Latest / Honey Bee Obscura Podcast / Plain Talk: Hot Bees, Ants and Weeds (291)
Transcript
- 0:02Hey listeners, you know the drill.
- 0:05I don't wear my windscreen anymore because the bees keep attacking it.
- 0:10I'm walking back to the bee yard.
- 0:13Listeners, it has been insufferably hot.
- 0:16I'll go ahead and tell you exactly where I am, even though when you listen to this, you won't be there
- 0:22It's July the 4th, and we've been under that heat dome.
- 0:28And everything has just been unreasonably hot.
- 0:32I felt like I was
- 0:34in my hometown in South Alabama again.
- 0:37I mean to see 87 at 9 o'clock at night is just unheard of in Ohio
- 0:47So I'm walking back and I want to talk about heat a little bit, but I want to come back with a more vibrant beekeeper to talk about how you can deal with heat if you're a bee guy working my way through the bar.
- 1:03So this will be kind of a two-part segment, I suspect.
- 1:08Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here about once a week where I try to talk
- 1:16about something to do with just plain talk beekeeping.
- 1:21Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
- 1:31Join Jew Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees.
- 1:40Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
- 1:47Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
- 1:55You know, I know I'm wearing you out.
- 1:57I am so sorry for that.
- 2:00But I know I'm wearing you out with this.
- 2:06I can't do it.
- 2:07I can't manage it.
- 2:08I'm old.
- 2:08I'm sick.
- 2:09I'm sad.
- 2:10I'm whatever
- 2:12I'm just a chronic excuse manufacturing system.
- 2:19But honestly, in this heat
- 2:21At my age, I cannot be out here alone running some kind of weed tremor to keep the grass down.
- 2:33I grew up in Alabama, and not just Alabama, I grew up in South Alabama.
- 2:40It uh not uncommonly snows in North Alabama, but it's rare.
- 2:46In my hometown, Dothan, right on the Georgia, Florida line inside of Alabama
- 2:53And that's where I grew up keeping bees.
- 2:55And I I can't imagine.
- 2:57No offense to Alabama beekeepers or southeastern beekeepers who might be listening or southwest beekeepers who have heat all the time
- 3:07I know you learn to live with it.
- 3:09I understand that.
- 3:11But right now the last thing I would want to do
- 3:14is to open these hives.
- 3:16There are several hundred bees on the landing board all fanning frantically.
- 3:23It thunderstormed last night, so I hope there's pools of water around for them.
- 3:29I used to put water out, and then it just got soggy and ugly, and then when I put it out, the bees didn't come to it.
- 3:37They've already found their own water sources
- 3:40I stopped doing it, even though years ago I would have hundreds of bees at these birdbath water sources
- 3:49Taking on water.
- 3:51And I even had bees doing it when it was stunningly cold.
- 3:56And I talked about all that, and that's not where I want to go today.
- 3:59Where I want to go today is
- 4:02This just would not be a good time to open these hives.
- 4:07Number one, my my physiology is all keyed.
- 4:11I'm hot.
- 4:11I'm sweaty
- 4:13I would fill the stings a lot more.
- 4:16The bees are very active.
- 4:18It would destroy the cooling system they've got going inside the hive.
- 4:24So, why would I open that colony?
- 4:27I'm not.
- 4:27I'm not.
- 4:28If I were a young beekeeper and had exuberance, I'd probably rip right into it
- 4:35But I'm not doing that.
- 4:36So in my late life form of beekeeping, I have to assume
- 4:43that the bees can fly about a half mile away to where there's a stream and it's never gone dry since I've lived here in 50 years, the Apple Creek.
- 4:53And I hope they can find water there.
- 4:56I'm just not trying to provide it for them.
- 4:59I know, I know, you're supposed to let a water hose drip
- 5:02You're supposed to put out containers.
- 5:04I know I know all of that, but there's so much now that I just don't do.
- 5:10More and more and more I become a natural beekeeper
- 5:14So I'm back here today.
- 5:15The bees are all vibrant, strong, healthy.
- 5:22I want to walk over in this tall grass
- 5:26Probably going to pick up a tick and look at one of those little hives.
- 5:32You remember I talked about it
- 5:34Several weeks ago, by now several months ago, and their bees are still coming and going, so they have a queen in there, and they're surviving okay
- 5:46That looks good.
- 5:47I'm not going to open them either.
- 5:49I want to go back to where we had the dreaded swarm where we Jason and I pulled the
- 5:57The vacuum way back here, I put a little swarm over there out of the way so maybe it wouldn't get robbed out by being too close to the big colonies
- 6:07I'm walking back there now trying not to fall.
