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!

Son Of A Beeswax!

Non Birding Bill and I headed out to check the status of the Kitty hive. Last time, we had placed a new queen in a cage inside the queenless hive. The cage opening was covered with hard candy. The workers were supposed to chew their way inside and by the time they got to her, the whole hive would be under the spell of the new queen's pheromone. When we took out the frame with the queen cage, several bees were gathered around the queen, a good sign. They didn't appear to be attacking the cage, but VERY interested as to what was inside. I decided to remove the cage from the wax to see if the queen was still inside.

You can see on the side of the box is a piece of tape with a hole chewed through it. Behind the tape is the cage's opening. The opening is jammed with hard candy. The hole in the tape and the tunnel in the candy tells us that the workers have been trying to get the queen out--and have almost made it all the way through.

If you look at the workers on the side of the cage, you can see their proboscis is out to feed the queen nectar through the screen--they look like they are ready to serve under her rule. We did one more test. I had NBB smoke the cage to remove all the workers and we waited to see how long it would take for the workers to come to her again. Not long! They came to the cage before I had a chance to turn on my camera. Watch them come to the queen:

I think it's safe to say that they are assimilated to her. We put her in on Tuesday and here it is, Saturday afternoon and they are all over her cage, and have almost chewed their way through the hard candy. I decided to go ahead and open up the queen cage like we did when we first installed the bees in April. I'm an old pro at that now. I gave NBB the camera and had him make a video of this momentous occasion:

Did you catch what happened there? In case you missed it, that big bee flying away above my hand in the last few seconds of the video is our queen, flying away. HOLY CRAP! That wasn't supposed to happen! As soon as the camera was off, she flew to the right, I almost had her in my hand. She landed on one of the brood boxes. I went to get her and then she flew behind NBB and I lost track of her. It was not unlike the moment in A Christmas Story when Ralphie lost all the screws when he and his dad were changing the tire and he said in slow motion, "Oooooooooooh Fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge."

Only, I didn't say "fudge." Imagine the worst profanity you can think of and that's pretty much what I said at that moment. What else could possibly go wrong with the Kitty hive? I briefly thought back to just a scant two months ago when Olga was the problem child.

Then, I immediately switched gears to problem solving mode, and thought back to the beekeeping class I took. The instructors warned us that this could happen when we would be hiving our new packages and releasing the queen. They said the thing to do is just stand where you are when the queen left and wait for fifteen minutes. The queen who just flew off is full of eggs and ready to lay and therefore, kinda heavy. She can't fly far and as she leaves she will realize that this isn't really what she wants, she's not going to find what she's looking for on this flight and back track. She'll look for familiar objects from where she she started--what could be more noticeable than two giants dressed all in white?

We stood and waited. I noticed when she flew that she was obviously larger than the workers and flew like a drone--slow and heavy. I went behind NBB to see if I could find her clinging to any nearby bushes, but didn't see her. NBB and I still waited. A large bee flew by my head, I watched it land at the entrance--drat, it was only a drone. The noon time sun combined with my tension of wondering if the queen would come back started to form sweat along my forehead and back. I kept remembering what the instructors told us, that the queen would come back, even if we didn't see her. After fifteen minutes, go ahead and close up the hive, she was probably in there. Although, those instructions were for installing a package in April when there were no leaves on the trees, no flowers, and much cooler weather. This was a warm, sunny day, with clover all around, and trees chock full of leaves--perfect for a queen to hide. Would the same strategy work?

Another large bee bounced off my hood, I watched it fly low to the ground, and then to the entrance. Another #$%& drone.

I started to form another strategy in head. The queen dealer wasn't far, maybe I could pick up another queen and start all over? Boy, that would be embarrassing to explain that I lost another queen. Although, I prudently hadn't killed the queen cell with an egg that we found last week, maybe I could just go with that plan? Suddenly, a large bee came from behind NBB, it was heavy and slow, and very tan. It landed right on the frame where the queen cage had been. Could it be? Was it really? YES! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes! The queen came back! Of course, we videoed her triumphant return:

I'm sure we only waited for less than five minutes, but I have to say that it felt like we were waiting for an hour! In case you are having trouble viewing her in the video, I did get photos:

She's right in the middle of the photo, surrounded by attendants. Note how her abdomen extends well past her wings. She's also much lighter in color than the original Queen Kitty. We have noticed that our workers in both hives have been changing colors. This hive started with lighter bees and now has darker bees, I'm sure it has to do with what types of drones the queen was mated with. The queen dealer told me that he had mated this queen with a variety of males, including a couple of carniolan drones which should bring me some colorful workers. Since carniolans are black, I wonder if the original Queen Kitty was carniolan?

