Protect The Honey Bee Population
Donation protected
Introduction
You’ve probably heard at one point or another about the die-off of the honey bee population. More officially known as the colony collapse disorder (CCD) that was first reported back in 2006. This is a silent war to save the honey bees that’s not taken serious enough by the general public. You often hear the call to arms to save the whales, protect the abused animals, and so on, but where's the call to arms for the honey bees? That’s where we come in. With your support, we're on a mission to help safeguard the future of the honey bees and even humanity. It would be a very different world without our little pollinating friends.
An In-depth Look
According to the EPA, the theories that researchers are focusing on that may have caused CCD is…
· Increased losses due to the invasive varroa mite (a pest of honey bees).
· New or emerging diseases such as Israeli Acute Paralysis virus and the gut parasite Nosema.
· Pesticide poisoning through exposure to pesticides applied to crops or for in-hive insect or mite control.
· Stress bees experience due to management practices such as transportation to multiple locations across the country for providing pollination services.
· Changes to the habitat where bees forage.
· Inadequate forage/poor nutrition.
· Potential immune-suppressing stress on bees caused by one or a combination of factors identified above.
we believe strongly all the theories above played a part, some more than others in leading to the CCD in one way or another. What the vast majority of people fail to see is the underlying problem to CCD that even beekeepers tend to overlook. Which brings us to the fundamental issue of the breeding of queen honey bees with poor genetics. When poor quality queen bees are bred passing on poor genetics to their offspring, it makes them, and their hive more susceptible to dying from the potential causes listed above. You could argue bees being poisoned by pesticides applied to crops has nothing to do with the issue of poor quality queen bees being bred. However, this just wouldn’t be true. A poor quality queen bee bred with inferior week genetic traits will be far more susceptible to dying including her fellow faimly members from exposure to pesticides applied to crops. Certainly far more so than its stronger healthier counterparts that will have a greater chance of survival to these unfortunate circumstances of pesticides being used.
You might be thinking as you read this, "well my hives are doing just fine." Yes, we hope they are, but what happens when your hives get sick and die out from diseases or mites in the hive? Where do you get new ones? As queen honey bee breeders it's our job to safeguard the honey bee population from being wiped out by such things through our selective breeding programs. By breeding queen bees naturally with genetics more resilient to diseases and mites every year, we help prevent the mass die-off of the honey bee populations across the nation.
Sadly a great many large-scale queen bee breeders are solely in it for the profit. By cutting corners in the raising of new queen bees that are sold across the country, it weakens the genetic pool of honey bees all across the nation that can one day lead to a catastrophe and further CCD. A few examples of poor breeding practices would be improperly mated queens from raising too many new queen bees at one time and having a lack of drones (male bees) to mate with the new virgin queen bees properly. Producing too many queens bee at one time in a beehive that results in some of the new queen bees getting less royal jelly in there cells thats needed in the development of healthy and strong queen bee larva. Having queen bee mating yards in locations near other commercial beekeepers or areas where feral Africanized honey bees (killer bees) are known to be present that leads to uncontrollable genetics in open mated queen bees. Using treatments in their hives to help their bee colonies survive diseases and mites in the hive, but by doing this, you're allowing colonies to pass on genetics that can't survive infestations of mites or diseases on their own.
The list of failures goes on, but don’t get us wrong. There are many queen bee breeders who do care and try to produce quality queen bees, but generally, fall short in one area or another, unfortunately, whether they see it or not. Perhaps we may be rebuked by some fellow queen breeders, but it doesn't change the facts.
Who are we?
We are a small group of like-minded queen bee breeders and volunteers who have a mission to safeguard the future of the honey bee, and humanity. We seek to breed quality queen bees to be shipped to beekeepers across the nation that will pass on their healthy strong genetic traits to help minimize the effects of future colony collapse disorder. For our new location, we've secured one hundred sixty acres of farmland in a remote rural area in eastern Oregon that is perfect for raising and mating new queen bees. Unfortunately, it lacks nectar sources for the honey bees to survive on. However, it’s a problem that can be easy Remedied. Before we move the last of the colonies of honey bees to the new site we now would like to start planting spring, summer, and fall forage crops for the bees. Primary Lacy Phacelia will be planted in blocks at staggered times for continuous blooming of flowers from spring to fall. This will allow us to expand the number of colonies of honey bees that can live in one location year round at our honey bee breeding sanctuary.
