The Beeyard

Even nice girls...

2010-08-23T10:33:00.000-04:00

Today I killed two of my three colonies. I've washed my hands and changed my clothes, but I can still smell the mothballs.

A few days ago, I opened one of them up to do the regular, monthly check. I have a medium super on each of the two hives started from packages this spring, and wanted to check for strength, mites, brood, and general condition going into the fall goldenrod flow. What greeted me was a foul oder and brood turned to ropy brown soup.

American foul brood. It's about the worst thing that can happen to bees and beekeeper, because not only have I lost the bees, but the equipment, too. I could scorch the boxes, but it isn't worth it to me. They were among my oldest, and I simply don't want to take the chance.

I called an experienced beekeeper friend, PB, the same one who helped with the hot hive last summer, to verify that this was, indeed, the dreaded American foul brood, and not the less deadly European foul brood. I've never seen it before, and wanted to be absolutely sure. He opened the hive, took a sniff, plunged a stick into one of the cells, twirled, and pulled out the ropy mess. And then he told me how to kill them.

He checked the second hive, too, which I hadn't opened yet. Same thing.

I have a third hive, about 50 yards away. It overwintered, has three mediums of honey on it, and seems pretty strong. We didn't open that one; it's less likely to be infected, and I'm going to pull the honey soon anyway. I'll check it then.

Because they were started from packages this spring, either the foul brood was on the frames I used or they robbed out a weaker hive and caught it. He found scale on one of the frames, indicating at least one round of brood that died in that frame. The frame was plastic, and I only use wood, and so it must be from a nuc I bought before I switched to packages. So--did the foul brood come from a nuc a few years ago? And the bees didn't show symptoms because they had been dosed with antibiotics? Or did my bees pick it up, and the scale is from a round of brood that I missed? Seems unlikely that I've ever had an active case in the apiary before without noticing. The smell, the sunken and perforated caps, and the ropy, liquid brood were unmistakable. I don't see how I could have missed it in a previous year, even the year Baby Bee was born, and I wasn't as vigilant.

How depressing. Once I'm sure the bees are dead (it only takes minutes; they're gone already, I'm sure), I'll bag up the hives and take them to the dump. I can't burn here, so bagging is my only option.

First Harvest of the Season

2010-07-27T16:13:00.000-04:00

We pulled about 65 pounds from the hive that overwintered. Considering how poky they were last year, I think they're doing really nicely. The honey is a very light. slightly greenish black locust, with apple and mint undertones. My favorite thing about the honey harvest is how different every batch is. It's always a surprise.

The Hot Hive, Conclusion

2010-07-04T16:31:00.003-04:00

So--back to last summer's hot hive. I had a few choices: kill it, split it, or move it to the country. I decided to split it. A friend came over to help watch my toddler and view the process. She's a new beekeeper, and I was a little worried about putting her off beekeeping.

I suited up: gloves, boots, full suit. I checked the zippers and hook-and-loop fasteners to make sure I was sealed up. I don't mind being stung, but this hive gave me an unpleasant feeling I'd never had around bees before. They were attacking me in force from the moment the lid came off. They were mad, and they were determined.

Of course, I'm anthropomorphizing. Bees don't get mad. They respond to stimuli. So let me phrase it this way: these bees seemed to ignore smoke, and responded to the lid coming off defensively. Whereas some hives will send one or two bees over to ping off the veil, these bees moved in a group, and didn't bother with warning pings. The moment the lid was off, I was enveloped in a cloud of bees, many of whom were trying with what seemed like desperation to get into my veil. Others were stinging my gloves over and over. They weren't warning me. They were straight on trying to get rid of me. After it was over, my friend did say that it was intimidating to watch: there was a constant swirl of bees around me, a cloud that followed me a good 50 yards or more.

I knew I would never be able to find the queen in such a huge hive. The original queen had been marked, but I was pretty sure this change in attitude had come about due to supercedure. The hive had come through all of the previous season and part of this one as a calm, productive, well-mannered hive. The relatively sudden change had to mean a new queen--one who had mated with drones who had attitude.

Since I wouldn't be able to go through the hive to find the queen (especially with a tornado of bees swirling around my head), I decided to split the hive into three parts, then return in a few days to see who had eggs. Find the queen then, in a smaller hive, squish her, and replace. There was also a chance that without honey and broken into smaller hives, the bees would settle down.

The split went without particular incident. I put down a stand and new bottom board, pulled the top brood box, and put it on the stand. Then I got a nuc box, and pulled frames to fill it from both top and bottom brood boxes. I didn't worry about balancing the boxes' stores and bees; I hoped to reunite the whole thing in a couple of weeks with a new queen.

I put drawn comb in the brood boxes to make up for the frames in the nuc. I now had one nuc and two deeps. I knew that foragers would likely go back to the original hive, and hoped that they would take the bad attitude with them. Maybe the nuc and the box at the new location would be sweet without the mean old bees.

In the meantime, I had two nice queens on order. I figured I would introduce a queen into the nuc and one brood box, in hopes that one would take. Smaller hives usually accept a queen more easily, so my bet was on the nuc. I figured if one queen survived, she would head up the new, reunited hive. If both survived, I could just go with the split. It was late in the season--August already--but most years we have a good fall flow, and I could always feed.

I lucked out. The queen was in the nuc. What was less lucky is that the hives' attitude hadn't sweetened one iota for having been split. Even the nuc was mean, all five frames of it, with bees coming out to meet me the moment the hive tool went under the lid.

One queen went into the nuc, one into a hive body. I waited a week, the queens were laying eggs, and so I recombined the nuc with the queenless hive body. I have to admit I didn't check it for queen cells, though there must have been by then. I assumed my replacement queen would take care of that. I added a second hive body to the other requeened box. And called it good.

They both did manage to work a goldenrod flow and do ok, but I didn't open them again that season. One had plenty of stores (the one on the original stand). The second seemed light. I will admit, though, that I was done with them. I had another hive that had made a nice 30 lb surplus on the fall flow, so I had that to extract and bottle, as well as a toddler to take care of. They would make it or they wouldn't, but they'd had all the attention I was going to give them.

I will say that I requeened with a small bit of regret. This hive had boomed and make a 60 lb surplus in a season when no one was getting much honey at all, due to overcast, cool weather. I loved their honey making genes. I loathed their attitude.

Neither requeened hive made it. The light one starved, the second apparently started raising brood too early, and choose to keep it warn rather than move up to the 40 pounds above their heads.

In the end, I could have saved myself the trouble and expense of requeening by putting a trash bag over the hive. But I'm still glad I did it. It was a heck of an experience, and I feel like I'll know what to do when (if?) it happens again.

Google's Hiveplex

2010-06-07T08:26:00.000-04:00

Official Google Blog: Hello from the Hiveplex

The people at Google have decide to start a little apiary--The Hiveplex--on Google property in California. They feel like Google is structured a lot like a honey bee community (who's the queen?!!), and they want to bring attention to CCD. Google employees volunteer to care for the bees, and will share in the results of the bees' efforts.

Beekeeping Art

2010-05-17T09:32:00.004-04:00

The story of a piece of beekeeping art may interest some of you. The finished piece is amazing. The artist, Mary Shelly, carves and paints her work. She also blogs a lot of it, and you can see this piece from sketch to done step by step.

Click here to go to Mary's amazing blog of her amazing work.

Baby Bee Growing Up

2010-05-08T20:31:00.002-04:00

Hot Hive, continued

2010-05-08T16:46:00.004-04:00

Once I realized I had a problem on my hands, I did the sensible thing: I called in a pro. I have 5 years of experience--he has more like 40. We'll call him P.B. He's been an apiary inspector, and has worked in beekeeping forever. I figured he'd seen it all.

He came out and visited, and confirmed my suspicions (and took about 20 stings in the process): hot hive. Now to decide what to do.

Option one: Move it to the country. I have friends who are still out in the middle of nowhere. I could put the hive on their land, and let it continue to do its marvelous honey gathering.

Option two: break it up into two or three smaller hives, requeen all of them. Smaller hives are less defensive. They wouldn't make anymore honey this year, but...

Option three: Kill them.

Option one was really tempting. Let them do their thing where they wouldn't bother anyone. The downside of this was... moving the hive. I've done it before, but those were small, early spring hives that didn't have attitude. I moved them in Cherokee. Now, I have a Subaru wagon with much less room, utterly unsuitable for a two-story hive. Frankly, any enclosed vehicle is unsuitable, though. This isn't just a hive--it's a mean, mean hive.

More later.

Sorry for the hiatus...

2010-05-04T16:03:00.008-04:00

Baby Bee kept me busy last year, as did a hot hive. My daughter grew, and her dad and I figured out parenthood as best we could to a good-natured child who ate a lot--about every 3 hours. Around the clock. That finally changed in January of this year, and I'm feeling far, far better, now that I get a good night's sleep nearly every night. For a while, typing a coherent sentence was an iffy proposition.

Back to beekeeping!

Last year, a hive that overwintered came into spring bursting with bees. The queen was a Buckfast, and I hadn't taken honey from them the previous year--after Avital was born at the end of June, there was just too much to do, and we didn't pull honey until October. By that time, the bees had moved honey from the supers into the brood chambers, and our temporary extracting area in the garage was so chill that getting the honey out of the comb was hard, even with heaters going full blast. So we got a measly 30 lbs or so.

The colony obviously didn't suffer from the previous summer's lack of attention. They didn't swarm, though I didn't have the time or inclination to prevent them, had they wanted to. I did manage to put a couple of medium supers on early, and at the time, they were a happy, gentle hive--just as they had been the previous summer.

As the summer of 2009 went on, that hive seemed to do well, while the other, a new package also with a Buckfast queen, was kind of dinky. They never really got their numbers up, and if I hadn't been busy with a one-year-old and the hot hive, I would have squished the queen and replaced her, or combined the colony. But the weather may have been partly at fault. The summer of 2009 was bad, simply bad. It was cool and rainy, and everyone at the bee club complained that they were getting no honey. Well, I was. I hefted those medium supers occasionally, and knew they were filling up. So I figured I had a great queen. Woo-hoo! Lucky me!

Or so I thought. Until, on a slightly sunny, far-from-perfect weekend day, I opened the booming hive. I really wanted to give them a thorough check, and Hubby was home to watch Baby Bee. The vagaries of our weather, combined with the need for childcare meant that I hadn't looked into the hive in quite a while. Puff of smoke at the entrance, puff of smoke under the hood... Open her up, and... five bees come out like fighter pilots with the enemy in their sights. All of them tag my right hand, the one holding the smoker. One right after another, they drop their payload and go on to their reward. I, of course, do not wear gloves. That day, I was glad I wore my veil--something I haven't always done in the past.