Anyway, help us, Queen Kitty II, you're our only hope. The workers will show her around, she'll get rid of any queen cells in progress, and commence to layin' some eggs. Man, oh man, what nail biter that hive visit was.

In other news, the Olga hive continues to be a model of good bee behavior. We got in our new Ross Rounds comb honey super and are going to try that since we are having so many problems with the original comb honey kit. I'm happy to report that not only did the Ross Rounds kit come with instructions (unlike the other kit) but it was already assembled. Since I didn't want to waste time, we didn't paint it, but added it right to the Olga hive. You can tell the Ross super from the rest because it's not painted. Here's hoping we get some good old honey out of that.

Can't Stay Out Of The Hives

I dedicate this entry to Christina, who I inadvertently stood up--I swear I left a message, just on the wrong phone. Here's what kept me away:

A first for me: placing my ungloved hand on top of a brood box loaded with bees, and not having a complete and utter nervous breakdown. When I realized that the Kitty colony was queenless, I tried to purchase a replacement queen but every place I called had just run out of queens. So, I decided to go for the madcap raising an egg from another hive into a queen plan--risky and time consuming, but my only other option was to combine our two hives and I didn't want to do that unless I absolutely had to--the hive would then be just be too high for me to reach and inspect.

I recently made friends with some local beekeepers and was telling them about my problems with Kitty and several of them told me of a man nearby who still had queens for sale, but they warned, I had to get her installed now. I called the number, he said he had what I needed, we made an appointment, and in a warehouse out in undisclosed town that could pass for the picture definition of the boonies, the deal went down. We shook hands, he pulled a small wooden box from his pocket, I pulled some cash from my pocket, and the queen was mine. I put her in Non Birding Bill's pocket and from there we hightailed it out to the Kitty hive to install the new queen.

We threw on the bee suits, NBB lit the smoker (because he is the smoker master), and I gave Mr. Neil the queen for safe keeping. It was late in the day and we had to act fast. The foragers would be back in the hive and those are the most likely to sting you. However, when we opened Kitty, all was surprisingly calm--must be the lack of queen. Mr. Neil took the queen from his pocket and as soon as he took out the box, one of the Kitty bees landed on it. The queen's very first subject! That's it, my pretty, drink in that pheromone, assimilate, assimilate.

Basically, the queen is in a little cage that has a piece of candy covering the opening. When we first put the queen cage in the hive, the workers will want to come and kill the queen--but when they approach, she releases her pheromone and they want to serve her. Her aroma is released through the screen and both she and the other bees chew through the candy to have access to her. Once they get through the candy, they will have worked out their differences and the workers will show the queen around the hive so she can commence laying eggs. Here is the video of attaching the queen cage to one of the frames:

When we pushed in the cage, some of the cells with honey came open and created a small river of honey. In the video, you can see some of the workers start to lap it up. Here's a detailed photo:

Look at the lines of bee proboscis (tongues) lapping up that honey. Feast, my girls, feast. A new queen has arrived to build up your numbers. Some of you readers may be wondering why I went for a whole new queen if we started some eggs growing in a queen cell? Well, that wouldn't yield any new eggs for two weeks, and then it would be another three weeks until those eggs would hatch into new workers. Now, we have a new queen, fully fertilized and ready to lay. She'll need a few days to work her mojo on all the workers, but then she will get to layin' and I'll have new workers in three weeks instead of five weeks, giving them more time to build up food stores for winter.

So for the moment, the workers are all over the queen cage, like ugly on a pig, absorbing her pheromone. More bee madness to come this weekend.

Requeening The Kitty Hive

I took a photo when we opened the Kitty hive and just when I hit the button, a worker went straight for me--INCOMING! Oh, and if you are curious, none of us have been stung through our bees suits...yet.

Today was the day to find out if the mad experiment worked. You may recall that last week, our dear Kitty hive had swarmed and in my efforts to try and prevent it, I removed all the queen cells, but the hive swarmed anyway. Doh! I read about a plan to take eggs from the healthy Olga hive and see if Kitty would raise one of the eggs into a queen...

