Interviewed By MPR At The Beehives

Yesterday was an interesting day.  A couple of people from Minnesota Public Radio accompanied Lorraine and I out to the hives.  We've had Euan Kerr out before, but he was interviewing Mr. Neil.  For some reason, it really didn't register to me what we would be doing when they asked to come out.  I love to show off our bees and I love to take people who have never been to a beehive out to our hives, but it didn't register to me that Lorraine and I would be interviewed.  In my brain, they were out to interview the bees not me and I did not prepare for it the way I would prepare for a bird segment.  There were two people, Jessica Mador who took the audio and asked most of the questions (and was apparently a bit scared at the hives) and Tom Weber who came along to get video footage to go along with the story on the website.

Our hives were on their best bee-havior.  All four of our new Italian hives have been so mellow this bee season, they were perfect to introduce to newbies.  They pretty much just let Lorraine and I talk while they asked questions that most people ask the first time they visit our hives.  As I understand it, the gist of the segment is about the recent change in the law that allows beekeeping in Minneapolis.  One of the reasons that I started with bees at Mr. Neil's was because it's illegal to keep bees in Minneapolis when we started.  Since our operation is going well out there and my building manager doesn't want anyone on the roof of the building, we will not bee keeping any hives on top of the roof of my home.

One theme of questioning that we seemed to get over and over again was something along the lines of, "How dangerous will this be for people if hives are in their neighborhood" and "what should you be worried about."  As I said, Jessica did not seem comfortable around the hives--and that is totally understandable.  She kept her distance from the hives and even had Tom put her mic in front of the hive entrance for her.  Lorraine and I totally freaked the first time we worked with our bees, so I could understand her nervousness. Plus, I'm sure Euan had told her how he got stung right through the beesuit (the suit was a hair to small on him and the bee found the breach where his bicep was flexed...and we also made the mistake of taking him out to a very angry hive.

But I wondered if this was an article more along the lines of--are bees something really scary that people need to worry about in their neighborhood and I hope we conveyed the answer of, "Not really." Bees are kind of like the big scary guy at the bar.  If you go about your business, stay polite, you'll be fine and if you play close attention, might learn a thing or two.  However, if you go up, punch and kick him, he's going to get defensive and quite possibly hurt you.

The bees were so chill, Lorraine demonstrated how to hand feed the girls.  I asked if Jess and Tom wanted to feed them.  Jess politely declined but Tom was all over it.  We also had another friend out named Beth (she was visiting from out of town and it was her first time at a hive too) and she was ready to hand feed the bees. I got a photo of it here.  Tom is the one filming his hand and Beth is the one in back.  Incidentally, Beth was a natural at the beehive.  Lorraine and I would be busy showing frames and larvae that when we'd ask for some puffs from the smoker or an extra hand--she was right there ready to help.

We did get into this whole weird conversation about talking to our bees and I really hope I don't come off sounding like a hippie.  I was talking about all the times I have found comfort in our bees.  One of the awesome things about being a freelancer is that you can set your own schedule, the downside is that so can the people who pay you.  There have been times when we've been financially strapped because of waiting for a check or wondering what the next project will be.  Going out to the hives, watching the girls go about their work really comforts me.  I think it's getting wrapped up in watching the live natural science right in front of me.  We also talked about the different personalities of all the hives and sometimes I even talk to the bees.  But for the record, I want everyone to know: I do not expect the bees to talk back to me.  I'm more of a Clint Eastwood type singing, "I talk to my beeeeeeeeeeeeees, but they never listen to me."

I love this shot!  Beth is tasting honey freshly scraped right off the frame, I think she likes it.  She's enjoying the flavor and her fabulous hair color works with the bucolic palette of our bee yard.  I think my favorite food period is honey freshly scraped off of an active hive in summer.  The wax is soft and warm.  Right now, our honey has a delicate sweet flavor with a hint of something peppery and surprise flavor of mint.  Earlier this summer, it totally tasted like lilacs.

All in all, it was fun to take people out and both Jess and Tom said we made them feel at ease visiting their first hives.  Which is good.  The last thing I want to be is the snarky and judgemental beekeeper screaming at a nervous newbie, "Get your butt over here and stick you hand in the hive.  Why are you crying?  There's no crying at the beehive! Wuss!"

I know they're going to interview some other beekeepers too and I can't wait to hear how it's all going to come together...I just hope I don't sound like the hippie beekeeper and I hope more people will be excited to take up beekeeping.  One thing is for sure, they will get a lot of different opinions.  Talk to three different beekeepers and ask them the same question, you're likely to end up with seven different answers.  This should be up sometime next week and I'll put up a notice.

