AdAgrA 2015: Restoring the Waste Places

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Short Course: Beekeeping

Vasiliy Osadchuck

Beekeeping- Part 1

I was raised in a small town, and my grandparents had a farm in the Ukraine on the border of Romania, a little town, oh, mid-sized town of Cernauti or Cernivci.

And that town is in a beautiful area with fertile lands, plenty of rain, beautiful forests.

You can grow plums, apples, walnuts, you can grow anything.

Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and you could have bees.

So I always worked on the farm every summer, going to school every summer, going to grandparents' work on the farm.

And when I was 16, I took a summer job on a queen, bee queen rearing farm, and I fell in love with bees at the age of 16.

I didn't fall in love with any girl, anything like that.

I fell in love with beekeeping, and I loved bees ever since.

Their world is such intricate world with interaction between all the species within the hive.

It's like a small city or like a small country with its laws, its government, and it's such exciting event to see the colony develop from small, grow, separate, start new colonies.

And the byproduct of it is wonderful Fruits and nuts that we eat and you will ask why?

Because of cross pollinization Absolutely.

Somebody tell me which 1 Food that we eat almost daily could not be on your table if it went for the bees?

Most other fruit and nuts can be produced there, fruit and nuts, just right, even without bees.

The crops will be not as good, you will have fewer fruit, you will have fewer seeds in your seeds, you know, if you are raising sunflowers, for example.

But almonds, if there's no honeybee, won't have a single almond on it.

They are 100% relying on the honeybee pollinization.

So if you have almonds or almond milk or almond anything, you have to thank bees because without the honeybees there won't be almonds at all.

Therefore, all the almond growers in California or anywhere else, they entice and invite the beekeepers from all over the US to bring their bees for the almond blossom season.

So today we'll talk about pollinization, we'll talk about honey production, we'll talk about organic beekeeping, we'll talk about honey plants or nectar producing plants, we'll talk about how to manage bees without chemicals, without pesticides, We'll talk about things like ABCs of beekeeping.

I don't know how many of you are beekeepers.

Some of you may be beekeepers, which is great.

If you are not, we'll start with ABCs so we all understand what we're talking about.

Now before we do that I'll introduce you to my family.

But every morning I wake up, I walk on a farm, I go to see my bees right there, and I see this beautiful Carpathian mountain look.

If you've ever been to Europe, there's Alps, and there's Carpathian mountains, and there's Tatra mountains, and This is the kind of mountains where my grandparents live in the region where I was born.

Every day I walk, I pray as I walk through this farm.

Sometimes I see a bear eating honey there, you know.

Sometimes I find a few pieces of comb on the ground, but I say, hey, if God wants to feed the bear with my honey, that's all right.

I just come and put the box back together and put the frames in and that's how it goes.

I have a wife and 2 children, Eric, my wife, Keris, my daughter, Melissa, and I also enjoy my other family, which is bees.

My kids know that I love bees, my wife know that I love bees and those of you who are beekeepers know what I mean.

It's like a passion when you know that you have bees, you have the call of the wild.

You want to go and see your bees every day.

So we'll start with the life of a bee colony.

And the Latin Greek word for the bee is apis mellifera.

Miel in Spanish means honey and miere in Romanian means honey and myod in Russian and Ukrainian and Bulgarian med means honey.

Fero in Greek means carry or bring so mellifera it's honey that brings I mean bee that brings honey.

So honeybees is the only social bee that actually stores Honey.

Most other bees, there's hundreds of varieties of other bees, they are good kind of helpers in agriculture.

They bring nectar for every day, but they do not store for the winter.

There are many other bees that hibernate.

They don't eat in the winter, they don't use food, they just sort of semi, only the queen is semi-alive in the winter.

And then In the spring, she lays a few eggs when it's warming up, and then they start a small colony, a few, maybe 10, 20, 100 bees in a colony.

Then they bring food enough for the day, enough to feed the babies.