But first, I have to show you a really cool new tool I got to make our hive inspections easier. It's a little hanger you attach to a brood box while it's open. When you take out a frame, you can hang it on that, instead of setting the frame on the ground--it was pretty sweet and keeps you from crushing bees or letting the queen crawl onto the ground.

We had to dig around and look for the queen cells and we found one. This one had LOTS of activity around it. We tried smoking the bees out of the way to see if we could look inside and find an egg or better yet, larvae. Any fertilized honeybee egg can be a queen. What separates an egg from being a worker as opposed to the queen is that the the larvae is fed only royal jelly every day before it pupates. Workers only get royal jelly for three days. All this activity around this cell had me hopeful there was larvae inside, but I couldn't see anything, because it was at a weird angle. We continued our hunt for more queen cells. We found many, but they were empty.

But then we found two queen cups on the bottom of a frame (queen cups are the early states of a queen cell and low and behold, there was an egg inside the queen cup on the right. Can you see the tiny thing that looks like a grain of rice? That's an egg that has been transferred so it can be raised as a queen. WHOOT! If you're having trouble seeing the egg, try clicking on the picture, that will make it larger. Things are looking up for the queenless Kitty colony. An Olga egg that was originally intended to grow into a worker, is now to become a queen--should I change this hive's name to Anny Boleyn?

Okay, it will be an egg for three days, a larvae for about 5-6 days and pupate for about 7-8 days. When she emerges, she will get a quick tour of the hive for a couple of days, then fly around and fornicate and kill some drones for three days, and then get down to business and layin' some eggs. Hopefully in about two and a half weeks, we'll see some eggs!

Last week, we had added a honey super to Olga, as well as a propolis trap. I went to check in and see how that was doing. As you can see in the above photo, the trap is well on its way to filling with propolis--yum. The honey is another matter...

I've been having some issues with the comb honey kit that I ordered. First, there were no instructions that came with it that told me the important step of nailing the comb foundation into the frame, so last week all of our foundation started to melt, bend, and fall out of the frames. I called the place I ordered my kit from and they unhelpfully asked, "Didn't you nail in the foundation?" I told him no because there were no instructions. So, I nailed in all the foundation. Today, when went to look inside, the foundation had fallen out again! And I had nailed it! In the above photo, you can see the foundation laying between frames on the bottom of the box. They bees are using it, but it's going to make inspecting the hive and extracting the honey a pain. Hey, and remember how Olga had a talent for building funky comb? Well, that talent finally came in handy:

She built her own comb on one of the empty frames! Go Olga bees! Not only did the bees build inside the frame, but on the bottom for good measure. As much as I appreciate Olga's ambition, this may not be the best way to go. I called the company and complained about my dissatisfaction with this comb honey kit and we are going to exchange the kits we have for a comb honey kit called Ross Rounds, hopefully that will work better for all involved. So, if anyone is reading this blog and thinks one day they will try having their bees make comb honey...choose your kit carefully.

In other news, on our way to the hives today, Mr. Neil was telling me about a hen turkey and poults he and Cabal flushed on their way to the hives a couple of days ago. Just as he was describing it, Cabal flushed a turkey right next to us that was hiding in the grass. She popped up and flew in one direction and then Cabal flushed about five poults who flew in the other directions. The poults were about the size of a cantaloupe and could fly already! I didn't know they could fly that young. All the young turkeys made it safely into a tree and Cabal did not get them.

Queen Excluder Time

I took this photo of an entrance reducer to show you guys what it is...I didn't notice the juxtaposition of Non Birding Bill until after I downloaded photos. If you read my answers at Nerve.com, you get the joke (insert naughty giggle here).

I'm confused about the Kitty hive, but I have a plan and am rallied by all the support! First, let's talk good news: Olga was reversed and given a queen excluder and a propolis trap today! Chances are good, that last sentence made very little sense to you, but it's a whoot in my book.

Olga had filled all three of her brood boxes with eggs and honey. Since all the frames in the boxes were 100% filled with drawn out comb, we need to switch the top box with the bottom brood box. Bees tend to fill hives from the top down, so to encourage more brood, we needed to switch--all the frames in the bottom box have hatched, all the frames on the top were full of freshly laid eggs. I'm SO glad NBB was with me. I learned something today: a brood box full of honey and brood is too heavy for me to lift...and I can lift sixty pounds without a problem.