Our Breeding Program
The extensive breeding program we use is scrupulous and methodical. All bee hives are numbered for identification for research notes as well as the complete history on each colony and its queen bee.
For Example color, aggression of the workers, parentage, of the queens, the population size, weight of the colony, How quickly they build up in spring, How good do their brood patterns look, How much honey they have stored up, How much propolis do they use in the hive, How well they overwinter, How much pollen they have store up, How old the queen bee is, How clean do they keep the hive, have they been sick or infested with parasitic insects, How did they fair if they have been sick or infested with parasitic insects. How often do they try to create their own swarm queen bee cells and supersedure queen bee cells (new queen bees), How well and fast do they build new wax comb, and so on.
In the above picture, you'll see a queen bee with a white dot on her back. Aside from the white dot making it easier in locating a queen bee in the hive and knowing for a fact that is the original queen you’ve been keeping track of. The primary purpose is to identify the year the queen was born that all beekeepers go by using the International Color Chart. So the queen bee in the picture above with the white dot was born in 2016.
Years ending in 0 or 5 are blue.
Years ending in 1 or 6 are white.
Years ending in 2 or 7 are yellow.
Years ending in 3 or 8 are red.
Years ending in 4 or 9 are green.
Unlike other queen bee breeders, we breed queen bees, so they live longer not just be productive longer. Our hives are treatment free so in other words we don’t use any pesticides, antibiotics, and such to combat American foulbrood disease (AFB), Chalkbrood disease, Sacbrood disease, Nosema disease, Varroa mite, Tropilaelaps mite, Tracheal mite, Beetle, Ants, Wasps and hornets, Wax moths and other Lepidoptera. By having treatment free hives, it allows the breeding of bees naturally resistant to pesticides, antibiotics don’t need to be used in the hives.
Our bees overwinter eating their own honey that they collected from flowers, unlike many commercial beekeepers who remove every ounce of honey from their hives then feed them high-fructose corn syrup to survive on during winter. That’s equivalent to only feeding candy to your kids and expect them to be healthy with poor nutrition. Well, isn't honey just sugar you might ask? Yes, it is a natural sugar, but unlike high-fructose corn syrup, raw honey contains natural sugar (80 percent), water (18 percent), and 2 percent minerals, vitamins, and amino acids. (Vitamin B6, thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid and Calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and zinc) So it does make a difference in the health of the bees when they eat their own honey they collected from flowers.
How your donations are helping?
The honey bee industry is an expensive endeavor whether you're starting out, expanding, or even if it's just maintenance it’s a hard business to be in. It’s even more challenging if you're in it for the bees sake and you're not in it solely for the profit. With your support in helping us safeguard the future of the honey bees, your donations will assist in the acquisition of seed, primarily Lacy Phacelia for sustainable food source for the bees. (A video of a test plot we did last year is seen down below. Hint: the phone took poor audio so turn up your volume to hear the buzzing of the bees!)
Thank you for your support in helping us make a difference. Even a five dollar donation will go a long ways to helping.
Fun facts about Honey Bees
· You're considered a hobbyist beekeeper if you have one hundred or less bee hives.
· Worker bees are all female bees that do all the work in and outside of the hive. Worker bees live 6-8 weeks in the summer but live longer through the winter.
· Drones are male’s bees that are larger than the worker bee, but shorter than the queen bee. Drones do not work and do not have a stinger, unlike the workers and queen bee. A drone’s sole purpose is to mate virgin queen bees on their mating flight. When winter comes or when food becomes scarce the drones are forced out of the hive by the worker bees since the drones are a drain on the colonies honey stores for winter.
· Queen bees can live from one to five years old growing to be about twice the length of a worker bee. I have once even heard of a queen bee living to be seven years old. Queen bees have a non-barbed stinger, so they won’t die from stinging, unlike worker bees. A good, prolific queen can roughly lay up to 2,500 eggs per day, if the queen bee is removed from the hive, within 15 minutes, the whole colony will know. The queen bee has control over if she wants to lay male or female eggs. If she uses stored sperm to fertilize the egg, the larva that hatches is female workers. If the egg is left unfertilized, the larva that hatches is male. So that means, female bees inherit genes from their mothers and their fathers while Drones (male bees) inherit only genes from their mothers.
