Nature's Nectar Saved My Beekeeping Butt

Well, I don't know if you anyone noticed in my Twitter Status Updates or over at Lorraine's blog, but our queen for dividing the Olga hive (who arrived a week earlier than expected) died suddenly on Monday. Arrrgh! I had a back up ordered, but wasn't sure with my travel schedule and plan to divide on Wednesday would be able to fly. I'm not sure I can take the stress of timing spring beehive divides and warbler migration. I think it's going to make my tiny little brain explode!

Fortunately, Jim from Nature's Nectar was at the MN Hobby Beekeeper's Association meeting on Tuesday night and sold me a queen he just happened to have in his vehicle for desperate beekeepers like myself--totally saving my butt. He comes highly recommended from Minnesota beekeepers, I have a feeling he will be getting more bee business from us in the future. For those interested, Jim also has a beekeeping blog, you should check it out and see his grand scale operation.

So, thanks to all the prep work done by my Personal Beekeeping Assistant (Lorraine) and Junior Beekeepers (Non Birding Bill & Mr. Neil), we went out to Olga to look for fresh eggs (that would be the box that had the queen and would stay). The other box with no fresh bee eggs would be used to restart the Kitty Hive. And wouldn't you know it, the queen and eggs ended up being on the bottom box, so that one stayed and we removed the top box with just sealed brood to start Kitty.

We took the new box off and let it sit queenless for a few hours and then took the queen cage and wedged it into one of the frames. Hopefully, if all goes well, her pheromones will permeate the hive and those bees will accept her. She has a piece of sugar candy blocking the entrance to her cage. The first day, all the workers will want to kill her (hey, that's not our queen) and eat at the candy to get at her. However, all the while they chew at the candy and absorb the pheromone and suddenly, she seems like the best queen ever. This will now be the fourth queen for the Kitty hive. Let's hope this one takes.

We had to make the decision when we did the divide to either immediately start exploiting the Olga hive for honey or let her grow into a third brood box and overwinter her again. She's been such a great hive and one our first, we've decided to try and winter her again. Ah, Olga. She's grown up now. As of the divide, she is now considered a "parent colony". Our little girl has matured. I am so proud.

We also did a check of our two new hives. The one on the left was origionally called Kelli hive, but I'm getting Kelli and Kitty confused, so she is now Queen Bickman (which is just fun to say, in my book). Either way, she's named after her artist Kelli Bickman.

Someone emailed and mentioned that I never blogged about the art on the Mimi Hive, I just have an overload of subjects sometimes. But this hive was painted by photographer MimiKo...which I may just end up calling Queen MimiKo because I love to say MimiKo. It has this kind of cool bubble/planetary thing going on.

I'll say one thing, the bees look really cool when they are up against dark blues of the MimiKo Hive.

We went to check on the strange cells that Non Birding Bill found last weekend. He thought it was unregulated honeybee comb construction, but Mr. Neil and I both felt that this was the naughty work for mud wasps and quickly dispatched the freeloaders from the Bickman Hive.

We're using some different comb foundation in these hives this year. Last year it was white, this year, it's black, which makes the freshly constructed honey comb really pop with color on the frame. But that's not even the best part:

The eggs and larvae are ten times easier to see up against the black as opposed to the white! The Bickman hive seems to be a few days ahead of the MimiKo hive--Bickman has sealed brood, MimiKo does not, but both are full of industrious workers constructing new comb and lots of eggs.

I wonder if we will get honey from either of these girls like we did last year?

All the bulbs that I planed around the woods for our girls were just bursting out all over and it was fun to see bees here and there. As we were finishing up and climbing the hill back into the yard, my nose was suddenly hit with a wall of plum blossom aroma--it was intense. If you looked at the top of the tree, you could see a steady line of honey bees (and a few other insects and butterflies) furiously tackling and pollinating the blossoms. I tried to get a video of it, but I'm not sure how well bees translate onto YouTube:

Distractions

I'm literally leaving for Detroit Lakes in 10 minutes, but I had to get this up. Here are some of the birds that were totally distracting me from my beekeeping duties yesterday:

Not the best angle, but you get the idea: bold black and whites, pinks, indigo, yellow! Couple that with the oriole in the bee equipment, it was a challenge!

I love this lunch date: male indigo bunging and male rose-breasted grosbeak--perhaps discussing female attraction techniques?

