Bees, so many bees!

[Kadjain]

I don't intend to make to much of an a-do about it, but bees pretty much run rampant whether they live in a man made hive or in a hollow tree in Poo Bear's 100 Acre Wood. There are no domesticated honey bees anywhere in nature.

There could 'bee' anywhere from a few dozen to a 1,000 or more hives in a commercial beek's bee-yard at this time of year. At 20,000 bees per hive BEFORE the build up even begins that equals a bunch of working women to feed.

The climate in the Central Valley is out of sync with the rest of the Northern Hemisphere so the trigger of daylight hours that signals the bees when to start brood rearing in earnest is out of sync with the temperature and vegetation.

My old neighbor from where I just moved kept bees also. He had quite a few hives/colonies on just a few acres and his bees never ventured from his yard. I just talked to the senior partner today and he was about as helpful as the previous guy I talked with. I did learn that he does not keep them very far from my coops. He says they put them as far as they could because a creek runs there and he can't take the trucks he hauls the bees in past the creek .. . or something? I thought that sounded kinda lame. He has 400 acres and he keeps his bees just a few acres away from his neighbors .. .

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I sympathize with you but 400 acres is nothing even to just one colony of bees. They will in mho forage at least 3 miles from the hive and if my scribbling is correct that equals over 28 square miles or about 18,000 acres. The problem you are facing is caused by at least two if not more things.

One is the number of hives which has statured the immediate area with foraging worker bees, and the second is a nectar and pollen dearth or near dearth which is forcing the bees to explore far and wide for resources.

I was at a neighbor's house for a cook out and while we set around the coy pond he apologized to me for his fish eating my bees. He said that my bees had been swimming with the fishes for months. I focused in and sure enough a honey bee lit on the edge of a lily pad and she soon disappeared in a swirl of water. I got up and walked to the side of the pool were a 4 foot water fall came crashing down and low and behold there were maybe 500 to a 1,000 bees on the moss underneath the ledge that formed the water fall and all were quietly sucking up coy pond water off of the cool green moss growing behind the waterfall. My bees had been helping themselves to the water in my neighbor's coy pond for months if not years, and neither he nor I had ever noticed. This was despite me supplying clean water within 100 feet of the hives and with 2 large natural water sources within 1/4 mile.

To make the bees leave your chickens' water alone you will need to fix it so that they can't gather water at your coop. Bees are very much like the notorious bank robber Willy Sutton. When asked why he robbed banks Sutton replied, "Because that is were the money is." The long and short of it is that the bees are at your chicken coop because that is where the resources are that they need to live.

 

[Kadjain]

LOL

 

[centrarchid]

I think you are in a realm were legal precidence is not well established. Based on the economic value of the bees and their pollination services to your agriculture industry, you will have a decidely uphill battle. If I was the jury it come down to who has been using the area first, the poultry keeper or the beekeeper.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

.... Chemicals are raising havoc on the bee colonies. GMO's are adding greatly to the problem from all I've read.

Insecticides are usually manmade chemicals but GM crop's insecticide actions are 100% natural and do not affect bees. Since the 1950s the healthiest bee colonies I have ever owned have been less than 30 feet from 160 acres of GMO corn, cotton, canola, or soybeans. The reason for this is the lack of chemical insecticides used on GM crops.

There are two words in agricultural that the average citizen should learn. One is Pest "control" and the other is Pest "management."

Control implies killing the pest. Management on the other hand is more focused on things like the time of year that the seeds are planted or using part of a crop field to plant a decoy crop on in the hope of luring the insect pest to the decoy crop where an even greater concentration of chemical insecticides can be applied to reach total control levels before the insect pest can damage the real crop. Unfortunately honey bees can't read the farmers mind, so they forage in these decoy fields. When they do Buy-Buy bee colonies. So I welcome GMO crops as do every experienced beek that I am acquainted with.

As I think is playing out in the OP's case, honey bees are disappearing because year in and year out, no one is willing to work as hard or as long anymore to make commercial bee keeping a financial success.

The EPA under the current President has cut the irrigation water allotment to California's Central Valley farmers. (where the OP lives) This has resulted in tens of thousands of acres of perfectly good bee forage crops like almond, and fruit trees to be ripped out of the ground like so many weeds, because regardless what some people believe, you can't grow almonds or peaches on a sand dune.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I think you are in a realm were legal precidence is not well established. Based on the economic value of the bees and their pollination services to your agriculture industry, you will have a decidely uphill battle. If I was the jury it come down to who has been using the area first, the poultry keeper or the beekeeper.

Can you positively identify each of the marauding bees in a police line up or from a mug book? This is posted not to make fun of the situation but to help you understand some of the legal challenges that you face.

 

[centrarchid]

Can you positively identify each of the marauding bees in a police line up or from a mug book?  This is posted not to make fun of the situation but to help you understand some of the legal challenges that you face.

George, intent of your post not certain, but colony source of a given bee could be determined unambiguously through either marking bees in mass then watching for their return to putative source colonies or even by killing a bunch for DNA fingerprinting against putative colonies.


