Major Bee Work 3/31/12

We spent the entire day working in the bee yards. By day's end, we'd inspected the bulk of the hives in all three yards in our area. We installed two new queens from Mr. Harbo in Louisiana. They're numbered with yellow dots on their backs. They should be easy to spot when we next inspect! We have three more queens to install, and as we're winding down this evening, Mark is contemplating where to put them. We think we're going to requeen a very aggressive colony at Bee Hill (#5, the meanest bees in our enterprise), add one to a hive we suspect has a failing queen at Harley's (#5), and may requeen an aggressive colony at Barhams'.

The biggest surprises of the day were finding our splits were, for the most part doing what they were supposed to: making new queens for themselves from the fresh eggs in the frames we moved with them when we split the hives. Related to that surprise was the occasional discovery of a queen when we thought we'd find only queens-in-the-making. Apparently, we'd transferred a nearly fully developed queen cell into the split (such as Bee Hill #6), and she'd already hatched out and was doing her job.

I typed up extensive notes for Mark (which I won't repeat here). Suffice it to say he was stung several times before he put on his gloves at the end of the day; we added equipment where it was needed, we saw hive beetles in the colonies that aren't on oil trap bottom boards (we're more convinced than ever that they work); we spotted some queens -- I even saw one laying!; we saw pollinators of all kinds and wildflowers galore.

Below are a few photo highlights of the day.

Barhams' Bee Yard

The beavers are back -- we had a lake where we shouldn't.

Blueberries!

Crimson clover is all over these days!

The map I made last week after we split hives.

The surprise queen in 2A on Bee Hill. She's in the center.

Marked, numbered queens!

Another queen siting -- can you see her?

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!"

Going on a bee safari? He put his gear on after this photo, I assure you!

Everything in our bee yard is ahead of schedule and in better shape than this time last year. It's nice to be able to look back at the blog and say, "Oh, we were getting swarms the end of the first week of April!" and "Oh, we let them build up too much last spring -- we could have split them." I think each time we work with our bees, we learn more, and hopefully each season we'll be more efficient and effective.

Hive Inspection July 9, 2011

Mark has been carrying the weight of the bee enterprise this summer. While I was in New Mexico visiting family, he called to say that he & Sarah saw one of our hives swarm at Barham's, Hive 6 had swarmed in Mayhew, and that it appeared another had swarmed at Harley's in spite of having plenty of super space. I returned home expecting to find struggling hives at Harley's.

Instead we found evidence of a laying queen in all three -- including the two splits we'd made before our trip mid-June -- and a sizeable population in the hive that had swarmed. We removed the feeders too.

Then the truck wouldn't start.  Thanks to Harley and Diana's hospitality, we didn't have to spend our time outside in the wicked heat. Mark pulled the truck out to their driveway with a tractor (I had to steer the behemoth without any power steering!), and made arrangements for repair while I sat in the air conditioned cool.

Sarah came to the rescue with the trusty Honda, which in a pinch does just fine as a bee mobile. We stopped by Barham's to observe the "tower of power" and happily discovered the cotton is beginning to bloom.

Back at home, we checked on Hive 6 to see if they had successfully requeened themselves. From the contented hum we heard when we opened the hive, we suspected all was well. But, we looked through the two deep boxes just in case. Mark saw eggs and larvae, so we closed it up and headed to the house ahead of the rain.

Inspection at Harvey's Hives

A happy beekeeper.

After our bee tree adventure, we went to the bee yard at Harley's to do a full inspection. While it's tempting to give you the blow-by-blow, I'll generalize and then show you some pictures, because we saw some pretty cool stuff.

The summary: we found evidence of queens in all of the hives, saw supercedure cells in one of the hives started from a nuc (which was very interesting, as we couldn't see a reason why they wanted to replace their queen), and found very little honey stored and little foraging happening, meaning there's a dearth of nectar. The bees were not occupying the space provided in the supers Mark had added.

The decisions: make a split from the hive with all of the supercedure cells, remove unoccupied supers from 3 of the hives, and move the four smaller colonies to the Delta, where there's plenty blooming.