The warblers on the suet feeder were really throwing me over the edge. Above is a female yellow-rumped warbler. The birds were so exciting, even Mr. Neil was getting into it.

Look at that, Mr. Neil took the above photo of a male yellow-rump at the feeder--go, Mr. Neil!

Okay, I seriously need to hit the road, but I will do a bee update from the hotel room at some point today.

Oriole In The Bee Equipment

Ug, I'm getting a backlog of blogging and I'm leaving for another festival tomorrow...prepare for a blogging explosion next week. I was supposed to go out and get to dividing Olga into a second beehive, but was WAY too distracted by birds. There were six, count 'em six, indigo buntings on Mr. Neil's feeders--among all the rose-breasted grosbeaks. Not to mention yellow-rumped warblers jockeying for position on the suet feeder. I was trying desperately to concentrate and focus on bees, not digiscoping birds. I went to the garage to the bee equipment shelves.

I heard a rustling and then looked up. There on the top shelf was a male Baltimore oriole. How can I focus on bees when the birds are forcing me to watch them? I opened up the garage doors figuring that he would fly out. Instead, he ran behind the equipment and hid.

Yo, dude, that's not the best hiding spot. The oriole eventually came out from hiding, but instead of flying out the wide open doors, kept flying into closed windows. I took one of the nets from one of our bee hats and tossed it on the not so bright oriole and grabbed it.

Boy, that bander's grip does come in handy. I gave him a look over and he was fiesty--that was good, he didn't hit the windows too hard. He had bent the tip of his beak a tiny bit, but was otherwise okay. He started whistling in my hand--man, could you feel the power of that song--that's a lotta whistle coming from a tiny bird.

I gave him to Lorraine to release and he was off. He preened a bit, roused, and then flew down to the grape jelly. A side door was open on the garage, so he must have flown in that way, probably going after what few insects are out and about.

Oh Hai! That's Not Supposed To Bee There

Can you name what item is not supposed to be with our beekeeping equipment?

Also, six indigo buntings at the feeder right now...must...focus...on...bee...duties...birds...drawing...me...to...procrastinate...eh.

Brits Banning Bread Bird Feeding?

From The Telegraph:

Bread should be banned as a bird food because it is so unhealthy and damages chicks’ chances of surviving to adulthood, experts said yesterday.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said it holds little nutritional value and suggested instead giving them a range of alternatives, including cake crumbs, crushed biscuits, grated cheese, leftover jacket potatoes, breakfast cereal, overripe strawberries and porridge oats.

Granary breads with seeds are marginally healthier than cheap white sliced loaves but still simply fill the birds up without doing them enough good.

Experts say the issue is particularly important at this time of year, when young are being raised.

Val Osborne, head of wildlife inquiries at the society, said: “There are many other household foods that would be much better for them.

“Bread doesn’t actually contain any of the vital ingredients to provide birds with the energy they need to breed and fee.

“The RSPB is asking people to consider alternatives such as porridge oats, cake crumbs and potatoes.”

The advice was mainly aimed at those people who feed the birds in their back gardens.

However, it is also applicable to swans and ducks found on lakes, ponds and rivers which might be fed by the public.

The rest of the story can be found here.

World Series of Birding 2008 Report Part 1

I have so much catching up to do before the Detroit Lakes Festival this weekend--how will I fit it all in? In the meantime, I need to catch you up on all the wacky fun that is the World Series of Birding and some of the photos we got like the above red-winged blackbird. Essentially, it's a contest that turned 25 years old this year that requires a team to see the most species of birds in the state in a 24 hour period. There are a few different ways to win, like seeing the most birds in Cape May County in a 24 hour period or what our team did: digiscope as many different species of birds as possible in a 24 hour period. Our team was the Swarovski Digiscoping Hawks consisting of Swarovski Optik Rep Clay Taylor, me, and our driver, Amy Hooper (aka WildBird on the Fly). Incidentally, her magazine WildBird sponsored a winning team as well and you can read about that here.

There was on big challenge for the day: the weather! It rained--blah. It's hard enough if you are a team just trying to see and hear as many species as possible, it's even worse for camera equipment. I was hoping to come home with some really hot shots of shorebirds and species I don't normally see like the brant in the above photo, but I had to settle for just getting identifiable.