- 6:11If I do, somebody dial 911 for me.
- 6:15And they're still flying
- 6:19Not a lot, there's just two or three bees.
- 6:21There may be a problem in that one, but just directly under the tree where Jason got the swarm down
- 6:30Let me ramble off the subject for a while.
- 6:33Jason has been a good friend of mine.
- 6:35He's about half my age.
- 6:37I've known him since the day he was born.
- 6:40His wife is Mexican.
- 6:44And last night I told Jason Bai he's moving to Mexico.
- 6:48So that's gonna be a loss for me.
- 6:50I'll go ahead and tell you that.
- 6:51He's been here several times.
- 6:53He was always a good
- 6:55A good podcaster to be here.
- 6:57Plus, he's far more agile than I am.
- 7:02I don't know how it's going to work out if he finds bees down there
- 7:07Certainly I'll log out on our program and capture something, but that's a change.
- 7:12So what little help I did have, I'm losing that.
- 7:18When I lived in Alabama, I remember it distinctly.
- 7:22You would just sweat yourself wet.
- 7:26I got to move back to the shade.
- 7:27I can't sit in the sun
- 7:30So if you had on those old style bee suits that all they were was modified painter clothes.
- 7:37and an old A.I. Root screen veil and you'd sweat right through it and then immediately the veil would begin to rust from your sweat and then after you used it for hardly a year
- 7:52Then that rusted spot would break out and then you got a hole right in the middle of your veil.
- 7:56And you put duct tape over it.
- 7:58Then you got to look around the duct tape until you buy another veil.
- 8:02So at least now with these ventilated suits and galvanized wire, I'm not galvanized, vinyl wire, vinyl screening, and the hoods has been a major improvement.
- 8:16And I have no interest in going back to the old hot cotton clothes.
- 8:21You'd sweat them wet, and then once they sweat once you perspired so much that the suit stuck to you, then the bees could much more easily sting through it.
- 8:31Especially at night.
- 8:33So I I understand you people who have to to live in high heat.
- 8:37My grandparents, you know, lived in a
- 8:41An old dog trot type house with the hall down the middle to go to Venturi pulling the hot air through the house at least at night, sometimes during the day too.
- 8:51Sometimes they would sleep out there if the weather was particularly hot.
- 8:56They grew up at a time with no air conditioning and the way the way they dealt with it is they started very early, an hour before dawn.
- 9:05They fed animals while my grandmother cooked.
- 9:08Then they'd come back and eat, and then they'd go work in the field until around 10.
- 9:1445, maybe 11.
- 9:16And in the heat of the day, long before daylight savings time, they would come back and sleep, nap during the middle of the day
- 9:26and then would not go back out to work until much later.
- 9:30I bet you that that philosophy would still work for hot weather beekeeping.
- 9:36Get up as early as you can when it's cool.
- 9:39Go outside.
- 9:41Get your bee work done as quickly as possible.
- 9:46And then leave the bees alone during the heated part of the day.
- 9:51And under those conditions that warm, you could actually open the bees late in the afternoon.
- 9:55afternoon and they can still have time to recover.
- 9:57They're not clustering.
- 9:58They're going to mostly be outside by then to avoid the heat inside the colony.
- 10:03I think that it's proper to say that a lot of my grandmother's grandparents' grandfather's techniques for heat avoidance would work for beekeepers and avoiding the same thing.
- 10:15I guess a lot of you people in colder climates, Minnesota, Dakotas, are kind of rolling your eyes right now because this is not a topic really related to you, but it's related to me right now
- 10:26I don't know what all this heat means, but the bees seem to be tolerating it okay.
- 10:33It just really, really
- 10:36reduces my entrance into putting on a full bee suit, lighting a smoker, and tearing into these colonies just to look.
- 10:44So my just have a quick look days of beekeeping.
- 10:50are pretty much gone.
- 10:53If I now at my age and this heat, if I open a beehive, there needs to be a crystal clear reason for it
- 11:02Let's move on to some other updates.
- 11:05The animal was a raccoon.
- 11:08The bedding and the
- 11:11The wearing down part seems to have subsided because the grass is regrowing.
- 11:17There is one over here that may still be nope, there's there's grass growing there too
- 11:23One of the cues that an animal is bothering it is that the front edge of the landing board will be bright and polished, where the animal has laid up against the landing board while it was eating.
- 11:36Clearly not a skunk because there's not a bit of an odor out here at all.
- 11:40I'm gonna walk over again to a different shade.
- 11:43Being from Alabama, you don't stand in the sun, you stand in the shade
- 11:49This is a swarm that I picked up.
