I am the Audience

Checking in with the bees

June 11, 2012

a day in this life

Since they swarmed, I have tried to give the new queens new names, but it just isn’t working.. They are named for the hives and you’ll just have to consider them Lucretia II and Rosamund II, III, IV, etc, down through the generations. Lucretia and Rosamund Prime are in Frank’s bee yard and doing well.

These are the Lucretia hive. The bar with the little nublet of comb is the 9th one from the back.

These are Rosamund. The nublet is on the 10th bar from the rear.

There are still a lot of drones in there, but I occasionally see workers hustling them up toward the front. Some of the drones sit very still, hoping to be ignored, I guess. But I don’t think it’s working.
Reminding myself

June 7, 2012

note to self

From Philip Chandler, the Barefoot Beekeeper, in the BioBees forums:

A good general principle with bees is – if in doubt, do nothing. More often than not, the bees are doing what needs to be done. The exceptions are almost always when they are trying to correct a situation created by a human.

BTW – sorry to correct you, Barbara, but a queen is three days in the egg, five as a larva and seven to eight sealed inside pupating, for a total of 15-16 days to emergence. She will usually mate 5-10 days after emergence, but it can be longer if the weather is unsuitable.
Update May 27th

May 27, 2012

a day in this life

Garden status with pictures. This one is going to be kinda long. Showing fruit trees too.

Serious peas. We tend to just graze on them right out of the pod like candy.

Squash and Eggplant were overpowering the Okra, so I have attempted to transplant them to the bed where the cabbage was.

Moved seven of them. Hoping they will bounce back with a little watering. Tomatoes and peppers in there too. Harvested what was left of the cabbage to make room for the Okra.

Arugula and Fava beans are doing great. Been eating arugula for a while now.

Cantaloupe is in a different location, but is coming along. Tomatoes are still behind where I expected them to be based on the warm Spring. They are healthy and when they do come in we are going to have way more than we can eat.

We expected our fruit trees to do better this year, especially with the new bee hives. Most of them bloomed out very early and then the April freezes came. We covered what we could, but I think the cold nipped them at a vulnerable time. We had peaches starting, but they disappeared except for one sick looking one. We have very few cherries and only a couple of damson plums on one of the three plum trees.

The orange tree, however, is looking pretty good.

Herbs in pots on the deck are doing fine.

Also picked chard and brussels sprouts today.

And yes the bees look great today, especially Isabella. Just looked in on them. You would never guess that hive swarmed a week ago based on the number of bees.
Homeless bees?

May 23, 2012

a day in this life

Found some wet cranky bees in the mulch this morning, below the bush where the swarm was last night.

Don’t know what that means. Stormed hard all night here last night and the hives were not very active. Rosamund’s old hive population looked about the same, so I am guessing it is the stragglers that we couldn’t entice into Frank’s box. I don’t think Rosamund is in the pile. Most of the swarm went eagerly into the box and were fanning the good vibes on top of it.

Hoping they go back to the old hive. Anyway, they’ll have to work it out one way or the other.
Rosamund’s turn

May 23, 2012

a day in this life, bees

I was late getting home tonight, but I had to go have a peek at the girls. Isabella still had busy foragers coming in, but Rosamund was unusually quiet. I peeked at Isabella and admired her busy, enthusiastic workers and then looked in at Rosamund.

She was very laid back.

And I could see the comb, unlike this morning when they were covering the combs so completely that I couldn’t see the swarm cells that were evident tonight.

And one was open at the bottom.

So, I hollered for Chuck and we looked and looked up in all the trees around and behind the hives. They were nowhere to be seen. We started back into the house, thinking that they had already headed off to someone else’s yard or hole in a tree or wherever they found a spot when I noticed a brown wad wrapped around the crook of one of our crepe myrtle bushes.

I ran in the house to get my phone and camera. Chuck got his camera. I called Frank.

This is what he’ll find when he gets here.

Except it is going to be DARK. He’s an hour away and can’t get them tomorrow, so it’s now or, most likely, never.

And rumor has it that bees don’t like being messed with at night.

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We did it anyway, though.

Frank was here by 9:30 and gone by 10:20 with a box full of bees.

There were a couple of stings and a little attitude, but not nearly as much as the rainy evening we helped Marty split 3 hives. And that’s with Chuck sawing off the crepe myrtle trunk to lift them over the box. In the dark with only a couple of little red flashlights to see by.

Bee handling endorphins are a little like getting a tattoo. 🙂