I closed the hive up and walked around to the back of the house, where Hubby and Baby Bee were playing in the not-really-sunshine. I lamented that the overcast, coolish weather had put my girls in a foul mood, and five had died for the cause. I looked down at my right hand. The knuckles were barely swollen. I have a pretty high tolerance for bee venom (apparently a natural advantage, since I've never reacted much to honey bee stings), but even my system notices five in the same place.

A couple of weeks later, the weather was perfect: 80s, sunny, just what the beekeeper ordered for a trouble-free inspection. I opened the same hive again, after dousing it liberally with smoke, and was promptly met by bees pinging off my veil and heading for my smoker hand again. I didn't persist for long. I smoked them down, put on the lid, and got well away from the hive before I took my veil and jacket combo off. One or two followed me for 30 yards or so--unheard of behavior in my experience. Of course, in my few years of beekeeping, I'd never had a hot hive. But I had to face the fact: now I did.

Back when I had ten acres in the middle of even more unpopulated acres, the hot hive would have been a problem, but only for me and passing wildlife incautious enough to poke their nose in the hive. Now, in the 'burbs, with neighbors (though not close neighbors) and a walkway 30 yards from the hive, and a soon-to-be-toddler scooting all over the place, I had a potential problem.

I let them settle down, donned my jacket again, and checked the front of the hive, looking for signs of a skunk or other animal that might be irritating the hive. Nope. The bees were completely uninterested in me, as long as I was just near the hive. Only when I opened it did they go ballistic. That was some comfort, anyway.

Baby Bee is up from her nap. More later!

How the season ended

2008-12-08T13:53:00.007-05:00

While Ms. Baby Bee kept me busy from June 24th onward, I did manage to work my bees in July and September, and we extracted in October--a bit late, but new motherhood is a complicated thing.

The two colonies ended up much as they began, and in a different summer, I would have managed them much differently. One colony built up nicely, the other was slow, and never really got strong. I would have/should have requeened the second hive, so give it a chance to build up for winter, or at the very least, combined the two, but I did neither. The stronger hive made a medium super of honey--not horrible, for a first year colony from a package, but not great, either. It was a wet year, and other beekeepers were complaining of bees staying home and eating supplies rather than storing up more, so I wasn't alone in this.

I gave each hive a medium super of honey/sugar syrup mix that had been packed away by last year's bees, and put them to bed for the winter with the entrance reducers. I doubt the weaker colony will make it (and if it does, I'll order a new queen for it right away in spring), but I'm hopeful for the strong one.

These Buckfast are extrememly gentle. When I put on an escape board to pull honey, neither colony reacted much--my jacket and veil were completely unnecessary. Same is true when I pulled the supers and the escape boards. So they get points for being gentle (important when you live in town). However, they are heavy propolizers. The weaker colony had started to build a propolis "drape" across the entrance--something I'd heard of bees doing, but had never seen.

I will be ordering more bees for next year. I have a friend who would like a couple of hives on her land; I was thinking New World Carniolans. She's out in the country, so extremely gentle bees are less necessary than here(though as a new beek, gentleness would be a plus for her, I'm sure).

My Baby Bee

2008-09-03T13:41:00.002-04:00

My husband and I welcomed Avital into our family and our hearts on June 24th, 2008. She was born after a relatively quick labor. Mom and baby did fine from the start.

When she was six weeks old, she had her first visit to Dyce Lab in Ithaca, NY, where I was taking a beekeeping class. Dad watched her all day, brought her at lunch time to nurse, fed her expressed breast milk the rest of the day, and everyone did quite well. I think it was good for her to see a bigger beekeeping operation, and to smell the honey and beeswax in their facility!

My own hives are doing fine. I've only checked them once since she was born (are you surprised?), but they have plenty of activity, and the supers were partly filled. If we have a good goldenrod flow, we should do fine this year. We'll try to extract ourselves again, and with luck, Avital will help. Or at least sleep through it!

Beeekepers for Barack

2008-09-03T13:26:00.003-04:00

It's election time, folks. The current administration has mired us in two failed wars, spent us out of house and home (often, literally), and has lost of the confidence of the vast majority of Americans.

Let's try something different--a candidate who gets his money from you and me instead of PACs. I believe Barack Obama can bring about the change we need. Donate a little, and show that individual matter more than corporations.

A quick check...

2008-06-09T08:10:00.003-04:00

I was out watching the hives yesterday afternoon; we've had weather in the 90s for the last three days, and I was curious how they're coping. Both hives are on screened bottom boards, which I'm sure helps, and there was some fanning going on, but nothing outrageous--no bearding or anything.

The West hive, the stronger of the two, did have young bees doing orientation flights at the front of the hive, as expected. The East hive didn't. Just for the heck of it, I decided to do a quick check of the East hive. I really am worried about it. I didn't bother to suit up--it was 95 in shade!--just lit my smoker and went in. The queen in already laying in the second brood box--I saw uncapped larvae. So she's there and laying. I wonder if there is a drifting problem, or if it's just taking longer for them to clean up the frames and get her laying... or what.

Today's check: One Month

2008-06-02T22:05:00.002-04:00

I hived the two packages on May 2, so today is their one month anniversary. The East hive, which released its queen a day or two sooner, is building up more slowly. They still have about 4 frames of bees. The queen is laying, and there is brood, but either the package is dying out more quickly or she is laying more slowly. I found the queen on the last frame, wandering around, apparently not happy with the state of the cells. This is the second time I've spotted her, and she never has much of a retinue. I'll give her another few weeks, and we'll see if she's the problem, or if it's just a case of the package bees dying before the new bees could replace them. At one month, we could be at the nadir of the colony's size.

By contrast, the West hive is booming, with bees on every frame. I had to manually release their queen, so they should be a day or more behind the other, and yet... quite a contrast. I didn't bother to hunt down the queen. I saw plenty of bees and capped brood in the frames I pulled, and decided to leave it at that.

Both hives got a second deep hive body, this one with two Pierco drone frames. I'm going to use drone frames for mite reduction. I used this method a couple of years ago, and was successful, so the experiment is worth repeating. The method is simple: every three weeks, pull the capped drone brood, replace the frame with an empty, and freeze the capped brood to kill the trapped mites (and, of course, drones). With only two hives, it shouldn't be too labor intensive.

However, speaking of "labor," my own first baby is due on June 20. So I guess we'll see how time I have for the girls once I have a new girl of my own!

Building up... sort of

2008-05-24T17:24:00.003-04:00

Because I gave both hives drawn comb, I expected them to build up quickly. I posted a question about it on Beesource, as a matter of fact: how long before I pop the lid and maybe add a second hive body? Two weeks minimum was the answer. And the respondent was right. Two weeks have gone by, and they haven't filled out that hive body yet.

The East hive has four frames of brood, nectar, pollen, and the West hive about the same. But there are only four frames of bees right now, so they aren't ready to expand. We have had cool weather until the last couple of days, so I've been feeding--they've used up the frames of honey that were in there already.

I spotted the queen in both hives--the blue dot on her thorax makes that much easier.

First check

2008-05-10T14:54:00.003-04:00

I hived the girls on Tuesday evening. Today, Saturday morning, seemed like a good time to make sure the queens were released, and everyone had settled in cozily.

May weather being what it is, I haven't even had a chance to see them flying all week, since it was too chilly in the mornings and we were having cold, drizzly evenings. But today I was reassured even before opening the hives by the site of bees bringing in pollen.

I gave them a bit of smoke and popped the lid. The first colony had already released the queen. The queens are dark, and marked with a blue dot, so they're pretty visible. I pulled a couple of frames, but didn't see her or eggs, and decided to leave them in peace. I pulled out the queen cage, snugged up the frames, and put in the tenth one.

The story was similar in the second hive, except the queen wasn't quite released--the bees had eaten enough candy out for a few to be in there with her, but she was still running around the cage, unsure of how to get out through the candy tunnel. I pulled the screen off and let everyone off into the hive.

Both hives were quiet and gentle. I've given them frames of honey from last year, and a bit of syrup in Boardman-style feeders, just in case, and put on some reducers more for heat retention than because I think anyone will rob them out.

Hiving the packages

2008-05-06T20:54:00.002-04:00

I hived both packages this evening after work. I'm happy to say that it went smoothly. Although I wore my jacket, I didn't need it. The bees were calm and gentle. Even putting my hand down on one or two didn't provoke a sting.

I did spray them with sugar syrup first, and I cut open the package to give them a gentler transition than shaking them through the feeder can hole.

The queens are long and black, and are marked this year's color, blue.

Behold! The Power of Bees

2008-05-06T06:50:00.003-04:00

I knew that my bees were on their way from Texas. R. Weaver let me know that they shipped on Friday, May 2. So I was expecting them today, but not quite so early.

I couldn't sleep for some reason. About 5, I started tossing and turning, and by quarter to six, I gave up, made a pot of half-caff and a bowl of cereal, and started reading email. At 6:05, my cell phone rang. The number that came up on the display wasn't a familiar one. Wrong number, I thought.

"Hello, this is Lesli."

"This is the post office. Your bees are here."

"Thanks! What time do you open, so I can pick them up?"

"You can pick them up right now!"

So I did. The same woman who called brought them out to the loading dock for me, two three-pound packages with a big, wide, push cart all to themselves. No one wants to touch boxes of bugs. That's just the way it is.

I was back home by 6:30, with six pounds of pretty happy-looking bees. A few dead in the bottom of the cages, but not bad for a three-day trip from Texas. Otherwise, the girls are forming a fat, upside-down cone around the queen cage and syrup can, buzzing slightly, and no doubt impatient to stop being a swarm, and get down to the business of colony building.

Last time I bought package bees, I was still a smoker. I could appreciate the wax-and-wood smell of a hive, but I didn't notice then, as I did today, how the bees themselves smell in the package. I caught a whiff of lemon as I picked them up.

My Sweetie and I finished arranging their hives yesterday. He was good enough to haul some flat slabs of slate for me to use as hive stands. Last year, the ground heaved over winter and the hives ended up a bit askew. I'm hoping this will help.

Last fall, this spring

2008-04-26T10:30:00.008-04:00

You may be wondering why I quit blogging last fall on September 29. By my reckoning, I was about a day pregnant; about 10 days later, it was confirmed that our baby bee was on her way into the world. That news took up a bit of my time and energy. Now that we're closer to D-Day (delivery day!), I want to pick up where I left off, at least where bees are concerned.

I did pull honey last fall from the two colonies--about 120 lbs total of a very dark, fast granulating kind. Some of the honey--about a third--was almost black in the cells, with a minty flavor. There is just enough of that to give an interesting bouquet to the crop, which is also a bit darker than the usual fall crop. My best guess is that the bees found some Japanese knotweed.

We set up our extracting station in the garage. We had done it in the basement before, but find the garage gives us more room to work. I have a fairly modest setup: I bought my first batch of equipment from a hobbyist's widow: a powered Ranger Radial extractor, bucket heater, and electric uncapping knife. The Ranger Radial holds six medium frames (or three deep frames tangentially). The uncapping knife has a screw that should allow us to control the temperature--we found it got a bit too hot at first. But it's easier just to use a rheostat. We later found that the bucket heater overheats, too (the plastic on one of the buckets started to melt!), so the rheostat came in handy for that, too. I also bought an uncapping tub at Betterbee, along with an uncapping fork, several plastic honey tanks with gates, and plastic sieves.

