Hello Bee Sting, Goodbye Dignity

It was inevitable. Working with bees I had to be stung sooner or later. I've been kind of dreading it, but I thought it was more the anticipation of the sting as opposed to the sting itself. I learned many lessons today, one being that the anticipation of the sting is not worse that the sting itself. The sting HURTS. One week, I'm hand feeding my bees. The next week, they're stinging me. Women!

So, we have this madcap plan to rid Mr. Neil's woods of invasive exotic plants like buckthorn and garlic mustard and replace it with (mostly) native or at least bird and bee friendly plants. This is a long term project, but the buckthorn must be taken away--more on this later. Today we began the plan by trying to get some bulbs in the ground that will pop up in early spring to aid the bees with pollen and nectar gathering. We got some daffodil, hyacinth, and crocus bulbs on sale and started putting them around the gardens. I had the brilliant idea of planting the bulbs near some of the hives. This wasn't too crazy of an idea, earlier this week I planted some bee friendly trees (red osier dogwood, lilac, and pussy willow). The cool weather has slowed them down a bit, and as along as I kept a good ten feet from the hives, they were okay with our digging.

I had been out the hives earlier today--that's where most of these photos came from. I was feeding Kitty and just checking on Olga. For some reason, the bees were really interested in crawling all over my suit. I thought I must have spilled some home made nectar on my bee suit, but in hindsight, I wondering if they had it in for me from the get go? Especially that one on the far left in the above photo. This little pack of Olga bees looks like they are plotting against. But that one on the end, she has it in for me, she wants to do the stingin'.

I went out with Cabal and began planting my bulbs. It was later in the afternoon and the foraging bees were heading back to the hive. I noticed that I was working under the bee super highway, the spot where bees from both hives descend in the area and then split to go to their respective hives. I figured that if I kept bent over and low to the ground, all should go well and it did.

Then my cell phone rang, it was my sister Terri. I told her that I was standing between the hives, she was honored. I told her that I was sans bee suit and she was really impressed. I continued planting bulbs while on the phone. We caught up and then I noticed Lorraine approaching the bee area. I hung up from my sister and Lorraine paused before coming closer. "Wow, there are a lot of bees." She noted.

I looked over to the Olga hive. In the time I was on the phone with my sister, hundreds of bees had descended on the entrance of the Olga hive. In the instant that I thought I should maybe leave, I felt a prick on my head, just behind my ear, but well into my hair. I realized that I was being stung. It didn't hurt that much in the first instant and I wondered if I really had been stung or if it was a mosquito. Then I heard angry buzzing. Then I felt tremendous pain.

"I've been stung!" I shouted. Lorraine and Cabal looked as though they were about to bolt. "Ow! It's still in my hair! Ow!"

It was still in my hair and I wondered if I was far enough from the hive to avoid attracting the other bees attention? Would they smell the attack pheromone from her sting and come join the party? I couldn't see where I was stung, but I tried to get the bee out, by flicking fingers near the epicenter of the pain. They dying bee buzzed harder and that sent me into a panic and flight mode and I ran towards Lorraine. I'm not sure if when I reached her I tripped and fell or if some twisted response of stop, drop and roll came into play, but I was on the ground thrashing, yelling all the while, "It's still in my hair! I can hear it!"

Lorraine who is at best on uncertain terms with bees to begin with, tried to look at my hair, but my trashing on the ground was making it difficult. I think I had a fear that the bee would get loose from her stinger and get in my ear. I plugged my ear with my finger and rolled over to the other side, giving Lorraine a view of the stung side of my head. Lorraine started stomping on my ponytail. "It's still there!"

It was at this point that Cabal sensed something was amiss and wanted to help. He sensed our panic as I was writhing and squealing on the ground and Lorraine was jumping up and down desperately trying to get a bee out of my hair without actually having to touch it. Cabal wanted to help too, but what could a mere dog do? He barked and whimpered and then began digging at my clothes.

It was at this point I realized the ridiculousness of the situation and just started laughing. Lorraine pulled out the binder holding my ponytail and frantically kept searching for the bee. I could hear more buzzing from my unplugged ear. Every time she would find it, the bee would slip deeper into my hair. It didn't help that the bee was the same color as my hair. Finally, she got it out and then said, "Ah, it's flying at me!"

"That's not the same bee," I warned, "They die after they sting you! That's a different bee!"

She ran. Cabal ran. I ran. We made it to the four runner, but the bees were still chasing us. We took off down the field. We made it a safe distance away, I looked down to my feet and realized I had kicked off my shoes and was barefoot.

