My hive died within the past week

[Ted Kretschmann]

Unrefined sugars, such as organic and non organic brown sugars contain high ratios of molasses. Which is rather non digestable by the bees. Which can cause dysentery in the bees and KILL them. Also one should NEVER, ever feed honey from an unknown source. If it did not come off your bees-do not feed it ever!! This is the quickest way to come down with some exotic form of AFB or EFB is through the feeding of honey. One of the worst outbreaks of AFB ever experienced fifteen years ago by the beekeeping industry in the southeast was caused by unclean, leakey empty honey drums sent to producers by Ernie Greob/packer of foriegn honey for refill in their operations. The honey drums lids were not tight and the bees did what bees do-rob exposed honey...So connect the dots. Commercial packers pack honey from exotic places in small packs and you then augment your feed with possible that honey. Commercial cane sugar is best, does not give bees dysentery or transmitt AFB. Fed in the right ratio, it will put weight on a needy colony. TED

[weathershaman]

Thank you for the explanation. The local honey I would purchase is from a trusted source. Where do you suggest I find pure organic cane sugar? I can't seem to locate it anywhere other than from the Coop. Jules

[Ted Kretschmann]

Jules, if you feed regular commercial cane or beet sugar for late winter or early spring feed, it will not show up in your honey. The bees will consume it rearing brood or feeding themselves. Just do not feed before the honey flow if you are trying to stay all natural. It is more important to keep your bee alive through the winter. If you must feed organic then the source you have found will have to do. Good Luck TED

[xcugat]

If you have one hive, organic sugar is ok but if you ever get more it gets very pricy. As I understand it, the organic label is not as important on something like sugar which is by definition a processed product and a simple organic compound sucrose. I had 6 hives (of which 5 perished due to mite attack) and I had to Feed 250 lbs of sugar syrup to get their stores up. 15 dollars for a 25 lb bag at BJs I can deal with, but I can only imagine the cost of organic...

[weathershaman]

Thank you Ted. I've been feeding the same sugar all year, I will follow your suggestions. I do not feed commercial beet or other sugar. This winter we also have patties in the hive for them. I would like to make the fondant but need a simple recipe. Right now its too cold to do anything. Also, when we have a warm day, I need to remove the queen excluder which we didn't realize was not good to have. As you can see, we are complete newbies. I can only hope our bees survive the winter.

[Michael Palmer]

This winter we also have patties in the hive for them.

Patties? For??

[weathershaman]

Grease patties. For varroa mites and also nutrition. I made them. We are newbies

[FlowerPlanter]

Grease patties. For varroa mites and also nutrition. I made them. We are newbies

What is in your grease patties? any essential oils?

[Michael Palmer]

Aren't grease patties used for Tracheal mite control, not Varroa mite control?

[weathershaman]

Yes, that's what I meant to say. I am a newbie!!!

Here's an article I wrote for our local food Co-op.

Winter Bees, Grease Patties, and Crisco

Who uses Crisco, raise your hand! You know what kind, the hydrogenated solid stuff that you can buy at Wally’s for a mere few dollars. I have discovered, in the past month, multiple uses for this vile substance, and most notably, my bees love it! According to our wonderful go-to resource, Vilness Mattison, an elderly, bee-loving, honey producing, Latvian gentleman who lives in Averill Park, grease patties are needed in the winter to feed the bees. Bee Journal agrees with him, as do many online resources and forums. We have been buying many pounds of organic sugar from the Coop all summer, feeding syrup (sugar mixed with water) in a top feeder to keep our hungry bees content. Some folks say, ah just leave the bees, they’ll fend for themselves. Here at Cherry Plain Sanctuary Farm, which is beginning to feel more like Noah’s Ark, we feed our bees as long as they are willing to eat. They have fended too much for themselves already and our goal is to bring them back to health.

Vilness says his 20 or so hives also needed to eat all summer, due to the fact that the rainy season (just like in the tropics) caused the pollen to be less accessible to the bees. So, he says, feed them if they are hungry. I would have done it anyway. Back to the Crisco. You can buy bee patties or you can make them yourself, and being an ingredient-minded Coop devotee (I have transcended ‘shopper’), I made them myself, thus ensuring organic sugar for my patties. The bees deserve organic, after all, for without the bees we would have no more sugar cane, sugar beets, or food on the planet. Crisco is recommended because evidently, the vile tracheal mite attaches to the grease which leads to their demise. You know how I feel about pesky parasites if you’ve read the November Coop Scoop.

