# Honey bees and Purple Martins Question



## MikeinCarolina (Mar 9, 2014)

As a bee keeper I would not be keeping purple martins. I used to live in a place where the guy down over the hill had martin houses. Probably 500 yards away - I could watch the martins way up in the air circling around my place picking off my bees. Very frustrating to say the least - and they didn't stop at one.


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## MikeinCarolina (Mar 9, 2014)

I also want to add that the mosquito eating martin is a myth.

http://www.abirdshome.com/pm/myths.htm


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## gnor (Jun 3, 2015)

The myth that Purple Martins eat a lot of mosquitos is exactly that – a myth. They do eat a lot of larger flying insects like bees, so having Martins around your bees would be like putting out an all you can eat buffet.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

MikeinCarolina said:


> As a bee keeper I would not be keeping purple martins. I used to live in a place where the guy down over the hill had martin houses. Probably 500 yards away - I could watch the martins way up in the air circling around my place picking off my bees. Very frustrating to say the least - and they didn't stop at one.


I don't doubt that you saw Martins circling above your bee hives. I see them circling above mine all the time, but to say that you can't be successful having Martins and honey bees is a larger myth than you posted a link to, *but it's absolute hogwash to say that you can't have bees and Martins at the same location.* Martins feed by circling above their housing whether bees are there or not. Mine did it long before I had bees and have not changed. I also have about 40 pairs of nesting Barn Swallows and 15-20 pairs of nesting Tree Swallows. They don't bother my bees at all. I'm sure they pick off an occasional forager or drone but they don't key on bees as a food source.

The man that I bought my first 2 packages of bees from (and the last 2 packages of bees that I have ever bought) told me when I started keeping bees that I would have to get rid of my Martin colony. I told the man that the bees would go before the Martins would. He said he hated Martins and left it at that. People assume because Martins are aerial insectivores that they feed on bees. They may eat an occasional bee, but they don't key on them or feed on them as a primary source of their diet. They do eat key on dragonflies, which are a predator of honey bees. 

I have had a Purple Martin "supercolony" (100+ pairs) for over a decade. I have had bees for 3 years. While I am still an uncertain new beekeeper at times, I will stand toe to toe with anyone in the US with my knowledge and experience of Purple Martins. While this isn't a large number in the grand scheme of things I have raised around 40 queens here since I started (either by harvesting queen cells, or with other methods and including supercedes as well) I HAVE HAD 100% SUCCESS IN QUEENS RETURNING MATED TO MY HIVES. Even though having 40 queens mate and head a colony is a small number compared to the thousands per year than queen breeders raise, the percentage of success can't be improved upon.


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## centrarchid (Jun 13, 2014)

Eastern Kingbirds more problematic. They forage more at altitude honey bees fly. Also more inclined to hawk an apiary.


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## jfmcree (Mar 10, 2014)

I started a new apiary on a farm this Spring. There are about 15 adult pairs of Purple Martins on the farm, plus juveniles not yet mating. Their nests are about 300 yards from the hives. I rarely even see a Purple Martin around when I visit the hives. I have not seen any impact on the bees, but would also never notice if some bees left and never came back, as I am sure happens every day for a variety of reasons. It does not concern me at all, so far, since the hives seem to be doing well. Bees are a part of the ecosystem and food chain like every other creature: eat AND be eaten!


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

If you want to see martins feeding, find your local drone congregation area.
Walt


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

wcubed said:


> If you want to see martins feeding, find your local drone congregation area.
> Walt









These guys like them also. Every day before the drones started to exit the hive, two of these, and a few other birds would show up for what I came to call the feasting on the drones. You could also tell when the drones were returning.

Alex

P.S. This one is looking right at my hives.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Purple martins are highly location and environmental condition specific. If you are lucky enough to have the right area to host a nest, I wouldn't hesitate to keep it and your bees. I have a wonderful martin house, but, alas, no takers for it. 

I have dozens of barn, bank, and tree swallow nests. I'm sure they snatch a bee or two. But so do mockingbirds and kingbirds. 

