Singing Wood Thrush LOL

So the other day I posted a short video showing a hermit thrush singing from the folks over at Music of Nature.  I noticed that they also have a wood thrush video on their YouTube channel too (this is another bird that is a moral imperative to listen to): [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrmxlez2cAg[/youtube]

This video cracked me up.  Did you notice how many times the bird sang a phrase and then flew? I was actually surprised that the videographer got the bird perched for more than one phrase--but noted how the bird was always obscured by a branch or leaves.  It reminded me of when I was a kid and my parents moved to a new home and we had one of these singing in the yard.  You didn't have access to all the bird id CDs and apps back then like you do today.

So one Saturday morning my mom and I spent an hour trying to track this bird down in the tops of the trees.  After each song phrase it fluttered to another leafy branch, hiding in obscurity.  The longer it took, the more I fantasized this would be something cool and so beautiful it HAS to hide, maybe even a painted bunting.  I remember feeling like such a chump that that it was brown and fairly colorless.  How could something so brown have a song so pretty?

Now I know better and it's one of my favorite songs and sometimes I get to hear it out around the beehives.  But all that searching we did to see it makes me appreciate all the work the videographer went through to give us such a wonderful glimpse to a secretive singer.

Smoking Bees

This is a video of some of our bees just chilling out at the hive.  I started it to show what they look like when they are relaxed.  We had to dig deeper into the hive to see what was going on so I asked Non Birding Bill to smoke them.  When you puff your bees with wood smoke, it triggers a response that makes the bees go in and eat--there could be a forest fire and they may have to flee and who knows when they will eat again. The eating makes them less interested in defending the hive and stinging the large people moving around frames and boxes of the hive. When you smoke them it always reminds me of office workers who suddenly realized the boss is walking through and they all need to look busy, it's a joke I've done before but it still cracks me up.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxNxvEm_-zc[/youtube]

Total Slacker Bees #Beekeeping

Dear Bees,

I don't want to get all Ned Stark on you, but Winter is coming.  You are bees of summer and it's been fun to fly around and explore, but seriously, dudettes, you need to start some serious storage to make it through the winter.

See, this whole socializing and not storing honey business is not going to do you any good.  I know, I know, Mr. Neil has been away for awhile and I've been busy counting birds this summer and you've been able to do your own thing, but that's because I believed you could handle the responsibility of being an adult worker.  And I realize that some of you are Russian Bees and that you have a reputation for keeping the hive small and still surviving the winter.  But all of you are bees of summer and bees of the south--what do you know of Winter?

I'm willing to compromise.  I know some books say you should have 3 deep brood boxes full of honey to get you through our northern winters, but we've had bees do just fine with only 2 boxes.  If that's all you want to do and not give us any excess honey this year--that's fine.  We'll help you with that.  But this business of only using one box and completely ignoring the second is not going to work, you must band together and get to work.

I know you think you're being clever by filling in any area that violates "bee space" but that's not enough.  And though we will subsidize you with food in a 2 box system well into fall and possibly early winter, we can't help you come February, that's when your stores are crucial.  And do understand, if you don't have enough honey, your hive will fail and you will die.  And though we will mourn you, we will loot your hive like the Hound loots a corpse.

I love you, but I understand that you are all insects and that you have to do as much for yourself as you can.  So, I hope you read my blog between gathering pollen and half-heartedly storing honey to understand how serious I am about your need to bump up production in order to survive the winter.  I also hope Mr. Neil doesn't mind me referencing another writer in a post about our hives.

Your Obedient Beekeeper,

Shaz

Warblers Eating Honey

I'm in a quandary with my beehives and my love of birds.

On my way out to the Horicon Marsh Bird Festival, I stopped at Mr. Neil's for a quick check of our new beehives and some birding.  The warblers have arrived and the cool weather has forced those who arrive early in migration to search for alternate sources of food.  Yellow-rumped warblers like these would prefer insects.  Far too cool and far too few available, so the enterprising early migrants explored the bird feeders.

Despite the fact that Baltimore orioles are in the area and singing, none came to the feeders.  Yellow-rumps gladly took advantage of the grape jelly.

The warblers even jockeyed for position at the suet feeder among the four species of woodpecker that normally feed here.

