August Bees

The summer has been active. A bit too active for my liking really, with a very "spirited" new hive. I have had to resort to full gear (veil, boots and long sleeves) every time I go up. I don't think that they are mean bees really, just more defensive than some, and a bit impulsive. Each of the stings I have gotten can be rationalized; a girl got caught in my hair and freaked out, a girl bumped into me because I was in her way while pulling out weeds and freaked out, a girl got caught in my pants fold and freaked out. You get the idea. (As with parenting, it's easy to blame oneself when anything goes wrong.) But the other hive is so mellow. How could this be? I guess it is like having a second child and being surprised at how different they are from the first. But why should they be the same? It is hard to approach them now without fear or anger. It is sinking in that we are not "friends" really. I still love sitting near them and watching them though. It calms me and stills my mind.

About a week ago, following my mentor's advice, I started feeding the girls again. Apparently there is not enough out there for them, in part due to the heavy rains that wash all the pollen of the flowers. I found them to be ravenous! Sucking down a gallon of sugar water within hours. They will stop taking the "bee tea" when they no longer need it, but I can't keep up with them. Yesterday I decided to give them two of the frames of honey that were left over from last winter. I opened up the large plastic container on the front patio and took out two frames and left two behind. By the time I set them up at the hives, the girls had found the two that I had left on the patio (note to self; don't forget to put the top back on next time.) I brought the whole container up to the hives and watched as they gorged themselves all afternoon. the frames were covered with bees within 20 minutes. Each frame holds about 4 pounds of honey and by the end of the afternoon, each cell of each frame was dry as a bone. I am thinking now that I probably will not get any honey this year if this is the state that they are in. I need to be o.k. with that. I have come to think of myself as being "at their service" versus the other way around. I am thinking instead of making some beeswax "products" i.e. body lotion and lip balm. Things that use the by products of the hive but are not dependent on them producing honey.
Today I will venture in to see what is going on inside the hives. Fully covered, full of love.

a new season

I'm back and so are the bees. The winter was good to the bees. Not too brutal and I had left them with more than enough honey to make it through. This spring I got a second hive, which I will refer to as the lower hive (for now) as it is geographically lower than the upper hive (the hive from last year). The major excitement so far, has been the anticipation of, and witnessing of my first swarm, which occurred yesterday! I had seen queen cells being grown a few weeks ago and have had my eyes out since then. The queen cells are the longs things hanging off of the bottom of the frame.

The hive grows a new queen for one of two reasons. Either the old queen is dead or not producing well (laying good and plentyful eggs), or because the hive is overcrowded. I had added a super, but apparently not soon enough to suit them.
The past few days I had been hearing the strangest sound from inside the hive when I put my ear to it. A rhythmic, high pitched "weep-weep-weep" sound, which I read is called "Queen piping, or tooting". It is the sound of the new queens communicating with the hive, sometimes from within their cells before they even emerge. It was quite surreal and reminds me of just how odd and fantastic this whole beekeeping thing is. Once the queens emerge, they duke it out with each other until one rules supreme. The old queen then leaves the hive with up to half of the bees to start a new hive.

Yesterday at around 10:00a.m., I was out on the patio and I must have sensed them, because I looked up just as a cloud of bees was forming high up in the bee yard. I grabbed camera, boots, phone and ran up. Creeping through the woods, I could feel their presence and could hear a dull, deep whirring sound, but could not see them at all. I moved slowly through the trees with them and finally they popped out to where I could see them.

I ran down to the house and brought up the spare "bait hive" (an empty hive box with old comb in it) that I had prepared for this occasion. I set it down at my feet and beat out a slow rhythm on my bucket, something I had both read about and heard from Chris. And boy did I feel odd! Luckily, all neighbors seem to have been away for the afternoon. I beat, I sang, I beckoned. All to no avail. They settled on a dead branch 75 feet in the air. Much too far for me to reclaim them. From here, it is the drones' job to scout out a new location and report back to the group. The drones do a dance to convey what they have found and how prime a spot it is. Based on the enthusiasm of their dance, the group votes on where to set up house, and off they go. I had to go out for the afternoon, and Matt reported that by 3:00, the group was gone. Click on the images to see the bees up close!

late august

Dear reader,
Up until recently, I have been keeping this blog AND keeping a beekeeping journal and have been finding much redundancy, so I have decided to keep this as my beekeeping journal. What this means for you is more details about things that you might not care too much about. Feel free to just look at the photos and say "oooh"and/or "ahhh" and skip the words if you feel overloaded. I will try to keep including some interesting factoids here and there, like the fact that a worker bee can locate where the sun is even during the nighttime. As always, feedback is welcome.
I went up yesterday with the intention of venturing into the first deep, a place I have not been for many months. A local beekeeper convinced me that I needed to make sure that all was well there, but having gone in, verified what I already knew, (that everything was fine), made a mess, killed a lot of bees and gotten stung, I stick to my original belief that it was unnecessary.