Once we had the rheostat and uncapping knife working as we liked, things went pretty smoothly. The extractor is on a stand, and the stand is bolted to a wooden platform, but, obviously, we don't bolt it to the floor, since it's a temporary set up (though I suppose we could rig something...). That means that we start the extraction at a low speed, and let the amount of honey in the frames equalize a bit before ramping it up, to keep the shaking and shimmying to a minimum. That's probably a good practice anyway, since you're less likely to blow out comb.

There are some improvements we're thinking of for next time: perhaps heat tape for the extractor, to keep it and the extracted honey warm and flowing quickly. We've been extracting right into buckets, without straining, but it would be better to strain (at least a coarse strain) during that first pass, just to make the process go more quickly. But even a warm garage doesn't keep the honey warm enough to strain as you go. We did that later, using the bucket heater and patience.

Ideally, we'd also warm the honey before extracting (though, again, a fall garage is fairly warm, probably 80F). We tried it once, using a light bulb and stacks of supers, and it didn't work all that well. The closest super over-warmed, and the more distant ones got no heat at all. Several people have suggested the unused freezer or refrigerator trick, but at the moment, my beekeeping supplies are taking up quite enough room, and I'm hoping for something smaller. I think we'll just end up building a box that I can stack supers in, and using that as insulation with a space heater--or something like that.

After last falls trials--losing a queen and all--I'm sorry to say that neither colony made it. It looks like the south colony, which was requeened, may have lost that queen (again!). They didn't starve (they had a full super of honey and a top feeder), but were gone by February, when there was a thaw. A few were heads down in cells, but most were just dead on the bottom board. There was some evidence of deformed wing virus, too. I'd hoped that requeening would help, but either the queen didn't "take" and they went into winter without one (or lost her soon after), or the virus got them.

The north hive simply got too far from their stores, too, and couldn't reach them. They had a full super and then some, too.

So now I have two supers of honey, but it may be adulterated with the syrup I fed in fall, so I'm saving it for the packages that will come soon. I'm ordering Buckfast bees from R. Weaver. I bought that Buckfast queen from them in the fall, and since she didn't make it, I still want to try some Buckfast bees and see how they do here.

There are other bees in the area, though. Some stopped by to rob out my empties. I let them have what was in the hive bodies (but I squirreled away the two full supers for my packages). They must have traveled a distance, though, since I don't see them taking water from our stream (my bees did last year), and I don't see bees on dandelions now. While my deadouts were the only source of food, they were willing to travel, but now, with other things blooming, my hardtack isn't as attractive. Cornell's Dyce Lab is only about 1.5 miles from here, so it's no surprise that there are other bees, if not beekeepers, within close flying distance.

I set up a couple of deeps in preparation for my colonies, but also as a hopeful enticement for any swarms that might be looking for deluxe accommodations. I doubt I'll be so lucky, but you never know!

Today's check

2007-09-29T15:40:00.000-04:00

Both hives are doing well. I wanted to pull honey today, but it was too cool for the fume board. I took one medium super from the north hive and brushed bees, but put in an escape to get rid of the bees in the two supers on the south hive. That will make four mediums of honey this year from the two hives.

Both looked good, lots of bees. The north hive, which I requeened on the 11th of September, has capped brood and larvae, so we're doing well. I was disappointed not to see the queen and her yellow mark, but I was more interested in evidence of her than in continuing to pull the hive apart. Looking through the brood nest, I also did not see any bees with phoretic mites. Given how well they were doing, and how much honey they had, I added a medium super of mixed foundation and drawn comb for them. They looked like they could use a bit of room, and like the other hive, they have packed away a hive full of honey. So a bit more room seemed like a good idea.

The north hive is all mediums, for brood and honey, while the south hive has deeps for brood and mediums for honey. I like using the mediums in some respects--easier to life, for sure. But I also find it more time consuming to go through three "layers" of brood nest instead of two. I may move them to full deeps in the spring. In any case, it needs to be standardized, so I can swap frames and make nucs.

More later...

New Queen

2007-09-11T18:17:00.000-04:00

When I arrived home from work yesterday, the weather was good--mid-seventies, a little overcast, but the bees were flying. So I decided to check on the new queen.

The bees were calm, less nervous on the comb than they had been. I removed the cage, and saw that the queen and her attendants were fine, and the bees in the colony seemed to accept them. I removed the cork from the candy end and poked a little hole in the candy, and put the cage back in.

They're already building some bridge comb between the frames, so I'll go back in this weekend and check to see if she's laying and to put the extra frame back in.

Queenless

2007-09-08T13:07:00.000-04:00

Here's a nice YouTube clip from Discovery News on CCD.

As it turns out, the accidental nuc may have been my swarm after all. I eventually found the queen, who was on her last legs, and died just outside the nuc. Though my queens weren't marked, she was a dark queen, chocolate brown to black. The bees left the nuc and returned to the hive (presumably) the same day, without the queen. She was pretty much dead when I found her, except for random leg motions. Various bees were trying to sting her (why? I don't know!). I caged her, and saw the occasional weak leg movement, but she was a goner. That all was on August 19.

By September 1, it was clear the hive next to the nuc was queenless. No eggs, no larvae, just capped brood. I ended up pulling the whole hive apart after I saw a bee dragging out a newly hatched bee with deformed wings (see picture above). Though I haven't seen any other signs of varroa, I was worried that a bee with deformed wings might mean high mite loads and/or virus problems, so I decided to do a powdered sugar treatment.

If you Google "sugar dusting" or "powdered sugar varroa," you'll get plenty of hits. The method I used on the first hive--the one that was ok--was the simplest: open the colony, remove the honey supers, and dump two cups of powdered sugar over the bars, use my brush to brush it between frames. The bees were startled, but they didn't boil out.

When it came to the second hive, I wanted to get a good look through it, since it was the one that had thrown out the bee with the deformed wings. That is when I discovered that they were, in all likelihood, queenless. This hive has three mediums as brood boxes and a medium honey super. I pulled the medium super, then started pulling out frames from the three medium brood boxes. I saw capped brood, both workers and drones, some in the process of chewing their way out (and therefore, 21-24 days old), but no eggs and no larvae. The bees were defintely more nervous on the comb than usual, another sign of queenlessness.

Same in the next box, same in the very bottom one. I saw a couple of empty queen cups, but no queen cells, occupied or empty. It was like they had swarmed to the nuc but without queen cells left behind. But I had been watching the hives the day before, and the activity going in and out was normal. The last time I had a hive swarm, the bees hung out for a day or so, with no activity before they swarmed. There were no signs this time.

Since I had the colony pulled apart, I did the powdered sugar dusting to each medium individually. The bees didn't like it much; they did boil out and make life hard for me as I tried to reassemble the supers with the least amount of "squishing." Eventually, many opted for hanging out on the front of the hive for a day before they wanted to go back inside.

On September 1, fewer than 16 days had passed since I had seen the swarm, so there should have still been queen cells, even if empty. So had I dropped the queen during my last inspection? Hard to believe. I hadn't broken it down or pulled it apart. Still, anything is possible. And if I had dropped the queen, would she have moseyed over to the nuc, with an entourage of thousands?

It's a mystery. But I did end up with a queenless hive. Someone on Beesource asked if I was sure there wasn't a virgin in there somewhere. Nope, not completely sure. But I am sure there are no eggs, no larvae, and no remnants of queen cells. I did see bees bringing in pollen, which I've always read is a good sign, and yet... they're bringing in pollen for a hive without eggs or larvae, so perhaps it's overrated as an indicator of colony health.

So I bought a queen from R. Weaver. I have to admit that I have always wanted to try Buckfast queens--and I mean always, since before I owned bees, because they were mentioned in the very first book I read on bees, John Vivian's Keeping Bees. While Vivian suggests plain ol' Italians for the novice beekeeper, there is something about the story of Brother Adam and his bees that I appreciate. The scientist observing, testing, and crossing strains all in a very low-tech way, and yet, successful.

My experience with R. Weaver was also successful, from start to finish. I emailed on September 4 to inquire whether they had queens, and how soon they could ship, and received a reply the same day that they could ship the next day, September 5. A few more emails to confirm marking and clipping and payment, and we were set and a queen and court on their way. I've never done business with them before, but they are willing to invoice (I offered a credit card, but apparently my credit is good with them). I asked for her to be marked and clipped. My suppliers have never given me the option of marking or clipping before, and I decided to take it. I've always been afraid of marking queens myself, lest I damage a queen, but it is good to have that bright yellow spot on her back, to make supersedure noticeable and finding her in a busy colony easier.

The queen and her retinue arrived safe and sound yesterday, Friday. I opened the envelope right there in the post office to make sure she survived the journey. She and her retinue seemed just fine, and quite lively, as a matter of fact. When I returned home, I put a few drops of water on the candy and wire (as John Vivian suggests), to give them all a drink after their hot journey.

The cage was a typical wooden one, and had no attached hanger. Rather than muck around with something to suspend the cage, I removed a mostly empty frame from the brood nest to give me room, and snugged her between two frames in the middle. In a new colony, I wouldn't do that--it's asking for wild comb to leave so much space, but those frames are already drawn and it should be find for a few days. Some sources suggest improving acceptance by removing her retinue. I admit that I did not do that. If I had an extra queen or was re-queening a queen-right colony, I might have risked it, but I was worried about her escaping and becoming damaged. If this colony has been queenless since August 19th, that's nearly three weeks, making the development of a laying worker a real possibility in the not-too-distant future. The emerging brood suggests about the same dating. I wanted to get a queen in there pronto.

I did not remove the cork over the candy, however, and I omitted that step intentionally. I'd been reading about acceptance rates going down with Russian stock. The stock that I have is from a variety of sources: Buckeye Bee in Ohio, Wixson's here in New York, and whatever wild bees may have mated with a superseded queen.

Since I was busy falling in love last summer, my bees may have gone through all sorts of trauma and supersedure without me noticing. I've never had bees that were "pure" anything, so there's no reason to think they're predominantly Russian... but I figured a slow intro couldn't hurt. After all, it's not like I have a 100 hives to look after. I'm going to give them several days to get used to her--maybe a full week, before I pull the cork.

It did occur to me yesterday that I would like to get one of those cages that allow the queen to lay eggs, pretty much guaranteeing her acceptance.

We're finally getting some rain today and tomorrow. The smell of goldenrod has been wafting from the hives, so I have no doubt the bees are finding nectar, but it has been dry lately.

