Well, it's been awhile, huh? You may have thought my interest in my bees waned with the loss of the Georgia Girls. Admittedly, it was a blow, but I've soldiered on. With other projects and obligations around the house, it has been the blog that has suffered, unfortunately. Finding time to sit down and make an entry has been difficult, while at the same time, the colder weather has reduced the activity level on my part and the bees.
After Georgia went down in flames, I carefully dismantled the hives and allowed the marauders to finish cleaning out the frames. Some had been torn up pretty thoroughly by wax moths and those I discarded. The ones that were salvageable I stored away in sealed plastic bags for future use, along with the hive boxes and other hive components. The last I saw of my beautiful Georgia queen and her blue dot, she was wandering, alone on the bottom board with nary an attendant to wait on her. A pitiful sight! I gave her another day or so to fly off or die, as I just didn't have the heart to perform a mercy killing. She had done so well for the first four or five months of her reign, but Mother Nature, while neutral, takes no prisoners. Georgia Queen lost.
While the weather remained warm, the Arlington hive bustled with activity. Several workers were seen hauling full pollen sacs into the hive and there could be seen daily orientation flights in front of the hive that featured hundreds of bees. As an experiment, I placed two full honey supers left behind by Georgia on their hive to see if it might have any ill effects on the Arlington bees. As best as I could tell, to this point, no harm seems to have resulted from it as they began to slowly empty the comb from these supers.
The weather began to get colder and activity slowed considerably in front of my remaining hive. Each morning I would find dead bees and brood on the landing board and very few girls flying around. This worried me because this was how the Georgia collapse began. Eventually, I began to fear that Arlington was going to give up the ghost as well. For days on end I saw no activity or even dead bees at the entrance. I had inserted an entrance reducer to cut down on drafts into the hive and I would poke a stick into the entrance to see if I could get a response, but nothing. The thought of losing my other hive left me mildly depressed, let me tell you! Of course, temperatures were generally getting no more than in the 50s during the day and much chillier than that at night, so I clung to the hope that they were just staying indoors for warmth. As my mood reached its lowest point, Indian Summer arrived the beginning of Thanksgiving week with temps reaching to nearly 80 on a couple of days. It was as if an alarm clock had gone off and the bees woke up. Suddenly, for 3 or 4 days, I saw large congregations of bees on the landing board and winging about. They worked diligently removing their dead from inside the hive and I even saw some returning to the hive bearing pollen! They were ALIVE!!!
Having developed a strong attachment to my little friends by now, I can't tell you how excited I was to see them enjoying the fine weather. I felt I had another good reason for celebrating Thanksgiving!
With the holiday came a cold snap and once again bees are scarce around the hive. Last night, I put my ear to the side of the hive and heard a reassuring buzz eminating from within. I pictured them in a big cluster fighting the cold, but surviving. Of course, it's only November, so they have a long way to go, but this week has made me feel hopeful. We'll just have to see what happens.
The good news is that cold bees = no stings!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Georgia Gone South
Well, tragedy has struck my Georgia contingent. I had known for several days that something was amiss but I hadn't had time to investigate. After checking their hive yesterday, I believe I've been the victim of "Colony Collapse Disorder" or CCD. The bees were simply gone, leaving the hive open to marauders. It was a scene of devastation and it all seems to have occurred in a month's time. The fact that Georgia had been my strong hive only adds to the shock.
As I mentioned in my last blog, I had noticed a dozen or so dead bees on the entrance board each morning along with a few larvae at the Georgia hive. The Arlington hive in contrast might have one or two. I pondered why this might be so, but I had no inkling that it was a sign of the disaster that I would soon discover. I also mentioned that I saw drones from time to time at the entrance and thought it odd, given the time of season. A few days after this observation though, I witnessed several instances of workers wrestling drones out of the hive and driving them off. I allowed myself to believe that this was a sign that all was well. But shortly after this, I observed a large dropoff in the number of bees in front of the hive when compared to Arlington, who remained robust. Within the last couple of weeks I began to notice the telltale signs of robbing bees dancing in front of the hive. They are quite distinct and easy to identify by their approach to the entrance. A bee who belongs to the hive will fly right in with little hesitation. Robbers, on the other hand will fly back and forth, probing for an opportunity to enter by darting in and out for a fair amount of time, working up their nerve perhaps. This activity increased considerably and it was this that convinced me that something very bad had happened to my Georgians.
Yesterday, I finally had time to open the hive to check it out. It consisted of three shallow honey supers on top and two deep brood boxes below. The top two supers were still full of capped honey and a few bees busied themselves gorging from a few of the cells. The third super, closest to the brood boxes had almost all of its honey removed. A handful of bees were still working it over but their dirty work was mostly done there. The further I went down into the hive, the number of bees remained constant. Perhaps a hundred or two in each super and those that were there probably didn't belong.
Upon entering the brood nest, it took on the look of a ghost town and with honey to be found in tiny patches only on the outermost frames. There was not much activity to be found and the comb was almost completely deserted. I began to see instances of young bees who had started to emerge from their cells, only to die with just their heads poking out. I found a wax moth on one of the frames and evidence of her offspring beginning to tunnel beneath the comb. Fortunately, the wax moth damage was minimal. Both brood boxes were the same. Vast fields of chocolate colored, empty cells and no bees. Finally, in the bottom box, huddled between the wall and the last frame, I saw a clot of bees massed together. I knew I would find the queen there and I did, her blue spot clearly visible among her remaining attendants who numbered perhaps 2-300. It was a pitiful sight for they were surely doomed. They had long since given up on any notion of defending their hive from intruders and now simply hid in a corner waiting for the inevitable.
The bottom of the hive was free of dead bees. The girls were simply gone. At this point, I found a deep frame that had a fair amount of honey on it and placed it next to the queen and her retinue so that it might sustain them for a time. The least I could do for the poor girl, I figured. I then reassembled the hive, keeping the top two, honey filled supers for myself. Next I'll have to figure out what to do with the hive so that I can preserve as much of the drawn out frames as possible. That will be a subject for another entry.
Meanwhile, all indications would seem to suggest that Arlington is doing great. Each afternoon, I see hundreds of bees winging about in front of their hive and crawling under the top cover. I don't feel as sure of myself as I once did, however. And I have grave doubts as to the bees ability to survive the winter. The last couple of months, I have consciously chosen to let the bees fend for themselves according to what nature prescribed and for Georgia it was too much. It is hard for me to accept that these wild creatures would depend on my activities to survive and yet, with little interaction from me, left to what their instincts would dictate, a colony that once held 50 to 60,000 bees has completely collapsed in the space of just a few weeks. Why do I feel that man has a hand in this as well? With the introduction of mites, pesticides and God knows what else, survival for the honey bee seems to be quite a precarious proposition these days.
As if to exact some small measure of revenge for this state of affairs, I was stung. Though it hurt, I couldn't help but feel it was a bit of spitting into the wind for that bee and her sisters.
As I mentioned in my last blog, I had noticed a dozen or so dead bees on the entrance board each morning along with a few larvae at the Georgia hive. The Arlington hive in contrast might have one or two. I pondered why this might be so, but I had no inkling that it was a sign of the disaster that I would soon discover. I also mentioned that I saw drones from time to time at the entrance and thought it odd, given the time of season. A few days after this observation though, I witnessed several instances of workers wrestling drones out of the hive and driving them off. I allowed myself to believe that this was a sign that all was well. But shortly after this, I observed a large dropoff in the number of bees in front of the hive when compared to Arlington, who remained robust. Within the last couple of weeks I began to notice the telltale signs of robbing bees dancing in front of the hive. They are quite distinct and easy to identify by their approach to the entrance. A bee who belongs to the hive will fly right in with little hesitation. Robbers, on the other hand will fly back and forth, probing for an opportunity to enter by darting in and out for a fair amount of time, working up their nerve perhaps. This activity increased considerably and it was this that convinced me that something very bad had happened to my Georgians.
Yesterday, I finally had time to open the hive to check it out. It consisted of three shallow honey supers on top and two deep brood boxes below. The top two supers were still full of capped honey and a few bees busied themselves gorging from a few of the cells. The third super, closest to the brood boxes had almost all of its honey removed. A handful of bees were still working it over but their dirty work was mostly done there. The further I went down into the hive, the number of bees remained constant. Perhaps a hundred or two in each super and those that were there probably didn't belong.
Upon entering the brood nest, it took on the look of a ghost town and with honey to be found in tiny patches only on the outermost frames. There was not much activity to be found and the comb was almost completely deserted. I began to see instances of young bees who had started to emerge from their cells, only to die with just their heads poking out. I found a wax moth on one of the frames and evidence of her offspring beginning to tunnel beneath the comb. Fortunately, the wax moth damage was minimal. Both brood boxes were the same. Vast fields of chocolate colored, empty cells and no bees. Finally, in the bottom box, huddled between the wall and the last frame, I saw a clot of bees massed together. I knew I would find the queen there and I did, her blue spot clearly visible among her remaining attendants who numbered perhaps 2-300. It was a pitiful sight for they were surely doomed. They had long since given up on any notion of defending their hive from intruders and now simply hid in a corner waiting for the inevitable.
The bottom of the hive was free of dead bees. The girls were simply gone. At this point, I found a deep frame that had a fair amount of honey on it and placed it next to the queen and her retinue so that it might sustain them for a time. The least I could do for the poor girl, I figured. I then reassembled the hive, keeping the top two, honey filled supers for myself. Next I'll have to figure out what to do with the hive so that I can preserve as much of the drawn out frames as possible. That will be a subject for another entry.
Meanwhile, all indications would seem to suggest that Arlington is doing great. Each afternoon, I see hundreds of bees winging about in front of their hive and crawling under the top cover. I don't feel as sure of myself as I once did, however. And I have grave doubts as to the bees ability to survive the winter. The last couple of months, I have consciously chosen to let the bees fend for themselves according to what nature prescribed and for Georgia it was too much. It is hard for me to accept that these wild creatures would depend on my activities to survive and yet, with little interaction from me, left to what their instincts would dictate, a colony that once held 50 to 60,000 bees has completely collapsed in the space of just a few weeks. Why do I feel that man has a hand in this as well? With the introduction of mites, pesticides and God knows what else, survival for the honey bee seems to be quite a precarious proposition these days.
As if to exact some small measure of revenge for this state of affairs, I was stung. Though it hurt, I couldn't help but feel it was a bit of spitting into the wind for that bee and her sisters.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
I've been a BAD Blogger!
Well, I guess I'm not doing so well keeping this blog updated, huh? Part of it is due to the novelty wearing off a little, I guess. Where as before I would run to the computer as soon as I did something new with the bees, now I put it off for weeks. Since this blog is serving as my record for all of my bee doings, I better get back with the program.
Since last we wrote, several events have occurred in the Holster beeyard. To begin with, the girls have had several visitors since July. Their fame has spread and they are often the first thing on the agenda for our guests. Various cousins, in-laws, and friends have tested their fortitude in seeing how close they can dare venture up to the hives and take a peek. Some have been fearless, others not so fearless. All have exhibited a deep curiosity in these little critters and what they do. My 89-year-old mother-in-law stood right beside the hives, examined them closely and asked many questions. Others, who will remain nameless Joe, kept a sizeable amount of real estate between themselves and our little heros. Either way, the girls were popular attractions and of course, I didn't mind holding court describing every nuance of bee culture. Not all of my hobbies have had such an effect on others.
With the increased mite count that I referred to in the last entry I had planned to pick up some confectioners sugar and a sifter so that I could douse the bees and hopefully, as a result, reduce the population of mites. I finally got around to that a couple of weeks back and though the girls didn't seem to appreciate the procedure at first, they quickly set about cleaning up the mess. My procedure was to set each super on my picnic table and sprinkle them their before returning the supers to the hive. This worked out well but the table ended up covered with powdered sugar that the bees cleaned up with vigor. By the next morning you wouldn't know that the sugar had ever been there. Hopefully, this treatment along with a normal reduction in mites going into the fall will keep the bees healthier.
During the process of sugaring the bees I examined the hives down to the brood boxes. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I had installed inner covers below my honey supers in order for the bees to move those stores down into the brood boxes. The idea being that my supers could be cleaned out and ready to go for spring. All five shallow supers were completely filled with capped honey but they showed no signs that the bees had begun moving anything south. Several bees toiled about the comb but initially, there seemed to be so few of them that I worried that most of the bees had flown away. I was relieved when I saw that the hives were jam-packed with bees below these inner covers. Still, it was a little disconcerting to see that the supers were still honey-filled after a month sitting above the inner covers. The bees had also propolized the inner covers to the tops of frames below so thoroughly that I had to literally dismantle the inner covers to get them off the hives. Likewise, the frames themselves were locked in tight. The Arlington girls seem to be the propolis queens as their hive is routinely dripping with the stuff and working the hive is always more of a challenge because of it.
The real problem I was faced with though was what to do with these supers of honey. It might seem obvious that I should just extract it and bottle it up but I'm fairly sure that most of it was produced from the gallons of sugar syrup I had been feeding the bees through the middle of August and so it wasn't the sort of honey that would be suitable for keeping. I also don't have the facilities yet for extracting the honey which means I would have to prevail upon one of my mentors to use their equipment. If the honey was not the best for human comsumption I wouldn't want to waste someone's time dealing with it. So in the end, I figured I would just leave it all for the bees to help them through winter. I'd estimate that there is probably at least 80 lbs. of honey in each hive. Having removed the inner covers and thus creating two large hives, four to five boxes tall, I imagine the bees will do what nature prescribes and use the next couple of months to orient their household in such a way to help them best face the winter. I'll feed them a 2:1 mixture of syrup again in October to help them replace any stores they use in the meantime and give them a dose of medicine to help them fend off Nosema this winter.
As the weather has turned colder at night, I've noticed a higher mortality rate amongst the girls. Each morning, before work, I'll take a look at the hive and usually I can expect to find up to a dozen dead bees littering the landing board. Interspersed with these are a half dozen dead larvae. I'm guessing that these are the result of what is called "chilled brood" and has come about because of the drop in temperatures. The Georgia hive seems to be having a larger die-off than Arlington. Interestingly, I still see a fair number of drones active at the entrance. I would have thought, going by the books I've read, that these guys would have been run off by now. I guess there must be adequate amounts of food entering the hive, or we can chalk it up to the bee's notorious reluctance to read books.
Well, until next time.
Sting count: Holding at 15! Yay!!!
Since last we wrote, several events have occurred in the Holster beeyard. To begin with, the girls have had several visitors since July. Their fame has spread and they are often the first thing on the agenda for our guests. Various cousins, in-laws, and friends have tested their fortitude in seeing how close they can dare venture up to the hives and take a peek. Some have been fearless, others not so fearless. All have exhibited a deep curiosity in these little critters and what they do. My 89-year-old mother-in-law stood right beside the hives, examined them closely and asked many questions. Others, who will remain nameless Joe, kept a sizeable amount of real estate between themselves and our little heros. Either way, the girls were popular attractions and of course, I didn't mind holding court describing every nuance of bee culture. Not all of my hobbies have had such an effect on others.
With the increased mite count that I referred to in the last entry I had planned to pick up some confectioners sugar and a sifter so that I could douse the bees and hopefully, as a result, reduce the population of mites. I finally got around to that a couple of weeks back and though the girls didn't seem to appreciate the procedure at first, they quickly set about cleaning up the mess. My procedure was to set each super on my picnic table and sprinkle them their before returning the supers to the hive. This worked out well but the table ended up covered with powdered sugar that the bees cleaned up with vigor. By the next morning you wouldn't know that the sugar had ever been there. Hopefully, this treatment along with a normal reduction in mites going into the fall will keep the bees healthier.
During the process of sugaring the bees I examined the hives down to the brood boxes. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I had installed inner covers below my honey supers in order for the bees to move those stores down into the brood boxes. The idea being that my supers could be cleaned out and ready to go for spring. All five shallow supers were completely filled with capped honey but they showed no signs that the bees had begun moving anything south. Several bees toiled about the comb but initially, there seemed to be so few of them that I worried that most of the bees had flown away. I was relieved when I saw that the hives were jam-packed with bees below these inner covers. Still, it was a little disconcerting to see that the supers were still honey-filled after a month sitting above the inner covers. The bees had also propolized the inner covers to the tops of frames below so thoroughly that I had to literally dismantle the inner covers to get them off the hives. Likewise, the frames themselves were locked in tight. The Arlington girls seem to be the propolis queens as their hive is routinely dripping with the stuff and working the hive is always more of a challenge because of it.
The real problem I was faced with though was what to do with these supers of honey. It might seem obvious that I should just extract it and bottle it up but I'm fairly sure that most of it was produced from the gallons of sugar syrup I had been feeding the bees through the middle of August and so it wasn't the sort of honey that would be suitable for keeping. I also don't have the facilities yet for extracting the honey which means I would have to prevail upon one of my mentors to use their equipment. If the honey was not the best for human comsumption I wouldn't want to waste someone's time dealing with it. So in the end, I figured I would just leave it all for the bees to help them through winter. I'd estimate that there is probably at least 80 lbs. of honey in each hive. Having removed the inner covers and thus creating two large hives, four to five boxes tall, I imagine the bees will do what nature prescribes and use the next couple of months to orient their household in such a way to help them best face the winter. I'll feed them a 2:1 mixture of syrup again in October to help them replace any stores they use in the meantime and give them a dose of medicine to help them fend off Nosema this winter.
