206 - Ellen Topitzhofer - The Holy Grail: Banking Queens Over the Winter

[00:00:00] Andony Melathopoulos: To my faithful listeners in the province of Alberta. I think finally of the years, I spent at the agriculture and AgriFood Canada honeybee lab working under Dr. Steve personnel. There were many things I loved about that job. One thing that comes to mind is this room on the second floor of the main building that was stuffed full of B journals going all the way back to the 19th century.

[00:00:21] It was a real delight to spend any amount of time in that room. And it was in that room that I discovered the holy grail. How to get queen bees through the winner in a bank. Now, for those of you who aren't beekeepers maybe this is lost on you, but Queens are abundant late in the year. It's easy to make them and breed them and make them, but it's hard to get them in the first thing in the spring.

[00:00:46] And so what this paper from 1969 by harp described was getting these Queens into one colony and banking them all the way. Through the winter now subsequently there've been some pioneers in this work. There was also the thesis in that room was the thesis of Margaret doctrine. A dear friend of mine who recently passed, who also rediscovered this work and tried to get it going here in the Pacific Northwest and subsequently past guests like Heather, Hugo and Shelley Hoover had been working on this as well as the university of Gwelf and university of will vow, but there really hasn't been.

[00:01:19] Taking up of this work here in the Pacific Northwest until now, I'm really excited this week to welcome back Ellen, dopants over from the OSU Sakili lab. She's been actually cracking this nut recently and she's got a research project on how to bank Queens. She also has a brand new publication on how to ship queen cells that has been funded by project APIs, M so some real practical tips in this episode.

[00:01:42] But before we get started with the episode, I want to remind you, March 5th is coming up. That's the day. Is the annual event this year, it's going to be virtual. It's the biggest conference dedicated to pollinators in the Pacific Northwest, it's going to be featuring a Livia messenger Carroll from the bees in your backyard.

[00:02:00] Also, she's been working on a Western native bee field guide. So always exciting hearing from Olivia. Get your tickets now. I'm going to have the link in the show notes again, that Saturday, March 5th, and anybody around the country can attend this year because it's virtual and I bet you next year, it's going to be back in Albany.

[00:02:18] So last chance to attend the event. And without further ado, here we go. This episode with Ellen Topen Sofer talking about banking Queens. We shouldn't have recorded this in the BR cause they're like in person, but I guess it's still a little cold in Western Oregon. We had that nice, beautiful weekend. And now we're, it's cool again.

[00:02:39] Yep. But you've come back from almond pollination. And I think one of the things that you were mentioning is that I think many people are hearing about this. It's just been a very fast bloom in California

[00:02:50] Ellen Topitzhofer: this year. Yes. It's been what people describe as a flash bloom. There are many parts of California, the almonds are in full bloom right now.

[00:02:59] I'm even starting to see some pedal fall in the Northern part. Also what's interesting about this year is that there are some significant delays of queen orders from Hawaii. And so that is something that also, so you have this really early bloom. Fairly early, but it's going to be over sooner than I think what a lot of beekeepers anticipated and at least for some beekeepers, they don't have their Hawaiian sourced Queens when they need them.

[00:03:31] They're just, they're going to, they're about, two, three weeks delayed, which can make a pretty big difference for beekeepers with their March management in almonds.

[00:03:40] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. So before I want to get on, we're going to be talking almost exclusively about Queens on a pickup on these Hawaiian Queens in this.

[00:03:47] But is a flash bloom. Good for beekeepers. Is it good for the crop? Is it bad for the crop, the bathroom, the beekeepers? How does the, these intense blooms, how does it play out in terms of how everybody ends up at the end of the day?

[00:04:01] Ellen Topitzhofer: That's a good question. I think from a grower's perspective, I'm not exactly sure if it's a bad thing.

[00:04:07] I know all the cultivars are blooming in very quick succession. I think the growers have to have a different management approach for something like that. For beekeepers, it can be tough because you have this huge rush of almond or pollen collection that happens, and sometimes that's difficult to manage.

[00:04:29] And so in a flash bloom situation, you can, you may not have enough time to imagine.

[00:04:36] Andony Melathopoulos: I think would be your callings of Komodo winter. They go to California and they get a little pollen. They grow a little, get a little Palm and they grow a little and now it's just they got as much pollen as that small little colony or the colleague could gather.

