MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

Welcome to
tonight's Michigan Ag Ideas to Grow
With session. We'd like to start by thanking our sponsors. So thank you to
our sponsors, AgriStrategies, LLC,
Consumers Energy, and the Institute of
Agricultural Technology. Tonight I'll be
presenting on getting started with beekeeping
in Michigan. My name is Anna Heck. I'm an
apiculture extension educator at Michigan
State University. I work with MSU
Extension and our programs
are open to all. So we'll get started by
introducing ourselves to the members of
the honeybee colony. So on the left
we have a worker bee, in the middle
we have a drone, and on the right
we have a queen. On the left the worker
bees are females, they have barbed stingers,
so their stingers normally get caught
in whatever they're stinging, and when that
happens they'll die within a few hours of
stinging, not sooner. The workers are
females and there's normally tens of
thousands of them in a colony in the
peak of the season. In the middle we
have a drone bee. Our drones are
males and we normally only find
them in the hive the spring
through the fall. And on the right
we have a queen bee and the queens
are females. we expect to only
find one queen in a colony at most
times of the year. Queens do have a
stinger, but they're not barbed. They're
smooth stingers, so if they do sting, they
don't die afterwards. Here we have
a picture of a queen surrounded
by worker bees, and so you can
see here the workers are around
her. They will feed her, tend to her,
groom her, spread her scent or pheromones
around the hive. The queen's role is
to lay eggs. So in the peak of the season,
the queen can lay over a thousand eggs per day.
Here in this picture, there is an egg in
each of those cells. So along with laying
eggs, the queens are also giving
off a scent that lets the colony
know that it's queen right and
that she is present. After eggs are eggs
for three days, they will develop into
larvae and those larvae grow and develop.
At this time, they're being fed by the
adult worker bees. And then when the
larvae are old enough, they give off a pheromone
or chemical signal that lets the adult
bees know to cap off their cells with
wax. And this is when pupation begins. So
this picture is what we would call sealed
brood or capped brood. And it's the pupation
stage of developing honey bees, specifically
worker bees in this situation. So
that's worker bee brood. Here we have a
picture of a drone. So part of your
role as a beekeeper will be able
to distinguish worker from
drone from queen. Drone bees tend
to have really big eyes and
that wider body. And again they
don't have stingers. So here's a drone in
between some worker bees. Just so you can
see for comparison the drones again having
those really big eyes and that wider body and
then we have our worker bees our worker bees
have a very appropriate name they do a lot
of different jobs and the jobs that they
do in the hive depend on their age they
transition through different jobs as they age and
then also the needs of the colony the
younger worker bees are going to be the ones
who do the work inside of the hive so
they'll do things like cleaning the wax cells,
tending to the queen, beating the developing
brood, and then later in their lives
they'll forage. So they'll leave the hive
and fly and they'll collect nectar to
bring back to the hive. Nectar is something
that they'll collect from plants. It has
sugar in it but it also has a lot of
moisture so bees bring it back to the hive
and then they need to dry it out before it
gets to a point where it's dry enough that
we call it honey. Workers also forage
for pollen. They have a corbicule or pollen
basket on their hind legs where they're able
to carry pollen and they'll bring that
pollen back to the hive. Pollen can be all kinds
of different colors. It can be not only just
orange and yellow, but also colors like blue,
gray, green, brown. and then they will also
collect resins from plants which when they
bring it back to the hive we call propolis
and then propolis is normally red or
yellow in color and it's pretty sticky because
it's resins from plants and the bees use it
to kind of seal off any spaces that are
too small for them to walk through they also
use it in areas in a way that will connect
or kind of cement the hive body boxes and
the frames together so it's kind of like bee
glue and this is why one of our tools as
a beekeeper is a hive tool and that's like
a small pry bar that we're able to use to
separate frames and boxes when they're stuck
together with propolis so here is a slide that
shows the different development time in
days for bees the queens have the shortest
development time the workers have a
longer development time so it's queens it's
16 days from the time when the egg is laid
till she emerges as an adult workers it's 21
days and then drones it's 24 days queens
and workers are females and they develop
from fertilized eggs drones are males and
they develop from unfertilized eggs the
difference between a queen and a worker
developing um is the nutrition they're given
as young larvae so a fertilized egg is going
to be a female bee and it has the potential
to develop into a queen bee or a worker
bee and that just depends on the nutrition
that that um young larvae is given by
the adult worker bees so honeybees are not
native to the americas we have a lot of
species of bees in michigan that are
native to here, but honeybees are not
native to the Americas. So you can see
that the honeybees that we manage
are from different parts of Europe
or Africa. And there are many
species of bees in Michigan that we can support
through conservation. So most of the
species of bees that are native are not
managed by humans, and so the best ways to
support them are by increasing the amount
of habitat on the landscape, making
places that are good for nesting, and also for
nutrition, so flowers that provide pollen
and nectar for them. We think about honeybees
pretty differently. We think about them
more as managed livestock for honey
production and pollination. And
honeybees, in most cases, really need the
care and intervention of a beekeeper in
order to thrive. So when we think
about our honeybees, we think of them
like we do other livestock or sometimes
even how we think of other animals.