- 11:51I didn't pick it up.
- 11:52It moved in by itself.
- 11:54They're washboarding
- 11:57I never know what that is.
- 11:59We'll talk more about that probably next week.
- 12:02It's just a weedy, natural beehive.
- 12:07Bee yard.
- 12:08Everything looks okay.
- 12:12I don't know what else to say about that that would be relevant.
- 12:16I want to talk to you for a few minutes about ants.
- 12:21Because I have ants in most of my colonies.
- 12:24If I had a bee suit on I'd start popping tops just to have a look, but I know what I would find.
- 12:30On top of the inner covers, I frequently have functional ant nest.
- 12:35of different species of ants that I can't identify.
- 12:38There's so many of them.
- 12:40There's carpenter ants and there's medium-sized black ants.
- 12:44And then in one of them there was really small ants.
- 12:47And I've tried to figure out how to ants and bees, both Hymenopterous insects, closely related, similar respiratory systems
- 12:56different lifestyles, how do they coexist?
- 13:01And my impulse, as I always do in so many cases, is to dump the ant nest and try to dis disrupt it.
- 13:09and see if that helps the bees.
- 13:11Well when you go back the next day, either the nest has reconstituted itself
- 13:18Or it's a different nest.
- 13:20I don't know.
- 13:22But it looks like that ants and bees coexist in perpetuity
- 13:28It's been that way as long as I can remember.
- 13:30I've already mentioned my southeast Alabama roots over and over again.
- 13:36Well fire ants were just just unheavenly common.
- 13:41And I know I've talked about it with Kelm and others in the past, but it was a peculiar situation when I would read
- 13:49At the time, it was books and pamphlets.
- 13:52It was not on the web.
- 13:54There really was no web then.
- 13:56People in Texas said that they actually killed beehives.
- 14:00And that was reported
- 14:03I am not arguing, I'm just saying that was not my experience with fire ants.
- 14:11Anytime I had an incubation mound piled up against
- 14:17A beehive, I had to to watch that nest, that mound, that incubation mound.
- 14:26Because if you stood at it while you're working bees, all of a sudden your feet and legs would be on fire, hence the common name given to these ants
- 14:39I dare say that in most cases strong colonies in some way, some fashion dealt with those ants because they seemed to coexist.
- 14:52I never actually found them in the colony.
- 14:56They cleaned up the front of the nest so all the dead bee detritus was eaten and foraged on by ants and whatever else wanted to forage on that.
- 15:05But the thing that I really want to jump to is when a colony did die for whatever reasons, I don't know, possibly fire ants, the wax moths never had a chance.
- 15:17Because when the wax moths began to kind of take over as that colony declined, the ants were on top of it.
- 15:24The fire ants were on top of it.
- 15:26And seeing this happening and seeing that in Alabama where wax moths were actually available all the time, to see that in a n a nest that should have been completely consumed by wax moths
- 15:38was not consumed by wax moths, those ants were doing it.
- 15:43They were foraging on those wax moth larvae.
- 15:47They seem to be, oh, someone may really want to argue with me on this, and that would be okay, because I'm I'm only know what I'm talking about from my experience in Alabama.
- 15:58I can't discuss
- 15:59ant predation in any other state.
- 16:02But they seem to be beneficial.
- 16:04There's the word.
- 16:05They seem to be beneficial to the bee yard basic operation.
- 16:10They suppressed wax moths, they cleaned up yard litter.
- 16:13They were they never nested inside the colony.
- 16:17They always nested around the hive stands that were down on the ground.
- 16:21While I give you a chance to chew on that, let's take a break.
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- 17:26So the thing I wanted to come back to you with on this ant business.
- 17:30Was to tell you that I actually began to use them as a wax moth control technique
- 17:38So when I would find a hive that was dead, that was sitting high on a stand, and the ants had not mounded against the base of it, they couldn't get to it.
- 17:47and there were wax moths beginning to attack this dead and dying colony, specifically those that were dead already.
- 17:55I would just take those things, those colonies that that deep, that super
- 17:59and go to the nearest fire ant mound, which was usually very close by, and I would jam that equipment right into that incubation mound until the ants were just rolling out
- 18:13and they were upset.
- 18:16And then you leave it.
- 18:17I would leave it for about a day or maybe two.
- 18:20And then I would go back to it and move that ant-infested equipment
- 18:26about ten feet away and just set it up and then leave it for another day and then and then when I return to it
- 18:34The ants were gone, and they had spotlessly cleaned everything edible out of that colony.
- 18:43There were there were no
- 18:45No wax moth larvae of any kind.