"We have to get back to the four runner." Lorraine said nervously, noting how close it was parked to the hives.

"I have to go back to get my shoes and all the planting tools I left behind." I noted.

We got the stuff and headed back to the house. Lorraine asked how my head was. For a moment it would have a warm, almost pleasant sensation, then would come searing pain and then it would go back to a warm sensation again. When we got to the house, Lorraine had to go through my hair to find the sting. She asked where it hurt and the area was getting wider. It didn't help that I have really thick hair to sift through. After some searching, she located the stinger and pulled it out, the waves of throbbing pain ended and I could feel the side of my head and ear swelling slightly. We were both nauseous and had some mint tea to soothe ourselves.

I hope no one in a nearby farm house was watching us from afar.

Ah, dignity, it's sometimes overrated.

Favorite Moment Of Beekeeping Thus Far

I have started giving extra food to the Kitty hive to help her build up her winter stores. She's just not drawing out comb very quickly and by putting a feeder right in the hive, maybe that will give them more time to work instead of flying away. I will say, they are doing one heck of a job of bringing back pollen. Dozens and dozens were flying in with loaded pollen baskets on their back legs--and in several different colors: red, orange, yellow, even white!

What was really cool for me was watching some of the other workers removing the pollen baskets. Here we have a bee with orange pollen. Behind her is a worker removing the pollen. Note the blurry bee in the front of the photo with the yellow baskets?

I like this photo. A forager hanging out and talking to another worker while the pollen baskets are removed.

I just couldn't believe how mellow the Kitty bees were behaving. I was watching everybody getting there baskets removed. I like this because you can see the bee with the baskets raising her wing while the other bee works on her load of pollen. It was at this point I noticed something very interesting. I had set my camera on the inner roof and as I was getting the macro shots, my fingers were splayed out for leverage. That's when I looked over to my pinkie finger and saw this:

That's my gloved pinkie in back. I had some homemade bee nectar that had spilled on my gloves and the bees were licking it off! Check it out:

More bees came over and started crawling up. So, apparently not only will smoking your bees make them mellow, but so will hand feeding them. I was so excited, I threw caution to the wind and removed a glove and dipped my pinkie finger in the nectar solution:

Look at that! She's reaching...almost there...she's reaching for the nectar with both front legs and her tiny tongue:

Contact! Alas, the actual photo of the bee licking the bare finger turned out blurry, but you get the idea. Hands down, I think this is my favorite moment of beekeeping this summer. Having a bee lick homemade nectar from my bare finger. That is something I never thought would ever happen. Ever. And no, I did not get stung.

Honey Harvest

At last we harvested some honey! We are only harvesting from our Olga hive as the Kitty hive is not producing any surplus. Olga has plenty for winter and a little extra for us to enjoy.

I want to thank all the readers who recommended Bee-Quick to me for getting the bees out of the honey supers--it worked GREAT! I have no basis for comparison for what some of the other alternatives smell like, but the aroma of this wasn't so bad. Although, I did learn that the oils will wipe off the little marks on your camera that let you know what setting you are shooting in--oops. What you're supposed to do is spray the Bee-Quick on a fume board.

When I opened the hive and looked on top of one of our supers, I saw many bees milling about amidst sticky propolis. Smoke isn't the most ideal option at this point. Yes, it will cause the bees to move from the top and be mellow, but it also causes them to open up capped honey and eat it--not the desired effect when you want to extract capped honey.

You put the fume board on top of the super that is full of honey that you want to take out. The super is the smaller unpainted box. The fume board looks like the hive roof on top of it. You let it sit there for about two to five minutes.

Here's what that same super looked like after three minutes with the fume board--a ghost town of honey and propolis. Pretty slick. The supers full of honey were very heavy and this time I drove out to the hives instead of walk to make bringing them back to the house easier.

"Why iz I stuck in back wit da beez?"

I don't know why, but I can only hear Cabal talk in an I Can Has Cheezburger voice. There were about three or four bees still milling about in the frames but they left by the time I took the supers back to the four runner, so Cabal was safe. I harvested two supers, a regular cut comb honey kit and our Ross Rounds super.

When I got the Ross Round super into the kitchen, I began to wonder how I was going to get the frames out. There was propolis in every visible nook and cranny. The frames are kind of wedged together as it is so as not to violate bee space, but they literally sealed the deal with the propolis. Perhaps they knew this super was for Mr. Neil and myself and they thought, "Okay, if they're gonna steal the honey, we're gonna make it as difficult as possible."