And then, as it gets colder, all the babies die out, you know, and the queen hibernates for another winter, you know.

Honeybees bring enough food for at least 2 years ahead, and they store it in the colony.

If you imagine, this is the first story of the colony, and normally in the wild, bees grow, bees live in hollow trees, let's say, or in a wall of a building.

And they start at the bottom and start building, come up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and they would have babies or brood in the bottom.

Then they will have some honey supply, some pollen supply.

Just like we humans, we need carbohydrates, and we need proteins, right?

Very little fat, a little protein, and more complex carbohydrates.

What is, what is carbohydrates for the bees?

They condense it, evaporate water out of it, and it becomes honey.

So pollen also contains some fat, very little fat.

So they get all 3 major nutrients, right, for their, macronutrients I should call them, for their life.

And they also get multiple, multiple micronutrients from the pollen, because pollen is very rich in micronutrients, various salts of metals, various compounds that we call them phytonutrients, or nutrients found in the plants.

So pollen is very important, honey is very important, and the colony that does that is only the honeybee.

Now humans use the surplus honey and pollen sometimes, and the honey bee colony is just fine because they store enough for the next few years.

So the beekeeper can collect full year's supply for himself, right, and share with others, right?

You are not only helping the agriculture in cross-pollinization, you also have the byproduct, The honey and the bee pollen.

Beekeeping- Part 2

All right guys what bees are known for besides pollinating cross-pollinating besides being producers of honey and producers of pollen and besides being producers of stuff like wax that is used in in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry and for candle making and there's many other varieties of use for wax.

Bees are known as weapons Because they have weapons, right?

Even when you are beekeeper for many years, if you get stung by a bee you feel the pain.

And you automatically respond if you don't have protection.

Because normally with non-Africanized bees, when in a good weather, you can work without any protection.

You don't, for example, when I was a kid, like a 16 year old kid, I worked my bees in just shorts.

And of course I had gentle bees like Italian or Carneolian bees you just if you are gentle with them Gently take the comb out look at it put gently back if you don't smoke And you don't have cologne if you don't smell like sweaty and stinky, they don't mind you working with them.

So, however, if you are boisterous type, if you come to the hive and just go Like this, okay, let's move things around.

They like a person to go gently like this, take a little gently off.

Take a, Your motions should be fluid and smooth.

So, Killer bees, that's a very scary name and people heard about killer bees and you can go on YouTube or you can go and research about killer bees and you have these horror stories about killer bees.

Well, basically stinging is a natural response of a colony, of the bee, to what?

Let's, for example, think this is a bee colony, right?

And this is the front of the bee colony, and the bees fly in and out here.

As a beekeeper, I want to be less disruptive to their life.

If I don't disturb them and disrupt their life, they won't be stinging me.

So if I come to the hive gently, let's imagine this is the lid to the hive, and I gently come from the back of the hive or the side of the hive, I gently take the lid off, I put it gently down so I don't squish any bees, alright?

And I gently take a frame with comb out, I check for whatever I need to check, I gently put it back without squishing any bees or killing any bees, they won't sting me.

I can work like this with the bees and it's gonna be alright.

I run into my colony from the front, where they fly in and out.

As I grab it, I bump the frame on the walls of the hive, squishing bees left and right.

Imagine if you're sitting here and this is your home, this is your living room, and all of a sudden somebody rips the roof off.

And somebody's trying to to grab stuff from your house, you know.

It's their reaction to protect their house, their colony.

That's why they sting and stinging is their only defense.

What time of the day might be best to do that?

Any time after sunset when the temperatures are 60 degrees and above.

Any time between the sunrise and through sunset.

Avoid doing it right before sunset because it's cooling off and the bees are disturbed when you do it right before sunset.

So anytime half an hour or an hour when the temperatures are 65 and above would be fine.

If it's not windy, if it's not stormy, when the weather is changing and the atmospheric pressure is changing, the bees are agitated.