It was a messy business. As we took the whole hive apart, worker bees were running a amok, gathering all over the sides. We smoked the crap out of them, but still had a tough time keeping them out of the way. Now, I see the value of a hive brush. One of the instructors in the class inferred that the hive brush was an unnecessary tool, but we could have used one today. I ended up sweeping all of the bees out of the way with my glove--boy they really didn't like that! But it was that or squishing them as we put the hive back together.

After we reversed the hive and reassembled it, I placed the queen excluder on top of the three brood boxes. This allows only the workers to pass above the brood boxes and insure that all the frames placed above this point will only be filled with honey. After I set it on top, I watched closely to insure that the workers could pass through--yes they could.

After we put on our honey supers, I placed a propolis trap on top of them. This will encourage our bees to produce more of the sticky stuff they use to seal up the hive for us to eat. Ah, propolis--irritating when inspecting the hive, tasty and nutritious in your tea.

Now, on to the Kitty hive! I wanted to take a look today to see if there were any eggs--hoping against hope that a new queen had returned from a mating flight and had started laying. As I scanned, I found a bee emerging and was watching it...then I found something troubling. Notice the worker bee right above the emerging bee? That worker bee is doing something she shouldn't--she's plunked her little abdomen into a cell to lay an egg! Doh! That really isn't a good sign for this hive. She sat in there for some time, almost appeared to be struggling like she was constipated.

I watched the hive and the other frames for a long time (at least a half hour) and only found this one worker bee trying to lay eggs. Here's the problem. When a healthy queen is present, workers don't lay eggs. When a queen is gone and the workers aren't controlled by her pheromone, ovaries develop in the workers and they begin to lay eggs. These eggs are infertile and will only turn into drones (female workers and queens are the result of fertilized eggs). If this is happening, this means that there is no viable queen. Perhaps I did kill off all of the queen cells right before the swarm--my effort to prevent the swarm has kind of doomed the colony.

There are other signs of this as well--spotty drone cells capped over in the worker brood frames. Above the bee is a capped over cell that looks puffy--that's a drone that has been laid in a worker cell. All the flat capped over cells are capped worker cells. I called B&B Honey Farms--that's who I have been getting all of our bee supplies from. They ran out of replacement queens last week, so the very helpful Tammy went over some options with me. She agreed that one bee laying eggs is a very bad sign for that hive and I need to take action now.

1. Can I find the swarm? Boy howdy have I tried, but the woods are so thick and full of hollow trees, it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

2. Do I want to pick up a swarm? There are apparently quite a few showing up along Hwy 90 and 94 through Minnesota and Wisconsin. Someone who travels around so their bees can pollinate farms has lost six already. One was in Tomah at a truck stop if I wanted to go for it. A little too far away for me at the moment.

3. Combine what's left of Kitty with the strong Olga hive using the newspaper method.

4. Then I ran an idea I came across on the Hive Mind Bee Blog(one of the beekeepers who answered questions like I did on Nerve.com): take a frame or two of brood from the Olga hive (making sure that it's full of freshly laid eggs) and inserting that into the Kitty hive. Like birds, bees look at eggs as something needing to be raised. They will take some of the eggs (they will all be fertilized and therefore female) and place them in queen cells. The only difference between a worker bee and a queen is that the queen is raised entirely on royal jelly. If one of those queens makes it, she will go on the mating flight and then come back and lay eggs. Also, the bees won't turn all the eggs into the queen, but raise them as workers--this will put some new life back in the hive to cover for the lack of eggs being laid in the last few weeks. Tammy said I could try it, however for every person who has had it work, there's another person who hasn't had it work. I think it's crazy enough of a plan that it just might work. What have I got to lose at this point anyway?

I think that's what we'll try tomorrow...too bad we just did the reversal and all the eggs are in the bottom box. Ah well, it'll be good exercise.

Because Kitty's progress we had to change the third brood box. When you start them, you put in ten frames to help with the way the comb is drawn out. Once they fill the brood box, you take one of the frames out so you only have nine in there. When you are expanding, you put the tenth frame in the new brood box. We'll we've expanded all we can in the Olga hive and the supers for honey are too small to hold a brood frame.

So, I brought it in and we had a little of the honey in our tea. It wasn't capped over, so it wasn't true honey, but it tasted awful darn close.

