SPRING 2012

Spring seems to be upon us very early this year, and my bees are certainly getting busy early as well. Because we had such a mild winter, there were days they came out to explore in January! By Mid March, my bees were in full swing collecting pollen. There wasn't a thing in bloom in my garden, or so it seemed. Where were they collecting? Many people think of only herbaceous flowers when it comes to bees collecting honey, however inconspicuous tree flowers (in my case the blossoms from my Silver Maples) are a major early source when little else is blooming. These blossoms, while not very noticeable to us, are loaded with pollen, and just what a bustling Spring hive needs to boost thier food supply to keep up with the soon to be increasing number of eggs the queen will lay. The natural "reproduction" of hives comes from bees swarming activities. This occurs when another queen is born and she takes a portion of the colony with her to start a new hive. Last year, my bees swarmed in May, and I missed their capture. Swarms can move fast or linger as scouts select a new home for the rogue bees. Last year a swarm from my hive settled on a nearby tree, and just as I was preparing to capture them in a box, they took off to parts unknown. This year, I am getting a hive all lined up in anticipation for swarm capture this Spring. In the next week or so, if the warm weather holds, I am planning to crack open the hive in hopes to glimpse my queen and check on the general welfare of the colony. Perhaps I will be able to spot a future mutinous queen larvae to truly get a feel for future bee plans. Until then-

Back to Bees

Well, here it is, Spring 2011, and I have a bit of bee catching up to do. I returned from my deployment in November 2010. The swarm I had caught in May 2010 (my last blog) I gave to a friend and left the mother hive to nature. When I returned this past fall, it was already too cold to do anything but give the hive a candy board and build a three walled box for insulation to help survival. This spring I discovered I lost the hive. When I opened the hive to investigate, my best guess is that the queen had died. There were full frames of honey, and a small cluster of deceased bees.




Duty first, bees second.
The good news is that the swarm I captured last May has come back to my possession a happy healthy hive, and so we will begin this spring with them, and carry on our beekeeping adventure. It was quite a journey getting them back to my house, but that will be saved for the next blog. Until then, take a look at pictures from the hive I lost. There are lessons to be learned in everything, and I find bees fascinating even in death. I will leave you with this amazing fact, that had my bees starved to death, they would have done so together, rationing the remaining honey amongst themselves and perishing as a group. As always, amazing little creatures wise beyond their size.

My First Swarm

Well, Its been a long time since I last posted about my bee adventure, I've been thousands of miles away from my hive-in Iraq. But, last week I came home on leave, and I soon discovered it was a bee-utiful time to come home. My bees swarmed! I had never dealt with a swarm before, only pored over books and articles regarding the incredible act bees perform when its time to divide the colony. There were actually three swarm masses, all within inches of each other in the Silver Maple right above my existing hive. What is a beekeeper to do? Well, according to my husband the bees had been congregating there for over a day...so I had to act fast before they took off in search of a new home elsewhere. Little did they know their home was sitting a few feet from them! I called my farmer-and-former-beekeeper friend for support, and we set up swarm camp.
First, to get the smoker started to calm the bees. Due to their location on the tips of branches, I would have to get pretty close and snip them down. I have yet to be stung by my bees, but better to err on the side of caution then to startle my bees. We prepared a super with foundation below the swarm, leaving a few frames out of the center to place the bees.
I climbed the ladder, carefully sniping each branch containing a swarm, and walking it down the ladder to their new home.
We decided to put all three masses in the same box, who knows which contained the queen...the only reason the bees would stay together as a colony. We then left the bees to their buzz-iness. This new colony was given to a dear friend of mine who will begin beekeeping this summer.
Now to go over my errors on this swarm:
1. I did not remove the branch from the super right away, and had to disturb the bees to get it out. They are in a fragile state as it is, breaking from their main colony and hanging from a tree for over a day, so the least disturbance, the better.
2. I did not replace the center frames right away either, so when I came back the next day to do so, the industrious bees had already begun building honeycomb in the void hanging from the roof of the hive. Unfortunately I had to dislodge this comb, but I left it in the hive so the bees could salvage from it.
3. Third and gravest mistake, to which we will have to see how the bees will react. I did not feed the bees right away. Since I was putting them in a new hive with no food, and they had been hanging from a tree for over 24 hours, I should have supplied them with a supplement of honey or at the least sugar syrup.
Another issue that sets the bees back is that they were transported over an hour away to their new home in this condition...stay strong bees!
Hopefully these resilient creatures can overcome all the obstacles I placed in their path to create a good strong colony. After all, they do it in the wild with only the guiding hand of nature!
Another interesting point to note... I was curious what set the bees to swarm. I knew that the usual reason was the colony being too big for the hive, however, when I opened my exisiting hive, the top super was mostly unoccupied. What I did find interesting, however, was the goings-on under the hive roof. We had installed a candy board for the bees this winter to feed, but had not taken it off when pollen season began. I noticed that the bees had congregated up there, and there were what looked to bee egg sacks attached to the roof. Could it be that the queen had come to the roof and laid another set of eggs, one of which became the queen to swarm with part of the hive? I will have to continue my beekeeping studies to see if this could have been...