Pine warblers are also hitting the feeders.  Whereas the yellow-rumps go for the suet and jelly, the pine goes for sunflower hearts.  It will also go for the suet, but seems content to eat the seeds.

While I was working around the garage, I noticed Neil's groundskeeper Hans had put out some old bee frames.  We do this so the bees from active hives will fly in and clean out the old honey.  These frames were from the hives that died over the winter.  The bees found it.  While I was working around the garage, I noticed warbles hanging out in the area.  At first, I thought the warblers were after the live bees and even said allowed, "I know you're desperate for insects, but you're far too small for eating bees."

Then, right about dusk when the honeybees were all tucked in their hives for the day, I noticed the warblers on the frames, pecking at them.  The light was dim but thanks to the auto timer on my Nikon D40 I was able to digiscope a Nashville warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler on the frames.

Based on the holes in the frame it looked like the warblers were going for dead bees.  Some of the frames had capped larvae that never hatched, so I figured the warblers were after the protein of old squishy non-hatched larvae.  We had more frames of dead larvae and honey in the garage so I set more out.  I figured the warblers could clean out the larvae and the bees could clean out the honey and help get a head start on their hives for the season.

The next morning when I went out for some birding, I checked the frames, they were covered in warblers.  Above are two yellow-rumped warblers and one Nashville warbler.  These were a small cross-section of about two dozen warblers waiting in line to feed off of my old beehive frames.  There were at least four species in the flock, the above two and pine warblers and orange-crowned.  I didn't get photos of the other two species, but got plenty of shots of the feeding frenzy.

Here are four warblers on one frame.  As I took pictures and watched them feed, it became clear that old bee larvae was not the only sustenance they were after.  They were very certainly eating honey.  I had a moment of panic...should birds be eating honey?  Honeybees are a fairly new species to North America, they came over with the early settlers.  Warblers did not evolve with honeybees.  Could they safely process honey and still migrate?

As I watched them I noticed that they tugged and chipped at wax foundation too.  Is that safe?  I've seen honeybees that have built comb out in the open on a bare branch, I remember seeing some abandon ones in Arizona and Texas...perhaps warblers have had exposure to this.

The air was so cold and their food scarce, I didn't want to take this source of food away if they were still trying to load up for their journey north.  I couldn't find anything about it on the Internet other than not using honey as a means to make nectar.  I wanted to plant myself in front of the frames all day long see how many species of warbler would come in but I had to go.

I also noted that as the sun got higher in the sky and our honeybees became more active, the bees didn't tolerate the warblers in close proximity and chased them off.  A few warblers still came in for the bounty but not four on a frame like at dawn.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing but if the warblers figured honey out, no doubt other birds will and I don't know if they should.  We already had one casualty of a tufted titmouse getting covered in honey while it explored some of our dead beehives.  I'm going to have to seek out an avian nutritionist to find out if this is a safe thing to offer birds.  If it is, this may be a new way to enjoy birds and bees and a new product to offer at bird stores.

2011 Bee Installation Part 2

This is Kelly McCullough, he came out with us to help hive four more packages of bees on Sunday.  His family kept bees when he was kid and I have to say, he's the first person I've ever seen get almost every single bee out of the travel cage.  I can't remember if it was in the comments or on Twitter, but they wanted to know how the bees got into the travel crate.  They were sucked out by vaccuum and put into the crate with a new queen in a cage.  It's pretty incredible when you think about all the "trauma" these bees have been through.

Happily chugging along with a queen in a hive in sunny California (or Texas or some other warm state).  Suddenly a big sucky beast invades their home, transports them into a darkness and then a cage.  They've lost their queen pheromone, the guiding force they've come to trust and are now in cage with thousands of other bees, suddenly a new queen pheromone works its way to them but they are trapped in a cage with no comb.  They have food, but just carbs, no protein.  Then they are shipped and jostled to colder parts of the country, colder than they have ever experienced in their lives.  A bit more jarring and tossing (akin to a huge earthquake and they are dropped into a mostly empty box.  A sense of duty based on age tells them to evaluate the home, explore the region and build.

Pretty resilient and pretty cool when you think about it and completely understandable that some bees look exhausted when they arrive.