Never under estimate the power of a hive tool--an essential piece of bee keeping equipment that looks remarkably like your garden variety paint scraper. Anyway, it lives up to the reputation by prying open anything, including propolis packed frames.

I got the frames apart and inside you could see the rounds and excess foundation comb.

I took out the rounds and trimmed away the extra foundation. I place a cap on each end of the round and voila:

comb honey ready to go. It was at this point that I realized that the fantabulous logo that Olga has designed for our honey (we've even named it--Mr. Neil and Beechick's Dangerous Honey) is rectangular and most of our honey is in round form...we're gonna have to rethink the labeling a little bit.

Not all of the honey was capped. This means that it's "not quite ripe." You can still eat it, but it has a little too much moisture in it and it will ferment in storage. Some of this I will put out in a feeder to the Kitty hive to help her build up her winter stores since she is a tad behind Olga but some I will keep for myself. I really like it, it's like some strange chewy candy. The entire cell isn't quite full, so when you bite into the comb, it's a soft textures that pops little bursts of sweetness into your mouth. I think eating fresh comb straight from the frame is now in my top ten foods. And to think, about three years ago, I didn't like the taste of honey. I made fun of friends for eating their "bee vomit" (well it kind of is) but now, with my own bees I've raised with great friends, I can't get enough of it.

Here's the pile of our harvest. Keep in mind that this is just from one hive during our first summer when we weren't expect to get any honey. What will next summer be like when we have two hives in full honey production? Yikes!

And now, I leave you with some bee art that the Olga girls made. This is actually propolis that was surrounding one of the Ross Round frames wedged against the wall of the honey super. That Olga, she is so artistic. And true to form, she was our early on problem child, but the best honey producer in the end.

Holy Crap! Everybody Look Busy!

I can't stop watching and laughing at this video I took of the bees today. I just set my little camera on top of the hive and puffed them with the smoker. The smoker is supposed to mellow them out and make them go down into the hive body and eat honey. But in the video they look like bees on a coffee break and then when the smokers puffs, it's pandemonium as if they suddenly realize, "Holy crap! The human is watching, everybody look busy!"

I apologize to those who can't watch video, I don't have a photo to go with this one. A full bee update will bee up soon.

Har har.

Other Bugs At The Beehive

I've gotten a couple notes that some readers are grossed out by bees and by other bugs. FYI, this post is certainly not for you. We have other bugs in this post, and one photo is slightly gross.

This post is the combination of two days of beeing. Mr. Neil is leaving for a while and I wanted to make sure he got a bee experience before he left. Unsure of what his packing schedule would be, I came out the night before he was to leave so I could be up early and ready to beekeep at a moment's notice. When I arrived, I met up with a woman who is assessing the surrounding woods and will help come up with a plan to get rid of some non native plants and managing the woods for native plants, bees, and wildlife. She mentioned that the bees were very active and loud, crowding at the entrances of their hives.

I zipped up my bee suit and stoked the smoker to go see what was happening. Olga bees were all over and swarming out of the hive. When I was about 50 feet away, you could hear the buzzing--usually you can't. From that angle, when you first approach the hives you can see the bee super highway as they head up over the tops of the trees on their way to look for nectar and pollen. There was a pretty steady stream of bees coming and going. I don' think it was swarming, I think it was four days of constant rain--they wanted out and wanted to gather winter stores. I didn't open the hives, but just took some time to sit at the entrance of each hive and watch the bees coming and going.

The Kitty bees were coming back loaded with pollen of various colors. Note that almost every bee in the above photo is loaded with pollen--I love the neon yellow stuff. Goldenrod is blooming all over, so my guess is they are using that.

Now, look at this one. In the middle is a bee with the neon yellow pollen. But, look in the bottom right hand corner. That bee has pollen that is snow white--where are they getting white pollen? Wish I knew my plants better.

This bee is so loaded with pollen, she's practically dragging it in.

When I came to the Kitty hive, there were some grasshoppers (sometimes called by locusts) hanging out. There are always some on one of the hives and I always wonder what the appeal is. Do they like the buzzing? These appear to be two different species. I've been trying to id them with the Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America. I think it might be a two-striped mermiria but am willing to listen to anyone who knows otherwise.

I think the larger one is a differential grasshopper, but whatever it is, I love the yellow antennae.