So here's a picture of a dog. And like
our dogs, which are pets, our honeybees
also need food, water, shelter,
and medical care. For food, a lot
of the needs of honeybees are met
by the environment. Honeybees collect
pollen and nectar from plants, which makes
up their nutrition. So the nectar, which
they dry out and convert to honey,
provides carbohydrates. It's very high in sugar.
It's important for them to be able to
have honey over the winter so that they
can consume it and generate energy to keep
the colony warm. And then the pollen is
really important for the development of
the bees. It contains proteins, fats,
vitamins, and minerals. However, there are
times of years and situations where our bees
might not have nutrition available to them or
they might not have enough stored in
the hive. We do have cases of honeybees
starving and in most cases these are going to be
preventable deaths. So deaths that the
beekeeper can prevent. We tend to see starvation
occur in the winter if the colony just goes
into winter without having enough honey and
the beekeeper didn't do enough to provide
supplemental feed in the fall or the
winter. Or we'll sometimes see cases in the spring
where a colony has gone through winter,
they've depleted a lot of their stored honey,
and maybe they are growing in population
and there's a lot in bloom, but we get some
days where it's just too cold or too wet for
the colony to forage and fly. And so in
those cases, we can see starvation and even
cannibalism of the brood. So as beekeepers,
we feed our colony when needed. And
that can be sometimes when the colony is
very small. Sometimes when it's small in
population, there's just not enough
foragers to go out and bring resources
back to the hive. When we want the colony
to make wax comb. So the worker bees
have lands in their abdomens where they
can produce tiny flakes of beeswax. And
that's how the colony makes that wax comb.
And they use the comb to store pollen and
nectar. and as well as to raise brood.
And they need a lot of energy and sugar in
order to produce calms. So that can normally
either be from nectar or from something
like sugar syrup. Sometimes we need to
feed our bees when there's not any or not
enough food available in the environment.
So there's just not enough flowers in
their local area that are providing nectar
and pollen for them. Sometimes the colonies
are sick, providing them with some
supplemental nutrition can help support them
and help them recover more quickly and then
sometimes again we might have a lot of
flowers in bloom we might have a really strong
colony and population that's healthy but
if the weather is not if the weather
doesn't allow them to forage then that
might also be another time we need to feed
so if it's too cold or too wet and then
finally as a beekeeper we're evaluating the
food stores in the hive we're checking to
see if they're stored pollen and stored
honey. And if there's not, that's when we
can supplemental feed. The Honey Bee Health
Coalition has a guide called Honey
Bee Nutrition. This is a pretty comprehensive
guide that covers a lot of nutrition
and feeding topics. So it's a resource
that I recommend. All right. Another thing
that honey bees need is water. And I think
sometimes people don't think about bees
needing water, but especially on hot days,
honey bees will bring a lot of water back to
the hive, which they'll fan with their wings
and evaporate to cool the hive down and so
it's important for beekeepers to think
about the needs of their honeybees and having
water nearby especially because unfortunately
this can be an area where honeybee colonies
can become a nuisance to neighbors or neighboring
areas so honeybees will off will collect
honey or sorry collect water and bring
it back to the hive they are sometimes really
interested in collecting water from swimming
pools and even if that's um even if they're
not in a defensive behavior when they're
collecting water sometimes people don't
like to see hundreds or thousands of honeybees
at a swimming pool especially when they're
trying to use it they may honeybees may also
find water in animal water troughs or
feeding dishes or water bowls and so this is
an area where sometimes people who live close
to where honeybee hives are can complain and
the generally accepted agricultural management
practices or the GAMPs have a section
in the care of farm animals on honeybees
caring for honeybees and so it's really great if
beekeepers can review the GAMPs and these
recommendations if you are a beekeeper and
you're following the gamps then that can
provide you some protection if you receive a
nooses complaint and if you can show that you're
following all those recommendations but in
terms of water sources what we recommend is
setting up a water source early in the
season close to the hives honeybees will have a
pattern of returning to the same water source
over and over again And so once you
establish a water source, you want to keep it