It was yummy! Although, now that we are going to take a frame of brood out of Olga and put it in the Kitty hive, we'll need to put this frame back in Olga. Good thing we didn't scrape off all the honey from her comb.

Refreshed, recharged, and ready to tackle the situation!

Quiet in the Kitty Hive

Non Birding Bill and I are watching Cabal (the beekeeping dog) while everyone is away--If you don't regularly read Mr. Neil's blog, the last week has been hilarious--Maddy, his 12 year old daughter has been guest blogging their adventures on a movie set in Budapest. Check it out, she writes exactly as she talks. She's crackin' me up, this one is my favorite.

Well, on to the saga of the Kitty hive. If you remember from last week, she was showing signs of swarming or a failing queen by building lots of queen cells. If queen cells are on the bottom of one of your frames, that means she's feeling crowded and the old queen will stop laying eggs, and then fly off with half the hive. If the queen cells are on the middle of the frames, that's a sign that the current queen is failing and is about to be superseded. We had mostly queen cells on the bottom frames and a few in the center. We removed as many queen cells as we could find and added a third brood box, hoping that room for expansion would encourage them to stay. We decided to wait a week and see what was happening.

Non Birding Bill and I went out to the Kitty hive and opened the box. It was quiet...too quiet. There was not the usual buzzing. We took out two center frames and they had not drawn out any comb at all. Not a good sign. We opened the second box, still quiet and the bees were totally calm. One of the most important beekeeping tools is the smoker, it helps keep them calm. We really didn't need it. The bees were as calm as the were when we first installed them...there were also noticeably fewer. We had our answer, sometime in the last week, the Kitty hive had swarmed. The old queen left, taking half the workers with her. The other half was left behind to start with a new queen.

Taking out more frames we found queen cups, the start of queen cells, the workers probably started those after I had ripped out all of the queen cells I could find last week.

I also found queen cells that I had missed. Can you find this one? Look at the top of the photo right in the center--there's kind of a vertical peanut shell structure--that's a queen cell. If you recall, this was the hive that kind of doubled up on each frame--the cells were away from the frame, so the bees had brood on the outside and between the cells and the frame--I wonder if that contributed to the feeling of being overcrowded? If you still can't see the queen cell, here is an up close shot:

I started to think back to the last time we were at the hive, last week when we first discovered the queen cells, quite a few bees were covering the side of the hive--they were much further along in swarming than I realized. Ah, hind sight is twenty twenty. Now, what will I do. I tried to find the new queen, but we couldn't. However, depending on when she hatched, she could be out on her three day "maiden voyage". A newly emerged queen is a virgin. When she hatches, the workers show her around the hive and she seeks out any remaining queen cells and kills them--it's kind of a Highlander thing--there can be only one. This takes about three days. Then she flies off for another three days to a "drone congregation area". Seriously, this is what the drones live...and die for. She will go up in the air about a half mile and find a few dozen drones to mate with (each drone she accepts will die in the copulatory act). After three days of sex and killing, she will return to the hive full of sperm and begin laying eggs.

In that time, I have to hope that nothing bad happens like a phoebe or great-crested flycatcher eating her before she comes back from her mating flight. There is some unhatched brood, but there haven't been new eggs for awhile. I'm kind of at a crossroads: do I start a new queen or do I work with the old queen? Which ever way I go, is there enough time for them to build up enough food and workers to survive winter this far north? I also wonder if I just shouldn't have left the queen cells last week.

Searching bee forums, I did what I could, but I should have caught this much sooner. My mistake was not checking the bottom box after adding the second. I thought that if I had let them alone, they would construct faster. Although, I did learn that even if I had caught it early, my methods of stopping a swarm still might not have worked. There are even some valiant efforts I could have tried, but probably wouldn't have, like finding the queen and cutting off her wings, making her flightless. If she couldn't fly, she would fall down on the swarm flight and the other workers would have been forced to stay. I don't think I could have the heart to cut the queen's wings.

As I look at the frames that are completely empty of brood, I feel that I have let this hive down with my inexperience. NBB was very excited--he was looking at this from a more scientific angle. He found the whole swarm process and the change in the hive's behavior fascinating. As I kept feeling like a failure, he kept marveling that our bees were now out in the wild--starting fresh and perhaps this healthy line would help build up the population that is so in trouble in North America. Our main goal was to have bees for pollination and well, the swarm couldn't have gone far so they will continue to pollinate Mr. Neil's yard--we will just not be managing it or getting any of the excess honey. So, for now, I will check Kitty daily for eggs, signs of the new queen. If there are no eggs in a week, I'll order a new queen.