When I went over to the Olga hive...I didn't find any life grasshoppers. Apparently, Olga has a lower tolerance for these guys hanging around their hive. This is a dead Carolina grasshopper. When they jump/fly they resemble a mourning cloak butterfly with dark wings and a light stripe. I found this species in my Songs of Insects book (I love this book. Not only does it a beautiful picture book, but i comes with a CD that identifies the buzzy insect songs of late summer early fall--I'm paying way more attention to the number of species I'm hearing now. Sometimes I just let it loop on my iPod while I'm writing, it's great background noise).

One of the really cool things of just hanging outside of the hive was that I noticed some things I had never seen before. The dead grasshopper got my attention, and then I noticed a worker from the Olga hive dragging out another dead worker bee. She was trying to fly it away far from the hive--this is part of they hygienic behavior my bees are bred for. Here's a video of it:

This helps keep the hive clean and healthy. I wondered if the workers had been putting some of this off because of the rain or if I'd never just had a chance to sit and watch them come and go from the inside of the hive. of just I noticed something interesting. I scanned the ground just outside the entrance and found a few lethargic drones and workers. Then I found this:

This is a solitary wasp called a beewolf (some books lump it as one word, some make it two separate words) and it's attacking one of my workers. I wondered if this is a lethargic, dying worker and not one of the stronger ones. They paralyze other stinging insects and take them back as prey for their larvae. You can read more about them here.

The next day Mr. Neil and I went out to check what was going on inside the hives. It was very much the same as last week. Again, I think it's because the workers haven't had a real chance to forage and draw out more comb and produce honey. I'm not too worried about Olga, but I'm going to need to give food to Kitty if she's going to have enough food to supply the colony for the winter.

We tried putting the queen excluder in last week and I think I'm done with them. The queen excluder is supposed to prevent the larger queen from going up into your honey supers to lay eggs. However, it's very obvious that workers are having a tough time passing through the bars too. This poor girl was so wedged, I had to push her out. The beekeeping community seems to be divided on the queen excluder, but myself, I'm done with them. My other option is to do what's called a reversal--which we did do and is kind of a mess, but it's better than watching a bunch of workers stuck in a metal frame.

When we opened the Olga hive, about nine moths flew out from just under the roof. One landed on my hood. One concern you have with beekeeping are wax moths (you know the wax worms you get for fishing or sometimes to feed birds--the larvae can wreak havoc on a beehive). The larvae will eat the beeswax and make cocoons in the frames, generally making a dusty, webby mess. This moth doesn't look like a wax moth to me, I think this was more some other type of moth and they were trying to keep out of the rain. Either way, Olga is a nice strong colony and a strong, healthy colony can keep wax moths out.

I Think The Bees Are On To Us

Just a short update on the old bees. Yesterday, Mr. Neil, Lorraine and I checked on the beehives.

The Olga hive is really expanding with comb honey and I'm very hopeful for what she will do for us next summer. She's got three deep brood boxes (the large ones on the bottom) full of brood and honey for winter, and the top three smaller boxes are the honey supers for us. Two are the Ross Rounds and one is the cut comb honey kit which had some melting issues earlier in the summer and is now full of burr comb. Ah well, in the end it's all edible.

One of the Ross Rounds super is almost completely ready to harvest, almost all the frames are capped. We should be able to take it out next week. Up until this point, we've been putting an extra empty frame in our third brood box. We've just been harvesting it there from time to time. The frame is empty, but the bees are perfectly capable of drawing out comb without foundation.

However, I think the Olga bees are on to us. When I opened the box, I could see comb from the frame attached to the wall. I tried to pull the frame out, but it felt stuck. We took out the frame next to it out for a closer look inside.

Sure enough, the girls had drawn out their own foundation from the wall to the frame, making it impossible for us to harvest. It was as if they were saying, "Ha ha, take that, thieving humans." So, no honey harvest this time, but next week (insert maniacal giggle) we shall plunder the honey supers and no amount of propolis will stop us.

On our way to check the Kitty hive's progress we found a grasshopper waiting for us on the outside. You would think that they could sense all the activity in the hive and would want to stay away. You can hear much more activity before you open the box--the most I've heard in weeks. The brood has definitely hatched.

The girls still have not quite drawn out all the frames in the third brood box, but they are over halfway there and with more workers hatching every day, I feel that they will be ready by the end of August. Above is some of the freshly drawn out comb, see the little glob of bright yellow? Some worker has just deposited some pollen stores.

We found more freshly laid eggs, which means Queen Kitty II was here sometime in the last three days. As we were checking this hive, I suddenly realized that next month I will need to begin preparations to overwinter the bees. They will have to be sealed up in October and I won't be able to check on them every seven to ten days. What on earth am I going to do with myself between October and April?