filled with water. You want to ideally rotate
out water as needed to prevent it from
becoming a breeding area for mosquitoes and
then keep water in that spot. But if you don't
set up a water source and your bees become
used to going to a neighbor's swimming pool
for water, even if you set up a water source
near the hives, they will probably still
continue to go back to that swimming pool
because it's that habit. So ideally, you want
to set up this water source close to the
hives ahead of time, early in the season
before it gets very hot. All right. And
then another thing that honeybees
need is shelter. So when we think
of a shelter, we think of something
like a hive. The honeybees are cavity
nesters. So in the wild, they'll often
nest in tree cavities. Most beekeepers will
keep them in a hive style like this. This is a
lingstroth hive. There are other styles of
hives, but this is a hive that allows for
easy inspections. And it also allows us to
add more space as the colony grows and needs
more space for incoming nectar and honey
production, and then it allows us to make the
hive smaller for winter. So technically, the
hive is the home or the equipment where the
honeybees live, and then the colony is that
group of honeybees. So there's one colony
and one hive, and the hive is that stack of
boxes. The bees can go up and down within
that stack of boxes. These words, however,
are often used interchangeably. So you'll
hear beekeepers talking about how many hives
they have when they are actually trying to
talk about how many colonies of bees that
they have. So that's very common to use those
words interchangeably. So we expect that the
bottom boxes in the hive are going to be
the boxes where the bees live year round.
The queen tends to lay eggs in the bottom
boxes and the workers tend to store
pollen close to that brood nest. So the
bottom boxes are where we expect to have developing
bees and pollen and then also honey
that the bees are storing. And then the
bees tend to store surplus honey in the
top boxes. And so beekeepers will add
boxes on throughout the season as there's
incoming nectar that the bees are drying and
converting to honey. We recommend that
beekeepers keep these boxes separate. So
we think about the boxes that we use year
-round for the animal, which is the
honeybee colony, differently than we think
about the boxes that we use for the crop,
which is the honey production. The
boxes that we use for honey production, we
call honey supers. And these combs are
usually just used in, you know, spring
through fall they're not normally kept on the
hive in the winter and they're normally only
storing honey or nectar and since those combs
stay younger and since they're not used for
brood or pollen we can use them for many
years the boxes for the honeybee colony or the
animal we we think of differently those boxes
might be exposed to things that we don't
want in human honey like antibiotics for
certain bacterial brood diseases, certain varroa
mite treatments that aren't approved for use
with honey supers on. And sometimes in the
winter, there can be things like mice
nests or mold. So we really want to keep
those boxes separate. And then those combs
that are in the brood boxes or those
bottom boxes for the animal, we tend
to recommend rotating out every so many
years as feasible. The amount of time
can really vary, but there's some recommendations
that say about every six years, try
to rotate out the frames in the brood
nest. Whereas the frames that are just used
for honey production, we can usually use
for much longer. All right. And then
another thing that we think about a lot with
honeybees is their medical needs. Just
the way we think about pets and how
we might have certain medical treatment or
preventative, certain treatments like
heartworm medications. Similarly, we think
about our honeybees and the medical needs
that they have. So there's a parasite
called Varroa destructor, which is, that's the
scientific name. Its common name is the
Varroa mite. It's a mite that is in all of
our honeybee colonies. There's a few islands
in the world where there's honeybees
that don't have this mite, but as far as
Michigan goes, we expect this mite, varroal
mite, to be in all of our honeybee colonies.
So it's not going to be a question of
whether or not your bees have varroal
mites. It's going to be a question of how
high these levels are. And so the varroal
mite is a parasite that will be on adult bees.
The female mite will go into a cell, a brood
cell, right before it's capped. And
then that mother mite will or female mite
will lay eggs her offspring mate with each
other the mother mite creates a feeding
spot on the developing honeybee and that's
the time when they can spread viruses to that
developing bee and the then when after
that bee emerges if she survives or the bee
survives the mites will emerge the mother
mite and then daughter mites and the mites
then can switch to a different adult bee.