Bees, Glorious Bees

I've been doing so much traveling, I have not been able to visit much with our bees. Poor Lorraine had to take over beekeeping duties while both Mr. Neil and I were away. She did her best, making sure to give the bees more room to build as they filled in their hive boxes. We have one hive, the yellow Hannah hive that had been slow to build and draw out comb. Lorraine reported on Twitter that the hive had no new brood and whatever larvae was present was shriveled, other than that there was capped honey. We advised her to let the hive be, add a box if it needed it and maybe keep a food bucket on there. As soon as Mr. Neil returned from his trip and I returned from North Dakota, we'd check it and decide what do to. The shriveled larvae had me worried...did we have some new disease to deal with?

Non Birding Bill and I headed out to meet up with Mr. Neil and Lorraine for a hive inspection. We started with the presumed queenless hive. I wanted to see if the Hannah hive was failing and if a disease was the cause. If she was merely queenless, we thought we might combine her with another hive, but we weren't going to do that if she had something like foulbrood. However, when we go there, we could see a fair number of bees going in and out, some even arriving with loaded pollen baskets.

There were a fair number of worker bees inside and they were rather laid back but did not have that queenless buzz, they sounded mellow but harmonious in their buzzing. We took out a frame to assess the situation.

Not only did we find capped brood (larvae pupating into new workers) but we found very fresh, healthy looking larvae and eggs. The queen was definitely alive and kicking into high gear producing some larvae. We told Lorraine that she did the right thing by just letting the hive be. What she thought was capped honey was capped brood. I didn't see any shriveled larvae, just plump healthy larvae. I tested a couple of capped off cells for the presence of foulbrood but they were healthy. What a big sigh of relief--we still have four hive for the summer! We just adjusted the spacing of the frames in the hive and let Hannah keep growing.

The only big problem we encountered in any of the hives was the violation of bee space. The term "bee space" came from Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth who in the 1800s figured out that if a space of 3/8 inch is left in the hive for the bees to move around in, the bees will neither build comb in the space nor cork it up with propolis (bee duct tape). If you allow your frames to fall into violation of that space you get what's called "feral comb." As you can see in the above photo, the purple Yvaine hive had a major bee space violation going on. NBB and I had to pry off that excessive comb while Mr. Neil held the heavy brood box.

We carefully scraped it off to ensure that the queen was not there. We couldn't just leave it, the oddly placed comb would have caused more problems with future inspections and encouraged unregulated comb construction. Mr. Neil took care to properly space all of the frames in all of our hives so we could avoid future violations. Above, he's using a frame spacing tool along with a hive tool to set all the frames straight and into proper alignment for good bee space. I'd heard from more experienced beekeepers that frame spacing tools were a toy, but for newer beekeepers, they really do help cut down on the feral comb. I cannot eyeball bee space.

As we scraped of some of the feral comb, a few developing pupae came out. I felt bad, but again it's worse in the long run to let the comb stay. The queen lays thousands upon thousands of eggs, a few lost larvae will not destroy the hive. Lorraine however, was a tad grossed out. Here's a video of Mr. Neil properly scraping some feral comb with his tool and explaining larvae:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w97rNEzUlqU[/youtube]

One happy surprise was that our Juliet hive which started as a bit of an angry hive is mellowing out.

We had to make some minor repairs to her base...well, NBB and Mr. Neil did. Lorraine and I sat and studied the chilled out bees while they worked (didn't want to be in the way while the boys did the heavy lifting). It's just so relaxing spending time with chill bees while they do what they do and how pretty they look, all golden in the sun. You can watch them here, if you would like to experience the mellow red Juliet hive.

Oh, one final note: How do the boys like to spend their time while working with the hives? They make up haiku:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CZAOlWgbfM[/youtube]

What a joy to have happy harmonious hives without the drama of the previous summers. Let's hope that holds when our Russians arrive.

Odd Baird's Sparrow Song

I just returned from the Potholes and Prairie Bird Festival in North Dakota where I go to see some of my favorite songbirds like the above Baird's sparrow.  There was one particular Baird's who did not get the memo on his life history. First, this bird had staked out territory on this tiny patch of grass next to a cultivated field, not desirably Baird's habitat.  What's interesting is that where you find Baird's sparrow, you usually find Sprague's pipits and there were no Sprague's hanging out with this guy.