The hiving of the four new packages went fairly well.  It's interesting to me that at this point, I'm happy to fall into naturalist/educator mode for installing bee packages.  I think having done just about all of them since the first year that I enjoy letting anyone else who wants to hive a package a go and be there for moral support and help getting queen cages open.  Lorraine has been there for most but still has some understandable nervousness since she had an unfortunate wasp incident as a kid.  Phobias are hard to conquer, but she still goes for it.  Kelly got a video of her installation and you can view it on YouTube.  It's kind of like watching some odd family therapy.

After all the new bees were installed Non Birding Bill and Kelly helped me check on the Russian bees we hived earlier in the week.  If you recall, there was concern that one of the queens was dead on arrival so Mr. Neil and Lorraine ordered a replacement.  Since that queen would be totally new to the hive, she would have to stay in her cage for a few days for the workers to absorb her pheromone.  Mr. Neil put her in on Thursday to give the workers a chance to get used to her.  Non Birding Bill checked it the next day and said, "She's already out."

That was too soon, I thought bees not used to the new queen could kill her.  But I figured we hope for the best and deal with this later.  When we were checking that hive on Sunday, we immediately found the queen because she's marked with a white dot:

See the reddish large bee in the center with the white dot, that's the queen.  Then NBB said, "Hey, the queen I saw had a much smaller dot.  I gave Kelly this frame to hold while I searched for a second queen on a different frame.

"There she is," NBB said noting the second queen (she's on the right).  We have 2 queens in 1 hive (insert sad trombone here).  Not sure what we're going to do about this.  I was trying to formulate a plan and NBB said, "Don't do anything, let the bees sort it out.  Every time we try to help, we screw them up and the hive fails.  Leave it alone."

Sage advice indeed.

I know there are systems for 2 queen colonies, but that's two well built colonies not two new ones.  If the queens find each other, they will fight to the death.  However, both could die in the fight.  We put the hive back together and I put a frame between the two queens.  Maybe if they survive the next couple of weeks we could try and set up something like this.  I have to admit that if one queen dies, I'll feel bad for getting them in this situation.  Ah beekeeping, you always leave me with more questions than answers.

Honey Covered Titmouse

  This is a problem that only I could have.

Non Birding Bill and I had one of those exciting married people dates: did a little dinner, sorted some tax receipts, pretty much got down last night.  While we were enjoying some sushi, my phone went off and I noticed the number was from Mr. Neil's housekeeper, Merry.  She rarely calls unless there's a bird emergency, so I picked up.  Her daughter Alicia walks Mr. Neil's dogs in the evening and when she arrived, she found a honey covered bird unable to fly on the ground.  Merry sent this photo:

Oh no!  A honey covered tufted titmouse!  How the heck did that happen?  I felt so guilty, it was as if the 2 loves of my life, birding and beekeeping found out about each other and got into a fight.  I advised Merry to do what wildlife rehabbers do with oiled birds, use luke warm water and a little bit of Dawn Detergent and gently was off the feathers.  I also asked her to check if it was banded (it was not).

So, she took to gently cleansing the feathers of the sticky bird, even carefully using a cotton swab to get the feathers around the face clean.  Laura Erickson has had experiencing cleaning a red-breasted nuthatch that got caught in some grape jelly and she warned that it might take a few washings to get the bird totally honey-free.

I told Merry the bird would need a warm, dark and dry place to settle, dry out and preen its feathers. I mentioned that titmice like suet, peanuts and sunflowers too, so she put some peanut suet in the cage, covered it and let the bird be til morning.  I tried to puzzle how this would happen.

None of our hives survived the winter and it's been a group effort of the groundskeeper, Hans gathering the hives and all of us taking a turn at extracting the remaining honey before too many deer mice move into the empty hives and eat what the bees did not.  Some of the hives have been left outside the house to await extraction.  What would make a tufted titmouse explore the hives?  They are not honey eaters.  I wondered if our 50 degree weather brought out some early spring insects and they were attracted to the honey, which in turn attracted the titmouse?

I also recalled last fall setting out frames that were covered in wax moth larvae for the chickadees and titmice to eat.  Did this bird recognize the frames as a source of larvae?  It could have hopped into the open box inspecting the frames, only to come out covered in honey and unable to fly?

Thank goodness we didn't have any active hives.  With that warm weather, the bees would have been out and would have gone to the titmouse to clean off the honey.  The titmouse would have struggled, causing them to sting...ew, don't even want to think about that.