The Olga hive, our former problem child is right on schedule and is ready for honey supers--honey for us to collect for our own purposes. Go Olga! Look at this frame full of honey! We took a small taste--it was awesome.

I walked the woods to see if I cold find signs of the swarm. Swarms don't go too far from the hive. There are quite a few hollow trees nearby, so they could be near. I watched the hives to see where the bees were flying off to. From this photo, they start from each hive respectively, and then fly up and off to the upper left corner of this photo. They clear the tree line and then go on. I tried following the bees, but was stopped by waist high stinging nettle.

I started following the creek. I was feeling very down, NBB had a hard time understanding it. It's understandable that there will be some problems your first year as a beekeeper, but I wanted to get everything right. Our class instructor even advised us to get two hives in case something goes wrong, and from what I've read, swarming happens to the best of beekeepers (although usually the second year, not with a new package). I'm bummed, I feel I've let our beekeeping operation down. But on a deeper level, I think what was really bothering me was a sense of rejection. The Kitty bees didn't care for the hive and took a bunch of their workers and left. A bunch of stinging girls left me and moved on. It's middle school all over again.

And then I heard this (it's about 32 seconds long). Can you identify the bird singing:

It's a song I haven't heard for a long time. I've never heard this species singing in Mr. Neil's woods before (this has been a good year for them, many more reports on the local listservs than usual). We used to get these in the woods where I lived as a kid in Indianapolis. It was the first bird I tried to id based on song--without the help of bird identification CDs--or records as we used at the time. My mom and I spent an entire Saturday morning chasing this bird down trying to see what made such a beautiful song. It took us a long time, but finally we caught a glimpse through the leaves of a robin shaped bird, with black spots on a white belly, and brown back: a wood thrush.

Hearing this song reminded me of how much work it was to id this bird. We'd heard it for several days before we had the chance to really track it down and find it. It took a long time, and a lot of work--that's how it was early on my birding life. And it's a good reminder of how it will be with my beekeeping life. I will make mistakes, and bees will do what they want to do.

Thanks, wood thrush, for the reminder and for making one of the most haunting melodies a person can ever hear in the summer woods.

Unrest In The Kitty Hive

Five days ago we checked the hives to see if they were ready for some expansion. Olga was very ready and we added a third brood box. Kitty was about three frames behind, so we decided to expand Olga and give Kitty a few more days to build up comb.

We took a look at Kitty today, and I noticed all but one of the frames had comb drawn out. We took out a center frame to check the status of the brood and found something most troubling. Can you see it in the above photo? It's down at the bottom, towards the right...kind of looks like a peanut shell...here's a close up:

The bees have formed queen cells. Now, I'm perplexed as to what is going on. There were about six queen cells formed throughout the hive and most were formed on the bottom of the frame--off of a column of drone cells. Now, here is the deal, queen cells are formed for two reasons--swarming (when the bees run out of room, they raise a queen, divide up and swarm) or supercedure (which means the current queen is failing, injured, or dead and the workers are trying to raise a new queen to replace her).

Now, according to bee literature, swarming queen cells are on the bottom of the frames. Supercedure queen cells are formed on the center of a frame...Most of the queen cells in the Kitty hive were on the bottom, but I did find two that were on the frame towards the center. I could find no eggs, but if the hive is about to go into swarm mode, the queen would have stopped laying eggs. However, it's been weeks since I've seen the Kitty queen. Is she dead? did she get injured or killed when we checked the box five days ago? Now, what do I do? Should I buy a new queen to introduce to the hive?

Check out this frame laden with capped over honey and a small patch of brood. From reading about queen cells in books and bee forums, the only thing that is certain with bee keeping appears to be that there are some guidelines, but really nothing is hard and fast. Sure swarming cells are usually at the bottom of a frame, but according to bee literature and bee forums--anything is possible. All of this may just be the Kitty girls feel crowded and are ready for a third brood box. I started thinking back: We checked the hive five days ago, and all seemed normal--eggs in cells and no queen cells. Today--there are about a half dozen queen cells. It takes fertilized eggs three days from when they were laid to be larvae and queen cells get capped at about seven days after being laid--these can't be more than four days old. The queens don't emerge until nine days after they have been capped. I decided to remove all the queen cells I could find and to add the third brood box and check again in a week. If there are no eggs after a week, then I'll order a new queen.