I am really envious of BradBee's martin establishment!

Enj.


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## centrarchid (Jun 13, 2014)

wcubed said:


> If you want to see martins feeding, find your local drone congregation area.
> Walt


How does that compare with foraging worker flight paths. Martins want to take advantage of predictable concentrations. If queen mating a major concern then still a problem.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

Martins aren't much of a problem, they primary hunting zone is higher than the average bee flight zone. Catbirds, Flycatchers, etc, set up shop near the hives and catch a lot more bees than Martins do. 
I'm moving my mating nucs AWAY from the main hives to try and get a higher percentage of mated queens making it back. I'm hoping that having the queens start and end their flights 200 yards from the main hives will get them out of the target rich zone that attracts the predators. Could end up worse, as there will be fewer bees to pick from. In about a month I'll know.


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## popeye (Apr 21, 2013)

I replied to thread about this last year. I've had a colony of purple martins at my latest residence so since 2001. Hosting 48 pair on three gourd racks. Member of Purple Martin Conservation Society. Follow the Purple Martin Forum. A true pm landlord.
Started keeping bees 2013. Then when I learned more about bees and how the queens mate... Well anyway the colonies are only about 250 feet from each other. I went three for three on virgin queens getting mated last year.
It seems like my martins and bees forage away from my property. Martins love dragon flies and bring them back continually for brood. Dragon flies fly all around the gourd racks. The bees fly right over my yard nectar and pollen sources most of the time it appears to me. But like Walt says about drone congregation areas could be a diff story. 
A forty +years local commercial beek has PMs too. My first year beeking I met him I asked very newbee questions. I noticed his active pm house. He told me PMs don't like bees cause they don't like getting stung. I think they go for the easiest most tasty meal. They eat flying insects when temp is +50 degrees F. Now when they first get here in very early spring the scouts(after second year) are taking a chance to lay claim to their favorite nest site. Five days straight of below 50 weather they will starve. So maybe they will eat any flying insect then?
Mosquito eating is a sales pitch for the cheap metal and now plastic houses. I like gourds. Check out the conservation site and forum. Most Skeeter's come out at night while martins are roosting. I have three bat houses. This part of northwest Tn next to Reelfoot lake has plenty of Skeeter's.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

The earliest arrivals have started fledging their young now. It's quite a show in the evenings when 200 adults and 350-500 fledglings flying around to find their gourd before night fall.

This is a picture from several years ago that I took in my back yard. I have converted my colony over to all plastic gourds. All have tunnelled entrances. Most of my gourds are Troyer Verticals. The ones pictured are something I came up with about 10 years ago. They are Natureline gourds but I bought two back halves instead of a front and a back. I could then add a tunnel and a cleanout port to it just like I was working on a natural gourd. It worked great, and that was before tunnels were available on commercially produced gourds.


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## Survivorbees (May 7, 2014)

+1 ('Eastern Kingbirds more problematic. They forage more at altitude honey bees fly. Also more inclined to hawk an apiary')

I have pm's also,cant say that I ever saw one eat a bee...but eastern kingbird is a different story. They will sit on a branch near the hives and pick off bees at a rate of a bee every 30 seconds.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Survivorbees said:


> +1 ('Eastern Kingbirds more problematic. They forage more at altitude honey bees fly. Also more inclined to hawk an apiary')
> 
> I have pm's also,cant say that I ever saw one eat a bee...but eastern kingbird is a different story. They will sit on a branch near the hives and pick off bees at a rate of a bee every 30 seconds.


The oldtimers around here call Eastern Kingbirds, Bee Martins.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

Brad Bee said:


> The oldtimers around here call Eastern Kingbirds, Bee Martins.


People have told me to watch out for the Bee Martins. I thought they were talking about a neighbor.
They seem to hang out here a lot.