As the weather has turned colder at night, I've noticed a higher mortality rate amongst the girls. Each morning, before work, I'll take a look at the hive and usually I can expect to find up to a dozen dead bees littering the landing board. Interspersed with these are a half dozen dead larvae. I'm guessing that these are the result of what is called "chilled brood" and has come about because of the drop in temperatures. The Georgia hive seems to be having a larger die-off than Arlington. Interestingly, I still see a fair number of drones active at the entrance. I would have thought, going by the books I've read, that these guys would have been run off by now. I guess there must be adequate amounts of food entering the hive, or we can chalk it up to the bee's notorious reluctance to read books.
Well, until next time.
Sting count: Holding at 15! Yay!!!
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Belated Update
Wow! It's been awhile since I wrote something here. For the few who are still actually reading this, I hope I haven't run you off by ignoring you. Truth is, I haven't really done much with the hives since my last communication and here we are closing in on the middle of August. Please forgive me, dear reader!
I did another mite count using the greasy bottom board technique and after 24 hours, it was clear that the mite population has grown considerably within both hives. I gave up counting but I'm sure I had at least a few dozen on each board along with various other tiny critters, bee legs, etc. Time for some countermeasures. Must pick up some powdered sugar and a sifter tomorrow. Stay tuned on that one.
I also built a screened inner cover for each hive. Actually, Arlington got theirs a couple of weeks ago and it's afforded a nice opportunity to peek in on the girls while keeping them safely separated from yours truly. They appear to enjoy the draft up there because there is always a huge number of bees loitering around on top of the frames. I glued 1/4" pieces of dowel to the tops of the new covers to give a 360 degree opening for circulation while still maintaining a low enough profile so that the edges of the top cover prevent rain or direct wind from entering the hive. Of course, the bees have begun propolizing the screen in the corners, so maybe they have too much breeze?
Today I built a screened inner cover for Georgia and I had to remove the original inner cover to install the new one. Of course, this action riled them enough for one of their number to sting me on my exposed leg (I was wearing shorts) For some reason, that sting REALLY hurt! That girl packed a punch, let me tell you. Another tried to get me, but I was too quick for her and she gave up the ghost without delivering the goods! Ha Ha! You try to do them a favor and look how they repay you! Ungrateful little bugs.
A couple of weeks back, I had installed another inner cover under my top honey super in Georgia. They had completely filled the frames with honey and capped it and so, following the recommended procedure, I slipped in the cover so they would begin removing the stores and move them downstairs for easier access. Well, it doesn't appear that they are making much progress in this regard, at least as viewed from above while I performed the task mentioned in the preceeding paragraph. I guess I'll need to do a more thorough inspection to be sure.
At any rate, they should be a little cooler for the rest of the summer.
Sting count...15
I did another mite count using the greasy bottom board technique and after 24 hours, it was clear that the mite population has grown considerably within both hives. I gave up counting but I'm sure I had at least a few dozen on each board along with various other tiny critters, bee legs, etc. Time for some countermeasures. Must pick up some powdered sugar and a sifter tomorrow. Stay tuned on that one.
I also built a screened inner cover for each hive. Actually, Arlington got theirs a couple of weeks ago and it's afforded a nice opportunity to peek in on the girls while keeping them safely separated from yours truly. They appear to enjoy the draft up there because there is always a huge number of bees loitering around on top of the frames. I glued 1/4" pieces of dowel to the tops of the new covers to give a 360 degree opening for circulation while still maintaining a low enough profile so that the edges of the top cover prevent rain or direct wind from entering the hive. Of course, the bees have begun propolizing the screen in the corners, so maybe they have too much breeze?
Today I built a screened inner cover for Georgia and I had to remove the original inner cover to install the new one. Of course, this action riled them enough for one of their number to sting me on my exposed leg (I was wearing shorts) For some reason, that sting REALLY hurt! That girl packed a punch, let me tell you. Another tried to get me, but I was too quick for her and she gave up the ghost without delivering the goods! Ha Ha! You try to do them a favor and look how they repay you! Ungrateful little bugs.
A couple of weeks back, I had installed another inner cover under my top honey super in Georgia. They had completely filled the frames with honey and capped it and so, following the recommended procedure, I slipped in the cover so they would begin removing the stores and move them downstairs for easier access. Well, it doesn't appear that they are making much progress in this regard, at least as viewed from above while I performed the task mentioned in the preceeding paragraph. I guess I'll need to do a more thorough inspection to be sure.
At any rate, they should be a little cooler for the rest of the summer.
Sting count...15
Sunday, July 22, 2007
More Syrup...What Else is New?
Today, I added two fresh gallons of sugar syrup to each hive. They had drained it by Tuesday or so, but as I said in my last entry, I'm only going to fill the feeders once a week on Saturday or Sunday. For the record, I also added a large chunk of pollen patty to both hives.
It had been awhile since I had done a full inspection (below the honey supers) on either hive so I decided to take a top to bottom look at Georgia today. I had the intention of removing the honey supers and the top brood chamber so that I could start by checking out the bottom brood chamber first, as is recommended in some of the books. This way, you get the most defensive part of the hive out of the way early and they can start calming down as you check succeeding boxes. The idea being that you'll have fewer guards and foragers to contend with the higher up in the hive you are working.
It sounded reasonable to me except for one little hitch. The Georgia girls have shown themselves to be quite fond of propolizing everything to the maximum and building prodigious amounts of ladder/burr comb. When I tried to pry off the top honey super, it became clear that all of the frames were fastened tightly to the frames below. As I tried to lift, the second super wanted to come too. This meant I had to begin by removing each frame in the top super, one by one, and scrape wax that ran the length of each bottom bar. The girls had also added gobs of propolis to the ends of each top bar as well. Clearly, they had done their level best to ensure BeeKeeper Man could not invade their bustling little abode. Unfortunately for them, they don't know about hive tools and muscles of a size their small minds can't even begin to fathom! But even with these advantages, BeeKeeper Man had his work cut out for him. I scraped and scraped and the ground piled up with wax. Each frame was filled with beautiful capped honey and a couple contained a fair amount of capped brood too. Supers filled with honey are surprisingly heavy, even with the shallows I have on the hives. I'd estimate them to weigh around 30 lbs. or so.
(I'm using shallow supers not out of choice but because they were given to me, along with a whole stack of shallow foundation, by a friend. My preference would've been to use mediums, but why spend the money if you don't have to, right? I have a total of five, ten-frame supers and enough foundation to build five more. The bees have already drawn and filled four of these and I had prepared the fifth to put on Georgia today. But I'll get to that shortly.)
I had been into the honey supers before and so I wasn't surprised to see twenty frames of capped honey in them. The girls were close to achieving that goal the last time I looked. It is tempting to grab some of it now but I'm guessing it was made largely from the sugar syrup I've been feeding them, so it probably wouldn't be anything to write home about. Another reason for not taking it is that I've pretty much decided to leave all the honey for them this year. The better to ensure their survival through the winter. The question I have is how to manage all of these excess stores. The battle plan was to have the bees draw out the comb, fill it with honey and then place an inner cover between the supers and the brood chambers below. This would make the bees retrieve the honey from the supers and move it down into the lower boxes, leaving you with nicely cleaned out frames for the harvest next spring. But I don't know where the bees would put it. Please continue reading to see what I mean...
On checking the first brood box, I found the outside frames heavy with completely capped off honey. As I worked towards the center, I found the queen and lots of capped brood, eggs and larvae. She still appears vigorous and healthy and was easy to spot in the multitudes with her big blue spot. The brood pattern appeared to be a little more spotty than her usual, but there was plenty of it, so I'm not too worried about it. The bottom box had two outside frames full of honey, just like the box above it. Interestingly, as I moved towards the center, I encountered vast fields of cells full of nectar, upper corners full of honey but almost no brood. I was getting a little concerned until I hit the middle of the box. Frames five through nine were packed with capped brood, eggs and larvae. So the queen has been laying prodigiously from the bottom of the hive to the top. Some girl, that queen, but as you can see, I have no idea where they would put all the honey they have hoarded in the honey supers if I were to encourage them to bring it downstairs. Must ask Pat about this...
As I reassembled the hive, I inserted my fifth honey super with the new foundation under the existing supers, giving Georgia three total. When they fill that one, I can almost picture them setting up a little hiveside stand to sell honey to bee passersby. Wouldn't that be great? Little bee entreprenuers. I'm sorry, the smoke probably got to me. I mean, we all know they would kill 10,000 bees and lose 10,000 of their own before they would give up a mouthful of excess honey to a bee outside their hive tribe. Hard wiring doesn't allow for deviation from the script, my friends. And why in the world would we wish on them a human characteristic like that anyway? Before you know it, there would be Bee monopolies, multinationals with watered-down honey, queens having whole supers to themselves while other bees were forced to live on a mere cell or two. Fortunately for them, they have no capacity to listen to anything we might have to say.
Friday, while trying to replenish their water in the Boardman Feeders a bee who couldn't tell my pants leg from a hive entrance managed to crawl, undetected nearly to my crotch before panicking and giving me the ol' honeybee jab. As I grabbed at my inner thigh, she came tumbling out of my shorts onto the porch floor and trust me, she was doing far worse than I at that moment. She did boost the tally though...
Sting total...14.
It had been awhile since I had done a full inspection (below the honey supers) on either hive so I decided to take a top to bottom look at Georgia today. I had the intention of removing the honey supers and the top brood chamber so that I could start by checking out the bottom brood chamber first, as is recommended in some of the books. This way, you get the most defensive part of the hive out of the way early and they can start calming down as you check succeeding boxes. The idea being that you'll have fewer guards and foragers to contend with the higher up in the hive you are working.
It sounded reasonable to me except for one little hitch. The Georgia girls have shown themselves to be quite fond of propolizing everything to the maximum and building prodigious amounts of ladder/burr comb. When I tried to pry off the top honey super, it became clear that all of the frames were fastened tightly to the frames below. As I tried to lift, the second super wanted to come too. This meant I had to begin by removing each frame in the top super, one by one, and scrape wax that ran the length of each bottom bar. The girls had also added gobs of propolis to the ends of each top bar as well. Clearly, they had done their level best to ensure BeeKeeper Man could not invade their bustling little abode. Unfortunately for them, they don't know about hive tools and muscles of a size their small minds can't even begin to fathom! But even with these advantages, BeeKeeper Man had his work cut out for him. I scraped and scraped and the ground piled up with wax. Each frame was filled with beautiful capped honey and a couple contained a fair amount of capped brood too. Supers filled with honey are surprisingly heavy, even with the shallows I have on the hives. I'd estimate them to weigh around 30 lbs. or so.
(I'm using shallow supers not out of choice but because they were given to me, along with a whole stack of shallow foundation, by a friend. My preference would've been to use mediums, but why spend the money if you don't have to, right? I have a total of five, ten-frame supers and enough foundation to build five more. The bees have already drawn and filled four of these and I had prepared the fifth to put on Georgia today. But I'll get to that shortly.)
I had been into the honey supers before and so I wasn't surprised to see twenty frames of capped honey in them. The girls were close to achieving that goal the last time I looked. It is tempting to grab some of it now but I'm guessing it was made largely from the sugar syrup I've been feeding them, so it probably wouldn't be anything to write home about. Another reason for not taking it is that I've pretty much decided to leave all the honey for them this year. The better to ensure their survival through the winter. The question I have is how to manage all of these excess stores. The battle plan was to have the bees draw out the comb, fill it with honey and then place an inner cover between the supers and the brood chambers below. This would make the bees retrieve the honey from the supers and move it down into the lower boxes, leaving you with nicely cleaned out frames for the harvest next spring. But I don't know where the bees would put it. Please continue reading to see what I mean...
On checking the first brood box, I found the outside frames heavy with completely capped off honey. As I worked towards the center, I found the queen and lots of capped brood, eggs and larvae. She still appears vigorous and healthy and was easy to spot in the multitudes with her big blue spot. The brood pattern appeared to be a little more spotty than her usual, but there was plenty of it, so I'm not too worried about it. The bottom box had two outside frames full of honey, just like the box above it. Interestingly, as I moved towards the center, I encountered vast fields of cells full of nectar, upper corners full of honey but almost no brood. I was getting a little concerned until I hit the middle of the box. Frames five through nine were packed with capped brood, eggs and larvae. So the queen has been laying prodigiously from the bottom of the hive to the top. Some girl, that queen, but as you can see, I have no idea where they would put all the honey they have hoarded in the honey supers if I were to encourage them to bring it downstairs. Must ask Pat about this...
As I reassembled the hive, I inserted my fifth honey super with the new foundation under the existing supers, giving Georgia three total. When they fill that one, I can almost picture them setting up a little hiveside stand to sell honey to bee passersby. Wouldn't that be great? Little bee entreprenuers. I'm sorry, the smoke probably got to me. I mean, we all know they would kill 10,000 bees and lose 10,000 of their own before they would give up a mouthful of excess honey to a bee outside their hive tribe. Hard wiring doesn't allow for deviation from the script, my friends. And why in the world would we wish on them a human characteristic like that anyway? Before you know it, there would be Bee monopolies, multinationals with watered-down honey, queens having whole supers to themselves while other bees were forced to live on a mere cell or two. Fortunately for them, they have no capacity to listen to anything we might have to say.
Friday, while trying to replenish their water in the Boardman Feeders a bee who couldn't tell my pants leg from a hive entrance managed to crawl, undetected nearly to my crotch before panicking and giving me the ol' honeybee jab. As I grabbed at my inner thigh, she came tumbling out of my shorts onto the porch floor and trust me, she was doing far worse than I at that moment. She did boost the tally though...
Sting total...14.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Counting Mites!
To begin with, for the record, I added four more gallons of syrup to the hives on Saturday - two for Georgia and two for Arlington. They had both been dry for about four days, but in the interest of fair-sharing the sugar cane harvest in the western hemisphere, I've decided they each get two gallons per week and no more. They've actually kept ahead of my ability to provide fresh, undrawn supers for them anyway and the four supers currently on the hives have been drawn and filled for some time. Adding that to what they have stashed in the brood chambers, they should be in good shape. I'll pick up the feeding pace again in September. I do need to add more pollen patty though, as I'm sure they've finished that off.
Yesterday, July 15th, I slid a grease-covered board under the screened bottom boards of the hives for the purpose of collecting varroa mites that drop from inside. Today, I pulled the boards and counted. On Arlington, I counted a grand total of three after going over the board with an eye-loop three times. Georgia had six. They are pretty small - about the size of a lower case 'o' but after seeing a few, they became readily visible. The difficulty comes in determining that the little critter you see is a mite and not some other hapless insect who got stuck. There were many of these. Of course I had several ants -no surprise there - a couple of moths (wax moths?) and a variety of other things. Add to this the usual debris that rains down out of the hive such as wax flakes, dirt, propolis chunks, bee poop and God knows what else. They decorated the board pretty good in just 24 hours.
By putting the boards under the hives I effectively closed off a major source of ventilation for the bees. This was evident when I checked the hives an hour or so later and found thousands of bees chillin' on the front porch (ie. landing board). Twenty or thirty of them were vigorously fanning the hive entrance to get some air conditioning going. I felt bad for them, but it is for their own good in the long run. When I pulled the boards today, I felt like I was giving them a gift. Now the hives can get back to their normal 95 degrees or so and the girls can sleep at night without sweating all over the comb.
I believe that based on my count, the bees are in pretty good shape for the moment. I will do the count again in a week and see if the mite population has grown. They are supposed to peak in August, so I assume my count will rise. If it does, I'll have to take to the countermeasures that have been suggested. One of these is to sift powdered sugar down through the hives and onto the bees. This causes the mites to fall off the bees and it is hoped that the bees themselves will dislodge more when they groom each other after the sugar bath. The direction nowadays is to avoid using chemical solutions if at all possible. Stay tuned!
The girls and I have enjoyed a peaceful coexistance of late and so...
the sting count remains at 13!
Yesterday, July 15th, I slid a grease-covered board under the screened bottom boards of the hives for the purpose of collecting varroa mites that drop from inside. Today, I pulled the boards and counted. On Arlington, I counted a grand total of three after going over the board with an eye-loop three times. Georgia had six. They are pretty small - about the size of a lower case 'o' but after seeing a few, they became readily visible. The difficulty comes in determining that the little critter you see is a mite and not some other hapless insect who got stuck. There were many of these. Of course I had several ants -no surprise there - a couple of moths (wax moths?) and a variety of other things. Add to this the usual debris that rains down out of the hive such as wax flakes, dirt, propolis chunks, bee poop and God knows what else. They decorated the board pretty good in just 24 hours.
