beacon bee

Bears and Bees

2011-11-03T21:45:00.028-04:00

Fall..... on day four of the power outage caused by the freak October 29th storm, I arrived home and took my customary glance up at the hives while collecting the mail from the mailbox. But this time, I could only see one hive. I walked up to see what was going one, and immediately saw that we had been visited, in a not so graceful manner by a bear. The "Flaming Maples" hive was on its side, with dead bees and chunks of comb all around. We had received twenty inches of snow just four days prior, and the darkness of the dead bees scattered on the white snow was stomach turning. Due to the snow, I was able to verify my hunch by the paw prints all around the hives. Were it not for the overturned hive, I might have been able to simply appreciate the overlap of our worlds, but all I could see was the destruction of the stores that the girls had worked so hard to build up over the past few months.

My mind was spinning. Not only was I trying to process the carnage in front of me, but I was also trying to conceive of the fact that a bear had recently been right where I was now standing. I was hit with a pang of guilt for not having strapped this hive down like the other hive.

After taking a few photos and suiting up (I knew the girls would be rather pissed off), I reassembled things as best I could and tightly strapped the hive down. Looking up into the overturned hive boxes, I could see a large cluster of bees, which left me hopeful for their recovery.

The next morning, I took a peek before heading off to work, and was shocked to see the hive once again taken apart, this time even worse than the day before, with frames of honey and comb scattered about. Apparently the lack of a strap had not been the issue the first time. Surveying the damage, I felt a deep sense of helplessness and frustration. Bees were scattered everywhere, full frames of honey were ripped in half, and wooden ware was torn up and scattered around. Putting the hive back together for the second time, the temperature hovering around 40, I knew the chances of the queen still being alive were slim.

By the end of the day, I had two straps lashing the hive to the two cinder blocks that sit under it, and had installed a "critter gitter" (a motion sensitive alarm, thank you Chris and Grai) along with a motion sensitive light pointed at the hives. The next morning? The hive had been knocked over, but had stayed in one piece. Kind of like "I've fallen and I can't get up." versus "I've been knocked over and had my guts ripped out."

On the next warm day, I went into the Flaming Maples to consolidate the remaining frames. I could tell from their behavior (distinctive roar, disorganized behavior) that the hive was queenless. Hopefully, they will make it through the winter and I can introduce a new queen in the early spring. My heart goes out to them.

No more bear activity for a week or so, until late one night when Matt and I heard a loud noise. We went out onto the back deck of the house and saw that one of our bird feeders, which had stood at the top of a copper pipe that came off of the deck, was now dented and lying on the deck alongside the pole that it had been attached to. Turning around, I noticed that the second bird feeder, which I had filled with seed that morning and hung in its customary spot in front of the kitchen window, was gone. I shined my flashlight on the kitchen window and saw a large, muddy paw print. It was then that we spotted the bear in the backyard, bird feeder in paw, chowing down. After watching him for awhile, we went inside but soon heard a snuffling coming from the back steps. We leaned out the back door and watched as he lumbered up the back stairs, undeterred by the flashlights shining in his eyes. Finally, as it dawned on us that this bear was indeed coming up onto our back deck, we started making enough noise for him to decide to turn around and wander off to somewhere else.

As expected, both of the hives were knocked over the next morning, but luckily neither one had been taken apart. My theory is that the "critter gitter" has a bit of a lag time before it goes off, allowing the bear to knock the hives over, but scaring/annoying him enough that he does not stick around once it starts going off.

An electric fence is the only sure way to keep the bear away, but that will be a lot of work and money. For now, I am wishing him away and hoping that he has just been passing through and will relocate himself. Feel free to wish along with me.

Cross Pollination of Bees and Art

2011-09-07T21:16:00.002-04:00

After five years of keeping bees and many more than that of making art, the two paths have intersected, leading me to compose a post that will appear on both my Bee Blog and my Art Blog.

This fall, some work of mine will be shown at Wave Hill (a beautiful botanical garden/gallery in the Bronx), in a show called "Hive Culture: Captivated by the Honeybee". The show will be up from September 13 through December 1, 2011 with an opening reception on October 2, from 1:00-4:00.
For more information, you can read the press release. Hours and directions can be found at Wave Hill's website.

Looking for a preview of the show? Can't make the show? Saw the show but can't remember what work was mine?
Here it is again.

When Winter Comes
March, 2011

Having watched the honey bees as they make their way through the seasons, I have come to believe that from the time they emerge from the hive on the first warm spring day, they are preparing for the arrival of winter. From the first crocuses to the last of the goldenrod, the bees are taking stock of what is going on around them and what is coming their way.
This video is an investigation of that awareness, both in the bees’ world and in ours.

Also included in the Wave Hill show are two pieces that I made that have to do with Bee Lining, an activity that involves luring honey bees to a sweet bait and then following them back to their hive.

Bee Lining Kit and its contents.
To read what the envelope says, click on image to see it larger.

Looking to create a link between myself, the bees, and the viewer, I devised a portable bee lining kit. Below are some photos of the kit in action. A limited edition of 1,000 will be given away over the course of the show. Although the stated function of the kit is to locate feral colonies, I consider the piece fully realized if the receiver takes the time to read the directions and imagine him/herself going through the steps. As with a small first aid kit, a compass or a pocket flashlight, the bee lining kit is there when one needs it, and that knowledge is sufficient to offer one comfort.

Bee Lining Box
In using this rather complicated box, light ports, hinged doors and a sliding gate are opened and closed as bees are trapped, moved from room to room, tanked up on bait, and finally released.

It has been a rough month for the bees. Unrelenting rains are keeping them in their hive and washing the pollen and nectar off of the flowers during what should be the fall flow. Rather than reaping the harvest of their labors, I am doing what I can to ensure that they have enough stores for the winter. Now, more than ever, I appreciate the fine line between bounty and dearth.
It is a good time to come out and celebrate this noble creature, the honeybee.

Summertime, and the living is easy.

2011-08-19T10:41:00.049-04:00

The hives in June
The hives in August
It has been a good summer for the bees, and if the saying "slow but steady wins the race" turns out to be true then they are in good shape. The new hive, the Flaming Maples, arrived strong, but small, and is still working to draw comb in the second box (the other boxes are due to my wishful thinking). The House Hive has a full super of honey on it, but I am not touching it until I know how much they have going into the winter. The bees look healthy and plentiful, but there was no spring harvest, no swarming, no bee covered hives on hot summer evenings. (See August of 2010 to see what I am referring to.) Why such a sluggish year? Maybe due to the long hard winter that we had followed by loads of rain that can wash valuable pollen off of the flowers. Maybe a sleepy queen. Every year is different, and I am doing what I can to make life a bit easier for the girls.

Propolis: For those of you who swear by my Propolis Tincture to cure your colds and sore throats, here is a close up of me scraping some of it off of the inner cover. One of my favorite smells...

A shot of the top of a box of frames.

A shot of the bottom of a box of frames. From this angle, I can peek up between the frames and see if comb has been drawn and if so, what is in it. I can also check the bottoms of the frames for queen cells. In this way, I am able to see a lot of what is going on before I even pull out a frame.

August 20th marked the third annual National Honeybee Awareness Day! How did you celebrate? Vacationing 7,000 feet up in the air at Sequoia National Park, I had two terrific honeybee experiences while at a bbq. The first was communing with myriads of honeybees while meandering through an immense field of Goldenrod.

When I returned to the tables of fellow tourists, Matt informed me that he had met a beekeeper. My pulse quickened! How many hives do you have? I asked (the equivalent of "how many kids do you have" in the bee world). "My husband has 2,800 hives." was the reply. Said husband is a commercial beekeeper in Southern California, and we had a great conversation that I had to be dragged away from. I've never spoken much with commercial beekeepers, and Larry did not seem to be annoyed by my barrage of questions. Such as how does a hive move through the year when there is no winter to shut down for? (The hive works year round, with the queen slowing down her egg production during periods when there is nothing to forage.) What do commercial beekeepers do with the tons of honey that the bees produce as they are shipped around to pollinate crops? (Nothing, it is used by the hives as they are divided. Bit of trivia: honey from almonds tastes horrible.) We talked a lot about various treatments for varroa mites (the downfall of many a hive these days) and I was heartened to learn that Larry has experimented (and had success) with using essential oils. This used to be considered a far out alternative treatment, kind of like eating garlic to cure bronchitis (which works by the way). But as beekeepers are finding more and more that conventional chemicals only work in the short term, they are becoming more willing to try other things, and low and behold, they work! Larry also said that he is paying more attention to the bees themselves, and is better able to notice how a hive is doing before things go bad. Preventative medicine versus cleaning up the mess afterwards. I must admit that my preconceived notions of commercial beekeepers had been less than positive; images of folks hurling hives around, dousing them with chemicals and high fructose corn syrup without regard or respect for the bees themselves, and Larry helped me to see past this.

On our way out of the mountains, we were issued the strangest "bon voyage" by a roving group of honey bees. While stopped at a red light on a long sizzling hot road with endless groves of fruit trees, we suddenly became aware of insects flying around the car. Matt was the first to identify them as being honeybees, and I have never seen the girls behave in such a disorganized, random manner. Flying this way and that, spiraling, dipping and weaving around, over and around the car. I could sense their disorientation and can only figure that it was a recent delivery from a pollination truck that had not yet found its way back to its hive.

The number of honeybee related blogs has become immense, but one that struck me especially worthy of note is this one, which features folks who sing and dance in honor of the fine Apis Mellifera.
May the rest of your summer be as sweet as honey.

The Flaming Maples

2011-06-11T08:05:00.015-04:00

Ahhhh.... honey and daisies.

My second hive finally arrived! Due to the cold and seemingly never ending winter, bee losses were very high this year and the apiary in Pennsylvania where Chris gets his nucs was no exception. Nucs usually arrive mid May, but this one did not made its way to New Paltz until June 4th. A nuc is a mini hive, consisting of five frames. This nuc was amazing; two frames of capped brood, pollen, larvae, and one full frame of capped honey, which gives the girls a terrific head start for wax building and feeding brood. Their temperament was calm and gentle. In a word, a box of dreamy bees. I studied the frames carefully as I moved each frame into their new home, sure that this was my chance to spot the queen, but once again, she alluded me.

A top view of the nuc

Sam got the honor of naming this hive and after much deliberation he chose The Flaming Maples.

