A Skunk In The Beehives?

Don't forget, there's a FABULOUS new shirt available in the Birdchick Store. As Ian and Margery would say: "Kids in Carpool Alert"--parents who read the blog with kids may want to wait until reading alone to check it out. View the shirt here.

I could not escape bees while in North Dakota--not that I really want to. We don't want to overly inspect the hives, so they can get down to comb construction and honey production. We've been giving our girls space and room to grow and I've missed them.

We saw beehives all over in North Dakota, we passed several. I'm not sure all were permanent residents. Teageeare, a regular reader, attended the Potholes and Prairie Festival and told me about a flatbed truck she saw covered in beehives resting in town. She wanted to get closer and inspect it, but her husband sensibly kept her away--sounds like a woman after my own heart.

Also, while out on the prairie, I got a call from Mr. Neil about our girls. So far, all of us have been able to meander very close to the hives without our bee suits when not inspecting the hives and the girls go about their business. Mr. Neil and Cabal (the new dog) have been able to run through and I've been watching indigo buntings and digiscoping bobolinks without any trouble. That's now all over.

Mr. Neil and Cabal were taking their normal jaunt around the property and as they approached the hives, the workers started bumping into them. They were still very far away, but the girls were warning they were about to sting. Mr. Neil looked down and found one bee trying to sting his shirt--the stinger had not penetrated skin, but she was releasing warning pheromone and several bees were coming to her spot to join in the attack. He flicked her off and both very sensibly fled the area.

I have a suspicion that a skunk has been attacking our hives (and not just because of Cabal getting sprayed). The instructors in our beekeeping class warned that we would know without a doubt that a skunk had visited because of the change in personality of our hives. One day, our girls would be friendly and docile, but the next day they would be irritable and short tempered. Skunks come to the hive at night and slap the entrance around irritating the workers. The bees come out to attack the intruder, which is what the skunk wants--it wants to eat the bees and the stings don't seem to bother them. So, now all of our girls are irritated and on the defensive. And we are staying well away from the hives unless in full bee suit armor.

I'm going to get some carpet tacking and put that outside the hive (hopefully on Thursday), it's supposed to keep the skunk away--also if anyone has any skunk prevention tips, I sure would appreciate any advice.

More North Dakota Updates

We digiscoped the crap out of our field trip today. Today's birding was so awesome that it totally made up for the crap weather on Thursday. I have so many photos to sort through that the updates are going to be pretty darned cool!

I'm currently listening to Bill Thompson talking about birding. He just made a crack about my karaoke ability. For those who have read about their mad song stylings and have always wanted to hear them, here is a taste:

They were the music last night during the wine tasting at the festival. I shouted a request that they sing Blister in the Sun...and they did! They sound good.

Oh, more bee keeping posts are coming--don't fret bee fans, I'll be checking the hives next week. Also, we are now offering very cool bee t-shirts. BE WARNED--these are a little more PG-13 than the other shirts. So, parents who read the blog with your kids, may want to check them out alone first. Non Birding Bill came up with it, I died laughing when he showed it to me. I was hesitant to offer it, but everyone we have shown the design loves it and insists we offer it. So, here is the bee shirt.

Memorial Day Bee Update

The bees are plugging along!

Here's a photo from the back side of one of our frames. You can see some of the pollen stored on the other side. Such beautiful colors.

During our last visit to the hives, we had added another brood box because the bottom brood boxes were about 80 percent full. The Olga hive was a full 80% filled and Kitty was closer to 75% filled but we added another box to her as well. When we checked on Olga, she had barely begun to draw out any comb whatsoever in the new brood box. Kitty who was a little behind Olga and filled up one full frame already and was well on her way to filling the second. I wonder why the shift production?

Both hives were feeling less tolerant of us today. Above is Lorraine scraping off some irregular comb, while Non Birding Bill smokes the bees. (Mr. Neil was not around today, so we made sure to document the adventure). A smoker is one of the most important pieces of beekeeping equipment you'll need. My bee instructors said that they would rather visit a hive without a bee suit than without a smoker.

