A Day in the Delta

On Friday, April 6th, we drove to the Delta to work the bee yard there.

Mark had been over on 3/27, cleaned out the oil traps and split the very full hives. While there, he called to say he'd watched a swarm flying out of one of the colonies. Enterprising beekeeper that he is, he followed it (high in a tree), found a local farmer (who brought his tractor and a cardboard box), and retrieved the hive. I'd read recently that swarms don't like screened bottom boards, so he covered it with cardboard.

His first task on Friday was to check and see if the swarm had stayed . . . and it had. Hurray!

The good news is that we were able to add Harbo queens as needed where there wasn't evidence of a queen. The bad news is that time-wise, we were there at a terrible stage in the establishment of queens the hives created for themselves..

Whether it was because of this precarious state (agitation from a new queen who hasn't established her hold on the colony in terms of pheromones, she's out on mating flights, they're truly queenless etc), or genetics (Russian bees tend to be a feisty breed), the Delta bees were ferocious.

I mean, pelt-your-helmet-til-it-sounds-like-popcorn-popping ferocious.

The humorous part (from Mark's perspective) is after I went to get a drink of water, I forgot to zip up my veil. And a bee got in. And I proceeded to run from the bee yard, ripping off my gloves to try to unzip my jacket and get OUT of the thing so I wouldn't look like this:



I managed to avoid getting stung. Yay.









Photo highlights:

Bee Birth -- freshly emerging from its cell.

Delta Honey

Eggs on dark foundation.

General Beauregard, famous canine.

Guy Ray, with his Ducks Unlimited Box. He's delighted!

Angry Bees.

Pleasant Lake

Sharing a snack.

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.

Splitting the Porch Bees

Thanks to some TLC and a warm winter, the porch bees needed more room.

Porch Bees: Before

Splitting a hive is basically an inspection that results in dividing the frames with food and brood. The queen is left in the "old" hive or moved, and the group that doesn't get a queen must have a frame of freshly laid eggs to create a new queen.

We suited up and had the cushy accommodations of the porch chair for Mark and shade for me during this process.

We were surprised to see nearly every frame was filled with brood or food -- the queen really needed more space to continue her work!

The drone brood is at the bottom of the frame, poking out a bit.

The Pollen Smorgasboard

 We never saw the queen, but we saw plenty of evidence that she is a fabulous, busy lady, so we're hopeful the new colony will convert one of her eggs into a new queen. Each deep super with frames from the original colony was topped with a deep super of empty frames.

Porch Bees: After