· Bees communicate through pheromones and special bee dances.
· The peak population of a colony of honeybees usually in mid-summer can have a population of 20,000 to 80,000 bees per colony.
· Bees maintain a temperature of around 92 degrees Fahrenheit or 33.4 Celsius in their central brood nest regardless of what the outside temperature is.
· Bees do not hibernate but remain active all winter long clustering together in a ball for warmth. The bees on the outside rotate from the outside of the cluster to the warm inside of the cluster as the bees on the inside rotate to the outside.
· Bees fly outside the hive usually when temperatures rise above 50 degrees, but on rare occasions, bees will fly at lower temperatures.
· A honeybee can fly 24 km in an hour or at a speed of 15 mph. Its wings beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats per minute.
· To produce just one pound of beeswax, six to eight pounds of honey is ingested to build the honeycomb cells used to raise their babies in, to store nectar, honey, and pollen in.
· Bees carry pollen on their hind legs called a pollen basket collected from flowers. Pollen is a source of protein for the hive and is needed to feed to the baby bees to help them grow.
· Honey bees account for nearly 80% of crop pollination in the United States of America.
· Bees are the only insect in the world that make food that humans can eat.
· For every 100 beekeepers, 95% are hobbyists, 4% sideliners, and 1% are full time or commercial beekeepers.
· Honey has natural preservatives so bacteria can't grow in it.
· In an excavation of a tomb at Egypt’s famous pyramids pots of honey were found dating back approximately 3,000 years old. It’s the world’s oldest sample ever found that is still perfectly edible to eat.
· The record harvest for one colony is 404 pounds of honey, by the Aebis Family in 1974.
· There are some plants bees collect nectar from that are poisonous to honey bees, some of which include Rhododendron, Trumpet flower, or angel’s trumpet, Oleander, Yellow Jessamine, Mountain Laurel, Stargazer lily, Heliconia, Bog rosemary, Amaryllis.
You’ve probably heard at one point or another about the die-off of the honey bee population. More officially known as the colony collapse disorder (CCD) that was first reported back in 2006. This is a silent war to save the honey bees that’s not taken serious enough by the general public. You often hear the call to arms to save the whales, protect the abused animals, and so on, but where's the call to arms for the honey bees? That’s where we come in. With your support, we're on a mission to help safeguard the future of the honey bees and even humanity. It would be a very different world without our little pollinating friends.
An In-depth Look
According to the EPA, the theories that researchers are focusing on that may have caused CCD is…
· Increased losses due to the invasive varroa mite (a pest of honey bees).
· New or emerging diseases such as Israeli Acute Paralysis virus and the gut parasite Nosema.
· Pesticide poisoning through exposure to pesticides applied to crops or for in-hive insect or mite control.
· Stress bees experience due to management practices such as transportation to multiple locations across the country for providing pollination services.
· Changes to the habitat where bees forage.
· Inadequate forage/poor nutrition.
· Potential immune-suppressing stress on bees caused by one or a combination of factors identified above.
we believe strongly all the theories above played a part, some more than others in leading to the CCD in one way or another. What the vast majority of people fail to see is the underlying problem to CCD that even beekeepers tend to overlook. Which brings us to the fundamental issue of the breeding of queen honey bees with poor genetics. When poor quality queen bees are bred passing on poor genetics to their offspring, it makes them, and their hive more susceptible to dying from the potential causes listed above. You could argue bees being poisoned by pesticides applied to crops has nothing to do with the issue of poor quality queen bees being bred. However, this just wouldn’t be true. A poor quality queen bee bred with inferior week genetic traits will be far more susceptible to dying including her fellow faimly members from exposure to pesticides applied to crops. Certainly far more so than its stronger healthier counterparts that will have a greater chance of survival to these unfortunate circumstances of pesticides being used.
You might be thinking as you read this, "well my hives are doing just fine." Yes, we hope they are, but what happens when your hives get sick and die out from diseases or mites in the hive? Where do you get new ones? As queen honey bee breeders it's our job to safeguard the honey bee population from being wiped out by such things through our selective breeding programs. By breeding queen bees naturally with genetics more resilient to diseases and mites every year, we help prevent the mass die-off of the honey bee populations across the nation.