[00:04:48] And then they're out of pollen like that. I imagine it can be tough on them. They don't quite get moving.

[00:04:53] Ellen Topitzhofer: So with the growth that, the general growth curve, if you have. If you have your, instead of having, like maybe a three or four week window of where this growth curve could go, you may only have, I don't know, 10 days, two weeks in the case of a flash bloom,

[00:05:12] Andony Melathopoulos: it was like the kids, it, people who are my generation remember SIM ant, it was this little video game where you would take your aunts and some resources up here and your aunt mess would grow.

[00:05:23] And. Resources felt like somebody's hotdog lands and the plot of grass. But I imagine that's the thing is like you need sustain gross to get a honeybee colony up and ready and

[00:05:34] Ellen Topitzhofer: yeah. And with almond pollination, that actually brings up a good point for most. B colonies, especially in the Northern part of the U S you have to have your colonies ready to be rented in almonds in January.

[00:05:46] That is arguably pretty unseasonably large. You need really large colonies when, for naturally those colonies would still be in winter mode. So yeah, I think that having large colonies and by that, An average of eight frames of bees typically is what you need to be to have a rentable unit minimum of four frames of bees as colony strength.

[00:06:09] That's, beekeepers put a lot of inputs into their, supplemental feed, protein supplement, sugar syrup to get those colonies. Ready to grow in January.

[00:06:22] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. Yeah. All right. But as he mentioned, this is an early, this is a very early crop for a lot of people. This is low for everybody.

[00:06:31] This is the first crop that they're going to pollinate. And so one of the things that comes up is you come out of winter and you find a colleague queen lists, or you've got like queen problems and you mentioned. That Hawaii, which produces the earliest Queens for the U S market that I am aware of.

[00:06:49] Doesn't really have Queens quite ready in January. Like you just mentioned with this flash bloom, Hawaiian Queens may not even match up with the colony growth. And so just paint that picture. Why do people need extremely early Queens that I get it right? Is it like pulling a.

[00:07:07] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yeah. So beekeepers often, they'll have a handful of colonies that are queen lists or they'll have Queens that just aren't.

[00:07:14] They aren't healthy enough to have a colony grow in a way that a bee beekeeper needs that colony to grow during almonds. And so there's this pretty high demand for Queens in January and February for those purposes and beekeepers, they can't buy Queens outside of the. And so as far as queen supply, the earliest available Queens come out of Hawaii.

[00:07:40] And the first round of queen sales from Hawaii usually happened the last week of February and into March. It varies from year to year. Shortly after that you'll get queen cells. California sourced mated Queens. The queen cells would also come out of California or Southern states that happens in March.

[00:08:03] Okay. So you have, here queen supply, although limited starts as early as late February and then March the bulk, of those very first Queens happened in March. So you have, January, February, if you don't have. Queens of your own within your operation to supply your demand.

[00:08:23] Your

[00:08:25] Andony Melathopoulos: now we've got a great publication OSU, your colleague Carolyn Breece and the Geely and Harry Vanderpool or audit of making nukes. You have these smaller callings that you can plug in. They already got a queen in them. I guess that's one option, but that's a lot of. The nuc is a, you got to tie four frames up and you have to feed a lot of syrup.

[00:08:47] Ellen Topitzhofer: Exactly. Yeah. So the concept of so so looking at that technique and also looking at the technique that we're going to talk about today, which is overwintering queen banks. The concept is you have Queens mated Queens that you either purchase or produce yourself in the fall. You overwinter them some way.

[00:09:09] So that you can have them available in January. So yeah. So the extension publication that we have is looking at overwintering Queens and individual five frame nukes, nucleus colonies. You can also do that same thing with even tiny. Meeting nucleus colonies. And then you can also do them with banks and yeah the main advantage to overwintering Queens in a bank colony is that you can, for one single bank colony unit, you can overwinter manage.

[00:09:43] Caged Queens. So when it comes to the amount of resources that you put into, say a bank colony, it's going to be a lot less than overwintering five frame Queens and five frame nucleus colony. So for example, you can, overwinter 30 Queens in a bank instead of overwintering the making up 30 nukes to overwinter those.

[00:10:09] I that's,

[00:10:10] Andony Melathopoulos: That's a lot more be a worker bee to queen ratios, yeah. Okay. So when we're talking about a bank, probably some of listeners, or even honeybee people, there's I'm a gardener and it's banks, what is w what do they mean by banks? So let's just go back to the bank that everybody's familiar with.