When the storm is coming, have you noticed how the ants come out and scurry around before the storm?

So if you come to work your colony right before the storm, the colony senses it and the colony feels, I don't want my roof off.

It's gonna rain and possibly hail, you know.

It's their natural response if there's some kind of threat.

They grab a piece of comb and they eat it.

Now bears look dark, wooly, almost black, and we call them black bears in California.

So bear has black eyes, so they'll go for his eyes, right?

I have dark eyes, they'll go for my eyes too.

They go for my eyebrows, they'll go for your hair.

Whoever has black hair, they'll go for your hair.

If you have black eyes, they'll go for your eyes.

Because normal predators like bears, they are dark and that's how bees detect, oh, that's a predator, there's some danger, some threat.

So the bees don't like wooly, Dark colored colors something made of wool don't wear it around the hive something Black don't wear it around the hive.

So that's that's just natural for the bees now What can aggravate them If you mow the lawn right next to the hive, or weed eat right in front of the hive, guess what?

Because their bodies are made out of special membranes It's the same Stuff that makes up your nails and your hair It's resonating really easy.

So if you have a vibrating loud machine, their whole body is vibrating and shaking.

So the bees immediately mobilize their soldiers, send them out to chase away whoever is disturbing their peace, right?

So you don't want to mow right, you know in the middle of the day.

If you want to mow around the beehive, come at night after sunset, right, when it's dark.

And don't stay too long in front of a beehive, because even at night they will start coming out of the hive because it's vibrating and noisy and they don't like it.

They might even fly at night to sting you and chase you away.

You don't want to to be obnoxious around bees and bump the hive.

You don't want to do your karate moves about about the bees, right?

I hope you don't smoke, but you know if you if you're around bees you don't want to have strong cologne, you don't want you know to smell like you haven't showered for 5 days, you know, you because they will sting, they will be agitated and aggravated, right?

So, when you injure a bee or when some other bee stung something else, in this case, who do they fight, these bees?

They are trying to sting and chase away somebody.

Beekeeping- Part 3

So with geomorph farming, when you have the bees GPS tuned and set for their location, some of either the chemicals in Roundup or whatever chemicals they receive from the weeds around or from the plants around, they receive some of those toxins that mess up their GPS abilities.

And 1 day the bee leaves its hives and the bees leave their hives and they fly around and never come back.

It's 1 of those things, There's a few theories, and colony collapse disorder is 1 of those things that it's not finalized yet, the exact cause of it.

There's some theories that all the electromagnetic fields that are around the cell towers and the electric transmission lines affect their ability to navigate also.

So it's not quite clear to the bee scientists today, but for sure that the GMO crop management messes up with the immune system of the bee, not because it's directly affecting the bees, but because it wipes out all the variety of food that the bees would have had if it went for that type of farming.

Second reason, GMO crop management allows the bees to receive some of these toxins from the nectar they collect.

And it messes up with their navigation ability and their immune system as well.

Now let me show you some other slides here.

And you will see the immensity of these vast fields and problems.

And you have thousands of acres of wild clover.

And you have fields and fields full of it.

Some of the fields will have flax, and this is flax blossoming.

You would work on your beehive and you will feel somebody nudging you in the back.

They're beautiful creatures, but you would have, let's say you would have your forklift loading up and you're moving your yard because your neighbors have sprayed their crop.

Now, you may want to move them at night and at sunset when the moon rises, you want to load them on a truck.

And you will have hundreds of acres of sunflowers that are unfortunately sprayed.

And these particular leaves were eaten by locusts.

If you are a beekeeper and you are not registered with the county, the airplane will go and spray that crop and it can kill all your bees.

Or they will spray round up in the daytime when your bees are on the flowers.

And that is detrimental to the health of the bee.

So you want to register with the county when you move your bees to commercial crops.

You want to register Because if you are registered, 2 days before they will spray, they are supposed to call you and warn you that we will be spraying this crop in 2 days, so please take measures to prevent your losses, you know.

