Hiving and Checking for the Queen

The bees arrived Saturday, and it couldn't have been a worse day for it! It was really cold, hovering not much above freezing, and was raining and snowing off and on all day. Not good for the bees! But there wasn't much to do other than move forward. I mean, the weather wasn't supposed to change for at least a few days, and they couldn't stay in their package forever!

They come in a wooden box, two sides of which are screen. There is a hole in the top which is plugged during transport with a can of bee food (basically very thick sugar water) that has tiny holes punched in the bottom. The bees feed off this sugar water while they are trapped in the package and unable to get to pollen. They're fine in there, but they're obviously better off in their hive.

 

The queen is in a tiny version of the larger package, which is suspended from the top of the package. This is so that the bees begin getting used to her scent and so that they can take care of her, but she remains separated from them. Because the bees from packages are paired with the queen shortly before they're sent out to their new homes, you want the bees to have a little time to get used to their new queen. Otherwise they might kill her.

I picked them up early that afternoon and kept them in the garage so they'd be a little warmer until C got home. We put sugar water (a 1:1 ratio) in a spray bottle and spritzed the sides a few minutes before we went out to the hive. We first removed the queen cage, covering the now exposed hole that the bee food can was plugging. There is a small hole in the bottom of the cage with a cork in it. C removed that cork, immediately covering the hole so the queen couldn't get out, then I shoved a mini marshmallow into the hole. Don't worry! The plan is that the bees will eat through the marshmallow and let her out. Then we dumped them out of the package and into the hive. Literally just dumped them. C shook the package around a little until almost all of them were out in the hive. The temperature did work in our benefit a little in that it made the bees a lot less likely to fly around during the hiving process. Unfortunately I did not get any pics of this process. Maybe next year. Anyway, we closed up the hive and left them to get the queen out.

We checked back in this afternoon (Wednesday) to be sure that the queen had indeed been let out of her cage as planned. We found a huge wad of bees suspended from two of the top bars. While we didn't see her, it's most likely that the queen was in the middle of that wad. And hopefully they are working on making comb. We closed the hive back up and we'll leave them again for about a week. If all goes as we hope they will have a good start on comb and there may even be some brood!

PS Have I mentioned our awesome bee suits? They're made for someone about 6" taller than me, but otherwise they're quite stylish. You should see the way people slow down and stare as they're driving by when we are walking across the yard in these babies. It's quite funny, really :)

Build It and They Will Come

After we decided to get bees, we'd already decided to use a top-bar hive, but C decided he wanted to build our hive. We found plans in several different places, but he decided the plans he found in a beekeeping magazine - GRIT Magazine's Guide to Backyard Beekeeping and Honey - looked like the best and easiest to follow. So my Can Do Basically Anything Stud Muffin got started.




Gotta measure it out








Used a chalkline to make sure the lines were straight.

He made all the cuts.

I helped by sanding.

 We used a low VOC water sealant to protect the wood. We let these air outside for a week before C was ready to assemble the hive. You want to make sure that there are no toxic fumes remaining that could kill the bees once they're in the hive.

 I really wanted to be able to peek in without disturbing the bees - especially in the winter when you're really not supposed to open the hive at all - so C had the owner of our local glass shop cut some pieces of glass so that he could put in windows.

 Here are all the parts for the top bars.

 These will lay across the top of the hive, flat part (the part laying against the table) will be on top, the bees will build their comb suspended from the thin piece going down vertically from that.

Here are my windows!

And here is the roof! It's almost done! And a good thing... the bees arrive this weekend!

Time for Seedlings

We had a great garden last year, though the selection was somewhat limited. That was partly by design - we wanted to get our feet under us, figure out our soil/climate/season, gain a little experience as gardeners - and partly from inexperience - see reason number one. All-in-all, given that it was our first stab at gardening, I think we did a pretty good job. But one of the things I regret about last year is not keeping better records on our doings, so I'm making a big effort to be better about that this year. I am keeping a gardening journal, including a graph paper map of our garden and all the relevant dates. I plan to record those things here, too, along with pictures taken along the way. This will be the first of the garden progress related posts...