Alex


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## Moccasin (May 18, 2010)

Brad Bee said:


> I don't doubt that you saw Martins circling above your bee hives. I see them circling above mine all the time, but to say that you can't be successful having Martins and honey bees is a larger myth than you posted a link to, *but it's absolute hogwash to say that you can't have bees and Martins at the same location.* Martins feed by circling above their housing whether bees are there or not. Mine did it long before I had bees and have not changed. I also have about 40 pairs of nesting Barn Swallows and 15-20 pairs of nesting Tree Swallows. They don't bother my bees at all. I'm sure they pick off an occasional forager or drone but they don't key on bees as a food source.
> 
> The man that I bought my first 2 packages of bees from (and the last 2 packages of bees that I have ever bought) told me when I started keeping bees that I would have to get rid of my Martin colony. I told the man that the bees would go before the Martins would. He said he hated Martins and left it at that. People assume because Martins are aerial insectivores that they feed on bees. They may eat an occasional bee, but they don't key on them or feed on them as a primary source of their diet. They do eat key on dragonflies, which are a predator of honey bees.
> 
> I have had a Purple Martin "supercolony" (100+ pairs) for over a decade. I have had bees for 3 years. While I am still an uncertain new beekeeper at times, I will stand toe to toe with anyone in the US with my knowledge and experience of Purple Martins. While this isn't a large number in the grand scheme of things I have raised around 40 queens here since I started (either by harvesting queen cells, or with other methods and including supercedes as well) I HAVE HAD 100% SUCCESS IN QUEENS RETURNING MATED TO MY HIVES. Even though having 40 queens mate and head a colony is a small number compared to the thousands per year than queen breeders raise, the percentage of success can't be improved upon.


 Purple Martins almost always mostly fly early in the morning and early evening not during mid day when the bees are out.. I had neighbors that kept lots of Martin house colonies decades ago. They never bothered beehives hives at all. No birds bother any of my bees ever. Bees and wasps don't seem to have much trouble from birds because they sting. Hummingbirds are always running from the bees too. I think the Martins really love flies mostly. I don't know why but the mosquitos are never around Martin colonies and native Americans kept them housed in gourds around all their villages for some good reason. I have wanted Martins for decades but they won't stay in my Martin houses even with all my bees. If they ate bees I would think I'd finally get a colony to start nesting.


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## flyin-lowe (May 15, 2014)

For the OP you might have taken your martin housing down too soon. Many times (not always) new colonies are started by SY martins (those born last year) and they are still migrating through the midwest and still arriving in this area until the end of June first of July. 

Before I had bees I had 30 pair of martins at my old house and several pairs of tree swallows. I was taking pictures of my tree swallows one day as the parents were feeding the young. I took about 100 pictures, every time the adult would land on the gourd 4 little heads would poke out the front. I put the pictures on my computer and zoomed in and saw they were honey bees that were being fed. Someone on the PMCA forum saw the pictures and one of the bee magazines (can't remember which one now) purchased the images to use in there magazine for an article they wrote about birds and bees. My martins always feed pretty high so I wouldn't be as concerned about them as other birds. The tree swallows definitely found a source of bees somewhere because about every 2 minutes they came back with a bee.


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## xphoney (Nov 7, 2014)

Interestingly enough I've watched chickadees picking off bees on the side of hives in the cool mornings. Some type of song sparrow too. But the numbers are small.


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## Moccasin (May 18, 2010)

flyin-lowe said:


> For the OP you might have taken your martin housing down too soon. Many times (not always) new colonies are started by SY martins (those born last year) and they are still migrating through the midwest and still arriving in this area until the end of June first of July.
> 
> Before I had bees I had 30 pair of martins at my old house and several pairs of tree swallows. I was taking pictures of my tree swallows one day as the parents were feeding the young. I took about 100 pictures, every time the adult would land on the gourd 4 little heads would poke out the front. I put the pictures on my computer and zoomed in and saw they were honey bees that were being fed. Someone on the PMCA forum saw the pictures and one of the bee magazines (can't remember which one now) purchased the images to use in there magazine for an article they wrote about birds and bees. My martins always feed pretty high so I wouldn't be as concerned about them as other birds. The tree swallows definitely found a source of bees somewhere because about every 2 minutes they came back with a bee.