And these are the dangers of non-organic farming, or conventional farming, I'd say.

As you can see, these are wild sweet clover, wild sunflowers, and commercial beekeepers bring their bees there by thousands.

Goldenrod, by the way, produces pretty good honey.

What happens in alfalfa, what happens in commercial beekeeping these days, More and more of these crops are managed by chemicals rather than by people.

More and more of these crops, basically, you don't touch the crop, you spray the crop.

And you don't even put your tractor in the field except when you plant.

And it's done quick, it's so easy, it's cheap, but it's so damaging, both to the future of agriculture, to the health of the plants, and to the health of the insects that pollinate the plants.

So what does a beekeeper do when they are going to spray?

You can close your bees for 2 or 3 hours if it's not too hot You can literally put some kind of mesh at the entrance of the hive That would let the air in and out but won't let the bees out But if you have a thousand of bees, it'll take you 2 days to do that.

So it's not an effective way of dealing with it.

But if you have 50 hives or 10 hives or 5 hives, you can do that.

You can just put a mesh gate so the bees cannot escape out of the hive.

And for 3, 4, 5 hours they'll be okay if it's not too hot.

Now if it's very hot around noontime, most of the spraying is happening in the morning, chemical and any roundup spray is done in the morning.

By noon, you can take your restriction and let the bees out and they'll be okay.

Now, if you have a few hundred of colonies or a few thousand of colonies, you can't do that.

Or if it's too hot, you cannot do that with your own hives.

So you load them up on a truck at night and if let's say it's hot and they are still crowded on the front of the hive and you want to load them up you spray them with spray bottle or with some kind of you know mist of water and it'll cause them to go in.

If you have them on pallets, you load them on pallets and use forklift.

If you have a buddy to help you carry each individual hive, you put them on a truck and move them somewhere where it's safe.

You find out those locations, place them there for a couple of days, and then bring them back.

Now, you don't want to move your bees closer than 5 miles.

Because if you moved your bees just 4 miles away, guess what happens?

They come out of their colony there and they fly around and return back to the yard and there's no no hive in my yard.

So they will cluster on some nearby structure on a tree, on a barn, on a car.

Huge, huge swarm will be hanging on your tree.

1 thing you want to add to that, that's an excellent way of moving bees into a new thing.

1 thing you want in a new container or a real hive, 1 thing you want to do, you need to open that original barrel and get the queen and the brood and put it in that box too.

Otherwise, the field bees will be in a new house, but the indoor bees will still be in the old barrel, right?

So we have another challenge to beekeeping today, and that comes from beekeepers themselves.

Many beekeepers today use harsh chemicals and antibiotics to treat their bees.

The antibiotics take care of the disease.

The antibiotics take care of their health.

The bees improve well if they are sick, for example, if they have a disease called American fowl brood, which is devastating and basically killing the young larva.

You can apply antibiotics and it'll heal the colony.

Within 2, 3 weeks, it'll be back to normal health.

But as humans, the bees suffer from it because of the resistance that bacteria develops towards those particular antibiotics.

So the beekeepers also have to find new antibiotics to treat the old disease.

Most of these disease, like American foul brood, is the result of poor management of the colony.

The colony is hungry, doesn't have enough food.

Every 3 or 4 years, you want to replace and build new comb because every generation of bees that is born in the comb leaves their cocoon stuck to the cell.

So your original wax that's just built is beautiful white or yellow.

When there's 1 generation of bees that is born out of that comb, when it's raised and leaves the comb, the comb becomes darker, browner.

The more generation of bees were hatched out of that comb will become darker and darker, eventually become black.

If you look through your comb and you still can see brown light through the comb, you are okay.

But if you look through the comb and it's dark, you don't see light, it's time to throw that piece of comb away because there's so many shells and cocoons left in that comb that bacteria and viruses find their safe spot between the layers of these cocoons.