Category: a day in this life

The bees know

March 30, 2012

a day in this life

A friend sent us a link to an article about Bayer CropScience, neonicotinoids and bees.

One of the comments was a great reminder to me that the bees know what they are doing more than I do. I’m considering having it tattooed on my thigh so I see it every day.

From Tubbercurry:

Are we potentially doing more harm by dusting with sugar than not opening the hive? Something to consider: when a beekeeper opens a hive it is invasive to the super-organism that is the beehive. Many beekeepers open their hives way too often and all this opening helps to contribute to the demise of their beehive’s health. If you’re just curious, watch the hive entrance and see what you can find out about the bees by that rather than opening the hive. If the bees are bringing in pollen they’re feeding brood and chances are the queen is laying eggs. Even if she’s ill or old, the bees know how to replace her. Way too many beekeepers even organic ones over-manage their hives.

Addendum 3/31/12: This is a great explanatory article: Beekeepers to EPA: We’re running out of time

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Removing the queen’s carriages

March 26, 2012

a day in this life

Both queens had managed to get out of their boxes in the days since we put the packages in the hives.

However, rubber-banding them to the bars was a bad idea. The workers had built comb all around the boxes. If we need to do this again, we’ll use a thumbtack to hang the box from the bar and let the bees figure it out.

Rosamund’s colony had built more comb, but when we started trying to remove the rubber bands, the weight of the box broke the comb off. We think she was elsewhere in the hive because that piece of comb seems to only have food in it.

Elinore’s box had very little comb around it and we just removed it.

(Get it? Rrrrrrrosamund on the right and ELLLLLLLLinore on the left.)

We have left the pieces outside the hives to let them retrieve what they can.

Elinore’s colony seems to be eating less, too. Rosamund needed food, but Elinore is only about half down the quart.

But, both colonies seem to be busily building comb, so we are going to leave them alone, except for feeding a little more and moving the back board as comb gets built.

I expect we’ll go in and look for brood this weekend.

(The little bugs in a couple of the chambers were taking advantage of the situation after the comb was moved outside, not problems for the hive.)

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About the girls

March 25, 2012

a day in this life

We should name our queens. It would amuse me. What are the names of historic Italian queens? Wikipedia offers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_queens

I think I prefer Rosamund. That will be the hive on the right when looking out from the house. I freed her court from their box.

Chuck gets to choose for the hive on the left since that was the one he got started last week.

We were gone this weekend, taking my middle nephew to a 5K in Charlotte. Since it was cloudy yesterday morning, we didn’t try to open the hives to check the queens and it was raining when we got home today. So, tomorrow we will get in there and let who ever needs it out of her little box. Usually you leave them 3 days, but we are trying not to piss them off any more than necessary.

We suspect it will be (insert name here) because Rosamund’s crowd have sucked the sugar syrup down to about an inch from the bottom of the bottle. We figure this means she’s out and needing feeding. (Insert name here)’s colony has only dropped their syrup about 3 inches, so we think this means she’s still subsisting on the fondant in her cage.

From what I can tell through the window, it looks like both colonies are drawing down good comb, but it may just be that the bees are all happy in their clusters and I can’t really tell a damn thing.

I have made more syrup for Rosamund’s bottle, too.

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After the installation

March 23, 2012

a day in this life

I took a few pictures of Chuck installing one of the packages, but hadn’t thought to recharge my camera battery and it crapped out on me. I was relieved that Randy was taking pictures, too. In particular I loved that he got a good shot of the queen cage. (I think of it as her carriage.) I had expected it to have just the queen in it, but she had 5 or 6 attendants with her.

The white stuff in the top is fondant that all the bees will eat through to free her. Since she isn’t necessarily related to the bees in the package, this gives everyone time to get used to each other. By the time she is free, the workers will have comb started. She will begin laying immediately.

The white strip that Marty is holding was meant to be used to dangle the cage between 2 frames. But since we are using top bars, there is no foundation for her to step out onto. So, we rubberbanded it to one of the bars. It may be an adventure getting it removed on Saturday depending on how they have drawn comb around it.

This is Annalys Goodwin-Landher, one of our beekeeping friends.

This is the first installation.

This is Chuck holding up a jar of bee syrup so he can see that it is dripping out slowly.

He picked up a 10 lb bag of organic cane sugar from CostCo last week and I made a 1:1 syrup with it Tuesday night when we knew they were on their way. Because the sugar hadn’t been bleached, it smelled faintly of molasses and the syrup looked like weak tea.

The jars came with the hives. They are quart sized canning jars with a pair of tops with nail holes in them. Because there are 2 lids, the syrup comes out more slowly. We figured that out as we put them in the hives.

This is Chuck using our hive tool to open the lid on the shipping box.

And this is the removal of the can of syrup that is in the package for them to snack on as they travel.

Marty put the top over the hole while we got the queen’s cage unstapled from the box. Those staple were VERY secure, which makes sense if the bees are travelling by mail.

And at this point, my camera no longer participated in the festivities. But, I did get it charged overnight.

I was fascinated in the morning to see that the bees that hadn’t made it out of the boxes, yet, made their own little clusters to stay warm.

Chuck managed to get more of his bees out than I did.

And here is the larger cluster, up against the back board, before getting started on their day. The board is to encourage them to start with a smaller space initially. We’ll remove it tomorrow when we open the hives to be sure the queens are out of their cages.

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Move In Day, Part 2

March 23, 2012

a day in this life

Our friend Randy was one of the beekeepers who came to the “package party” to get the bees installed in their new homes. He got some GREAT pictures and posted on his own blog, Randy and Meg’s Garden Paradise.

Randy is a member of the Orange County Beekeepers’ Association and the Natural Bees in NC group.

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