By putting the boards under the hives I effectively closed off a major source of ventilation for the bees. This was evident when I checked the hives an hour or so later and found thousands of bees chillin' on the front porch (ie. landing board). Twenty or thirty of them were vigorously fanning the hive entrance to get some air conditioning going. I felt bad for them, but it is for their own good in the long run. When I pulled the boards today, I felt like I was giving them a gift. Now the hives can get back to their normal 95 degrees or so and the girls can sleep at night without sweating all over the comb.
I believe that based on my count, the bees are in pretty good shape for the moment. I will do the count again in a week and see if the mite population has grown. They are supposed to peak in August, so I assume my count will rise. If it does, I'll have to take to the countermeasures that have been suggested. One of these is to sift powdered sugar down through the hives and onto the bees. This causes the mites to fall off the bees and it is hoped that the bees themselves will dislodge more when they groom each other after the sugar bath. The direction nowadays is to avoid using chemical solutions if at all possible. Stay tuned!
The girls and I have enjoyed a peaceful coexistance of late and so...
the sting count remains at 13!
Saturday, July 7, 2007
More Sugar Syrup
Nothing much to report, but I wanted to log the fact that I put the feeders back on the hives and added 4 gallons of sugar syrup. As I mentioned in the last post, I cleaned the feeders up and by putting them on fresh and clean - minus bees and ants - I was able to pour in the syrup without drowning anybody. They were still working on the pollen patties, though they had consumed probably two thirds of them. I didn't smoke them, wore only my veil and I was pleased to see that they pretty much ignored me. Of course, the conditions were perfect with beautiful weather, cooler temps and half the hive out and about.
Couple of observations I'd like to share about other bee-types checking out the hive. For awhile, I had a couple of Carpenter bees who would probe the hive for entree. They were very cautious and kept a respectable distance for the most part. They are always fun to watch because they are incredible fliers. Honeybees fly by darting here and there. They hover only for a short time, if at all, and then zip to where they are going. They will crash into you or each other fairly often which tells me they haven't completely perfected their flying skills. Flying, for them, seems to be merely a means to an end. That is, getting to flowers and back to the hive as quickly as possible. I have sat in my car in the driveway after work and, against the dark backdrop of trees, I've watched bees from my hives shoot past like bullets, heading off to some distant source of nectar. They are bees on a mission. They have many mouths to feed. A different sort altogther are Carpenter Bees, those big black and yellow galoots, often mistaken for Bumblebees (they look similar, but Carpenter Bees, as the name would imply live in drilled out tunnels in wood. Bumblebees live in the ground.) Their flying ability is quite remarkable. I don't know if they can fly faster than honeybees because I have never seen one fly fast. They are slow, methodical fliers that seem to spend as much time hovering, swiveling around and flying from point to point in the air for the purpose of getting a better look at you as they do flying in straight lines anywhere. For them, flying is a highly evolved art. Of course, their slow, plodding ways are not a drawback for them as they are not required to help feed a large colony.
Flying in this way, the Carpenter Bees reconnoitered the hives, dancing back and forth, in and out, as if carefully choreographed. If they got too close, guard bees would fly up to them to give warning and they would back away. But tirelessly, they would continue to probe.
Yesterday, a different sort of bee or wasp tried to make entry into the hives. I don't know what it was. It was of the same general build as a honey bee but much larger and stockier with a distinct, bright yellow abdomen. Its probes at the hive entrance were much more aggressive and several times guards sallied forth and actually came in contact with it to drive it away. Whereas the Carpenter Bees never got closer than a foot or 18 inches from the hive entrance, this fellow came so close that I thought he might actually land. Several times he was within a couple of inches of the entrance before being driven away. After five minutes or so, he tried his luck with the other hive and then gave up and disappeared. I'm going to do some research on that guy - I'd love to know what he was.
Other critters that have shown an interest in the hive have included the aforementioned ants, who show no abatement!, and little bottle-green flies that will walk around on the landing board like they own the place. They are about a third their size and the bees seem to ignore them unless they try to actually enter the hive. When that happens they are run off. I have to give credit to these little guys for guts. No doubt their "noses" lead them there but I'm sure if they had any idea of the number of bees inside those boxes, they wouldn't be quite so bold.
Well, until next time...
Couple of observations I'd like to share about other bee-types checking out the hive. For awhile, I had a couple of Carpenter bees who would probe the hive for entree. They were very cautious and kept a respectable distance for the most part. They are always fun to watch because they are incredible fliers. Honeybees fly by darting here and there. They hover only for a short time, if at all, and then zip to where they are going. They will crash into you or each other fairly often which tells me they haven't completely perfected their flying skills. Flying, for them, seems to be merely a means to an end. That is, getting to flowers and back to the hive as quickly as possible. I have sat in my car in the driveway after work and, against the dark backdrop of trees, I've watched bees from my hives shoot past like bullets, heading off to some distant source of nectar. They are bees on a mission. They have many mouths to feed. A different sort altogther are Carpenter Bees, those big black and yellow galoots, often mistaken for Bumblebees (they look similar, but Carpenter Bees, as the name would imply live in drilled out tunnels in wood. Bumblebees live in the ground.) Their flying ability is quite remarkable. I don't know if they can fly faster than honeybees because I have never seen one fly fast. They are slow, methodical fliers that seem to spend as much time hovering, swiveling around and flying from point to point in the air for the purpose of getting a better look at you as they do flying in straight lines anywhere. For them, flying is a highly evolved art. Of course, their slow, plodding ways are not a drawback for them as they are not required to help feed a large colony.
Flying in this way, the Carpenter Bees reconnoitered the hives, dancing back and forth, in and out, as if carefully choreographed. If they got too close, guard bees would fly up to them to give warning and they would back away. But tirelessly, they would continue to probe.
Yesterday, a different sort of bee or wasp tried to make entry into the hives. I don't know what it was. It was of the same general build as a honey bee but much larger and stockier with a distinct, bright yellow abdomen. Its probes at the hive entrance were much more aggressive and several times guards sallied forth and actually came in contact with it to drive it away. Whereas the Carpenter Bees never got closer than a foot or 18 inches from the hive entrance, this fellow came so close that I thought he might actually land. Several times he was within a couple of inches of the entrance before being driven away. After five minutes or so, he tried his luck with the other hive and then gave up and disappeared. I'm going to do some research on that guy - I'd love to know what he was.
Other critters that have shown an interest in the hive have included the aforementioned ants, who show no abatement!, and little bottle-green flies that will walk around on the landing board like they own the place. They are about a third their size and the bees seem to ignore them unless they try to actually enter the hive. When that happens they are run off. I have to give credit to these little guys for guts. No doubt their "noses" lead them there but I'm sure if they had any idea of the number of bees inside those boxes, they wouldn't be quite so bold.
Well, until next time...
Monday, July 2, 2007
The Latest with Dem Bees
Yesterday, the first of July, I pulled the hive top feeders off of both hives for the purpose of cleaning them. The bees had drained the syrup a couple of days before and the feeders had become pretty funky in the weeks since I had put them back on. The "ant" feeder on Georgia was particularly nasty with lots of crusted ants who apparently just didn't have the capacity to know when to stop drinking. Once they are presentable again, I'll open the buffet with more syrup for the little beasts.
After removing the feeders - and yes, I smoked them - I noticed they had also finished off any trace of the pollen patties I'd placed on the top of the frames. As an aside, I was treated to the sight of a bee hauling out a piece of wax paper from the previous patty and tossing it in the grass a few days back. The piece of paper was at least four or five times bigger than she was. It must have been fun for her to drag that down through two brood boxes full of bees!
I then went through all four supers to see how comb production was going, starting with the Georgians. In their case, all twenty frames were completely drawn out and full of nectar. I'd say about 20% contained capped honey and I was surprised to see little knots of capped drone brood in the lower super, closest to the top brood box. There were perhaps 20-30 capped cells in all - all drone, no worker cells. Have no idea if this is normal. Another feature that I could have done without was the enormous amount of propolizing they had done to seal those frames in. The top super, which was the first they had drawn out, was really glued up. I spent some extra time scraping propolis and ladder comb just to help make things a little easier next time (I hope!) Their report card for this session is an 'A' though. In fact, I need to get hot putting together another super for them to work on.
The Arlington girls, too, had made great strides. In fact, I'd say they had about 30% of their honey capped in their first super. Unfortunately, the second super still had two frames that needed work and one that had barely been touched. I moved all of these to the middle of the box so they could focus their attention on them better. There was no brood in their supers at all and considerably less propolizing...Yay! When finished inspecting, I gave a large chunk of pollen patty to each hive and they went right to it, forgetting all about me. Maybe instead of smoke you could just toss a pollen patty into the hive like a grenade before entering. I'll have to look into a volunteer for that experiment.
There is one thing that I have been remiss to do up to this point. I need to begin focusing on what kind of mite situation I have going in the hives. The Varroa and tracheal mites can surely kill off both hives if left to nature and so I have to ascertain what level of infestation the bees might be dealing with and then work on a treatment program. And so, my next activity will be to do the "sticky board" check, which is to say I'll place a board under the screen at the bottom of the hive that has been sprayed with PAM or vegetable oil and leave it for 24 hours. Mites will fall off the bees onto the board and I can then count them to get some idea of their numbers in the hive. The whole mite control thing represents, for me, the next level in beekeeping and my success at it will determine the survival of the hives. More on that next time.
When it comes to observing the bees, my habit has been to stand beside the hive, rest my arm on the top cover and peer down on the landing board from above. They generally ignore me and go about their business as if I wasn't there. Even when they are engaged in "playtime" and the air in front of the hive is full of bees, I can stand as I've described and not be bothered by them. As always though, once a comfort level is achieved, something changes the equation and it is never to the beekeepers benefit, it seems. The hive top feeders I have are made of plastic and have a bottom flange that overhangs the hive box on all four sides. The feeder on the Arlington hive had become splayed out along the long edge enough that it had created an opening for the bees to enter the top of the hive. I was unaware of this fact one day as I assumed my normal position beside their hive. While happily watching the activity at the front entrance, a bee from the new upper entrance took an interest in my armpit that was so enticingly close. Naturally, I was made aware of this only when I tired of watching the bees and lowered my arm onto her. She responded in the only way she knew how and so, our tally grew by one and my left armpit endured a zap for probably the 5th or 6th time. Maybe it's time I changed brands of deodorant.
Sting count...an unlucky 13.
After removing the feeders - and yes, I smoked them - I noticed they had also finished off any trace of the pollen patties I'd placed on the top of the frames. As an aside, I was treated to the sight of a bee hauling out a piece of wax paper from the previous patty and tossing it in the grass a few days back. The piece of paper was at least four or five times bigger than she was. It must have been fun for her to drag that down through two brood boxes full of bees!
I then went through all four supers to see how comb production was going, starting with the Georgians. In their case, all twenty frames were completely drawn out and full of nectar. I'd say about 20% contained capped honey and I was surprised to see little knots of capped drone brood in the lower super, closest to the top brood box. There were perhaps 20-30 capped cells in all - all drone, no worker cells. Have no idea if this is normal. Another feature that I could have done without was the enormous amount of propolizing they had done to seal those frames in. The top super, which was the first they had drawn out, was really glued up. I spent some extra time scraping propolis and ladder comb just to help make things a little easier next time (I hope!) Their report card for this session is an 'A' though. In fact, I need to get hot putting together another super for them to work on.
The Arlington girls, too, had made great strides. In fact, I'd say they had about 30% of their honey capped in their first super. Unfortunately, the second super still had two frames that needed work and one that had barely been touched. I moved all of these to the middle of the box so they could focus their attention on them better. There was no brood in their supers at all and considerably less propolizing...Yay! When finished inspecting, I gave a large chunk of pollen patty to each hive and they went right to it, forgetting all about me. Maybe instead of smoke you could just toss a pollen patty into the hive like a grenade before entering. I'll have to look into a volunteer for that experiment.
There is one thing that I have been remiss to do up to this point. I need to begin focusing on what kind of mite situation I have going in the hives. The Varroa and tracheal mites can surely kill off both hives if left to nature and so I have to ascertain what level of infestation the bees might be dealing with and then work on a treatment program. And so, my next activity will be to do the "sticky board" check, which is to say I'll place a board under the screen at the bottom of the hive that has been sprayed with PAM or vegetable oil and leave it for 24 hours. Mites will fall off the bees onto the board and I can then count them to get some idea of their numbers in the hive. The whole mite control thing represents, for me, the next level in beekeeping and my success at it will determine the survival of the hives. More on that next time.
When it comes to observing the bees, my habit has been to stand beside the hive, rest my arm on the top cover and peer down on the landing board from above. They generally ignore me and go about their business as if I wasn't there. Even when they are engaged in "playtime" and the air in front of the hive is full of bees, I can stand as I've described and not be bothered by them. As always though, once a comfort level is achieved, something changes the equation and it is never to the beekeepers benefit, it seems. The hive top feeders I have are made of plastic and have a bottom flange that overhangs the hive box on all four sides. The feeder on the Arlington hive had become splayed out along the long edge enough that it had created an opening for the bees to enter the top of the hive. I was unaware of this fact one day as I assumed my normal position beside their hive. While happily watching the activity at the front entrance, a bee from the new upper entrance took an interest in my armpit that was so enticingly close. Naturally, I was made aware of this only when I tired of watching the bees and lowered my arm onto her. She responded in the only way she knew how and so, our tally grew by one and my left armpit endured a zap for probably the 5th or 6th time. Maybe it's time I changed brands of deodorant.
Sting count...an unlucky 13.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Random Observations
I've spent a lot of "blog" time recounting specific tasks or adventures I've had since I've had my bees, but I don't know if I've successfully conveyed how amazing these little creatures are. To the point that I can lose myself for quite a space of time just watching them. A neighbor, on seeing me in my chair intently staring at the hive asked me one day when the show would start. I couldn't think of a witty comeback at the time but I could have said 'It goes on all day!' Often, by paying close attention, you can see some pretty fascinating things that are a part of the bees day-to-day business. I find it very entertaining. So I thought that this time around I would share some of my random observations.
* Watching the entrance the other day, I saw a worker wrestle a dead bee out of the hive and drag it to the edge of the landing board. Then, using all of its strength, it half flew it, half threw it out into the grass in front of the hive.
* With the hive-top feeders on, I can take the top cover off for a short time and watch the bees in action under their screened enclosure as they slurp up the syrup. The adventure begins when I initially pour the (now) 2 gallons of syrup into the feeder. There are always bees loitering around at the bottom of the enclosure licking up whatever sugar residue there might be on the floor of the feeder once it has gone dry. When I pour in the new syrup, I do it slowly so that as many bees as possible can climb up out of the way of the rising liquid. Most do. A few of them seem to get confused and will walk down into the syrup and after becoming completely submerged, will begin sucking until they drown! I've taken to using a tiny stick to prod them towards the surface and in this way I've saved a few. But there is always a half dozen that seem bent on drowning and they become little floaters for the other bees to work around. Not that the other bees seem to mind, of course. Interestingly, once the feeder goes dry, as it always does, they will remove their dead sisters. I have never encountered a dead bee once the syrup has run out.
* I observed another cool thing while watching them in the feeder. Bees build their comb with wax that is secreted from the underside of their abdomen. Yesterday, a bee who was suspended upside-down on the screen had a couple of wax scales protruding and while I watched, she took hold of one of them, transferred it to her mouth/mandibles, and there began working it into shape for comb. After chewing awhile, she disappeared into the hive. No doubt to add her contribution to some part of the comb.
* Another interesting thing to see involves once again, the hive-top feeder. With the top cover off, it seems you have five to ten minutes before the first outside bee will come to investigate the sweet aroma of the liquid. Yesterday, I watched to see how long it took for the news to spread to other bees. The first bee or two settled in to fill their tanks and then flew off. While others happened upon the scene by scent or accident, it was clear that word had been passed by the first scouts after several minutes because traffic began to pick up to the point that I decided enough was enough. I blew smoke into the feeder to disperse the growing crowd as much as possible and then replaced the cover before the little festival qualified as a feeding frenzy!
* When the bees are feeding on the syrup, they will generally hang upside down from the screen and extend their tongues into the sweet liquid. You can actually see their tongues working as they suck up the liquid. Some, though, will actually lie on the surface, as if floating in a pool and blissfully suck away at the liquid. I don't know if this is on purpose or they've just been knocked down there by the others and now figure 'well, I'm here, might as well tank up!' Woe to the bee that reaches the syrup and is followed by a pack of others just above them as they often get pushed right down into the drink unless they can fight their way back up the screen to safety.
* Often times, the front entrance will become so lively with activity that the bees actually crash into each other while coming and going. Stationed around the entrance, there is always a crew of guard bees checking credentials. They are all very serious about their job and gamely run around trying to keep up with the continuous traffic seeking to enter the hive. They will stand on their rear two pairs of legs, heads elevated and twirl around and around trying to check foragers who come roaring in, largely oblivious to them. For their trouble, they are usually knocked all about by their older sisters who have nothing more on their minds than to unload whatever burden they are carrying. Meanwhile, other bees, intent on leaving the hive for yet another mission, will, in their haste or as a result of some collision with an inbound bee, come rolling out of the hive on their backs. They heave wildly until they have righted themselves and then take off undaunted. There is no room for niceties at the entrance, it's get out of the way or get knocked down!