One of the first things a new hive goes in search of is water, and given the extreme heat of last week, I wanted to have something to offer them. This bird bath has been frequented pretty steadily all week and I love standing by and watching them.

Do you like my new veil? (see Go Dog Go for point of reference). It's the little things in life, like finally finding a veil system that works just right. Mann Lake sells the black veil and it works perfectly with my new flat brimmed straw hat. I had to alter the veil by adding elastic loops to go under my arms. With this veil/hat combo., I can see much more clearly what is going on in the hive, and I can flip the veil up over the hat when it is not needed. It is also great in the garden when the gnats find me.

My Friends the Mason Bees

2011-06-09T21:01:00.012-04:00

Every spring I am visited by Mason Bees. On a mission of utmost importance, they investigate the nail holes on the side of my house, the small holes on the underside of the table on the deck, the hollow legs on the old bird cage that hangs above our patio, and anything else they can find that might suit their egg laying needs. Mason Bees are small, fuzzy bees that lay their eggs in holes that are approximately 5/16ths of an inch in diameter. Once they have filled the hole with eggs, they pack it with mud. Over the years, they have found the strangest places for doing this. Above is one such example, the fuel hole on Sam's Fischer Price garage. A few years ago they filled every hole on a multi-plug extension cord that had been left outside.

This year, they discovered the oh so convenient empty frames of comb that were stacked in boxes in front of the house. I was so confused when I discovered that they had started laying eggs in this comb. Here I am, trying to raise honeybees, and another, equally wonderful creature moves in and co opts the equipment. There was no way I could choose one over the other, but I could not stand by and just let the Mason Bees spread the word about what they had found.

So I decided to sacrifice a handful of frames for the Mason Bee cause and quickly constructed an improvised Mason Bee home on the opposite side of the house from where the honeybee equipment is stored.

If you are interested in providing a cheap and easy home for the Mason Bees, take a log and drill rows and rows of 5/16 inch holes in it. Hang it from a tree or on the side of your house and see what happens. Unlike Carpenter Bees, Mason Bees don't make holes in wood, they just use existing ones, so you don't have to worry about them damaging your house.

Getting to Know Your Hymenoptera

2011-04-01T16:27:00.036-04:00

Can't tell a wasp from a honeybee? You are not alone. Before I became a beekeeper, they all looked the same to me.
Here is a very basic course in common Hymenoptera that you might see in your neighborhood. This information might come in handy if you are taking part in the Beacon Bee Sighting Project. (See link in upper left corner of the homepage of this blog.) While the family of Hymenoptera encompasses a wide range of insects including sawflies and ants, we will focus on the members that might be confused for a Honey bee.

The Honey Bee
And so... we will start with the honey bee. As with all other pollinators, the honey bee is fuzzy. All pollinators must have fuzz, or else they cannot collect and transport pollen. In a young honey bee, the fuzz covers the honey bee's head and thorax (middle part), and also forms bands across the abdomen (bottom part). As a honey bee ages, the fuzz wears a bit. The color of the fuzz is not a bright yellow, but rather a ochre, or tan. The abdomen itself can be all black (Carniolan bees), but the most common honey bees are Italian (see photo) and have two or three cardboard colored bands at the top of their abdomens. The honeybee is about 3/4 of an inch long.

The Bumblebee
Bumblebees are big fat lovable pollinators. Fuzz covers their whole body and is black and bright yellow. Because of their size, Bumblebees travel slower than the honey bee.

Orchard Mason Bees
Every May a bunch of cute little bees show up and carefully investigate all of the nail holes on the sides of our house. They look a lot like honey bees, but they are smaller (only about half an inch long), and their abdomens are a bit rounder. A couple of years I figured out that they are orchard mason bees, a lovely wild pollinator. They lay their eggs in holes that are about one eight of an inch wide, and you can make a home for them by drilling a bunch of holes in a log or board and hanging it up outside.

Now we are onto the not so lovable Hymenoptera.
The Carpenter Bee
The carpenter bee is about the size of a small bumble bee, but while its thorax is fuzzy, its abdomen is black and shiny. Beware. The carpenter bee wants to drill small holes in your house, hence the name, and they are very difficult to get rid of.

The Wasp
Finally, the wasp (boooooo). As we complete the course on Hymenoptera, you no doubt know that because wasps don't have any fuzz, they are not pollinators. They have sleek, slender bodies and can vary in size from half an inch to well over an inch (in the case of hornets). This photo is of the common yellowjacket. Black body with bright yellow stripes. Unbarbed stinger allowing it to sting repeatedly. Whereas honey bees make their homes out of wax, wasps chew on wood in order to make their homes out of paper (grey dome like structures).

You are probably wondering what to do with so much new found information. Feel free to contribute to the Beacon Bee Sighting Project. A full description can be found in the Interesting Links box in the upper left corner of the homepage of this blog.

Knowledge is power.

Honeybee Sighting Project

2011-03-20T21:17:00.011-04:00

View Honeybee Sighting Project

Click on the above link to see the Honeybee Sighting Project in action. You will need to zoom-zoom in on the Beacon NY area.

Last Saturday was such a nice day, wasn't it?
Made all the nicer by the two honeybee sightings that I had while walking around Beacon, and the two more that I heard of from friends the next day!
I was struck by two thoughts. The first was "Where are they coming from? It was a cool enough day that the girls would not be wandering too far from home, and yet the bees that I spotted were on opposite ends of town. The second thought was how poetic it was that in spotting these bees, the three of us (myself and the other two who told me of their sightings) were linked together by the path that the bees had taken, starting from their hive and passing by us in their travels. I imagined a line drawing casting its web over the town in the form of the flight of the honeybees.

Naturally (to me at least), this got me thinking of a possible "honeybee sighting project", in which I will collect data (day, time, place) from folks who spot honey bees on any given day, and use that data to triangulate where the bees might be living, as well as illustrate the possible path that the girls might have made as they wended their way through town.

And so I invite you to let me know when you spot a honeybee. All I need is the date and location. Out of state is fine. Other countries are fine. Next door is fine.
Please note: There is NO OBLIGATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS. It is meant only for folks who find that the idea tickles their fancy and would like to take part.
Most likely, it will not go on indefinitely. Maybe just till the end of April, which is when we know for sure which hives have made it through the winter.

A Brief Reprieve

2011-02-22T19:55:00.008-05:00

Last week the temperature rose enough for me to be able to pop the lid and take a peek into the hive. Based on the poop and smattering of dead bees in the snow, I knew that they were alive, but I did not know if they had enough stores to last them through the next two months.

After dragging a stool over to the hive and planting it somewhat firmly in the remaining two feet of snow, I popped the lid and was immediately greeted by a blanket of live, warm bees covering the tops of the frames of the upper most box. They were not nearly as happy to see me as I was to see them, but I will not take it personally.

Looking closer, I saw with great satisfaction that they still have a full super of capped honey. I closed up the hive turned to the observation tray that sits under the hive. Pulling it out, I was stunned to finds thousands of bee wings and legs. Strange enough, but stranger still is that there were no bodies. How did this happen? My only theory is this: dead/frozen bees dropped off of the cluster and onto the screen that covers the bottom of the hive. As their bodies decomposed, their wings and legs filtered through the screen, but not their bodies.

Always something new up at the hive, I say.

Bee Dreams

2011-02-08T20:04:00.019-05:00

I am thankful for the warmer day or two that we have had over the past week. The long weeks of steady cold had me nervous, as the girls need days where it is over 45 degrees so that they can make their cleansing flights and rearrange the cluster. I left them with plenty of winter stores, but if they cannot get to the honey, it is of no use to them. Based on the dozen or so dead bees scattered in the snow and the brown dots of bee poop peppering the ground on the warmer days, I can safely say that there is some sort of cluster alive in there.

I had a dream last week that I was putting on a pair of black knit mittens, and something was inside the left mitten, stuck between the mitten and the back of my hand. It started crawling around in there and when it stung the back of my hand I realized that it was a honeybee. I carefully peeled off the mitten and the bee flew away. I saw that it had given me a few "warning stings", meaning that it had injected a bit of venom, but not deep enough to get her stinger caught in my skin. A few welts formed, but it was annoying more than it was painful.

When I remembered the dream the next morning, I said to Matt, "The bees were warning me about something, I have to go check on them this morning!" Then I thought to myself that this was probably a metaphorical warning, not a literal warning from the bees, but just to be sure, and even though I had just checked on the hive two days prior, I trekked up to the hive (over two feet of snow) before work.It was not until I got right up to the hive that I saw that for the first time in five years, snow had completely sealed up their entrance. I knelt down and dug out the snow and ice that was blocking their way out.

Sunday was the warmest day so far. Unable to keep away, some friends, Matt, Sam and I snowshoed past the hive on our way into the woods. A few of the girls were out, and perhaps seeing us as a warm resting post, they came over and landed on us as we walked by. I gently nudged a girl off of Shep's coat and onto my gloved fingertip. What must it be like for them, emerging from months of pitch darkness into this blinding winter landscape? Do they even see us through the glare, or do they just sense our heat and fly towards it?

As always happens this time of year, I miss them and long for the springtime when they will burst out of their hive. I am currently working on a new shadow puppet video, this one with the bees as its inspiration. The title is "When Winter Comes", in part because it would seem to me that from the day that they emerge in the spring, they are making preparations for the winter. Several months still lie between now and the first pollen of the willow tree and dandelion. My fingers are crossed.

In the meantime, here is an interesting link for those of you who are interested in some amazing footage of honey hunters. Eric Tourneret has photographed beekeeping practices around the world and here is a link to his video of honey hunting in Nepal.

Tucked in for the winter

2010-12-01T20:22:00.029-05:00

Sam examining a drone evicted from the hive in the late fall

The bees are neatly tucked in for the cold season and it is now time for us to take care of our skin!
I am already slathering on the balm to ward of the cracks and dryness that accompany the chill air.

We have expanded our Beacon Bee line to include a few beautiful gift packages such as a handcrafted hardwood box filled with balm, and a cotton gift bag, also filled with balm.
You can see photos on our website under "products". You can also see our entire line in the photo below, taken at our recent sale at Boscobel.
You can now purchase Beacon Bee Balm through our website, and we recommend that you to place your orders early!

Matt, Sam and I wish all of you a peaceful and joyful holiday season.
We are thankful for all of you, and we are thankful for the bees.