[00:10:28] The middle of summer, you get a shipment of Queens. You don't have a place for them all. And so what do you do? That's a regular summer. How do you make a regular summer queen bank? And what, describe what we're looking at? Is this a regular calling? Is

[00:10:42] Ellen Topitzhofer: it, yeah, it is. You can, you don't have to make it a full sized colony to make a bank in the fields

[00:10:51] Andony Melathopoulos: have had nukes that you've done them in.

[00:10:53] We've done it

[00:10:55] Ellen Topitzhofer: for a single is easier to manage if you're doing it. Long-term but basically what you do is before those Queens arrive, you can do it the day before you can do it. The day of you go into a colony that no is healthy, it's low. It's low on Varroa mites. It's got enough food. It's got enough bees.

[00:11:14] Enough to keep the amount of Queens that you're going to put into that bank warm.

[00:11:19] Andony Melathopoulos: One, you need enough bees. Yeah. You

[00:11:21] Ellen Topitzhofer: need to select a colony. That's going to be. Big and clean, basically free of mites and bruises disease.

[00:11:27] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. Our big clean calling. What else makes it, makes this a good I guess you don't want another queen in there exactly.

[00:11:34] Ellen Topitzhofer: Between us. Yeah, there is. I know some beekeepers that have tried to do a queen, bank with very marginal success. So currently I definitely recommend that you remove the mated queen. That's laying eggs in that colony. You can do it a day before. If I do it the day before. It just saves me time when the, on shipping day, when those Queens arrive, I'll put some temp queen synthetic queen pheromone inside that bank colony to hold him over, hold them

[00:12:09] Andony Melathopoulos: all kind

[00:12:10] Ellen Topitzhofer: of disperse.

[00:12:10] Okay. Got you then that about 15. Before I put those Queens on, I'll take out that synthetic queen for amount, or if I'm making it up on the spot, I'll wait about 15 minutes so that they know that they are now queen lists. And then you have a banking frame that holds all of your caged Queens. That could be, I've seen a whole different array of designs of banking frames.

[00:12:32] The ones we got

[00:12:33] Andony Melathopoulos: were made by the great Harry Vanderpool though. Yes.

[00:12:36] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yeah, and he has a great design. It's a very thin, easy to produce cheap to produce. You actually as far as I know, you can't buy banking frames from a manufacturer. You have to make them yourself. So his are made with welding rods and.

[00:12:52] And would a similar, it looks similar to an actual frame, right? It looks like for

[00:12:57] Andony Melathopoulos: you, from, if you look down from the top, it looks like a frame and then you pull it out and it's he doesn't have the comb, but it has an open space where you put the caged Queens, like they're in the same cages that you get them in bulk.

[00:13:09] And so they're, I guess they're just lined up side by side, like a little gallery.

[00:13:14] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The key is you want to make sure that they don't fall over. On the banking framer out of the banking frame you want to make sure that the, you don't have any kind of I guess opportunity for either the Queens or the workers to chew through a cork.

[00:13:30] You want your, you want any kind of quirk to be flush with, the.

[00:13:40] Yeah, you don't want to queen to get out that would result in all of the other Queens or the majority of the Queens to die, which is yeah. Catastrophic when you're making a bank. So yeah, generally following that, making sure the other thing that you want to do with your banking frame is you want to make sure that.

[00:14:00] The mesh screen of your queen cages are accessible to,

[00:14:06] Andony Melathopoulos: are you seeing oh, because some of these have a back and it's the, I guess the thing is that these, it's not just, they're keeping them warm, but they're feeding them

[00:14:14] Ellen Topitzhofer: exactly the two right. Main functionality. Of a bank is that it's an incubator.

[00:14:20] It keeps those Queens warm. And they, the worker bees in that bank feed those colonies or those Queens you could in theory, do this yourself as a human. There's an old paper on it. I think they were able to. These researchers were able to keep these Queens alive in an incubator set to 95, but they had to constantly feed them.

[00:14:42] And so anyway, that's just one. Yeah, I guess

[00:14:45] Andony Melathopoulos: that's the other option for people, we'll get into wintering again, when you get Queens and now you've got them for three, four days, you can keep them in a fund. Your kids. A little water every

[00:14:54] Ellen Topitzhofer: day. Yeah. And some, and like maybe a little bit of honey as well.