Ack, this is nerve wracking.

I ended up removing quite a few of the drone cells as I removed the queens. I felt terrible about it, but the hive needs workers to build and gather food,not males to eat honey while they bide their time to fly out looking for queens. As I removed wax, cells got exposed and you can see the larvae oozing out. I really felt bad killing the, but it needed to be done. On the upside, none of the larvae and pupae I exposed had any varroa mites--which means the overall health of the colony is good. After I scraped this chunk off, some of the drones started to emerge (above photo). I'm sure it was panic at feeling the cells being moved. As with any type of farming, you will have to kill some of your stock, but I found myself feeling more guilty about it than I had anticipated. If I'm like this with drones, I don't want to even think about my state at the end of summer in 2008 when I have to let my older colonies die off.

If anyone has advice or insights to my queen situation, please feel free to comment.

In other news, I have three new monarch chrysalises around the apartment. Two were formed about three days ago and appear to be parasite free. Whew!

Bee Update and Misc. Bugs

Warning: there is a spider at the end of this post. I used to be scared of spiders, not so much now.

We checked the hives yesterday and we had one of the hive namesakes to help out (Olga). We currently have three bee suits, which Mr. Neil, Olga, and I wore. Non Birding Bill came along too, but he wore the pith helmet with a net and a set of gloves. The rest of his outfit was a red t-shirt and gray sweats. I admired his bravery (or foolhardy attitude), although he wasn't digging around in the hives like I was, only staying back and taking a few photos.

Here is Mr. Neil showing a frame of burr comb from the bottom brood box of the Olga hive. Olga is giving the frame a puff of smoke. She still prefers to think of her bees as striking out new ground and innovative design as opposed to being problem bees. Actually, since I've started using the frame spacing tool, we haven't had too much of a problem with bees making the funky come.

Here's an up close look at the comb. If you recall, when I first posted a photo of Olga's odd comb, it was light in color and now looking at it above, it has darkened quite a bit. All normal and to be expected as the wax ages. Most of the worker brood has hatched on the above frame and there are quite a few drone cells.

We wanted to check both the top and the bottom boxes to make sure that all looked healthy and happy, see if we need to reverse the position of any of the boxes to encourage more brood. Some brood cells had been built between the two brood boxes and we exposed some larvae. We had to scrape them off and I felt awful about it, but the comb couldn't stay there. That is one tough part of beekeeping--you will kill some of the bees. Every time you go out, some of your colony will perish--some workers will sting your gloves and die, some bees just will not get out of the way when you put the hive back together (I hate crunching sound), or you have scrape away brood cells that are not in an appropriate area.

Despite some of our killing we did see new life. If you look at the above photo (towards the top and towards the left corner), you can see a new worker who has just finished pupating, chewing her way out of her cell--new life emerging into our hive! That was really exciting. Int he lower right hand corner is both a worker bee and a larger drone.

Here's a great frame shot! On the bottom is bright yellow capped brood (pupating into new workers) and some uncapped brood still growing. Above that is a layer of workers tending to the uncapped brood and feeding on honey. The top is the lighter colored capping is honey--all honey--properly aged and everything! Mr. Neil got some of it on the hive tool and we took a taste. Earlier in the season we had tasted the uncapped honey, which basically means that it had more moisture in it and wasn't true honey and could ferment. After the worker bees regurgitate the nectar into the cells, they fan it, evaporating the water from the regurgitated nectar and raising the sugar concentration. When the nectar has evaporated to less than 18.6% moisture, it will not ferment and that is when the bees cap it. When there is capping, you have true honey. We tasted it, our first true honey from our hives. Before we had tasted promise, this time, we tasted perfection. I was so proud of my girls.

All looked well, Olga had filled both brood boxes and was ready for a third brood box. I remembered from my notes in the beekeeping short course that three brood boxes were essential to overwintering our bees to insure that they would have enough honey and pollen stores--however, I couldn't remember if I needed to use the queen excluder at this point to that it would only be filled with honey and no brood. I reread my manual and couldn't figure it out, so I emailed the professor. She said to not use the queen excluder until I would put on our honey supers for our own consumption, that the queen have access to the the third box. So, no queen excluder for the moment. Kitty is now about three frames behind Olga, so we did not add a third brood box to her. We'll check again next weekend and then let them go. Hopefully, by mid July, we might be able to add our own honey supers and then use the queen excluder.