Geniuses and Goldenrod

2010-09-29T19:59:00.036-04:00

Congratulations to Marla Spivak, recipient of the 2010 MacArthur Genius Grant! Spivak is an entomologist who has been doing really important research regarding honeybees and their attempts to fight all of the bad stuff that comes their way. In particular, she has been studying the hygienic practices of bees and how bees that are more hygienic are more likely to survive. Such behavior includes things like uncapping pupae that are infested with disease or mites and removing them from the hive before they are even born. I have seen this happen with my own bees and it is hard to imagine how they know how to do this, but then again it is hard to imagine how they know how to do most of the things that they do.
And hats off as well to Carol Padden, a deaf linguist who also won the grant! Many moons ago I studied Padden's sign language books and videos and she is an amazing person. Her most recent research has involved visiting deaf Bedouins in Israel who have developed their own sign language.

Portrait of the artist as a beekeeper
Not to lump myself in with these "geniuses", but Matt did take some pretty cool photos last week up at the hive. It is amazing what a bit of smoke can do to create a mood of mystery.

The hive is doing really well. The bees are getting ready for fall/winter and I have been doing what I can to make them comfortable. The vent system is on the hive in an effort to accommodate these warm days with cold nights that can create a lot of condensation. The girls have two boxes of capped honey that I left them from the spring and summer flows. Mite levels are up, but they are kicking out the bad and taking care of the good. The goldenrod flow is intense this year and the hive has a heady smell that makes me lightheaded when I breath deeply. Of course, it is also making me sneeze and itch, but I don't mind, knowing that the girls are enjoying an ample fall forage. The propolis tincture is steeping and we are getting ready to dive into the world of holiday fairs. Matt has made a beautiful hardwood gift box for our Beacon Bee Body Balm, so keep us in mind when the cold wind starts to blow. For now, I am enjoying the leaves that are starting to turn, and I thank the bees for a gentle and sweet season.

A Swarm in July isn't Worth a Fly

2010-08-04T11:32:00.003-04:00

This years girls are incredible. Kind, gentle, healthy and productive. Throughout the spring I had been adding supers sooner than usual in an effort to stave off swarming, and the hive quickly grew to be as tall as I am.
I thought that I had succeeded in keeping everyone at home, but the dramatic difference in what I saw upon returning from California last week told me that despite my efforts, they felt the need to divide and move on. As you can see, July 20th shows many more bees than July 31. A swarm this late in the season can mean trouble if they don't have enough time to build up their population to go into the fall with. Also, if the new queen does not take, they won't have enough time to make a new one before the fall. (Insert the sound of nails being chewed on here.) Going in this morning, my guess was confirmed. Lots of empty queen cells along the bottom edges of the frames told me that the queen has hatched and is (hopefully) in there somewhere. The earliest I can expect to see eggs or larvae would be in about a week. That would reassure me that all is well. Until then, I must sit tight and think good reproductive thoughts.

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, a swarm in July isn't worth a fly.
It is true that July is late from a beekeepers perspective, but adding a new colony of bees to the natural world is always a good thing. If you find them in your backyard, send them my love.

July 20th
July 31
Speaking of California, my heart leaped (no really, my heart does leap at things like this) when I saw that the feral hive in Golden Gate Park was still alive and well. (Die hard blog followers will remember these girls from last year's visit out west.) I can only hope the the girls who swarmed from my hive find as nice a home as this one.

The spring harvest was bountiful. I pulled a full box of capped honey at the end of May, which yielded about 35 pounds of flavorful honey, deep cinnamon in color. I left three more full boxes of honey on the hive, which I can pull once I know that the season is leaving them with enough for the winter.
The following images show the process of extracting the honey from the frames. I don't use a mechanical extractor because I need to save the wax for my bee balm. This "crush and strain" method is a sticky, time consuming mess, but the end result is worth it.
A full frame of capped honey

Cutting up the frame

Mashing the comb

Straining the honey

Given that it was over 100 degrees out, I thought that I might be able to melt down my beeswax using the sun rather than my stove. I have not yet made myself a solar wax melter out of the traditional materials (a wooden box lined with metal covered by a sheet of glass), so I had to make do with what I had around.

After several hours..... nothing had melted. I attracted the attention of several hundred bees though, and so I ditched the tin can and let the girls suck out what they could from the sack of wax. This ended up being a very effective way of extracting the last remnants of honey from the beeswax.

The Bee Balm King at work

Keep an eye out for notice of our new website, beaconbeebiz.com
It is not quite ready yet, but will be quite sweet when it is up and running.

Glory to the bees!

2010-05-16T20:55:00.034-04:00

The girls this year are good natured and healthy. I know I am probably jinxing myself, but to have made it to mid may without a sting is a testament to their kindness.

The black locust is blooming!!
For those of you who have tasted my girls' honey, this is where the spring crop comes from! This year I have finally figured out what the black locust tree looks like and am therefore noticing them everywhere. I love this phenomena that knowledge brings. Things that were there all along, but were invisible due to not knowing what they were, suddenly become visible. For instance, this morning, Sam (for the first time) read the handwritten note posted above the doorknob on the back door that says "LOCKED" and shows a horizontal line to indicate that that is the locked position. He turned to me and said "Thanks for making this note Mama!" I explained that the note had been there for years, but that he did not know how to read it until now. Anyway... back to the black locust tree.... the honey it makes is... unbelievable. Light in color, full in flavor. It is like eating a flower. They tend (I hope, I hope) to fill a box or two the last two weeks of May. Given that everything is blooming early this year, I have been keeping a careful eye on the hive and piling on the supers.

The hive came out of winter in fine shape and needed a second super by the end of April. I have been debating whether or not to follow through on my plan to split this hive so that I can regain a second hive after my winter loss. Two weeks ago they had brood up through the first super, leading me to believe that they would be booming enough to split without a problem. Today, that top super was full of nectar and the brood was all within the two deeps. I think I am best off leaving well enough alone. I will keep my eyes and ears out for a swarm to adopt, but otherwise will stick with this one (hopefully) healthy and strong hive.

This is me bee gazing about a month ago as the girls started their spring forage in earnest.

And here is a closer look at a joy flight, or play flight, or orientation flight. This occurs when the girls graduate to their last job of "forager". They will spend a few minutes hovering in front of the hive, moving up and down, up and down, getting used to the smell, sight and location of their home so that they know where to come back to after foraging far and wide.

In anticipation of the upcoming flow, I added an empty super two weeks ago. This is a frame that the girls are in the process of drawing comb on. Isn't it lovely? Giving them a foundationless frame allows the girls to decide what kind of comb they want to draw, worker brood (smallest), drone brood or cells for honey storage. By next week, this will be a full frame of comb, most likely filled with nectar.

I added a third super after my last inspection. I left feeling very anxious because I was not able to see any worker brood, larvae or eggs, but I did not go very far into the brood chambers because by that time the girls had had enough of me and were getting pissy. What I did see was nicely patterned drone brood and some empty frames. My first thought was "No queen!" (a queenless hive can develop laying workers who can grow drones but not worker bees), but the empty frames could have been recently vacated by the last batch of workers, and it is natural that the queen would be making lots of drones right now, especially if there is any chance of swarming in their future. I am painfully aware that I do more harm than good whenever I go into the hive, so I will keep my fingers and toes crossed and try to let them do their work in peace.

A Lifeless Post

2010-03-22T20:09:00.031-04:00

Given the morbid nature of this post, (none of the bees that you are about to see are alive), it seemed fitting to also include this recent sculpture.

I have known since January that the Woods Hive was dead, and went up this past weekend to take it apart. This first photo shows the location and size of the cluster, much smaller than the standard size of a soccer ball, more like a softball I would say.

Bees head first in cells (as seen here) are a sure sign of starvation. Even though the girls had capped honey directly above them, they were unable to access it. Given that this hive never got very large, I think they were not able to form a cluster large enough to keep themselves warm. I have heard that this was a common occurrence this winter, given the lousy season that the girls had last year.

This frame shows the dead cluster, and also shows (to the left of the dead group of bees) an area of about 25 cells that show signs of American Foul Brood. This is a nasty, very contagious disease that occurs in old comb. The frame that it is on is black with age, and is a frame that came with the nuc last spring. I am so upset to have found this, but I am hopeful that by tossing out all of the old frames, and cleaning all of my boxes with a propane torch I will prevent its spread.

After removing the frames from the boxes, I went in search of the queen. Not spotting her, I resorted to brushing all of the bees off of the frames into the box and sifting through them, handful by handful. Mysteriously, I still could not find a queen in this hive. My question is this; Will a hive that is getting ready to go into the winter, but has no queen, form a cluster? My instinct tells me no, as she is the one that they are surrounding and keeping warm. I have yet to send out an email to various groups to find out the answer. (I will be sure to post the answer ASAP, as I know that many of you will be up nights pondering it.)

After searching in vain for the queen, I decided to figure out how many bees were in this hive. I figured out how many bees equal one ounce (about 350) and then weighed all of the dead bees. 10.5 ounces minus the weight of the plastic bowl gave me only about 3,000 bees, thousands fewer than should be in a winter hive.

And now it is spring. The House Hive is pulling in pollen (mostly from the willow trees) and seems to be quite active. I am painting new boxes and planning for my first attempt at a split. Season 4 is about to begin!

bishop hats on the hives

2010-03-11T20:28:00.012-05:00

The bees are sitting tight these days, waiting for the snow to melt and the willows to offer up some early pollen. Up in our mountainside eco-system, we still have about 6 inches of snow on the ground, although nothing like what you see in this photo taken during the massive week of snow at the end of February.

Most starvations happen during March and April, and I am apprehensive as I know that the girls are now in the upper super of honey. I have confirmed that the woods hive is dead and will take it apart soon. From what I have read recently, this winter was a really bad one for the bees, and losses were incredibly high.

So... go plant some bee friendly flowers and wish the girls good luck.