[00:14:58] You could do that. The other thing you could do is you could keep them in the shipping box. In a way I forget

[00:15:04] Andony Melathopoulos: I'm Canadian. So I always think there's attendance in the cages. I guess you Americans don't have, it's just a queen.

[00:15:11] Ellen Topitzhofer: Even Queensland three holer cages with, the seven worker attendance.

[00:15:15] And there, I think you could keep those alive for, three, four days as well. Yeah. Yeah. And you could also, with the way that we usually get our shipments, it's not there. They're in the Queens. Are by themselves inside their cages and their California mini cages with, scoop fulls of loose shipping attendance.

[00:15:35] You could in theory, keep those alive for awhile, but not a

[00:15:39] Andony Melathopoulos: battery box tended to be okay. Can I've ever told you my horrifying undergraduate research story? So I was doing this thing with. It was a, I can't even remember. It's like my undergraduate thesis and I was, I had, I got 40 JZ BZ cages in those little JZ, BZ, plastic shipping things.

[00:16:00] And I was working and got, I think it was, I worked till it got dark and I left the bees without the Queens, without attendance on the dashboard. Didn't bring them in. And I got them in the. And they look dead and I was like, oh no, I can't a little bit Queens. And so I turned the turn, a truck on heater came on or driving back, and then they all came into life again.

[00:16:27] It was like, they were just cold. Yeah. I never told mark Winston that he probably revoke my PhD and send me back to grad school.

[00:16:36] Ellen Topitzhofer: But now we know the effects of I know

[00:16:41] Andony Melathopoulos: I'm not telling you what research paper that is. All the past, what stays in undergrad happens at undergrad stays in undergrad. Okay.

[00:16:49] Anyway but, so I guess that the one last thing about just summer queen banks, I suppose you make them up fresh the way you described, but sometimes you want to keep a quick, how long can you keep these going, queen bank and how do you keep them going?

[00:17:03] Ellen Topitzhofer: So then the period of time. I will hear some beekeepers say, I if I put Queens in a bank, I want to get them out of that bank as fast as possible, because, and I can see how, beekeepers would think that that Queens somehow don't do well in a bank.

[00:17:21] But I'm a firm believer that's not true. You can't. Bank Queen's longterm. And what we're finding out with this project too, is that their quality is isn't damaged by long-term banking. Either when they're actually introduced into colonies eventually, but at OSU we'll have a bank.

[00:17:42] Or multiple banks going on starting in April and may and all the way through until October a full field season. A really long time we do that with our, we requeen everything every year. We do that for research purposes, but we keep the old Queens. And so that's when. We do this longterm banking and we'll use those Queens throughout the season.

[00:18:03] We always end up finding a use for them. And the way that we keep that bake, a well-maintained big, and yeah, big as the main part is that we do have to actively maintain that colony so that there. In that queen bank, there's no lane queen. So we have to consistently supply that bank colony with young Queens,

[00:18:26] Andony Melathopoulos: because otherwise the bees just get older and older grumpier.

[00:18:31] Ellen Topitzhofer: And if you don't right, if you don't have younger bees worker bees present, you do risks. The Queen's not being well attended as well. That's right. Cause

[00:18:39] Andony Melathopoulos: they're the ones that, their glands expand. They're the ones that provide. Okay. So they're the ones that,

[00:18:47] Ellen Topitzhofer: they're the ones that feed the Queens.

[00:18:49] Okay. Yeah. So there are two ways you can really do it. You can put brood frames in from dope, from donor colonies into your bank colonies either. Once every two weeks if you do decide to put brood frames in there, you have to return back to the colony, to cut queen cells that those, the bank to colony could potentially make those workers could potentially draw out queen cells.

[00:19:18] Andony Melathopoulos: There are Queens. The full signal compliment the brood CA it's just not all there. So they may start making a queen cell,

[00:19:27] Ellen Topitzhofer: assuming it's a pheromone imbalance where there's a really low amount of brood, Fairmount, or really high amount of queen pheromone. I'm not actually sure why they are stimulated to draw Queensland.

[00:19:39] That was actually

[00:19:40] Andony Melathopoulos: my undergraduate thesis project. Oh yeah. But let's not talk about it right now. I'm squeamish about it. But but I guess the thing is that they can rear queen. And then that queen pops out and unbeknownst to you. She goes through and systematically stings all your, all the Queens in the bank.