- 18:48Am I recommending this as a type of control?
- 18:51Not really.
- 18:52I'm just saying that if you happen to have such a situation, you could kind of use it
- 18:59to your advantage, and the thing you get from it primarily is a sense of satisfaction that you're tormenting wax moths, which in many other cases could be considered a viable part
- 19:10of apiculture because they may be given credit for cleaning up old nests and uh preparing them for future bee nest or for squirrels or birds to move into that natural cavity.
- 19:22So it just depends, is it a weed or not?
- 19:25Well it depends on where it's growing and whether or not I want it.
- 19:28That was my situation.
- 19:29That was my understanding of ants.
- 19:31It seems like ants and bees are always coexisting in some form
- 19:37I did a chat GPT search and tried to find out, you know, how that bees deal with it.
- 19:42And it's very general that the bees fan, they carry the ants away.
- 19:46It was nothing miraculous.
- 19:49And the thing I didn't find anything out about was the ants opinion on this.
- 19:55What were they trying to accomplish?
- 19:57What was their mode of action?
- 19:58What were they trying to do?
- 20:00They
- 20:00Ants were so small and they have their own sting, so it'd be sting versus counter sting.
- 20:06But yet somehow, most of the time, they seem to coexist.
- 20:09Every time I've seen ants really be a problem in a colony
- 20:14It was a small, weak, defeated colony that was experiencing failure to thrive.
- 20:20Now on this hot day
- 20:22In this hot bee yard with the wind blowing kind of cooking me evenly, I need to say that here in Ohio I have an ant problem of a different scope.
- 20:32Even if the bees are up on a hive stand
- 20:36Black carpenter ants move up into them and I've had a problem with expanded polystyrene equipment just being eaten alive by both wax moths when they're available
- 20:49and by ants when the opportunity arises.
- 20:53So those black carpenter ants would just tunnel all through that thick expanded polystyrene hive body, bottom board, whatever.
- 21:03So anytime that there's been a s a possibility, some use of uh pliable plastic equipment, of course carpenter ants can readily eat wood too, and they will
- 21:16They were always up on the inner cover.
- 21:18All these ants that I see are up on the inner cover.
- 21:21And when I would see an occasional ant inside the colony, I had to wonder, well that did it drop off
- 21:27when I moved the intercoper, when I came out and disturbed things.
- 21:31The ants seemed to be co-living, coexisting.
- 21:35I've said before that the bees are basically beavers of the insect world because they colonize an area and then all these other critters move into it, raccoons.
- 21:47Uh beetles, scavengers, all kinds of insects come to live here.
- 21:52Birds, toads, ants just seem to fit right in with that.
- 21:56I would mention earwigs, but that's an interesting story for some other time.
- 22:01None of those animals were systematically centralized in one area until the bee yard made it opportunistic for them.
- 22:10The point I'm making is that I've not had the best luck
- 22:14with expanded polystyrene when carpenter ants were available to tunnel through it because the bees couldn't get to them tunneling inside those thick walled hives.
- 22:26I also have smaller ants that live on the inner covers, black ants, and they don't they're just laying, all their pupae and larvae are just laying there.
- 22:34They're not they're exposed up on the inner cover.
- 22:38Does that hurt anything?
- 22:40By disrupting that relationship, am I am I destroying some kind of ecological balance or are they possibly oh it would be heavenly if they were somehow eating mites
- 22:54I've seen on the screen bottom boards when they drop down to the aluminum plate that's down there that there would be scavengers down there and I assumed they would eat any Varroa mite that dropped down through
- 23:06But for right now, most beekeepers have historically said that ants are not good for anything and they have the ant traps that they put on the edge with oil.
- 23:16And then the ants would figure out how to stream across the oil.
- 23:20There were always these things to be done to try to keep mechanically keep ants out.
- 23:25You couldn't use pesticides because that was such an issue
- 23:29That's the ant thing.
- 23:31I routinely have ants in these beehives that I don't routinely manage.
- 23:35If if everything comes to an ecological balance.
- 23:39In Ohio, the ants seemed to live on the top box inner cover lid, and they seem to be happy there.
- 23:49I don't know why.
- 23:50Are they protected?
- 23:51Is it warmer?
- 23:52Is it just a possible nest cavity?
- 23:55Why do ants leave their natural ground nest and move to a beehive?
- 24:00And how are they getting up there?
- 24:02I don't I don't see trails of ants going up these beehives.
- 24:06I don't I don't know how they do it
- 24:08But I gotta tell you this, any any styrofoam equipment in Jim Tew's yard, I don't speak for anyone else.
