The Classroom
The Classroom – December 2024
Q: How to store uncapped honey?
I have a super that is full, but it is not capped. I have been told you can freeze it for 48 hours, remove it from the freezer, place in a black plastic bag, and then store it away for spring. Your thoughts?
Fred Giardinelli
Schenectady, New York
September
A
I would not store the super of unripe honey this way. The unripe honey could ferment while the super is in the bag. The combs could sweat and mold. These issues would make the unripe honey unusable to the bees and not worth consuming for the beekeeper. Of course, the unripe honey could be perfectly fine in spring, but, to me, the risk is not worth the reward.
Are you able to leave the super in the freezer until spring? This is a better option. Maybe you have limited freezer space, making it where this is not an option for you. If that is the case, you could choose option number three:
Leave the super on a strong hive of bees. This option works well if (1) you intend to store the unripe honey for the purpose of feeding it back to bees anyway (in other words, why not just feed it to them now), or (2) if any of your colonies need this resource to survive winter. Regarding the latter: Do you have a colony that needs resources? If so, you could give it the entire super, or you could disperse frames from this super across multiple hives to boost the resources of the colonies they house.
Personally, I would leave this super on a hive housing a colony that is strong enough to use it or at least keep it small hive beetle/wax moth free. If you do not intend to harvest it for human consumption, I would think you can just disperse it among needy colonies.
Incidentally, I do appreciate the freezing part. You will need to freeze it first if you elect to store it in a
plastic bag. That way, you kill any beetles/moths, and their various life stages, that the combs harbor. I would prefer you freeze the combs a week or longer. You want to ensure that everything is dead. In summary, the best option is to leave it in the freezer until you need it. The second best option is to store it on a strong hive. The third option is to distribute the resources to needy colonies.
Q: How to influence feral populations?
What is the best way I can influence the other colonies in my area? I hear a lot about preventing Africanization. We do not necessarily have a heavy presence of that here in [***], but I do know of at least one individual who is close enough to potentially interact with my open mating. His bees are hot, at least exponentially hotter than I want in my apiary. I would love a solid strategy to start diluting the “bad” genetics in my area. I am assuming the answer is drones, but I am not sure to what level I should try to increase the drone population in my colonies.
Anonymous
October
A
I hope you do not mind. I took the liberty to anonymize your question and location given you mention a neighboring beekeeper.
You are correct. The answer is drones! There are two groups of bees that could influence what happens in your apiary. The first group would be the one managed by neighboring beekeepers. The second group would be composed of colonies living unmanaged in the local environment (i.e., the feral colonies).
How to deal with the colonies managed by beekeepers: There is no easy answer here. You could always talk to the beekeeper and see if he would be willing to requeen his colonies. Maybe you could even offer to purchase the queens. Of course, you could influence the genetics in his apiary, or at least lessen the impact of his bees on yours, by flooding the area with drones. I will discuss this more shortly.
How to deal with feral colonies: You have a few options here as well. First, you can assume that the feral colonies are coming from your hives, his hives, another beekeeper’s hives, other feral hives, or some combination of these options. Thus, one way to deal with feral colonies is to control swarming so that you are not putting more feral colonies into the environment. Swarm control is a common recommendation for beekeepers managing colonies where African-derived honey bees are present. You, of course, only have control over the hives you manage, meaning there is not much you can do about swarm control in colonies managed by nearby beekeepers. Your second option, then, defaults back to drones.
Why are drones the answer? Drones help in two ways. First, saturating the area with drones means that your virgin queens are more likely to mate with the drones with which you want them to mate, than with drones with which you do not want them to mate. Second, by extension, saturating the area with drones increases the chances that virgin queens produced by the feral colonies will be more likely to mate with your drones than with drones from related feral colonies. All this tilts the scales in your favor, both in your managed apiary and in the feral population. I am not suggesting a game of one-upmanship with your beekeeper neighbor, but his virgin queens would also have a high likelihood of mating with your drones.
How many drones are enough to accomplish this goal? This is a much harder question to answer. I do not know how many colonies you have, neither do I know how many colonies are in the mating range of your colonies. However, I will work off an example assuming you have 10 colonies to make this easier to discuss. You could consider putting one drone comb in each of your three best colonies. That way, you are producing an abundance of drones in your colonies, hopefully flooding the local population with a more desirable stock. It is difficult to estimate what level of impact this will have, but doing this will certainly help.
You can fight this in another way. You could just practice yearly requeening of all colonies in your apiary. That way, you replace any queens that result from supersedure. Doing this, you inherit the burden of ensuring that your colonies are not acquiring traits from drones originating from feral colonies or your neighbor’s bees.
Q: Pollinators and Food Security
How strong is the link between pollinators and food security?
A
I do not think I have ever been asked this question. I often get asked about the link between honey bees and food production. That link is strong, and I can rattle off paper after paper that shows how good honey bees are for watermelons, blueberries, almonds, and other crops. The question, though, was about food security, not food production. I looked up the definition of food security, given that it is a highly discussed topic in my world. There was a World Food Summit in 1996. At the summit, attendees defined food security as: “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
There are multiple parts of this definition that we need to consider in context with pollinators. Here are the definition’s key phrases: all people, all times, physical access to food, economic access to food, safe food, nutritious food, food that meets dietary needs, food that meets preferences, food for active life, food for healthy life. There is a lot packed into that definition and I am not sure it is possible to ask pollinators to carry the burden of satisfying all these criteria. Nevertheless, I feel honey bees and other pollinators do directly address these topics.
- All people: Pollinators are nearly everywhere people are. I say “nearly” given that people have found a way to live in Antarctica where there are no pollinators. Pollinators certainly make it possible for all people to have food. I doubt there is a single people group in the world that does not benefit dietarily from pollinators. Admittedly, some people groups derive many of their calories from grain-pollinated plants (rice in Asia, corn in South America), but their diet still includes food derived from insect pollinator plants.
- All times: I admit, I am not sure about the nuance associated with this. However, I assume it means that people can get food any time they want the food. I know this is not true for everyone, everywhere. Even still, pollinators play a significant role in producing food that is readily available throughout the year.
- Physical access to food: This simply means that food is available everywhere people are. Yes, pollinators make this possible.
- Economic access to food: To me, it is sad that “economic access” is part of the definition. Yet, it is a necessary part given that people can have physical access to food but be unable to afford it. We must ask, then, what role pollinators play in making food affordable. I would offer that pollinators play a huge role in food affordability. Now, people might counter that growers have to pay for honey bees to pollinate a crop (using honey bees as an example) and that this cost to growers is baked into the cost of the fruit/vegetable/nut/berry for sale in the grocery store. However, failure to have honey bees would make these crops scarcer, driving up their price significantly. So yes, honey bees and other pollinators play a role in making food more economically accessible.
- Safe food/nutritious food/food that meets dietary needs/food for active life/food for healthy life: Perhaps it is naïve of me, but I feel these parts of the definition of “food security” are intimately related. It seems to me that the point being made is that the food is good for you, with “good” defined as safe, nutritious, and beneficial for active/healthy lifestyles. Yes, yes, yes! The work of pollinators helps ensure these qualities in food. Many pollinator-dependent crops yield some of the healthiest and most nutritious foods known to humankind.
- Food that meets preferences: I travel all around the world and get to see, first hand, how diet preferences differ globally and culturally. Every time I go somewhere, I look at the food put before me and consider all the ingredients on the plates, ingredients which pollinators are responsible for making possible. Pollinators help us meet our food preferences. They make our regionally nuanced diet preferences possible.
As it turns out, it does seem that pollinators are important for food security …