[00:19:56] And that's why you got to go back in. So you give it a frame of brood gives a flush of nice young bees, but then you go back just the three, four days later and just, you can then see if the queen cells starting to form and just knock

[00:20:09] Ellen Topitzhofer: them all off. I actually, I recommend waiting a little bit longer than three days because sometimes it's hard to.

[00:20:16] Yeah. So what I'll do is I'll go back in, take the brood, frames out, shake the bees off of it. Look for those queen cells to then remove and put that back in. I do that between seven to nine days after you put the, that brood into the bank colony. Okay. So that's key is to make sure you go back and cut those cells.

[00:20:39] Andony Melathopoulos: How frequently are you like giving them a flush of

[00:20:41] Ellen Topitzhofer: newbies? I'm doing it once every. Okay. Other beekeepers I've talked to recommend doing it once a week.

[00:20:48] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. Okay. So let's take a quick break at this point, and then let's transition to your research onto doing this banking long-term but through the winter.

[00:21:02] All right, let's take a quick break. It's just like a, it's like the old silent movies we have a little clapper to.

[00:21:09] Ellen Topitzhofer: Is that just to signal? Is that actually doing something with the app that you have? No, it's just like in the old movies,

[00:21:15] Andony Melathopoulos: it's it's just like you getting ready to take, I got to get one of these listeners.

[00:21:20] If any of you have one of those. Movie clickers. We really please send them to us. Actually. I'm going to, I'm going to get one after the show's over. Okay. But back to, so we're talking about these banks in the summer, super useful. You can order a bunch of Queens and then, ah, geez, I'm going through some colonies.

[00:21:38] Something's wrong. I got, I'm just going to walk over to the bank, pull a queen out, put it in and just keep working and got this nice little store without having to call somebody up. And I need three Queens today to 20. 17. Okay. So that's, everybody knows this, a great thing. You've got to get your special cage made up and sounds like a piece of cake.

[00:21:57] Now we're coming around to this problem that we were talking about almonds it's January, nobody has Queens and these queen banks were not at least traditionally meant to go through winter. This is where your research comes in. So tell us about the challenges is this, I know people have tried this in the past.

[00:22:17] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yeah. It had been done before we decided to look into it in Oregon mostly in Canada. Yay. Yay. When they have longer winters, but the main difference about a bank colony that goes through the winter is that you are not constantly putting younger bees in there. So you're your. You're not putting brood frames in or bulk bees into that.

[00:22:41] You're not regularly maintaining that bank like you would in the field season.

[00:22:45] Andony Melathopoulos: These just get older and older with time.

[00:22:47] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yes. Yeah. They are, they have a different physiology. They are winter bees. And so they can live that long, but there's a lot more preparation to making that bake so that it can.

[00:23:01] So that they can all survive through the winter. You don't have as much flexibility in boosting that colonies, population, for example. The other thing you have to make sure they have enough food and they do have to be like really big. But it feels he's a nuke. Okay. So we're a field.

[00:23:17] These in bank we can't, you can run it in a single or an, a five frame nuke, but you can't do. Okay.

[00:23:23] Andony Melathopoulos: So tell us how you start. So you're, when are we starting our winter bank? When what's the months that you're starting

[00:23:29] Ellen Topitzhofer: to do that? Yeah. So the goal of, one of the goals of my project is to make sure that I can come up with a system of selecting a colony or multiple colonies in a general commercial beekeeping operation so that they can do it as quickly as possible.

[00:23:46] In the fall, but again, there's a lot of preparation that you have to do to select these colonies. So I started about a month before those Queens are ready to go into the bank. Okay. A

[00:23:58] Andony Melathopoulos: month before. And this is when, what month before?

[00:24:00] Ellen Topitzhofer: So I like to put it, you could start your bank in September, but I like to start my bank for the winter in October,

[00:24:08] Andony Melathopoulos: you're doing this during the preparations in September, then.

[00:24:12] Ellen Topitzhofer: So what I've been doing for the last two years, and it's worked out really well, is I'm working with a commercial beekeeper. He will send me to two or three of his super productive yards. I go through those colonies. I see which ones are the biggest ones I S I mark a tag, all of the colonies that have at least 12 frames or more is they're pretty big colonies for some timbered with these.