Second his song was just weird. Baird's sparrow should sound like this.  I felt kind of bad, he had little chance of attracting the mate with inferior territory and an odd song.  Last year, I got a great video of Biard's sparrow and you can hear what their song should sound like:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFLHwAZ601U&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.birdchick.com%2Fwp%2F2008%2F06%2Fbrown-birds-at-potholes-prairie-bird-festival%2F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Below is a video of the odd Baird's sparro that we heard over the weekend (sorry about the sound, as you can see by the way the bird is whipped around, it was a tad windy on the prairie):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVAF3kwzhUI[/youtube]

You can still hear the basic beautiful tone of the Baird's but the cadence is off.  I'm not sure if he was hatched last year and hasn't honed his song or if he is just an odd little misfit trying to break new ground on strange territory.

Adventures In Female Urination

This post maybe TMI for some people.  Take note of the title and if that is not your favorite subject or something you don't like imagine other people doing, I would recommend you stop reading and maybe check out this cool post by my buddy Amber about some gannet rescue she did while on vacation in Florida. When I travel, I'm periodically asked by friends to take along a stuffed animal or  a Flat Stanley for photos.  I almost always decline.  Number one--suitcase space is an issue and number two--I always lose something when I travel, whether it be accidental or confiscated by airport staff.  Stuff just goes missing.  If I lost a friend's treasured critter that's been photographed all over the planet, I'd feel terrible.

So, I got a request from an online rabbit name Audrey from All About You asking if I could take a stunt Audrey with me overseas.  She has a blog and it would be a reciprocal blogging thing.  I thought, "Okay, they have stunt rabbits, this isn't a treasured animal, I can do this."

So, Audrey came with me and we had a lovely time in Frankfurt.  Above she is hanging out with a rather large snail outside our Frankfurt hotel.

We shared a beer in a Frankfurt bar (although, I had to chuckle at her choice of fruity beer--grapefruit beer?  Really?).

And then this is the last known photo of Audrey.  After getting her photo next to a Frankfurt sign warning that you are being watched, she nestled into my checked luggage for our flight to Kazakhstan...and hasn't been seen since.

ARRRGH!  I feel terrible!

And she wasn't the only thing missing from my checked luggage.  I had also recently won a female urinary device known as GoGirl at an outdoor convention.  I was anxious to try this out.  But like Audrey, it was missing from my checked luggage.  I don't know why, don't want to know why.

And there were several times I missed my GoGirl.  For example, above is one of our restroom stops.  Our birding guide in Kazakhstan was more of an ornithologist than tour leader, so his bathroom breaks were stops like this with girls on one side boys on the other.  I can go outdoors, but with short legs, there are some challenges, and I have a shy bladder.  This was not ideal for me...I like a bush, a shrub for the illusion of privacy.  Also, I like something to lean on or prop up against.

If we did have restrooms, they were like this.  Let's take a closer look.

I really missed my GoGirl here.

I was excited at this birding spot--if you look in the distance towards the center left, there's an old wall--a perfect spot for female privacy.  I went around the wall, away from the birding group, I got in a good leaning position and started to go.  All was running smoothly until a slight movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention.  I looked and focused on the critter that was the same color as the wall and about to crawl on my exposed area...and that was the moment I got my lifer scorpion.  Didn't know they had those in Kazakhstan.

I lept up, there was spray, and a little tumbling.  After a moment's recovery, I got my camera out for a photo.

Apparently, my chosen leaning location was a little nook that the scorpion liked to crawl into.  All I got was a photo of its tail.  It was only about four inches long, but still freaked out this Midwestern girl.  I also have a new appreciation for the quick dry material on REI's convertible pants.

On our final day in Kazakhstan we hit a storm and it got very rainy.  I asked our guide if we could stop some place for a toilet.  He looked around and said, "This place is good," and pointed to the surrounding shrubbery.

I said, "I really need someplace dry and maybe we could go to a gas station, I'll buy the vehicle some gas. A cafe?  I'll buy some food, any place but I just want it dry."

He looked skeptical but said he would find me some place dry.  Our vehicle stopped and I didn't see any buildings, the terrain was as remote as the above photo.  He pointed to a blue railing along the road and said, "See that blue pipe? That is bridge, you go under road, it be dry there."

And it was dry and I appreciated it.

So, Audrey and GoGirl, where ever you two are, I hope you are being put to good use.