Before going in, I noticed this row of workers, all head down lined up on the front of the hive.

The first deep has some frames loaded with worker brood (no drones this time of year) while other frames have vast areas of empty cells. This makes me nervous (it all makes me nervous) but is probably not a problem. I saw larvae in various stages, but no eggs, which does not mean that there aren't any, just that they are hard to spot. I did not go into the second deep or into the honey filled super. The new super has almost nothing drawn on it yet, which makes me doubt that they will have time to draw comb and fill it with honey before the season ends. So, perhaps I will not be harvesting this year after all. We will just have to wait and see.
I got stung on my left index finger and for the first time put on the super cool elbow length leather gloves that I ordered in the spring. I am willing to get stung once per visit, but that is my limit I am afraid.

Here is how the hive looks now, fully stacked. The red strap is in case a bear knocks the hive over.

the second (last) super

An active few days at the hive.
After not going in for a month, I knew that things would be a bit of a mess in there, and I was right. I went up yesterday but did not go in because of some interesting but off putting activity. Hundreds of girls were hovering in mid air in front of the hive, all facing the hive, occasionally landing and then taking off again, only to hover some more. Speaking with Chris today (bee teacher) he explained that this was a "graduation flight", meaning that the girls who were about to become foragers were leaving the hive for the first time and orienting themselves so that they would be able to locate the hive again. I feel so lucky to have witnessed this! The other strange thing that I saw was the presence of MANY drones on the entrance board. Usually I might see one or two, this time I saw up to a dozen at a time. The girls were kind of nudging them to the edge, at which point they would fly away. I realized that I was witnessing the beginnings of the expulsion of the drones. With the cooler weather coming, the girls cannot afford to feed any extra mouths and the drones are all kicked out by the fall. Today, the hive was very calm and with Matt agreeing to be my smoker and photographer, in we went. This first photo shows a ton of propalis that the girls laid between the outer and inner covers of the hive. A beautiful bee painting.

There was a ton of burr comb between the super and the second deep and as I separated the two boxes, very mature larvae were exposed as the burr comb was ripped apart. Their bodies are all white, but their huge eyes were a strange purple. (click on the photo of me scraping burr comb to see this) I felt so bad destroying them and know that if I had come in sooner they would not have been let to develop this far.
As I scraped off the burr comb, I tossed the chunks onto the ground in front of the hive so that the bees could find it and eat what they wanted of the high protein larvae. All through this, the girls were docile and pretty much ignored me. Some days feel calmer than others at the hive, and luckily this was one of them.



I was thrilled and amazed to see that the frames in the super were 90% FULL of capped honey!! It is one thing to read about it in books, and yet quite another to see that it actually happens. Similar to Sammy learning to walk and talk, it seems obvious that given the right circumstances it will happen, but none the less miraculous when it does.
Many of the brood frames however, contained very little capped honey, which concerned me because this is what the girls will be living off of for the winter if I take the honey super away to harvest it. I saw lots of capped brood and uncapped larvae but no eggs. This is frustrating as I cannot verify that there is a queen unless I see her (yet to happen) or eggs, but I really did not want to delve into the first deep as the girls were getting restless, buzzing my veil and buzzing Matt.

Super frame with capped honey!


Deep frame with capped honey (light colored on top) and empty cells, probably recently vacated by newly born bees.

After I put the hive back together, I called Chris and he told me to put a second super on so that the girls can continue their work with more space. The purple loose strife is just now in bloom, resulting in near black colored pollen and "coca cola" colored honey. After doing this, I walked toward the house and breathed a sigh of relief that I had avoided getting stung after such an invasive inspection. Apparently I spoke to soon as I felt the sting on the back of my hand from a lone lost girl who had gotten trapped in the cuff of my shirt. Today my right hand is swollen like a rag doll's. It cannot dampen the excitement I feel at the prospect of actually harvesting some honey in the next couple of months though.