[00:24:41] Yeah. Okay. Yes. The supers are at this point also for those who are not familiar with like general Western, Oregon management, these colonies have also undergone several rounds of metal side application. They may not be completely done with their might management regimen, but they are well on their way to being they've been treated for a while for with specifically for Varroa mites.

[00:25:06] Okay. All the ones.

[00:25:07] Andony Melathopoulos: That was one of the things you talked about with the summer ones you want nice, clean, big, clean beat. So we've selected them. We've gone through, you've found the big strong callings, they're free of lights and parasites. So that's the

[00:25:17] Ellen Topitzhofer: first part. Yeah. And it's, I think it's even more important for an overwintered queen bank because you want to make sure that those bees aren't compromised with viruses going into the winter, because that can really reduce the number of frames of bees over time in the winter.

[00:25:34] So 12 frames of bees or higher from those tagged colonies, I'll take a might sample. So I take a field your standard of cup of 300 bees worker bees that I sample from the brood nest, do an alcohol wash. And then from there I select colonies. In theory, I want the bank to colony. Zero mites in that sample.

[00:25:59] Okay. I have though on on several occasions have also accepted colonies with 0.3 or 0.6 mites per 100 bees. So in that sample of 300 bees, you find two mites or less. Okay. Those colonies still qualify, as a potential bank colony. Okay. So very low. Might levels for, we're talking mid to late September.

[00:26:27] There's a very low mite levels for that time of the year. Okay. So

[00:26:30] Andony Melathopoulos: you've found your three, four colonies now let's say.

[00:26:33] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yeah. Yes. And so then from there. I then I select my queen bank or in my case for my research it's multiple queen banks, 10 or 15 banks. And from there, I make sure that I put enough honey stores on there.

[00:26:52] So the banking frame is going to be in the it's going to be so backtracking getting to the basics, the banked colony that goes over the winter. It's going to be two stories, two boxes, the banking frame. We'll be in the dead center of the top box. That top box is going to be full of honey frames.

[00:27:13] Besides the banking frame, I have found that for Western Oregon, putting about 60 pounds of honey works well. So that's six. Full frames of honey that are deep frames. So I will more often than not the colonies don't have that much honey in them. So I will find either a frames of honey from other colonies or I'll take some stored.

[00:27:41] And put that in there. The key though that I want to emphasize is that one of the big, tough things about the fall is robbing. So sometimes, robbing can be really difficult and to work with, especially when you're moving honey frames around. Oh, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. So what I do is I make sure that I do this.

[00:28:02] I tie. My selection of the banks and the order of the Queens that come in with this Oregon beekeeper that I'm working with so that I can move those honey frames around while they're still in their production yards. And this is it's pretty common for then colonies to be moved out of their production, into an a wintering yard location makes it easier for them. They consolidate a bunch of colonies into one spot makes them easier to move them down to almonds, stuff like that. So I make sure I move the honey frames around before they're moved to their wintering yard location. And then. Then they, so I do that.

[00:28:45] They end up moving to their wintered yard and that's when I put the Queens in, because rotting can get really crazy when you're moving honey frames around. It can also be really tough when you're installing those Queens into your banking frames and then putting them into your banked colonies. You want to really minimize the amount of time you have a colony open or.

[00:29:08] Your Queens out in the open, in that wintered yard. Yeah.

[00:29:12] Andony Melathopoulos: Cause I wasn't robbing Hammons. The bees are all aggressive and everything. Yeah. Okay. So these Queens, clearly they were, they've been banked themselves. Like they must've been bred in August or something. They must've been the last. That came out that you produced for the year, right?

[00:29:30] Okay. So these Queens have a bank already in a kind of regular bank for a month or so, and now you're transferring them in. And that frame, do you pack honey into that frame? The actual banking frame, is there space around it that you want them to draw? Fill up the spaces with honey and

[00:29:47] Ellen Topitzhofer: coal.

[00:29:48] That's a good question. I do a couple of things that I don't know if it really helps or not. And one of those things is putting the Queens around the edges of the banking frame are more susceptible to being chilled, and the very, very outer edges. So what I recommend. Is that instead of putting queen Queens there instead I'll put like some cut comb and put it in inside that empty space with a banking frames.