Winter Loss

2010-01-16T14:41:00.016-05:00

On oddly warm winter days, beekeepers check on their hives. Martin Luther King day I went up and saw signs that my taller hive (the house hive) was doing great. Lots of poop in the snow out in front of the hive (they hold it in while they are in the hive and take advantage of the warm weather to relieve themselves, and what relief it must be....) about three dozen dead bees scattered in the snow, cleared out from inside of the hive. The observation board had plenty of fresh cappings, letting me know where the cluster was in the hive. When I looked in with my flashlight, I got to see the most beautiful cluster, from one side of the frames to the other. It was the first time that I have seen a winter cluster! The sphere of bees widened as I scanned from the outer edge of the hive to the center, and then narrowed again as I reached the other side. When I put my ear to the outside of the hive, I heard a pleasant and reassuring hum. Plenty of stores left, with the top super still full of capped honey. The other hive however, had none of the outer signs of inner life. No bee poop or dead bees out in front of the hive, no cappings on the observation board, and some strange leaking of honey taking place. My fears were confirmed when I looked in with my flashlight. All I could see when I peered down between the frames were loads of seemingly dead bees at the bottom of the hive. No signs of an intruder. Plenty of stores. It will remain a mystery until I take the hive apart. Today, with temperatures going into the mid 50s, I again saw signs of life in front of the house hive, with bees even braving the rain, but nothing stirring from the woods hive. Although I am fairly convinced that the hive is dead, I find myself reluctant to go in there quite yet. I want to make sure that I do so before robbing, mildew or pests get a hold of it though. At that point I can look for signs of disease or starvation.

I am sad, and will be even sadder when I have to clear out the thousands of dead bees that I suspect are in there, but I know that this is part of the process. I have heard that typically, one out of four hives don't make it through the winter, so really I have been lucky so far.

I miss my girls. I miss their smell and the feel of them landing on my hands to check me out.

Next month, the queen will start laying eggs. Slowly at first, just enough to produce enough nurse bees to take care of the burst of young that will arrive when the weather warms with the arrival of spring. I am often awestruck by the realization that they know, on some intuitive level exactly what they need to be doing now, with the anticipation of what is to come. We have so much to learn.

My Cover Girl

2010-01-03T09:09:00.035-05:00

Yes, you are in fact looking at one of our very own Beacon Bees, sucking up the good stuff on the cover of the January 2010 Bee Culture Magazine!!
So, how did this happen? Well, back in September I sent in a few photos for their annual photo contest that they turn into a calendar. The theme was "honey" (strange, I know), and I never heard back from them. You can imagine my surprise when I spotted this month's issue on the kitchen table and recognized the photo as mine! I don't quite understand the immense pride I am feeling. Nor can I figure out who I am proud of, myself, or the bee. I told Matt that I feel as if my art made the cover of Art in America! But why? I did not make the bee, or the honey, and the photo was not hard to take. Matt's theory is that it makes me feel like I am part of "the club". That this oddball adventure that I started three years ago has been acknowledged on a higher level, making sense of the money, time and stings that have gone into it. Mostly though, it just feels like a nice surprise. The real satisfaction of being a beekeeper comes while sitting up there on a summer afternoon, hearing the hum and smelling the deep earthy smells of the hive. Knowing that I am providing an acceptable home for these amazing creatures.
For more information about Bee Culture Magazine, go to:

As far as I know, both hives are still warm and safe, even as the temperatures dip low. Last week, when we had a warm day with a high of 42 degrees, I was able to see girls going in and out of the hive, mostly clearing out their dead. I think about them every morning as I leave the house, and marvel at their (and all creatures') ability to survive the chill that has settled in so deeply.

Given that not much is (visibly) going on with the hives right now, I offer you a bit of beekeeping history.
2010 marks the 200th anniversary of Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth's birth. Langstroth was the creator of the Langstroth hive, which is what most beekeepers use these days.

His work was groundbreaking in that his hive design allowed beekeepers to remove frames from the hive without destroying what was on them. Langstroth also introduced the concept of "bee space", which is the amount of space that a bee needs in order to move comfortably between frames, while maintaining the preferred temperature and distance between objects. Too much space between frames and a bee will start building burr comb (extra comb), not enough space, and they cannot move around.
While most of the big names in beekeeping have been men's, there are an increasing number of female beekeepers, some of whom have been very influential such as Eva Crane and Dee Lusby. I am eagerly awaiting the release of "Piping Up", which is a history of the role of women in American beekeeping, by Tammy Horn.

May 2010 bring you much sweetness, growth and sunshine.

Zen and the Art of Beekeeing; The Close of Season 3

2009-11-12T17:04:00.039-05:00

Featuring the complete line of Beacon Bee Balm! Selected products are available at DIA Beacon, Homespun, Beacon Natural,
and coming soon to a new store; Wing and Clover in Rhinebeck.

After a month of temperatures that veered wildly from the 30s to the 60s (sometimes in the same day), the chill seems to be settling in for good now. This has meant winter preparation for me and the girls, with my focus on moisture control (sounds exciting, right?). The girls know how to cluster, maintaining a temperature of between 92 degrees (at the center of the cluster, where the queen is) and 74 degrees (at the outer edges of the cluster). Just inches from the outside of the cluster, the temperature is close to that on the outside of the hive. Because of this internal heat production, hot and humid air rises in the hive and condenses when it reaches the cool upper levels. If this cold water collects and drips back onto the bees, they are doomed. For some reason, maybe because we are on the side of the mountain and have more of a temperature fluctuation than most areas, my hives have major moisture issues. On mixed temperature days this past October, when a cool night followed a warm day, I could see the water dripping out of the hive entrance the following morning. I am thinking now that the mold that I found in the bottom box of my hive this spring was probably due to this condensation.

So, I put out my feelers for advice to a few bee experts, and got a dozen or so suggestions. I took from them what made sense, added what I knew from my own experience, and came up with a system that I feel optimistic about.
For the two or three beeks (yes, it stands for bee geeks), that are still loopy enough to be reading this post, my solution is as follows:

On top of my super that is full of honey, I put an empty half medium super. (Matt was kind enough to saw one in half on his table saw). On top of that, I put a shim (a perimeter of wood) which is about two inches high. Stapled to the bottom of the shim is a sheet of 1/4" hardware cloth (metal mesh). On this hardware cloth I can lay down sheets of newspaper, with a lozenge shape cut out of the center. The outer cover sits on top of the shim. (no inner cover!) I drilled a 3/4" hole in the front of the half medium super, for ventilation as well as a second entrance.
So; the moisture rises, gets absorbed by the newspaper and has air above it and below it so that the newspaper does not get moldy. Periodically I can go in and replace the paper.

The last thing I will did is wrap the hives with tar paper. This will not offer much in the way of warmth, although the black will help draw in the sun. Its main purpose is to block the wind and keep it from getting into the cracks between the boxes.

This fall I have treated both hives numerous times (with Oxalic acid) for mites. Levels got really high in September and it was only this last treatment, at the end of October, that caused a tremendous mite drop to occur. As you can see, they formed a sheet of parasitic disgustingness the day after. This continued for a few more days. Now that I know that there is no brood being laid, I should be able to get away with just one more treatment.

I would of course prefer to be "treatment free" in my beekeeping practice, but because I only have two hives, I am not ready to totally let nature take its course. In times of adversity, we are pressed hard between our ideal of how we would like things to be and the consequences of pursuing that ideal.

And so the season closes with two very different hives, one small with lots of stores, the other bigger with hopefully enough stores. My hope is that both hives get through the winter. If they do, I may split one and start a top bar hive in the spring, although two hives keeps me busy enough as it is.

I feel that this was the season where I learned to trust myself as a beekeeper. This did not mean that I did not make mistakes, but I found myself able to make sense of most situations and act accordingly (without reaching for the phone each time a bee buzzed in an unfamiliar way). In late spring or so, when I found myself getting overly anxious about the plight of my new nuc, and the never ending stream of ants going in and out of the bottom board, I realized that I could not continue to pursue this if it was causing me such anxiety. I had to let go a bit and feel comfortable being an observer as much as a keeper.

Om Shanti?

October

2009-10-10T10:43:00.031-04:00

The hives were light at the end of the summer, and the girls have been working hard to make up for their depleted stores. Luckily, September brought lots of pollen; Goldenrod, Purple Loosestrife, Aster and others. Like them or not, we count on many of the invasive weeds for fall forage.
I fed back all but one of the frames of capped honey that I took from the hives in July. The following photos show the emptying of a full frame over the course of about five hours.

Realizing that I was attracting bees other than my own, I moved the feeding indoors, meaning that I now have an empty box on the top of each hive that I put a feeder in full of Bee Tea (sugar, water, thyme, salt and camomile.) The girls are sucking it down daily. I am hopeful that by the time the chill sets in in a few weeks, they will have enough for the winter. I am more worried about mites, which rose to a dangerously high level over the month of September. I have been treating the hives with Oxalic Acid (a compound found naturally in things like Rhubarb), but I am still seeing a lot of them.

This last photo shows some of what I can learn from outside of the hive. The white plastic sits under the hive and catches what falls through the screened bottom of the hive. This is how I monitor the mite level in the hive, and it also lets me see when the bees are uncapping honey, or in this case when brood has hatched. The two piles of "stuff" is from emerging bees chewing through the caps of their cells. From this I can see the the winter brood has hatched! These are the girls that will live the relatively long life of four months or so until the spring brood can be laid. They are who the winter survival of this hive depends on.
I wish them love and the best of luck.

The Bees Have Gone Simple

2009-08-31T20:15:00.012-04:00

I went into the house hive yesterday, expecting to find a month's worth of sweet golden honey, hoping to pull off another full box... and instead I found... dryness.
It is a stomach dropping feeling to prepare oneself to heave a 35 pound box, and find instead that it lifts off light as a feather. My arms rose too far into the air with the unexpected lightness. The next box was the same, as was the third.
(Plenty of bees though, which was reassuring at least.)
That brought me down to the top deep, which should be full of brood, pollen and uncapped nectar. I found brood, and larvae both large and small, but no nectar. Cells that did not have brood in them were bone dry. I have never seen this before. (I also found supersedure queen cells, showing that the hive either lost their last queen or found some dire need to replace her.)
I felt sick. Not for my own loss of the good and sweet stuff, but with the knowledge that fall is almost upon us, and there are a limited number of weeks before the girls will pack it in for the season. Without at least a box and a half of honey, they could starve to death.
The girls were kind, but agitated, and must have sent a message out because I simultaneously got stung on my thumb, the back of my hand and my calf. For the first time this season, they went so far as to follow me down to the house and I ended up with one girl in my studio and another in the pocket of my bee suit.
I spoke with Chris Harp who said that he is finding the same thing (lack of nectar or honey) in his hives. He attributes it in part to the unrelenting rain that we have been getting. The girls are homebound when it rains, and the heavy rain washes the pollen off of the flowers.
I find myself wondering how nature can conspire against itself in this way? I understand her not giving a toot about us humans (who have a tendency to royally mess things up for her), but her own blessed pollinators?