There's a lot of viruses that honeybees have
that they can spread to each other, but
that are much worse when they're spread by
varroa mites. And so when you hear things
about how hard it is to keep honeybees
alive and healthy these days, a lot of times it
has to do with varroa mites and the viruses
that they spread. So here's just an
example of a worker bee where you can see
that her wings look really stringy instead
of normal and this is a bee that was
parasitized by a varroa mite during
development with high levels of deformed wing
virus and so there's these viruses that
are present in the colony kind of
regardless but sometimes if their high levels
are really high or if they're being
spread by varroa mites it can cause a lot
of damage to a colony and then here's a
situation where the varroa mites and virus
levels got really out of control because
they weren't being managed and we see
brood that looks really sick so it's not
developing correctly it looks sunken or gooey
in the cells it's not developing and
not going to survive and so there's a lot of
ways and tools in our toolbox to try to
keep mites low however it takes a lot of work
so if you're going to be a beekeeper and you're
going to be managing honeybees a lot of
what you're also going to be doing is managing
varroa mites. There's some non-chemical
options that can help keep mite levels low.
In Michigan, a lot of our varroa mite management
does involve using chemical treatments.
And so these are varroa mite treatments that
are approved by the U .S. Environmental
Protection Agency, or EPA, for use in honeybee
colonies. And our goal is to try to keep
mite levels low throughout the beekeeping
season. We don't want to wait until our
mite levels get high to do some kind of
intervention or management because once varroa
mite levels get high, then sometimes
the virus levels also get very high. And
even if we kill the mites, the virus levels
can stay high for months. So our goal
throughout the beekeeping season is to keep
the mite levels low so that the virus
levels also stay low. So we have this guide
or resource from the Honey Bee Health Coalition.
It's called Tools for Varroa Management,
and this is something that we recommend to
beekeepers. It has the different treatment
options. The current version as of February
2026 is the 8th edition, and that has
now become outdated because we have some
newer treatment options, and the 9th edition
will be released soon. And then this is just
an advisory statement from the EPA
that clarifies to beekeepers that anything
that we're using in our hives to manage
varroa mites should be labeled by the
EPA in order for it to be a legal
pesticide application. Outside of varroa
mites, there's other bee diseases or honeybee
diseases. On the left here, we have
chalk brood, which is a fungal disease.
It is not super common, but somewhat common.
We tend to see it in the spring. It
normally clears up. In the middle, we
have European fowl brood, which is a
bacterial brood disease that is very
prevalent in Michigan. We see it often in
the spring, and then sometimes it can linger
through the summer in certain colonies. And
then on the right, we have American fowl brood
disease, and that is a bacterial brood
disease that is not very prevalent in Michigan.
But if we do find it, we need to take
immediate action because the spores in this
disease can remain in the comb forever. So we
need to destroy all of the comb and manage
the bees appropriately. As a new beekeeper,
it's okay if you can't identify these
different diseases or issues. Your main
goal is going to be to identify healthy versus
sick. And so you'll be inspecting your
colony and looking at the brood. And if
you see abnormalities or signs where you
think there's some kind of issue or disease,
take a picture, and then you can send
it to MSU Extension through our Ask Extension
form. You can send it to your beekeeping
club or association or a beekeeping mentor
if you have one. We also have this
really neat tool, our online learning module,
that we developed for veterinarians, but
it's very relevant to beekeepers. It's called
Diagnostic Tools for honeybee diseases. And
it goes through these different diseases,
the visual signs, and how to deal with them.
So that's a really nice resource. It also
lets you quiz yourself so you can see how
much you're learning. And so as part of
beekeeping, we want to do regular
inspections. We don't want to just leave
bees alone in a hive because this
isn't providing them the care that
they might need. so when we're check
when we're doing an inspection we're looking
for four things we're looking for the stored
food which is going to be pollen nectar or and
or honey or if those aren't present
supplemental food if as needed we're going to
check that the hive has the appropriate amount
of space so we're going to add boxes on as
needed or remove them when we we don't we're
going to check that the colony has signs of
being queen right which in most cases is going
to be just looking for queen laid eggs. And
then we're also going to be checking for
signs of health. So that means healthy brood,
healthy bees, and low roal mite levels. So
we'll go through these to see kind of what they
look like. The first thing we're on our
list is to look for stored food. So we're
looking for nectar and cells. Nectar looks
liquidy. And then the bees will dry it off. Once
they dry it off enough, they will cap it with
wax. And that's when we call it honey.