- 24:16I can't put it on during the ant months.
- 24:19It can only go on during the cool months or the cold months.
- 24:23One last chapter.
- 24:24I don't know where I am on my time.
- 24:26I tried to set my phone and it's not working
- 24:29But I want to do one last thing.
- 24:31Yesterday I went over to Jason's Go On Away party.
- 24:33I told him bye, had my picture made with him
- 24:37And I left after a while, ate some barbecue.
- 24:40I had a nice time, saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time.
- 24:43And as I was leaving, I drove by
- 24:46a natural patch with an Ohio State sign professionally and boldly standing right before the patch that said Ohio Natural Grassland Tall Prairie
- 24:58Well hang on listeners because I'm basically sitting in that right now and I tried to describe it to you last year that when I couldn't take care of my bees.
- 25:08and for the previous years.
- 25:10This tall grass, weed, whatever thing would take over.
- 25:13It had a lot of flowering plants to it, and I really brought in a a diversity of butterflies and native bees and animals and deer nesting back here.
- 25:23There's still the deer press back here and my neighbors did see a fawn coming out one day, so I've got a really small unintentional ecosystem here
- 25:35And I've have labeled this my Ohio Tall Prairie Grass Beekeeping Yard, just as a defense measure against not being able to justify why the grass is so tall back here.
- 25:49I just can't I just can't cut it all down.
- 25:52I I can't do the work.
- 25:54I can't stand the heat.
- 25:55In fact, I was just having a few medical tests done this past two weeks or so, and I'm happy to tell you that I passed them all
- 26:03I'm I'm relieved to tell you that.
- 26:05But don't come out here and push it, Jim.
- 26:08So what I'm going to do, I'm going to make a trip to one of the national parks.
- 26:12My family is taking me.
- 26:14A biggie for me
- 26:16You know, you give up a lot of things.
- 26:18I don't water ski anymore.
- 26:19I'm not going to zip line.
- 26:21There's just all kind of things you give up.
- 26:23But in the new column, you get to do a lot of new and different things.
- 26:26And on this particular trip, I'm supposed to sit in a wheelchair so they can get me through the airport quickly to the next gate.
- 26:35without me having to hob along at my old man totter speed.
- 26:38So you see, you give some things up and you acquire some new things.
- 26:42But when I get back, my plan is to cut paths
- 26:46to my bees and to keep the entrance opened up, even though it does shade.
- 26:52As I say that, I'm wondering
- 26:54If the tall grass actually shades the bees and by me open it, yes, it would clear a flight plat path, but yes, it also lets this hot summer sun hit the front of the hives.
- 27:06You know you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
- 27:09But I've got to have I've got to have paths and and I can open pathways
- 27:14I'm going to see how that works to lay out to bring my my walk behind string tremor out and not try just to take down these weeds.
- 27:21Some of them this grass, I don't know if it's weeds or grass or natural plants
- 27:27And instead of trying to fight everything and mow everything, I know you people, I've seen those pictures of your beautiful mown mowed yards and colonies painted.
- 27:36I just that's just not me.
- 27:38I can't do it
- 27:39So that's my plan.
- 27:41I have learned to justify the mess in my yard by saying it's a natural tall grass, Ohio Prairie.
- 27:47and I'll cut colorful paths to it and then all these things can grow and bloom and everything can have a nice time back here.
- 27:56I know, I know, I know that it's not traditional beekeeping
- 28:01And I know that nearly all of you are traditional beekeepers.
- 28:07It's the right sermon for the wrong congregation.
- 28:12But you need to know that everybody listening to me who are is not here yet, you will be one day
- 28:19So it's okay if you begin to think and accept the fact that traditional beekeeping is not necessarily always the only beekeeping.
- 28:29out of sheer necessity.
- 28:31I'm going to have some visiting speakers, I hope, next week.
- 28:34We're going to address this heat thing more.
- 28:35I'm sitting here now just in the shade, just perspiring like crazy.
- 28:41This heat thing, I think, needs to be discussed again.
- 28:44Apparently, as the as the climate seems to be changing, maybe this heat thing is going to be
- 28:50More common than it has been.
- 28:52I don't know.
- 28:54You know I'm done.
- 28:56Wanna get ready to make a a nice trip here.
- 28:58I'll be talking to you again next week.
- 29:00Thank you for listening.
- 29:01I always enjoy talking with you.
- 29:03Please know this, no matter how
- 29:05defeated, no matter how old, no matter how haphazard I sound, I always care about the bees and I always enjoy the bees and I always do enjoy talking about them.
- 29:16Until we talk again, I'm Jim telling you bye.