Year 4 December - Reflections 🖊️

-Time to look back on the past season’s beekeeping adventures.

So, let me spill the tea on this beekeeping journey – it’s been the most disastrous year I’ve ever had in the bee biz. And trust me, I’ve had my fair share of challenging seasons.

But you know what’s different? This is the first tough one since I went all-natural over a decade ago. When things are going swell, it’s easy to get comfy, right? But just like the rest of agriculture, every new decade brings its own set of challenges. Get too comfy, and bam – surprise!

Three

Thinking back, my woes didn’t start in year 2. Nope, they kicked off four seasons ago when I parked my bees in a friend’s commercial beeyard for safekeeping. Fast forward a few seasons, I returned to Wyoming and got my bees back. Despite that year’s lousy forage, the rampant drug-resistant foulbrood, and pesticide-resistant mites in my friend’s commercial bees, my bees seemed okay – average populations, no foulbrood, and low mite counts. I thought I was golden.

But, oh honey, there was more. Turns out, more than mites and foulbrood hitched a ride from the Almonds to Wyoming! Wish I’d left my bees with my commercial buddy and started fresh with new package bees. But hey, they’d probably have come from the California almonds too.

Two

The next season, my bees were in their own little paradise. However, it was a tough forage year. The best hives were just meh. About half were tiny, and none were thriving. Now, that was unusual. Back before my Florida escapade, I always had more natural bees than I had equipment. So, I played the good beekeeper, fed them, and gave the stragglers a kombucha boost. Surprisingly, those ones produced more honey than the hives without the kombucha.

But my bees were secretly under the weather, and I didn’t catch on. No foulbrood or mite problems, and the usual mite-vectored virus symptoms were MIA. I blamed it on poor forage and old queens, thinking they’d handle their own queen replacements just fine. After all, they’d been doing it for a decade.

These bees were on a decade-old small cell comb. I had a plan to replace the comb, but it never happened. If only I’d started with package bees on fresh comb.

One

Fast forward to the last season – they barely survived winter. Only a handful of hives made it through in decent shape. The rest were weak or downright struggling. So, I thought, “Alright, time to feed, clean house, get new queens, and start afresh.” But this routine, which usually gives me ten strong double hives, was a flop. My bees were in deep trouble. Despite low mite counts, no crawlers, and no brood disease, they:

• Hardly touched sugar or pollen feed.
• Failed to expand, only producing enough brood to maintain populations.
• Didn’t forage during the best forage years in decades.
• Showed weird foulbrood-like symptoms by midsummer.
• Huddled away from the broodnest core.

And then, a revelation! Thanks to Randy Oliver and his Sick Bees series in the American Bee Journal. My bees were in bad shape. Despite all my efforts and expenses, there was nothing I could do to turn them around. They’d been ailing for years, and their chances of surviving the next winter were almost zilch.

They were on life support all season. Should I have pulled the plug and let them go? I decided against it.

So, I relocated them, kept feeding them, and threw in a round of antibiotics. Yes, there’s a time for treatment. For people. For kids. For animals. And yes, even for bees.

Post-antibiotics, they started foraging on late alfalfa, took the sugar and pollen feed, and got sprayed with malathion, twice.

Wish I’d used antibiotics sooner and moved those bees to a pesticide-free spot. Is there such a thing?

Zero

And here we are, gearing up for a new season. What will it bring for the bees? Only time will spill the tea. Natural beekeeping isn’t a magic spell for getting immortal, trouble-free bees. That’s just not natural.

But it does give the bees the freedom to do what they do best – survive and thrive in the face of new challenges. With natural beekeeping, a beekeeper can ride the wave of nature’s resilience and quickly bounce back from tough times.

That’s been my experience in the past. And with this new virus soup swirling around, that’s my hope for the coming year.

I don’t know if all my past wishes could’ve prevented this season’s outcome. Maybe the wild bees were the disease vector for my bees. But I suspect it was probably the other way around. Recent research even suggests it’s possible.

Losing my bees is one thing, but the wild bee population perishing because of mine – that stings. I sure wish it hadn’t happened, but the damage trail is pretty 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 my heart ache. I hope that transported virus RNA doesn’t linger. I hope it truly vanishes like a disappearing disease.

And one last wish – may you and your bees have the most fantastic season ever next year. With bees, you never know what surprises they’ll bring. Maybe even some honey to sweeten the deal.

Sending bee-positive vibes your way! ✨

-Cheers, D 🍂🐝