Here is a video demonstrating "smoking the bees". Watch what happens when NBB puffs some smoke on the workers:

Did you see the workers go down? The smoke makes the bees think that there is a forest fire and instinct tells them to go down and eat honey, don't bother to try and drive out the big thing taking apart your hive. Now is not the time to fool with that.

Above is a photo of the bees eating the honey. If you look closely, you can see their little tongues in the cells lapping it up. This was a part of some burr comb that didn't have any eggs or larvae in it, so we took it out.

What's interesting is that my bee instructors told us that if we got stung, to immediately smoke the area. When a bee stings you, it releases a pheromone to get other bees to come and attack. If you puff smoke on it, the smell of the smoke masks the pheromone. While working with the Olga hive, I saw a bee sting my glove--I didn't feel it, but I saw what happened--as soon as the stinger went in, five bees were on my glove in a split second. I had NBB puff my glove and all but the stinging bee left the glove. The stinging bee did get loose and I didn't see that she left her stinger--I wonder if she survived?

Brood has definitely hatched! We actually found some drones today. In the above photo you can see one of them, he's circled--you'll notice his wide, blunt rear end. Drones are the result of an unfertilized egg laid by the queen. They require larger cells than the female larvae in which to pupate. Drones pretty much eat honey and make flights out of the hive to find other queens to mate with. Once they mate with a queen they die. They don't help build comb or gather pollen or make honey. Some people get rid of drone cells--who needs 'em, but I'm hoping some of our hygenic drone genes make it out to other queens and maybe slow down the verroa mite in the US bee population.

On our last inspection we found Queen Olga but not Queen Kitty. This time we did find Queen Kitty, that's her circled above looking for cells for egg laying. It was so exciting to watch her in the Kitty hive as she was crawling over a clean frame of comb which two weeks ago was chock full of capped brood and now it was empty since our brood had hatched. Whoot!

And like a proud mom, I have a video of both Queen Olga and one of the drones:

The grow up and move so fast!

We still have a little bit of funky frame building, but this time it was very minimal in each hive. We've been using a frame spacing tool and that really does seem to be help the situation. It's not as easy to use as it looks, the propolis keeps things a bit sticky and I feel like I'm really wearing out my welcome with the girls--they start bumping our helmet and that's the final warning before they sting.

After we finished the Kitty Hive, the bees were all over in the air. I thought I would lay on the ground and get a video of the bees flying above us. It's just hypnotic:

Did you happen to notice NBB saying "Are we done yet?" That was a running theme today. The bees were anxious to have us away from the hives and NBB doesn't want to risk any of them getting killed by stinging us to get us to leave--gotta love that guy.

Anyway, I think this is my favorite video, you'll see why at the end of it...

Again, did you hear NBB, "Are you done?" My little broken record! We have one more video, but I'm having trouble getting it to upload properly. Hopefully we can get that up in the next day or so.

Bee Movies...Har Har

We are getting a ton of strong thunderstorms in our neck of the woods. I'll check the weather map and as soon as we get suited up to check the hives, a storm begins to rumble from the west.

Today we made a mad dash to the hive but as soon as we opened the top of Olga, it began to pour down rain. We decided to let building bees draw out comb. I did take a couple of videos with the camera to give some audio and visual impressions of our hives.

Below is a 12 second video of bees entering the Kitty hive:

Below is a video of bees returning right before storm. It's about 30 seconds long. Right about second 13 you'll see one poor girl bounce off--not as smooth at landing as some of the others.

And finally is a video from a week and a half ago when Non Birding Bill was out with us. We had top open of the entrance reducers, so NBB is widening Olga's entrance. Right at the beginning you'll see a forager return with large baskets of pollen on her back legs.

Speaking of NBB, he has some photos up at his blog from when he was in high school in Ohio and from when I was in high school in Indiana. Would we have dated if we knew each other back then? Warning: there's some big hair in those photos.

Belated Bee Report: Unregulated Comb Construction

QUICK NOTE: As of the posting of this entry, no one has correctly guessed the id of the bird in this entry...although the guesses are getting VERY close.

"I disapprove of being any part of your mad pollination schemes!"