* This time of year there are many drones leaving the hive hoping to get lucky (if they only knew!) and their clumsy ways are always amusing. They are not as nimble on their feet as their sisters and come rumbling out of the hive and take off with a low buzz. When they fly by your head, you can mistake them for a bumble bee as the noise they make is distinctively different from the higher pitched workers. Maybe it's because they lack stingers and are less menacing as a result, but I am fond of them. It's a shame that their efficient sisters will give them the heave ho as soon as nature shuts off the nectar valve.
* About four or five in the afternoon, it seems to be playtime for the new foraging recruits. Yesterday, for example, there was an astonishing number of bees sailing all around the hives, swirling in a thick mass, facing the entrance. These bees are about to make the big leap from house bees to field bees and they are orienting on the hive to hard wire its distinct features into their little brains so that they can find it again when they begin making foraging runs. After 20 or 30 minutes the activity returns to normal with just the usual comings and goings.
* Inside the hive, you see some really interesting things. One of my favorites is seeing the nurse bees feeding larvae. There is probably no more attentive creature in the animal world to its young than the honey bee. They will make an average of 1300 visits per day to feed each larvae with secretions from glands in their heads, etc. Whenever you examine a frame with brood, you will see dozens of bees poking into a cell with only their tail end visable as they feed the babies. The fact that you have smoked them and pulled that particular frame out of their house doesn't faze them at all, they gotta do what they gotta do.
These are just a few of the things I've seen. But as you can see, if you are observant and take some time, the bees will provide you with quite a show.
P.S. Currently I have two shallow honey supers on each hive, with one of them completely filled with comb and curing honey in each. I added another chunk of pollen patty to each hive today and added four more gallons of sugar water yesterday. Sheesh! (June 26 - added four more gallons)
Perhaps appreciating my generosity (though probably not) the girls have sheathed their stingers for the time being, and so...
Sting count...holding at 12.
* Watching the entrance the other day, I saw a worker wrestle a dead bee out of the hive and drag it to the edge of the landing board. Then, using all of its strength, it half flew it, half threw it out into the grass in front of the hive.
* With the hive-top feeders on, I can take the top cover off for a short time and watch the bees in action under their screened enclosure as they slurp up the syrup. The adventure begins when I initially pour the (now) 2 gallons of syrup into the feeder. There are always bees loitering around at the bottom of the enclosure licking up whatever sugar residue there might be on the floor of the feeder once it has gone dry. When I pour in the new syrup, I do it slowly so that as many bees as possible can climb up out of the way of the rising liquid. Most do. A few of them seem to get confused and will walk down into the syrup and after becoming completely submerged, will begin sucking until they drown! I've taken to using a tiny stick to prod them towards the surface and in this way I've saved a few. But there is always a half dozen that seem bent on drowning and they become little floaters for the other bees to work around. Not that the other bees seem to mind, of course. Interestingly, once the feeder goes dry, as it always does, they will remove their dead sisters. I have never encountered a dead bee once the syrup has run out.
* I observed another cool thing while watching them in the feeder. Bees build their comb with wax that is secreted from the underside of their abdomen. Yesterday, a bee who was suspended upside-down on the screen had a couple of wax scales protruding and while I watched, she took hold of one of them, transferred it to her mouth/mandibles, and there began working it into shape for comb. After chewing awhile, she disappeared into the hive. No doubt to add her contribution to some part of the comb.
* Another interesting thing to see involves once again, the hive-top feeder. With the top cover off, it seems you have five to ten minutes before the first outside bee will come to investigate the sweet aroma of the liquid. Yesterday, I watched to see how long it took for the news to spread to other bees. The first bee or two settled in to fill their tanks and then flew off. While others happened upon the scene by scent or accident, it was clear that word had been passed by the first scouts after several minutes because traffic began to pick up to the point that I decided enough was enough. I blew smoke into the feeder to disperse the growing crowd as much as possible and then replaced the cover before the little festival qualified as a feeding frenzy!
* When the bees are feeding on the syrup, they will generally hang upside down from the screen and extend their tongues into the sweet liquid. You can actually see their tongues working as they suck up the liquid. Some, though, will actually lie on the surface, as if floating in a pool and blissfully suck away at the liquid. I don't know if this is on purpose or they've just been knocked down there by the others and now figure 'well, I'm here, might as well tank up!' Woe to the bee that reaches the syrup and is followed by a pack of others just above them as they often get pushed right down into the drink unless they can fight their way back up the screen to safety.
* Often times, the front entrance will become so lively with activity that the bees actually crash into each other while coming and going. Stationed around the entrance, there is always a crew of guard bees checking credentials. They are all very serious about their job and gamely run around trying to keep up with the continuous traffic seeking to enter the hive. They will stand on their rear two pairs of legs, heads elevated and twirl around and around trying to check foragers who come roaring in, largely oblivious to them. For their trouble, they are usually knocked all about by their older sisters who have nothing more on their minds than to unload whatever burden they are carrying. Meanwhile, other bees, intent on leaving the hive for yet another mission, will, in their haste or as a result of some collision with an inbound bee, come rolling out of the hive on their backs. They heave wildly until they have righted themselves and then take off undaunted. There is no room for niceties at the entrance, it's get out of the way or get knocked down!
* This time of year there are many drones leaving the hive hoping to get lucky (if they only knew!) and their clumsy ways are always amusing. They are not as nimble on their feet as their sisters and come rumbling out of the hive and take off with a low buzz. When they fly by your head, you can mistake them for a bumble bee as the noise they make is distinctively different from the higher pitched workers. Maybe it's because they lack stingers and are less menacing as a result, but I am fond of them. It's a shame that their efficient sisters will give them the heave ho as soon as nature shuts off the nectar valve.
* About four or five in the afternoon, it seems to be playtime for the new foraging recruits. Yesterday, for example, there was an astonishing number of bees sailing all around the hives, swirling in a thick mass, facing the entrance. These bees are about to make the big leap from house bees to field bees and they are orienting on the hive to hard wire its distinct features into their little brains so that they can find it again when they begin making foraging runs. After 20 or 30 minutes the activity returns to normal with just the usual comings and goings.
* Inside the hive, you see some really interesting things. One of my favorites is seeing the nurse bees feeding larvae. There is probably no more attentive creature in the animal world to its young than the honey bee. They will make an average of 1300 visits per day to feed each larvae with secretions from glands in their heads, etc. Whenever you examine a frame with brood, you will see dozens of bees poking into a cell with only their tail end visable as they feed the babies. The fact that you have smoked them and pulled that particular frame out of their house doesn't faze them at all, they gotta do what they gotta do.
These are just a few of the things I've seen. But as you can see, if you are observant and take some time, the bees will provide you with quite a show.
P.S. Currently I have two shallow honey supers on each hive, with one of them completely filled with comb and curing honey in each. I added another chunk of pollen patty to each hive today and added four more gallons of sugar water yesterday. Sheesh! (June 26 - added four more gallons)
Perhaps appreciating my generosity (though probably not) the girls have sheathed their stingers for the time being, and so...
Sting count...holding at 12.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Bees Win in Hard Fought Contest
It was a mis- adventure that could have been ripped from the scripts for Jackass.
Have you ever heard some variation of the phrase "...knowing just enough to be dangerous?" In my "all of three months" of beekeeping - digging into hives, shuffling frames, blowing smoke - I had developed a serious case of "knowing" my bees. My girls! We had an understanding. Well, worse than any wife or girlfriend, these sisters put me in my place. I am still discovering stings that I didn't know I had. When you stumble into the proverbial hornet's nest, or in this case honeybees, and they rise up in a beautiful cloud of yellow and black, their patience and goodwill gone, their buzzing changed to the pitch of some World War II fighter plane, and they descend on you like the fury of hell itself, you are far too busy running to pay much attention to individual stings. The terror is in their numbers, their noise, and their relentlessness. Pain is way down the list. I ran across my lawn like a man on fire, arms flailing wildly (I did withhold the urge to scream like a child), It seemed to me that I plucked one bee after another from some part of my upper anatomy with each step. Others sailed around my head. If I actually outran any of them, I retained a fine cadre of bee track stars who not only kept pace but literally flew circles around me as I ran. Any neighbors watching must have regretted forgetting the popcorn. I'm sure I put on one hell of a show! In the end, at last count, only five bees made the ultimate sacrifice for their hive. A number so puny, that I'm almost embarrassed by what I've just written...except that THE TERROR WAS REAL!!! And as I say, I continue to find itchy red spots I didn't know I had, so...
By now, you are probably asking yourself "What in the world did he do?" "How did he get into such a scrape?" Or perhaps "What an idiot!"
Let me tell you the story and then you can all unite on that last phrase. Sing it out loud, in unison if you like. Here goes...
It all began with feeding my bees sugar syrup so that they could draw out lots of beautiful comb in my honey supers. A week ago, I placed pollen patties on the top frames of each honey super and poured a gallon of syrup in each top feeder. It took the bees a day or so to realize that there was vittles in them thar feeders, but upon finding it, they sucked it down like it was some kind of contest. Two days after putting it in, the feeders were drained. I added more. One day later the syrup was gone. Now remember, each gallon of syrup contains an entire 5lb bag of granulated sugar. So in a matter of days they had downed 20lbs of the stuff. Exasperated, I made four gallons, two for each hive, poured it in, and envisioned getting a second mortgage just to feed these little gluttons.
Prior to adding the two gallons this last time around, I checked their progress building out the frames. The Georgia girls, who had a good head start on the neighbors, had drawn out six of their frames and begun filling them with liquid. Good show girls! The Arlington babes were much farther behind, having just begun work on two or three. This is where we stood prior to adding the four gallons of new syrup. This was added on Friday, June 15.
Yesterday, I took a peek in the feeders to see how much they had consumed and was amazed to see no more than perhaps a half gallon left. This was in Arlington. I never made it to Georgia.
Upon seeing that their syrup was nearly gone, I was overcome with curiosity about the frames. So much so, in fact, that I thought I'd peek without benefit of smoke, gloves, veil, etc. I was wearing a tee shirt, shorts and a baseball cap. Oh, and lots of exposed skin. I lifted the hive top feeder up and the last thing I remember before running for my life was a mushroom cloud of bees forming above the hive, the roar of hundreds, maybe thousands of bees (God! I just don't know!) and the cloud collapsing around me. This all took place in perhaps a nanosecond. My next coherent memory is of my blessed bathroom and a single bee, who had followed me in, batting itself silly against the ceiling light. I was breathing hard...but I was alive.
I never was able to ascertain the progress on the frames and, frankly, I didn't care.
Until today. I'll show those little bugs. I won't be denied. I am the higher life form after all.
Sting count after yesterday's debacle...12
Sting count after yesterday's debacle...12
Monday, June 11, 2007
Time to Re-Think Strategy
With the previous blog I told you how I had placed honey supers on my hives. Dreams of numerous, full honey jars danced in my head. It seemed like a good plan. I just couldn't wait to spread my own honey on my morning toast. These fantasies came crashing down when I attended a BANV meeting set up by Pat Haskell that was designed to check on the neophytes and our progress to date with the winged wonders. During the meeting I learned several things that had me re-thinking my honey strategy.
For one thing, I was under the impression that the nectar in our area kept up a bountiful flow until the end of July. Not so. Turns out that the spring nectar season pretty much dies out completely by the middle of June. Several weeks back, I had removed the hive-top feeders because the girls were bringing in scads of pollen and presumably lots of nectar. They had stopped taking the syrup so off came the feeders. Lately I had noticed far fewer bees returning to the hive with full pollen baskets. On inspecting the hives on Friday, I noticed that the honey supers were being ignored. Not one fleck of beeswax had been added to my foundation. You would have thought the queen excluder was electrified.
In the meeting, we were told that we needed to add pollen patties and feeders onto our hives and remove the queen excluders. These measures would cause the queen to keep laying eggs and the workers to draw out comb in the honey supers. It was strongly emphasized that our mission this first year was to get the bees to produce as much drawn out comb as possible in preparation for next year's nectar flows. The lost honey this year would be compensated for by pounds and pounds of the stuff next year. Well, being a poor, working guy, I'm familiar with the concept of delayed gratification and so I agreed to follow the program. I removed the exluders, whipped up a batch of sugar syrup, brought out a couple of chunks of pollen patty and went about setting things right for next year. Oh well.
As I said, this took place on Friday. On Saturday, I peeked hopefully under the top cover to see if the bees had found the syrup. Maybe a half dozen had made their way up there, no more. On the Georgia girls hive, I had always had trouble sealing the feeder off from opportunistic little ants. Briefly, when the feeders were on last, I had accidently arranged my heavy landscaping rocks in just the right way that the top cover pushed down enough to keep them out. I have not rediscovered that particular rock arrangement since, because the little pests have been having a grand feast while, at the same time, sacrificing untold numbers to drowning in the process. In the unending exercise trying to thwart them, I shift my rocks around trying to find just the right position. I did it once, I can do it again, right? If I could only be certain I had found the perfect configuration, I would spray paint their positions like they do murder victims, but to be sure it worked, I have to remove the rocks to see if there are any ants inside, never to find that "perfect" position again! By such means do men lose their minds. Obviously, I have a warped top cover and the ultimate fix, I guess, will be to get a new one. The other hive, possessor of an old, seen-better-days top cover, has never allowed the first ant to pass through to the syrup. Go figure.
Anyway, I digress. On checking the feeders today, I was amazed to discover that the bees had almost drained the gallon of syrup I had put in each feeder! The screened off feeding area was packed with bees and you could see many of them just slurping it up with their long tongues. I can only imagine the effect this turn of events is having on the honey super below the feeder. I didn't check them today, but considering that on last check the brood boxes were fully invested with brood and food, there isn't anywhere else for all that syrup to wind up but in the supers as comb I would think. I just can't get over how fast that syrup was consumed. The first feeder I checked was the "ant" feeder, so at first I thought the ants had carried off most of it. But on checking the second, ant-free feeder, it too was nearly drained. In three days!? Amazing.
So, in conclusion, for all of you that I, with some cockiness, announced a forthcoming batch of honey this season...I was just kidding! Ha! Ha! But stick with me here. As the Brooklyn Dodgers used to say..."Wait til next year!"
P.S. One girl took exception to the foregoing proceedings, and so...
Sting tally...7
For one thing, I was under the impression that the nectar in our area kept up a bountiful flow until the end of July. Not so. Turns out that the spring nectar season pretty much dies out completely by the middle of June. Several weeks back, I had removed the hive-top feeders because the girls were bringing in scads of pollen and presumably lots of nectar. They had stopped taking the syrup so off came the feeders. Lately I had noticed far fewer bees returning to the hive with full pollen baskets. On inspecting the hives on Friday, I noticed that the honey supers were being ignored. Not one fleck of beeswax had been added to my foundation. You would have thought the queen excluder was electrified.
In the meeting, we were told that we needed to add pollen patties and feeders onto our hives and remove the queen excluders. These measures would cause the queen to keep laying eggs and the workers to draw out comb in the honey supers. It was strongly emphasized that our mission this first year was to get the bees to produce as much drawn out comb as possible in preparation for next year's nectar flows. The lost honey this year would be compensated for by pounds and pounds of the stuff next year. Well, being a poor, working guy, I'm familiar with the concept of delayed gratification and so I agreed to follow the program. I removed the exluders, whipped up a batch of sugar syrup, brought out a couple of chunks of pollen patty and went about setting things right for next year. Oh well.
As I said, this took place on Friday. On Saturday, I peeked hopefully under the top cover to see if the bees had found the syrup. Maybe a half dozen had made their way up there, no more. On the Georgia girls hive, I had always had trouble sealing the feeder off from opportunistic little ants. Briefly, when the feeders were on last, I had accidently arranged my heavy landscaping rocks in just the right way that the top cover pushed down enough to keep them out. I have not rediscovered that particular rock arrangement since, because the little pests have been having a grand feast while, at the same time, sacrificing untold numbers to drowning in the process. In the unending exercise trying to thwart them, I shift my rocks around trying to find just the right position. I did it once, I can do it again, right? If I could only be certain I had found the perfect configuration, I would spray paint their positions like they do murder victims, but to be sure it worked, I have to remove the rocks to see if there are any ants inside, never to find that "perfect" position again! By such means do men lose their minds. Obviously, I have a warped top cover and the ultimate fix, I guess, will be to get a new one. The other hive, possessor of an old, seen-better-days top cover, has never allowed the first ant to pass through to the syrup. Go figure.
Anyway, I digress. On checking the feeders today, I was amazed to discover that the bees had almost drained the gallon of syrup I had put in each feeder! The screened off feeding area was packed with bees and you could see many of them just slurping it up with their long tongues. I can only imagine the effect this turn of events is having on the honey super below the feeder. I didn't check them today, but considering that on last check the brood boxes were fully invested with brood and food, there isn't anywhere else for all that syrup to wind up but in the supers as comb I would think. I just can't get over how fast that syrup was consumed. The first feeder I checked was the "ant" feeder, so at first I thought the ants had carried off most of it. But on checking the second, ant-free feeder, it too was nearly drained. In three days!? Amazing.