So we're looking for nectar and or honey
in the hive we're also looking for pollen and
they store pollen in the combs and it can be all different kinds of colors all right after that
we're looking for the appropriate amount of
space here we have a picture where bees
look like they're just kind of bubbling out
over the top of this hive this is a hive where
if we removed the cover and we can see
that there it's just too full of bees so we
want to be giving our bees extra space
especially in the spring through summer we want
to make sure that they have enough space so
that they don't get crowded so we're adding
on boxes in the spring in the summer and then
later in the summer late summer or fall is
when we tend to harvest the surplus honey
and remove boxes and then get bees ready
in their wintering configuration which
can really vary I'd say commonly it's two of
these deep or taller brood boxes for winter but
sometimes beekeepers like to leave them with
a third deep box to leave extra honey on the
hive and then there's also kind of other
ways where you can use shorter boxes which
are less heavy to lift and those boxes are
called mediums and you can use approximately
the same amount of space just with more
medium boxes all right here's another picture
again with the animal and their crop so again
thinking about the space that the bees
need honeybees don't need to store honey for
winter but they don't know when they have
enough for winter which is why they will
produce more honey than they need and that's
why beekeepers are able to harvest surplus
honey and in some cases in a good year in a
healthy colony that can be at over 100
pounds of surplus honey that the beekeeper is
able to harvest and then we try to leave honey
in the hive around maybe 75 pounds of
honey in the hive for winters here in Michigan
or more and then we're looking for signs
of being queen right even though it can be
really fun and exciting to see a queen we
don't normally want to look for her there can
be tens of thousands sometimes 50,000 or
more bees in a hive in the peak of the summer
and so if we're going frame by frame looking
for the queen there's a possibility that
we'll miss her or that we'll end up squishing
her in that process so even though it's
fun to see her a lot of times what we're
normally going to be just looking for are eggs
and so these are queen laid eggs we can
see one egg per cell kind of centered on
that foundation seeing eggs can be hard it
depends a lot on your vision it can also
depend a lot on lighting. So there are
beekeepers who will use special lighting or magnification in
order to see eggs. All right, and you might
be wondering, well, what if my colony
doesn't have a queen? What's going on? And
colonies will raise a new queen under three
situations. One is swarming, and this is a way
that a colony is able to naturally reproduce
or relieve hive congestion. So if it
gets too crowded, and by crowded I mean that there's
not enough empty comb for the queen to lay
eggs and for incoming nectar, the colony
can swarm, or swarming is just a natural way
that the colony wants to reproduce. So
especially in Michigan and the spring, overwintered
colonies will often have an impulse to
issue a swarm where the queen and a portion
of the bees, sometimes around half of the
bees will leave to find a new home, and
they'll leave behind developing queens and
the rest of the bees. So it's the way that
the colony, which we think of as a superorganism,
splits itself. Another time when a
colony can raise a queen is to procedure,
and this is when the worker bees
identify some issue with the queen, especially
if the queen is older and not giving off
enough pheromone or scent. They will
select some young female larvae to raise a
replacement queen. And then the final
situation where we might see a colony raising a
queen is what we call emergency queen rearing.
And this is where the queen is suddenly
missing or dead. It could be, unfortunately,
because the beekeeper squished the queen or
some other situation. And when the queen is
dead or missing, the workers recognize
within hours that her scent is no longer
present, and they will choose some of those
young female larvae to feed royal jelly
and feed a different nutrition. And that
changes that female larva's trajectory from
a worker to a queen. Here's an example of
what queen cells look like. So on the right,
we have a sealed queen cell. So that is a
queen that is developing in the pupal stage.
And then on the left, we have a queen cell
where it's emerged. So that means that a
queen emerged from the bottom of that cell
and the way we can tell that a queen came
out of that cell is because the bottom is
open. It sometimes looks like the bees took a
can opener to open up the bottom of the cell.
That's kind of how it looks when a queen
emerges from a cell. Here is a picture
of a honeybee swarm. Again, this is the way
that colonies reproduce is by issuing swarms.
So they will leave. Sometimes it's with
the overwintered queen they can also swarm
with ****** or new queens and they will
congregate in an area close to the hive and
while they're in that formation scout bees
will go and look for a new hive location
so they'll look for a cavity ideally a
tree cavity although sometimes unfortunately
it's a cavity in a structure or a building
or a home and then they will do a dance to
communicate the new location, the location
based off, so they'll do a dance that
communicates distance and direction and recruit
other bees to check out that location.
They'll also leave scent to that location to
help the bees find it. Once enough of the
bees do the dance for that new hive location,
the swarm will leave and they'll move
into that new cavity. Here's another
picture of a swarm that is congregating
on a small plant. And another picture of
a swarm congregating on a tree. So beekeepers
are able to collect swarms oftentimes when
the swarms are in a swarm near the hives
before they move into a cavity. This can be,
you know, sometimes just a matter of hours
or days before the colony will move on. So
oftentimes in less than a day, the colony will
move into a cavity. So we try to respond
quickly. It also really depends on where the
swarm is. Sometimes they are really high in
a tree or in a place where they can't be
easily or safely accessed. So again, colonies
swarm because it's their natural reproduction.