Luckily, I have 16 (now 15) frames of capped honey stored in the downstairs bathroom. I harvested a box in early June, (with the Black Locust flow), but saved everything else that I have pulled from the hive. I put out one of these frames this morning and by late afternoon the girls were an inch deep on it.
This is the feeding station that I set up for them. The umbrella is in case of rain (as umbrellas often are), but I also like how it makes the spot feel kind of like a hot dog stand.

On a brighter note, this photo is of a feral hive that I found in a tree in Golden Gate Park, CA. It was conveniently located about six feet up the tree, and I was overjoyed to find it!!

I close with a lovely poem by Mary Oliver, who has a remarkable and admirable way of finding beauty in the smallest things. Thank you Naomi for bringing this to me.

Hum
What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them — haven't you? —
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered — so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this world I don't
admire. If there is, I don't know what it is. I
haven't met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.
-Mary Oliver

Early August Adventures

2009-08-12T20:55:00.040-04:00

Here is my favorite Junior Beekeeper.
And here are a few shots of my bees visiting my flowers, a rare and sweet occurrence. When I first got bees, I was so excited to have local pollinators grooving on my flower garden, only to learn that they really like to travel. This year however, some of them have been kind enough to be true locavors.

Over the first weekend of August, I attended a three day "Treatment Free Beekeeping Conference" in Leominster Massachusetts. With beekeeping, as with all agricultural pursuits, there is a wide range of beliefs about how to strike a balance between raising healthy, chemical free creatures, and dealing with the pests and diseases that threaten their existence. This conference gathered together some of the most passionate, hard-core, devoted to chemical free, beekeepers in the country and one from Sweden to boot. Imagine if you will 13 hour days of beekeepers sitting in a conference room listening to other beekeepers talking about bees. I was spellbound the entire time, not only because of the information that was seeping into my brain, but because of the devotion, ingenuity and powers of observation that these beekeepers demonstrated as they shared their years of experience. It reinforced my sense of beekeeping being a craft in which creativity, trust in yourself, and respect for the bees are key qualities, although ones not shared by all involved.
This photo introduces you (visually at least) to some of the biggies of the organic beekeeping world (as far as I know anyway). Dee Lusby holds court in the center. Dee is an Arizona beekeeper who can move a full 10 frame deep brood box as if it were filled with bubble wrap. She manages over 600 hives in the desert and produces a really unusual honey. (Chris Harp, my teacher from New Paltz is on the far left.)

Sam Comfort is a beekeeper in the Red Hook N.Y. area who has done all sorts of crazy bee oriented things, (like working for a year for a migratory beekeeping operation earning $6.00 an hour), and he is currently raising loads of bees in Top Bar Hives, which are very different from the Langstroth vertically oriented hives that I and most beekeepers have. Top Bar Hives are horizontal in nature, and only one level high. What is wonderful about them is that the bees build all their comb off of a bar of wood, and therefor dictate the size and form of their cells. You can see this with the frame shown here.

Note the queen on this frame!

On the home front, I just peeked in today to see what is going on supply wise. I have been seeing loads of Goldenrod in bloom (about 5 weeks early this year), and Purple Loosestrife, so I expected to find at least some frames full of honey, but both hives are still working on drawing out foundation in their top boxes. I have 16 frames of capped honey in reserve (in the downstairs bathroom actually), and will not harvest any until I see what happens between now and the fall. I went in today without smoking because I just wanted to take a peek.

The Woods Hive went well, but by the time I got to the house hive, word must have gotten out and I could sense their agitation. A girl got me good on the left index finger and man did it hurt!! I am curious as to what makes some stings so much more powerful than others. Is it the age of the bee? The location? My condition? Whatever it is, this one is a doozy in terms of swelling and throbbing. But then I go up and see them doing an orientation flight and my heart swells with pride (for them) and awe. Go figure.

This final image is of Ramona (an organizer of the conference) holding a section of comb that she and her husband Dean removed from a defunct stovepipe in someone's house.

Honey, Ants and Bee Stung Lips

2009-07-13T14:35:00.036-04:00

First, the beautiful sight of an orientation flight, (a.k.a. joy flight or play flight) that occurs when a group of girls (about two weeks old) is ready to take on their final job of forager. Before doing so, they leave the total darkness of the hive and do a hovering type dance while facing the hive, gently moving up and down in front of it. It is their way of imprinting their hive on their brains. "This is what it looks like, this is what it smells like." They will do this for a few days in a row before finally leaving to forage. The dance lasts about ten minutes and tends to occur in the mid afternoon.
Honey: I harvested about 35 pounds of honey from the first super that I pulled. It is a very time consuming process because I don't have an extractor and I am saving the beeswax for use in my Bee Balm. I work one frame at a time, crushing, straining and finally bottling it. The result was an amazing, light in color, flavorful honey, and the bottles lined up on the window sill fill me with awe.

Ants: I have known for awhile that black ants had taken up residence under the bottom board (the board of wood that sits under all of the boxes) of the House Hive. They would scurry out, carrying their eggs and larvae each time I would check the observation tray, and I was hoping that they could peacefully coexist. I have noticed lately though that the girls have been bringing in great big globs of propolis and doing something that has been causing it to drip down into one particular corner of the tray. This told me that there was something in there that they were trying to get rid of. (They have been known to coat a dead mouse in propolis if it is so bold as to try to build a nest in their hive.) I went in today to find out what was lurking in there.
I have learned that if I want to see what is going on in the bottom box, I had better not even peek in the upper boxes first, or I will be exhausted and the girls will have no patience for me by the time I work my way down there. So the boxes: three supers and one deep got stacked on top of each other next to the hive. Removing two frames, I could see that the girls were laying propolis into the holes of the screening that was separating them from the ants. Even though the ants could not get into the hive, they were clearly too close for the girls' comfort.

So... to think on ones feet, amongst thousands of whirring bees.
I removed the deep from the bottom board and exposed a huge nest of big black ants. I removed the bottom board to find even more ants, wood chips, eggs etc. under it. I moved both boards away from the hives, and wondered what to do next. Meanwhile, I saw that the girls REALLY did not like that I had moved their bottom most hive box. It would be as if you went out to get the mail and when you turned back to go inside, your entire house had been moved 6 feet to the left and sideways. Very disorienting to say the least. Girls were everywhere and I noticed that they were starting to move in on the Woods Hive!
I quickly looked around, pulled out two stakes that were supporting the wild blackberries and lay them on top of the cinder blocks to act as spacers between the blocks and the hive. This would allow me enough space to slip in the observation tray, but would not offer the ants a wood surface to call home.
I moved the bottom box in place and the air calmed down.
The rest of the inspection was smooth. I saw capped brood, a bit of larvae, honey, pollen and best of all freshly laid eggs. I know that the hive swarmed (again) in mid June (the population is about half of what it was) and eggs are the only way to know that a new queen is present and doing well. I moved frames around a bit so that I have another box full of capped honey on the top of the hive, with the escape board under it.

Going back up to the hives in the evening (in order to treat the Woods Hive for varroa mites), I was mistaken for a bear and stung squarely on the upper lip. Note the similarity to how Sam looked last year at this time (also note the super cool glasses that completed the look).
The swelling went down before Matt could make me a suitable giraffe costume.

A few days ago I got an email from Khalil Hamdan, a beekeeping teacher who lives in Holland. He asked permission to use an image of my hives for an article that he is writing and so I did what we all do these day, which is Googled him. What I found is a series of clearly written and interesting articles about various aspects of beekeeping. I learned some fascinating information about Bumble Bees! I will post a link on my blog.

The House Hive and The Woods Hive

2009-06-20T16:59:00.046-04:00

(This just in; Beacon Bee now has it's own email address, beaconbee@optonline.net)

As you can see from the above photo, I currently have two (very different) hives. The hives are named "The House Hive" and "The Woods Hive", the former being closest to the house and the later closest to the woods. The naming process was similar to the process I go through when titling a drawing or sculpture, I listen to what I am calling it in my mind.

Last year, the pissy hive was called Thor, due to its temperament, but after re-queening itself (I may have accidentally killed the pissy queen during the last inspection,) they no longer live up to the name. (Hurray!) I have learned that the temperament of the hive can change over the course of a season, depending on how well they are being treated by their care taker (removal of moldy equipment, providing adequate growing room etc.) and on the mood of their queen.

So far, The House Hive is performing above and beyond anything that I could have imagined. On May 31, I gave them a second super to fill, with frames containing undrawn foundation. I did this as a preemptive measure, thinking that they may need the space in a few weeks. In the following days, I noticed a whole lot of clumping going on in the front of the hive, even on cool days. I went back in six days later to see what might be going on and what I found was a "honey bound hive" which means that every cell of every frame was full of goods. In just FIVE DAYS these girls drew all the comb on the eight frames, filled them with honey, and capped them off with beeswax. I could not believe what I was seeing!! I put the bee excluder on between the two supers so that the bees would leave the top one, (the excluder has a special triangular exit that somehow allows the bees to leave a hive box, but not to reenter it.) Two days later I returned to find it nearly empty of bees and very much full of honey and I literally staggered back to the house with it. They continue to flourish. In the evenings, bees spill out of every entrance of the hive.

The Woods Hive however, which arrived in mid May, got off to a weak start. They arrived with a lot of mites, and I became concerned that robbing might be going on from The House Hive. In the same five days that the House Hive filled their second super with honey, The Woods Hive did not even draw any comb on their new frames. In response, I put an empty hive box above the inner cover and gave them a full frame of capped honey. To protect them from robbing, I closed down their entrance to about 1 and a half inches so that the guard bees could better protect the hive, and plugged up all of the ventilation holes. I also gave them a treatment of Oxalic acid (the same toxic compound that is naturally found in rhubarb). Three weeks later, they seem to be in better shape. Lots of pollen going in, no bees with withered wings visible, a more robust group of girls hanging around.

A frame from The House Hive, with a lozenge of fresh comb built hanging off of the bottom. This was due to my putting a medium sized frame in a deep box. An experiment that I won't repeat because it makes the frames harder to handle.

