And So It BEEgins

Bees in Boxes aka Nucs

The bees are home. Tucked in a hive, huddled deep in the center of their  brood box from the frost. This morning I pressed my ear to the side of the  hive and listened to the hum of life inside before we left for Fargo, ND. I've barely seen my bees in the two days they have been home. In fact, I barely saw them when I installed them, in the dark, late in the evening on Wednesday. So I'm thankful for the pics my daughter snapped with her phone in the flurry of activity which was the bees arrival.

It's been a long week and by the end of the day tomorrow I will have logged about 1100 miles of driving since Tuesday. My week started on Tuesday, in Fargo, with Mike where we learned he would need surgery to fix the "wonky" disc in his back. He's in surgery as I write this. Between trips to Fargo I fit in a 10 hour round trip to Dennison, MN to pick up the bees. I am thankful my son Dan went with to keep me company on the long trip.

I arrived home with the bees around 8:40. The temperature was 38 degrees. It was dark. Now, I told you I would share successes and mistakes in the blog. Here is my first mistake:

Opening a nuc of bees, who have been stuck in a box for 5 hours, in the dark without smoking them and without your bee gear on is dumb. Really DUMB

To them, I was a predator and they were having none of that.  Luckily I'm a fast learner.  Luckier still, no one got stung.

After lighting the smoker, putting bee gear on my grandson Seth (he is my helper) and myself, with my husband holding a flashlight and with my daughter (Kris), granddaughter (Brooke) watching from a safer distance I managed to get all the bees into the hive. Kris is a brave woman and stepped in to take pictures. I am thankful she did because it never crossed my mind.

Thanks Kris

Peace,
Karen

Filling the feeders.

Pre Bee Gear

Zippin Seth into his gear.

Ready for attempt number 2

Smoker ready

 

A Good Foundation

Wax foundation

It's been a long time since bees were kept in the hives I was given. While there was some drawn out comb in the frames, actual comb the bees built and used for brood and food stores, the comb was old and brittle and could not be used. Last Sunday while the kids and I painted, Mike scraped all the old comb out and cleaned the frames.

With the frames empty Mike and I set to installing wax foundation. I received a box of wax foundation along with other miscellaneous bee equipment.

I want to go on record as having been advised to melt all the wax foundation into blocks and sell the blocks at $15 a pound and then use the money to go buy plastic foundation.

I could not do it. I had the wax, bees make wax, wax makes sense. The foundation give the bees a head start, a good foundation.

Mike installing a foundation pin

Wax foundation and foundation pin

The happy bee keeper and her frame of foundation

Two full boxes of frames were made ready tonight. Big shout out to my man who has taken on the roll of Apiary Apprentice!  Now all we need are bees.

Peace,
Karen

Bee-centric

This is the evening I've been waiting for all winter. Warm, still with the scent of rain in the air, bird song coming from every direction and the heady feel of dirt in my hands. One of the flower beds was the night's mission. Armed with rake and hoe last years annual and the decaying remains of the perennials were removed revealing dark earth.

While I pulled and raked I began thinking about what flowers to plant in this bed. A seed package of zinnias with their brightly colored heads had caught my eye from my garden tote. As I spade the earth I imagined them in a row alongside the pavers leading to the front door and then I thought about the bees finding them and then...I was distracted. Because when I'm not focused on the task at hand or in this case even when I am, my mind is on bees.

I have been reading EVERYTHING I can find on the "interwebs" on organic and natural beekeeping. I stalk the forums. My kindle holds four books on bees and I'm downloading a fifth while I type this. Bee journals have been read and reread and I can pretty much recited the Mann Lake Bee catalog by heart. I will talk to anyone for any reason about bees. I  even wear a bee ring on my right hand.  I'm a little bee-centric.


