While in Indiana, I went out for some birding with my mom, my aunt and one of my sisters. In the Hoosier State, spring is ahead of my home in Minnesota, so I welcomed watching the song sparrows on territory singing for a mate (above). There were also a few field sparrows singing which had me excited about hearing them at Carpenter Nature Center in a few weeks--it's such a great song.
My mom and aunts have monitored a bald eagle nest in Mooresville, IN for the last five years. They keep a journal on their observations and I smile when locals drive by, see my mom and say, "Hey, it's the Eagle Ladies. Hi!"
Quite a few of the people who live near the nest have invited my mom and my aunts on their property to look at other birds. One is a bed and breakfast called Lake in the Woods. As we took the long driveway into their property, we passed a few beehives and then came to a whole bee yard with over 20 hives. Their bees were much more active, you could see workers going in and out of hives to look for pollen and propolis. I tried to get my sister, mom and aunt out of the vehicle to look at the hives, but they would not do it. I told them they would be fine, but they rolled up their windows. I swear, you blog about getting stung once or twice and no one wants to go near a hive.
The owners of Lake in the Woods were very generous with their time and showed us around their yard full of chickens, guinea fowl, bees, a couple of pigs, and lots of great birds, including the above mourning dove. A pair took up residence last summer on their porch and fledged two broods. The pair of doves returned three weeks ago and got started again.
I noticed some splashing on the lake behind the bed band breakfast and at first could not believe what I saw. It could not be what I thought it was. But when I got my bins and finally my scope on the splashing...
...I discovered that it was what I thought: a common loon--my state bird. I had to come all the way to Indiana to see the Minnesota state bird. The loon was in the process of bathing and darted and splashed all over the lake. I never saw these in Indiana when I was growing, but I wasn't often at a lake large enough for a loon either.
Must be a migrant loon, on its way north, waiting for the lakes in the far north to open up. Apparently, this species is possible to see on larger Indiana lakes during migration. I got some video of it bathing, it really looked like it was having a good time.
Mr. Neil emailed that he had been by the hives and that Kelli was silent. I emailed back, "You mean Kitty, right?"
If you recall, Kitty was in a small cluster and the cold was probably going to kill her. The Kelli hive was strong and loud. No, he meant Kelli. I hoped that he was either seriously jet-lagged, had excessive ear wax and ear hair, or maybe minor hearing loss of his punk band days.
Non Birding Bill and I headed out to the hives before I left for Indy to get the down low. I put my ear to the Kelli hive. It was quiet...too quiet. I wondered what could have happened, she was so healthy, did we finally get colony collapse? We wouldn't know without opening the hive. It was about to rain at any moment, so we decided to take the hive apart and take it back to the garage and inspect what could have been the problem. However I soon as I opened the ceiling, I found a small cluster of live bees.
At first I was hopeful to see signs of life. But wen I looked closer, I could see that the cluster was just too small. It barely covered one frame. She had plenty of food to see her through, but one more hard core cold snap was probably going to do this hive in--which is entirely possible even though the calendar reads spring.
What went wrong?
I think I have my answer on the front of the hive. Look at all that bee excrement, I think there's a bit of bee dysentery going on. I think the Kelli girls had a case of nosema, but I can't really say that unless I send in a few bees for testing. Bees hold in their poop all winter and then let it go in the spring. They'll go on cleansing flights on warm days to relieve themselves. They shouldn't go all over the front of the hive. When I give the bees their fall feeding, we put a little antibiotic to prevent nosema. Neither hive ate too much of our homemade nectar, which I didn't think about too much since they both had plenty of food. Kind of regretting that now, but then again, how does one forcefeed a bee so it will take her medicine.
So.
Looks like we'll be starting with all new hives this summer and no dividing of older hives.
We were planning on a total of six hives this summer, but that was based on four new packages and splitting Kelli. Since we will only have four, I'm thinking about trying some Russian bees. We've been using the Minnesota Hygenic bees (Italians) based on their "hygienic" behavior of cleaning out brood cells when they sense something wrong. But the more I read about the Russian bee and how it seems to resist varroa mite infestation a bit and can take a hard winter, I'm thinking I'd like to give some a go.
Any blog readers know someone who raises and sells Russian bees in the US and would be willing to send a package to Minnesota?
Here's a video from ScienCentral on Cornell's Project NestWatch.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MRy-4tQr7I[/youtube]
What's interesting is that the video talks about how birds like tree swallows are nesting 9 days earlier than previous records indicate. I always thought that bird migration was more influenced by how long daylight lasts as opposed to weather. If daylight is the case, then they would be nesting at about the same time, right? Unless these are southern tree swallows that tend to be more resident and more apt to nest early.
