CATCH THE BUZZ SAVE THE HIVES

CATCH THE BUZZ

Headline Error In October Issue

In the October issue of Bee Culture Magazine, we printed an article about www.savethehives.com, a web site aimed at locating feral hives for all manner of purposes. Unfortunately, we put in a headline that said savethebees, not savethehives. Saving the bees is a legitimate website, selling products made from the beehive. Though they are attached to our industry, they in no way have anything to do with the hives page. If you went there and concluded that the article was misleading, only the headline was. You'll note that the correct web page address is used throughout the rest of the article. Please check out www.savethehives.com and see what you can do to help.

As beekeepers, we have ample opportunity to go out and play with bees. Public citizens, however, have lately wanted to help honey bees but don’t quite know how. Here is a way to encourage non-beekeepers to help honey bees, as well as beekeepers to help the public…

The standard line about feral or “wild” honey bee colonies is that there are 90-95% fewer of them now than there were before the Varroa mite was introduced in the mid-1980s. As a result, if you see a honey bee in your backyard garden, thank a neighboring beekeeper since it unlikely came from a feral hive living in a tree somewhere. Most of us, however, have heard reports of bees living in an old barn or oak tree, and – following the conventional wisdom above – have often chalked up these reports as isolated incidents: “Even though you’ve seen them there for at least 10 years, they couldn’t have been the same bees but rather have died out and reoccupied by a new swarm every year.

But how many of these anecdotal reports do you have to hear before you start to doubt the conventional wisdom? How many times do you have to refer someone to a willing beekeeper to help remove a bee colony from their house? How many “bee trees” need to be found in the forest? The answers to these questions start with consolidating these anecdotal reports into one place so that we can get a better perspective of the feral honey bee population in the first place.

Ronnie Bouchon, a beekeeper in North Carolina and participant in the 2005 Cost-sharing program (see Bee Culture, 134 (9): 45-47), has developed a new website to help us do just that. Using Google Maps technology, he has established an online system for anyone to plot the location of a non-managed honey bee colony (of course, any and all personal information is kept strictly confidential and is not shared with anyone without consent). Aptly named www.SaveTheHives.com, the general purpose of the site is to simply collect all of the reports of wild honey bee nests and display them on a map. The display even plots a three-mile radius around each location so you can see the approximate foraging area covered by the feral population.

But the site offers much more than that. It provides useful information about the history of the feral honey bee population in the U.S., links to other efforts to help protect bee populations, and impressive instructions on how to find feral bee nests using the ancient art of “beelining” (in short, following foragers making a bee line back to their nest). The hope is for nature enthusiasts, beekeepers and non-beekeepers alike, to take on the challenge of “hunting for bee trees.”

What’s more, mapping the feral bee population may have some important long-term benefits for honey bees in general. If the bees are living (and perhaps thriving) without the assistance of beekeepers, then how are they doing it?! Is it possibly because they have developed a tolerance to Varroa mites, or because the mites they’re living with are not as harmful? Recent research has suggested both may be the case, but more research is needed. For example, NC State Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Deborah Delaney has recently secured a two-year USDA grant to compare the genetics of these putative feral bees to managed bees. If they are genetically similar, then it would suggest that these colonies are recent “escaped swarms”; but if they are genetically distinct, then it might suggest that these bees are “survivor stock”. If the latter, they may offer some important insights into how we as beekeepers may cope with Varroa mites and other bee problems.

So what is AAn information resource about feral honey bees (those not living in our beehives)An easy-to-remember web address to refer concerned citizens about honey bees?www.SaveTheHives.com one-stop-shop for physically mapping the location of non-managed honey bee nests

So what will www.SaveTheHives.com be used for?To track individual nests over time to determine if they survive or die off every yearFor georeferencing bee trees so that others may go out and verify their locationsTo possibly sample and analyze to determine what bees occupy the feral population and how they may be coping with Varroa and other pests

So please, encourage anyone who might know the whereabouts of a feral bee nest to visit www.SaveTheHives.com and plot the location of the colony. Together, we can see where these hidden bees are living, and we may even discover some important secrets that they may be hiding.

This message brought to you by Bee Culture, The Magazine Of American Beekeeping