Q: Spotted Lanternflies
Recently spotted lanternflies have started to make a frequent appearance where I live in Southwestern Virginia. I have read that they have been spreading in the U.S. for the past decade, but I am just now hearing about them. A lot of people I know are worried about what their impact could be in this area. My question is, should beekeepers be concerned about the ecological impact they could have? Do they pose a significant threat to floral sources for honey bees, or is their impact on floral sources negligible? Could they create an even harsher dearth during times of the year where forage is already limited? Finally, is there something we should actively be doing to combat this?
Remington Propps
Virginia, September
A
Admittedly, I do not know much about spotted lanternflies. However, I have heard about them and know that they even have an association with honey bees (more on that in a second). First, spotted lanternflies are not actually flies. They are plant hoppers that feed on various species of plants. Plant hoppers are members of an order of insects that entomologists refer to as true bugs. True bugs have piercing, sucking mouthparts, like those of a mosquito. They feed on plant fluids by sticking their syringe-like mouthparts into plant tissue and sucking out the fluids. Plant fluids are very dilute from a nutrient perspective. Thus, plant hoppers must pass a lot of it through their system to derive the nutrition they need. They do this by regularly excreting liquid waste that is sugary in nature. We refer to this substance as honeydew. Ants, bees, wasps, and other insects collect and consume honeydew.
Spotted lanternflies are not native to the U.S. and have been marching south and west since their discovery in the northeastern U.S. Their feeding habits damage trees, agricultural crops, and any plant they use as a host. I just do not know much more about this pest, other than what is available on the internet. Consequently, I cannot estimate what level of damage it will cause as its spread continues. I read about projected impacts online, but without being an expert on this topic, I hesitate to speculate how much they will impact the forage available to honey bees.
There is, however, an interesting twist to this story. Honey bees collect honeydew from spotted lanternflies, and they can use it to make honeydew honey. I have covered the topic of honeydew recently in this column, and I even have a question related to it again further into this installment. Honeydew is a sugary liquid secreted by some insects that feed on plant liquids. There are places in the world where the dominant source of honey produced in an area is derived from honeydew. I certainly do not want to paint spotted lanternflies in any sort of positive light. It appears from my reading that they are expected to cause significant ecological damage. I am just noting that their relationship to honey bees will be complicated because they may kill some honey bee forage sources but then provide a forage source (honeydew) directly to the bees.
I think what beekeepers would do about the spotted lanternfly mirrors that recommended to the general citizenry. From what I found online, you would kill any adults and crush any eggs that you see. Also, you need to report on their presence if you live in an area where they have not been documented. I found several chemical and cultural control strategies mentioned for them online. I also found multiple university websites that include a lot of good information about this pest. I list a few of those here as additional resources.
Penn State University – https://extension.psu.edu/spotted-lanternfly
Virginia Tech University – https://ext.vt.edu/agriculture/commercial-horticulture/spotted-lanternfly.html
NC State University – https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/spotted-lanternfly
Q: Queen excluder to stop swarming
Can I stop a swarming queen from leaving the hive by placing a queen excluder between the brood chamber and bottom board of a hive?
Anonymous
August
A
Our team hosts the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Resources Bee College in August of every year. We call this our Summer Bee College. We held the last one about a month before I wrote this column. In that Bee College, one of our attendees asked the above question about using queen excluders to stop swarming. I answered that question on our laboratory’s podcast: Two Bees in a Podcast (https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/honey-bee/podcast/). I thought you might like to read my answer to this question as well.
The question is based on one aspect of swarm biology, the aspect where the colony’s queen leaves the hive with the workers during a swarm. In most cases the first swarm to leave the hive includes the old queen, the mother of all the bees in the nest. You also can get afterswarms, with the first afterswarm (often called the secondary swarm, since it is the second swarm to leave the nest) accompanied by the first virgin queen to emerge, the second afterward (a tertiary swarm) accompanied by the second virgin queen to emerge, and so on.
Since the queen leaves the hive with a swarm, it makes sense that doing something that limits the queen’s ability to leave the hive would make it possible to keep the colony from swarming. Queen excluders seem to be the answer. After all, they exclude the queen from whatever location you do not want her to be. The catch is that queen excluders work well on queens that are actively laying. These queens have large, swollen abdomens because their ovaries are producing eggs.
However, worker bees begin to limit the amount of food they give to the queen in the lead-up to swarming. Furthermore, they will get on the back of the queen, vibrate her, and cause her to run around the nest. Here, we have an example of diet and exercise leading to weight loss in the queen. Virgin queens and queens that lose a lot of weight in preparation for swarming often can fit through queen excluders. Thus, queen excluders would stop some queens from leaving the nest with a swarm, but other, smaller queens would be able to pass right through the excluder.
Beyond that, at best a queen excluder would be swarm insurance rather than swarm control. This is because colonies will continue to try to swarm for a few days, even if their queen remains trapped in the hive. Sure, they will return to the nest each time, once they realize that the queen is not with them. However, they will try again the next day, thinking that they will be successful next time. A repeated lack of success swarming with a queen will lead that colony to replace the queen with the next one in line. You get to keep your bees, but you may lose your queen if she remains trapped in the nest. I think doing something like this will help in some cases but hurt in others. There are better ways to attempt to control swarms.
Q: Similar colonies performing slightly differently
In an apiary with a dozen hives, I find that some will be highly productive, and some will produce essentially nothing. [The] queens are all fairly similar. Does science have anything to say about such variance in honey production, or should one assume some set of different, but unobserved, conditions that bear causally on production? Put differently, do we know a likelihood for such variability? Or does it all come down to the queen (implying the variance can be stabilized by breeding)?
Dan Geer
September
A
There are multiple reasons colonies that are otherwise of similar strength have distinct levels of productivity. A lot of it has to do with genetics. Some colonies are better honey producers than others simply because of their genes. This does imply that you can select colonies that are uniform in strength and productivity through regimented breeding programs.
However, we cannot lay all the credit at the feet of good genes. Some colonies, though equally strong, may have underlying health issues. For example, maybe their Varroa loads are higher than those of other colonies in the apiary. Perhaps they have more Nosema, viruses, or small hive beetles than the better performing colonies. It could also be related to the presence of a queen and how new the queen is. It could even be related to nutrition, for example, how much stored pollen they have in the nest.
If all else (nutrition, pests, and disease) is equal, then some colonies may simply be better stock than others …