Speaking of nesting, while writing on the futon today, I noticed a robin lurking in the neighborhood and by this evening, he was singing outside of our apartment. I wonder if he will be our resident robin this spring?
Well, I got some fun bee news today. The City of Minneapolis is considering allowing beekeeping in the metro area (although with a license). There's a hearing on April 15.
I also just got a copy of the second edition of Beekeeping for Dummies and one of my photos is in it. Whoot. It's the one of me hand feeding the girls and you can tell it's my finger--green nail polish!
DON'T FORGET:There is still time to get your entries in for the Swarovski Guest Blogging Contest. A chance for you to have a blog entry posted here for the day (and getting some of my readers a taste of your writing) and a cool prize while I'm birding in Guatemala!
Well, the weather has been above freezing and all of us just happened to be in town for a moment so Mr. Neil, Non Birding Bill, Fabulous Lorraine and myself decided that it was time to do a winter bee inspection to determine how many bees and supplies to order for this spring.
Since we would be digging about inside the hive to check the food stores the hives had left, we decided to go with our bee suits on. With his hat and bee suit, NBB almost looked more like seaman from the movie The Life Aquatic than a member of a team of award winning beekeepers.
We have two hives that we are over wintering. Above is the Kelli hive. She is three deep brood boxes, wrapped in insulation, with two moisture boards (stuff they use in your bathroom walls to absorb moisture), and some newspaper. You worry more about your hives getting wet in winter than you do the cold. The bees can take the cold, but moisture in a hive just messes everything up. Kitty is two boxes without insulation and just newspaper for moisture. We were running a couple of experiments: for overwintering, do we want to do three boxes instead of two and do we want to use insulation or not. There are arguments for both. It's possible for bees to survive with only two boxes--fewer places to go and therefore the cluster won't be at risk of being too far from food. Insulation on the hive could fool the bees into thinking it's warmer outside than it really is and they fly out too soon and die.
Before we opened them, I put my ear up to each hive to see if I could hear them buzzing. I could! Kitty was not as loud as Kelli, but both hives were totally alive and had survived the harsh January temperatures so far! After we opened the Kelli hive, I held up my camera to the open frames so you could hear a hive buzzing in winter (you can see the green Kitty hive in the background):
We didn't dig too deep in Kelli, she was loud, just glancing at the top frames, she had plenty of food, and if we have learned anything, it's that the more you leave your bees alone to just bee, the better off they are.
We did make sure that bother bottom and top entrances were open for good ventilation. She was incredibly dry. Even her news paper was bone dry. The moisture board was working well and there weren't too many dead bees at the entrance and we could see a couple come in and out. The three box system, with insulation, and the moisture boards appeared to be working very, very well.
Kitty was a different story. She was alive, but her cluster was very small. If you look between NBB and Mr. Neil in the above photo, you can see part of it. Mr. Neil is holding a spray bottle, he sprayed some homemade bee nectar around them and we made sure that the frames closest to them were full of food, so if the cluster ran out of food where they were, they would not need to go far.
The cluster of bees stays together to stay warm. If it gets so cold that they cannot move far and they have eaten all the nearby food, they may starve before they can move to where there is food in the hive. As we moved the frames around, the hive was incredibly wet.
Even the newspaper on top was wet. There were thousands of dead bees on the inside. We took out a bunch of the dead wet bees. We have some concerns about this hive. Her cluster is small. If the rest of the winter is mild, she should survive. If we get some more subzero days, we're afraid that the remaining cluster of bees is so small it won't be able to stay warm enough. There's not much more we can do at this point.
So, I think two things to take from this are: 1. That white moisture absorbing material used for bathroom walls helps to keep a wintering hive dry. 2. That a two brood box hive probably could survive, but I don't know if we would do it again without insulation. We want to have six hives going this summer and we think what is going to happen is that we will split the healthy Kelli hive into two hives and that Kitty will most likely die and we will need to restart her.
Some good, some bad with the hive inspection, but it was fun to get a taste of our beekeeping operation. I really do miss it. I love birding and I love travel, but I think beekeeping is one of the coolest things you can ever try in life. It's more fun than I ever realized.
After we were finished we had to put the hives back together and put the bricks back on to make sure a strong winter wind didn't knock their covers off...and I can never resist working a Father Ted reference:
We are hardy folk, we northern beekeepers! Mr. Neil and I pose around a snow surrounded Kitty beehive. We came out to make sure that the snow wasn't blocking key ventilation areas in the beehives and to see if they were alive.