[00:30:19] Does it really help? And I know I am assuming it adds some kind of insulated factor there that wax yeah. So that's what I do. I have tried to have them draw out. Wax themselves, but it doesn't really work very well. So I just have cut pieces of comb that I'll just stick it. Okay. So

[00:30:38] Andony Melathopoulos: you're in October, you've got these callings that I've very many mites.

[00:30:43] You've moved some honey around to make sure that they've got a good store up front. You've taken your colonies, your Queens. They're filling up this banking. They have a little bit, you don't go right to the edges, just as the cluster contracts. They're just not going to abandon anybody.

[00:30:59] How many Queens are you putting into these things? So

[00:31:02] Ellen Topitzhofer: the cages are California mini cages. You can use other cages too. You can pack them in. I will put corks in, so not candy puck. They have, they come with corks. I'll push those in so that they're flushed with the queen cage and I'll make sure that those cork side are down on the baking frame.

[00:31:24] So they're not exposed. Exactly. Yep. And. The first year we looked at just having 20 Queens and the banks this last winter of 2021 to 2022, we looked at overwintering 30 Queens. So we have a banking frame that has three roads. So we did three rows of 10 and like the center, most portion of that banking frame, we also looked at just 60 Queens all the way through edge to edge.

[00:31:55] And the so the banks, the 30 Queens did remarkably well besides one bank and I want to get back to the one bank. We had, I think an average of 93% survival with 30 Queens going through the winter. And it was about it was mid-October to it would have been mid January when I took that survival.

[00:32:24] Count that for survival count the banks.

[00:32:28] Andony Melathopoulos: Seeing Diana Ross. I am, I did survive.

[00:32:33] Ellen Topitzhofer: There was one bank that had 30 Queens that, and this happened in the first year two with one bank. The, there was this huge amount of queen loss. Like half of the Queens died in the first nine days. So between what happened?

[00:32:48] No, there was the. And I'm so frustrated. Cause I can't, I don't have an exact answer for what happened with this last year, but the first year there was a queen running around in that bank. So it happened to have been a colony that just had two Queens in there because I physically removed one queen and none of the Queens got out of their cages in the banking frame.

[00:33:14] And so that's what happened the first year, but I do not have hunted. For a queen roaming around in there and I couldn't find her, so I don't have an exact answer. So I think moving forward, that's just something that beekeepers are going to have to expect using this technique is you might end up, having having.

[00:33:33] Some kind of issue where you do end up losing a fair number of Queens in that very first, one to two weeks. Sometimes you can explain it and sometimes it might, you might not, I might not have there might've been a hatched out Virgin or something of a cell that I didn't find. Or, it could be a number of reasons why that happened.

[00:33:54] So I think it's probably to be expected that you'll, you might have a, some kind of variance there or an outlier I should say. But

[00:34:03] Andony Melathopoulos: This 30 queen bank seems to be the most reliable. And I guess going all the way back to the beginning of the interview, the people like if you have bank a queen for more than a few days, It's going to go downhill.

[00:34:14] Tell us a little bit about how you're answering that question. So what happens with these Queens in January?

[00:34:20] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yeah and just to conclude the ones with 60 Queens each, before we move on real quick, they did. Okay. But they did I think the average was seven 70% survival with the Queens, with 60 Queens each and there was notably more queen death on.

[00:34:35] Okay. As he thought. Okay.

[00:34:37] Andony Melathopoulos: Yeah. Okay. So January comes around, January, comes around going through your colonies, getting ready for California. What did you do in the experiment?

[00:34:46] Ellen Topitzhofer: So as soon as they were moved to California we also didn't find, we found no to very little queen death by transporting them from Oregon to California for the.

[00:34:58] Andony Melathopoulos: Yeah. So you can put it down in a central location and you can start to work out of it, like a regular blood, like

[00:35:04] Ellen Topitzhofer: yeah. The theory behind it as you'd have a bank in California and you use the Queens as you please. Okay. And. So from there, like when I was in California, this was the last week in January.

[00:35:17] I then started to put brood in those colonies. Alternatively, you can put bulk bees, like a package of bees in there that are really young bees. You can't really do that early in January, but that's something you could do if you're maintaining a field season bank later on. But yeah I started putting two frames of brood.

[00:35:39] And those colonies. And I do that once every two weeks.

[00:35:43] Andony Melathopoulos: All right. But you evaluated whether these Queens were any good. How did you, so the answer to this question, can a queen be banked for this long and not suffer damage? You have an experiment that you do when you get to California.