Even though my bees live in a residential neighborhood, there has been plenty of forage for them, so far. This area was a farming area even 50 years ago, with orchards and fields of clover for dairy herds. The clover is still in the lawns, along with plenty of dandelions and other weeds, and apple trees, black locust, and more are still plentiful. I wondered about fall foraging, but as I explore the area, I see that just as we have some areas on our property that are still thickets, it isn't uncommon here for there to be semi-wild areas on people's property. Few have perfect, manicured lawns here, much to my relief. The old-growth was left alone as people built houses, and on the edges there are things like goldenrod. I've also seen some false bamboo. Around here, it's considered invasive, but the bees love it. There are also some fallow fields less than a mile away--a bit far for really good forage, but there may be others I'm not familiar with (I haven't invaded my neighbors' properties to see what all they have... though I'm occasionally tempted).

I'll be checking my north hive in a few days; I'm hoping that I'll be able to tell how they're accepting her by their behavior.

The Accidental Nuc

2007-08-19T14:10:00.000-04:00

When I moved the hives here in May, I brought two colonies, each in a medium super, and one tiny, tiny colony in a nuc. I was pretty sure the nuc colony wouldn't survive, but I decided to let them Darwin it out. Indeed, the colony died out after a few weeks, while the other colonies thrived.

I left the actual nuc next to the hives, though, because it made a handy seat for watching the bees come and go. In fact, I moved it a bit yesterday to sit next to the South hive.

Today, the nuc is apparently inhabited by a new swarm. At least, I think it's a new swarm. I suppose I may have dropped the queen on the ground yesterday, and she walked over a new home... But somehow, that doesn't seem likely. And neither of my colonies swarmed--I was watching them all day yesterday. So if these aren't my bees, then I've gone and caught myself a swarm completely by accident.

And lest you think that bees don't swarm in August in New York, yep, they do. In fact, in 2004, one of my colonies swarmed in late September. Check out my September 25th entry from that year.

Their new home has five full frames of drawn comb in it. I think I'll let them settle in for a week, then check to see how they're doing. If all looks well, I can move them to a full deep and start feeding like mad--maybe add a frame or two of sealed brood to get them going.

A Wedding, Honey, and A Fuzzy White Bee

2007-08-19T09:59:00.000-04:00

David and I married in the backyard on August 12, 2007. Our ceremony was short (and sweet), and attended by a few close friends and family. About an hour later, the other hundred or so close friends showed up. Everyone received a bottle (or two) of honey.

A couple of weeks ago, David and I extracted the honey from last fall (falling in love put me behind a bit...). Because I'd left so much honey for the bees, I only had about 30 lbs of my own, a dark, fall honey. I supplemented with another local beekeeper's honey from this spring's basswood flow. We bottled them separately, found oval labels online, and designed the label with our picture and the words, "Life is the flower, love is the honey."

I know other people have done honey for a wedding. Usually, they give those little glass jars, 5.5 oz, pictured below. They're pretty, no doubt about it, but I wanted people to have a real bottle of real honey--a whole pound to enjoy for awhile to come. I also have to admit that I'm prejudiced in favor of the new no-mess caps. I think more people would eat more honey if it weren't so hard to get out of the jar without making a sticky production of it.

Because we had the party here, we wondered what to do about the bees. Should I close up the hives the night before? We worried about people being bothered. After considering it, though, I realized that the bees were unlikely to bother anyone's Diet Coke or Riesling or Killian's Red. That just left the worry about the party's children bothering the bees. But we had a couple of child-minders on hand, and asked them to keep kids away from the hives.

As it turned out, several guests were interested in where the honey came from, so I, proud beekeeper and bride, took little groups on a tour of my tiny apiary. I always love talking about bees anyway, and it gave me a chance to do some good PR for our melliferous sisters.

One tip for all of you out there: don't stand next to a colony in a long skirt. Bees can get under it, and you know what happens when they get tangled up in clothing!

Yes, the bride got stung. No one else did, and no one noticed that I did. After telling people how gentle and easy bees are to keep, there was no way I was going to dance and swat at myself. So I did what any good beek would do, and ignored it.

Yesterday I went back out and opened the hives. I figured it was time to pull honey, since there may not be many more warm days. I guess the girls had other ideas, though. I only had one super of capped honey in the south hive, along with a super of uncapped and partially filled frames.

The two supers on the north hives are full of brood. I guess that colony is upside down! I drove all of the bees into what ought to be the brood chambers using Bee-Quick, put on a queen excluder, and then put the supers with their capped brood back on. I'll check them again in a week to so and see how they're doing.

Both hives have good brood patterns, though. I saw young bees chewing their way out of cells.

I have to do some kind of mite check soon--either a plain drop or a powdered sugar drop, but I'm not seeing any evidence of heavy mite infestation. Everybody has good wings, and there are no phoretic mites in sight. I know--it's no proof of anything, but at least they aren't collapsing from mites or anything else. Considering that they started out in a single medium super in May, I'm very pleased with both colonies.

One question for anyone who stumbles across this: do you know why the occasional bee will have bright white fuzz? Every once in a while, I'll see one of these, and yesterday I managed to snap a picture. I assume it's a mutation of some sort, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.

Driving out the drones

2007-07-22T15:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I noticed that the colony to the north is expelling its drones. This is a bit unusual, I would think, for July. As I watched, in the space of about 10 minutes, I saw two drones carried out dead and another two "ridden" out of the hive by a sister, with the worker trying to sting the drone all the way.

Today, I saw the same parade of rejected drones, some carried out already dead, others being driven out. I posted on the Beesource forum, hoping someone else had an explanation for this. So far, one person has blamed mites, and another said a poster on another forum suggest supersedure going on. I've never heard of drones being expelled just because the bees had decided to replace their queen.

Driving out the drones suggests that the colony is under stress, but what sort? They're bringing in nectar and pollen, and their numbers look good. The second colony is thriving and having no issues.

I opened the hive today. They were defensive, and I was glad I wore my jacket. I went into the top brood chamber, but didn't manage to find any eggs. By the time I got that far, the bees were getting "sticky," and clouds were covering the sun, so I decided to back off and wait for better weather. There is no queen excluder on that hive, so the queen may be up in the honey supers laying. I think I'll break it down and find her this week, and see what's going on.

Plastic hive stand/ventilated bottom board from Dadant

2007-06-09T08:32:00.000-04:00

Since my bees have been moved from rural splendor (where I could do as I please) to an old neighborhood where people have standards, I decided to switch out my old method of putting the hives up on cinder blocks or pallets for something a bit more aesthetically pleasing. Cinder blocks were cheap. Pallets (from work) were free. The stands I ended up with were neither.

About a year ago, Dadant started selling a plastic ventilated hive stand complete with moats around the legs and a pull-out drawer for mite inspection. At $29.95 plus shipping, they ain't cheap. But with only two hives, I figured it wouldn't break the bank, so I got a couple.

They needed to be assembled, but they snapped together easily enough. The sides slope toward the middle, and a drawer does indeed slide out from the underside (you access it from the back of the hive--good!). The slope (which you can see in the picture) means that there's a bit more than bee space under the center of the hive, and predictably, the girls took advantage and built an inch or so of drone comb there on the bottom of the center frames.

I've had them under the hives for about a month now, and so far, no problems. I'm not using the ant moats on the legs; to me, that would just be asking for mosquitoes or funky water. But ants aren't a real problem here, anyway.

I do like the drawer for inspecting hive debris. And yes, I've seen a few mites in there, though not enough to worry about (2-4 on a 24 hour drop). The drawer is only the size of the center rectangle, however. If I were to redesign these, I would made the ventilated bottom flat and the drawer full-size across it. I'm not sure why they did it this way. I'm wondering if they need to make it more rigid to hold more weight, and having the entire center be plastic mesh wouldn't have given it the strength they were looking for. Don't know. I'll have to ask an engineer.

On the whole, they serve the purpose and they do look nice (nicer than some of my woodenware, unfortunately). I'm not sure they're worth $30 apiece, though.

Spring update

2007-06-09T07:42:00.000-04:00

Spring was busy, and I missed noting a couple of things: one of my hives had nosema when I first brought it here in early May. The yellow and brown streaks outside the hive were unmistakable, though until now (my fourth season), I'd never seen bee poop except at the end of winter. A few spots can be seen on the bottom board, right.

There were also bees outside the hive, moving around lethargically. When I examined the inside, though, there was no evidence of bees pooping inside, so at least the sick bees were going outside (though not far outside) the hive.

The colony recovered quickly, though. Within a few days, the streaks had stopped, there were no more bedraggled bees out front, and the colony started to really boom.

Both are booming, in fact, so packed full of sealed brood that I keep adding hive bodies. They fattened up on dandelion and apple, and just past, the black locust. Creeping Charlie and Dame's Rocket are good stand-bys at this time of year, too, and the neighborhood lawns have erupted in white clover--no doubt a leftover from this areas past as apple orchards and dairy farms.

The other thing of note was that I got a swarm call on May 16th. Cornell gave my`name to someone with a swarm near my job, so off I went. Unfortunately, the swarm was too high up in a spruce tree for me to do anything about them. Given that it issued in a residential neighborhood, I did have to wonder whose house had a few more guests than they knew of. It's hard to say, though. The neighborhoods are old, and so are the trees, so it's possible the swarm issued from somewhere other than a nearby house. And that the girls found a new home whose mortgage wasn't being paid by someone else.

But I don't think so.

Salon symposium

2007-05-31T13:25:00.000-04:00

It says something about the media today when Colony Collapse Disorder mkes it to salon.com:

I haven't had a chance to read the full article yet, but I suspect they're going to blame the pesticide industry.

I'm no great fan of chemicals, but as far as I know, the word is still out on what causes CCD--so if they imply they have a cause, I'll be dubious.

Black locust bloom

2007-05-30T19:23:00.000-04:00

The black locust is blooming here, and it smells so sweet!

Spring

2007-05-28T22:40:00.000-04:00

A late April snow storm killed off two and a half of the surviving colonies. By the time I was able to move them to my new home, I had two and a tea cup left--and the tea cup has now officially dwindled to nothing but a dozen bees and a queen. I don't think it's CCD in this case, just a sad little colony with a failed queen.

But the two colonies are booming! Each started on one medium (for easy transport). I added a second medium a couple of weeks ago, and today added a medium to one and a deep to the other. Considering how tiny they were when they started out, that's amazing!

Forage has been good. I moved them just as dandelions were blooming. Apples came next. There's some kind of creeping Charlie weed everywhere in the lawn that they like, and no doubt other things that I don't recognize, including a weedy looking bush that is blooming, and that I see everywhere on my strolls.

Five...

2007-04-05T14:58:00.000-04:00

Five hives survived the winter. The colonies are tiny, but there.

I'll be moving one or two to my new home, and the rest will live on a friend's acreage, I think. They'll still be mine, but living where there's a bit more room than my SO and I have.