I can't believe it! I got Non Birding Bill out to the hives! There he is standing next to the Olga hive, right before he opened up her entrance reducer. I have to say, he looks mighty cute in the bee suit. The suits were built for men and the guys look kinda sexy in them. Lorraine and I tend to look more like Oompa Loompas with the suits on. Sigh. But, I'd rather risk looking like a chocolate factory worker than getting stung.

Here's a big pile of Kitty bees. Saturday, was about checking comb construction and adding another brood box. The Olga bees had filled 80% of the frames with drawn out comb, which meant it was time to add another box for them to build even more comb. I would say that Olga is a full frame ahead of Kitty, but Kitty has some of her own weirdness going on that may in fact put her ahead of Olga.

Olga continues her odd comb construction. This particular frame appeared to have waves of comb built across it as opposed to a flat layer of comb across the frame. I didn't want to kill any more brood than I needed to, so left this odd construction. I'm sure this is going to bite me on the butt later this summer, but the girls are working on hatching the first brood and I think that's more important to let the odd comb go as opposed to killing off brood. Besides, this is a learning summer for me.

We found Queen Olga with very little effort this time. She was on one of the outer frames with fresh honey in it, looking for cells to lay her eggs.

Kitty has gone from being a textbook hive, to making some funky comb like Olga. As soon as we opened the top, we could see the workers placing comb on the tops of the frames. I hate to discourage creativity, but we scarped it off since there weren't any eggs or larvae inside it.

The Kitty bees weren't doing the waves of comb like Olga, but have made their comb in layers. Instead of drawing up the comb from the frame's wax base, they appear to have made a layer on top of the frame and are tunneling between the frame and newly made comb. We weren't able to find the queen, but I'm sure she was running around between the layers and we couldn't see her. We did see several eggs which implied that she was alive and healthy. Even though Olga has filled out more frames, I wonder if Kitty is actually ahead, since she appears to be doubling up each frame?

If anyone has experience with this or advice, I sure would love to hear it.

As we were checking the Kitty hive, the oddest thing happened--a plane crashed. Seriously! We heard a crashing in the trees right overhead, we all looked up and saw what at first looked like a large branch falling to the ground.

It turned out to be a radio controlled plane falling to the ground. We didn't hear it fly overhead, but heard it landing in the trees. At first we weren't sure if it had been in the tree for a few days and finally fell or if it flew over and crashed in the tops of the trees while we were working. After about 10 minutes, the plane's owners arrived. I chuckled at the idea of them coming to look for the plane if we had not been there, only to find it behind two beehives.

As if the plane crash weren't weird enough, check out the name on the plane: Yellow Bee. Ooooooo. We're getting an exorcist and this time I mean it (NBB at least will get that reference).

As we were adding another brood box to Kitty, we couldn't help but notice all the foragers coming back loaded up with pollen. It's interesting to see the distinct colors based on the type of flower they were gathering from. Some have orange colored pollen baskets, some bright yellow.

Here is a worker that I affectionately refer to as thunder thighs--she's an over achiever when it comes to gathering pollen. How did she fly back with that much weight? I don't know, but I sure am proud of this little Kitty bee.

So, now we leave our bees alone to create more worker bees, fill in the frames of the second brood box and to gather nectar and pollen. It will be at least another week until I check on them again. I hope they do well.

Clan Apis

If you are looking for a delightful book to teach you the basics of honeybee natural history, then Clan Apis by Jay Hosler is for you! This is a great book! Mr. Neil recommended it to me, actually insisted that I read it. I tried to tell him that I'm not one for the comic books but he assured me that this was very accurate and just a wonderful read. I was skeptical but thumbed through it in his presence to placate him. Before I knew it, I was hooked.

Hosler has a cheeky sense of humor about the bees but at the same time gives you all the facts about their life cycle and behaviors. This book is great for kids, but adults will love the humor. One of my favorite parts is when the hive decides to swarm (was that a spoiler?) and starts to carry off the queen. As the workers are toting her away, she exclaims, "Great Googaly Moogaly!"--points for use of that phrase! AND! Points for:

...inserting a pileated woodpecker drawn accurately and doing what woodpeckers do. Boy, I hope one of these boys doesn't decide to go after our hives.