I don't think I could do a World Series team any other way than digiscoping. Here we are getting ready to load into the vehicle to get started at 5am. We can't really shoot photos in the dark, so unlike the other teams who drove out to their birding spots Friday night, so they could start the count right at midnight Saturday morning, we got a compartively late start. We were out for a total of 15 hours because of light, as opposed to teams who went for the full 24 hour birding blitz. Digiscoping is a more relaxing way to go.

I've heard people try to say that birding is good exercise. I don't know if I agree with that since you are generally trying to creep through areas looking for species and if you get to a hot spot, you stand around and stare. A world series team is constantly moving at a brisk pace--you need to rack up the species, you can't just dilly dally around. The only problem is that you are out for so long, you tend to load up on sugary drinks and junk food so it counter acts all the movement. It was great for us when we would get to a spot like the above, and you could knock out several species in one frame: whimbrels, short-billed dowitchers, and gull-billed terns.

But, I have to say, I thought we did a few things that would keep us from winning. Clay is my kind of guy. We enjoyed the sport of going out to get bird photos, but when a merlin flew in and landed, we had to take a moment. With merlins, attention must be paid. We saw this bird fly in and land not long after we arrived at this spot. We got an identifiable photo, but Clay, Amy, and I went over to get as many photos as we could. I love that even though it was a competition, we still could take a merlin moment. Incidentally, merlins were everywhere that day. We first saw one at the Meadows and it flew by too fast for us to get a photo, but we watched it fly over a couple of other teams who were not digiscoping and the completely missed it. I wonder how many birds we missed like that?

There were some challenges for me. We didn't see too many feeding stations and I'm used to Mr. Neil's where all I need to do is place a feeder in great sun and bam, I knock off the birds. When I heard a rose-breasted grosbeak overhead, I was sweating trying to line up the scope with the bird popping out periodically from the leaves to sing his song.

Even more shocking was that I was able to knock out a tanager. Again, a not perfect photo, but it's identifiable.

Clay has some mad digiscopin' skillz. I used a point and shoot digital camera with my spotting scope. He uses a digital SLR attached to his. He also has developed a technique of taking his scope off the tripod and holding it to get flight shots--note above. Yes, he's holding a Swarovski 80mm scope that is attached to his SLR--and he can get some great flight shots that way.

Check it out, he even got us a snipe in flight! Snipe are hard enough to find and photograph, he got one on the wing. See what I mean people, mad digiscopin' skillz. You can see examples of this free handed digiscoping technique at this blog entry when Clay and I were at the Connecticut Bald Eagle Fest.

I was really curious who we were going to get swallows, they were zipping around all over the place and that's a challenge even with Clay's technique. Fortunately, a whole line was perched on a wooden railing and we were able to systematically knock off barn swallow and cliff swallow (both above) as well as northern rough-winged and tree all in a few snaps.

I think this is the best photo that I got all day long. It was pouring rain and I was trying to get a white-eyed vireo and for all my pishing, about three catbirds came out to stop and stare. Perhaps they were thinking of incorporating that into their usual mimic song routine?

This is one of the photos that Clay got, his SLR really was able to get the color of this tri-colored heron even in the crappy light. We were actually trudging around through a salt-marsh trying to get a photo of a salt-marsh sharp-tailed sparrow...man, a salt marsh...that's a special kind of stinky.

While Clay got the heron, I got this banded osprey feeding on a fish. When I showed this photo to Non Birding Bill and pointed out the band, he asked snarkily, "Can you read the numbers?" I zoomed in on iPhoto and we could make out a 0 and an 8. He was impressed.

I think this is the last photo that I got for the day. We already had a turkey vulture flight shot, but again, a turkey vulture that was perched in the rare moment of sunshine for the day was just too good to pass up.

We actually ended our day at around 8pm because it got too dark to photograph. We went back to the hotel, showered and Clay worked on our PowerPoint for our checklist presentation. At around 11:30pm, we went to the finish line which was bustling with activity. Here is the long line of volunteers who verify your numeric total of birds. Teams were pouring in all the way to midnight. Teams who were just trying to observe birds were out til the last minute trying to listen for black rail and saw-whet owls.