Hiatus

2006-11-02T11:36:00.000-05:00

Hi Everyone,
Life changes. I met someone, moved to town, and will be moving my bees to a new home. They'll still be my bees, but they can't live in town where I am now. So pretty soon I'll staple the hives together and move them, and we'll see how the girls do over the winter. My house is on the market--email me, if a farmhouse on 10 acres in the Finger Lakes is of interest. :)

I may resume next spring.

We'll see.

Yee-haw!

2006-04-23T17:26:00.000-04:00

Three out of four hives made it over the winter. I am amazed. Last year, the summer was so dry--and all four hives new, from packages, with comb to build--I thought there was no way so many would overwinter.

The one that didn't make it was no surprise. I wrote about it last summer, as the hive in the middle of the three that had the fewest bees. They did make some nice small comb, though.

I split the strongest hive. I'll check in a few days to see if I need to add eggs to one side or the other--I just pulled the top off one and put it on its own stand. The weather wasn't ideal and the girls were getting restless, so I figured it was time to let them rest.

Update

2005-12-06T13:52:00.000-05:00

I disappeared for the summer and fall. Things went well, until the summer got hot and dry. And dry. And more dry. And then work got busy, and I got bronchitis, and, well, the bees suffered in more ways than one. I will almost certainly lose one colony that never built up well. The others... we'll see.

So no honey for me this year. But the great thing is that there's always spring to look forward to!

Second deeps on

2005-05-30T10:45:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was pretty nice--a little overcast, but warm enough. I decided to put the second deeps on all the hives. They seemed ready, with only the middle hive in the field looking a bit thin. I wonder if there has been drifting?

The hive in Max's yard moved happily into the drawn comb in that deep. They have plenty of foragers coming and going. I should probably check that middle hive more thoroughly, make sure there isn't a problem.

I find I like the propolis traps that are substituting for inner covers. No bees on the cover, and I can open a hive and look at the top bars without bees flying out--minimal disturbance for a quick look. Maybe I'll start using them everywhere.

One thing that amazes me: I take off the cover and hold my hand over the proplis trap and feel the warmth. The hive is warm, really warm on the inside. Not that I haven't read that, but still, it's just plain amazing to think of them generating that heat to keep the brood warm.

When I combined the queenless hive with the one in the backyard, I didn't do any of the usual stuff: no smoke, no spray, no newspaper. I just pulled the frames with bees from the failed colony and put them in the strong hive. No apparent problems have surfaced--no fighting on the board, no pile of dead bees outside. They are cleaning out the drone larvae from those frames, though, and I've seen a few of the tiny drones, raised in worker-sized cells, dead outside. On the whole, it should give that hive a boost, more drawn comb and a few more workers, though they must be pretty long in the tooth by now.

Combining and propolis and pollen

2005-05-26T11:15:00.000-04:00

Today is the first sunny, warm day this week. I'm taking a long weekend, so I went out this morning and checked on the hives. All are doing well except the requeened drone layer. Last weekend, I moved them to a nuc to give them an easier space to keep warm. I saw no capped worker brood, but some single eggs in cells, so I still had a little hope.

That hope disolved today. Still no worker brood--and on top of it, I saw a worker scoot her butt into a cell. So that was it for that colony. I took the nuc to the hive in Max's yard, and (against all the advice in the books, I know, I know) simply took out the frames of bees and drone brood and plunked it into the hive. I dumped the rest of the bees on the ground in front of the hive, and told them to work it out for themselves. At least it gives this hive more drawn small cell, and if they don't dislike their cousins on sight, a boost in their numbers.

The other hives are doing fine. The southern-most hive out in the field is ready for another brood box. The others can wait a bit. I'll check the wether before I do it for sure. If there are cold nights coming up, I'll wait just a bit longer.

But all the hives (now) have really good brood patters and seem to be thriving. I've cut off their supply of extra food for now. So much is blooming now that they shouldn't need it.

The small cell is being drawn out fine--mostly. Maybe it's the feeding, but they all have a bit of floating comb. Some of it I pulled off. Some already had capped brood, so I let it be. They need quick, large storage, and they need drones, so I figure I'd let them do what they need. I can cull the frames later.

Three of the colonies acquired propolis traps. I can't say that any of them seem like heavy propolizers, based on how easy opening has been, but heck, it's only been a few weeks, and they're pretty busy with brood rearing and all.

I took the pollen trap off for now. The girls collected a good amount, which I've put in the freezer. I'll put it back in a few weeks to collect "summer" pollen.

Queen replacement, pollen, and build up

2005-05-19T18:04:00.000-04:00

The hive with the poor queen ended up having a laying worker...and a queen cell. Bizarre! The queen cell looked wrong. Too long, and too smooth. But I doubted that I could find a queen for them at this time of year--and the other four hives really can't spare a frame of brood so soon into their own build up.
But then I saw this:

Notice the gazillion eggs in each cell. There are also a few cells where an egg is laid on top of pollen. Those two things usually indicate a laying worker. But I've never heard of a queen cell and a laying worker. Nor had anyone on the boards I posted on.

So I shook out the hive--the usual recommendation for dealing with a laying worker, and was lucky enough to get a queen at Dadant. They just happened to have extras. The queen was apparently accepted, since I saw single eggs in cells. I'll check on them again this weekened. If anything has happened to that queen, I'll combine this colony with one of the others.

Meanwhile, the healthy colonies are doing fine. Not as much activity at the entrances as I saw last year, but this is probably the colonies' low point. Most of the bees from the packages have died by now, and the young bees born in the last week or so are still not foraging age. But I do see loads of pollen coming in and lots of syrup being taken.

The dandelions have been blooming, along with forget-me-nots, apple trees, a particular plum tree I have, and I'm sure a lot of things that I don't notice. But I do see bees on all of the above.

I'm collecting pollen from one hive, the one in Max's yard. I bought a pollen trap from Betterbee. It's ok--because my screened bottom board doesn't have "sidebars" there is a gap between the side of the pollen collector and hive that allows the bees to go around the trap. The hooks to hold it on are kind of hard to position. On the plus side, it is working, and pollen is being collected. I decided that the gaps aren't such a bad thing, since that means a fair number of bees get in, pollen intact. And at this point in their cycle, that's a good thing. The brood probably needs plenty now.

First full check

2005-05-07T15:13:00.000-04:00

Today I did the first really full check of all the colonies. Three weeks have passed, so I figured everyone is settled in.

The hive in Max's yard is doing fine. Plenty of brood in a good pattern, plenty of stores and good pollen stocks.

Three of the four out in the field also look good. Good brood patterns, active foragers, stores and pollen. Some of the comb is badly drawn in all the hives--"floating" comb as I think of it. I decided to leave it for now. I assume the girls wanted large cells for quick storage--that's what they're using it for.

But the forth hive is in trouble. They've decided to replace their queen--and rightly so. The brood pattern is spotty with too many drones. There's one sealed queen cell and one in the works. I'm going to let them finish raising a queen for themselves, feed them well, and hope for the best.

I bought a Nicot system for queen rearing, and this confirms the need to me. These girls may well raise a queen that will do just fine... But I think I'd like to raise a few to have on hand for splits and emergencies.

I noticed that most of the foragers in the backyard hive are heading toward the swap across the road and a bit west. Right now, we have willows, dandelions, daffodils, maples, oaks, and no doubt other things I don't see. I never did see the girls working the violets; forget-me-nots have replaced the violets, and I don't see them working those, either.

Wikipedia has a really nice site on nectar and pollen for honeybees.

Lost mail, more bees

2005-04-24T08:09:00.000-04:00

Somehow, the post office lost 15 pounds of bees. Don't ask me how. When the girls didn't arrive by Saturday, I called Buckeye, and they sent out replacements the next week.

So last Friday, my replacement bees came. (Whatever happened to the first bunch? Did the poor girls starve to death in some warehouse?) I hived them Friday evening after work. The weather was great--70s, sunny. Last year, I bought nucs, so this is my first time with packages. I followed the "rules": I sprayed them with sugar syrup about half an hour before I hived them, then again just before I opened the packages.

Still, I got stung. I admit that I didn't wear a veil. All the books say that bees in a package are very gentle, especially if you feed them first. Well, bees don't read books.

The first problem confronted me before I even opened a package: I'm using new frame feeders from Betterbee that have floats. I poured in the syrup and went off to the garage to get my bees. When I returned, syrup was streaming out of the hive. Yep, my brand new plastic frame feeder sprung a leak. Argh. So I replaced it with the old-style (no floats) frame feeder with a bunch of sticks in it to provide some flotation devices for the girls.

I pried the top off, removed the queen cage, removed the syrup can. Hung the queen cage, jarred the bees down, and tried to pour them in. Yeah, most went in, but a lot hung in clumps in the corners. Jarred the package again, tried more pouring... It was harder than it looks in the pictures. One bee stung me on the jaw during the first package install, and that pretty much set the tone for the other four.

Most had started to build a little comb in the package, but one had a good hand-sized piece of snow-white comb attached to the syrup can. Getting that can out was just not going to happen, so I pried off the side of the package.

A leg sting, arm sting, back sting, and scalp sting later, I had all five installed, with food. Packages set in front of the hives so that the stragglers could get into the hives when they were ready.

That's as much as I've ever been stung in one session, but my immune system is cooperative, and other than a red mark on my arm, I suffered no ill effects (couldn't even find the other marks half an hour later).

I have to admit that all that stinging worried me a bit. I mean, the books do say that packages have nothing to protect (well, that one with the palm-sized comb did, sort of) and are gentle. So why was I suddenly a pin cushion? Did I get hot bees? Or were they just in a bad mood from their trip?

The following Tuesday, I donned my veil (just in case), fired up the smoker, and made a brief foray to find out if the queens had been released.

One hive is in my dog's yard--that's the one I can watch all the time as I throw a ball for Max. The other four are in the field behind my house. I opened the one behind the house first and removed the queen cage. The weather had been warm since I'd hived them, and I'd watched the girls coming and going for days. I put a little puff of smoke at the entrance, and another under the cover, and then pulled off the cover. Well, no tornado of bees. I pulled out the queen cage (empty now--she'd been released) and shook off a few bees clinging to it. I discovered some badly drawn, free-hanging comb where the queen cage had violated bee space. (For the novice, that means that the queen cage kept two frames further apart than the bees like, and so they started to fill the void with comb.) I yanked out the comb, shook off the bees, and was happy to see that they didn't object. A quick check of a frame showed larvae, so the queen must have been released pretty darned quick--probably within a day. Since the bees are starting on some drawn comb, it looks like she got right down to business. Good! I pushed the frames together gently, and inserted the tenth frame, and closed up.

I repeated those steps with the other four colonies, yanking out floating comb each time, but not checking for brood. I wanted to minimize the intrusion, since the books say (darned books, there they are again!) that the bees might kill the queen if they are disturbed too soon. All the queens had been released.

The colonies were all gentle and happy, and my work earned me nary a sting this time. So maybe they were just cranky from the trip. Even though I didn't look for eggs or larvae in all the hives, they all seemed normal, happy, and busy, which indicates to me (with my vast experience...of what the books say) that they're queen right.