Anyway--this is a great read and a great gift. Go forth, find it, buy it (or check it out of a library) and read it. Ah, if only birders could do comics like this...maybe I will.

Bee Report - Olga on Track

The heavens opened up and shone down upon our industrious beehives and made the larvae to sparkle! And it was good. Note the twinkling bee larvae in the above photo? That's gotta be a good omen.

Well, we learned some interesting lessons at the bee hives today. Number 1 - you sweat in all kinds of places when wearing a bee suit in upper eighty degree temperatures while standing in bright sunlight. Hoo wee! Number 2 - Olga is coming along rather splendidly!

She had about 70% of her frames drawn out with comb! The above photo is one of the center frames that we checked last week that had eggs in it. Now the eggs are larvae and the workers are capping them so they can pupate in peace. You wouldn't believe how heavy a frame full of drawn out comb, brood, and honey feels! This is what a good frame of brood looks like according to the books and classes--what do you know, Olga is finally agreeing with the books--and exceeding Kitty's hive in comb construction. Kitty was a full two frames short of the Olga hive.

That's not to say that Olga still isn't showing her individuality. There is some unique comb construction going on, but I believe that is more my fault for not spacing the frames properly. Above is an example of some of the funky comb from Olga's hive. It's elevated and curled upon itself. They Kitty hive had a little of this as well, but not to the degree of the Olga hive.

For some of the comb, we were able to press down onto the frame, but some of it was out so far out, I had to take it off. I felt a pang of guilt because larvae was inside some of the cells--but it had to be done to insure proper frame spacing in the future. There was also some honey mixed in with the larvae from the removed comb that dripped onto my palm. Mr. Neil, Lorraine, and I took a taste. It had honey flavor, not full honey but the potential for flavorful greatness is there. I felt a surge of pride in our girls.

Here's another shot of some uncapped brood. This larvae will probably be capped off within the next day or two. Imagine, two weeks from now, those gelatinous, squirmy blobs will be just like their sisters above. We did not see either queen today, but we did see lots of eggs in both hives meaning both queens were there, but doing a good job of evading our watchful (albeit sweat covered) gazes.

Both hives are taking advantage of the nectar feeder and of the pollen patties. Kitty's hive has gone into propolis overdrive. The flat things in the above photo are the pollen patties and the little bits of tan granules around it are propolis. It's starting to get gooey ad sticky in the hot weather. I have a feeling it's gonna get messy later this summer in the Kitty Hive.

Here's a photo of the workers at the Kitty hive entrance. Notice the yellow around the hole--that's pollen that has fallen off and collected from returning worker bees. It's interesting to observe the more territorial behaviors today. With the Olga hive, we have a very limited time before we wear out our welcome. They start off quiet, but within five minutes, they start bumping our head masks, warning they are about to sting. The buzzing gets more agitated as well. Kitty gives us a bit more time before warning us off. They are an easy going kingdom--to a point. When they've had enough, they get down to the business of driving you out.

Once our frames in our brood boxes are 80% full, it's time to stack another brood box on there. With they way Olga was working today, I might do that this Saturday. For now, cap away girls, cap away.

New Bee Hives After One Week

Today, Lorraine, Mr. Neil and I all headed out to open our hives (Kitty and Olga) and see if the bees had drawn out comb and if the queens started laying eggs. Lorraine has been keeping a dutiful watch on the nectar situation and the Olga hive has not been eating much of the nectar or the pollen patty. In fact, that hive is very quiet and not nearly as active as the Kitty hive. Last night we discussed the possibility that Queen Olga may be failing (infertile) or had been inadvertently killed during installation. We braced ourselves for the possibility of re queening.

We decided to inspect the Kitty hive first. After all, she has been performing by the book and wouldn't it be best to inspect the hive that will give us confidence before dealing with the problem hive? Bees were busily flying in and out of the Kitty hive and a happy humming came from inside. Opening the roof revealed bees covering the nectar pail and the pollen patty. Mr. Neil puffed some smoke to calm our girls while I exposed the frames on the inside. As expected, they were congregated on the center frames. The moment of truth arrived, time to find drawn out comb, eggs, and hopefully Queen Kitty.