So, in conclusion, for all of you that I, with some cockiness, announced a forthcoming batch of honey this season...I was just kidding! Ha! Ha! But stick with me here. As the Brooklyn Dodgers used to say..."Wait til next year!"
P.S. One girl took exception to the foregoing proceedings, and so...
Sting tally...7
Friday, June 1, 2007
Honey Supers!
I'm a little tardy in writing this, but better late than never, right? This past weekend, after determining that the bees couldn't go much further in drawing out comb, rearing brood and socking away all the pollen and honey they could cram into the two deeps hive bodies, I figured it was time to see how they would do in making me some honey. With little fanfare, and with a minimum of disruption to the bees themselves, I slipped a queen excluder and a shallow "honey super" on each hive, closed things up and crossed my fingers.
Just so things are clear to those of you who may not know a honey super from a screened bottom board, I'll give you a quick run through...
The queen excluder, as the name suggests, keeps our egg-laying machine from climbing up into our honey box and creating lots of squiggly white larvae in the cells around our honey. To bears, larvae constitutes a delicacy (more so than the honey, despite what Winnie the Pooh would have us believe!) but people tend to frown on the little critters mixed up with the sweet stuff. Basically, an excluder is very similar to the grill on your George Foreman, with the wire just wide enough to allow workers through but not the more rotund queen. Thus, no eggs.
The honey super is a box that holds frames just like the brood boxes only they are usually smaller. Where your "deep" hive bodies are roughly 10 inches high, your honey supers or boxes, are usually either mediums (about 7 inches) or shallows (about 6 inches). Deep boxes can be used as honey supers but the weight of one of those filled with ten frames of honey can tip the scales at around 100 pounds. To save old beekeepers backs, the smaller boxes are the popular alternative, particularly amongst hobbyists like myself.
The supers I put on this weekend contained frames and foundation only. Meaning that the bees would have to draw out the comb before they could start filling it with nectar. So this would set them back some, but the only way to get it drawn is to get it in the hive so they can draw it.
Honey, by the way, is made from the nectar that the bees store in the cells. Nectar contains primarily sugars and water. After storing the nectar in the cell, the bees work to reduce the water content and allow it to ripen into honey. Foragers carrying nectar transfer it to workers in the hive who carry it to a cell. To facilitate the evaporation of water from the nectar, the bee will carry small drops of it on her long tongue so that the air movement will have the desired effect. Through the fanning of their wings in the hive, other bees will help this process along as well. In short order, they will create the precious liquid, stored in the cell and finally capped over with wax to await the day when the bees need it or their hulking keeper swipes it from them. Life isn't fair for bees either, I'm afraid.
Just so things are clear to those of you who may not know a honey super from a screened bottom board, I'll give you a quick run through...
The queen excluder, as the name suggests, keeps our egg-laying machine from climbing up into our honey box and creating lots of squiggly white larvae in the cells around our honey. To bears, larvae constitutes a delicacy (more so than the honey, despite what Winnie the Pooh would have us believe!) but people tend to frown on the little critters mixed up with the sweet stuff. Basically, an excluder is very similar to the grill on your George Foreman, with the wire just wide enough to allow workers through but not the more rotund queen. Thus, no eggs.
The honey super is a box that holds frames just like the brood boxes only they are usually smaller. Where your "deep" hive bodies are roughly 10 inches high, your honey supers or boxes, are usually either mediums (about 7 inches) or shallows (about 6 inches). Deep boxes can be used as honey supers but the weight of one of those filled with ten frames of honey can tip the scales at around 100 pounds. To save old beekeepers backs, the smaller boxes are the popular alternative, particularly amongst hobbyists like myself.
The supers I put on this weekend contained frames and foundation only. Meaning that the bees would have to draw out the comb before they could start filling it with nectar. So this would set them back some, but the only way to get it drawn is to get it in the hive so they can draw it.
Honey, by the way, is made from the nectar that the bees store in the cells. Nectar contains primarily sugars and water. After storing the nectar in the cell, the bees work to reduce the water content and allow it to ripen into honey. Foragers carrying nectar transfer it to workers in the hive who carry it to a cell. To facilitate the evaporation of water from the nectar, the bee will carry small drops of it on her long tongue so that the air movement will have the desired effect. Through the fanning of their wings in the hive, other bees will help this process along as well. In short order, they will create the precious liquid, stored in the cell and finally capped over with wax to await the day when the bees need it or their hulking keeper swipes it from them. Life isn't fair for bees either, I'm afraid.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Living Dangerously or How to Learn to Love the Veil
Yesterday I went to help my mentor, Paul Kent, inspect his hives and remove the queens for the purpose of "requeening." He had secured what are known as hygienic queens from a noted apiarist and researcher named Marla Spivak, who had been doing graduate work in the area of breeding queens that had strong traits for keeping their homes clean and ship-shape. These traits would be passed on to her offspring and the hope would be that this obsessiveness for diligently cleaning house would have a beneficial effect in the fight against Varroa Mites - perhaps the biggest threat to a healthy hive. In theory, these special bees won't tolerate brood that might be hosting mites on their bodies and would thus toss them out, mites and all. The Varroa Mite's reproductive cycle depends on infesting the brood prior to their being capped off in the cells, particularly Drone brood. It is the latest of many strategies designed to combat these little parasites.
Anywho, I thought it would further along my bee education to see his frames and catch some queens. He has two hives that he started on packages like I did but with the advantage that he already had drawn comb on all his frames thanks to the hard work of his bees from the previous year who did not survive the winter. Another reason for my being there was that I was considering replacing the "Arlington" queen with one of these new-fangled hygienic lasses. And so we began...
After detailing my travails with a smoker in the last posting, it was ironic to me that Paul did not use one at all! In fact, he said he rarely used one because handling his bees without a smoker had never been a problem. Sure enough, we went through both hives, frame by frame with nary a wisp of smoke and the bees remained gentle and easy to work. Hmmm.
To make a long story short, we captured the queens, closed the hives and our work there was done. I gained some insight examining frames with someone who had "been there before" and could help me interpret what I was seeing. I even practiced the technique for capturing a queen by trying it out on a drone. You literally have to reach into the multitudes and pluck her out by grasping her gently around her thorax - the middle segment of her body from which her legs and wings sprout. Of course, queens are a rare commodity so it's best to practice on a drone for two reasons. First, if you're too rough and injure a drone, there's no great harm done to the hive, there being many more drones. (Of course, that particular drone may disagree with that assessment.) The second, really good reason is that drones have no stingers! Fearless in my nimble surgical gloves, I plucked out a party boy with no injury to either of us. Piece of cake!
After a couple of hours playing with Paul's bees, I of course couldn't wait to get into my hives and I was determined I would try this smoke-free method myself.
It had been over a week since I checked in on the Georgia girls and I wanted to see how they were doing with drawing out the remaining comb and to install a "slatted rack" under the brood chamber. Briefly, that contraption can supposedly help dissuade the bees from the notion to swarm by giving them a larger gallery beneath the brood chamber to hang out and trade foraging stories and other tall bee tales.
At first all went well. In the top hive box, the bees behaved about the same as when I smoked them. I inspected the frames and was happy to see great progress on all but one of them. The bees were rapidly reaching the point where drawing out comb would be done and they could concentrate on brood and HONEY FOR ME!
About this time, the bees began to collectively put together what was going on and commenced to rise up in serious protest. By the time I had set the first hive body aside and begun to pull frames from the lower box, I began to thank the Lord and all that is holy for the blessing of my veil. At times, I had literally hundreds of bees slamming into the mesh surrounding my face. The sound of buzzing rose to drown out the traffic noise on Lees Corner Road behind me. It was quite an experience! As confidence grew in my veil and other defensive clothing, I think I may have smirked a little at their feeble efforts to get at me. Silly bees! YOU CANNOT HARM ME...I AM BEEKEEPER MAN!!! It was about this time that some of them...I'll call them Mensa Bees...began to get the idea that there was a point where the veil and my sweatshirt were not attached and began looking seriously for an opening. Beekeeper Man had to rethink his strategy. I had seen the queen, no doubt smirking a little herself by now, and I decided to hurry along and get the slatted rack in place so I could get things reassembled before the Mensa Bees discovered the weak point in my armor. I tried to follow the basic rule of remaining calm and deliberate and I'm proud to say that everything went well, but I was a bit rattled. What especially got me was their persistence in tracking down the intruder for over an hour after I had left them be and returned to working on my front porch. I killed two bees who buzzed me and ended up tangled in my hair and another who seemed to get tripped up in my ear. Beekeeper Man not so tough now. I may have changed clothes, but they remembered well my smell apparently because every ten minutes or so, another kamakaze would swoop in. Outside their hive, hundreds of bees flew about for a good hour and a half and I stayed far away. Who knows, maybe some of those Texas girls were still able to get it together and saddle up the posse.
Next time, folks will see my smoke for miles! Miraculously, I was not stung once and though they gave it their all, the tally remains...
Bee stings....6
Anywho, I thought it would further along my bee education to see his frames and catch some queens. He has two hives that he started on packages like I did but with the advantage that he already had drawn comb on all his frames thanks to the hard work of his bees from the previous year who did not survive the winter. Another reason for my being there was that I was considering replacing the "Arlington" queen with one of these new-fangled hygienic lasses. And so we began...
After detailing my travails with a smoker in the last posting, it was ironic to me that Paul did not use one at all! In fact, he said he rarely used one because handling his bees without a smoker had never been a problem. Sure enough, we went through both hives, frame by frame with nary a wisp of smoke and the bees remained gentle and easy to work. Hmmm.
To make a long story short, we captured the queens, closed the hives and our work there was done. I gained some insight examining frames with someone who had "been there before" and could help me interpret what I was seeing. I even practiced the technique for capturing a queen by trying it out on a drone. You literally have to reach into the multitudes and pluck her out by grasping her gently around her thorax - the middle segment of her body from which her legs and wings sprout. Of course, queens are a rare commodity so it's best to practice on a drone for two reasons. First, if you're too rough and injure a drone, there's no great harm done to the hive, there being many more drones. (Of course, that particular drone may disagree with that assessment.) The second, really good reason is that drones have no stingers! Fearless in my nimble surgical gloves, I plucked out a party boy with no injury to either of us. Piece of cake!
After a couple of hours playing with Paul's bees, I of course couldn't wait to get into my hives and I was determined I would try this smoke-free method myself.
It had been over a week since I checked in on the Georgia girls and I wanted to see how they were doing with drawing out the remaining comb and to install a "slatted rack" under the brood chamber. Briefly, that contraption can supposedly help dissuade the bees from the notion to swarm by giving them a larger gallery beneath the brood chamber to hang out and trade foraging stories and other tall bee tales.
At first all went well. In the top hive box, the bees behaved about the same as when I smoked them. I inspected the frames and was happy to see great progress on all but one of them. The bees were rapidly reaching the point where drawing out comb would be done and they could concentrate on brood and HONEY FOR ME!
About this time, the bees began to collectively put together what was going on and commenced to rise up in serious protest. By the time I had set the first hive body aside and begun to pull frames from the lower box, I began to thank the Lord and all that is holy for the blessing of my veil. At times, I had literally hundreds of bees slamming into the mesh surrounding my face. The sound of buzzing rose to drown out the traffic noise on Lees Corner Road behind me. It was quite an experience! As confidence grew in my veil and other defensive clothing, I think I may have smirked a little at their feeble efforts to get at me. Silly bees! YOU CANNOT HARM ME...I AM BEEKEEPER MAN!!! It was about this time that some of them...I'll call them Mensa Bees...began to get the idea that there was a point where the veil and my sweatshirt were not attached and began looking seriously for an opening. Beekeeper Man had to rethink his strategy. I had seen the queen, no doubt smirking a little herself by now, and I decided to hurry along and get the slatted rack in place so I could get things reassembled before the Mensa Bees discovered the weak point in my armor. I tried to follow the basic rule of remaining calm and deliberate and I'm proud to say that everything went well, but I was a bit rattled. What especially got me was their persistence in tracking down the intruder for over an hour after I had left them be and returned to working on my front porch. I killed two bees who buzzed me and ended up tangled in my hair and another who seemed to get tripped up in my ear. Beekeeper Man not so tough now. I may have changed clothes, but they remembered well my smell apparently because every ten minutes or so, another kamakaze would swoop in. Outside their hive, hundreds of bees flew about for a good hour and a half and I stayed far away. Who knows, maybe some of those Texas girls were still able to get it together and saddle up the posse.
Next time, folks will see my smoke for miles! Miraculously, I was not stung once and though they gave it their all, the tally remains...
Bee stings....6
Monday, May 21, 2007
First Inspection of the New Hive
As promised in my last post, I inspected the new hive today. Though this hive is offically Hive#2, I have decided to dub them the Arlington girls. After all, this is where they came from, right? Sounds better than "Hive#2" anyway. So henceforth, we will be refering to the Arlington girls and the Georgia girls. The Texas girls, having been absorbed into Hive#1, are for all intents and purposes no more. Hopefully, they taught some Texas Two Step moves to the Georgians before they had their Lone Star traits pheromoned out of them!
Anyway, like I said, today was the day for checking in on the Arlington clan. It has been a little over a week since they were installed with their four, fully invested frames and six frames of foundation.
The first thing evident was that they had drawn out all but one frame and had started on the tenth. Wow! These are some wax producing ladies. As a result of this, I added a second hive box so they could have plenty of room for expansion. If the progress in these two hives continues at this pace, I don't see how I can miss pulling some honey out of them before the year is out. What's more, the Arlington bees did it without the benefit of a feeder on their hive.
The second thing to cheer me was seeing the unmarked queen scrambling along the comb. Not being painted, it is quite a trick finding her among the throngs, but I not only saw her, my lovely wife caught her with the digital camera she got for her birthday! (It really was for her)
You can see her highness in the middle right of the photo. She's the one without the tiger stripes. (Click on the picture for a close up) There was also plenty of capped brood and honey.
I should tell you here about my smoker. Why? Because I had a breakthrough of sorts today with that little contraption. Even for folks who don't know much about beekeeping, the smoker is an easily recognized part of the business. For the beekeeper it is essential. Prior to opening up a hive, a beekeeper will puff smoke from his smoker into the entrance and under the inner cover to throw the bees off their game enough so that he can do his thing without arousing too much unwanted attention. The theory behind it, so the experts tell us, is that the smoke alerts the bees to the possibility of a forest fire (they live in trees when wild) and they race off into the bowels of the hive to retrieve their most prized possession, honey. This may be true, but I also think that they just plain don't like someone blowing smoke in their faces and so they run off to find some fresh air. Either way, they make themselves scarce pretty quickly and having them so preoccupied holds several obvious advantages for our intrepid keeper.
With regard to my smoker, I have always had trouble coming up with the right formula for keeping it lit and billowy with smoke. I tried the prepackaged raw cotton stuff the supply houses sell, I tried sticks and leaves and pine needles. All with limited success. Today, I kept it simple. I broke up some pine board scraps and lit 'em up with my propane torch until I could roast marshmallows on them if I wanted to. Once they were going good, I clipped some small, leaf-covered branches from a thorn bush I don't like much anyway and jammed them into my little inferno. Instant smoke! Enough that I could send smoke signals to my mentor across town. Best of all, it remained smoky throughout my inspection and for awhile after. Like I said, a breakthrough. I just hope that thorn bush isn't some rare toxic thorn bush!
So, in closing, the Arlington girls are settled in and doing fine. Theresa, the lovely wife mentioned earlier, got to experiment with her new camera. And I received no bee stings, not a one. Of course, as history has shown us, bees are a cunning sort and wait for a moment when I have my guard down to exact their revenge for my intrusions. I am in greatest danger when dozing in my lawn chair.
Sting count...steady at 6.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Boilin' with Bees!
Just a quick little post to let you know that on checking the hives today after work, there must have been a thousand bees flying around the entrances to the two hives. It wasn't a swarm situation. Rather, the mob, which looked a lot like the entrance to the Metro after a sporting event, seemed to be engaged in bringing in pollen and nectar or orienting on the hives. Being a warm day, there were probably a number of them who were just cooling off on the front porch . The second hive, though fewer in number, were engaged in the same way, and so I'm hoping they are going to be fine. I'll be inspecting them on Sunday or Monday. I'm on vacation next week, working around the house, so there'll be plenty of time to do some bee watching. Who knows, maybe even add to the ol' bee sting tote board.
* I added this image on 5/21 because I thought it was pretty cool. During one of my inspections of the Georgia girls, I cut off some burr comb and left nectar all over the middle of this frame. The bees are furiously sucking up the gooey mess. Click on the image to supersize it!