Due to the seemingly never ending rain that we are currently having, I have not been able to get back into the hive the past few weeks. My guess is that they are both in need of another super, which means that I have more frames to make. It is a repetitive and somewhat pleasant activity. (In case you were wondering, each frame uses a total of 15 nails of varying lengths.) I am not sure what affect the constant rain is having on the bees, but up until that, it had been a super spring for them. Reports of swarms were coming in fast and furious from friends, bee teachers and even co-workers. It's enough to give one a ray of hope about it all.

Beacon Bee Balm is now available at both DIA Beacon and Homespun Foods. I am really happy about my new fragrance, Rose Geranium, which not only smells lovely, but is also a natural tick repellent. (What more could you ask for really.)

In general, I am having trouble keeping up with everything, (parenting, job, art, garden, bees and more), but don't want to (or am not allowed to) give any of it up. Hopefully the summer will give me a chance to catch up, or at least catch my breath.

A shot from below of a super healthy and vibrant hive box.

Season Three, From Egg, to Honey

2009-04-16T20:52:00.017-04:00

Picture of the day: this photo shows the wide range of activity that goes on inside the hive. (You may want to click on the image so that you can actually see anything). Ready? The center cells with the curled up white wormy looking things are larvae, which is the second stage of brood development. To the right of these cells are several cells containing eggs, (the first stage, and very hard to spot) which look like really small grains of rice. On the upper left edge of the photo you see capped brood, (the third stage). Just above the larvae, you can see two girls as they are popping their heads out of their cells for the first time. On the right edge you see capped honey, and just to the left of that, uncapped honey. Finally, between the uncapped honey and the larvae, you can see many cells stuffed full of pollen, in all of its glorious colors (this will be fed to the brood).

As a beekeeper, I am glad I live somewhere with four true seasons. By the end of the fall, I am ready for a rest from the hive, but by April I am missing the bees, and eager to see how they have fared over the winter. I must admit that before the first inspection of the season however, I find myself wondering just how it is that I plan on going into a wooden box housing several thousand bees and coexisting with them, if even for just a short time.
This morning, donning my new and official feeling bee jacket, I reassured myself by singing my little bee song and telling myself "Because this is what a beekeeper does, that's why."
It was a flower day, the smoker caught and stayed lit. And then the cover was off and there they were, my beautiful bees. I have seen them around a lot with the warmer days. I have tasted the pollen that they have dropped on the tray that sits under the hive, but until I saw them crawling over the frames in their vast numbers, I did not know for sure that they had made it through the long and cold winter. This hives temperament had not mellowed with the winter, and within a few minutes, they were really agitated, buzzing me and landing on my clothing and veil. I slowly relaxed as I saw the merits of my jacket and gloves. I may not look as dare-devily or as "at one with nature" as that guy who goes into his hives shirtless, but I felt calm (relatively) and remained sting free throughout.

It was a mother of an inspection, with all sorts of unexpected situations thrown my way. Here is a synopsis of what I found: The top super was still full of capped honey. I set this box on the ground without inspecting it. The top deep was loaded with capped honey as well, and also a lot of brood. I recognized the four frames of wacky comb (frames that the bees built so that one frame linked with the one next to it, making it impossible for me to remove the frames without destroying the comb.) I set this box on the ground as well so that I could see what was going on down below. The bottom deep was really light, and I remembered that it felt light in the fall as well, but that I had not been able to go through all of the frames at that time. Today I looked at them all. The first four I pulled out were empty except for brood in the upper left corner, an odd place for brood to be. The fifth frame was a plastic one that came with last year's nuc, and apparently the bees disliked this so much that they never even fully drew the comb on it. The big surprise came with the last three frames, which were covered with a layer of green mold, explaining the complete absence of bees, brood, honey, ANYTHING on them. The inside of the wood was also moldy on this half of the hive box. It's not easy to think on ones feet when surrounded by agitated bees, but I was in fact fairly prepared for the unexpected. I had brought up to the hive with me a bunch of different frames and boxes, and was able to replace both the moldy box and frames, as well as the wacky comb frames that I had to remove from the top deep.

The whole process from lighting the smoker to putting the top back on took an hour. Way longer than an inspection should ideally take, but considering all that was done, I was pretty happy. This was the first time where I felt a certain level of confidence when dealing with new and complicated situations. Instead of running to the phone for advice, I considered what my options were, and what I knew from past experience and books and workshops. Of the frames that I took out, several were loaded with honey, and one was about a quarter full of brood in its various stages. While writing in my bee journal, I noticed two bees just crawling out of their cells. (which brings us back the the first photo in this post.) Poor girls being born on the wrong side of the hive wall. It is true that the hive functions as an organism, but I still wince with the death of each individual. Despite the mass murder of today, (alright, not mass, but a whole bunch did die), I know that my setting things right is what needed to be done. I will try to be more vigilant this year, not letting my fear get in the way of digging deep into the hive and knowing what is going on in there. In the meantime, I have two new deep frames of honey to harvest!

On the Beacon Bee Balm front, interest continues to grow and I plan on hitting the Farmers Markets this summer. I now have three different size tubes; lip balm size, .75oz (a slightly bigger tube that is a great purse size) and 3 ounce (the most Balm for your buck). After a morning of gloveless gardening today, I found the Bee Balm to be soooo comforting to my dirt dry hands. Looks like it is a year round product!

Next month I will get my new nuc to start my second hive with. Until then I will do what Kim Flottum from Bee Culture Magazine always says to do, "Keep my hive tool sharp and my smoker lit."

Honey Harvest and first Pollen

2009-03-13T20:13:00.005-04:00

This past weekend I felt confident enough that the girls had enough stores to last them till spring that I finally harvested the four frames of honey that I pulled last October. My studio is the closest I have to a "honey house", so if you notice flecks of wax or honey on my drawings the next time you see them, you now know why. From the four frames, I bottled a total of twelve pounds of honey! (Honey is measured by weight, not volume, and an 8 ounce glass jar of honey that you buy in the store actually contains 6 fluid ounces of honey.) This batch is very light in color, and has a nice fairly mild flavor. Sam visited me many, many times, as I had told him that he could have a taste each time that he visited. It was interesting to see that as I cut into the frames, I could see the color of the honey change slightly as the crop changed. I hung the rinsed frames out under the front deck and being that it was a pretty warm day (around 55 degrees), they were soon discovered and enjoyed by a few dozen girls. I noticed that most of the girls that I saw had all black abdomens (the hive often times contains multiple breeds since the queen has mated with about a dozen different drones). These are probably Carniolan bees, originally from eastern Europe I think.

Today I went up to check the observation board which sits under the hive, and found.... POLLEN!! This week has been too cold for them to have been out and about, so this must have been from March 7th or 8th when it was warmer. The earliest trees that produce pollen are Willows, and the color I am seeing matches that, but there are NO willow trees in our neighborhood. It was thrilling to see this clear sign of spring. Also on the board was a lot of wax cappings showing that they are still consuming a lot of honey. This makes sense as they are busy raising their brood at this point. My new beekeeper's jacket came in the mail!

help the bees and eat ice cream

2009-02-26T17:19:00.013-05:00

The following image shows how high hives can get to be at times. I am planning on making a switch to shallower boxes so that I am better able to move them when needed, and so I asked for advice from the organic beekeeping email chat group that I am part of, and a member sent me this image of his hives. His point was that it is a good idea, but that the hives tend to be taller than ones using deeper boxes. Note the loads of bees on the front of the hive. This must have been taken on a pretty hot day.
These beekeeper people are pretty intense. I could send out a question at 11:00 p.m., and by 8:00 a.m., there might be five or more responses. In July I plan on attending a three day conference where I will finally get a chance to meet some of the big names in the (bee) field.
Maybe we will eat some ice cream.

Speaking of ice cream
Haagen Dazs has been doing sooo much to help the honey bees, that you really ought to suffer through a pint of their new line of honey vanilla ice creams in order to show your support. So far they have given $500,000 to several Universities that are conducting research to solve the mysteries of Colony Collapse Disorder, funded the creation of a honey bee friendly garden and established a web-site that aims to bring awareness to the importance of the honey bee. Check it out at www.helpthehoneybees.com You may even want to send someone a honey bee email, which means that you can build an animated bee and email it to your friends. Oh, and don't forget to try the honey vanilla, or lowfat honey vanilla with granola (the only ones that I have tried so far.) Yum....

February bees

2009-02-11T14:51:00.010-05:00

Given the warm weather today, I made my first hive inspection of 2009. Most bees that don't make it through the winter die in March because they have started to raise brood but nothing is blooming yet and they don't have enough food to get them through the last gasp of winter. My goal therefore, was to make sure that they have enough stores left to get them through the next few months. I have four frames of capped honey that I pulled in the fall and have been saving in case they need them. The inspection was short and sweet. It was a fruit day (good news from a planetary perspective), the smoker caught, and the top super was still FULL of honey! The girls were out and about, enjoying the warmth and the sun, clearing out the dead (all those black spots on the snow), and pooping all over the place. They are very hygienic creatures, and will not poop in the hive, so a day like today comes as a welcome relief to them. They were attracted to my white helmet and light colored clothes and I enjoyed watching them as they perched on me and rested.

The image below shows the tray that sits under the hive. I pull this tray out to see what is going on in the hive. On it, I can see if I have any mites (NO!), and in the winter I can see where in the hive they are clustering. The yellow dusty stuff is wax cappings that the girls are chewing off of the frames to get at the honey. Today I can see that they have been clustered to one side of the hive.

I have decided to by a new nuc (box with 5 frames of bees including a queen) this spring rather than try to split this hive and make a second one from it. My primary reason is genetic diversification, meaning that this hive has been what we beekeepers call "a hot hive", (pissy, keen on stinging me, not friendly at all), and I would welcome some new genes in the bee yard.

On a business note, Beacon Bee Balm has been a huge success! All over Beacon (and beyond) folks are saying good-bye to their dry skin, chapped lips, damaged cuticles and cracked heels. Currently, I am making the Balm as a Moisturizing Stick, which is like a giant lip balm stick. It rubs on in an even and thin layer and seems to be quite popular.
This 3 ounce stick is $15.00 and comes in Lavender and Naturally Scented. I also have regular size lip balm sticks for $4.00, and 2 ounce jars in both Lavender and Naturally Scented Balm for $10.00.
Interested? Send me an email.
I have received many testimonials regarding the Propolis Tincture and I am currently SOLD OUT!