Here’s my grease patty recipe for those of you who are interested:
• One gallon container filled with organic sugar from the Coop’s bulk department
• One can of Crisco, heated in a pan of hot water so that it will loosen into a big blob
• Four ounces of Honey Bee Healthy, made of essential oils
• One quart of local honey
• Two ounces pink Himalayan salt

Slightly warm the Crisco in a big pot on the stove, add sugar and salt, mix till all is one syrupy glob, remove from stove, add Honey Bee Healthy and last, add honey. Mix well, then scoop big fat patties onto wax paper, and head out to the beehives. Which brings me to the next part of my story, my first time handling the bees. Vilness insisted that I change from a top feeder, which doesn’t work for grease patties anyway, to smaller feeders that take mason jars with syrup. These sit on wooden dividers with a hole. What this entailed was taking apart the beehive feeder, which sits directly above the combs (filled with buzzing bees), replacing it with a wooden ‘feeder top’ with a hole in the middle for the bee tunnel, and placing patties on this wooden top. Then I was to add a large ‘super’ which is basically a rectangle without top or bottom, then finally the top cap, which seals everything. Vilness also told me to place crumbled up newspapers within the super to collect moisture, which is not good for bees.

We had one good warm day in the 50s before it turned cold with rain and then a big snowstorm. On that one warm day, the bees could be disturbed. Yes, they were truly disturbed all right. Always in the past, my husband has handled the bees as I have reactions to stings, thus keep an Eppie pen handy and loving them from a distance. We had one bee outfit with a mesh face mask, hat and gloves which fit only him, so I had never actually done more than add syrup to the top feeder while the bees were napping. Due to my desire to become more involved in their care, I purchased my own smaller outfit, and prepared to venture out to completely switch their feeding system. The bees were not happy to see me.

I was like a thief in the night. First, I prepared for my assault on their home by setting up my equipment in the tipi, getting the patties together, putting on my new size small hat-shirt-face netting combo, then the gloves. I slowly came out behind their hives, (you do not want to get in the way of active bee flight patterns) having turned off the electric fence beforehand. Once I began to get close enough to remove one of two top feeders, I heard a loud buzzing. Having watched too much Alfred Hitchcock in my childhood, I dropped everything, and ran to the house. Bees had attached to my green sweat pants, and one stung me on the rear end. I breathlessly called my husband “JEROME! You have to talk me through this!” Which he did. After removing about ten bees from my green sweat pants, I realized they had to come off, and I put on the recommended jeans. Multiple forays into the swarming angry hive nest later, each time freaking out, running back to the house and calling Jerome, the bees were happily munching on grease patties. And the next day it snowed, thus closing the window of opportunity to feed our babies their winter rations.

Now that I’m officially stung, and a proud keeper of bees, I can watch my flock closely through the hole in the wooden feeder to see how they fare. So far, ours are fast-multiplying, happy, feeding bees. Crisco and organic sugar, who’d have thought we would come to this? We have two more ‘nukes’ coming this spring from a local beekeeper if his bees survive the winter, and will add these new families to our bee village. Vilness says his bees are creating more propolis than he’s ever seen before. Knowing that propolis is used in herbal medicine as an antibiotic, I believe this means the bee’s immune systems are finally fighting back. With the help of our Divine Creator, each of us with a single organic, heirloom flower in our backyard will bring back the bees.

As Junesan tells us to pray,

Namu-myoho-renge-kyo

[weathershaman]

Keep in mind, I try things, I write about it, and I make mistakes. I write about them. My next article is about my dead bees...I write a monthly article about organic permaculture microfarming, by the way. You will find errors, in everything I do, so please don't be harsh on me when you do. Instead, I appreciate learning and growing by listening to what others who have more experience say...thank you.

[Ted Kretschmann]

Why pink himalyian salt??? What is wrong with our good old fashion rock salt that is mined along the great lakes and then ground up into the Morton variety?

