It was a war ~

It was a war & the drones lost!

They've been tossed out of the hive by the workers as

 they are expendable going into the winter.

It's hard to tell but there are lots of bees in the grass.

While cleaning up the bodies a not-quite dead

soldier had a last hurrah & stung me between my toes!

OUCH! 

A lesson to not wear sandals around the hives.

Wonky Comb ~

In between rain showers & downpours I've been trying to get into the bee hives.

I have two supers of honey to harvest & wonky frames of comb to check on.

This is what it looked like the last time I checked one of the hives a little over a week ago.

Two separate combs built together on one frame ~ one started from

the top & one from the bottom... 

 Stuck together!

It's beautiful white comb on the top & gooey, honey-filled, comb on the bottom.

Here you can see how the two combs are overlapping.

I removed one of the combs & in doing so the other

comb bent at a right angle to the frame.

Here it is after beekeeper surgery...all tied up with string.

Some beeks use rubber bands to hold the comb in the frame

 ~ & I've tried that in the past ~

however this hive has removed the rubber bands & strewn them in the lawn when I tried to fix up their poor engineering previously.

My theory is that they don't like the smell or texture of the rubber

and prefer the organic cotton string(?)

Hey....that might be a good science project!

For William...not me  :)

Two Busy Little Bees!

Thanks Aubrey & Will!

These are my two seasoned honey processors.

They know how to crush the comb to release the honey,

bottle & taste test it.

Delicious!

Queen Bee Alert

It's almost time for the spring packages of bees to arrive.

Packages typically arrive around the middle of April so in

March I get itchy to check the hives & see how the girls have done over the winter.  

This past week it was finally warm enough to pop the top & take a peek inside. 

Usually I rap on the side of hive first & if all is well & gentle hum accelerates.

Unfortuanately, when I rapped there was no answerinh hum.

Oh-oh.....

This is a freaky picture because the bees look so healthy & perfectly perserved!

But....unfortunately, they are dead.  They were down to this little bit of honey in comb.

The queen & her attendants were clustered around it.

We saved the queen & this piece of the comb for William's science project.

Usually, we just shake out the few that are dead onto the grass for the birds to feed on but there were 10's of thousands!  A large colony can have well over 60,000 bees living inside it's walls & these were both big & healthy hives going into the fall.

I had high hopes for them this year!

Unfortunately, there were just too many bees & soon we had to put them in a trash bag.

We said a little blessing to thank them for their environmental work & then put them into the compost pile we've saved for our worm composting.

I've never seen so many bees!  It's a double edged sword with a large & healthy hive going into a long winter....there just isn't enough reserves to get them through to April.

A Summer Swarm

Every summer I worry about my bees swarming. This occurs when the hive becomes congested with too many bees, no room for the queen to lay eggs, over heating, or a multitude of other reasons. This year I ordered a "nuc" which is sort of a mini hive that is used to catch swarms or to do a split with a hive that is growing too big so the beekeeper "splits" it into two hives.

So a couple of weeks ago I set up the nuc in my garden area. It's located about 75 feet away from the main hives. It's usually recommended that a nuc or swarm trap be set-up close to existing hives if you want to catch a swarm from bees outside the area & away from existing hives if you want to catch bees that may be from your own hives. It seems that if bees are going to swarm they will not set-up a new home close to the original hive but will travel a short distance (usually 75 to 100 feet) away to find a new home.

Then I forgot about it.

Until today when I was checking the progress of my raspberries. Wowie-zowie! There were bees all over the nuc! The picture above doesn't really do justice to the buzz of activity around the entrance to the nuc. There was a cloud of bees!

Very exciting & satisfying. I'm hoping one of my existing hives didn't swarm but if they did I'm glad they found a new home in the neighborhood. Welcome home!

Bee Check ~ a day later

It looks like the bees are making themselves at home! Here's a guard bee at the upper entrance keeping watch.


As we watched more bees were alerted that we were present & more came out to see what was going on & if re-inforcement was necessary. We're friendly...we promise!

Here's a photo of the hive & the bees coming out the upper entrance.

My beekeeper assistant also keeping watch...Who's watching who???

Bee Installation 2009

My two, four pound, packages of bees arrived yesterday so it was important that they be put in their new homes quickly so that they didn't get chilled or hungry. My son (4.5 yo) is my assistant beekeeper & photographer. Unfortunately, we only took a couple of pictures & the camera shut off because the memory card was full! I had planned to take step by step photos of the installation but that will have to wait for another time.

I already had my hive boxes cleaned out & ready for the new bees. I also have some frames full of honey from last year so we cleaned up the frames & put some those frames in the brood box. The bees will love this~

Here's me leaning down to pry the can of syrup out of the temporary hive / travel box. The queen is inside in a small cage that I needed to remove after pulling the can out. I put the queen in a pocket on my green garden tool belt. My husband gave me this garden tool belt a number of years ago but I never really used it until the past couple of bee seasons. It works great as a tool holder after I'm suited-up.

Here's the junior helper checking out the new~bees!

The spray bottle has warmed sugar syrup in it so I gently spray the bees before I dump them into the prepared hive. The sugar water calms them down & they get distracted because they lick the sugar off of themselves & each other ~ slick, uh? I used to use smoke but I don't use it on a regular basis. Sometimes mid season I might use it as an alert to the bees that I'm going to open the hive but early in the season it just seems be an agitator.

Well, dumped the bees into the hives, added the honey filled frames & feeder on top & closed the hives-up.