Bee Progress

Man, all week I have had great intentions but lingering jet lag and life has gotten in the way.  Tuesday night, I thought I would do a quick bike ride, maybe bike to a restaurant with Non Birding Bill, have some quality spouse time, come home, do a wee bit of blogging, and watch a movie. Just as our bikes reached the restaurant...a screw found it's way into my tire and we had to walk home.  A big thank you to the random hippie who slowed down and tossed a temporary patch and said, "Heeeeere, maaaaan, find somebody with a pump!" The thought was appreciated.  We ended up over at my favorite bike shop--Sunrise Cyclery who quickly helped me out with a patch.  But we came home late and exhausted.

Then yesterday, I was supposed to go out to some bald eagle banding and I thought I would come home in the afternoon, catch up on some blogging (do a bee update and then a little Kaz update), have a nice walleye dinner, watch Fight Club with NBB (a favorite date movie) and just relax. Due to high winds and uncertain nest locations we were out all day, dealing with high winds on the river, hot sun, climbing one really high hill, wading through stinging nettle. I came home to find the servers down or the site so no blogging which was fine, Sleep descended on me like a shark from the sky.  I could not keep my eyes open, despite NBB, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.

And now I have an enormous backlog (or should I say blackblog)...and in a couple of hours I'm going to be on a river boat teaching kids the wonders of the Mississippi River.

So, lets do a quick bee update.

For the most part, the four new hives are doing swimmingly!  They are still so young and so new, they are quite friendly.  Lorraine, further conquering her bee fear demons even went without gloves for this hive inspection.  I was holding a frame looking at our hives' egg  situation when Lorraine offered to hold for me.  I said, "Dude, you forgot your gloves."

"No I didn't," she said.  At first I admit I was skeptical, but she handled them well.

The bees themselves were more focused on eating and building up their hives.  Above is a worker chowing down on some pollen patty crumb.

The bees eat a tiny bit of the pollen patty we make for them, but every year, new hives appear well capable of gathering their own. Check out this girl with fat baskets attached to her back legs.  Dandelions are in heavy bloom, that could very well be the pollen in her baskets.

But the workers are finding other sources of pollen.  Check out the colors of the stored pollen. There's bright yellow, but also dark orange.  Where could that be from?  Bees store pollen (their protein source) in the bottom of a food cell and then store honey on top of that.

All four of our hives had brood and eggs.  You can see the eggs freshly laid by a queen in the above photo.  Both the green Wendy hive and the red Juliet hive were built up quite a bit in their boxes--seven full frames.  According to the way I was taught, when the bottom box has 8 of the ten frames built out, it's time to add a new box full of empty frames for building on top.  But our first summer, we saw a hive at seven frames and decided to wait until she added one more...but she ended up swarming, so if they had seven frames drawn, we added another box to give them room to grow.

The purple Yvaine hive and the yellow Hannah hive were both a little behind in production.  They had eggs, so the queens are present in both hives, but they are not working as fast as the other two.  Check out the shot above of all the girls coming back with pollen.  I love watching bees coming and going at an entrance.  I took several photos.

When I was going through all my entrance shots, I noticed this one.  I was going for the worker in the middle above the entrance reducer, she is very yellow (I suspect from pollen).  But then, I noticed the poor bee on the bottom who appears to be falling ass over tea kettle.  I had just adjusted the entrance reducer, so I think she wasn't ready for the change in position, flew into it, and got knocked on her back.  Bees, so organized, yet sometimes not very graceful.

We had a friend out with us to the hives.  Above, Mr. Neil is showing her how much bees enjoy the gag, "Pull my finger."

They love it.

Beekeeping interview

Just a quick note, Sharon was the subject of a beekeeping interview over at the Sunset website.

New Bee Package Adventures

Our bee crew with substitutes headed out to our hives to welcome our four new packages of bees. We started with the Wendy hive, above is the Queen Wendy in her cage (with a worker on my thumb).  We we hive the packages, we spray the packages with sugar water, bonk the box so all the workers fall to the bottom, remove the feeder can, spray a bit more, take out the queen cage, make sure she is alive, put her in a pocket, dump the bees in the hive, remove the queen from your pocket, spray her, open her cage and release her into the hive, carefully put in all of the frames, put on the ceiling, put in the sugar water feeder and pollen patty, and close up the hive.

Here's a video of the newly installed Wendy hive checking out all of the new frames to build comb and raise the next generation of workers (I recommend clicking the HQ aka high quality button:

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

After successfully installing the Wendy hive, we moved on to the Juliet hive.