The problem of determining source would be relatively easy. My point in previous post is "how is the interest of the public is serviced or harmed by attacking the beekeeper that is crucial to the agriculture industry and would the courts fall on that issue. You seem to have missed that.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I am curious if there is any farms in your area that grow almonds. January and February is when hives of bees are traditionally trucked into the orchards to provide pollination services for almonds, the first crop in California to need pollinating. The bees may or they may not belong to your neighbor. It is quite common for landowners in your area to rent out land for use as yards, or apiaries by commercial beekeepers who follow the bloom much like other migrant farm workers follow the harvest. This way their hives are on sight when the almond blooms are about to open.

As far as I have been informed DNA fingerprinting is difficult with honey bees because the queen bee is very promiscuous. The worker bees in any one hive may be fathered by 20 or more drone bees, who may come from a hundred square miles or more of territory. This is further complicated by the fact that as long as the bees are rolling in the nectar and times are good, a hive will accept any drone bee who happens to drop by. Drone bees are quite helpless, they all need worker bees to even feed and groom them so it is in the hive's best interest to maintain a large gene pool by carrying for any drone bee on a knight's quest who happens to drop in. However there is a definite down side to this lifestyle, if you want to know what it is send me a PM.

Drone bees also don't have a father so to absolutely positively id the bees in question a drone bee still in his natal cell and the queen bee in that one hive are the only bees in any given hive who can settle the question of paternity via DNA. Besides, any one hive may be re-queened two or three times per year with a new queen bee bred, born, raised and mated clear on the other side of the United States, and your neighbor's hives may not even be raising drones.. at least not yet. Since the drones don't forage you'll have to open a hive to get a drone bee specimen still in the cell and test that bee, then you will also need to sacrifice the queen bee in that hive to see if the drone or drones you're testing are the queen bee's fatherless sons and related on the female side to the worker bees foraging in your chicken feed. This can take months or even years of writs, court orders, briefs, discovery motions, and other legal wrangling. Is the hassle worth $300 to $500 per hour in legal fees, not to mention what the testing, expert witnesses, and your neighbors good will cost or is worth to you?

I think that a simple can if PVC or CPVC primer and cement to absolutely, positively, re-seal your pipe joints so that bees can't gain access to your chicken's water makes more sense to my old brain.

 

[centrarchid]

Catch some of the darn bees ()workers only), role them about in a fluorescent powder, then go to putative hives and to see if they come in. Owing to circumstances you will likely find it easy to get permission from courts to look at hives without too much trouble.

George, you are talking to a fellow beekeeper using argument based on dated information. You do not need to look for drones at all, full-siblings and half-siblings will do and you collect them hive entrance. I acknowledge a couple hundred hives might be involved.

Your are also being flat out contrary.

 

[Kadjain]

I am curious if there is any farms in your area that grow almonds. January and February is when hives of bees are traditionally trucked into the orchards to provide pollination services for almonds, the first crop in California to need pollinating. The bees may or they may not belong to your neighbor. It is quite common for landowners in your area to rent out land for use as yards, or apiaries by commercial beekeepers who follow the bloom much like other migrant farm workers follow the harvest. This way their hives are on sight when the almond blooms are about to open.

As far as I have been informed DNA fingerprinting is difficult with honey bees because the queen bee is very promiscuous. The worker bees in any one hive may be fathered by 20 or more drone bees, who may come from a hundred square miles or more of territory. This is further complicated by the fact that as long as the bees are rolling in the nectar and times are good, a hive will accept any drone bee who happens to drop by. Drone bees are quite helpless, they all need worker bees to even feed and groom them so it is in the hive's best interest to maintain a large gene pool by carrying for any drone bee on a knight's quest who happens to drop in. However there is a definite down side to this lifestyle, if you want to know what it is send me a PM.

Drone bees also don't have a father so to absolutely positively id the bees in question a drone bee still in his natal cell and the queen bee in that one hive are the only bees in any given hive who can settle the question of paternity via DNA. Besides, any one hive may be re-queened two or three times per year with a new queen bee bred, born, raised and mated clear on the other side of the United States, and your neighbor's hives may not even be raising drones.. at least not yet. Since the drones don't forage you'll have to open a hive to get a drone bee specimen still in the cell and test that bee, then you will also need to sacrifice the queen bee in that hive to see if the drone or drones you're testing are the queen bee's fatherless sons and related on the female side to the worker bees foraging in your chicken feed. This can take months or even years of writs, court orders, briefs, discovery motions, and other legal wrangling. Is the hassle worth $300 to $500 per hour in legal fees, not to mention what the testing, expert witnesses, and your neighbors good will cost or is worth to you?

I think that a simple can if PVC or CPVC primer and cement to absolutely, positively, re-seal your pipe joints so that bees can't gain access to your chicken's water makes more sense to my old brain.

Yeah he says he moves them in Jan and I am just waiting to see those trucks come back and haul them out'a here .. .