Go See Stardust and A Little About Our Honey

One of the fun things about being a theater major is that from time to time you see former classmates show up in anti-drug commercials, episodes of Law and Order, or live action kid tv shows. It's just fun watching friends get into the Hollywood industry. That's kind of the way I feel about Stardust--it's the Hollywood version of Mr. Neil.

Unlike Non Birding Bill, I had never read any of Mr. Neil's stuff before we met him. I got to know him as this fun British guy who has an interesting job. I think Anansi Boys was the first book that I read (and that was just checking bird facts) and I have read a couple other things since then. I listened to Stardust as an audio book on my travels the last couple of weeks just prep for the movie. Sunday we were invited to the preview and had a great time.

The movie is different than the book--it's a Hollywood version of it--what fun to see something a friend had written turned into a big summer movie with lots of special effects and actual stars--Robert De Niro, Clare Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer. It's about a fallen star that has landed into the fairy side of the world and all the people going after her. If she had landed on the real world, she would have been a cold, hard rock. Since she landed in fairy land, she's a woman who now has princes, a boy in love, and an evil witch all coming to claim her.

De Niro was by far my favorite part of the film. I figured he was just going to be his usual De Niro self which would have worked fine with the book, but they really take the character to another level which I was not prepared for and loved.

I would call this an adult fairy tail, kind of along the lines of Princess Bride (but with much cooler effects) but I think kids would enjoy it. It has some violence, but not nearly what is in the book--the book is far grosser in my opinion. The movie version has some sword play--not a lot--the end has a fun fight scene with some cool effects. There's something for everyone: pirates, magic, pretty dresses, hot guys, a couple of sword fights, unicorns, even a bird--I think it's a magpie jay, but if someone else has seen the movie and knows what it is, please let me kn0w.

So, go see Stardust this weekend, take a friend. Supporting this movie does help support the bees you read about in this blog. If the movie does well, next year we can add more hives--perhaps even making it available for sale or to give away as prizes. I know it's crazy to make blockbuster movies to fund a beekeeping business, but it's just crazy enough that it might work. Speaking of bees, Mr. Neil told me to do a taste comparison between the first frame of honey we harvested and the second. Here is a photo of our first honey:

Now, below is some comb honey from our second harvest two weeks later:

Look at that, it's a little darker and more yellow. The flavor is a bit different too, it's more sweet and not as peppery and lacks the hint of pine that the first harvest had. Still very tasty. Some honey was sent to our friend Malena and she reviews it here...although as much as I love Malena, her bee natural history is a little inaccurate, so don't take that bit too seriously.

And, I have it on good authority that four out of four dead princes agree, our honey rocks.

More Honey Extraction From Our Bees

It was time to check on the progress of the bees once again, so Mr. Neil, Non Birding Bill, Cabal, and I headed to the hives. Last weekend, NBB checked on the hives and found that the bees were still not using our new comb honey supers. The instructions that came with our Ross Rounds supers led us to believe they were already fully assembled. Well, I did some digging on the Internet and found that they were supposed to have wax foundation on the inside of the rounds to get the bees started. GRRRR. I emailed NBB from out of town and he did some digging. Fortunately, the boxes that the supers arrived in hadn't been recycled yet, so he found the foundation. WHEW!

He put together one of the supers and replaced it with the one that was already on the hive. We're supposed to take the brown plastic pieces apart--they just snap apart easily. Well, even though the bees hadn't been filling that super with comb and honey--they did manage to propolis the crap out of it. But, NBB and Mr. Neil managed to pry them apart with the aid of the hive tool and get the foundation in, so it will be ready if we need more supers this summer. Our goal with the inspection today was to check on Kitty's progress and see if Olga was finally filling the Ross Rounds with the foundation.

Kitty's buzz is much improved. Before, when we would open the hive, it was very quiet and if you did some digging you would find the bees, and there would be a quiet general hum, but here and there would also be a weak solitary buzz. Today the bees just sounded more contented and industrious--they sounded like they had a purpose.

The larvae from the new queen hasn't emerged yet, but I'm not too worried, there are massive amounts of honey stored for the time being (that's the workers eating some of it above), so if there is a shortage of foragers for a small period of time the girls have reserves for the next week or two. Some workers have finally started drawing out comb in top box--that's the box they need to fill in order to make it through the winter. It's the beginning of August so there is still time. OK, maybe I'm a tiny bit concerned, but we'll do what we can when we can.

