Pre-eruption, I was thinking about keeping bees.

[Wao nahele wahine]

Are you considering getting hives yourself and maintaining them? Or are you looking for someone who has bee hives who wants to store hives on other people's property? We had 40 hives on our property that were maintained by they guy who owned the hives. He had people come out every few weeks to maintain them, we got the benefit of having bees pollinate our trees, and also got a case of honey every 4-6 weeks. Once the flow got close to us, he removed the hives, but I expect him to bring them back once we can be somewhat sure the pau.

Wahine

[ElysianWort]

Yes a delicate balance. The ohia has been ravaged and are suffering from ROD but have shown promise of resurgence and resistance in healthier species.

The bees, wild and domestic, have their own plethora of challenges:
A mite that attacks them
A fly that attacks them
A beetle that attacks them.
Not to mention decline from overuse of pesticides.
And an overall decline from other unknown factors.

So I may choose not to touch this situation of delicate balance. Just enjoy their benefit of their presence. Their buzz filling my orchard with vibrant energy.

[bananahead]

fyi the Western Honey Bee, is Bad for Hawaii!
it is ALSO ... NOT Native to North America, Central America, South America, Australia, Oceania, much of Asia, Africa, etc.
thus its probs with hive collapse via having to adapt to new foods and having their 'food' stolen daily for nonvegan human consumption.

here in Hawaii, we have many endemic bees on the endangered species list... ALL because of the invasive western honey bees!

try read, try conserving the natural flora and fauna of our unique island chain! NOT INTRODUCED INVADERS that push out the native!

'For the First Time, Bees Declared Endangered in the U.S.'
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016...ow-faced0/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/...r-1st-time


******************************************************************
save our indigenous and endemic Hawaiian Plants... learn about them, grow them, and plant them on your property, ....instead of all that invasive non-native garbage I see in most yards... aloha

[ElysianWort]

Gosh that sucks that our native bees are in decline. I love those little buggers and what they can do/make...
along with praying mantis, ladybug, spiders, dragonflies. Even the dragonfly nymph. It is such a cool creature. But I digress, back to bees...

How do I know what type of wild bees I have? I don't think I'll be getting up that tree and looking close up.

So just in case they are an endangered native type of wild, I'll just leave them there to do their job in my orchard which I have been so grateful for. I'll get my honey elsewhere.

Or they could be an invasive type? In which case I'll be leaving them because I was thinking/hoping for them to be native but it won't matter to the plants and trees the invasive type will do the exact same job anyway.

[terracore]

I watched a fascinating documentary about keeping bees. Typically beekeepers make half of their money selling honey, and the other half by renting their bees out to farmers who need pollination. Some of the crops they pollinate don't produce enough calories for the bees to sustain themselves and to keep them from swarming away to greater resources the bees have to be fed by the bee keepers by dumping white table sugar over the honey combs. They might be insects but they require care just like any other form of livestock.

[Carey]

In Keaau, we have never had to feed our bees... this is something a beekeeper that has bees that have not stored nutritionally diverse nectar & pollen sources year round... seems we do have

Swarming is normally a function of a bee colony splitting, not normally because of calories (though this can happen, it is very very uncommon, esp in Hawaii), but because of the queen & colony size.... the worker bees communicate with each other by shared pheromones in trophallaxis, if the workers do not sense the queen pheromones, they will work to create a new queen.....This can happen with a super large colony or a smaller one with a queen that is older & "less fit". The queen will normally leave with some of the worker bees (those that sense the queen pheromones, from the hive (also older, as younger workers, nurse bees, do not yet fly....) This is normally done when the nurse bees have determined another queen must be made & start working on queen cells.... If the older queen does not leave by the time a new queen hatches, either the workers, or the new queen will try to kill the older one...

Here the main care is in making sure that the colony size is right for the queen, that the queen is healthy & laying eggs, that the workers are healthy & not infested with any organisms.. that the hive stays dry & is not rotting....that pigs, dogs, elements & such do not knock over or tear apart the hives, & to try to responsibly control swarming tendencies & try to monitor & collect any swarms from the hives you maintain..

[ElysianWort]

Interesting info Carey.

Also:
"the bees have to be fed by the bee keepers by dumping white table sugar over the honey combs."

- I hope they were using organic non-GMO sugar!

[Carey]

Actually, that dumping sugar over the comb is the least best desirable way of feeding bees, as this is also an invitation to just about every other sugar craving animal...

Most beekeeper that need to feed, use hive feeders & supply a nectar substitute... some will use a simple syrup, others will use a fortified nectar replacement... but dumping crystal sugar inside a hive is not a recommended method of supplementing the nutrition of bees... & anyone who would do that on anything but an emergency basis is asking for a whole slew of beekeeping problems... the only time I can even think that this might be excusable is when dealing with a catastrophic hive event in a freezing temp... & then, most likely, you are just trying to salvage as much of the population until something can be done...

& neither of these replaces the proteins that bees need from the pollen... for bees, the absolute best thing is a diverse selection of pollens & nectars... & we have that here...

[terracore]

I guess I should clarify that in the documentary they dumped something that looked like table sugar into the hive and called it "sugar", but I have no idea what it was.

Sometimes I call my wife "sugar" but that doesn't mean I can replace her with something that's 49 cents per pound at Walmart.

[MarkP]

"praying mantis, ladybug, spiders, dragonflies"

All non-native and technically invasive although each is beneficial in their own way, same as honey bees. As far as native bees go I think that they do not form hives so if you see a bee hive, those are introduced honey bees.