[cg3]

Ted- good marketing will even convince people that Bud Lite is good beer.

[Gypsi]

I got sold a bag of that himalayan salt by my former massage therapist. Emphasis on former, the shop was doing poorly and she started piling stuff on the counter and I finally gave up, paid for it, and hired a new massage therapist after my wreck. (I do not pay $10 for a cup of bath salts ordinarily.)


CG3 - that works on everyone but a certain rock band that are friends of my daughters'. Only budweiser works for them..... My garden finished a keg of the lite.

Gypsi

[weathershaman]

You guys are funny! I only had regular sea salt, but I also had a lot of pink himalayan salt (from a trusted source) and the recipe called for that specific color, i.e., pink. So I assumed it would work.

Out of that whole story all you can find to pick on is the color of the salt? C'mon, you guys are a tough crowd, you can do better than that! What you may not realize is that I worked as a bicycle mechanic with only guys for years on the west coast, and I'm now on a ski patrol shift that is only guys...hahaha I take a LOT of ribbing! I can give it back too

[Gypsi]

I'm not a guy. And ordinarily I avoid GMO's like the plague, but when it comes to partially processed sugar the research is out there that this is not good for bees. Despite all misgivings, my bees thrived and multiplied on plain old Imperial Pure Cane Sugar by the 50 lb bag. I don't want to be mean... I KNOW what it is like to lose a hive, and don't want to see you lose the other one.

(and the massage therapist story is true - I did pay $10 for a cup of pink salt. And a lot more junk was on that counter, I've since given most of it away - it's good to have daughters.)

Gypsi

[cg3]

Out of that whole story all you can find to pick on is the color of the salt?

OK. Given the quantity and quality of advice available on the internet, etc. I prefer to take it from people with proven success.

[weathershaman]

Thank you for the non-guy comment...After all this discussion, I have a feeling you would approve of the organic sugar I am using, as it is partially refined, it just doesn't go through the chemical process. Is all organic sugar bad? Probably not. This is not beet sugar, nor is it dark.

I also appreciate daughters!

Some people charge outrageous amounts of money for boutique salt. I worked at WiseWays Herbals at the time I purchased mine, bringing them into FDA compliance. The owner is a friend of mine, so the price I paid for Himalayan salt was considerably less

[weathershaman]

I agree, with taking advice from people who know what they are doing. That's why I'm here. I know you folks are experienced. We joined SABA, and we defer to our local beekeeping "godfather" Vilness Mattison who advises us.

I am going to search for the right sugar until I find it. I do not believe that the plain white sugar that is being produced today and sold in every grocery store could possibly be good for bees, but finding the right sugar is obviously going to be a search.

Again, we are beginners, and we value your opinions. I am glad for each and every one of you who has spoken up and provided input into everything that we are doing right or wrong. I plan to switch out my plastic bee boxes that I was told to buy by what I considered a reliable source, Better Bee. Sadly, all reliable sources don't give reliable advice. I have already found a local bee box builder who is a member of SABA, and will purchase boxes from him this spring.

I spent a lot of money buying products that were not recommended, not knowing that my first source, Better Bee, would not be a good source. The top feeders we replaced with the lid feeders, we are not giving any drugs at present to the bees even though them were recommended by Better Bee. It's hard to sift through all the information to figure out which is reliable.

I am glad I found this site, with real people who are not in the business of selling the latest greatest, but instead are old hands at bee keeping and have advice for me. I hope you'll bear with us while we try to get up to speed, ask dumb questions, and make mistakes. I feel like we are all bee keeping for the same reason, and that is to bring back the bees to our world.

Together, by sharing our good and bad news, maybe we can make a difference.

Jules

[cg3]

finding the right sugar is obviously going to be a search.

Again, you are choosing the wrong thing to stress out about. Refined white sugar may not be the best thing for people, but bees, at best, have a lifespan of a few months. They are never going to develop obesity, get diabetes, become hyperactive. When taking advice from your health food store you run into the same problems that you do taking advice from Betterbee- they are taking advantage of your innocence to sell what they offer. I'm not saying they are doing it maliciously, they may even sincerely believe it, but these are not new issues, at least to beeks.