Mr. Neil and Non Birding Bill also checked to see if our electric bear-proof (and skunk-proof) fence was still in working order. Not that we need to worry about bears at this exact moment, but better to find out now if there is a problem with the solar panel now than in the spring when a bear has breached the fence and made a mess of the hives.
The Kitty bees are in a smaller hive this winter (an experiment to see if we can overwinter bees in a two hive system instead of three). This time of year, the workers and queen are all clustered together to stay warm. We opened the roof and they were right at the top. A couple even flew out at us! Mr. Neil asked, should we go inside and see what's going on, maybe we could add a frame of honey for them."
NBB quickly said, "No!"
"But do we--"
"No!"
We didn't have a smoker and two of us were dressed in black--the color a bee is most likely to sting. So we didn't go much further. Her humming sounded very healthy. Here's a video I made just to pick up the sound of their buzzing in twenty degree temperatures:
Things over that the Kelli hive were just as happy:
We could hear them inside the hive. The snow had piled up over the bottom entrance and Mr. Neil shoveled the front. As soon as it was clear, a couple of bees came out--one even took out a dead be. Bless our OCD Minnesota Hygienic Bees--"Must be clean, must be clean," they chant in their little buzzy voices.
Both seem content and healthy. They still have a few months to go and we'll check them again. This reminds me that it's getting time for me to order our bees for the spring! I think we'll have a total of six hives this summer! We'll probably divide Kelli and order three new packages of bees.
On our way out to the hives NBB found some feathers scattered on the snow. Above is one of the clumps. We found them in the spot where we have seen a saw-whet owl in the past. We were trying to figure out what kind of bird the feathers came from. The coloring of this clump looked like morning dove.
But then we found these secondaries (with a little blood ), looks too small for mourning dove to me. I think this might be junco. Possible for a saw-whet to take out, but also prey for a sharp-shinned hawk which also hangs out in Mr. Neil's woods in winter. I didn't see any owl poop on the snow, but then again, find white on white is kinda hard. But a fun mystery to chew on.
I just got the current issue of WildBird Magazine in the mail and there's a photo of me at the beehives! I'm so proud, part of our award winning Kelli Hive is pictured in a birding magazine. I feel like I'm crossing some sort of border by getting bees in a birding magazine. Now sure what that border is exactly, but it's cool in my little brain. Incidentally, you can send in your own photo of yourself reading WildBird, you just need to make sure to take it someplace where you do a lot of birding. Which for me happens to be around my beehives. Check out this killer titmouse photo I got near the hives on Sunday:
Nothing like mixed nuts and brush pile to make a titmouse come in and give you his sexy side.
We went out to our two remaining beehives to prep them for winter (the lovely lady above is the Kitty namesake). We are running a couple of experiments. There are beekeepers of two camps: 1 is to insulate your hives in the winter and the other is to not insulate. In our neck of the woods where subzero is the norm in January and February, insulating your hive makes sense. However, some beekeepers feel that a strong hive can stay warm without the insulation and that the insulation gives the hive a false sense of how cold it really is outside. Foragers come out too soon and die, weakening the hive.
We decided to insulate the Kelli hive and this year, Non Birding Bill made sure the insulation was not going to come off like it did last year. He duct taped the crap out of it.
We decided to not insulate the Kitty hive and to take her down to two boxes instead of three. Mr. Neil has read that this will work in our neck of the woods and I was skeptical but he brought me around to his way of thinking. The idea is that the cluster of bees does not have to travel as far to get to the food storage. Last winter, the Kitty hive died because the cluster got stuck were there was no food and starved to death. So with lack of insulation and a small space to keep warm, she should be good to go.
Note how Mr. Neil and NBB are a good distance from the hive? We foolishly went out to the hives with no beesuits or smokers. As we checked inside the Kitty Hive (and true to her cranky nature) some bees flew out and one stung me through my winter glove. Everyone took a step back. Interestingly enough--the sting did not hurt nearly as much as my first sting. It is true, the more you get stung, the less painful the sting--although it has been rather itchy the last two days.
We were a tad worried about Kitty when we came out, her buzz was not as loud as Kelli's and when the hive was opened, I thought I heard that kind of dissonant buzz that you get when your hive has gone queenless. It may just be the winter low-key buzz. I'm not going to worry about it. Requeening just does not work out for us and I refuse to intervene on that any more.