Checking in on Hive #1

After installing #2 hive, it was time to check on hive # 1 to see their progress and remove the queen's cage. A bonus would be to spot the queen, but it takes a real good eye to spot her, even if she is clipped and marked. The queen's body is longer and more slender than the worker bees, with no markings on her back. Her eyes are also set different. The drones are a larger size than the workers as well, with large eyes that almost meet in the middle. They do have similar markings as the worker bees (to my untrained eye)- Look at the close up shot of my frmae and see if you can spot any :0).
After smoking the hive, I removed the inner cover and pulled out a frame- I caouldn't belive all they had built in two weeks! It is definitely true that bees are the hardest working creature out there! I also spotted some brood (eggs) in the comb in the bottom super, so even though I didn't catch a glimpse of her, I know the queen was there doing her job of procreation. I was a quick inspect, I removed the cage, and put the hive bakc together so the bees could get back to work. As temoting as it is to look in on my hives, it does disrupt their 'groove' especially smoking them, so I will keep my peeks to a recommended minimum. But it was thrilling to see them at work- the epitome of the phrase busy bee!

Package #2 Underdogs installed!

So in my bee reading, many an author sang the praises of starting two hives at once. They said this came in very handy in better spotting a disease or problem with a hive by comparative raising. So I purchased two packages. Hive #1 was actually the second one I bought, it did not travel through the mail. Package # 2 arrived early on May 12th, 6:55am to be exact- and I was promptly called by the Post Office to please come get my bees. Just one problem. My hive for them had not arrived. Homeless bees that had been stuck in a box for 4 days- not good. So I sent out an SOS email to every beekeeper I knew, and thankfully my good friend Chris Sheldon who has been beekeeping for over 20 years had a spare hive. So that evening we both drove 1 1/2 hrs to meet for a hive exchange. The bees would just have to wait it out one more night in confined quarters. As cruel as this seemed, there was a frost predicted for Tuesday night, so the bees would have had install shock and cold shock, so it was best to wait.

Wednesday morning I took the hive out for a cleaning (no chemicals, just warm water and a scrub brush) and cleaned all the old propolis and comb from the frames, installed wax foundation in each frame (10 per super), and lugged it all to the back yard bee spot.

I took my time with this install, and I must say, I became so much more a part of this install than the other one. I don't know why people root more for the underdog- but in this case I definitely worked hard for my underbees :0)

I'm no boyscout, and it was a windy day, so finally after an entire book of matches, I got my smoker lit. Smoking the bees disrupts their main type of communication pheromones. They cannot effectively communicate any signals such as danger, so they basically become confused and scatter. Another thing I've heard is when they smell fire, they go into survival mode and gorge themselves on honey, so they can rebuild later. This gorging makes them sluggish and less aggressive. Either way, they stay clear so a beekeeper can work. This package was put together way to well, and I had to basically break the whole box to get it open, dropping it once- oops!

I looked into the package, and had to sift through the thousands of bees to find the queen- the bees were all over me! I dumped them more successfully than the first package, getting most in the hive since the box was destroyed.

I pried open the queen's cage, set it inside the super and closed up shop. Another successful install, and so much more satisfying since I had to really work for these bees. Now it's their turn to work for me. Next stop- peeking in on hive #1. But that's for tomorrow's post- it's been a long day :0)

Installing My First Package of Bees: April 26th

On April 26th, 2009, I traveled to Forestville, NY to pick up my first package of bees. They had just been transported from Georgia the day before. The package was $69 for 3 pounds of Italian bees (that's about 10,000 bees!) and an Italian queen. There are a few different types of bees, but Italians tend to be the most docile and a pretty good producer. The queen is inside the package, but contained in a small cage with a few 'attendants'. This is to give the bees time to adjust to their new queen; if introduced too soon, they could kill her.
That evening was a perfect time to install- cool lower 60's, and a nice sunny day. I was quite nervous though, so I dragged Peter down with me- only he had no protective gear :0). First, I sprayed the bees with a sugar water solution (food), then a few puffs of smoke to calm them, and I pried the lid off the package.
It was quite hard to open, and when I finally did get it open, a cloud of bees came flying to freedom! I then extracted the queen cage, and dumped the bees down into the super. I had been told to thump the package hard to let them fall out- but it just seemed a tad scary to bang an open package of 10,000 bees, so i just shook it a few times. Only about 60% came out, so I set the package at the entrance, hung the queen's cage on the frames, and closed up the hive. Within a few minutes, the bees began a parade up the cinderblock and into the hive entrance- smart little suckers!
Now it was time to walk away- and no peeking for at least a week. I fed them three feeders full of sugar water that week, and then left them to do what bees do best! All in all a nerve-wracking but satisfying first installation by yours truly!