When Hans found out, he went back to the house last night and moved and covered the open brood boxes so no other birds would make the same mistake as the titmouse.

I got a text this morning that the titmouse was dry and feisty so it was immediately released back to the yard, hopefully a bit wiser.  Thank goodness Alicia found the bird, had it been left out, it probably would've succumbed to the chilly air. It's sticky feathers wouldn't have been able to maintain a proper temperature in the cold night air.  No doubt a raccoon would have found it and ate too.

Who knew beekeeping would be hazardous to birds?  Now Merry has another talent to add to her resume: honey extraction from titmouse feathers.

Let's Get Weird With Honey

Here is a curious article about an interesting hurdle faced by some urban beekeepers in Brooklyn...their honey is turning out bright red!  Guess what the culprit is: Red Dye #40 from Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company.  So people who want hives in the neighborhood to contribute to the whole slow foods/locally grown/organic/natural movement are being betrayed by bees who cannot resist heavy syrup no matter how many native nectar rich plants are around.

Speaking of weird honey, Lorraine and I finally got around to putting some of our extracted honey into jars.  Kind of fascinated by our honey colors this year.  We usually only have light colored honey, but this year we have both light and dark.  Both taste fabulous, the darker honey is a bit more...rich in flavor, while the light is delicate and subtle in its sweetness.

I was not having the best day.  A project I have been working on for some time received a setback yesterday.  Every time I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with this project, I get the rug yanked out from under me.  This time it's a financial setback on the project. Lorraine and I had planned on bottling honey today, but when I saw the snow and ice as I got out of bed this morning, I texted Lorraine that I was bad company and decided to stay home to brood a bit about my problem.  She called and said, "No, that's not what you need to do, you need to come out here and help me with the honey and talk."

Well...how could I argue with that?

We have some honey that has been drained from comb and then we have comb with honey called Ross Rounds.  Both are safe for human consumption.  We decided to get a little arty with our bottling and put chunks of wax and comb honey in our jars.  We'd then pour extracted honey over it.  It looked cool and it gives our friends the chance to try comb honey if they want but still get plenty of the straight liquid variety.  As we admired how cool the wax comb looked in the jars...we wondered what else we could put in there...like the above Buddah.  We were quite pleased with the results and wondered how far we could go with this madness.

I noticed a Weeping Angel figurine and told Lorriane that I wished we could try that.  She said, "It's my figurine, let's do it."

The affect was cool and terrifying.  If you have seen the Doctor Who episode, you know why this is the most terrifying and dangerous honey ever.  If not...well...I guess Lorraine and I seem a little weird, but that's okay.

The shenanigans helped put my project in perspective.  I'm always thrilled to rediscover that no matter what life throws at me on a long project, friends and beekeeping are a great escape.

Drunk bees!

Hello all, NBB here. Yesterday was a pretty shining example of why, three (?) years into this process, I'm still the junior beekeeping assistant, the Barney Fife of the apiary world.

To get everyone up to speed: the bees needed to be fed, Sharon has to work, Neil is out of town, Hans is out of town, and Lorraine is sick as a dog. Which left me. Now, the last time I was sent off alone to check on the bees it was a comedy of errors, if by "comedy" you mean "it's funny because it happened to someone else."

This mission, however, was a simple one: feed the bees. I didn't have to switch boxes, combine any hives, or search for the queen. Just feed the bees by mixing sugar and water in a pail, then add the pail to the hive. A job so simple, an idiot could do it.

Which is why they sent me.

It was a cold day, about 44°, which meant the hives would be less active, they tend to stay inside and cluster for warmth. I got there in plenty of time, figuring to take about an hour to make the sugar water solution. Small problem:

The sugar, having been left in the garage all summer, was not so much as “easy pour” as more of a “solid brick.” After chipping away at the bags, I was able to produce several manageable chunks and also a large mess. So after about an hour I had five pails full of sugar water.

Too bad we have six beehives. Sigh... what can I say? Math is hard! Back to the house to make another pail, then back down to the hives.

Amazing, the bees were still alive by the time I got to them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsJIUgrF0ws[/youtube]

We didn’t get as much honey as we were expecting this year. I wonder if the wetness of the season had something to do with this, or the fact that we had eight hives competing for pollen rather than two.