And since we're talking about bugs at Mr. Neil's house, I thought I would add a few more. I don't know about where you live, but around here I am noticing a TON of red admiral butterflies. The drive way was covered with them yesterday!

I even found a few flitting around in the education bird courtyard at The Raptor Center this year. I think their larvae like stinging nettle, must be a good year for that plant too. Yippee.

This isn't a painted lady, but a giant leopard moth near the trash bins. As if this moth isn't cool enough on the back, check out the front side:

Check out those crazy blue mandibles. I'm not sure if they make it look scary or incredibly wise. Speaking of scary...brace yourself:

Ewww! Spider--with an egg sac. At first glance, I thought this was a wolf spider. Someone else speculated garden spider. I remember once seeing a wolf spider with her back covered in babies, but some quick Internet research showed that wolf spiders carry their egg sacs in back and this girl was carrying her eggs in front.

Also, looking at the photo, this spider has very thin legs compared to wolf spiders. What could it be? Well, I googled "spider egg sac" and quickly found the answer. Turns out, this is a nursery web spider who carry their eggs sacs in their jaws (in front) as opposed to wolf spiders who carry them on their spinnerets (in back).

I don't know if this photo does the spider justice--it was quite large. And now we return to our the regularly scheduled bird updates to the blog...and quite possibly another porcupet post is in the works.

Sweaty Bee Update

Ah, the bees suit which has been such a comforting fortress of solitude has turned on me in 90 degree heat into a sweat factory.

Lorraine and I went out to the beehives today to put up some skunk preventative. Near the area, we found some "leftover turkey". There were several clumps of turkey feathers. Lorraine mentioned they had flushed a turkey near the hives a couple of days ago. My guess is that they won't be flushing it again.

A quick scan of the feathers leaves me with the impression that this bird may have become prey to the coyotes. I've heard them recently, but also looking at the barbs you can see some ripping marks that match up with canine mouth shape. Also, the shafts lack any impression from a bill or talons. The whole body is missing and a turkey is so large, about the only thing large enough to carry it away would be a coyote. Ah well, on to the bees.

The bees were not as defensive as I thought they would be. Lorraine pumped the smoker to keep them calm. When we got to the Kitty Hive, the side was covered with bees getting in and out. It makes sense, they've had a few weeks of brood hatching so of course we should have several more bees. The last few visits, we've been using a frame spacing tool and it is helping cut back on funky comb construction in the Kitty hive. It takes a little extra time to use it--it's not as easy to use as it looks--all the sticky makes the frames stick.

When we last visited, the Kitty Hive was ahead as far as comb production in the second brood box, but this time she seemed to have slowed down. There were for sure more bees in the hive--but just going at a slower pace. Above is a frame with what looks like some bubbled up, capped comb--those are drone cells. Drones are larger and need more space to grow, so the workers make the cells bigger. We found eggs and then closed Kitty up. We'll check on them a bit more next week.

Olga has almost completely fill up the second brood box. I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, but we may get to use a queen excluder next week--whoot. Speaking of the queen, that's Queen Olga above. I was trying to take a photo of her eggs and she walked right into the shot--the really scoots along in the hive.

Here are some cells with her eggs. It's interesting to watch her, she doesn't really do it systematically by laying eggs in each cell, row by row, but she appears to run around all willy nilly, inspecting the cells and then randomly depositing an egg. Here's a video so you can see who quickly she moves about and towards the end of the video you can see her slip her massive abdomen into a cell and deposit an egg.

If you curious, the bird singing in the background is an indigo bunting. I have to admit, with all the sweating going on, it's great to have a life where you can be out working some bees and be serenaded by one of the bluest birds in the country.

We set down some carpet tacking to keep the skunks away. What the skunks are doing is slapping the ground outside the entrance to irritate the guard bees, force them out, grab them, and eat them. For whatever reason, the stings don't seem to bother them. The nail tips on the carpet tacking are supposed to prick the skunk's paws when it walks up to the hive entrance and when it starts slapping the ground. I'm not sure why this will work since stings don't bother the skunks, but many beekeepers have found success with this. If this doesn't work, we'll look into an electric fence.

And really, trapping a skunk is not an option.

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.