We will check on our girls a bit in the winter. Mr. Neil suggested we go out with a spray bottle of sugar water to spray the cells if they look low on food. We are also trying to use some newspaper in the tops of the hive to absorb moisture and that will need to be replaced.
Holy Buckets, I am in love with the boys at the Golden Valley, MN National Camera Exchange. My all-time favorite point and shoot digital camera to use for digiscoping is a Fuji FinePix E900. It's been discontinued and hard to find. They found one for me. I'm takin' that bad boy to Texas. The Canon A570 I'm currently using is okay, but the color quality is just not as good as the Fuji. Thank you National Camera in Golden Valley, you boys are the best!
A bird that's believed to be the oldest banded bald eagle on record in the upper Midwest has been returned to the wild. The 31-year-old female was hit by a car on state Highway 47 near Fence Lake last month. After recovering, the eagle was released by wildlife officials in Lac du Flambeau on Friday.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the bird was among 6,000 eagles banded in 1977. The average age of adult eagles is 10-12 years old.
So, I think I'm kinda grateful for my insanely busy schedule this fall. Mr. Neil wanted to move the Kitty hive so it would be inside the newly installed "bear proof fence" before the winter. This is our least friendly hive and the best time to move a hive is at night. I'm sure you can tell how fun and exciting this is just be rereading that last sentence. I alas could not go this week but you can read all about it over at Lorraine's blog. Of the four of us: Non Birding Bill, Mr. Neil, Me, and Lorraine, only NBB is not the bee sting virgin. Lorraine got her's last night.
Don't forget, we got a couple of Birds and Beers coming up. Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities--if you're interested in birds, you're invited. You can meet other birders--maybe find a carpool buddy, ask about where to find target birds, share cool research projects you might be working on, ask a bird feeding question, share life lists, share some digiscoping tips, promote your blog--the sky is the limit. It's low key and it's fun.
Here are the dates and note that the first date is in Harlingen, TX--in conjunction with the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest!
Thursday, November 6 at 7:45pm (or after the festival keynote speaker is finished that night). It will be held at The Lone Star, they are holding a table for us.
If anyone is on a Texas birding listserv and wants to post the Harlingen Birds and Beers there, please do. It's open to anyone, even if you are not part of the bird festival.
Speaking of the RGV bird fest, if you are a bird blogger and are going to be there, we're going to have a formal Bird Blogger Meeting in the Alcove at 4:30pm on Friday. This is your chance to meet other bloggers, ask questions, share ideas and network. We're a fun group and we're happy to see you be successful. Please come!
AND if you are someone who has no clue what bird blogging is all about or even what the heck a blog is, I'll be giving a program called Blogging: The New Nature Journal on what bird blogging is all about, how to start one, ideas for what you can blog about, highlights of my blog and other great birding blogs you can find on the Internet. The program is on Thursday at 2pm.
If you're in Texas, I look forward to meeting you. It's gonna be a great time!
I can't believe I forgot to blog about the turkey!
I stopped at Richardson Nature Center the other day to see if the feeders had any activity worth some digiscoping--some wild turkeys were there, about three toms. The above dude made me chuckle. His body was in the sun and his head was in the shade.
Periodically, you would see him pant, meaning he was hot. Birds do not sweat they way we do. To expel excess heat, they pant. I wondered if it occurred to this turkey to put its whole body into the shade, rather than just the head? But then again, that is a small brain controlling a large body.
It's feathers gleaming rust in the sun were quite beautiful.
The neck was another story. Ew.
While watching the turkeys, I noticed quite a few bugs flying around. At first, I thought the bugs were either box elder bugs or some type of wasp creating a hive on the side of the nature center. Then I noticed the dull hum--honeybees!
Richardson has a couple of beehives near their bird feeders. It looked as though someone had extracted some honey from some frames and left them out for the bees to "clean up." The frames were right next to the window, so I had a chance to watch the bee activity without being hindered by a veil.
There were a few other species coming in to take advantage of the unprotected honey. While I was watching the intense activity, I noticed several "balls of bees" start to roll around. At first, I thought they were fighting, but noticed that no one was using a stinger and that the were all licking each other. I think what was happening as that the forager bees would go into get some honey and get covered in honey themselves. Other bees would sense the honey on them and come in to lick it off. The bee would try to fly away, but another bee would have her tongue stuck to her leg from trying to lick off all the honey. I got a video of a bunch of girls, covered in honey,...and...licking each other:
The MimiKo hive has failed in a big way. I thought maybe last summer, I messed with the hives too much and that perhaps being a bit more hands off would be better this summer. Apparently, I was too hands off.
