Know Your Local Bees: A Cautionary Tale, Episode II, Part 2

When we last left this Cautionary Tale, a voice was heard saying, "If you'd have asked me, I'd have told you those bees have been there three or four years." Fortunately, Part 2 of this episode has a happy ending. (Whew!)

Just down the road from the swarm/tear-out/pesticide debacle is a 100+ year old house surrounded by all kinds of trees and plants.

In the 100+ year old house lives a much younger-than-that lady, who is a lover of bees. She kept about 15 hives up until about 2000-2001, as best she can recall. Her name is Hattie. I think she is one of those people who loves the bees, but hates the honey harvesting process. It's work, people.

She gave Mark some old bee boxes, which he cut down and repurposed into a swarm trap. He's been reading Swarm Traps and Bait Hives by McCartney Taylor, who blogs about beekeeping at Learning Beekeeping. From that book, he's refined his approach.

On Saturday, after we left the Other House, we stopped by Hattie's to set up a swarm trap.
She has a couple of colonies in old equipment, but she's ready for Mark to take over their management. "I don't really manage them, they're just swarms that come in and go out," she said.

The metal on the entrance discourages mice and birds from going in, but allows bees.

I saw her pan with sticks where she pours out honey every day for the bees. She likes to watch where the bees fly off to after they visit her honey dish.

In theory, the swarm will come in and build on the frames but have a cavity big enough to convince them to stay.

"If you sit in a chair, you can see them go over into the woods, or over that way," she said, pointing toward the neighbors. She could name several neighbors who had bees in various parts of their houses or barns (not the best places for bees!). Including the lady who had a "swarm" in the ash box of her fireplace . . .

I bet they didn't know that their bees had likely originated at Hattie's, swarms from her colonies!

She talked about having Mark set up a bee yard there at her place -- not for her to manage, but so that she could watch them make honey for us. Today he got a call that she'd reconsidered -- the rain had made things too boggy, and she'd be tempted to fool with them more than she should.

The trap is on her front porch, where she can keep an eye on it.

She still wants him to take over the colonies she has, and she wants to have a swarm trap to watch, she can catch us some bees.

She showed us bee tree near her driveway -- the hole is low to the ground, so Mark may try to trap them out. She took us to the neighbors' house, but the bees have been in her eaves for years, and it looks impossible to trap them out. One of her dogs kept flopping down on its back by my feet, begging to be rubbed. It was pretty funny. 

When we finished, I was famished, so we stopped at Pop's Barbecue on Hwy. 45. Delicious brisket. If you're ever out in Columbus and want a tasty meal, Pop has a steak special -- 2 ribeyes for $30 with baked potato and salad. And Delores makes a mean hot fudge cake. But really, the brisket rocks, so get that.

Tear-Out at a Former Workplace Popularly Called The Palace

Today I got an email from one of the nicest guys I've ever worked with, Frank Young.  He's a curator at my former workplace, and had some bees removed from an unused part of a unfinished wing.  He took some photos and shared them with me at the urging of my motorcycle buddy Shirley, who retired but works there part-time.  Just can't get enough of it I guess.

A massive amount of bees and beautiful brood.

Look at all of that honey!

These bees have been here a while

What I find crazy is that the guy has on no gear at all, and at no point is the air full of bees.


Thanks Frank & Shirley!  Miss you!

Crush and Strain Method

To get an idea of how I've spent my Friday night, visit Linda's blog and watch her video on the crush and strain method of harvesting honey.

Then remove anything that makes the process convenient, and you'll have a better idea of what I went through.

The Story: Mark is migrating another group of bees. This time they're in Kemper County, and they'd set up housekeeping in a huge metal barn with a camp house built inside, but a "one story" camp house. So in that big inviting space between the plywood ceiling of the camp house and the rest of the barn, the bees built a hive.

From the evidence of queen cells in some of the old, dark brood, this hive may have been growing a new queen. Mark will inspect the hive within a week to see if he needs to buy a new queen quickly to keep the colony together, or if a new queen had hatched out and was busy doing her job.

What he brought home was a cooler full of comb most of which looked old, dark, and brittle, at least what I could see on top. He also brought home a bucket of lighter comb filled with honey (and bees!) and an old Tupperware container, also full of honey comb (but not as many bees). I picked through the best looking comb and trimmed up some chunks to save for eating (photo above).

However, because of the condition of everything else in the containers, we'll use this honey to feed the existing bees, rather than feeding them with sugar water. I'm glad we'll be able to feed this honey to the bees that worked so hard to make it when Mark moves the hive to Bee Hill. They'll be healthier if they're eating honey.

Thankfully, Mark has ordered some equipment that will help with this process, namely a bucket with screen and a honey gate. I ended up with three full quart jars of honey, and when I got up Saturday morning the container holding the remnants of crushed comb had about half an inch of honey in the bottom that had drained out overnight!

Hive 4: The Barbecue Bees

Rather than rehash the process in words, here is a short slide show of highlights from our time spent removing "The Barbecue Bees" from the gas grill and relocating them first to the deep super, then eventually to Bee Hill. It was an interesting process and by far the fastest and easiest of his attempts. They went right in on Friday even before we left and we picked them up Sunday night. The honey was dark even though it was the spring batch, but these bees were near the piney woods without a lot of diversity in their nectar sources.

Bringing Home the Bees: Hive 5

Mark is taking some equipment to a work site tonight so he can come back through Macon and pick up Hive 5. If Hive 4 hadn't gone so easily (details in a future post), these bees would have been at Prairie Blossom Bee Farm first.

Hive 5 is the first colony of bees mark has moved from their established home inside a building. Remember when I wrote about Hive 1 and said the owner of the hardware store had two hives at his camp house? He actually had 3 colonies, but one was in a tree by the road, and Mark felt it would be dangerous to attempt to remove them. So that left bees in the old dairy barn, and bees in the old house. Hive 5 is the dairy barn bees.

And boy, were they a challenge. Mark had to build his platform up high, as they were going through a hole at the top of the board. Once he got the screen cone and the bee box in place, complete with sugar water sprayed in it to attract the bees, they started going in a hole at the bottom of the board. Realizing there were too many holes in the board, he decided to return another day to tear out the board and just start moving comb and bees. This process has taken weeks, with trips to Macon to feed them, check the old hive area, put in the moving screen, etc.

At long last, he's bringing them home tonight. Welcome to the farm, Hive 5!