I WOULD HOPE THEY ARE EATING DRONES.


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

A few more notes for the skeptics:
When the feral bees here had been decimated by the mites, the local martin population also plunged. A couple PM fanciers with large nesting layouts suddenly had very few birds and didn't know why. I borrowed a PM book from one of them to satisfy my curiosity. The book reported that when the stomachs of birds were investigated, they were found to be feeding primarily on hymenoptera. They were careful not to mention honey bees, but I don't know of any other insects in that class that would be clustered around at a 100 feet in the air.

And when the males show up in March here on their house-hunting trip, most other insects are still in their winter dormancy. Our bees are in the expansion period of swarm preps.

Enough??

Walt


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## centrarchid (Jun 13, 2014)

wcubed said:


> A few more notes for the skeptics:
> When the feral bees here had been decimated by the mites, the local martin population also plunged. A couple PM fanciers with large nesting layouts suddenly had very few birds and didn't know why. I borrowed a PM book from one of them to satisfy my curiosity. The book reported that when the stomachs of birds were investigated, they were found to be feeding primarily on hymenoptera. They were careful not to mention honey bees, but I don't know of any other insects in that class that would be clustered around at a 100 feet in the air.
> 
> And when the males show up in March here on their house-hunting trip, most other insects are still in their winter dormancy. Our bees are in the expansion period of swarm preps.
> ...




Early in season PM fly water ways while foraging taking advantage of aquatic insect hatch which is not so weather dependent. As temperatures rise PM forage higher up and over forested areas where larger insects are more abundant. The wasps and the like are likely much more important at canopy level than are honey bees as they are largely done working such heights by mid-spring. Get up in a tree with in a forested area where PMs forage and you will see an insect community you never realized to exist.


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## Survivorbees (May 7, 2014)

I have witnessed the pm's feeding for days in a row on aquatic hatches, I wondered how they survived cold wet April days being insect feeders. 
I dont think even one of my bees were out in that weather.

Also, I house pm's and keep bees at the home bee yard,,, and have an out yard on 2500 acres where there are no PM housing, and notice no difference in hive size or numbers. 

I dont know where my drone congregating area is, but it would be interesting to see what happens there,,

and for all you trying to trap sparrows around your PM housing,,, try a discarded bird egg in the bait


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

wcubed said:


> A few more notes for the skeptics:
> When the feral bees here had been decimated by the mites, the local martin population also plunged. A couple PM fanciers with large nesting layouts suddenly had very few birds and didn't know why. I borrowed a PM book from one of them to satisfy my curiosity. The book reported that when the stomachs of birds were investigated, they were found to be feeding primarily on hymenoptera. They were careful not to mention honey bees, but I don't know of any other insects in that class that would be clustered around at a 100 feet in the air.
> 
> And when the males show up in March here on their house-hunting trip, most other insects are still in their winter dormancy. Our bees are in the expansion period of swarm preps.
> ...


Walt, I'm going to have to respectfully agree to disagree with you on this subject. I have nowhere near the experience you do with honey bees, but there are quite a few around these parts and others that would consider me to be as competent in all things Purple Martins as you are considered by myself and others with honey bees. 

Anyone who has ever spent much time even casually observing Martins have noticed that many times they feed above their colony. The reason for that is because there is an almost constant supply of migrating insects riding the thermals to their destination. Yes, crop contents of Martins have been analyzed many times. The general consensus of most of those findings are that a Martins diet is pretty diverse. I'm sure Purple Martins could decimate a drone congregation area, but if they preyed primarily on honey bee drones then there would be little hope of ever raising a mated queen in my area or yours. There are Purple Martin colonies scattered all across the country side in both our areas. I know of a 1 square mile area in the county northeast of me that has over 3000 nesting pairs of Purple Martins. One colony site has over 2000 gourds. That one square mile area is not too far from our own squarepegs outyard. If Purple Martins wiped out drones and honey bees in general, squarepeg would surely be in trouble there.