Total stings...holding at 6
Total stings...holding at 6
Monday, May 14, 2007
Another Look at Hive #1
It's been 6 days since I combined the two hives and with the weather warm and sunny, I figured it was a good day to check to see how things have been going with the merger. I was pretty sure that the bees had long ago chewed through the sheet of newspaper that divided them and having seen nothing to indicate open warfare, I really had a couple of other things I wanted to do once in the hive, though I was curious to see the extent to which they had intermingled.
The first thing, as always, was to check the status of the queen. By now, new bees have been chewing their way out of their capped cells for about 10 days and her majesty should have been revisiting those cells to lay new eggs. Conservatively, ten days of emerging bees could equal an additional 10 to 15 thousand bees I figured. With the Texas merger , I could be looking at 30 to 35 thousand bees by now in hive #1. That of course is a semi-educated guess. I wasn't going to be counting!
I was also interested to see how they had been doing getting additional frames drawn out in the lower hive box and if the queen had begun laying eggs in the upper hive box. I had used the inner cover at the top of the hive to provide an entrance to the transplanted Texas girls under the hive top feeder. Many of them had imprinted on this opening and seemed to use it instead of the main entrance at the bottom of the hive. Though merged, I had no way of knowing if any Texas bees were using the lower entrance, or if the Georgia girls used the upper. If you're not a bee, they look amazingly alike. I figured that the Texans were probably working mostly in the upper hive box and the Georgians in the lower. The logic being that old habits die hard, especially for an insect.
Between the nectar flow and the syrup in the feeder, I hoped that they had expanded onto the unused frames in the upper box as well. I've come around to the idea that, in this first year, it is more important to get all the frames drawn out into comb than to worry too much about honey. Fully drawn comb means a better infrastructure to support more bees in the long run. This, in turn, increases their survival chances for the winter through a larger population and more room for food storage. If the hive does not survive the winter - a sad outcome after all this nurturing! - I will have fully drawn frames to hand over to a new package next year. They won't have to waste time and energy on constructing comb and instead can get right to work making baby bees and honey.
Well, with all this in mind, I set about smoking the little critters and opened things up piece by piece to have a look-see. The first thing I noticed after pulling a couple of non-drawn frames in the upper was that they had made short work of the newspaper. All that remained was a 2-3 inch fringe around the outsides of the hive. The upper box contained about six frames almost fully drawn out that contained mostly nectar and pollen. There were patches of capped brood scattered around that I believe tended to be drone brood because they protruded out a few millimeters beyond the rest of the cells. The patches tended to be around 2 to 3 inches in diameter and were not in any particular pattern on the frames. Could this mean laying workers? The queen was alive and well in the lower box and she seemed to be doing fairly well in keeping the cells occupied with brood down there. But I wasn't sure I saw evidence that she had been at work in the upper box. The Georgians had not done much in expanding onto the 3 frames they had not touched before, but the seven frames that were fully drawn out were heavy with bees, brood, pollen and honey. Most of the progress in drawing out comb had occured in the upper box. I decided to try to rectify that by moving two drawn out frames that were full of nectar and pollen to the lower box, replacing two of the lightly drawn frames down there, which I moved upstairs. In this way I hoped to get the bees to fully invest the lower box and only after that would I work to get the upper box's frames completely drawn out.
I am a little worried about the possibility of laying workers in the upper box. Will the queen and a laying worker coexist? Can a worker who has begun to lay eggs continue doing so after she is introduced to a hive with a functioning queen and her pheromones? I think for my next inspection, I'll need to have my mentor on hand to help me interpret what I'm seeing. Things seem to be going generally well, but I have nagging feelings that I may be missing some vital clues for things that could have an undesirable effect down the road.
One of the guys I met while in class, who was a second year beekeeper, said that he found it easier to take digital pictures of each frame during inspection and then he could review them at a more leisurely pace at his computer rather than making quick interpretations at the hive itself. Having been through a couple of inspections now, I think his method is an excellent one.
The other benefit to this is that I can show pictures to other bee people and thus get other opinions without having to troop them to my hives. I see a digital camera in my near future!
On a separate note, I have been surprised to find a slight up-tick in the bee's aggressiveness in the past couple of days. The vast majority remain too busy to pay me any mind, but I've sustained two more stings in the past two days from single bees who have gotten it into their little heads that I am a pin cushion for planting their business ends. Ironically, both stings occurred, like the one mentioned in my last posting, while I was sitting a short distance from the hive, watching them do their thing. Out of nowhere, individual bees came barreling straight at me to plant their little darts into (a) my finger and (b) my back.
If only the little buggers could understand...I'm only here to help! Sadly, they don't, and so our tally grows...
...Sting count, to date: 6
The first thing, as always, was to check the status of the queen. By now, new bees have been chewing their way out of their capped cells for about 10 days and her majesty should have been revisiting those cells to lay new eggs. Conservatively, ten days of emerging bees could equal an additional 10 to 15 thousand bees I figured. With the Texas merger , I could be looking at 30 to 35 thousand bees by now in hive #1. That of course is a semi-educated guess. I wasn't going to be counting!
I was also interested to see how they had been doing getting additional frames drawn out in the lower hive box and if the queen had begun laying eggs in the upper hive box. I had used the inner cover at the top of the hive to provide an entrance to the transplanted Texas girls under the hive top feeder. Many of them had imprinted on this opening and seemed to use it instead of the main entrance at the bottom of the hive. Though merged, I had no way of knowing if any Texas bees were using the lower entrance, or if the Georgia girls used the upper. If you're not a bee, they look amazingly alike. I figured that the Texans were probably working mostly in the upper hive box and the Georgians in the lower. The logic being that old habits die hard, especially for an insect.
Between the nectar flow and the syrup in the feeder, I hoped that they had expanded onto the unused frames in the upper box as well. I've come around to the idea that, in this first year, it is more important to get all the frames drawn out into comb than to worry too much about honey. Fully drawn comb means a better infrastructure to support more bees in the long run. This, in turn, increases their survival chances for the winter through a larger population and more room for food storage. If the hive does not survive the winter - a sad outcome after all this nurturing! - I will have fully drawn frames to hand over to a new package next year. They won't have to waste time and energy on constructing comb and instead can get right to work making baby bees and honey.
Well, with all this in mind, I set about smoking the little critters and opened things up piece by piece to have a look-see. The first thing I noticed after pulling a couple of non-drawn frames in the upper was that they had made short work of the newspaper. All that remained was a 2-3 inch fringe around the outsides of the hive. The upper box contained about six frames almost fully drawn out that contained mostly nectar and pollen. There were patches of capped brood scattered around that I believe tended to be drone brood because they protruded out a few millimeters beyond the rest of the cells. The patches tended to be around 2 to 3 inches in diameter and were not in any particular pattern on the frames. Could this mean laying workers? The queen was alive and well in the lower box and she seemed to be doing fairly well in keeping the cells occupied with brood down there. But I wasn't sure I saw evidence that she had been at work in the upper box. The Georgians had not done much in expanding onto the 3 frames they had not touched before, but the seven frames that were fully drawn out were heavy with bees, brood, pollen and honey. Most of the progress in drawing out comb had occured in the upper box. I decided to try to rectify that by moving two drawn out frames that were full of nectar and pollen to the lower box, replacing two of the lightly drawn frames down there, which I moved upstairs. In this way I hoped to get the bees to fully invest the lower box and only after that would I work to get the upper box's frames completely drawn out.
I am a little worried about the possibility of laying workers in the upper box. Will the queen and a laying worker coexist? Can a worker who has begun to lay eggs continue doing so after she is introduced to a hive with a functioning queen and her pheromones? I think for my next inspection, I'll need to have my mentor on hand to help me interpret what I'm seeing. Things seem to be going generally well, but I have nagging feelings that I may be missing some vital clues for things that could have an undesirable effect down the road.
One of the guys I met while in class, who was a second year beekeeper, said that he found it easier to take digital pictures of each frame during inspection and then he could review them at a more leisurely pace at his computer rather than making quick interpretations at the hive itself. Having been through a couple of inspections now, I think his method is an excellent one.
The other benefit to this is that I can show pictures to other bee people and thus get other opinions without having to troop them to my hives. I see a digital camera in my near future!
On a separate note, I have been surprised to find a slight up-tick in the bee's aggressiveness in the past couple of days. The vast majority remain too busy to pay me any mind, but I've sustained two more stings in the past two days from single bees who have gotten it into their little heads that I am a pin cushion for planting their business ends. Ironically, both stings occurred, like the one mentioned in my last posting, while I was sitting a short distance from the hive, watching them do their thing. Out of nowhere, individual bees came barreling straight at me to plant their little darts into (a) my finger and (b) my back.
If only the little buggers could understand...I'm only here to help! Sadly, they don't, and so our tally grows...
...Sting count, to date: 6
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Movin' and Shufflin'
Last I left you, I was in a quandary about what to do about my dead Texas queen. I was faced with two choices...re-queening or combining the Lone Star girls with my other established hive. Because it would take some time to secure a new queen - time that the existing bees could ill afford to lose - I decided on the combining hives route. An interesting little bit of bee trivia was my chief concern in prolonging their queenlessness.
Remember I mentioned how the queen has a small arsenal of pheromones that she gives off to perpetuate certain behaviors within the hive? Such as her "happy and contented" whiff? Well she gives off another chemical cocktail that has a pretty amazing effect on all of her daughters. You see, worker bees are equiped with reproductive apparatus of their own, but it is kept in check by this particular pheromone. Their egg producing organs remain undeveloped as long as there is a healthy queen in the hive. If the queen dies and this pheromone is absent, some workers can become functioning egg layers themselves. There is a small catch, however. Because they have never mated with a drone, they are incapable of laying fertilized eggs. Unfertilized eggs become drones - even when layed by the queen. (The queen will do this on purpose to create a requisite number of drones for the hive) The workers cannot lay eggs that will grow up to become worker bees or queens.
All these workers know is that they suddenly find themselves having this maternal instinct to begin depositing eggs in cells. The problem with this is a hive cannot survive on party boys alone - someone has to cover that food thing - and so the colony will soon die out. Not a good outcome. So of course, this was my concern if I let these girls go another week without a queen.
The preferred method for combining two hives is to lay a single sheet of newspaper on top of the hive box receiving the transplants after cutting several small slits in the paper. You then take the hive box containing the new permanent house guests and set it on top of the newspaper. Over the next several hours or days, the scent of all the bees will intermingle, slowly convincing them all that they are just one big happy family. They will chew away the newspaper, and voila! One big hive. And this is just what I did. As of this writing, it has been four days and all seems well, judging from the activity at the hive entrance.
My next issue was rectifying the "one hive" situation. I really did not want to go forward with just one Super Hive. Fortunately, Pat Haskell, my bee class instructor, told me that Dane Hannum, another instructor from the class had "nucs" to sell. For the uninitiated, a nuc is an itty-bitty hive made up of 4 or 5 frames, 3 or 4 pounds of bees and a queen. The frames, in Dane's case, were fully drawn out and loaded with capped brood and honey. The perfect start for a new hive. All I needed to do was install the frames from the nuc into my 10-frame hive body, and add the additional frames on which the bees could expand their holdings. After driving to Arlington to pick up the nuc, I got them tucked in with no trouble. I even did it in short pants and a short sleeved shirt. I've come a long way in suppressing that primordial fear I mentioned in an earlier posting. I've been fortunate in not seeing my bees in a bad mood to this point.
As an aside, I 've spent a lot of time in and around my hives in the last month, and since my experience of the first day, when the girls pointedly showed me their defensive capabilities, I have not had the misfortune of being stung since. Until today. Ironically, it happened not while I was ripping open their home or blasting smoke through every orifice in the hive. No, I was sitting about 10 feet away, in my lawn chair, watching the girls winging about on a beautiful day. Something I've done about a hundred times. Today, though, I lowered my arm down to my side and put the squeeze on a hapless wretch who was drawn to the peculiar pheromones of my armpit. ZAP! She got me. And so you see, boys and girls, one cannot become too cocky about this business. One must always think that one enters the bee's world at the bee's pleasure and one must be thankful that they are a very welcoming, or at least oblivious sort most of the time.
NEW FEATURE!!! Sting count, to date: 4
Remember I mentioned how the queen has a small arsenal of pheromones that she gives off to perpetuate certain behaviors within the hive? Such as her "happy and contented" whiff? Well she gives off another chemical cocktail that has a pretty amazing effect on all of her daughters. You see, worker bees are equiped with reproductive apparatus of their own, but it is kept in check by this particular pheromone. Their egg producing organs remain undeveloped as long as there is a healthy queen in the hive. If the queen dies and this pheromone is absent, some workers can become functioning egg layers themselves. There is a small catch, however. Because they have never mated with a drone, they are incapable of laying fertilized eggs. Unfertilized eggs become drones - even when layed by the queen. (The queen will do this on purpose to create a requisite number of drones for the hive) The workers cannot lay eggs that will grow up to become worker bees or queens.
All these workers know is that they suddenly find themselves having this maternal instinct to begin depositing eggs in cells. The problem with this is a hive cannot survive on party boys alone - someone has to cover that food thing - and so the colony will soon die out. Not a good outcome. So of course, this was my concern if I let these girls go another week without a queen.
The preferred method for combining two hives is to lay a single sheet of newspaper on top of the hive box receiving the transplants after cutting several small slits in the paper. You then take the hive box containing the new permanent house guests and set it on top of the newspaper. Over the next several hours or days, the scent of all the bees will intermingle, slowly convincing them all that they are just one big happy family. They will chew away the newspaper, and voila! One big hive. And this is just what I did. As of this writing, it has been four days and all seems well, judging from the activity at the hive entrance.
My next issue was rectifying the "one hive" situation. I really did not want to go forward with just one Super Hive. Fortunately, Pat Haskell, my bee class instructor, told me that Dane Hannum, another instructor from the class had "nucs" to sell. For the uninitiated, a nuc is an itty-bitty hive made up of 4 or 5 frames, 3 or 4 pounds of bees and a queen. The frames, in Dane's case, were fully drawn out and loaded with capped brood and honey. The perfect start for a new hive. All I needed to do was install the frames from the nuc into my 10-frame hive body, and add the additional frames on which the bees could expand their holdings. After driving to Arlington to pick up the nuc, I got them tucked in with no trouble. I even did it in short pants and a short sleeved shirt. I've come a long way in suppressing that primordial fear I mentioned in an earlier posting. I've been fortunate in not seeing my bees in a bad mood to this point.
As an aside, I 've spent a lot of time in and around my hives in the last month, and since my experience of the first day, when the girls pointedly showed me their defensive capabilities, I have not had the misfortune of being stung since. Until today. Ironically, it happened not while I was ripping open their home or blasting smoke through every orifice in the hive. No, I was sitting about 10 feet away, in my lawn chair, watching the girls winging about on a beautiful day. Something I've done about a hundred times. Today, though, I lowered my arm down to my side and put the squeeze on a hapless wretch who was drawn to the peculiar pheromones of my armpit. ZAP! She got me. And so you see, boys and girls, one cannot become too cocky about this business. One must always think that one enters the bee's world at the bee's pleasure and one must be thankful that they are a very welcoming, or at least oblivious sort most of the time.
NEW FEATURE!!! Sting count, to date: 4
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
New Trouble with the Star Crossed Hive
I was finally able to do a first inspection today on the second hive. The Texas girls. Well, if they didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all, as the saying goes. Turns out they had never released the queen. The candy plug was still in place and her dessicated remains were inside her cage. I'm assuming that she must have succumbed to the rigors of her travels north from Texas with an empty food can and she must have checked out early on because it appeared the candy plug had hardly been touched. I guess that's one way to eliminate possible Africanized DNA.
The bees themselves had given every indication of good health and cheer by their activities at the entrance. Constant traffic with leg pouches crammed with pollen was an everyday occurance. On inspecting the frames, they had drawn out six frames about 75% with the other four empty of cells. Obviously, there was no brood and no capped honey as well. Their efforts had not had the inspiration provided by a queen and her magic pheromones.
The obvious downside to all of this is that I'm now in a bit of a time crunch to ensure that this hive can still prosper or survive at all. Without eggs, they can't even make a new queen. The twelve days wasted is 12 more days off of the lives of the existing bees. Remember, workers only live 5 or 6 weeks. Given that the hive population will drop anyway in the three weeks it takes for the first eggs to turn into new bees, the youngest bees currently in the hive will be nearly five weeks old when the next generation can crawl out of their cells to take their place. And that's if I can get a queen immediately.
Another possibility I thought of is combining these bees and frames with the other hive, thus boosting the first hive's population and providing it with additional drawn frames. Of course this will mean I'll be down to just one hive for the year, but maybe it will pay dividends in the form of increased productivity this spring and perhaps more honey to show for it over the course of the year. I'll have to ask someone about that.
I posted my dilemma on the talk group set up for all of us newbies and can only hope someone can come forward to sell me a new queen and maybe even some frames with capped brood. Frames with capped brood will cut the time for some young blood to appear in the hive. Either way, this course of action doesn't seem to alleviate the reality that this hive will be behind the eight ball for this year. This is one of those times where experience would pay off but I have a very short supply of that!