Lorraine held up a frame COVERED in worker bees. How in the world could we find a queen in that swirling mass of bees? They were tending the comb, building it, filing it with nectar. They had made some funky comb that stuck out--my fault for not spacing the frames a bit better, but all looked right with this frame. A few more frames in, we did find some eggs.

And then lo and behold, we found Queen Kitty! Are you able to see Queen Kitty? She is in the lower right hand corner, is all black and her abdomen sticks out well past the end of her wings--Kitty got back! The hive I helped out with last year had a queen who was pretty much the same color as the workers, but she was larger. It was hard to find her among the workers and drones. With her big, black, beautiful abdomen, Kitty sticks out and is easy to find.

As we closed the hive back up and replaced the food, we noticed all the foragers coming back laden with pollen. Here is one of the Kitty workers above with a very full pollen basket on her back leg.

We then headed over to check on the Olga hive. There was not much activity of foragers heading out, although we did notice one of the Kitty bees being denied entrance to the Olga hive. We can tell a difference between the two--Kitty bees are a pretty reddish-tan and the Olga bees are much darker. We opened the top and there was an absence of the loud humming like there was at the Kitty hive. This did not bode well. If the queen was infertile, we would find drone cells--drones (male bees) come from unfertilized eggs. They are in larger cells and really don't do much for the colony. They do not help build comb, all they do is eat honey and bide their time until they can fly out and find some other queen to fertilize. If the queen was dead, then we would find no eggs.

The workers are supposed to start building the comb on the center frames. There we no bees on the center frames, they all congregated to one side and there looked to be quite a few bees inside. We pulled out a frame and found it chock full of workers drawing out comb. That was a good sign, but could we find eggs?

I blew on the frame, some bees cleared and will you look at that, we found eggs! Look at the some of the empty cells in the above photo. You should see what looks like super tiny grains of rice--those are bee eggs (there are four visible)! Whoot! That was a good sign there was a queen alive. We still needed to look for Queen Olga, because if a queen is dead, sometimes workers will lay infertile eggs.

We took out another frame and there she was, a very active and healthy Queen Olga (right in the middle of the above photo--you can just see her black abdomen). What a relief--the Olga bees are doing just fine--albeit making comb in an unusual place--one one side of the hive and not in the center. They had also cleaned out all the dead workers on the floor from last week too--all good. Apparently, these bees are not going to go by the book (I guess they didn't read it). I wonder where they have been getting nectar? They still haven't been eating much that we have provided and they show absolutely no interest in the pollen patty. Mr. Neil got a copy of a book of bees by Sue Hubbell and she does not use the pollen patties and her bees are just fine. She's in a different part of the country than we are, but I think the Olga bees like her way of beekeeping and want to do this on their own, without too much of our help. We moved the frames with comb and eggs towards the center and closed Olga back up.

Before I left to go home, Lorraine pointed out a honeybee on a dandelion near the house. The bee was busy gathering lots of pollen and nectar. She was lighter in color which makes her a Kitty bee. Now we need to let our girls get down to work, tending the nursery and drawing out comb. The next few weeks will be tough, no new bees will come in until the eggs hatch--21 days after being laid. We'll have a decrease of workers until the larvae hatch and the current workers need to focus on construction.

We'll check on them next week.

UPDATE: Here's an entry from Mr. Neil about our bee adventure--and you can see him white. We call it the Negative Neil.

Quick Bee Update

The Fabulous Lorraine has been keeping an eye on the hives while I was out of town and I am so grateful. We're supposed to leave them alone to do their own thing for the first 7 - 10 days after installing them, but I was worried since we were having problems with the Olga hive. So, Lorraine just checked the food and sure enough, the Olga bees quit eating the nectar again and hadn't touched the pollen patty. Lorraine and Mr. Neil made up some new food and today they appear to be eating normally.

Today, Lorraine sent over this photo of one of the bees right outside the house foraging on some dandelions. She's also seen some of the honey bees on the flowering plum tree and soon they should find the flowering cherry tree. I'll check the hives on Wednesday to see if they have drawn out comb and if I can find any eggs. Go, girls, go!