[00:35:57] Ellen Topitzhofer: Tell us about that.

[00:35:58] Yes. Yeah. So right. Besides evaluating just general survivability. The other big question we have is what are the effects on a queen with this longterm banking? And so in. The last week of January for the last couple of years, I've sampled Queens out of the banks and sent them to the North Carolina queen clinic North Carolina state university queen clinic.

[00:36:24] So they dissected those Queens for me. They. Looked at weight, thorax with, the kind of morphometric measurements. They also looked at their total sperm count. And what is the most interesting one for this particular question is the amount of sperm are still viable. And we have found that there are.

[00:36:49] No differences in between banks that have 30 Queens and 60 Queens each, there was the year before we had a series of controlled Queens that were sampled from just regular colonies and we found. And one instance in one of our replicates the banked Queens were just, they weighed less, they were smaller than the control.

[00:37:16] We also found that there was lower sperm viability, and particularly in the banks that went into indoor store. That was one of our replicates of the first day of study

[00:37:29] Andony Melathopoulos: potato sheds up in Idaho?

[00:37:30] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah. And so they, that was also those banks had pretty low survivability as well. So it's possible that you can have lower sperm viability in a banked colon.

[00:37:47] And it's likely because some of those Queens are chilled on the edges. And so it's really important that we maintain really big colonies. And and also having them in the variable of having them in endorsed. Might be something that, that happened the way that they were stacked or, it's unclear exactly what caused such a variable survivability rate in those in the indoor storage.

[00:38:18] So we're continuing to look at that and we want three years of data to see exactly how. I guess the risk of having a lower percent sperm viability with Queensland banks. The other thing that we're looking at is we're installing those banked Queens in colonies. And so I'm maintaining these banks now in almonds until March, and we're installing those banked Queens into new splits that are made up and we are comparing those.

[00:38:50] Queen's their brood pattern, the colony strength whether that queen lives, how long that queen lives, we're comparing that those, that group of banked Queens with Hawaiian sourced Queens, which we consider that the control, because those are the queen set. Those are the only Queens available. Yeah.

[00:39:09] Andony Melathopoulos: And this is the first year you're doing this.

[00:39:11] Ellen Topitzhofer: So I just looked at this is the it was like, 11 month mark. I looked at so we have one year's worth of data from that. And we have found that

[00:39:22] Andony Melathopoulos: also 11 months after making

[00:39:23] Ellen Topitzhofer: the splits. Yes. Yeah. So we made them up in March of 2021. I just looked at them in late January.

[00:39:32] And I had looked at them throughout the year. Last year, the, there was a fair number of colonies that either replaced their Queens somehow. And actually the biggest drop happened between June and August. But that's the, it was the same case for the Hawaiian. The Queens, there were no differences in just in queen retention and there are no differences in brood patterns or frames of bees as well.

[00:40:02] And so for at least the first year, the banked Queens performed at the same. All

[00:40:10] Andony Melathopoulos: just the last question here is so this work as well as another project that we will have to get you back to talk about the queen cell project. These are both been supported by project DPSM.

[00:40:21] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yes the bank project our primary research funds are from Western Sarah, but project ABSM is working with with us to produce a guide.

[00:40:32] On how to do this and how to make up queen banks, both for just the regular field season and for overwintering

[00:40:38] Andony Melathopoulos: them, because there's already the lots of people talking. You've got a great guide out with project FSM on shipping queen cells. So this is, can be a sort of a companion publication, just giving people ha what we talked about in the podcast and much more detail on how.

[00:40:54] Ellen Topitzhofer: Yes. Yeah. So right. Yep. Project NEPA. Some has a technical guide on, on our other project on shipping queen cells also on indoor storage, which I wasn't directly involved with. But but yeah, so we're going to have a technical guide out on queen banking. We are hoping to have it published later in the year, this year in 2022.

[00:41:14] And so that's, it's exciting. That's

[00:41:17] Andony Melathopoulos: great. I'm looking forward to this. This sounds like a great solution to a problem that I'm sure many people face, and it's really great to see such practical research getting done. So thank you so much. We will be in touch and I'm looking forward to maybe sneaking a few Queens out of your queen bank this summer.

[00:41:34] Ellen Topitzhofer: Sounds good. Thanks for having me on.