Some teams were collapsing from sheer exhaustion. Birding hardcore for 24 hours. Could you blame them. There was also some press there--even Animal Planet! They were following one of the teams for a potential birding series pilot. Hope it makes it on tv. After midnight, we went back to our hotel and slept, resting up before the morning awards ceremony.

Here, Clay and I are reenacting me learning that we won--that was total shock. I really thought with some of the birds that we missed, the crap weather, and things like merlin moments that we would come in at a respectable number, but not win. But at 113 bird species identifiable in our PowerPoint, we won.

I was a big ole honkin' cheese ball when we went up to get our award. I think I said "Holy Crap" about four times (although, better than the words I actually used when I learned we won--my mom would get out a bar of soap). I even took a photo of the audience while we were getting our plaque.

Here is our award. They used Clay's photo of a marsh wren in the background. Since Swarovski was the sponsor, the plaque will go to their offices. That's fine they get the award, I got to have all of the fun out in the field.

More to come later.

Delaware's Wood Sandpiper

I think this photo about sums up the weather for the weekend of the World Series of Birding--rain, rain, rain, blah. It was not the best conditions for digiscoping but weather cannot be controlled.

The day before the contest, Clay and I were going to do some scouting and really nail down our plan of attack. However, it was supposed to just pour rain all day. We had heard that a wood sandpiper had been found in neighboring Delaware that Monday. Thursday night, we ran into a colleague who had just come to see the sandpiper. We figured with the weather, the chances were good to see it, so we decided to ditch a scout day and take the ferry from New Jersey to Delaware to see the wood sandpiper. I love being on boats--it always makes the day seem like an adventure with the wind blowing through your hair...even if a fairy is nothing more than an aquatic bus.

There were a few stowaways on the ferry including the rock pigeon above. We also saw a redstart and a common yellowthroat.

When we first arrived at the spot the wood sandpiper was reported, no one was there. Within ten minutes several other people arrived. Apparently, someone reported seeing the sandpiper about 35 minutes before Clay and I arrived. The bird in question kind of looks like a solitary sandpiper but with yellow legs. Everyone was on edge looking for the bird. Clay decided to drive down the road and scout and within 5 minutes he found it and called me. I hitched a ride with a very nice birder I just met and we launched out to see it. The wood sandpiper was so close, I had trouble getting it into my scope.

Here it is! The wood sandpiper...oooo...ahhhh! As the group gathered to see the sandpiper, we started introducing ourselves, we found out where we were all from. When I said that I was from the Twin Cities, they thought I came in for just the bird. I said, "Oh, I'm not that crazy, I'm here for the World Series and this bird is a perk." I can't afford to do that type of chasing. Okay, the above photo is not the best shot, but since Clay had a few minutes alone with the bird before the rest of us arrived, he digiscoped a much better shot:

So, how rare is a wood sandpiper? Well, it's supposed to be in Siberia and parts of Australia and Africa. From time to time, they are reported in the Aleutian Islands. The last recorded sighting in the lower US was in 1990 in New York. The report before that was 1907! This species is more rare than the common crane we saw in Nebraska in March.

Hm. I'm seeing some really unusual and odd birds this year. I almost should be doing a Big Year.

Marsh Wren

Well, this week is action packed! I'll have to do my full update on the World Series later today, I'm off to band some eagles this morning. And I still have to blog about going to see a rare bird: the wood sandpiper--I think that's the rarest bird I've ever seen.

Meanwhile, I'll direct you to a link where a reader altered a photo of our bees dancing and added tap shoes and top hat. It's making me giggle...I wonder if I would still giggle if tap shoes and a top hat were added to a bird photo? Anyway, I appreciate all the work the Junior Beekeepers did while I was away...and I am relieved to learn that when one of them took a queen out with the hive tool, she made it safely back into the hive. Hopefully, queen shenanigans will be kept to a minimum in the future.

I also leave you with a video I took of a marsh wren singing while hidden in the reeds during the World Series o Birding:

A Simple Plan

Hello, all, NBB here again.

First off, big ups to my fabulous wife and her kick-ass team from Swarovski for winning first place in digiscoping at the World Series of Birding.

As for myself, having successfully made the backyard safe for brown birds, I trudged off to feed and inspect our two new hives. Both Kelli and Mimi were very active, and in Kelli's case, perhaps a little too active...