Matt smoking the hive

bees in the rain

These summer storms can be tough on the bees. Due to the heat, they like to be outside and when the rain starts they form clumps on the front of the hive. These clumps seem to be three or four bees thick and the bees are... still. It is the only time that I have seen them not moving and it is strange. Based on my observations, (yes I have been spending a bit of time with the bees during rain storms) bees cannot fly if their wings are wet, so they just hang out until the rain stops and they have dried off. Following advice from my teacher, I have been constructing an extended roof for the hive out of corrugated metal when a major storm hits so that the girls don't get washed away. I take this off when the rain is over so that they can get as much sun as possible.
My attitude has shifted lately. Now that I have a super on the hive, there is no real reason for me to go in there other than to make sure that there is a queen. By watching the hive and seeing that girls are coming and going and carrying on in a typically busy manner, I can be pretty sure that there is one even without barging in to check for eggs in the cells. My goal now is to get the girls well established with what they will need to get through the winter. If I can do this, then next year will bring me honey.
As the girls collect pollen from flowers and pack it into the baskets on their legs, it forms into these beautiful solid clumps of various colors depending on what they have been harvesting. Frequently, the pollen falls off of their legs onto the varroa tray where it is out of their reach. I collect the fallen ones when I check the varroa tray. This last time up, I took a dozen or so for myself (it tastes strange and slightly sweet and is supposed to be good to combat allergies) but I dumped the rest back next to the hive. I wonder if they will re-gather it now that it is no longer in the flower that they originally got it from.
Matt got me a multiple pounded book titled "The Hive and the Honeybee" which covers hundreds of bee topics with essays from the mid 1800's throught the present. The following F.Y.I. tid-bit is from this book.
Considering that in a healthy hive about 1,000 bees die every day, it is amazing that there are so few on the ground at the base of the hive. In addition to the fact that sick and old bees will fly away from the hive to die if they are able, there are also "gravedigger bees" who's job it is to carry the dead away from the hive.
They continue to amaze me.

not quite fearless

Going into the hive last week, I was apprehensive after the previous two stings. I have adapted my veil so that it is easier to get on and off and I am trying to see it as way cool to wear bee gear rather than a sign of weakness or lack of beekeeping skills. I suppose I could think of it as wearing sturdy shoes when doing woodworking so that a hammer does not clobber your toe (something I don't always do). The girls were active and have been productive in a way that is both wonderful and difficult. The super was full of burr comb, (lumps of freeform honeycomb that the bees build in any gap they can find). I need to scrape the comb off because it messes up the artificial order that I am imposing on the hive and makes it hard to move the frames around. Between the burr comb and the propolis (a gooey gluey substance made from tree sap) that they fill EVERY space between the frames with, everything was attached to everything else. Within moments my fingers were sticking to each other and I was struggling to move things around without crushing the girls. It is a horrible sound when a frame slips and slams against a neighboring frame, smushing bee mass into bee mass. It sounds kind of like a saw starting up, a wusshhing sound of sorts. I could see the direct results of my smoking the bees and it is true that it makes them gorge themselves on honey, thinking that they will need to flee the hive. I could see their panic as they buried their bodies into the cells. The chunks of burr comb are filled with nectar still, not honey, as the water has not been evaporated from it yet. I found that if you treat a chunk of it like gum, the nectar oozes out and fills your mouth with sweetness. The waxy lump left will be melted down at some point once I figure out what to do with it.
The frog in Matt's hand is included in the bee blog as he is a neighbor of the bees and possible friend.

How much does it hurt?

Question of the week: "Just how much does it hurt to get stung two times on the face?" (Hopefully none of you already know the answer to this question).
Answer: "An awful lot!!" Even more than I would have thought if I had thought about it. Enough that I have ditched my pseudo-plans to get a small tattoo to commemorate my turning 40. (people say getting a tattoo feels like getting stung by a bee.)
I have learned much in the past two days. I have learned that even though I love my bees, that does not mean that they love me back and if I am going to play around with the unconventional habit of working the hive without smoking the bees, I had better wear my veil.
What happened was this. I was poking around yesterday, marveling at the amount of honey that the girls have packed away in the super over the past week and I had to get the hive tool (metal pry bar kind of thing) deep into the box to scrape off some burr comb (extra honey comb built in in-between places) and as a result I ended up removing some comb with honey in it and disrupting things to the point where they just got pissed off. The first girl got me on the ear, (see photo and note how the swelling, reddness and ITCHYNESS has spread down my neck). I screamed, popped 5 of the homeopathic pills that I keep in my pocket (apis mellifica) and went back to quickly put the hive back together so that I could go and remove the stinger. I knew that the bee sting would be worse the longer the stinger was left in because the poison sac keeps pulsing and releasing venom, and I also knew that the other girls would smell the venom and it would attract more attacks. I should have just left and dealt with the hive later because sure enough a second girl got me on the nose within a minute. At this point I ran down to find Matt and handed him the handy tweezers I also keep in my pocket and he got the honor of pulling out two pulsing stingers. Then I put on the Osha Root tincture that I bought from an herbalist and hoped for the best. Throbbing pain, hurt feelings (I thought we were friends, I am a failure etc.)
The ear sting is remarkably worse than the nose one. Perhaps because the stinger was in longer, I'm really not sure, but it is a drag. On a slightly upbeat note, I recognize that this was bound to happen and am happy in a way to have gotten it over with. I have read that over time you can become immune to the venom and the reaction that your body has to it. I have also read that you can develop an extreme allergic reaction to it.
photos:
1. Two bees exchanging nectar; the returning bee passes the nectar from her nectar stomach to the waiting bee, who then passes it to another bee etc. until it is packed away in a cell. The exchanging of enzymes is what turnes the nectar into honey!
2. Some bees removing some sort of undeveloped bee, perhaps a drone based on its size.
3. My ear today.