Guilfordbeekeepers.org

2009 NCSBA Summer meeting
Wilkes Community College

If you didn’t attend the meeting July 9, 10 and 11 you missed another great meeting there were interesting speakers and great work shops. There were more workshops then you could attend because of the number of times a workshop was repeated and what other work shops you wanted to attend and picking was tough. Wish I could have attended a few more.
Here are a few notes I jotted down from the main speakers.
Some of these guys are true lab geeks.
David Tarpy – NCSU - NC update.
They have found pollen in hives that has been capped over and they are calling it entombed pollen because the bees no longer have ready access to it. It seems that it is only found in weak hives. The entombed pollen was fed to healthy bees and they are still alive. However when the pollen was tested it was found to have a high level of a fungicide used in aerial applications that was not found in other pollen in that hive that was not entombed. The tested pollen open and entombed also showed signs of coumaphos and fluvalinate. David Tarpy also asked for comments and if anyone had found entombed pollen to give him a call.
There was a study being done on why naturally mated queens are superceded or not good layers. They got queens from 8 breeders in California and did sperm counts from the mated queens. An average should be 5-7 million. These queens averaged 4.2 million 13% had less then 3 million and 65% had less then 5 million. He seemed to think this was acceptable. They tested viability and found only 83% of the sperm was still alive so maybe there is something wrong with the drones and not the queens. They found someone who was good at finding the Drone Congregation Areas (DCA’s) and they flew kites with queen pheromone in capture cages of some type to capture the drones. The drone testing is going on. It was noted that a queen with a wide (with) thorax was most likely a better mated queen then one with a narrow thorax.


Roger Simonds Gastonia testing lab
The Gastonia lab was / is a lab that tests fruits and vegetables and has started doing testing on everything from the bee world. They are government run and therefore the rates are lower then a private lab and anyone can send samples in to be tested. It was still over a $100 for one sample to be tested, but one test covered over 100 pesticides. This lab has been doing a lot of testing for the studies being done by the universities and he received permission to release data on a summarized basis. One note he mentioned twice is that if you are taking pollen as a dietary supplement you may want to have your source tested as that was the most contaminated product he had ever seen.
There is a web site for pesticides in fruits and vegetables the site can be found by googling “PESTICIDE DATA PROGRAM (PDP) “.

Mark Carroll - Attraction of the Varroa Mite to host odors.
This guy is a true lab geek.
They captured odors from different stages of larvae and put these in comb cells and released varroa on the comb to see if they were attracted to the cells, turns out they were attracted to certain larvae stage odors.
Apparently mites have odor sensors on their forelegs and will lift the legs as they run around looking for a cell that has the right smell. So they cut the forelegs off the mite and mounted them on a sensor that would record an electrical impulse when the right odor was sensed.
Another test was to put the mite on a screen with divisions that had different compounds or products below the screen to see what the mite was attracted to. They had recorded mite trails or paths as they wandered around this screen and settled on a certain compound. The mite would find the compound and stop, stop for days. The mite would also roll over on its back like it would if there was a larva there for it to feed on. SO it seems they have a compound that attracts the mites. Now what. They tried flooding the hive with the compound to confuse the mite this seemed to work but the goal would be to kill the mite. So maybe a gel to capture the mite….work continues.
It was noted he could not revel what the compound was due to patents, but he did say that it was cheap.

Unknown speaker
It was announced that Florida has a standard for honey and it will take affect next week.

More notes later

Steve Pernal PhD Candian APA Beaverlodge Farm Officer –in–charge, Alberta
American Foul Brood
AFB is a spore forming bacteria and the spores can be anywhere, in the bee, honey wax, in the cell. There is a 48 hour window that larvae is susceptible to AFB. Indications of AFB can be: Bees don’t take syrup in the fall, odor, dead hive, the bees die in the pre-pupa stage, holes in cells capping, ropy test, scale and pupa tongue left in cell- although 1 in 100 cells may have a tongue. Most infected larvae never show symptoms because antibiotics hide them. Suggestion was to feed the bees when there was no flow to keep them from robbing an infected hive.
Disinfection – Use scouring pads with soapy water, steam and lye virkon, cold water flush, soak in bleach for 30 minutes 1 part bleach 9 parts water, hot paraffin sterilization 6 min at 150 –160 degrees, shaking workers on to clean comb or foundation or half and half

Roger Simonds Gastonia testing lab – it was also noted that the FDA requested honey to be tested both from the USA and imported – ALL tested to be safe. Imported honey also tested safe but he had no numbers broken out for comparison.

Steve Pernal
Nosema Ceranae
Nosema ceranae does not have the dysentery like Nosema apis. Leaning toward treating with Fumagillin each spring. There is no substitute for Fumagillin but using recommend dose for Nosema ceranae is effective.

Buddy Marterre
working on a “Certified Naturally Grown Queen, Bees, Honey, and Wax” program documentation is well underway and will be posted on a web site when completed. Expecting the program to be underway within a year.
http://www.naturallygrown.org/standards.html