The good weather ended, unfortunately, two days ago. It's been just cool enough to keep the bees from flying much. Yesterday, the weather got into the high 50s, low 60s during a mostly overcast afternoon. Now, the temperatures are below 50, but I'm glad the girls got a few days of flying and collecting nectar and pollen. I'm giving them syrup, of course, but not pollen substitute patties. I didn't think they'd want them, since we already have pollen now, from maple, daffodils, skunk cabbage, and willows (all of which grow around here in abundance). Indeed, I watched the hive close to the house bring in large amounts of pollen--bright yellow and orange.

The weather forecast for the next two days is rain, high 40s, but Tuesday should be warm enough for them to resume their flights. They'll probably need more syrup, but I'll wait until Tuesday to give it to them. That's the only problem with frame feeders. I know I can just slide the cover over, but I don't want to disturb them even that much just now.

Change of plans

2005-04-04T20:55:00.000-04:00

I called Buckeye today. I was asked if I could come the day after tomorrow to pick up my bees, rather than a week from Wednesday. He said his hives are doing really well. That's good news! But what with the full time job and the 10 hour drive, no, can't do it. So my five packages of girls will be mailed to me. He'll ship Wednesday. I hope they arrive on Friday. I have to call the postoffice and let them know. It would probably be a kindnes if called and showed up there just before 8 am on Friday, in case they come.

I had planned on picking up the packages at Buckeye, going first to Michigan to visit family for a few days, then down to Ohio. I did want to see how a big operation is run, and I'm sorry not to get the family visit, but heck, I'll have my girls a week earlier, and I won't have all the driving.

Death

2005-03-05T18:27:00.000-05:00

In spite of my efforts, the colony died. I went out today to check on them, and the colony had starved.

There were a couple of cells of capped brood and a queen cell. Whether their queen died after laying a few eggs, or they just decided to replace her I couldn't tell.

There was no evidence of disease, and the bees I looked at didn't have any sign of mite problems. I think this last long cold snap just didn't allow them to move enough to get to their own stores or even the candy over the top bars. The population of the colony was enormous, though (I think) for this time of year: nearly 15 frames of bees and dead an inch deep on the bottom board. Maybe our long, warm fall (and combining with the colony that swarmed) just made for a population too large to overwinter easily, though I left them their honey and fed them copiously.

Well, at least I have the five packages on order. Instead of the 7 colonies I'd hoped for, I'll be lucky to get to the fall with 5.

Comments, an extractor, and plans

2005-02-25T08:10:00.000-05:00

Thanks to all of you leaving comments. I appreciate the encouragement. And I envy the person who works at Buckfast! I do enjoy the full time job that pays for this expensive hobby, but a life among the bees is attractive, too.

My one colony is still alive. I knocked on the hive a couple of days ago, and heard a reassuring buzz. I've decided to travel to Buckeye to pick up my packages. It's a long drive, but I'll break it up (sort of) by traveling first to Michigan to visit with my aunts and cousins, then down to Ohio to see the Buckeye operation and pick up the bees.The Michigan to Ohio to NY part will probably be too long to do in one day, so there may well be an overnight in a hotel. I wonder how the Motel Six will like having me and 15 lbs of bees in a room? I could leave them in the car, of course, but I suspect that the weather will be too cool. Hmmm.

My hope had been to have someone come along for the ride, and do it in a long one-day drive, but I don't think that will happen. So I figure I'll take a week off of work and combine it with a visit. The pick up day is a Wednesday, so when I get home I can either hive the girls in the early evening or the next day. Everything, of course, depending on weather.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Ranger Radial extractor, electric uncapping knife, and other odds and ends from the window of a local beekeeper. He had only used the extractor once, so it is essentially brand new. The visit turned out to be an interesting one from a personal point of view. The house was only a few miles out of town, but as so often is true in this area, had that country feel. The barn had three horses in it, there was a Chow mix dog, several cats. Everything warm and clean and casual. She obviously still misses her husband, and spoke fondly about him and the hobbies they had shared. Beekeeping, though, was his alone. She found a beekeeper to take his colonies and other equipment last fall, but no one yet had wanted the extractor, knife, and other things.

Her comments about their life together painted a picture of a truly happy, long marriage. There's not much to say in these situations that doesn't sound trite to my ears. Words of comfort hardly exist, so I told her he sounded like a wonderful man. She said she wanted his beekeeping things to go to someone who would use them and enjoy them, and I told her that I was very, very sorry for her loss, and glad that I could at least give a "good home" to his equipment.

She probably has enough honey on that shelf in the basement to last years, but I told her to keep my number and if she ever runs out, I'll drop off a few jars. She was hesitant to take my check--she didn't even want to name a price.

There are still plans to be made for the spring and summer. I have enough equipment for now, but I'll need more supers, medium frames, and foundation. Last fall, I bought enough deeps for my colonies. I'm still deciding now whether I want to do some cutcomb or section honey, and what type of foundation I should use for extracting. Plastic is easiest, and lasts the longest but I hear that bees like wax best. And who could blame them? I may go with wax for this year. If I change my mind, I can always buy plastic. And wax never goes to waste.

I would also like to try raising queens, with a view to eventually making up nucs for sale (and to have queens on hand for my own hives). I'm hoping that my remaining colony will be strong enought to split this spring. If so, I may buy a queen from elsewhere to add to the gene pool, since all my bees now are from Buckeye. A Russian, maybe, or one of those Mountain Gray...

Finally, there is the farm stand. I'll need one. In real life, I'm a systems administrator, running email systems for a college. My first thought is always to do things online. Although I might be able to sell candles and other things that way, shipping honey would cost more than the honey itself, so I can't imagine there would be many buyers. And why not a farm stand? I live on a rural road with little traffic--most of the time. But it is on the way to Watkins Glen, where there is car racing and auto shows every summer.

Yep, I'll do the honor system. I'm pretty trusting. So there will be that to design and build.

My bees now have their own checking account. I registered a doing-business-as name and opened an account for "them," so to speak. I'll inject some funds from savings, and buy future equipment only from that. I am determined to turn this into a sideline business that at the very least pays for itself. Since my day job pays well, this isn't out of necessity. I think it's more the challenge or the experience. So far, I've been giving away candles, honey, and hand creams, but it will be interesting to see what I can do if I actually try to sell some things!

Packages, a sugar board, and cold

2005-01-26T13:22:00.000-05:00

Plans for packages have changed. I'm ordering my own from Buckeye Bee in Ohio, while other club members are staying local(ish). I may drive down there, 350 miles each way, if another club member wants to go along for the ride. I think it would be fun to see a big operation.

I've ordered five packages of small cell bees to save me the pain of getting large cell bees downsized. This has brought about some skepticism on some discussion groups, where small cell is not accepted as a mite control. And, of course, being a new beekeeper, no one is going to give much weight to anything I have to say.

That's ok. I myself don't know whether small cell beekeeping works, though it seems to work quite well for others. What I do know is that it can't hurt, unlike the chemical strips people put in their hives. Small cell bees draw foundation a bit smaller, and are a bit smaller themselves. The worst that can happen is that it won't work, and they'll die. Or that it will work, and they'll die, since colonies can die of a lot of things.

What won't happen is contaminated wax and honey. While everyone is warned not to use those chemical strips during a nectar flow, I have my doubts that large beekeepers always get them out in time. I also doubt that they segregate brood comb from honey super comb--so that contaminated wax may be storing honey.

I am not trying to alarmist. I have no idea whether or how minute amounts of those chemicals affect humans or bees. What I do know is that if they aren't necessary, I don't see the point.

I checked on my remaining colony a couple of days ago. Back in early January, when we had an uncharacteristic warm spell, the bees were out flying and drinking water from the side of the hive.

Now they are definitely huddled inside against the zero and below temps. I cracked the lid and pushed in a sugar board for them, which got their attention. As did the ruckous, since several bees flew out to protect the nest. I'm a little surprised that they are so active in this cold.

These girls have attitude! They were such a gentle hive all summer until fall. And now they are furies, ready to protect their nest and queen against all comers.

For the coming week, we will continue to have temperatures around 0 F, and windchills as low as -30 F.

Beekeeping in my family

2005-01-13T09:21:00.000-05:00

While I'm the first person in my generation to keep bees, it turns out my grandfather's sister Cordelia kept bees down in the mountains of Virginia. My aunt told me about it when I visited this year. Bees were kept in "gums," hollow logs. Swarms were "controlled" by banging on pots and pans.

Seems Cordie's attraction to bees skipped a few generations. My grandfather loved tulip poplar comb honey, but was himself afraid of bees, as are my aunts. I sent one of my aunts a picture of me, in a short sleeved t-shirt, jeans, hat, and glasses holding a frame of bees. I'm not sure if they think I'm odd, brave, or a throwback. All three may be true.

I do have a few tulip poplars growing on my land, though they aren't common here in Upstate NY. A couple of trees aren't enough for a crop, but I may get a taste or two out of it.

Preparing for spring

2005-01-09T08:26:00.000-05:00

I talked to our bee club president. We're ordering packages as a club, which includes about 175 packages for the beekeeping program at a local university. We may get them locally, or a couple of us will drive down to ... wherever to pick them up. I hope they don't wait too long to order--I've heard that there will be shortages.

Shortages might come about because thousands of hives are crashing around the country. The varroa mite, a honey bee parasite, has become resistant to the chemicals that are used to kill them. The mites feed on the hemolymph (blood) of developing and adult bees, causing deformities, reducing life spans, and spreading disease. Since I'm keeping my hives clean of chemicals and antibiotics, it means I have to find another means to fight these parasites.

I started by putting the colonies on screened bottom boards, instead of the usual solid board. That way, when mites fall off of adult bees, they can't just hitch a ride on the next one that comes along. Some also say that the improved ventilation helps the bees.

Next--when I fed in summer and fall, I used essential oils in the bees' feed. This strategy is based on a study done at West Virginia University.

During the summer, I put in frames of drone-sized foundation, and when the bees had capped it, I removed the frames and either uncapped to check for mites or put the frame in the freezer to kill brood and mites before returning it to the hive to be cleaned out and reused by the bees. Since mites prefer the larger drone brood, this can be a good (but labor intensive) control. It's also a good way to check for mites. Late in summer, I uncapped a frame nearly solid with drone brood on two sides, and found only 5 mites. So the colony has them--but the number seemed small. I also did the powdered sugar shake to check for mites, and found none.

This combination seems to have worked for the colony so far, but I'm going to take it a step further, and "regress" the bees to a smaller sized cell in their foundation. That seems to be the only way to give bees the tolerance they need to stay ahead of the mites. One season of controls isn't enough to prove that something works.

Last weekend, I knocked together five more hive bodies. I'll have to inventory my woodenware and make sure I have enough for at least five more colonies in the spring--I think I'm short a couple of bottom boards and covers, and I'll need more medium supers and foundation.