It's the way that the super organize them
splits itself. They will also swarm when
they're crowded so they don't have enough drawn
or empty comb for the queen to lay eggs and
for incoming nectar. It depends on the
weather and it can change from year to year.
There are some years where I hear of many
reports of swarms and then other years where
we have fewer reports. The onset of a strong
nectar flow can trigger swarming. So
if there's a plant that's producing a
lot of nectar and it's really abundant in
the landscape and the bees are bringing
that nectar back to the hive, that can
sometimes create a crowding effect where
the queen doesn't have space to lay
eggs. And then there's also genetic components.
So some colonies are just more prone
to swarming than others. And so for
beekeepers, what this means is that a lot of
times with overwintered colonies, we will
split our colonies in the spring to try
to deter swarming. And this is important
because some people get into beekeeping and
they think that they are going to just
have a set number of colonies or hives. And
this isn't normally going to be the case.
We want to be somewhat flexible in the number
of colonies that we have because we
might need to split in order to deter
swarming. There are some options, you know, if
you're limited in space or resources, sometimes
beekeepers will sell or donate smaller
colonies in the spring, but it is a
good idea if you can to have at least an extra
set of beekeeping equipment going into
the season so that you are prepared in case
you need to do a split all right some other
queen issues you might see one is called
laying workers and this is an issue with
that we'll see if the colony has been
queenless for a period of time and there's not
brood pheromones or queen pheromones in
the hive and in the absence of queen pheromones
and brood pheromones the worker bees can
begin to lay eggs the worker bees can't
mate so they can only lay unfertilized
eggs so they can only lay eggs that develop
into drones so if the colony is not able to
raise a new queen the workers will start
laying eggs this can happen for example if
a colony does raise a new queen she goes on
and then she goes on her mating flights
which she does within the first couple weeks
of her life and then maybe something
happens to her and she doesn't return. In this
situation, there's no longer any young
female larvae for the colony to raise a new
queen. And so with the absence of brood
pheromone and queen pheromones, the workers
will start to lay. Those unfertilized eggs will
develop into drones. The colony won't
accept a new queen by herself. Beekeepers can
buy queens from other operations. But in
the situation where there's laying workers,
the colony is unlikely to accept a new queen
by herself because there are already
bees that are laying. So it's a situation
where we normally advise combining it with a
queen right colony. And in this picture, this
is a picture of a frame with eggs and brood
that have been laid by laying workers. Some
telltale signs of laying workers is that we
often find cells with more than one egg in
them. So we might find three, four, or
five eggs in a single cell. We'll
also sometimes see eggs that
are on the cell walls. All right.
Another different issue that we can have is
what we call a drone layer queen. And this
is where the queen is not mated properly
or is running out of ***** in an organ that's
called a spermatheca. So she's not laying
fertilized eggs when we expect her to lay
fertilized eggs. So the queen in this
situation is present. It could be that in
the first couple weeks of her life when she
was trying to, when she should have gone
on her mating flights, the weather was poor
and she wasn't able to mate properly with
drones in a drone congregation area,
which is where drones congregate and mating
occurs. So if she's not mated properly, then
she can only lay unfertilized eggs, which
develop into drones. Or it could be that
she's older and she's running out of
***** that's stored. So in this situation,
we normally find a normal brood
pattern. The queen is laying normally, but
instead we're finding there's drones
developing in places where we expect there
to be worker brood. And so in this
situation, sometimes the bees will supersede
the queen, but not always. And so
this is a time when sometimes the beekeeper
needs to intervene by removing and
replacing the queen. There's a resource called
Help I Need a Queen by Dr. Megan Milbrath,
who is an apiculture specialist here
at Michigan State University, and it has
this timeline and it's just really important for
beekeepers to become familiar with it and
take really good notes. So we recommend taking
notes at all of our inspections so that
you have a timeline and you know what's
occurring. It is really common for beekeepers
to have some kind of queen issue and normally
what we're going to recommend if you are
opening up your hive and you're not seeing
brood and you think it's queenless is to
give that hive a frame with egg and young brood
from a different hive and that will kind
of act as a test. So you'll go back in a few
days later and if the colony built queen
cells on that frame then you can pretty safely
assume that it's queenless. If there's
not queen cells on that frame of young brood
that you got from that other hive then it's
a sign that there is a young queen who just
hasn't started laying yet so these are common
issues but we have lots of resources and
information on them all right and then
the last thing we're checking for is health
and so we're looking for healthy brood healthy
bees and low varroa mite levels to monitor
for varroa mites there are a couple different
tests there's some good resources and
videos online to show the steps for going
through them. This is a video from the Honey
Bee Health Coalition on YouTube. And the test
we normally recommend is the alcohol wash
test, which involves taking a sample of
about 300 bees, putting them in isopropyl
alcohol, dislodging the varroa mites, and counting
how many mites per sample of 300 bees. It
does involve killing that sample of bees.