Lorraine took the Magnetic Fields out to our hives the day before and mentioned that the MimiKo hive was quiet...too quiet. We headed out today and she did seem quiet, but what caught my attention were odd looking drones. They were small, having trouble walking and totally out numbered the workers. The odd drones brought one thing to my mind--egg laying workers. Only queens are supposed to be able to lay eggs. Fertilized eggs become workers and on a occasion a queen, unfertilized eggs become drones. Workers are not supposed to lay eggs, but if a hive is queenless, workers will lay eggs and because they are all infertile, they will all be drones (who do not build comb or gather honey). A queenless colony with egg laying workers is a hive that is as good as dead.
There were dead workers on the roof and so we opened her up. It was quiet and the buzzing that we heard was that dissonant buzzing that you get from a queenless colony. More and more drones were moving all over the hive and I noticed a few non honeybees entering the front entrance. The drones moved as though drunk--another suspicion that they were the result of egg laying workers. Here's a video:
That is just so sad! Further inspection of the colony brought worse news:
Every cell had been ripped open. The colony had been robbed, most likely by the nearby Kelli Hive. All would take is one or two Kelli workers coming to the hive and noticing how weak it was. They fly back and let the other Kelli foragers know and the siege of the MimiKo would be underway.
With few workers, no queen, and lots of blundering drones, the colony didn't stand a chance. Flakes from shredded cappings that covered cells of honey were everywhere. There were even a few other species coming in to take what little honey was left. Notice the two non honeybees in the above photo.
Here's another look at ripped open cells. There were even flakes on the inside. I suddenly remembered that one of the signs of American Foulbrood is scales in empty cells. I'm panicking a little because American Foulbrood is a serious bee disease that would require some drastic measures. I tested a couple of what little remaining sealed brood was left (you poke it with a toothpick and if it's foulbrood, the contents comes out brown and ropey). Nothing I poked came out brown and ropey, the contents of the cells looked like an almost formed bee.
Here's another view of a ripped apart cell. To me, all this looks like bits of capping but if there are any experienced beekeepers seeing this and feel that this is American Foulbrood, feel free to let me know. I'm hoping it's not. American Foulbrood is a big fat downside to beekeeping. We'd have to burn the remains of the MimiKo hive and treat the Kelli hive with some serious drugs since she would have been exposed by robbing the MimiKo hive.
I found a dead worker that appeared to have died while trying to lay an egg in a cell. How long had this hive been queenless?? It has to have been a long time for things to be as bad and as empty as this hive is. How did it happen? Is this American Foulbrood? Did we crush the queen on one of the few inspections? When we took a frame of brood from the MimiKo hive to help the failing Olga hive this summer, did we accidentally brush the queen onto the ground and kill her? Was she just a bad queen?
Here was a sad little drone that died as it was trying to crawl out of its cell. Without any nurse bees around to help it along and the fact that it's a drone that grew in too small of a cell, it got wedged.
We took the hive completely apart and found lots of dead bees but not the huge amount that I expected. I looked over all the dead bees (and a few wasps) that were on the bottom, trying to work out what had happened. What caused things to go this wrong, why didn't I catch it sooner. I've come to a couple of conclusions--if the queen had failed and we caught it early enough, I would not have tried to requeen the colony--we've tried that more than once and it just doesn't seem to work for us. Both hives we've done that too have ultimately failed. We probably would have left this one alone to try and grow a new queen. I wonder why they didn't grow a new queen? Did they not realize they were queenless until it was too late to grow a new one?
So we left MimiKo in pieces so all the bees that were robbing it already could finish the job. I'm not sure what we're going to do next. I have a beekeeping meeting on Tuesday, I'll see what I can learn there. Non Birding Bill suggested I take a frame with me to show, but on the off chance it is American Foulbrood, I think bringing a frame full of it would make me the least welcome member of the club.
I love beekeeping, I love my girls, I love that I get to do it, but a discovery like this is a challenge. My goodness, we started this spring with four hives. We're now down to two and we have to move one of them into the bear proof fence. Will that hive make it?
After all of this, I had to do some digiscoping to try and clear my system. The fall colors made for a perfect backdrop. Usually, taking photos of birds is relaxing and satisfying but I was having trouble getting my focus down or predicting the perch the birds would use. I was getting frustrated, so my dear NBB offered to help...
Clever Bill. We did go for a walk in the woods and I got some cleansing that way...more on that tomorrow.