The photos:

A mosaic of pollen stores.

I love the variety in the colors of pollen packed into the comb!

This is an ideal frame: honey around the edges, a solid brood pattern, uncapped larvae around the edges, and eggs.

Uncapped honey -- see it glistening?

Do you see the queen?

Don't waste a drop!

When we took off the top hive body, we tore open some brace comb the bees had built. Immediately the workers gathered around the exposed honey, drinking it in so it wouldn't go to waste. They'll relocate it to open cells in other frames, I hope.

The next morning before daylight, Mark returned, screened the entrances, made the split, and drove the bees to the Delta.  Once they were unloaded, he added the supers back so they'd have space to grow. We hope they thrive there.

Mark had already done the prep work.  Can you tell the man is OCD, with everything cleared just so?!

Midnight Dance of the Crazy Beekeeper

If Frances Barham had looked out her window near midnight on Thursday, she'd have seen two men wildly jumping around in her cotton field, waving their arms and ripping off their clothing. Well, some of it anyway. Wish I had a photo of THAT.

In the bright moonlight, the bees exacted their revenge for the bumpy two-hour ride from their home in Kossuth, MS. They relentlessly attacked, crawled under veil edges to sting necks, and buzzed angrily.

Last week Mark traveled to Kossuth to buy out a hobby beekeeper who was no longer interested in his hobby. The gentleman had three hives of bees from the Minnesota Hygienic line, plus equipment and tools, including a homemade bee vacuum. Mark brought home a load of stuff on Tuesday, then returned Thursday night to retrieve the hives. His friend John Barham, who is interested in taking up beekeeping, joined him for the dramatic relocation process.

On Sunday, I went with Mark to  move frames of bees into our hive bodies.  Some of the originals were missing corners.

I've heard of alternative entrances, but I don't think this is what the experts had in mind.

 
And let's face it: my husband's OCD will not allow him to have mismatched hives stacked up.  So, first we went to the Barhams' Bee Yard. The population of this hive is immense.  There were bees *everywhere*.  Lots of honey, too!

 We moved them into new supers, added two medium supers to give them more space, and will have to return soon as we didn't realize two of the original hives were shallows, not mediums. The bees will have a heyday building brace comb to fill in the space between the bottom of the shallow frames and the tops of the frames below them.

BB6 is "The Leaning Tower of Beez-ah"

After we finished at Barhams' we went to Harley's.  Mark had put a single deep nuc from Kossuth there.  We quickly transferred those frames -- an interesting assortment of new frames, one plastic frame, and dark wood frames, only half of which had comb built.  When we stopped back by Barhams' to see if the bees had calmed down enough to put oil in the trap, Eldon gave us a fresh head of cabbage, and some frozen corn and peas.

I can't wait to give them some honey!

Bees are Busy, and so are the Beekeepers

With plenty of bee-related tasks, weekend company, crazy storms (the tornadoes missed us, thankfully), and a full-time job, the bulk of the work has fallen to Mark.  I'll get calls that involve rapid-fire descriptions of whatever he's found in a particular hive or bee yard before he moves onto the next swarm, tear-out (Hi Jason!), or load of laundry.

Nice. ;-)

Mark & Jason Shedd, who needed some bees removed from his attic.

Friday night (5/6) we went to Mrs. Beatty's house to prepare it for moving.  Mark was stunned to find the bees had completely waxed out the entire hive (10 frames) and stored honey -- all without a queen, who was, ostensibly, left behind the tree.  This morning we transferred them to BB2 which continues to have a low population.

This box weighed A LOT.

We added medium supers to the three existing hives at the Barhams' Bee Yard, including BB2, with its new deep from Mrs. Beatty's house.  There was a question if BB3 had a queen captured in the large swarm that was added, and on Friday Mark found evidence that she's there: "she's going like a house afire, there's brood everywhere!" he said.  That's great news.

The big news, however, is that he left home before 6 a.m. on Friday to pick up two queens and 5 nucs from Harry Fulton.  He installed the nucs at Barhams' Bee Yard (see those single deeps on the far end?) and at Harley's. 