This all makes me more upset with the Post Office for taking 6 days to get a priority package of bees to me. Maybe this is an isolated occurance but it sure seems to have doomed the success of my second hive. I should have refused them when I saw so many dead bees in the bottom of the package but in my enthusiasm I didn't, and so I lost the chance to make a claim on the insurance I had purchased. One thing is for sure, I'll be doing all my future purchases of bees in person or through the club - like I should have done in the first place.
The bees themselves had given every indication of good health and cheer by their activities at the entrance. Constant traffic with leg pouches crammed with pollen was an everyday occurance. On inspecting the frames, they had drawn out six frames about 75% with the other four empty of cells. Obviously, there was no brood and no capped honey as well. Their efforts had not had the inspiration provided by a queen and her magic pheromones.
The obvious downside to all of this is that I'm now in a bit of a time crunch to ensure that this hive can still prosper or survive at all. Without eggs, they can't even make a new queen. The twelve days wasted is 12 more days off of the lives of the existing bees. Remember, workers only live 5 or 6 weeks. Given that the hive population will drop anyway in the three weeks it takes for the first eggs to turn into new bees, the youngest bees currently in the hive will be nearly five weeks old when the next generation can crawl out of their cells to take their place. And that's if I can get a queen immediately.
Another possibility I thought of is combining these bees and frames with the other hive, thus boosting the first hive's population and providing it with additional drawn frames. Of course this will mean I'll be down to just one hive for the year, but maybe it will pay dividends in the form of increased productivity this spring and perhaps more honey to show for it over the course of the year. I'll have to ask someone about that.
I posted my dilemma on the talk group set up for all of us newbies and can only hope someone can come forward to sell me a new queen and maybe even some frames with capped brood. Frames with capped brood will cut the time for some young blood to appear in the hive. Either way, this course of action doesn't seem to alleviate the reality that this hive will be behind the eight ball for this year. This is one of those times where experience would pay off but I have a very short supply of that!
This all makes me more upset with the Post Office for taking 6 days to get a priority package of bees to me. Maybe this is an isolated occurance but it sure seems to have doomed the success of my second hive. I should have refused them when I saw so many dead bees in the bottom of the package but in my enthusiasm I didn't, and so I lost the chance to make a claim on the insurance I had purchased. One thing is for sure, I'll be doing all my future purchases of bees in person or through the club - like I should have done in the first place.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Another Inspection
After returning from my Florida trip on Friday, it had been just shy of two weeks since I had inspected the first hive. Saturday was a little overcast early on and a tad breezy, but I figured it was as good a time as any to see what the girls had been up to. I noticed that they had emptied the hive top feeder of syrup again (their second batch) and yet they seemed to be going great guns with pollen and nectar at the hive entrance. I was anticipating evidence of some major doings upon opening up the hive. Well, I wasn't disappointed!
I smoked them and opened things up. They were amazingly calm. Very few came up to protest the intrusion and the whole time I looked things over they seemed largely oblivious to me. What nice little bees! They had built a little burr comb on the tops of some frames but the vast majority of their work had been spent drawing out some really beautiful comb on the foundation. Seven frames were fully covered on both sides and on two others the bees had made a good start adding more. On five or six frames I saw large, circular patterns of capped brood, pollen and, in the upper corners, gorgeous, white-capped honey. These girls looked like they knew what they were doing!
On frame four I saw her majesty herself, scrambling around with her conspicuous blue dot and oh, so beautiful, at least as far as bugs go. You can see her for yourself in the photo shown below. My son-in-law Dave Phillips took the pictures with his digital camera and to illustrate how passive these girls were, he basically came right up to the hive to snap the pictures in his "street clothes." They never so much as landed on him. I don't know, maybe it had something to do with that ganja weed I used in my smoker. Just kiddin' ma, I did no such thing!
All kidding aside though, I couldn't figure out why they would be so docile now that they actually had brood and honey to defend. They had been more aggressive when I hived them (you may recall I was stung three times). Of course, I'm not complaining. I happen to like laid back bees.
It was just fascinating to examine the frames, covered with thousands of bees, most of which seemed to be carrying out their little jobs despite the fact that they had just experienced what I would think to be a major disruption to their routine. I mean, think about it, one minute they are working diligently away in the dark, hurrying along on their appointed rounds when suddenly smoke begins billowing in from everywhere. Then the lid to their home is lifted off by our hero to bathe the whole place in blinding light. Their hive is dismantled piece by piece, lifted in the air and stared at by this impossibly large something who most likely isn't giving off any pleasant-smelling pheromones. And despite it all, they continue to do the hive's business, largely oblivious to the aforementioned hero. Quite remarkable!
The key, as any beekeeper knows is working below their radar. In other words, the more gentle you are when rifling through their world, the less likely the vast majority of them will even take notice. Anybody who has ever, as a child, kicked an ant mound and had seemingly millions of ants boil out to protest the intrusion at the mere entrance to their nest will surely find the passivity of the honey bee nothing short of extraordinary. The few bees that do get their knickers in a knot must be quite frustrated indeed. I picture them flying around, hopelessly trying to raise the alarm to their sisters. Shouting in bee talk "Hey!!! What the hell is wrong with all of you! Do you realize what is going on?!?!" Only to have the multitudes go on about their business blissfully ignorant to any danger. A very nice circumstance for the beekeeper!
The other rather obvious thing to marvel at when inspecting the frames is the terrific skills the bees employ in building their hive. The picture below illustrates the precisely engineered comb on which everything depends. Their young are raised in the comb cells and all their supply of food is stored there too. Not only is the hexagon design incredibly durable and strong, it is even built with the mouth at a slight upward angle to prevent the nectar and honey from running out. Water is stored here too. The bees use water to cool the hive and dilute the honey for feeding it to the brood. Another extraordinary thing is that if you look at the cells in burr comb straight on in such a way as to see the walls of the cell behind them, you will see that they are offset to provide maximum strength. In other words, the walls of the front cell do not line up with the walls of the cell behind it. You will instead see the bottoms of the rear cell forming a kind of 'X' to form a rigid cross member on which the front cell can be supported. Whether through evolution, a plan of God's or both, bees are incredibly adapted to do what they do. It's humbling to think about.
I smoked them and opened things up. They were amazingly calm. Very few came up to protest the intrusion and the whole time I looked things over they seemed largely oblivious to me. What nice little bees! They had built a little burr comb on the tops of some frames but the vast majority of their work had been spent drawing out some really beautiful comb on the foundation. Seven frames were fully covered on both sides and on two others the bees had made a good start adding more. On five or six frames I saw large, circular patterns of capped brood, pollen and, in the upper corners, gorgeous, white-capped honey. These girls looked like they knew what they were doing!
On frame four I saw her majesty herself, scrambling around with her conspicuous blue dot and oh, so beautiful, at least as far as bugs go. You can see her for yourself in the photo shown below. My son-in-law Dave Phillips took the pictures with his digital camera and to illustrate how passive these girls were, he basically came right up to the hive to snap the pictures in his "street clothes." They never so much as landed on him. I don't know, maybe it had something to do with that ganja weed I used in my smoker. Just kiddin' ma, I did no such thing!
All kidding aside though, I couldn't figure out why they would be so docile now that they actually had brood and honey to defend. They had been more aggressive when I hived them (you may recall I was stung three times). Of course, I'm not complaining. I happen to like laid back bees.
It was just fascinating to examine the frames, covered with thousands of bees, most of which seemed to be carrying out their little jobs despite the fact that they had just experienced what I would think to be a major disruption to their routine. I mean, think about it, one minute they are working diligently away in the dark, hurrying along on their appointed rounds when suddenly smoke begins billowing in from everywhere. Then the lid to their home is lifted off by our hero to bathe the whole place in blinding light. Their hive is dismantled piece by piece, lifted in the air and stared at by this impossibly large something who most likely isn't giving off any pleasant-smelling pheromones. And despite it all, they continue to do the hive's business, largely oblivious to the aforementioned hero. Quite remarkable!
The key, as any beekeeper knows is working below their radar. In other words, the more gentle you are when rifling through their world, the less likely the vast majority of them will even take notice. Anybody who has ever, as a child, kicked an ant mound and had seemingly millions of ants boil out to protest the intrusion at the mere entrance to their nest will surely find the passivity of the honey bee nothing short of extraordinary. The few bees that do get their knickers in a knot must be quite frustrated indeed. I picture them flying around, hopelessly trying to raise the alarm to their sisters. Shouting in bee talk "Hey!!! What the hell is wrong with all of you! Do you realize what is going on?!?!" Only to have the multitudes go on about their business blissfully ignorant to any danger. A very nice circumstance for the beekeeper!
The other rather obvious thing to marvel at when inspecting the frames is the terrific skills the bees employ in building their hive. The picture below illustrates the precisely engineered comb on which everything depends. Their young are raised in the comb cells and all their supply of food is stored there too. Not only is the hexagon design incredibly durable and strong, it is even built with the mouth at a slight upward angle to prevent the nectar and honey from running out. Water is stored here too. The bees use water to cool the hive and dilute the honey for feeding it to the brood. Another extraordinary thing is that if you look at the cells in burr comb straight on in such a way as to see the walls of the cell behind them, you will see that they are offset to provide maximum strength. In other words, the walls of the front cell do not line up with the walls of the cell behind it. You will instead see the bottoms of the rear cell forming a kind of 'X' to form a rigid cross member on which the front cell can be supported. Whether through evolution, a plan of God's or both, bees are incredibly adapted to do what they do. It's humbling to think about.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
A Second Package
Well, it's been awhile since my last posting so I'm a little behind. My wife and I made a trip down to Florida to help our daughter Emilie make the transition from college sophomore to working in Costa Rica for the summer. On my return, the bees seemed to be doing fine, just work, work, working away. Probably didn't even miss me! Prior to our trip though, I did get my second package installed. And it is that experience I'll recount for you this time around.
Back in November or so, when I began to get into this whole thing, I read that packages of bees and queens would be at a premium if one waited until spring to order. Not wishing to be left out, I jumped right in to place an order. I decided to go with Wilbanks in Georgia first. A reputable outfit, I called and got the impression I may have been a tad bit early for placing an order. They did say that they would send along a catalog and price sheet though, and so I waited with eager anticipation. Having not joined BANV as yet, I had no way of knowing that Wilbanks were the folks who supplied bees to the club. In fact, it was typical for two packages to be reserved for students in BANV's beginner classes with their annual order of some 900 packages. As I say, I didn't know this and when I grew impatient after a couple of weeks waiting for their catalog, I figured I would order from someone else. Next on my list was a company in Texas called BeeWeaver. They sent me a nice color catalog touting their mite-free bees - well, that's a good trait, I thought - so I picked up the phone and ordered up a package right then and there. I was told that they would be delivered by the USPS in April.
It was shortly after this that I joined BANV and was told of my grave error in ordering bees from Texas. Turns out that Texas has been included in the territory of the Africanized Honey Bee, the alleged "killer bees" of media lore. These bees are not actually deadly, but they are far more ferocious in defending their hive than European Honey Bees. Meaning that several hundred or even several thousand of these girls may decide to chase you for long distances just for the chance to make your life a lot more painful. Beekeepers work very hard to avoid having this breed of bee introduced into their area for obvious reasons.
This was the concern of the folks I met at BANV and I was told that I would have to "re-queen" at some point after I installed the package to ensure that any Africanized DNA would disappear with the new brood. This process involves plucking the old queen out of the hive, and replacing her with a nice Italian girl with a better temper.
Anyways, to make a long story short, I ended up getting just one package through the club's Wilbanks order and the BeeWeaver bees were to arrive a week later. The target date was April 18, but as that day came and went and several more days to boot, I was getting nervous. On Friday, the 20th, I called BeeWeaver and was told my package was going out that day via Priority Mail. I knew I was leaving for Florida just a week later, so I kept my fingers crossed. Well, Monday went by. No bees. Then Tuesday and Wednesday. I called the Post Office and was told that Priority Mail didn't gaurantee 3-4 day delivery! Terrific! I began calculating how I would deal with a package of bees that arrived with no time to hive them before I left for my trip. Of course, the weather turned colder and wetter as Thursday dawned and I finally got the call from the Post Office that my little killers had arrived. Forecasts for Friday indicated thunderstorms, so it appeared I had a very small window available to get these girls into their new home. Running home from work at lunchtime.
The bees had been through the mill. There were perhaps 2 inches of dead bees in the bottom of the package (they stunk to high heaven) and as it turned out their feeder can was drained dry. I had no time to lose. About 11:30, I raced home and got everything quickly prepared. I had made a gallon of sugar syrup that morning and prepared a pollen patty. Thankfully, the queen appeared fine when I pulled her cage out. I stapled her cage to the top bar this time to try and avoid the burr comb that was built the last time around. I then dumped some bees onto her cage. With all the dead bees in the package, I was reluctant to just dump the rest of the bees into the hive, so instead, I removed 4 or 5 frames and sat the package into the hive with the opening up and closed everything. I figured this way the healthy bees would come out, leaving their dead sisters in the package.
This stategy worked, because when I checked the hive on Friday, the bees were out of the package and all over the frames. I removed the reeking package and replaced the frames so the girls could get going on drawing comb and closed the hive up again. Almost immediately I noticed many, many bees flying around the entrance. So many, so soon, that I got a little panicky that maybe the other hive was launching a full scale assault or that, in fact, I did have on my hands a warrior clan of Afrika Korps bees. I called Tom Merz, the president of BANV for some guidance. He told me that they were most likely bees from the new package doing orientation flights on the hive and that I didn't have anything to worry about. I can assume this to be the case, because on my return from Florida, both hives exhibited the normal activity of bees flying in and out of their respective hives, blithely ignoring each other. I'm also happy to say that to this point, I haven't noticed anything unusual in the way of aggressiveness with the new batch. Maybe they would rather make pasta...
Next up: a second inspection of hive number 1.
Back in November or so, when I began to get into this whole thing, I read that packages of bees and queens would be at a premium if one waited until spring to order. Not wishing to be left out, I jumped right in to place an order. I decided to go with Wilbanks in Georgia first. A reputable outfit, I called and got the impression I may have been a tad bit early for placing an order. They did say that they would send along a catalog and price sheet though, and so I waited with eager anticipation. Having not joined BANV as yet, I had no way of knowing that Wilbanks were the folks who supplied bees to the club. In fact, it was typical for two packages to be reserved for students in BANV's beginner classes with their annual order of some 900 packages. As I say, I didn't know this and when I grew impatient after a couple of weeks waiting for their catalog, I figured I would order from someone else. Next on my list was a company in Texas called BeeWeaver. They sent me a nice color catalog touting their mite-free bees - well, that's a good trait, I thought - so I picked up the phone and ordered up a package right then and there. I was told that they would be delivered by the USPS in April.
It was shortly after this that I joined BANV and was told of my grave error in ordering bees from Texas. Turns out that Texas has been included in the territory of the Africanized Honey Bee, the alleged "killer bees" of media lore. These bees are not actually deadly, but they are far more ferocious in defending their hive than European Honey Bees. Meaning that several hundred or even several thousand of these girls may decide to chase you for long distances just for the chance to make your life a lot more painful. Beekeepers work very hard to avoid having this breed of bee introduced into their area for obvious reasons.
This was the concern of the folks I met at BANV and I was told that I would have to "re-queen" at some point after I installed the package to ensure that any Africanized DNA would disappear with the new brood. This process involves plucking the old queen out of the hive, and replacing her with a nice Italian girl with a better temper.
Anyways, to make a long story short, I ended up getting just one package through the club's Wilbanks order and the BeeWeaver bees were to arrive a week later. The target date was April 18, but as that day came and went and several more days to boot, I was getting nervous. On Friday, the 20th, I called BeeWeaver and was told my package was going out that day via Priority Mail. I knew I was leaving for Florida just a week later, so I kept my fingers crossed. Well, Monday went by. No bees. Then Tuesday and Wednesday. I called the Post Office and was told that Priority Mail didn't gaurantee 3-4 day delivery! Terrific! I began calculating how I would deal with a package of bees that arrived with no time to hive them before I left for my trip. Of course, the weather turned colder and wetter as Thursday dawned and I finally got the call from the Post Office that my little killers had arrived. Forecasts for Friday indicated thunderstorms, so it appeared I had a very small window available to get these girls into their new home. Running home from work at lunchtime.
The bees had been through the mill. There were perhaps 2 inches of dead bees in the bottom of the package (they stunk to high heaven) and as it turned out their feeder can was drained dry. I had no time to lose. About 11:30, I raced home and got everything quickly prepared. I had made a gallon of sugar syrup that morning and prepared a pollen patty. Thankfully, the queen appeared fine when I pulled her cage out. I stapled her cage to the top bar this time to try and avoid the burr comb that was built the last time around. I then dumped some bees onto her cage. With all the dead bees in the package, I was reluctant to just dump the rest of the bees into the hive, so instead, I removed 4 or 5 frames and sat the package into the hive with the opening up and closed everything. I figured this way the healthy bees would come out, leaving their dead sisters in the package.