In a week I will be driving to southern Minnesota to pick up my ladies. Tonight the wait is getting to me. My rake is left to languish in the dirt. My hoe feeling rejected. Piles of plant debris waits patiently by the empty wheel barrow while I  set up a watering station next to my empty hives. I'll get back to the garden tomorrow or the next day and get flowers planted. I'll also be planting the vegetable garden one of these days. Most of those plants take up my dining and living room waiting for that last frost. In the meantime there are frames to ready and more reading to be done and...and...and...I should be getting another package from Mann Lake. Ha! Forgive me.

Peace,
Karen

A New BEEginning

It's May in Bemidji. Ice is still on the lakes. Snow mostly gone except in a few sheltered areas in the woods.  Sap season just ended and morels have not started to push their wrinkled heads above the leaf litter. To say the winter of 2013- 2014 was difficult is to pad the blow. Beginning in October and still trying to hang on into May we were savaged by wind and snow and unrelenting cold. We were forced to stay indoors; succumbing one by one to the fever of the cabin fever.

But let's go back to last fall and the end of beekeeping season. We harvested the honey, 120 lbs to be exact, an apparent huge success for first year bee keepers, so we were told, and then we vacuumed the bees out of the hives. This is pretty standard procedure for northern beekeepers. Vacuum out your hives and get new bees the following season. We were told the bees would not survive winter. Heard words like humane and common practice. We were told the bees would die instantly in the vacuum. 

Three hives of bees went into my shop vac. What came out was a pile of sticky, dead and broken bees. Many were dead but just as many were alive but broken or too sticky to fly. They walked away from the pile, crawled up blades of grass, climbed onto my shoes and one made it up Mike's pant leg for one final sting of the season. But it wasn't the last sting. The sorrow I felt, the shame, the complete disbelief and disappointment that this is the best way to "keep" bees carried  a larger sting far into the darkness of winter.

The inclement weather provided ample time for research. I began to explore alternate ways to keep bees. Minimally invasive, natural beekeeping free of antibiotics and miticides. Different breeds of bees and bees called hygienic bees which are stronger and know how to take care of some of the problems like mites; bees that can withstand winter were explored.  And every article about overwintering was read. I vowed I would do my best to get my bees through a winter.

 

Yesterday, my husband, daughter and two young grandchildren helped prep and paint three hives which were gifted to me. They also entered into a silent agreement to swim against the flow; to explore and learn and to succeed and fail in this grand experiment. They have agreed to become bee stewards.

Peace, 

Karen

 

  

Bee Whisperer

Today was one of those day dreamy days in a person's life. One of those days where you bear witness to something so beautiful and rare, so special and precious that your breath is gone and letters do not make up adequate words to describe what is unfolding in front of you. You forget to pick up your camera and take pictures of the things that are now held captive in your mind for all the rest of your days. You just hold your breath and wish for it to go on forever.

I took my grandson Seth to see the bees today. I dressed him in the little jacket that was still too big for him (a gift Les Hiltz), tucked his pants in his socks, pulled a net over his Angry Birds cap and fitted him with some gloves. I told him, if the bees seemed happy to see him we could take off the veil and gloves.

What follows is what I can't put into words.

Seth was well received by the hive. He stood in awe for a few moments and then slowly sat down at the hive entrance. For the next 30 minutes he whispered to and petted bees.

Enjoy, this one's on me.
Karen

Finding the Queen, or Not - a follow-up

Better late than never right?

In my previous post you may have recalled we were going on a queen hunt. Well we suited up, scoured the hive and did not find her. What we did find were fewer bees than we had anticipated AND a whole bunch of capped queen cells.

What we think has happened is this: we missed a swarm. We missed the old queen's exit with her share of ladies in waiting. They are probably happily setting up new quarters near by in a hollow tree. What remains in our hive are about half of the bees we started with and new queens waiting to emerge and claim the hive. This sets us back a bit.

The hive was super unfriendly. I took three hits to my finger and a sting up my pants leg (and never mind where that sting ended up at) The day before Kris took a hit from the same hive and had a welt on her leg that Bill described as looking like a veal cutlet.  There was honey in the bottom deep. Not a ton of brood and then the queen cells. Further inspection showed about the same in the second deep and there was little to no activity in the supers.