Beacon Bee products

2008-12-03T20:49:00.010-05:00

We are in full production mode here on Sunnyside Road!
I currently have two wonderful products for sale.
Bee Balm, made from beeswax, shea butter, almond oil, propolis and vitamin E oil
This is a wonderful, thick, but not heavy, soothing and healing cream for both your lips and skin. I have found it to work wonders on chapped lips and cracked skin.
Bee Balm is available in both unscented (a lovely aroma of the natural ingredients) and lightly scented lavender.
Once ounce jar $4.00
Three ounce jar $10.00.

I also have Propolis Tincture. Propolis tincture can help to ward off or shorten the length of a cold, sore throat or flu. Propolis contains a high concentration of flavenoids, which have been shown to have antibacterial, antiviral, antioxident and immune stimulation effects. Honeybees collect plant resins and bring them back to the hive. They then add beeswax, honey and enzymes, transforming it into propolis. Bees use propolis like caulking, filling cracks and gaps in their hive in order to protect it from disease.
One ounce bottle: $12.00
Two ounce bottle: $23.00

If you are interested in purchasing something, please send me a comment, or email me directly at ddavidovits@optonline.net

Deb's mom says "Hi Deb, I used your tincture yesterday because I woke up sick. Much better today... It really works!"

October

2008-10-29T16:40:00.021-04:00

And now it is fall.
In early September I realized that my first hive was missing a queen. The queen cells that I found in the hive were "superceeding" cells, meaning that they were the workers' attempt to make a queen from one of the eggs in the side cells because their queen was dead or dying, versus the queen cells that were built in May, hanging off of the bottoms of the frames when the girls needed a new queen in order to swarm. I gave the girls a few weeks to sort things out, but when I saw in mid September that not only did they still have no queen, but that their honey stores were being robbed by the other hive, I knew that I had no choice but to merge the two hives. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It will turn the two hives (one weak) into one ultra-strong hive and I can go in and split the hive back into two in the spring. My only reluctance, was a) the process of doing the deed, and b) the knowledge that the new hive that I make next spring will be from the same lineage as this rather feisty (mean) hive.

As expected, it was a grueling, job. It involved

taking out all of the frames from one box and "shaking" all of the bees into the second box in an effort to consolidate the two into one. The girls, queenless and victims of robbing for the past weeks, were understandably really upset. I was working in a literal cloud of bees for way longer than anyone should ever work in a cloud of bees. Added to this was the fact that the girls did not seem to understand that I wanted them to stay in the box, not crawl out of it.

I had to call Matt over to carry the box of bees and frames over to the host hive and place it on top of it. Believe it or not, this was his first time carrying a box of bees, and boy was he excited! It was shockingly heavy. I winced as I saw how he struggled to carry it the twenty or so feet to the other hive, imagining the chaos that would ensue if it were to be dropped.
The technique of merging is simple. You place a single sheet of newspaper between the two hives and in the amount of time that it take for the bees to chew through the paper, they become accustomed to each others' smell.
This seems to have happened.
I pulled the full super of honey that was on the host hive (now known around here as "Thor") and harvested just a bit. The honey was very thin but has thickened up with the help of a dehumidifier. I am saving the remaining six full frames until I am sure that the girls have enough for the winter. Perhaps the best piece of bee news is that my body (at least for the time being ) seems to have become immune to bee venom!! After a particularly serious reaction in August (at which point my entire torso turned beet red and got covered with hives), each subsequent sting has caused a progressively minor reaction. A solid sting on my index finger last week, which started to swell and send red lines up my arm, went on to deflate and cause nothing but a red dot after I put a baking soda paste on it.
The hive will be wrapped soon for another winter of clustering. I turn now to the stove and my boxes of beautiful blue glass bottles and white containers waiting to be filled with propolis tincture and bee body cream.

August Bees

2008-08-09T07:03:00.010-04:00

The summer has been active. A bit too active for my liking really, with a very "spirited" new hive. I have had to resort to full gear (veil, boots and long sleeves) every time I go up. I don't think that they are mean bees really, just more defensive than some, and a bit impulsive. Each of the stings I have gotten can be rationalized; a girl got caught in my hair and freaked out, a girl bumped into me because I was in her way while pulling out weeds and freaked out, a girl got caught in my pants fold and freaked out. You get the idea. (As with parenting, it's easy to blame oneself when anything goes wrong.) But the other hive is so mellow. How could this be? I guess it is like having a second child and being surprised at how different they are from the first. But why should they be the same? It is hard to approach them now without fear or anger. It is sinking in that we are not "friends" really. I still love sitting near them and watching them though. It calms me and stills my mind.

About a week ago, following my mentor's advice, I started feeding the girls again. Apparently there is not enough out there for them, in part due to the heavy rains that wash all the pollen of the flowers. I found them to be ravenous! Sucking down a gallon of sugar water within hours. They will stop taking the "bee tea" when they no longer need it, but I can't keep up with them. Yesterday I decided to give them two of the frames of honey that were left over from last winter. I opened up the large plastic container on the front patio and took out two frames and left two behind. By the time I set them up at the hives, the girls had found the two that I had left on the patio (note to self; don't forget to put the top back on next time.) I brought the whole container up to the hives and watched as they gorged themselves all afternoon. the frames were covered with bees within 20 minutes. Each frame holds about 4 pounds of honey and by the end of the afternoon, each cell of each frame was dry as a bone. I am thinking now that I probably will not get any honey this year if this is the state that they are in. I need to be o.k. with that. I have come to think of myself as being "at their service" versus the other way around. I am thinking instead of making some beeswax "products" i.e. body lotion and lip balm. Things that use the by products of the hive but are not dependent on them producing honey.
Today I will venture in to see what is going on inside the hives. Fully covered, full of love.

a new season

2008-06-02T16:48:00.008-04:00

I'm back and so are the bees. The winter was good to the bees. Not too brutal and I had left them with more than enough honey to make it through. This spring I got a second hive, which I will refer to as the lower hive (for now) as it is geographically lower than the upper hive (the hive from last year). The major excitement so far, has been the anticipation of, and witnessing of my first swarm, which occurred yesterday! I had seen queen cells being grown a few weeks ago and have had my eyes out since then. The queen cells are the longs things hanging off of the bottom of the frame.

The hive grows a new queen for one of two reasons. Either the old queen is dead or not producing well (laying good and plentyful eggs), or because the hive is overcrowded. I had added a super, but apparently not soon enough to suit them.
The past few days I had been hearing the strangest sound from inside the hive when I put my ear to it. A rhythmic, high pitched "weep-weep-weep" sound, which I read is called "Queen piping, or tooting". It is the sound of the new queens communicating with the hive, sometimes from within their cells before they even emerge. It was quite surreal and reminds me of just how odd and fantastic this whole beekeeping thing is. Once the queens emerge, they duke it out with each other until one rules supreme. The old queen then leaves the hive with up to half of the bees to start a new hive.

Yesterday at around 10:00a.m., I was out on the patio and I must have sensed them, because I looked up just as a cloud of bees was forming high up in the bee yard. I grabbed camera, boots, phone and ran up. Creeping through the woods, I could feel their presence and could hear a dull, deep whirring sound, but could not see them at all. I moved slowly through the trees with them and finally they popped out to where I could see them.

I ran down to the house and brought up the spare "bait hive" (an empty hive box with old comb in it) that I had prepared for this occasion. I set it down at my feet and beat out a slow rhythm on my bucket, something I had both read about and heard from Chris. And boy did I feel odd! Luckily, all neighbors seem to have been away for the afternoon. I beat, I sang, I beckoned. All to no avail. They settled on a dead branch 75 feet in the air. Much too far for me to reclaim them. From here, it is the drones' job to scout out a new location and report back to the group. The drones do a dance to convey what they have found and how prime a spot it is. Based on the enthusiasm of their dance, the group votes on where to set up house, and off they go. I had to go out for the afternoon, and Matt reported that by 3:00, the group was gone. Click on the images to see the bees up close!

late august

2007-08-21T08:08:00.000-04:00

Dear reader,
Up until recently, I have been keeping this blog AND keeping a beekeeping journal and have been finding much redundancy, so I have decided to keep this as my beekeeping journal. What this means for you is more details about things that you might not care too much about. Feel free to just look at the photos and say "oooh"and/or "ahhh" and skip the words if you feel overloaded. I will try to keep including some interesting factoids here and there, like the fact that a worker bee can locate where the sun is even during the nighttime. As always, feedback is welcome.
I went up yesterday with the intention of venturing into the first deep, a place I have not been for many months. A local beekeeper convinced me that I needed to make sure that all was well there, but having gone in, verified what I already knew, (that everything was fine), made a mess, killed a lot of bees and gotten stung, I stick to my original belief that it was unnecessary.

Before going in, I noticed this row of workers, all head down lined up on the front of the hive.

The first deep has some frames loaded with worker brood (no drones this time of year) while other frames have vast areas of empty cells. This makes me nervous (it all makes me nervous) but is probably not a problem. I saw larvae in various stages, but no eggs, which does not mean that there aren't any, just that they are hard to spot. I did not go into the second deep or into the honey filled super. The new super has almost nothing drawn on it yet, which makes me doubt that they will have time to draw comb and fill it with honey before the season ends. So, perhaps I will not be harvesting this year after all. We will just have to wait and see.
I got stung on my left index finger and for the first time put on the super cool elbow length leather gloves that I ordered in the spring. I am willing to get stung once per visit, but that is my limit I am afraid.

Here is how the hive looks now, fully stacked. The red strap is in case a bear knocks the hive over.

the second (last) super

2007-08-12T20:22:00.001-04:00

An active few days at the hive.
After not going in for a month, I knew that things would be a bit of a mess in there, and I was right. I went up yesterday but did not go in because of some interesting but off putting activity. Hundreds of girls were hovering in mid air in front of the hive, all facing the hive, occasionally landing and then taking off again, only to hover some more. Speaking with Chris today (bee teacher) he explained that this was a "graduation flight", meaning that the girls who were about to become foragers were leaving the hive for the first time and orienting themselves so that they would be able to locate the hive again. I feel so lucky to have witnessed this! The other strange thing that I saw was the presence of MANY drones on the entrance board. Usually I might see one or two, this time I saw up to a dozen at a time. The girls were kind of nudging them to the edge, at which point they would fly away. I realized that I was witnessing the beginnings of the expulsion of the drones. With the cooler weather coming, the girls cannot afford to feed any extra mouths and the drones are all kicked out by the fall. Today, the hive was very calm and with Matt agreeing to be my smoker and photographer, in we went. This first photo shows a ton of propalis that the girls laid between the outer and inner covers of the hive. A beautiful bee painting.