I'm glad of the prep. I like working with the wood, and I like doing something for my bees, even though the active season is yet to come.

Happy New Year

2005-01-02T11:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I visited the girls, to wish them a happy new year, and see how this odd, mild winter is treating them. There are only a few dead so far, and since the day was in the 40s, I saw a few bees leave the hive, and others were doing housekeeping duties. I added a quart of syrup for them, since the weather is relatively warm, and finally put a wrap on the hive.

I had planned to wrap much earlier, but the weather has been so mild, it hardly seemed worth it. I'm still not sure that it is, but it can't hurt.

I wonder if such mild weather will cause the girls to use more stores, since they'll be moving around more. While the goldenrod flow was great, and I assume they they made the most of it, I'm too new to all this to really be sure. And I don't want to open the hive now, even if the weather is mild.

I still have a few frames of honey and pollen to give them, stored by their sister colony last fall. I went through the supers yesterday, checking which have drawn comb, which have stores, and sorting through things. I have some woodenware to put together for the spring, which I may well do today. Staining will wait, of course, but I'll need more deeps for brood boxes, and I hope I'll need more medium supers for honey!

One problem I noticed yesterday was a distinct tilt to the hive. It looks like the uneven weight made the cider blocks under the hive sink more in one spot than another. I righted everything by propping a corner up with another cinder block, but it does raise a question for the new hives. I've never thought of my land as soft (I usually think of it as clay, lightened by rocks!) but obviously, this spot isn't ideal.

For Christmas, I made candles, hand cream, and lip balm for my family. They were a big hit with everyone. My aunt tells me that her aunt raised bees in Virginia, and that comb honey, especially tulip poplar comb honey, was a favorite with her father. He, however, was terrified of bees! That's a phobia inherited by many in my family, unfortunately, but I guess my grandfather's sister's genes must have been passed to me.

Into the Winter

2004-12-14T18:25:00.000-05:00

I kept waiting for the cold weather to set in. I waited and waited and waited. And now, finally, much later than usual, the cold weather seems to be here to stay, though we haven't had a decent snow yet.

I gave the girls a couple of extra gallons of syrup, though the goldenrod flow was so good, it's hard to believe they'd need it. Can't hurt, though.

I'm saving most of the honey for the spring. I'm using some myself--hand crushed a few frames and strained it to get a quart. The rest is just waiting for spring build up, in case they need it.

So now--on to the winter activities. I've been experimenting with lip balm and hand creams, and have started making candles from the wax I harvested. There's enough to make gifts for the holiday. And I have to say that making candles, as I am tonight, is a pure pleasure. The scent of beeswax is heavenly. I can't bear to scent or dye the candles--the natural beeswax is too wonderful. But I do like the scent of the essential oils I put in the hand creams and lip balms.

I'm planning to expand in the spring: the bee club is banding together to buy packages, so I'm getting 5 more. Not only will I start new hives, but I intend to raise queens next summer. There are other beekeepers within flying distance, I've learned, and--who knows--there may be some ferals in the area to spice up the gene pool.

Combining hives

2004-10-03T11:39:00.000-04:00

After checking the hive that swarmed, I realized that there really aren't enough bees to get through winter--barely one hive body. The best decision seemed to be to combine the now weakened hive with the stronger one.

What irony! That hive was so strong, starting from a nuc in late June and going on to produce nearly two full mediums of honey. Remember, I even thought of raising a queen from them because they were doing so well! And now, a late September swarm has reduced them to a pitiful ten frames of bees. And the hive I worried about so much, that arrived with a supersedure queen, a whole lot of dead bees and built up so slowly--well, they didn't produce a bit of extra honey, but they're a big happy, productive hive now with stores a-plenty for winter.

So I combined the two hives, with the hope that come spring, I'll have a big, bustling colony that can be split before it swarms.

I've removed the two mediums of comb honey. I'm trying to decide if I should just do the crush-and-strain method of removing honey, or leave it in the comb. I've been using some of it from the comb on toast, and I have to admit, it really is good.

I also wonder if I should keep a bit, one way or another, in case the girls need stores over the winter. I also intend to feed, though. While the colony seems to have lots of stores (and why shouldn't they, with the great goldenrod/aster flow we had?), still, our winters have been so incredibly cold the last two years, I want to make sure they have enough. I'll feed sugar syrup until they won't take anymore to help them for the winter.

It has been a heck of a first season, I have to say.

I intend to expand next year--I already have the equipment for five hives, so I'll buy three packages, minimum, for next spring. I'd also like to raise some queens next year, and I'm exploring various ways of doing that. I can use the natural method: put a bunch of bees in a nuc with eggs, and let them raise their own, or I use one of the kits available to raise multiple queens at once, and then put them in mating nucs.

Clearly, for either I'll need more than the two nucs I have now as finishing/mating nucs.

I'm trying to be as organic as possible, by the way. I'm using essential oils in their syrup to combat mites, and I'll use menthol on trachial mites, but otherwise, I'm working on converting the girls to small cell to control pests.

I was astounded when I read that most beekeepers use antibiotics twice a year and various chemicals against mites. The antibiotics really surprised me: we all know by now that prophylactic use of them creates resistant strains--and that is exactly what has happened. As for mites, misuse of chemicals has started to create resistant mites, too.

Even thought neither is used (in theory) during a flow, still, I find it hard to believe that all these chemicals don't make it into the wax and the honey.

This may well mean I'll lose a colony, or both, until I get the bees onto small cell (and even that won't prevent some colony loss). But I think the trade-off is worth it. I'm not a commercial beekeeper--I can afford to make mistakes, after all.

Split, swarm, chainsaw, robbing.

2004-09-25T11:34:00.000-04:00

I split the hive on Saturday, removing seven frames of bees and brood, including a queen cell, and putting them in their own little snug home.

The girls swarmed anyway on Sunday. It was amazing. All morning I watched that hive, watched the girls hang out at the entrance, nervous and skittish. Other bees came out of the hole in the super and the vent notch in the inner cover. They were obviously waiting.

Around noon, the signal--whatever it was--came, and a cloud of bees flew overhead. The noise was incredible, like a small plane hovering over me as I watched.

Finally, they settled in a young maple tree near the hive--about 30 feet up. I got out my chainsaw and cut it down, but that helped me only a little--most of the swarm (and presumably, the queen) flew up into an adjacent tree. Worse, the chain came off my chainsaw, and was too bent to put back in. I scooped what bees hadn't flown off into a nuc, and considered my options.

I couldn't reach the branch the swarm was on. So I put out a bait hive, with ten frames soaked with sugar water and Honey-B-Healthy.

To make a long story short, they left on Wednesday. I tried another saw, the help of a neighboring 17-year-old, a ladder, and verbal encouragement to accept the bait hive. Nothing worked. When I came home Wednesday evening, the girls were gone. I hope they found a good spot, but it's much too late in the season for them to build a decent home.

My worry now is whether there is a virgin queen--or a mated queen--in the hive. Between last Saturday and Sunday, I found three dead queens outside the hive. I hope that means a fourth won the battle.

I combined the nuc-caught bees and the seven frames from the original hive, and a few days ago, started the newspaper method to recombine the main colony with those I split off.

And then today... I went out and found a robbery in progress. Now at least I know that there are other bees in the area. These robbers are mostly Carniolan types--black with gray stripes, or golden with thick black bands that run together. No doubt they found the upper story of the combined hive and decided it would be a soft touch.

The books say that bees don't rob during honey flows. Unfortunately, the bees don't read the books.

I stuffed grass into the holes drilled into the supers and put on entrance reducers. I did this for both hives, though the robbers are showing interest only on the upper story of the combined hive. I watched my girls struggle and fight bringing down the intruders and I listened to what must be the sound of thousands of bee feet against rustling newspaper.

So in this first, short season of beekeeping, my girls and I have been through supersedure, the death of a nuc, swarming, and robbing. We've also had a damned good honey flow from the goldenrod and asters, and I've pulled about 30 lbs of comb honey.

Supersedure

2004-09-18T13:10:00.000-04:00

Last weekened, I heard piping coming from Hive Two, and when I inspected, I found supersedure cells. I also found eggs, so I figured the girls had decided to replace their queen.

Today I checked the hives. There are supersedure cells and swarm cells, and two virgins emerged as I watched! Beautiful, golden girls. But I'm also worried--there are no eggs in the hive--I pulled it all apart and not an egg anywhere. So the old queen is dead, or not laying.

I have a decision to make. There are plenty of drones in the colony, and if that's the norm, then those virgins will be able to mate and with luck, all will be well going into winter. Or should I buy a mated queen right now, and requeen? Or--are they really planning to swarm in September? Should I split the hive give each a deep and a medium super of honey, and buy a queen for one?

Decisions, decisions. I'll consult with an experienced beekeeper on this one. I'd hate to lose this colony, given how strong they are.

The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture says that in Ithaca, 20% of swarms occur in September. I think that's what's going on here. And finding no eggs may well mean that the queen stopped laying in preparation for swarming. I'm leaning towards splitting the colony. Yep.

Rain, rain, rain

2004-09-01T07:21:00.000-04:00

After the storm on Sunday, the girls were fanning the entrance to the hives. Hive One had fanners just inside, while Hive Two had a semi-circle on the landing board. As I watched, I realized that the landing board was wet everywhere except under the bees.

Never underestimate the power of those little wings.

We've had rain the last two mornings, so my morning coffee is enjoyed near hives with little enough activity. There is a lot of fanning going on, so much that the hives are literally noisy, even from a few feet away.

Hive Two has moved happily into the second super (I peeked!) and there are bees all but filling the first one. I haven't checked for honey yet, or to see if the queen moved up there. I'm not using a queen excluder, so it's possible.

The rest of the week is supposed to be sunnier--I hope so! Go girls, go!

I now notice plants and insects in ways I didn't before. Those aren't weeds. That's forage. I notice the bumblebees and dragon flies, and see little wasps around the hives.

I saw a bald faced hornet pluck one of my girls out of the air, force her to the ground, kill her, and fly off with her corpse. No doubt it happens more often than I'll ever see, along with dragonflies and birds doing similar aerial stunts. Foraging is dangerous.

The goldenrod flow

2004-08-29T14:13:00.000-04:00

Now I know what a good nectar flow looks like. Both hives are busy from sun up to sunset, with so many bees coming and going that, in the stronger hive at least, the landing board has turned into gridlock.

I put one honey super on the weaker Hive One, and a second one on Hive Two. I don't know whether they'll need or want them, but supering too soon is better than too late, I figure.

I've been taking pictures right along, including this one of a forager on clover:

Notice her ragged wings and bald thorax. Those are things I look for now in the workforce, to see how many are young and how many are old.

There are some interesting-looking bees in Hive Two--I'll get a picture if I can. On their thorax, they have tufts of white hairs. At first I thought it was pollen, but after closer observation, I don't think so. They look like little punk bees with white mohawks.