I found this after opening the lid of the hive to change the pail of nectar we give the bees to give them a head-start on the season. These cells had been constructed between the outer wall of the hive and the lip of the room. I'm assuming this is the work of the bees, but Sharon will know for sure. I wondered how far Kelli had gone in constructing comb inside the hive, but decided not to investigate further, as the weather was turning dark and cloudy, so I was keen to get moving.

As I say, both hives were very active, chomping down the pollen patties we gave them and sweet, sweet sugar water. There was a lot of activity outside the hives as well, in fact, here you can see a Mimi bee coming back into the hive with pollen baskets on her legs! This is great news and shows that even in this early, cold spring, the bees are hard at work, gathering pollen on their own, even when it's being provided for them. Again, I didn't open the hive to see if Mimi was doing any cell construction.

Mimi and Kelli taken care of, it was time for the main mission: Olga. Next week Sharon will be splitting the Olga hive, taking one of the boxes and putting in a new queen: Kitty III. To do this, we have to get a box of brood (eggs) and make sure that Queen Olga isn't in that box, otherwise she and Kitty III will fight to the death. In bees, like the great films that have crummy sequels, there can be only one.

Neil, though just back from a trip to Australia, joined me for the pre-split, and got this really cool picture while I ran back to get a frame holder. I'm not sure if this bee is dancing (which they do to communicate), but it sure looks neat.

So, the long and the short of the plan is this: inspect the top two boxes and make sure they each have at least 5-7 frames of brood. Then, place a queen excluder between the top two boxes. When Sharon comes out next week, whichever box has new larvae in it must be the box with the queen, thereby saving us the trouble of having to find her. Simple, right?

Small problem: the top box had no brood in it. Nothing. Not a sausage. Just honey and miffed bees. I was already in enough trouble for letting a colorful bird come to a feeder. How was I going to explain this?

We inspected the second box and found 5 frames of brood. Now, at this point I could have called Sharon, who was in the middle of about 14 hours of digiscoping. But we could see down into the bottom box and what seemed to be brood, so Neil and I decided to Deviate From The Plan.

In what I mentally dubbing Operation: Honey, It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, We placed the bottom box on top, the empty box in the middle, and the middle box on the bottom, placing the Queen Excluder between the top two boxes.

This would, we hoped, accomplish what we were trying to do before: making sure that a) the queen would be in one of the two segments and unable to get into the other brood box, and b) since bees build up when making brood, if the queen was in the bottom box, the empty middle would give her room to grow.

And that was that. Part of what I find fascinating working with bees is that on one hand, they're like little machines, working industrially, each one doing her job, a cog. On the other hand, they're living creatures--both as individuals and as a hive--and act in unexplainable ways. Olga bees have a propensity for building feral comb that folds out from the hive frame, whereas Kitty didn't. It's especially odd to me that you can walk out in the middle of the day and literally take their home apart, when they live and work in darkness, and most of them will ignore you completely. Such odd little things.

Sharon will be out next week to survey the hives and figure out what needs to be done. Having explained what we did, she said she probably would have left the hive as it was, but that the best thing to do was not to reverse our work, but to leave the bees alone. And she's right; the work we do with reversals and such helps them in terms of what we want them to do (make honey), but really, the girls can work things out on their own. As long as the idiot drones don't get in the way.

Holy Crap We Won! And Contest!

I'm blogging from the World Series of Birding Awards Breakfast. When I arrived with Amy and found Pete Dunne and my other teammate Clay, they said our digiscoping team (The Swarovski Digiscoping Hawks) won--our goal was to digiscope as many bird species as possible in one day. We won? In complete and utter shock I said "Get the heck out!" (Athough, substitute a more colorful metaphor in there).

The photos didn't have to be pretty but identifiable. So above is one of our photos that helped us win. What species of bird is this? First winning answer with a name attached in the comments section of this blog entry wins a Woodlink Hummingbird Feeder.

Don't worry, cool photos will be uploaded soon.

Meanwhile, our team is sharing a table with WildBird Zen Zugunruhe team (who won the Cape Island Division) and they would like me to tell you that their teammate Tait Johansson is dipping his bacon in catsup and teammate Matt Garvey is my favorite because he is keeping my coffee cup filled.

Also, I just learned that New Jersey is putting a moratorium on the harvesting of horseshoe crab eggs until the populations of both the crabs and shorebirds recover...go New Jersey birders!