There was a ton of burr comb between the super and the second deep and as I separated the two boxes, very mature larvae were exposed as the burr comb was ripped apart. Their bodies are all white, but their huge eyes were a strange purple. (click on the photo of me scraping burr comb to see this) I felt so bad destroying them and know that if I had come in sooner they would not have been let to develop this far.
As I scraped off the burr comb, I tossed the chunks onto the ground in front of the hive so that the bees could find it and eat what they wanted of the high protein larvae. All through this, the girls were docile and pretty much ignored me. Some days feel calmer than others at the hive, and luckily this was one of them.

I was thrilled and amazed to see that the frames in the super were 90% FULL of capped honey!! It is one thing to read about it in books, and yet quite another to see that it actually happens. Similar to Sammy learning to walk and talk, it seems obvious that given the right circumstances it will happen, but none the less miraculous when it does.
Many of the brood frames however, contained very little capped honey, which concerned me because this is what the girls will be living off of for the winter if I take the honey super away to harvest it. I saw lots of capped brood and uncapped larvae but no eggs. This is frustrating as I cannot verify that there is a queen unless I see her (yet to happen) or eggs, but I really did not want to delve into the first deep as the girls were getting restless, buzzing my veil and buzzing Matt.

Super frame with capped honey!

Deep frame with capped honey (light colored on top) and empty cells, probably recently vacated by newly born bees.

After I put the hive back together, I called Chris and he told me to put a second super on so that the girls can continue their work with more space. The purple loose strife is just now in bloom, resulting in near black colored pollen and "coca cola" colored honey. After doing this, I walked toward the house and breathed a sigh of relief that I had avoided getting stung after such an invasive inspection. Apparently I spoke to soon as I felt the sting on the back of my hand from a lone lost girl who had gotten trapped in the cuff of my shirt. Today my right hand is swollen like a rag doll's. It cannot dampen the excitement I feel at the prospect of actually harvesting some honey in the next couple of months though.

Matt smoking the hive

bees in the rain

2007-07-24T21:34:00.000-04:00

These summer storms can be tough on the bees. Due to the heat, they like to be outside and when the rain starts they form clumps on the front of the hive. These clumps seem to be three or four bees thick and the bees are... still. It is the only time that I have seen them not moving and it is strange. Based on my observations, (yes I have been spending a bit of time with the bees during rain storms) bees cannot fly if their wings are wet, so they just hang out until the rain stops and they have dried off. Following advice from my teacher, I have been constructing an extended roof for the hive out of corrugated metal when a major storm hits so that the girls don't get washed away. I take this off when the rain is over so that they can get as much sun as possible.
My attitude has shifted lately. Now that I have a super on the hive, there is no real reason for me to go in there other than to make sure that there is a queen. By watching the hive and seeing that girls are coming and going and carrying on in a typically busy manner, I can be pretty sure that there is one even without barging in to check for eggs in the cells. My goal now is to get the girls well established with what they will need to get through the winter. If I can do this, then next year will bring me honey.
As the girls collect pollen from flowers and pack it into the baskets on their legs, it forms into these beautiful solid clumps of various colors depending on what they have been harvesting. Frequently, the pollen falls off of their legs onto the varroa tray where it is out of their reach. I collect the fallen ones when I check the varroa tray. This last time up, I took a dozen or so for myself (it tastes strange and slightly sweet and is supposed to be good to combat allergies) but I dumped the rest back next to the hive. I wonder if they will re-gather it now that it is no longer in the flower that they originally got it from.
Matt got me a multiple pounded book titled "The Hive and the Honeybee" which covers hundreds of bee topics with essays from the mid 1800's throught the present. The following F.Y.I. tid-bit is from this book.
Considering that in a healthy hive about 1,000 bees die every day, it is amazing that there are so few on the ground at the base of the hive. In addition to the fact that sick and old bees will fly away from the hive to die if they are able, there are also "gravedigger bees" who's job it is to carry the dead away from the hive.
They continue to amaze me.

not quite fearless

2007-07-13T17:47:00.000-04:00

Going into the hive last week, I was apprehensive after the previous two stings. I have adapted my veil so that it is easier to get on and off and I am trying to see it as way cool to wear bee gear rather than a sign of weakness or lack of beekeeping skills. I suppose I could think of it as wearing sturdy shoes when doing woodworking so that a hammer does not clobber your toe (something I don't always do). The girls were active and have been productive in a way that is both wonderful and difficult. The super was full of burr comb, (lumps of freeform honeycomb that the bees build in any gap they can find). I need to scrape the comb off because it messes up the artificial order that I am imposing on the hive and makes it hard to move the frames around. Between the burr comb and the propolis (a gooey gluey substance made from tree sap) that they fill EVERY space between the frames with, everything was attached to everything else. Within moments my fingers were sticking to each other and I was struggling to move things around without crushing the girls. It is a horrible sound when a frame slips and slams against a neighboring frame, smushing bee mass into bee mass. It sounds kind of like a saw starting up, a wusshhing sound of sorts. I could see the direct results of my smoking the bees and it is true that it makes them gorge themselves on honey, thinking that they will need to flee the hive. I could see their panic as they buried their bodies into the cells. The chunks of burr comb are filled with nectar still, not honey, as the water has not been evaporated from it yet. I found that if you treat a chunk of it like gum, the nectar oozes out and fills your mouth with sweetness. The waxy lump left will be melted down at some point once I figure out what to do with it.
The frog in Matt's hand is included in the bee blog as he is a neighbor of the bees and possible friend.

How much does it hurt?

2007-07-02T16:39:00.001-04:00

Question of the week: "Just how much does it hurt to get stung two times on the face?" (Hopefully none of you already know the answer to this question).
Answer: "An awful lot!!" Even more than I would have thought if I had thought about it. Enough that I have ditched my pseudo-plans to get a small tattoo to commemorate my turning 40. (people say getting a tattoo feels like getting stung by a bee.)
I have learned much in the past two days. I have learned that even though I love my bees, that does not mean that they love me back and if I am going to play around with the unconventional habit of working the hive without smoking the bees, I had better wear my veil.
What happened was this. I was poking around yesterday, marveling at the amount of honey that the girls have packed away in the super over the past week and I had to get the hive tool (metal pry bar kind of thing) deep into the box to scrape off some burr comb (extra honey comb built in in-between places) and as a result I ended up removing some comb with honey in it and disrupting things to the point where they just got pissed off. The first girl got me on the ear, (see photo and note how the swelling, reddness and ITCHYNESS has spread down my neck). I screamed, popped 5 of the homeopathic pills that I keep in my pocket (apis mellifica) and went back to quickly put the hive back together so that I could go and remove the stinger. I knew that the bee sting would be worse the longer the stinger was left in because the poison sac keeps pulsing and releasing venom, and I also knew that the other girls would smell the venom and it would attract more attacks. I should have just left and dealt with the hive later because sure enough a second girl got me on the nose within a minute. At this point I ran down to find Matt and handed him the handy tweezers I also keep in my pocket and he got the honor of pulling out two pulsing stingers. Then I put on the Osha Root tincture that I bought from an herbalist and hoped for the best. Throbbing pain, hurt feelings (I thought we were friends, I am a failure etc.)
The ear sting is remarkably worse than the nose one. Perhaps because the stinger was in longer, I'm really not sure, but it is a drag. On a slightly upbeat note, I recognize that this was bound to happen and am happy in a way to have gotten it over with. I have read that over time you can become immune to the venom and the reaction that your body has to it. I have also read that you can develop an extreme allergic reaction to it.
photos:
1. Two bees exchanging nectar; the returning bee passes the nectar from her nectar stomach to the waiting bee, who then passes it to another bee etc. until it is packed away in a cell. The exchanging of enzymes is what turnes the nectar into honey!
2. Some bees removing some sort of undeveloped bee, perhaps a drone based on its size.
3. My ear today.

Happy national pollinator week!

2007-06-30T14:08:00.000-04:00

It has come to my attention that June 24-30 was National Pollinator Week!! Hurray for all of the creatures who do what they can to share the sweetness of the world and help things to grow. Check out www.pollinator.org/pollinator_week.htm for lots of information for gardeners and others regarding pollination. Also, look for the new stamp that will be coming out honoring all of these creatures that we love and need.

Every day? No way!

2007-06-29T17:50:00.000-04:00

Hi folks, I know the google group thingy just sent you an email saying that you will receive an email everyday. I am assuming they mean that this will only happen if I add something to the Blog, which I don't plan on doing EVERY DAY so relax. I don't intend to bombard you and risk losing my bee fans.
The first photo here shows you what a wasp nest looks like, (courtesy of my parents). Wasps are mean and hairless (that's not what makes them mean though) and should be avoided. The second image shows you what a bunch of bees look like when the hang onto each other in an attempt to reach their bee tea. The third image shows you what a busy entrance board looks like.

Who we are

2007-06-26T09:37:00.000-04:00

Sammy is the little one. He is learning a lot from this and asks questions like "Do insects have eyes?" ("Yes.") "Then what are their antennae for?" Matt is the big one. He thinks that I have become totally obsessed (He is probably right) but has been a supportive and involved party in all of this. I am the one working the hive. People ask what got me into this. A good question and one with several answers. Curiosity. Feeling ready to delve into a new world. Turning 40, possible mid life crisis, (this was less trouble than having an affair and cheaper than buying a sports car). And underlying it all may be my name, Deborah, which means honeybee in Hebrew. Throughout my life it has felt like an ill fitting shirt. A bit too formal and stuffy as Deborah, too young and girlish as Debbie, too abrupt as Deb. Somehow, with this endeavor, I find myself feeling more comfortable with Deborah. Like it makes sense on a below the skin level.

Some photos of the hive in its first month

2007-06-25T15:56:00.000-04:00

Instead of rewriting all of what I wrote pre-Blog, I will include a few photos of what has been going on.

Hello

2007-06-25T15:42:00.000-04:00

O.K. So I am diving into the world of BLOG. For those of you new to me, I have one beehive that I am taking care of and reporting on. So far it has been a great experience and has made for some interesting photos and thoughts.

A photo of the girls sipping bee tea.

2007-06-25T15:37:00.000-04:00