Sadly a great many large-scale queen bee breeders are solely in it for the profit. By cutting corners in the raising of new queen bees that are sold across the country, it weakens the genetic pool of honey bees all across the nation that can one day lead to a catastrophe and further CCD. A few examples of poor breeding practices would be improperly mated queens from raising too many new queen bees at one time and having a lack of drones (male bees) to mate with the new virgin queen bees properly. Producing too many queens bee at one time in a beehive that results in some of the new queen bees getting less royal jelly in there cells thats needed in the development of healthy and strong queen bee larva. Having queen bee mating yards in locations near other commercial beekeepers or areas where feral Africanized honey bees (killer bees) are known to be present that leads to uncontrollable genetics in open mated queen bees. Using treatments in their hives to help their bee colonies survive diseases and mites in the hive, but by doing this, you're allowing colonies to pass on genetics that can't survive infestations of mites or diseases on their own.
The list of failures goes on, but don’t get us wrong. There are many queen bee breeders who do care and try to produce quality queen bees, but generally, fall short in one area or another, unfortunately, whether they see it or not. Perhaps we may be rebuked by some fellow queen breeders, but it doesn't change the facts.
Who are we?
We are a small group of like-minded queen bee breeders and volunteers who have a mission to safeguard the future of the honey bee, and humanity. We seek to breed quality queen bees to be shipped to beekeepers across the nation that will pass on their healthy strong genetic traits to help minimize the effects of future colony collapse disorder. For our new location, we've secured one hundred sixty acres of farmland in a remote rural area in eastern Oregon that is perfect for raising and mating new queen bees. Unfortunately, it lacks nectar sources for the honey bees to survive on. However, it’s a problem that can be easy Remedied. Before we move the last of the colonies of honey bees to the new site we now would like to start planting spring, summer, and fall forage crops for the bees. Primary Lacy Phacelia will be planted in blocks at staggered times for continuous blooming of flowers from spring to fall. This will allow us to expand the number of colonies of honey bees that can live in one location year round at our honey bee breeding sanctuary.
Our Breeding Program
The extensive breeding program we use is scrupulous and methodical. All bee hives are numbered for identification for research notes as well as the complete history on each colony and its queen bee.
For Example color, aggression of the workers, parentage, of the queens, the population size, weight of the colony, How quickly they build up in spring, How good do their brood patterns look, How much honey they have stored up, How much propolis do they use in the hive, How well they overwinter, How much pollen they have store up, How old the queen bee is, How clean do they keep the hive, have they been sick or infested with parasitic insects, How did they fair if they have been sick or infested with parasitic insects. How often do they try to create their own swarm queen bee cells and supersedure queen bee cells (new queen bees), How well and fast do they build new wax comb, and so on.
In the above picture, you'll see a queen bee with a white dot on her back. Aside from the white dot making it easier in locating a queen bee in the hive and knowing for a fact that is the original queen you’ve been keeping track of. The primary purpose is to identify the year the queen was born that all beekeepers go by using the International Color Chart. So the queen bee in the picture above with the white dot was born in 2016.
Years ending in 0 or 5 are blue.
Years ending in 1 or 6 are white.
Years ending in 2 or 7 are yellow.
Years ending in 3 or 8 are red.
Years ending in 4 or 9 are green.
Unlike other queen bee breeders, we breed queen bees, so they live longer not just be productive longer. Our hives are treatment free so in other words we don’t use any pesticides, antibiotics, and such to combat American foulbrood disease (AFB), Chalkbrood disease, Sacbrood disease, Nosema disease, Varroa mite, Tropilaelaps mite, Tracheal mite, Beetle, Ants, Wasps and hornets, Wax moths and other Lepidoptera. By having treatment free hives, it allows the breeding of bees naturally resistant to pesticides, antibiotics don’t need to be used in the hives.