This stategy worked, because when I checked the hive on Friday, the bees were out of the package and all over the frames. I removed the reeking package and replaced the frames so the girls could get going on drawing comb and closed the hive up again. Almost immediately I noticed many, many bees flying around the entrance. So many, so soon, that I got a little panicky that maybe the other hive was launching a full scale assault or that, in fact, I did have on my hands a warrior clan of Afrika Korps bees. I called Tom Merz, the president of BANV for some guidance. He told me that they were most likely bees from the new package doing orientation flights on the hive and that I didn't have anything to worry about. I can assume this to be the case, because on my return from Florida, both hives exhibited the normal activity of bees flying in and out of their respective hives, blithely ignoring each other. I'm also happy to say that to this point, I haven't noticed anything unusual in the way of aggressiveness with the new batch. Maybe they would rather make pasta...
Next up: a second inspection of hive number 1.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
First Inspection
After installing the package last week I was anxious to take a peek inside to see how things were going. It's recommended that you wait anywhere between 3 to 7 days before opening the hive to ensure that the new queen has been completely accepted by her new subjects. When the package is assembled, bees are taken from one or two hives and the queen comes from someplace else. Meaning that she is a stranger to the bees surrounding her cage in the package. Given the chance, in those first few days after introduction, the bees are more likely to kill her as invite her to tea. The queen gives off several pheromones including one that makes her subjects happy and contented with her presence. After a few days of this scent circulating through the hive - about the time it takes for everyone to eat away the candy plug in her cage to release her - she becomes supreme potentate with all ready to do her bidding. This is what the beekeeper hopes to have been achieved by the time he opens the hive for inspection. For some reason, when things go wrong for the bees during those first critical days, such as an invasion from some impossibly large foreign thug with a smoker, they like to blame the queen for their troubles and may decide on a palace coup to set things right. Alas, the thanks she gets for laying thousands of eggs, day after day, is a lethal mob who keep their compound eyes trained on her for any perceived sign of weakness or malfeasance of duty.
As I say, I was anxious to open that hive up and see what they had been up to, but I respected the waiting period. I didn't have much choice anyway because the weather in the week since I installed the package has been historically bad for mid-April. Very cold with a couple of days of gale-force winds. I was beginning to think the gods were not happy with my choice of hobbies. But at last, on Friday, the weather turned beautiful. A cloudless sunny day with temperatures around 70 degrees. I took the day off work and in the afternoon, I set to work. I gathered all my tools, lit my smoker and put on my gear. With my better half looking on from a safe distance, I smoked the entrance to the hive, took off the top cover and smoked the bees that were up in the hive-top feeder. The sound of buzzing grew as the bees scrambled out of the way and ran for their small store of honey I guess. I cracked the feeder off the brood box and shot a few puffs of smoke in there too. I waited a bit for the message to get across and then I hoisted the feeder off of the hive and set it aside.
Readers of this blog will recall that I wrote of a high mortality rate on installation day ---
(B-Day). Apparently, the number of deaths were trifling, because I'm happy to report that many, many bees survived that day. The hive box consists of ten suspended frames that contain beeswax foundation on which the bees will draw out comb in which to lay eggs and store pollen, honey, nectar & water. The three or four middle frames were completely covered in bees. A roiling mass of tiger-striped workaholics. There were many bees flying around but the great majority stayed put on the frames. I took out the first frame closest to the outside wall and hung it on a rack specially made for the purpose. No comb had been started here and there were only a half dozen bees on the frame - probably playing hooky. I then worked my way towards the center, lifting each frame and examining it. The first few were like the wall frame with no comb and reletively few bees but as I got towards the center, the frames were heavy with thousands of bees so thick it was difficult to see the foundation under them. I could tell that they had begun comb on three or four of these middle frames but, try as I might, I could not find the queen in these masses. I was hoping it would be easy to see her because she came with a nice blue spot painted on her back. It was like finding Waldo. After looking for a time, I gave up.
I had suspended her cage initially between the sixth and seventh frames. I saw that the plug was now gone and the queen had escaped into the hive to hobnob with the riff raff. I pulled the cage out and after brushing off the clinging workers, set it aside. Because the cage was hanging between the frames, it had created a condition in which I had violated what is known as "bee space." A fellow named Langstroth in the nineteenth century had figured out that bees like a space of about 3/8 of an inch between things. Anything less than that, they fill with something called propolis, a dark sticky goop that they use to seal up cracks and other small openings in the hive. If the space is much bigger than that bee space, the little critters will endeavor to fill it with wild, or burr comb - not a good outcome for the beekeeper for various reasons. My girls had taken the opportunity to build two large, suspended marvels of such engineering in the space on either side of the queen's cage. Beautiful white, oval structures that they had filled with pollen and an incredibly sticky, clear substance that I assume to be nectar on its way to becoming honey? Have to ask about that one! Using my hive tool, I carefully removed this comb, cleared off the multitudes of bees and set it aside at a safe distance. Later, on further inspection with an eye loop, I also saw several eggs tucked away in several cells! Yippee! That meant the invisible queen was doing her thing as recently as two days ago anyway. At this point, I reassembled the hive with my only concern being that I couldn't be sure that the queen was okay. Odds are she is, but having never seen her I couldn't be sure where she might have ended up during the operation of removing the wild comb. Was she on there? I never saw her but who knows. I guess I'll have to wait for the next inspection to find out. Stay tuned...
As I say, I was anxious to open that hive up and see what they had been up to, but I respected the waiting period. I didn't have much choice anyway because the weather in the week since I installed the package has been historically bad for mid-April. Very cold with a couple of days of gale-force winds. I was beginning to think the gods were not happy with my choice of hobbies. But at last, on Friday, the weather turned beautiful. A cloudless sunny day with temperatures around 70 degrees. I took the day off work and in the afternoon, I set to work. I gathered all my tools, lit my smoker and put on my gear. With my better half looking on from a safe distance, I smoked the entrance to the hive, took off the top cover and smoked the bees that were up in the hive-top feeder. The sound of buzzing grew as the bees scrambled out of the way and ran for their small store of honey I guess. I cracked the feeder off the brood box and shot a few puffs of smoke in there too. I waited a bit for the message to get across and then I hoisted the feeder off of the hive and set it aside.
Readers of this blog will recall that I wrote of a high mortality rate on installation day ---
(B-Day). Apparently, the number of deaths were trifling, because I'm happy to report that many, many bees survived that day. The hive box consists of ten suspended frames that contain beeswax foundation on which the bees will draw out comb in which to lay eggs and store pollen, honey, nectar & water. The three or four middle frames were completely covered in bees. A roiling mass of tiger-striped workaholics. There were many bees flying around but the great majority stayed put on the frames. I took out the first frame closest to the outside wall and hung it on a rack specially made for the purpose. No comb had been started here and there were only a half dozen bees on the frame - probably playing hooky. I then worked my way towards the center, lifting each frame and examining it. The first few were like the wall frame with no comb and reletively few bees but as I got towards the center, the frames were heavy with thousands of bees so thick it was difficult to see the foundation under them. I could tell that they had begun comb on three or four of these middle frames but, try as I might, I could not find the queen in these masses. I was hoping it would be easy to see her because she came with a nice blue spot painted on her back. It was like finding Waldo. After looking for a time, I gave up.
I had suspended her cage initially between the sixth and seventh frames. I saw that the plug was now gone and the queen had escaped into the hive to hobnob with the riff raff. I pulled the cage out and after brushing off the clinging workers, set it aside. Because the cage was hanging between the frames, it had created a condition in which I had violated what is known as "bee space." A fellow named Langstroth in the nineteenth century had figured out that bees like a space of about 3/8 of an inch between things. Anything less than that, they fill with something called propolis, a dark sticky goop that they use to seal up cracks and other small openings in the hive. If the space is much bigger than that bee space, the little critters will endeavor to fill it with wild, or burr comb - not a good outcome for the beekeeper for various reasons. My girls had taken the opportunity to build two large, suspended marvels of such engineering in the space on either side of the queen's cage. Beautiful white, oval structures that they had filled with pollen and an incredibly sticky, clear substance that I assume to be nectar on its way to becoming honey? Have to ask about that one! Using my hive tool, I carefully removed this comb, cleared off the multitudes of bees and set it aside at a safe distance. Later, on further inspection with an eye loop, I also saw several eggs tucked away in several cells! Yippee! That meant the invisible queen was doing her thing as recently as two days ago anyway. At this point, I reassembled the hive with my only concern being that I couldn't be sure that the queen was okay. Odds are she is, but having never seen her I couldn't be sure where she might have ended up during the operation of removing the wild comb. Was she on there? I never saw her but who knows. I guess I'll have to wait for the next inspection to find out. Stay tuned...
Sunday, April 15, 2007
The How's and Why's of Getting into This Bee Thing
Since my previous message had no idea it would become a blog, I figured some background was in order here folks. Installing the package was, after all, not the real beginning of this adventure, just the first event in the saga that actually involved dealing with the little winged wonders. And so now I give you my personal "How's and Why's of Getting into this Bee Thing."
Most people's initial response to my telling them I was getting into beekeeping has been... "Really... that's interesting. I'm allergic to bees." But that is often followed by genuine curiosity about what it's all about. Everybody has at least some curiosity about "bugs" and honey bees are among the most fascinating of the creepy crawly things out there. They are highly evolved social insects. The hive, which can number upwards of 60,000 bees, is really almost an organism in and of itself. Every bee in the hive has a prescribed function that at various points in their 4-6 week lives (for workers) keeps the operation running smoothly.
According to "The Beekeepers Handbook" by Diana Sammataro and Alphonse Avitabile, the queen has the smallest brain of the three classes within the hive. Yet she sits at the top of the hive hierarchy. Kinda brings some well known human institutions to mind, don't it? Nevertheless, she is by far the most important individual bee in the colony for one very important reason. She lays eggs, eggs, and more eggs. Upwards of 15-2500 per day. She is so busy laying eggs that nature has removed most other basic responsibilities from her, such as feeding herself. She has a continual retinue of workers who feed her, groom her, even remove her wastes. Nothing is to distract from her job of laying eggs to replenish the hive's population. They call her a queen to keep her smiling, no doubt.
Workers, who make up probably 95% of the population are non-reproductive females and, as their name implies, do just about everything for the hive's survival. They clean the hive, fight off enemies, take care of the brood, queen and drones, forage for pollen and nectar. You name it, they do it until their poor little wings are frayed and their little bodies just can't take no more. And they die. As a final disservice, their worn out little corpses are unceremoniously booted out the front door of the hive and soon forgotten...if anyone actually gave a twig about them to begin with. They are the ultimate team players my friends.
Drones, are the males in this land of sweat and toil and their sole function is to mate with virgin queens. Can I get a "Yeah, Baby!" The workers feed them and they basically hang around the hive eating, watching football and awaiting the day when their stud services are required. These are some layed-back fellas. They don't even have stingers. They are incapable of foraging for pollen or nectar. They clean nothing. There are downsides, however. If they successfully mate with a virgin queen, they die from the act. When the cold weather begins in the fall, the workers toss their lazy rear ends out of the hive. But on balance, I like their gig. If they miss out in the conjugal arena, they have several months of being wined and dined before they get the boot. Compare that to the life of toil and drudgery that is the workers lot.
Of course, that description of hive life is about as bare bones as it gets, but the fascination I have for the many nuances of bee life was one thing that got me interested in doing this beekeeping thing. I also have this retirement dream of having a small farm where I can grow things and have lots of critters. Living in suburbia, bees are about the only livestock that I can practice on. Plus, I like honey. I'd like to see if I can make some with my own bees. My hardworkin' girls!
To begin with, I read several books. "The Queen and I" by Ed Weiss; "Beekeeping for Dummies" by Howland Blackiston; "Beekeeping: A Practical Guide" and "Hive Management" by Richard E. Bonney and the aforementioned "The Beekeepers Handbook"; These and three or four others were my introduction to the hobby of keeping bees. I joined Beekeepers Association of Northern Virginia (BANV) and attended some of their meetings, and finally, I enrolled in their eight-week class on Practical Beekeeping. This whole process took about six months. I bought hives, tools, protective clothing and impatiently awaited the day described in my previous blog entry.
As you can tell from that entry, despite all the preparation and months of mental reheasal, things did not go as smoothly as I would have hoped! The fault of that can be layed down to one unforeseen consideration. Bees in books don't sail around your head at 100 miles per hour. Bees in books don't land all over you just to check you out. And when you read about them in books, their stingers are tucked safely away in the color photographs. When these things leave the pages and become reality you have to check all of your primordial instincts at the door and remain calm. On the whole, I think I did pretty well. But there was a period of about five to ten minutes where panic was the order of the day. I admit it. I did not remain calm. I confess that this 5 to 10 minutes probably cost a couple of thousand bees their lives. There! I've said it! So sue me!
But, as I've said, the vast majority of the bees did make the transition to the hive despite the clumsy ministrations of their keeper. This week, I get a second package for my other hive and I get to do it all over again. But this time, I will do better. I hope to keep the mortality levels down into the hundreds this time around. I'll keep you posted.
Most people's initial response to my telling them I was getting into beekeeping has been... "Really... that's interesting. I'm allergic to bees." But that is often followed by genuine curiosity about what it's all about. Everybody has at least some curiosity about "bugs" and honey bees are among the most fascinating of the creepy crawly things out there. They are highly evolved social insects. The hive, which can number upwards of 60,000 bees, is really almost an organism in and of itself. Every bee in the hive has a prescribed function that at various points in their 4-6 week lives (for workers) keeps the operation running smoothly.
According to "The Beekeepers Handbook" by Diana Sammataro and Alphonse Avitabile, the queen has the smallest brain of the three classes within the hive. Yet she sits at the top of the hive hierarchy. Kinda brings some well known human institutions to mind, don't it? Nevertheless, she is by far the most important individual bee in the colony for one very important reason. She lays eggs, eggs, and more eggs. Upwards of 15-2500 per day. She is so busy laying eggs that nature has removed most other basic responsibilities from her, such as feeding herself. She has a continual retinue of workers who feed her, groom her, even remove her wastes. Nothing is to distract from her job of laying eggs to replenish the hive's population. They call her a queen to keep her smiling, no doubt.
Workers, who make up probably 95% of the population are non-reproductive females and, as their name implies, do just about everything for the hive's survival. They clean the hive, fight off enemies, take care of the brood, queen and drones, forage for pollen and nectar. You name it, they do it until their poor little wings are frayed and their little bodies just can't take no more. And they die. As a final disservice, their worn out little corpses are unceremoniously booted out the front door of the hive and soon forgotten...if anyone actually gave a twig about them to begin with. They are the ultimate team players my friends.
Drones, are the males in this land of sweat and toil and their sole function is to mate with virgin queens. Can I get a "Yeah, Baby!" The workers feed them and they basically hang around the hive eating, watching football and awaiting the day when their stud services are required. These are some layed-back fellas. They don't even have stingers. They are incapable of foraging for pollen or nectar. They clean nothing. There are downsides, however. If they successfully mate with a virgin queen, they die from the act. When the cold weather begins in the fall, the workers toss their lazy rear ends out of the hive. But on balance, I like their gig. If they miss out in the conjugal arena, they have several months of being wined and dined before they get the boot. Compare that to the life of toil and drudgery that is the workers lot.
Of course, that description of hive life is about as bare bones as it gets, but the fascination I have for the many nuances of bee life was one thing that got me interested in doing this beekeeping thing. I also have this retirement dream of having a small farm where I can grow things and have lots of critters. Living in suburbia, bees are about the only livestock that I can practice on. Plus, I like honey. I'd like to see if I can make some with my own bees. My hardworkin' girls!
To begin with, I read several books. "The Queen and I" by Ed Weiss; "Beekeeping for Dummies" by Howland Blackiston; "Beekeeping: A Practical Guide" and "Hive Management" by Richard E. Bonney and the aforementioned "The Beekeepers Handbook"; These and three or four others were my introduction to the hobby of keeping bees. I joined Beekeepers Association of Northern Virginia (BANV) and attended some of their meetings, and finally, I enrolled in their eight-week class on Practical Beekeeping. This whole process took about six months. I bought hives, tools, protective clothing and impatiently awaited the day described in my previous blog entry.
As you can tell from that entry, despite all the preparation and months of mental reheasal, things did not go as smoothly as I would have hoped! The fault of that can be layed down to one unforeseen consideration. Bees in books don't sail around your head at 100 miles per hour. Bees in books don't land all over you just to check you out. And when you read about them in books, their stingers are tucked safely away in the color photographs. When these things leave the pages and become reality you have to check all of your primordial instincts at the door and remain calm. On the whole, I think I did pretty well. But there was a period of about five to ten minutes where panic was the order of the day. I admit it. I did not remain calm. I confess that this 5 to 10 minutes probably cost a couple of thousand bees their lives. There! I've said it! So sue me!
But, as I've said, the vast majority of the bees did make the transition to the hive despite the clumsy ministrations of their keeper. This week, I get a second package for my other hive and I get to do it all over again. But this time, I will do better. I hope to keep the mortality levels down into the hundreds this time around. I'll keep you posted.
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