We decided to check the other hives. Again, no queen, honey capped and uncapped in the deeps and capped queen cells in both. Fantastic. What to do? Once a colony has decided to swarm there is little to do about it. We discussed the clipping of the queen but she may try to fly anyhow and land on the ground and then what? Or if we clip her the hive could decide that she is weak or broken and raise a new queen anyhow and kill her off. Either way we are behind.

I called Les. I wondered if we could buy an empty nuc out. After conferring for 20 mins he suggested that because we had capped honey in the bottom that we were probably having a nectar run. The bees were storing the honey in any empty comb. Since the supers were not drawn out yet they were using the deep. The queen, feeling she was crowded now had quit laying eggs and the hive had decided she was failing sooooo....deep breath...making a replacement.

Complicated this bee psychology.

Kris and Bill went out the next night. Rotated a few frames and now our fingers are crossed. And our toes. And our eyes. All I know for certain at this point is bees will do what bees will do.

Peace,
Karen

Rising From the Ashes - Burning Down the House

Capped Honey

Well I've been a little preoccupied with a wedding. My son wed his best friend on Saturday! Congrats Steven and Emily.

The fact that I had a wedding does not mean the bees have been neglected. Kris has been a diligent bee-keeper and checks them daily. All the hives have been behaving, well, until last Thursday when this report came in from Kris:

I went down to look at the bees tonight. Lyle told me that if I saw bees crawling up the hive before taking off, they were stealing honey and preparing a swarm. They climb the box before take off to get the extra lift they need due to the extra weight of the honey. Well, I saw bees doing that on the Phoenix hive. So, I took off the lid, and holy-moly the Phoenix has risen. This hive didn't have any supers on it.
So, I suited up, grabbed a queen excluder and a super and went in. Their were queen cups on the bottom of several center frames. There were also drone cells. The second brood box was full. I scraped off the queen cups, no capped queen cells, and the drone cells. They were pretty angry and I had no smoke, so I didn't look for the queen. I also didn't look for eggs/larvae b/c it was obvious she has been laying by the amount of bees. So I just smushed what need to be smushed and put the excluder and super on.
Lyle and the Dudist looked fine. Some bees above the excluder, but still drawing out comb.

Good enough. As aptly named the Phoenix hive has risen. Yay bees.

Then today, while I was at work. This message came from Kris:

Bee emergency!!!!
Sealed queen cells in Lyle's hive. I scraped them off. Definitely swarm cells. Bees very agitated. I got stung. (I was in a t-shirt and flip flops. My own damn fault) Bees were very agitated. Not much going on above queen excluder, so I went into top deep. Bees did not want me in there. Now I know why. So, I need my bee bitches to come look. I did not see evidence of egg/larvae?? Maybe they need a new queen? Maybe I shouldn't have done that? I need to call for a meeting? I leave for a week out of town on Sunday.

Let me explain as simply as possible - THIS IS BAD!

A phone call later, the plan is to go in at 8 am tomorrow morning and hunt down our queen. At this point we don't know what is going on. We have narrowed it down to one of two things a) we have a failing queen or a dead queen  or b) they just want to swarm.  If we find our queen we are going to make a grab for her and clip a wing. The reason for this is to keep her from flying off with half of the hive. We also need to look at brood pattern, eggs and larva to determine if we even have a queen in the event we don't find her. This may be why we have queen cells; they are trying to make a new queen.

Gaaa. It's all so confusing!

I hope we find the queen. This would ease Kris' mind. See, she scraped off some queen cells today and is now concerned that if we don't have a queen she may have complicated things. Plus, to add insult to injury she has been stung on the thigh and has a rather large welt from our very aggressive hive. There seems to be no lack of things to concern new bee-keepers. Or maybe it's how it is with all bee-keepers? I don't know. Anyhow, here we are, as ever, confused and going to school on the bees. One hive rising from the ashes and the other trying to burn itself down. 

Peace,
Karen