If that's something that you are unlikely
to do, we recommend the powdered sugar roll
test, which doesn't immediately kill of
the bees in the sample. We suggest starting with two or three colonies. We want, we don't
recommend starting with just one colony
because it limits your troubleshooting
ability if you need resources. So
again, if you have a queen issue, you
might want to pull a frame of brood
from another hive. Sometimes we also
share food or other resources between hives.
So we normally suggest starting with two or
three. If you start with more than that,
you might find that you're getting a little
bit over your head. And then also, again,
thinking about the number of colonies
as dynamic, that they will increase through
splits and then may decrease through
losses, so either colonies not surviving
or combining colonies as needed if there's
a queen issue. a lot of people worry
about winter and honeybees and honeybees
can survive really cold winters it's just
important that they have enough stored honey and
that they're healthy going into winter and
unfortunately it's really hard to get them
healthy before winter the varroa might
spread viruses and the varroa might levels
and virus levels tend to peak in the fall and
that's when our bees that are going to go
through winter are developing. So if our
winter bees are developing under high virus
pressure and high varroa mite pressure, that
can sometimes make it more difficult for
the colony to survive. There's a lot of cool things about beekeeping. If you are getting
started, one of the best things you can do is
learn about their biology so you can learn to
work with them and you can understand what
they're communicating. On the left, we have
a picture where the workers are sticking
their abdomens up in the air and towards the
end of their abdomens there's a white band and
that's a gland that's open called the nasnov
gland the bees are giving off an orientation
pheromone called nasnov that's lemony
it's not defensive they'll do it give it
off when they're swarming but we'll also see it a
lot when we're opening a hive and disorienting
some of the bees it's a pheromone they
give off when they're trying to stick
together on the right we have a bee that's giving
off a pheromone called alarm pheromone. And
so her stinger's out and there's a little
drip or drop of venom on her stinger. And
this is something that's a chain reaction in
the hive. It elicits other bees to also give
off alarm pheromones and then to sting. So
it is the reason why we use smoke to mask
those alarm pheromones. And it depends on
your nose, but some people can smell these
pheromones. The Nazanop pheromone on the
left is lemony, and the one on the right,
alarm pheromones, smells like artificial
banana flavoring. We also want to look
at the body behavior of the honeybees. This
is a picture that was taken looking down
into the hive where the honeybees are looking
up at the beekeeper. It's really adorable
in my opinion but also it can be one of the
first signs of defensive behavior so this is
a situation where normally just a puff of
smoke would cause the workers to stop paying
attention to the beekeeper and smoke not
only masks alarm pheromones but also has an
effect of making the bees want to consume
nectar or honey so gives them something else
to do and then there's also all kinds of other
pheromones in scents in the hive the larvae
give off pheromones and same with the
sealed brood or the pupae and the queen
gives off scents as well. We want to work with
the natural instincts of the colony. The
colony's goal is to get big and to grow
in population and have enough food to
survive the following winter and then to
reproduce in the spring. So if you are considering
beekeeping, we have an online course
called Is Beekeeping Right for Me? And this
course is really intended to go through the
different considerations of keeping bees and
what it what you want to kind of know
before you get started or at least what a lot
of people told us at MSU they wish they
would have known. So it covers meeting the
honeybees, helping bees. So a lot of people want
to become beekeepers because they are just
interested in helping bees but there's
actually a lot of ways to help bees and some
of the ways we can help bees will also
really benefit the native species of bees we
have here in Michigan. So if your primary goal
is just to do something outside to help bees,
sometimes planting flowers for bees
might be a better fit. We go through the basic
needs of beekeeping, including physical
demands, time demands, testimonials, and
financial costs. And then finally, we just end
the course by asking everyone to do something
to help pollinators. And there's a lot of
different ways that people can help
pollinators. So some of the considerations we cover
in the online course are lifting. I think
some people get started in beekeeping and
don't realize how much lifting it is involved
and how difficult it can be. Honey is really
heavy. We have to remove boxes in order
to inspect the hive or inspect the colony
and then add boxes on. And these boxes are
often stuck together by the propolis. So it
can be really difficult to separate and lift
them. And then on top of that, we're doing
this lifting in the beekeeping suit where
we sometimes don't have our normal field of
vision that can restrict our range and our
motion can be limited. And so this can be
a challenge that we encourage beekeepers
to consider before they get started. That
doesn't mean it's not possible. It really
depends on each individual. There's
also ways to lift boxes between two people that
can really help share the load, and there's
other physical accommodations that
can be made as needed. We also talk about the
time that's involved in beekeeping, and
so there's one piece of that is how often
colonies need to be inspected, which
changes throughout the season, but another part
of it is just how much learning is involved.