All went well with this hive, but we did notice a wee bit of bonking from these girls as we were pouring them in. Bees are supposed to be fairly docile when you get new packages.  They are in swarm mode--they have been moved from their old home with no comb or brood and they are focused on finding a new home not defending a home.

Hans took a picture of a bee angrily buzzing on his hood and even though it's blurry, you can still see the stinger coming out.  I don't want to start off on the wrong foot with a hive, but I wonder if the pretty pink Juliet hive will not be so friendly as we do our first bee inspections?

Most of the bees that come our bee suits are pretty low key.  These are bees on Merry's suit.  They were more after old honey residue and sugar water on our suits than actually climbing around looking for a place to sting. Although, I think Hans would disagree.  Here's a video of me pouring in the Yvaine hive bees, most go in, but you can hear Hans say, "Stop bonking me." There's also a very angry bee coming up to attack the camera:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UON395ruFwk&feature=channel[/youtube]

When I was pouring the bees into the last hive, we got a tad rushed.  It started out sunny, but then it suddenly clouded over and it started to rain, I wanted to keep our girls dry.  As I rushed, I felt something on my foot--a small clump of bees fell on my shoe. I suddenly regretted my lax attitude about the bees' mood during hiving, bees crawled over my turkey vulture socks and I decided not to walk right away so I wouldn't irritate them into stinging.  They eventually flew off and it was all good.

The bees in all hives were ravenous!  Even though there's a feeder can, they were licking anything with sugar water on it.  Here are two bees frantically licking sugar water that had coated a very dead and very old bee--yuck.  There was even a moment when we were at the Hannah hive, about to release the queen and she pointed to my gloved hand. There was a tight cluster of five bees surrounding another--I gulped hard.  Was this a queen from another hive??  No, it turned out to be just a very sugar coated worker that was getting a good lick down from the other workers.

Whew.  But there was more queen drama to follow.

After successfully installing the previous three queens, I didn't worry too much about the final Hannah queen. I opened her cage and instead of her crawling out onto the frame, she opted to try and fly away--Hans captured the moment.  Because she is heavy and full of eggs, she flew very slow.  I slowly followed with my hands to get her to follow me and then two other workers flew on her and she sank like a stone to the bottom of the hive.  I'm sure the workers were just attracted by her pheromones, but it looked like they were saying, "Oh no you don't  there Bessie, you're stayin'!"

We carefully put the frames back in and closed her up before too much rain got in the hive.

After the hiving, I waited for the rain to pass and then headed into the woods to do some birding.  As the day got later, I headed towards the hives to see what was going on.  I set up my digiscoping equipment so I could watch them from a safe distance.  Almost all of the hives had removed the leaves blocking the entrance (it's supposed to stay there the first day to encourage them to accept the hives.  Bees were coming and going from the entrance.  Watching them, it looked like quite a few workers were flying around and orienting themselves to the new home so they know where home is when they go out to forage.  Some were bees who got lost in the hiving and now have to see if they can get accepted into one of the hives, I'm sure they will work it out.

And so it begins, a fresh bee season.  Here's a video of the Yvaine hive workers milling about the entrance of their new homes:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yko6dEGvgU[/youtube]

Welcome girls.

Vicarious Beekeeping

This week was a tad frustrating.  We had received a note from our honey bee supplier that bees would ship sometime the week of April 27.  I kept all of my plans soft expect to dash off an hive our packages of new bees.  The calls never came and when fellow Bee Team member Lorraine called our supplier, we were informed that the bees were coming next week.  AAAAARGH! ME WANT TO PLAY WITH BEES NOW!

But birds are always there for me when bees are not.  Friday's bird banding added in some spring migrant excitement.  While I've been reading about friends in the southern US seeing warblers, I've been practically salivating.  Well, we got in a female yellow-rumped warbler in the nets on Friday at Carpenter Nature Center, the spring migration flood gates are about to open!

As we were banding, Al, who is in charge of volunteers enthusiastically complimented my hair.  I just got colored, so initially I figured the compliment was natural, but the tone had a sense of urgency.  Sure enough, he asked if I would be willing to help out with Carpenter's beehives.

I was simultaneously incredibly honored and nervous.

It's a tough economy right now and like many places that rely on grants and donations, Carpenter has had to cut back on staff and ask volunteers to help where we can.  Staff at Carpenter take care of the education animals, maintain the property, give programs, organize events, the list goes on and on. Al is the one who normally takes care of the bees.  Way before I ever had bees or even took a beekeeping class, he let me follow him out to the Carpenter hives, just to get a feel for it.  He's been beekeeping since he was a kid and knows much more than I do.  The fact that he asked if I would check on his hives was a huge honor.