Our bees overwinter eating their own honey that they collected from flowers, unlike many commercial beekeepers who remove every ounce of honey from their hives then feed them high-fructose corn syrup to survive on during winter. That’s equivalent to only feeding candy to your kids and expect them to be healthy with poor nutrition. Well, isn't honey just sugar you might ask? Yes, it is a natural sugar, but unlike high-fructose corn syrup, raw honey contains natural sugar (80 percent), water (18 percent), and 2 percent minerals, vitamins, and amino acids. (Vitamin B6, thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid and Calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and zinc) So it does make a difference in the health of the bees when they eat their own honey they collected from flowers.
How your donations are helping?
The honey bee industry is an expensive endeavor whether you're starting out, expanding, or even if it's just maintenance it’s a hard business to be in. It’s even more challenging if you're in it for the bees sake and you're not in it solely for the profit. With your support in helping us safeguard the future of the honey bees, your donations will assist in the acquisition of seed, primarily Lacy Phacelia for sustainable food source for the bees. (A video of a test plot we did last year is seen down below. Hint: the phone took poor audio so turn up your volume to hear the buzzing of the bees!)
Thank you for your support in helping us make a difference. Even a five dollar donation will go a long ways to helping.
Fun facts about Honey Bees
· You're considered a hobbyist beekeeper if you have one hundred or less bee hives.
· Worker bees are all female bees that do all the work in and outside of the hive. Worker bees live 6-8 weeks in the summer but live longer through the winter.
· Drones are male’s bees that are larger than the worker bee, but shorter than the queen bee. Drones do not work and do not have a stinger, unlike the workers and queen bee. A drone’s sole purpose is to mate virgin queen bees on their mating flight. When winter comes or when food becomes scarce the drones are forced out of the hive by the worker bees since the drones are a drain on the colonies honey stores for winter.
· Queen bees can live from one to five years old growing to be about twice the length of a worker bee. I have once even heard of a queen bee living to be seven years old. Queen bees have a non-barbed stinger, so they won’t die from stinging, unlike worker bees. A good, prolific queen can roughly lay up to 2,500 eggs per day, if the queen bee is removed from the hive, within 15 minutes, the whole colony will know. The queen bee has control over if she wants to lay male or female eggs. If she uses stored sperm to fertilize the egg, the larva that hatches is female workers. If the egg is left unfertilized, the larva that hatches is male. So that means, female bees inherit genes from their mothers and their fathers while Drones (male bees) inherit only genes from their mothers.
· Bees communicate through pheromones and special bee dances.
· The peak population of a colony of honeybees usually in mid-summer can have a population of 20,000 to 80,000 bees per colony.
· Bees maintain a temperature of around 92 degrees Fahrenheit or 33.4 Celsius in their central brood nest regardless of what the outside temperature is.
· Bees do not hibernate but remain active all winter long clustering together in a ball for warmth. The bees on the outside rotate from the outside of the cluster to the warm inside of the cluster as the bees on the inside rotate to the outside.
· Bees fly outside the hive usually when temperatures rise above 50 degrees, but on rare occasions, bees will fly at lower temperatures.
· A honeybee can fly 24 km in an hour or at a speed of 15 mph. Its wings beat 200 times per second or 12,000 beats per minute.
· To produce just one pound of beeswax, six to eight pounds of honey is ingested to build the honeycomb cells used to raise their babies in, to store nectar, honey, and pollen in.
· Bees carry pollen on their hind legs called a pollen basket collected from flowers. Pollen is a source of protein for the hive and is needed to feed to the baby bees to help them grow.
· Honey bees account for nearly 80% of crop pollination in the United States of America.
· Bees are the only insect in the world that make food that humans can eat.
· For every 100 beekeepers, 95% are hobbyists, 4% sideliners, and 1% are full time or commercial beekeepers.
· Honey has natural preservatives so bacteria can't grow in it.
· In an excavation of a tomb at Egypt’s famous pyramids pots of honey were found dating back approximately 3,000 years old. It’s the world’s oldest sample ever found that is still perfectly edible to eat.
· The record harvest for one colony is 404 pounds of honey, by the Aebis Family in 1974.
· There are some plants bees collect nectar from that are poisonous to honey bees, some of which include Rhododendron, Trumpet flower, or angel’s trumpet, Oleander, Yellow Jessamine, Mountain Laurel, Stargazer lily, Heliconia, Bog rosemary, Amaryllis.
Organizer
Dolan Crompton
Organizer
Portland, OR