Regardless, the remaining hives seemed full. And thirsty...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAv3TBxv7-Y[/youtube]

For reasons that escape me now, I had to reopen one of the hives after I put the pail on. I noticed one of the bees had gotten splashed with the sugar water, making her the most popular girl at the dance.

Her wings were sparkling.

We’re heading towards the end of bee season. Soon we’ll be taking the hives down to two or three brood boxes (filled with honey, which the bees will eat over the winter). We’ll wrap the hives in insulation, put the entrance reducers on (to keep out mice and other pests that would make a honey-filled box a winter home), and that’ll be that. We’ll sneak down in the winter and press our ears to the side to make sure they’re alive, dreaming whatever winter dreams bees have.

Honey & Swollen Dog

It's that special time of year when Lorraine extracts a little early honey, follows the strict codes, guidelines and fees of the county fair and submits it for approval.  I know we aren't the only ones entering honey because fellow beekeepers in the same county made some noise when we won last year that they intended to "serve us" and that this year it was "on" and we had better "bring it."

Bring it we did and got the blue ribbon!  That now makes three years in a row for extracted honey and two years in a row for comb honey.  Our bees rule!

Above is Storm of Paul & Storm sampling comb honey fresh from the hive earlier this summer.  I know our honey awesome and when friends visit and we force them to partake of the honey they also agree it is awesome.  But it is so nice to get the county officials behind you who say, "Indeed, mighty fine honey you got there, ma'am!"

An individual who is probably not as impressed with this victory is Lola.

If you missed it on Twitter, Mr. Neil's puppy got nailed by the bees.  We took her to the hive and didn't have any idea she had been stung.  When the other dog Cabal has been stung--you know.  He yelps, runs and if bees follow him, he tries to fight them by snapping wildly.  For the most part, the dogs understand to stay away, but here and there they get stung.  Interesting thing though about Lola was that we never heard any yelping at all.  When we were back at the house, I noticed that she kept wiping her face with her paws.  I asked Mr. Neil, "What's that all about?"

"Don't know," he said.  "Dog dream?"

She continued to rub her face against her paws and when she paused, I thought her eye looked swollen.  We immediately went to her to check that no stingers have been left behind.  I think we found where she was stung, but it looked like the stinger was gone.  Her face was so itchy, she rubbed it against anything she came in contact with: paws, carpeting, grass, rear ends--you name it.

Here you can really see the swelling, Mr. Neil said she looked like a cartoon dog.  He checked out what we could do to help the poor thing--turns out over the counter antihistamine medication.

Here's what Lola should look like for comparison.  Her swelling went down a few hours after Mr. Neil gave her some meds. Swelling is normal for bee stings.  Many people think that they have a fatal allergy to bees when they swell up from a sting.  That's a normal reaction.  When you really want to worry is when you itch in weird places.  If you get stung on the hand and soon after the bottoms of your feet or armpits are itchy--that's a sign of a fatal allergy and you should hightail it to the emergency room ASAP.

This is my favorite photo with a Hans inspired caption.  Poor Lola, she looks like she's wondering why her nose is so big.  That's got to be weird for a dog that uses smell the way we use sight.

Some good with the bad.  Glad Lola is better and happy that our bees still reign supreme in the county.

Mr. Neil Demonstrates Proper Smoker Tecniques

One of the irritations I have with beekeeping and have mentioned more than once is that the equipment rarely comes with instructions and if it does, you need a magic elf from the fiery marshes of Bee Vale to decipher it.  We used to jam pack our smoker with every type of natural fiber, light it with a brulee torch and hope for the best.  But Mr. Neil found an article in Bee Culture on lighting a smoker and we thought we'd make a demo video...on the off chance some poor person is like us and thinks they need a new smoker. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKyd4_LvXB0[/youtube]

And for those new to the blog, you use a smoker around your beehives to misdirect their attention.  They smell wood smoke and worry there might be a forest fire.  They focus on eating honey (not the giant things rearranging their home) in case there is an actual forest fire and they need to abandon the hive with only enough food they can carry in their tiny bodies.  Some beekeepers say they would rather work a hive with a smoker and no bee suit rather than the other way around.

You can also use the smell of the smoker to mask the bee pheromone released with a sting.  The pheromone communicates to nearby bee, "Hey, something bad is here, sting it!"  The smoke will mask that and prevent further stings.