It's one thing for me to make a mistake with our own hives, but to make a mistake or do things differently from the way Al would run his hives made me nervous.  But I wanted to help because Carpenter has an apple orchard and they need their bees.  I suited up and started the smoker and headed out.

Oh! It was so awesome to be back at a hive and actively work it.  It was still fairly cool, and the girls were calm.  Carpenter had a different bee suit than I'm used too and I had some concerns that there might be a breach. We use what I call the space man suit, the hood is attached to the suit and when it's all zipped up, it's hard for an angry worker to get through.  Carpenter has the suit, but the hood is a pith helmet with a net over it.  I could see potential breaches all around my neck as I worked.  But the bees were calm, I took my time and forged ahead.

I looked all through the hive for the queen or even signs of her.  I found some capped brood and a bit of larvae, but no queen and no fresh eggs.  Al told me to do a reversal to make sure his queen was in the top box.  Bees work from the top down.  So, if your queen is in the bottom box of your hive set up, then you just move the box she's in to the top.  The youngest larvae was on the bottom, so I hoped she was there and put the bottom box on top hoped I didn't crush anyone.

I also made her a container of bee nectar and a pollen patty to feed the girls.  They still had some of their winter stores left (above is a worker feeding inside a cell.  I think I spent about an hour with this hive.  Just checking the frames, going super slow to make sure I didn't crush anyone and also savoring time with the bees.  I haven't actively worked a hive since October--six months ago.  They were so calm, so furry.  The girls got a little irritated with the reversal, but nothing too bad.  It was fun to go with the groove of the hive, the contented buzzing was very soothing.

The other hive was much easier to work with and totally friendly. I found fresh eggs and larvae right at the top box in the hive.  I decided not to dig much deeper--the eggs meant the queen was right at the top, why disturb her work and risk crushing her?

This hive looked to have mostly Italian looking bees--with a beautiful gold color, but I periodically found a black bee (a carniolan).  Wonder what kind of drones the queen mated with in this hive?

I love to watch bees feed on sugar that I've made.  It does seem for just a moment, that they are little furry pets, coming up to gently lap the nectar that you have so carefully preparedfor them.

I told Al about not finding the queen in the first hive and reversing it.  He said that he had actually reversed that one a week ago--doh!  Ah well, best laid plans.  Who knows where the queen in that hive is?

He thanked me and said that he'd appreciate any help I could volunteer this summer.  I'm happy to help, Carpenter is my favorite nature center in the Twin Cities and if any of my skills can be of use, I'm happy to offer.

Plus, it will be a chance to learn from a very experience beekeeper.  Al managed to get two hives to survive the winter, I still need to master that.

Well, I hope our bees arrive before I go to Kazakhstan this weekend.  I'd hate to miss the hiving.

Mysterious Robber Bees

We still have juncos moving through, many were starting to sing some of their territory songs over the weekend.  Some even chased each other through the brush piles as the flocks start their northward migration.

Lorraine has been gleaning honey from the remainders of the Kelli and Kitty hives.  As she put the wrecked frames outside, we got some robber bees coming in to them!

Little honeybees came in to claim what honey we had not.  We currently have no active hives in our beeyard...where are these girls coming from? Is it possible that these are bees from our first summer that swarmed off of the Kitty hive?  Or is a neighbor also keeping bees?  Honeybees will fly 2.5 - 5 miles away from the hive in search of food, so it is conceivable that these are from a neighboring hive.  But it's more fun to think them being the Kitty bees.  Oh, how I wish I had a little robotic, remote-controlled, helicopter bee cam!

Bee Update

I kind of put my nose to the grind stone the last week and finished off a draft of the book and now I am dying to get out and watch some birds!  I'm hoping to do a bit of that on Wednesday.  In the mean time, we are getting things ready for the fast approaching bee season.  Our final living hive, the Kelli hive, has unfortunately succombed.  From the looks of things, she had moisture build up and that's what killed the hive. In the meantime, Lorraine has been extracting the honey from the dead hive and forced that nice folk singer, Jason Webley to aid in the extraction. Thanks to all who offered advice regarding Russian bees, we now have three packages on order, which brings our coming hive total to 7.  Yikes!  This year's Hive names are: Wendy, Juliet, Hannah, Yvaine, Magda, Svetlana, & Bea Arthur.