So it is really difficult to keep honeybees
healthy and alive. And there's a really
steep learning curve, especially at the
beginning. So this is something that you'll
want to keep in mind when you're thinking
about the time commitment of getting
started with beekeeping. And then we have some
testimonials from people who shared their
experience with us. Some of them who
decided that beekeeping wasn't a good fit or
shared how difficult it was and again with
the intent of helping people understand what's
involved before they get started and we
also cover some of the costs so these are
estimates but there are there is a number of
things that you'll have to purchase in
order to get started with beekeeping some
of it will depend on your style of
beekeeping and your location but the cost
can add up pretty quickly especially
when we're thinking of starting with
two to three hives. All right so I'm going
to share a little bit right now about
how people can help bees because for a lot
of people that's an interest in getting
started with beekeeping and regardless of
whether you keep honeybees we hope that
you do something to help bees and normally
the best way to do that is going to be
to plant flowers. Increase the number of
flowers on the landscape that provide nectar
or pollen to bees. There's a course
that we have that's free through MSU
Extension called Pollinator Champions.
And this goes through who the bees
are in Michigan, what's happening to them and how people can help. So this is a great
way to become familiar with different
bees in Michigan and different ways
to support them. If you're interested
in getting started with beekeeping, we
recommend that you take some time to learn
about beekeeping before you purchase bees
so we suggest that you start by buying
a beekeeping suit and then joining a beekeeping
club or association and getting in hive
experience through your beekeeping club
or a bee class or a mentor before you
purchase your own bees michigan beekeepers
association is our statewide beekeeping
club or association and on their website
they have a list of local michigan bee
clubs so there's about 30 beekeeping
clubs in Michigan, and they are a great
resource for learning about beekeeping
before you get started. I'm going to cover some additional
resources next. So our MSU
extension site for beekeeping is canr
.msu.edu slash bees. Canr is for
the College of Agriculture and
Natural Resources. On that page, you'll
find our newsletter sign up. We have
a beekeeping and pollinators email news
Digest that we send out about once or
twice a month, and that includes resources
and upcoming events. We also have a link
to our Ask Extension form, and if you have
questions about beekeeping or about supporting
pollinators, the best way to ask those
questions to MSU is through the Ask Extension
form. It allows you to type out your
question, and it also allows you to include
photos or short videos. Another website
that we have that compiles a lot of
resources and information is pollinators.msu
.edu. That's the Michigan Pollinator
Initiative website. On the extension website, canr.msu.edu slash
bees, you'll find information organized
by articles, classes, events,
people's publication, and videos. For
articles, you'll find a resource
called Getting Started with Beekeeping
in Michigan, which compiles a lot
of our resources. You'll also find monthly
resource articles. So for April through
September we have online articles that
cover the different resources that
are relevant for beekeepers at that
time of the year. We have a new beginning
farmer resource and decision decision
making guide. This is for lots of areas
of ag for people who are interested
in getting started and it includes a
chapter on beekeeping. And then for classes,
we have our Pollinator Champions online
course. We have this beekeeping right for me.
We have our Diagnostic Tools for Honeybee
Diseases, which is the online learning module
that covers honeybee diseases. We have online
courses on pollinator protection for
pesticide applicators. We have Foundations
of Gardening, which is from our consumer
horticulture team at MSU Extension
and another course from them on insects
in the garden. You'll find upcoming
events on our website. Each year
we do a question and answer webinar
monthly, April through September. So this
is where MSU will talk about seasonal
beekeeping management and answer
beekeeper questions. We also have videos
on our website as well as on our
YouTube channel. And that includes
webinar recordings. Here are my
acknowledgements. We thank the Michigan Department
of Agriculture and Rural
Development and the USDA for funding to
support our work. Again, I'm with MSU
Extension and our programs and materials
are open to all. And my name is Anna
Heck. I'm an apiculture extension educator
at MSU. And if you have questions, we
invite you to send them to us through
our Ask Extension form at pollinators.msu
.edu slash questions.