous.’ Disposed of as ‘toxic waste.’

• Often left in the hive too long• Users are encouraged to

‘alternate control methods to avoid immunity-building in the parasite’

• Users advised to not use fluvalinates before harvesting honey lest it contaminate product.

Organic chemicalsEssential oils and organic acids

• Essential oils – plants’ natural protection

• Kills less varroa, can also be toxic to bees

• Taste residues• THYMOL (66-98% mite kill).

Vaporizer – air temp must be 12C+. Does not penetrate capped brood. (Apiguard or Apilife VAR)

• Organic acids formic, oxalic, lactic. • Occur naturally in honey (trace quantities) • Formic acid – labour intensive, hazardous to use (burns skin + eyes, fatal if

swallowed, fumes can ignite), affects drone eggs – and we don’t know how it actually works!

• Oxalic acid – kills 98% mites. But corrosive…• Lactic acid caused up to 60% of bee eggs to be removed… advice is to ‘only

apply to brood-less colonies.’

Supermites – a silent spring

• “Varroa is likely to build up resistance to all pesticides (chemical and organic) given enough time and misuse of products.”

‘Biotechnical’ control• 1. Brood removal (esp. drone brood ‘trapping’ in a brood-less colony)

– ‘5 week Hive-splitting varroa control’ (Vietnam method)– Isolating queen on one comb for drone trapping

• 2. Mesh bottom boards– 20% natural mite fall from bee-grooming– Sticky boards / open bottoms prevent mites from climbing back up into hive– Not a stand-alone control but good for monitoring

• 3. Heat treatment?– Why? Adult female mites more sensitive to temps above normal brood temp

than brood themselves. How? Isolate brood, 44C for 4 hours kills 100% mites and 5% brood (+ potential deformities later).

• 4. Pollen traps? Nah. • 5. Smaller-cell foundation? Nah.

• ‘Varroa tolerance’ = ability to co-exist

• Remember A. cerana?– Removes mites from infested

cells and re-caps– Has a short yearly drone

production period, and capped stage for worker brood too short for mites to reproduce in them

– ‘Entombs’ mites in drone cells– Grooms– Significant absconding +

swarming, leaving infested brood behind

Apis cerana, the Asian honeybee: co-evolved with varroa

• Which traits are worth selecting for?– Hygenic behaviour (not really significant)– Duration of capped stage (difficult, time-

consuming)– Suppression of mite reproduction (very

worthwhile exploring!)– Brood ‘unattractiveness’ to mites (needs more

research)– Grooming (not significant)

• Brood-unattractive Russians

• ‘Live and let die’• Selecting queens and

breeder drones with a shorter capped period

• Selecting for low-infestation (combination of mite-resistant traits)

Brood diseases (AFB, chalk) • ‘Chalkbrood’ often caused by

fungicides in pollen – prevents natural fungi from preserving bee food, which rots.

• ‘American Foulbrood’ = VERY NASTY. Bacterium Paenibacillus larvae larvae in two forms: spore + vegetative. AFB spores fed to bee larva by nurse bees – spores germinate in gut. Vegetative form is rods that penetrate larval gut wall, multiply, consume tissue – larva dies in pre-pupal stage. It’s kind of like Alien. THEN vegetative rods turn back into new spores (1 diseased larva contains 2.5 billion spores) – house bees spread spores by trying to clean out diseased larva – VICIOUS CYCLE.

Wax moth

• Better thought of as symbiotic organisms in the hive

• Cannot digest new comb, only old fouled comb

• Best to freeze honey after harvesting to kill WM larva, lest they hatch and eat it all.

Wasps

Laws affecting beekeepers in NZ• Councils often have by-laws affecting beekeeping –

check them out• You must register your apiary because hives must be

annually inspected for AFB by an ‘approved beekeeper.’ Do an Annual Disease Return. Destroy any AFB hive.

• www.biosecurity.govt.nz – what you can and cannot import bee-wise

• Toxic honey management (tutin from tutu plant, produced as honeydew by passion vine hopper – no taste or smell, can be deadly)

• Pesticide management

Fundamentals

• Permaculture design: Ethics underlie everything.

• Trust the bees – it’s ok to not understand and control everything.

• Hobbyist / small-scale bioregional beekeeping is vital

What is going to save bees?

• Perennial polycultures – abundant forage• Locally adapted genetic diversity• Enough hives to sustain losses

Objectives: Do we?

• Understand pros and cons of top-bar?• Feel more comfortable around bees and

beekeepers?• See beekeeping through a permaculture lens?• Trust the process????

Where to from here?