Olga is in mass production mode. When we took her roof off, we found lots of propolis, these girls are really going to town. I wish I had such a great fix up tool. Got a hole or crack, got a dead mouse? Just cover it with propolis--it prevents the spread of bacteria, plugs up holes, and keeps everything together.

We checked the Ross Rounds and found some very exciting activity. Each compartment was jammed packed full of workers drawing out comb, soon to fill them with honey--WHOOT! Finally, they are using the super! They are also sealing all the frames together with massive amounts of sticky propolis.

Here's a little video:

NBB asked me last night what I enjoy most about bees, and I think just watching their industriousness. They each have jobs and those jobs change over time, they always have something to do, some place to be.

We found that the empty frame we put in the brood box was once again chock full of capped honey for us to harvest. I'm wondering if push comes to shove with the Kitty hive and she doesn't have enough stores for winter, if we can replace some of her empty frames with honey frames from Olga? Of course, that means less honey for us this year, but next year we'd have two hives that would produce nothing but honey. We'll see how things are at the end of August.

Here's another video of some general bee activity while we're getting the frame ready to take back with us:

Did you notice Mr. Neil using the bee brush in back? We're gently brushing off the workers from the frame with the honey. We're taking them off, so we don't take them back to the house with us. Thinking back to the Ross Rounds, we suddenly began to wonder, how are we going to get the bees out of the super when we are ready to harvest it? The frames are all wedged together (and now sealed with propolis), we can't really get a bee brush in there. We can't smoke the frames, that affects the flavor of the honey and also the smoke calms the bees and makes them eat honey, which doesn't help the situation. I've heard of some chemical methods, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm going to have to google that a bit to find out how we harvest the honey.

On the bottom of the frame, the workers had made more comb, but they made larger cells--we know what that meas--drones. The whole bottom of the frame either had squishy larvae or capped drone brood. It was easily cut away from the honey were going to eat, but it got me thinking: The queen has been up here sometime in the last week or two. We did have a queen excluder between this box and our other honey supers to prevent the queen from laying eggs in the Ross Rounds but we took it out when the workers weren't drawing out comb in them, thinking that was preventing them from working in the supers (plus many beekeepers are anti excluder). We also reversed the brood boxes, which gets the queen to start in the third brood box and work her way down to lay eggs. But larvae this small means she's been here in the last two weeks. Is there any possibility she has gone up to the Ross Rounds to lay eggs? I don't want to use the excluder now on the off chance she is in the rounds and that cuts her off from the rest of the hive. Oh well, only time will tell and this year is supposed to be a learning curve.

One thing I am really encouraged about with the beekeeping is that even though this is our first year and I've made some mistakes, we've still managed to get honey for ourselves. Last time we harvested we got seven boxes of frame honey, and on this run we got six boxes of honey--a total of 13 boxes so far and things looks promising that we will get more.

Oh! Here is something interesting. Some say that in nature you never find straight angles--check out what I found in the Olga hive entrance. I think that's propolis on the floor that may have dripped down, I'm not sure, but it's in straight angles. What are the Olga bees up to? Are they defying nature? The Olga bees, always leaving me with more questions than answers. Perhaps that is why I love them so.

This post is covered in bees

Hello, all, NBB here.

As Shazz pointed out, I was initially apprehensive about her keeping bees. Given that both her and Neil's schedules are so hectic, I was convinced that his assistant Lorraine and I would end up being the bulk of the work. And while I don't have a bee phobia, the idea of intentionally walking up to a big pile o' bees and tearing their home apart to steal their honey gave me pause.

So it was a little surprising to find myself heading off to inspect the hives today, alone. Well, except for Cabal the beekeeping dog, who really serves only in an advisory capacity.

I can haz beez?

The really weird thing is that beekeeping isn't all that scary. The suit covers you completely, and the smoker causes them to instantly scurry back into the hive. Whenever we go out there, I'm more concerned about crushing a bee that I am about getting stung.

Another thing is that the bees themselves aren't aggressive. As long as you handle the boxes carefully, and smoke regularly, most of them just go about their business, even as you take the frames out, one by one. You'd think you'd get a bigger reaction, since they live and work in darkness, but opening the hive really only affects a small portion of the hive, who come out and buzz around, but don't immediately attack. Part of this, of course, is because we go out in the middle of the day, when the foragers are out collecting pollen, but still.

