For a few of Albuquerque’s beekeepers, a Saturday morning involves prying planks of one-inch wood apart from each other to check up on the health of the hives at the Open Space Visitor Center. Among the six beekeepers were two members of the University of New Mexico’s Beekeeping Club who attended the monthly beekeeping mentoring session.
One of the attendees was Elizabeth Lake, former club secretary and president. Lake said that the responsibilities of a beekeeper are adding and taking away space for the bees as the colony grows, eliminating pests and keeping them healthy.
“We have fun,” Lake said when asked her favorite part about the Beekeeping club. “We’ve had game nights and had movie nights, made native bee houses and gone on field trips.”
Accessing the hives must be done in the morning when temperatures are cooler. If beekeepers attempt to open a top bar hive when it is warm, the vertical swaths of honeycomb can be damaged and the wellbeing of the entire hive is at risk.
Lake said there are other severe risk factors for the honey bees at the OSVC. Veils, gloves and white long sleeved t-shirts are worn as protection against the stings of the bees. Depending on the temperment of the hive, smoke will be puffed by the entrance.
The smoke causes the bees to start gorging on honey inside the hive in preparation for a long flight, making them heavier and docile. After the top is removed from the top bar style hive, the buzzing from the brood becomes enveloping.
Sections of honeycomb hang vertically in a trough, laden with honey, pollen and developing bees. Bees clamor over one another in a frenzy to store pollen and nectar and feed the baby bees which emerge from octagonal pods.
The first hive being checked on was showing signs of a mite infestation. Signs of infestation were evident in individual combs that had been partially chewed through by the bees. This was confirmed when a red-brown speck mite was spotted clinging to the back of a worker bee.
To gauge the severity of a mite finding, beekeepers can perform a number of tests, such as a powdered sugar test. During this test, powdered sugar is poured over the bees and they are left to sit in the jar for a minute. Then the jar is shaken for 60 seconds.
To find the mite count per hundred in a beehive, a few bees are shaken into a container. 300 bees are then scooped out into half a measuring cup. They are then put into a jar with a mesh top. The bees stay in the jar and the mites fall out and are counted by the beekeeper. When a hive reaches the count of three or four mites per 100 bees, the beekeepers consider treatment. The hive at the OSVC was needing treatment.
If left untreated, the varroosis disease from mites can cause wing deformities and wipe out entire bee colonies.
The other member in attendance, Vice President of the UNM beekeeping club Wyatt Stevens, first found out about the club at the Sustainability Expo about a year ago. He said that people need to change their perception of bees.
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“When you see a beehive, don’t let your first thought be to kill the bees,” Wyatt said. “It should be to call someone to remove the bees. Think of them more as something we can help out.”
Yana Apostalon is a freelance reporter with the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted by email at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @yana_aposta.