If I see any bees with mullets, I'll be worried.

They're certainly gathering goldenrod, and can I smell it! It has an odd smell, pungent, sometimes yeasty, sometimes almost like--I hate to say this--tainted meat. I've been assured that the cured honey is as good as any, though. Still, I like to sit by the hives and note the changes. Yes, even the change from the sweet smell of fresh wood and beeswax to goldenrod nectar. I feel sorry for people whose bees aren't close enough to visit daily.

Today we had perfect weather, sunny and in the low 80s, until about 5:30, when we had a short, but powerful thunderstorm. Once it was over, I went to see how the girls were doing. Few foragers were out, but there were plenty of bees fanning the entrance to the hives, probably to regulate the humidity from the storm.

I took some of the wax I have from my hives and created my first little tub of hand cream: beeswax, olive oil, and a little lavender essential oil. It came out pretty well. I probably put in more beeswax than I should have: the result is hard, but melts when you run your fingers over it. It's very rich, and the scent is light. On the whole, I like it.

Death of a nuc

2004-08-26T07:46:00.000-04:00

The nuc colony with the feral queen did not survive. Two weeks after installing them into a five-frame nuc, I moved them into a full hive body. I added a couple more frames of bees from my strong hive to give them more warmth, fed them, and reduced the entrace. Two weeks later, the colony was a bust. No brood, no eggs. The queen remained, with a good retinue, but either the workers were eating her eggs or they weren't allowing her to lay. Although they were taking syrup, no foragers were coming and going, and there was no pollen in the hive.

In the empty brood cells, lots of mite frass could be seen, white specs against the sides of the cells. No doubt, the girls were doing the right thing--removing infected brood. But with the cool nights, the lack of foragers, and what must have been a heavy mite load, they just couldn't manage.

I regretfully killed the queen and, after having an experienced beekeeper check for the frames for disease, gave the few remaining bees and the drawn cobm to my weaker colony. None of the bees had visible mites on them, oddly enough.

I then checked both remaining hives for mites. I did a powdered sugar roll on the weaker hive, and pulled drone comb on the stronger. I found nary a mite. It's hard to know what to make of that, except maybe the colonies are pretty good at cleaning out infested brood, and that positive trait simply worked against the tiny nuc.

Pollen and foragers

2004-08-08T10:17:00.000-04:00

We've had cool, rainy days lately. Today, though, the sun is out and shining. Hive Two is going mad in the sunshine, foragers coming and going and a real crowd at the entrance. Hive One, as usual, has only a small number of foragers, yet they aren't taking the syrup I'm still feeding them. What is up with those girls? Some days, they seem nearly as strong as the other hive. Other days, like today, there's a lack of activity at the entrance that worries me. Are they just going through the last phase while the new queen's brood hatches? In my records, I've been seeing eggs since 6/26. I don't think these girls are quite as good at wax building as the other hive, though, and starting on foundation means that the queen might not have had much space to lay.

The feral queen is now in a hive body with a couple of pounds of bees. I see that they are removing some capped brood; maybe they were chilled, or their cappings were scraped when I manipulated the frames. Still, the queen seems fine, and has been laying. If Hive One doesn't ramp up soon, I'll kill that queen and combine Hives One and Three.

The pollen du jour is buttery yellow and bright, bright white. Every third or fourth forager from Hive Two is bringing in pollen. A good sign, I'd say. Hive Two is no longer being fed, and I did put a comb honey super on top, but they haven't touched that yet--not that I expected them to. It's there just in case there's such a good flow they can't resist.

Watching Hive Two, and how well they've done since they were installed on June 23, I'm thinking that if they overwinter well, I should try to breed from that queen. They've been great wax builders, and their numbers have increased so well.

I've given up on the division board feeders for now. Too many bees were drowning, in spite of my efforts to give them twigs and paint stirs and corks. It's a shame, because it's a nice way to feed them. But now I'm back to the Boardman feeders, until I can find a better way.

More wood, more work

2004-08-02T21:00:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, I watched Tom Ridge talk about terrorist threats while I knocked together five more hive bodies and some covers.

Today I stained one of the hive bodies, a screended bottom board, and the cover. All have been left outside to air out (and likely be rained on tomorrow, alas). I put down some landscaping fabric in the spot where I think the third (and final, for this season) hive will go. Yes, it's late, but with a young queen, a good goldenrod flow, and all the syrup I can give them, I think the girls from the nuc will be fine.

Over the weekend, I noticed a toad hanging around Hive Two. At first, I thought he might be after the bees, but he was to one side of the hive, and it seemed more likely that he was having a snack of ants. I decided to leave him be, and after a day, he moved on.

By 8:30 in the evening, the girls are tucked away in their hives. It's just then, at dusk, that the bats come out. One of the small bats is now hanging around my kitchen door, and is providing entertainment for Smidge, the Calico cat, and Max, the giant dog. Smidge's tail twitches with kitty longing, and Max gives the occasional low rumble at the intrusion of even such a small animal. I'm happy that the bat is eating mosquitos and other less pleasant insects.

The nuc

2004-07-30T13:15:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, I started a 4-frame nuc with a purchased feral queen. She's black, very black, and has been marked with a green spot--green representing 2004 (and eventually, 2009, far longer than a queen's usual lifespan).

I started the nuc with two frames of brood and bees from my stronger hive, two new frames of small cell foundation, and a feeder. This queen was raised on small cell, and if I had small cell drawn and with brood, I'd have used it. So at the moment, things are a bit lopsided, but I think the girls are pretty forgiving.

This was my first queen installation. My current hives came in nucs with the queens already released. I was a bit nervous about the whole procedure. I've read that you should take the attendants out of the queen cage. I've also read that it doesn't matter whether you remove them.

I didn't remove them; the danger of releasing the queen seemed too great to me.

The queen came in a little white plastic cage that I've seem in illustrations. In those pictures, a human hand is simply pushing the cage between two frames. No doubt, those are well-propolized frames, because when I tried the same trick in my little nuc, the frames simply slid apart and the cage fell to the bottom. Ugh.

Bees immediately began to surround the cage, and I assume they were hostile, having just left their own queen. She was well protected, though, and by today, someone had eaten out the sugar plug, others had attached the cage to a comb, and she was moving sedately across a frame, inspecting cells and being attended by a fair number of bees.

I have a frame feeder in that nuc, and despite adding sliced up cork, found a dispiriting number of bee corpses floating in the syrup. I added two painting stir sticks (clean, of course) to give them maximum floatation. Hope that works.

I replaced the Boardman feeders in the other two hives with frame feeders, too, so I'll have to try the paint stir trick with those, as well. I'm a bit surprised that the feeders don't come with a plastic grill-type float. But then, most beekeepers probably don't feed long term, and the loss is minimal.

Initially, I was feeding syrup with tea tree and lavendar oil; now I've switched to Honey B Healthy. I don't know that it will make a difference, but it does smell nice, and I suppose it is more precise than my own home-made recipe.

Whatever my novice's mistakes, I'd say that both hives are thriving. Even the weaker one had a huge number of foragers coming and going yesterday, and play time outside the hives was absolutely dramatic. My little nucs are coming into their own. I may even get some honey out of that stronger hive this year, but I'm not counting on it.

Today I'm headed to Dandant's to pick up supplies. I'll be expaning the apiary to at least five hives, and though that won't happen this fall, I'm tired of buying things piecemeal. I'm just going to get enough for three and then some now.

A new queen, a new nuc

2004-07-26T17:30:00.000-04:00

Today I bought a new queen. She's a feral, small and black, and has good mite resistance. I have a choice to make in the next couple of days: start a nuc with her from my strong hive or requeen either hive with her.

I'm going to start a nuc. I know I'll want to expand in the spring, and so starting a five frame nuc now to overwinter in my cellar should work. Unless, of course, her fecundity gets ahead of me, and she and her girls need a whole hive. Which could, of course, happen. So--I'm going to buy more equipment. I'm considering trying the DE hives, to see how they work, but I don't know whether small cell foundation is available for them. Since this queen was reared on small cell, there's no point in ruining that benefit by moving her progeny to large.

I'd hate to mess up what's going on in the strong hive, so I don't want to requeen it. As for the weaker hive, they seem to be picking up, so although I might requeen them, I'd rather give this new queen a chance. And a mere 4 weeks isn't enough to prove herself. If she can't prove herself, I can always combine the nuc with her hive in the fall (after, of course, killing her).

Feral bees

2004-07-26T08:08:00.000-04:00

At least one person on the organic beekeeping board thinks my strange, black bees could be native ferals. I hope so; that means that the supersedure queen who mated here may have some feral drone sperm--a good thing, from my point of view. If they are ferals, they are used to the winters, and presumably have survived the mite infestations of the last twenty years.

Activity this morning at the hives was slow, as it usually is early in the morning. On a sunny day, the activity picks up around 9 am and continues through the afternoon into the evening.

Yesterday, I saw my bees working the catnip in my yard. It's popular with the bumblebees, too. My girls are still working the white clover, at least a bit, though the clover is on its way out now.

The corn field across the way may be providing them with pollen; both hives are bringing in large amounts now, no doubt because they're both breeding like mad.

Hive Two is taking about a quart a day of sugar syrup, but the weaker Hive One is taking much less--a quart every 3 days or so. Since they do have a lot of foragers, I'm hoping that they don't need it. I'd still like to see them drawing out the foundation faster, but given the setbacks they've suffered, I suppose they're doing well enough. Yesterday I lifted the Boardman feeder a bit, and saw the underside of one of the bees covered with scales of white wax. A very good sign.

I may get a couple of division board feeders for the winter. Hive One especially may need feeding through the cold months, unless they really make the most of the upcoming goldenrod flow.

Honey Bees

2004-07-25T22:27:00.000-04:00

In the beginning, there were two five-frame nuclei mailed to me from Ohio. It really started when I got the idea to keep bees--though I have no idea when that was. All I know is that around March, I started buying books on beekeeping, and by June was actively looking for bees. Since all the apiaries I could find were sold out, I consoled myself by buying equipment, hammering it all together, staining it, and reading, reading, reading.

At last, though, I found a place in Ohio willing to sell me two nucs. They arrived, one full to overflowing, the other a bit pathetic, with a lot of dead bees and a queen about to be superseded.

I duely hived them both on the 23rd of June, and have watched the stronger colony get even stronger, and the weaker colony go through a a decline, as the old bees died before the new queen's progeny could emerge.

Now, 23 days have passed since the new queen started laying eggs, and the new bees are emerging. If she mated well, the hive will do fine. If not, the hive may be in trouble.

Today I found three small, black bees dead outside the stronger hive. Everyone says that feral honey bees have died out, but the resemblence to the descriptions I've heard is pretty strong. I'm wondering if there are some wild hives out there, and whether my new queen mated with any of their drones. Should be interesting, watching her offspring in the next couple of months.