The only time they've become deliberately aggressive is when a frame we were handling slipped from the glove, fell about an inch, but landed on the hive with a good, solid, bonk! In a split-second, the buzzing got much louder, and Sharon and I both froze.

"I wish that hadn't happened."

"Me too."

Still, even when they're buzzing around your head, butting against the screen that shields your face, there's not really a sense of attack--though we have been stung in the gloves a couple of times. Maybe it's because before all this, my interaction was with lone bees--foragers, and all you think about is the stingers, rather than them working as a group, building a hive.

So anyway, I like the bees. They're kind of cute. Perhaps it's because they're fuzzy.

And now for your weekly bee report.

Queen Kitty II, by the Grace of God, Defender of etc., etc. had been accepted into the hive and it was hoped that she would start laying workers to replenish the hive. I'm happy to report that I believe this is happening!

Let me first apologize for the quality of the pictures; taking good shots of bees is tough enough, but add in a black screen in front of your face, direct sunlight on the view screen, and sweat dripping onto your glasses, and it's hard to feel the love when you're trying to get out of there as quickly as possible, before you need to find out if you're allergic to bees (and you realize that you left your cell phone back at the house. Screaming "911" doesn't really work as well).

Plus, and I hate to gossip, but the bees just really didn't take direction well. "Throw back your wings!" I shouted. "Show me how much you love that honey! Stick out your proboscis!" Honestly, it was like they weren't listening at all. Prima donnas.

This is the top box of Kitty. Some activity there, and a lot of buzzing. The last few times we visited the hive was very lethargic (quiet), so I took this as a good sign. Pulling out the end frames:

Workers, drawing out comb, which means that they're building their own comb on top of the plastic sheets in the middle of the frame. I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but there are a lot of bees in the middle box, below this one. Pulling out the center frame:
It's almost entirely filled with honey, some of it capped. This actually made me a little apprehensive, because what we hoped for was brood: eggs that would turn into workers. At least, I pretty sure it's all honey. Sharon's the head beekeeper here and I'm just trying to remember what she told me as I watched her inspect the hive. Anyway, not seeing any evidence of eggs, I moved onto the second brood box.

Tons of activity and a lot of buzzing, which I was happy to hear. On the end of the box they were drawing out more of what looked to be honey, and making more of their funky comb (Kitty hive takes after her namesake). I was pleased by the activity, but knew that I had to keep digging until I could report to Sharon that we had larvae. So, moving into the middle frame of box 2:
Larvae! Precious, precious larvae! Now, if I remember correctly, the worker cells are relatively flush with the comb while drone cells puff out, because the males need more room for their recliners and beer. So, is this almost all future workers for the Kitty hive. In addition to this, there was a lot more activity going on inside, lots of noisy buzzing. Yay!

Having established that Kitty II was having a prosperous reign, I closed the hive and moved onto Olga.

Olga, as you'll recall, was our big hope for honey after the Kitty I decided to go on tour with her Swarm (which would be a good name for a hair metal band, late 80s. So if you're thinking about traveling back in time and living like a modern cowboy, on a steel horse you'll ride...). However, after having no end of problems with the first honey super (the wax centers kept collapsing), we added a section of plastic rounds, but left the first super on as well, just to see what the bees would do.

And here it is: The bees are building feral comb in the empty frames, which, if all goes well, will translate into edible honey for us, albeit in a very funky form. Olga, your bees are getting results, but they're not following the rules!

Suddenly I'm a chief inspector in a bad 70s cop show.

Very little activity otherwise. Moving onto the plastic rounds:

ZILCH.

We're getting completely nooged by the Olga bees, who I think might be onto us. One was constantly buzzing my head, and despite my best efforts to smoke her, she kept right on flying a patrol around my noggin. Lots of bees running around in the plastic rounds, and they'd glued them all together with propolis so tightly I had to pry them out with both hands, but not a single spot of comb.

UPDATE: Turns out the plastic rounds are supposed to have a wax foundation (like the other frames) that goes in between them. After rummaging around in the shipping boxes, I found them, added them to our second set of rounds, and swapped the boxes. Needless to say, the bees don't really appreciate two visits in one day. Ah, life.

So, this concludes your regular bee update. And now, if everyone will please close their browser windows...

A PRIVATE MESSAGE TO SHARON:

Darling, please come home. I'm sorry I made jokes about birds. I'm so, so sorry. I miss you. The pets miss you. Well, Cinnamon doesn't, but you know what I mean. I promise never to make jokes about how brown birds look exactly alike, even though they obviously do. And all those times I said you were nuts to go and stand in a field at 5 a.m.? Well, uhmmm... well, I was right about that, too, but if you come back I'll keep it to myself and only laugh when I think you're not looking.