For the story of the queens, click here.

Harley's Hives: An Introduction (belated) and Update

Harley is friends with Eldon Barham. They spend a lot of time together, and are two of the toughest guys I've met -- relentless in their battle against time. They wear out much younger men with the work they do. I'd heard many stories about Harley's place and hobbies, but on Saturday I got to see for myself.

He currently has one hive, the captured swarm of bees who had been in our carport for so long.  They're doing great, so we just topped off the feeder.

Then he showed us his restored VW Beetle.  It's fabulous, and it was fun for Sarah to sit in the driver's seat and marvel at how simple those old cars were.  He was going to let "the girls" drive it, but neither of us can drive a standard and frankly, all I needed to age me in moments was wrecking his car.

Sarah loved his tin man too.

I loved talking to Harley's wife, Diana, who has had a very interesting life.  We had a lovely visit.

UPDATE: Mark added 3 nucs of Russian bees to Harley's Hives on 05/06/11, so he's up to four and very happy about it!

Swarms, Trap-Outs, and Combining Hives

Tuesday when I got home from work, Mark told me to hurry and change, and to grab a notebook because we had bee work to do.  We jumped in the truck, Andrew joined us, and off we went to New Hope.

As we drove, I took notes on his day.

1. The porch hive was moved to Harley's place.  Interestingly, we were unable to move them the night before because it was so hot they were bearding on the outside and fanning to keep the temperature down inside the hive.  Early Tuesday morning they were still outside, so Mark smoked them in, put on a vented entrance closer, and drove them out to Steens. He added a deep super, a feeder board with feeder, and oil. Their population is good and we'll check on them this weekend to see if they need more feed.

2. At the Barhams', he added a medium and removed the feeder from BB1, added feed to BB2 and saw the queen and eggs so hopefully their population will soon increase.

3. As for BB3, they got a healthy new dose of bees and hopefully a queen, thanks to a swarm call.  Jeff, "the big friendly guy" in New Hope had some bees move into the soffit on his house that day. Since it was rotten, he allowed Mark to tear it out to get to the bees.  He observed from his truck and was really interested in the entire process.  Thanks, Jeff, for the bees!

Mark took the bees, and had to wrestle newspaper in the wind so he could put the new bees on top of BB3.  "The lesson for the day is that wind + newspaper + being alone = need staple gun."  Fortunately he had one in the truck, but I would have loved to have gotten pictures of that process!

4. Our top bar hive caller from Monday night lives in New Hope, so Mark stopped by to see him.  He gave us the top bar hive he'd built!  Thanks, Mr. McGarity!

5. The other task of the day was a trap-out in a tree. Mrs. Beatty wanted the bees removed as she was afraid her great grandchildren might get stung.  She has a glorious backyard people called "Beatty Park" back in the day, and a feisty wienie dog.  Mark built a platform and funnel, and left.

That brings us up to the time we were all headed to New Hope. A family had bees in the upstairs wall of their house, but there was no good way to get to them either from the outside (siding) or the inside, so we were unable to rescue them.

Since we were out, we decided to visit the Barhams' Bee yard and Mrs. Beatty to check on them and see how everything was going.

At Barhams', the two sets of bees seemed to be flying out of their respective entrances. Their job is to chew through the newspaper, and in the time that takes, get used to one another. We hope the downstairs bees will accept the upstairs queen (if she's there) and we won't have to requeen.

At Mrs. Beatty's the weight of the bees trying to get into their tree home was so heavy it crushed the funnel.  Mrs. Beatty reminds me of my dear granny, who happened to turn 91 on the same day I met Mrs. Beatty!  (As an aside, we're not sure if these bees are going to make it. Mark visited them on Thursday, after the tornado/hail/straight line wind/thunderstorm episode on Wednesday.  They were still hanging on the funnel, soaked and cold.  He moved as many as he could into the hive and added a feeder. We'll see how they are tomorrow, after a day or two of better weather.)

So many bees!

She could be my granny's twin.  So sweet!

This is about the time Mark pointed out I'd stepped in dog poop.