Since most of us cannot afford the thousands of dollars required to get organic certification from the USDA, an alternative is emerging that will let your customers know you’re approaching beekeeping the natural way, and it won’t cost you a small fortune. Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), a “non-profit offering certification programs tailored for small-scale, direct-market farmers,” is piloting a program for beekeepers in North Carolina and Virginia. This certification will allow you to put the CNG label on your honey. Eventually, this certification will apply to all products of the hive, bees, and queens.
The standards emerging from the pilot program are strict, but they are doable by most beekeepers. To ease the transition, the program does allow for a “transition period” for many management practices except using synthetic chemicals and antibiotics. Most astute, deliberate beekeepers probably meet many of standards already.
To find out more about this program, view the CNG Apiary Standards.
There will be additional workshops this summer concerning disease management in the three regions of NC. The dates for these events will be posted soon. I’ll be helping with these, so I hope to see you there.
April 27, 2010 • Beekeeping • Comments (0)
I began beekeeping with a hodgepodge of equipment. I had deeps, mediums, and shallows, some new, some used, some from Dadant & Sons, some from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, and others from Walter T. Kelley. I even had some A. I. Root equipment that was older than my grandparents. While most of the equipment was perfectly usable, the equipment didn’t play well together (it has been documented that the subtle differences between manufactures can mean too much or too little bee space when equipment is interchanged). Perhaps more frustrating, all the sizes left me with head-smacking management problems: when I needed a frame from one hive, it never seemed to have a relative match in another. For instance, if one hive needed a frame of honey, the hive with excess would have one size frame, but the needy hive would have another. I decided, after much frustration, to standardize. I picked mediums for the simple fact that I could lift them without giving myself a hernia or a pulled muscle. Using all mediums does have its disadvantages, such as having to build more frames and boxes per hive, but the overall advantages are worth the extra work.
I decided to begin with package bees. You might ask yourself, “Has he never heard of nucs, which are vastly superior to package bees?” Of course nucs are superior for a lengthy list of reasons; however, to begin as cleanly as possible, package bees were the best solution for me—besides capturing swarms, but this is unreliable; furthermore, finding beekeepers who sell medium frame nucs is a challenge in my area.
What, you may ask, do I mean by “cleanly”? Since nucs have combs, they may contain the residue from past chemical treatments, and if you don’t know the beekeeper from whom you’re getting them, disease. When I speak of disease, I mostly mean American foulbrood. Passing around parasites, like varroa, are a given. After the packages become established, splits will be made from these.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is, in my opinion, one of the banes of human ingenuity. While it has provided us with a cheap way to sweeten, it has also given us the most empty calories humans have ever had access to. This is in no way to imply that table sugar is without fault. Processed sucrose is not necessarily a natural product either, but it’s nearer to nectar and will be used by bees in much the same way as nectar. Ross Conrad commented on the potential for mercury contamination in HFCS in the January 2010 issue of Bee Culture, another reason HFCS is, in my eyes, a suspect product.
It’s yet to be determined if Honey-B-Healthy has any positive effects on the health of the hive. Nevertheless, there are some benefits to using this product that are provable. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the essential oils to sugar syrup is its ability to inhibit mold growth. In addition to this, the bees love it and will readily begin to feed on sugar syrup that has Honey-B-Healthy as an additive.
Slatted racks prove that all things old are new again. Invented more than one hundred years ago, I just got around to trying them last year. I’ve seen some real benefits to their use. Mostly, it gives foraging bees a place to hang out when they’re not doing anything, which eases congestion in the brood nest. The design of the racks also acts as a buffer between the entrance of the hive and the first super, which decreases comb chewing, makes the bottom brood chamber a bit more enticing to the queen to lay in, and decreases the chances that robber bees have direct and unnoticeable access to the hive.
Some beekeepers claim that screened bottom boards do nothing. While you might choose to believe they have little useful effect on varroa populations (research suggest a 10% reduction), the other benefits are many. In my opinion, the ventilation and free passage of debris make them worth having. The 10% varroa reduction is a bonus, along with lower instances of chalkbrood.
I like crimp wire foundation for the simple fact that it gives the bees some leverage in comb design. It also has no plastic, so when it’s time to replace the comb, there’s little waste, or the waste that does result won’t be around for 1000 years.
Bees build drone comb where they can. Why not help them? Drones are useful members of a healthy hive, and while they might not make honey, they’re essential to well-mated queens. If you have good bees, you’ll be doing you and your community a favor by supplying good genetics and plenty of viable drones.
April 21, 2010 • Beekeeping • Comments (0)
beekeeper ['biˌki pər] n., One who keeps bees, specifically one who cares for and raises bees.
© 2010 Christopher Petree • Entries (RSS) • Comments (RSS)