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## lowhog (May 5, 2015)

I don't have any purple martins, but I have barn swallows that fly over the hives and pick off bees in flight. I guess there just part of the food chain.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Brad Bee said:


> There are Purple Martin colonies scattered all across the country side in both our areas. I know of a 1 square mile area in the county northeast of me that has over 3000 nesting pairs of Purple Martins. One colony site has over 2000 gourds.


Why do people want so many Purple Martins in one area?
It would seem to me to be an unequal ecosystem.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Acebird said:


> Why do people want so many Purple Martins in one area?


The enjoyment of watching them, and ego. A supercolony of Purple Martins is considered to be any colony with 100+ nesting pairs. I have a supercolony and have had one for the past 15 years. I enjoy watching the Martins circle around and listening to their almost constant chatter. The reason I have 100 pair, because I wanted to see if I could do it. 

Regarding why someone would want 2000 pair, I don't know. The guy that has them is very well off and has a guy hired full time to take care of his Martins. He is a really nice man, with money to burn. He wanted to have the largest Purple Martin colony in the world, and he accomplished that. 

Purple Martins in the eastern US are about 99% dependent on human supplied housing. There are more Martins in the south than any other area of the country. Florida and south GA are full of Purple Martin colonies and that's where many packages come from. Martins migrate to South America during our fall and winter. If honey bees were a main source of food for them, Brazil wouldn't have a honey bee. There are millions upon millions of Purple Martins that migrate to Brazil each year. Starting in the deep south around the end of June, Martins start to congregate in pre-migratory roosts. Roosts commonly contain 50,000-100,000 Martins. There are so many of them that they show up on doppler radar right at daybreak. By mid August there will be premigratory roosts scattered all over the eastern half of the US. It's really cool to see a roost up close and personal. The birds spiral into the roost and look like a tornado. I've sat in a canoe on the TN river and had Martins come to roost literally right around me. It was awesome. Those were nesting on a small island covered in alligator weed. They were no more than a foot off the water. 



> It would seem to me to be an unequal ecosystem.


Yet, they never seem to deplete an area of any one source of insects. We really have very little idea about what's flying over our head at any given time. I watched a program about migrating insects several years ago. It was fascinating. There are millions of flying insects migrating above our head at all times, but we don't see them.


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## JellyBee (Jun 6, 2015)

Thank you, everyone, for all the input. I m going to go ahead with my plans for attempting to attract a Purple Martin colony. I also asked some of the local Amish who have both and they all said that PMs do not like to get stung, and love to eat dragonflies which pray on bees. Also thankfully my Bird feeding station is on the opposite side of the property (10 acres) I will put the PM houses over there, it is closer to where the neighbor had his PM colonies, until he passed away and his PMs moved on about 3 years ago. I think that Ill have better luck over there, plus the wood house that I repaired and repainted after it fell, was one of his. I will put it on my property about 50ft from its original location. I think his wife would like that.


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## JellyBee (Jun 6, 2015)

BTW The Widow HATES my Bees, Ill tell her PMs eat Bees, It will make her happy


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

Obviously, not enough. Am aware that wasps come out of their winter hiding place on early season warm days. To shop nesting locations? All mated females. Return for the night.

Perhaps, one of you with all the answers could tell me what the mission of that wasp is 100 feet above any vegetation. Don't think they are migratory, but am no expert.

Brad, Am not offended by new information.

PMs feeding on DCAs could be considered an asset to beekeepers. Most colonies have more drones than they need and excessive drones is a burden on supplies. 

Walt


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## flyin-lowe (May 15, 2014)

Here are a few I had of the tree swallows feeding bees. Some appear to be drones, others I am not sure of due to the angle. Like I said I probably took two pictures every couple minutes for an hour. Both parents would come in, feed one bee then take off for a minute or two then return again. Once I started looking at the pictures I realized each one was a bee. So they found a hive somewhere close.
The sad thing is I can't even remember which bee magazine wrote the article and used the pictures. Back then I had no interest in bees and was just starting to practice photography so the pictures aren't perfect.


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