Please, please come back.

END PRIVATE MESSAGE.

Mini Honey Harvest

Well, it's official, Mr. Neil took one for the team...

...and got stung on the neck. The going pool was that all the helpers with the hive had to give the stingee $10 each, so for his pain he got some payola. He was walking near the Olga hive sans bee suit, so it was kind of his own fault. Good news though: no allergic reaction and he is still alive, well, and underfoot.

We went out to check the status of the Kitty hive, to see that the new queen was laying eggs, and boy howdy had she gone to town! If you look in the above cells, you will see minute grains of rice--those are fresh eggs, laid sometime within the last three days. We even found larvae and some brood being capped. Overall, worker numbers are low, but the honey supply for the hive is rich and I think it's still very possible to recover enough to survive the winter.

There is still some brood left that hasn't hatched yet that was transferred from Olga to Kitty, so even while we're are waiting the three weeks for the new eggs to emerge into workers, fresh workers will still be on hand to keep the hive running. Once the new eggs emerge into workers though, watch out!

Here's a new worker just chewing her way out to join the crowd. I'm glad I added in these frames from Olga, when bees first emerge, they are "nurse bees" that are to tend to eggs and larvae, keeping them fed and helping them grow. It's the older workers who are the foragers that look for pollen and nectar. This worker will tend all the eggs and larvae from the new queen--an important bridge in our hive's survival.

We checked the Olga hive and found one frame of harvestable honey--it was capped, when bees cap the honey, that means it's ready for storage and more importantly, ready for human consumption! This was a frame I stuck in one of the brood boxes, below the queen excluder as an experiment. It was a completely blank frame with no foundation and the bees built on it all over on their own. They filled it and capped it... but they haven't really done any comb building above the queen excluder. I've read different theories on the queen excluder. The idea is that the smaller workers can easily pass through the excluder to build comb, but the larger queen cannot get through. This makes the workers fill up all the comb with surplus honey and insures that no eggs and larvae are mixed with your honey for human consumption. Some beekeepers say that bees are reluctant to pass through the excluder and it slows honey production. They say that the third brood box is so full of stored honey that the queen won't go past it into the supers. Since we haven't had luck using the queen excluder and our honey supers are going empty, we took it off today to see what would happen. Hopefully, this time next week I can report that the girls are drawing out comb in the honey supers.

In the meantime, we decided to take advantage of the experimental frame that got filled in the brood box and harvest the honey! H-O-L-Y C-O-W was it an unbelievable taste--it's so light and delicate and yet, so full of nectary goodness. We each took a chunk of the comb loaded with the lightly colored honey. When my teeth pushed through the wax, a wave of honey surged over my tongue, covered the roof of my mouth, and flooded around my teeth. The flavors seemed to shift from minty, to peppery, to unbelievably sweet, but always fragrant. After I had swallowed several chunks, my breath smelled like a field of flowers.

Since this was in a brood box, the queen had laid a few drone cells in the center of the frame--they were easily cut out. You can see two drones in the above photo--the two cells with dark objects filling them. Mr. Neil said that in Italy, people will sell the larvae with the honey--perhaps for aphrodisiac purposes...not really what I'm looking for, so we just tossed them out. I had to laugh, when I was taking this photo, I was holding the hunk of comb to the window for the light, and just kept my finger on the camera button to take several photos in a row. About photo six...

...Cabal came over to to sniff the comb! Crazy dog. He didn't eat it, but the sudden nose surprised and tickled me.

So, we have our first mini harvest of the Gaiman-Stiteler honey (Non Birding Bill calls it Stamen Honey) from the Olga hive.

We ended up getting seven suet cake sized packs of comb honey. There were four of us and we ended up eating at least one full box. Which seemed like a good idea at the time--we were swept up in the excitement of the first harvest--Mr. Neil and I both assumed that we would get no honey either because it was our first year or some freak accident would happen (like, oh, I don't know, a swarm, killing off the queen, or the queen flying away) and yet despite all that we got a little honey, and there's still hope on the horizon for more to come this year.

We were down right gluttonous sampling Olga's wares, it was intoxicating--almost like tasting all the plants within five miles all at once in a sugary burst. But then the insulin goes a little haywire and you find that eating half jar's worth of honey is probably not the best idea you've ever had in your whole life--up there with eating a whole tube of chocolate cookie dough, but boy was it fun at the time.

Whoot!