This year we've decided to go with almost all heirloom seeds, and are using organically grown seeds whenever possible. We began talking about this idea during the winter, and we quickly realized that it was important to both of us, mostly for the same reasons we wanted to start gardening and get bees in the first place: it's important to us to be sensitive to our environment and we want to be able to give back as much as we take. Unlike hybrids and genetically engineered seeds, heirloom seeds are much more genetically diverse and have no genetic engineering in their history. While the other two are often engineered to the point that they can survive in more drastic climates (like ours) or are resistant to various diseases, I believe that these problems can be avoided too by using heirloom seeds that have been used in the area before. This year we got all our seeds from two companies: Botanical Interests, a great Colorado company, and Seed Savers Exchange.

We have also decided to use these little plantable, biodegradable peat seed flats again this year. The only thing you have to be careful of with these little guys is being sure that, when you plant them, you put the entire pot under the ground. If you don't, if even a tiny edge is above the ground, it can be disastrous for the plant. The pots soak up some water, which is fine if it's under ground, but any exposure to the air, and the water in the pot is quickly wicked away. We found this out the hard way last year. This year we will also use a very sharp knife to remove the bottoms of the pots. We didn't have trouble last year with the pots degrading and the roots being able to push through, but if we can help the process, why not? The pieces we cut off can just be thrown into the compost pile, so there's no real waste from doing that.

Last year we had three strawberries, two blackberries, and one each blueberry and raspberry; but four or five of a handful of different veggies. We decided to be much more diverse about our plantings this year. We will have: three cauliflower (white, purple, and green), three broccoli, two broccoli rabe, four beets, two eggplants, two tomatoes, two jalapeno, two cayenne, two tomatillos, two each of Catskill and Long Island brussels sprouts, five cucumbers, five edamame, five lima beans, four acorn squash, four butternut squash, three yellow squash, three zucchini,  and four each of Jack O Lantern, Big Max, and Casper pumpkins. We planted everything but the tomatillos, cauliflower, eggplants, and Casper pumpkins March 23rd. We kept them inside, near the fire so that the oil stayed nice and warm - a factor far more important than sun at the germination stage.

We began to see our first sprouts - within the first week: the 27th saw all three broccoli and both broccoli rabe sprout; the 28th brought us sprouts of two beets, 2 Long Island brussels sprouts, four cucumber, four edamame, and one Jack O Lantern sprouts, we also planted the tomatillos that day; the next day, two more beets, two Catskills brussels sprouts, one cucumber, one edamame, and three Jack O Lanterns sprouted; the day after that two yellow squash, three zucchini, and the last Jack O Lantern sprouted; the last day of March we saw sprouts for the two tomatoes, four limas, one acorn squash, one yellow squash, and all four Big Max pumpkins.

The first two days of April we had sprouts from the last lima bean, three acorn squash, three butternut squash, and the last Big Max; and a tomatillo finally popped through the 3rd; the 4th the second tomatillo sprouted, and we planted the cauliflower, eggplants, and peppers - jalapeno and cayenne. We'd been waiting for local garden shop to get in the seeds we wanted. One of the cayenne sprouted very quickly - the 6th, and the 7th two of the cauliflower sprouted. I love that we can already tell which are going to be the purple ones - they have darker leaves with purple around the edges. The 8th we had sprouts of one jalapeno, one cayenne, and the last cauliflower; the 9th our last sprouts - one jalapeno, one cayenne, and both eggplants - emerged.

Over the last two weeks the seedlings have been growing like crazy! By the time we put them in the ground - still a month from now - we'll have strong, healthy plants, ready to put their roots into the ground and give us lots of delicious vegetables.

Of course we're hoping to still have the fruit too. It all looks like it's wintered over okay, so within the next month or so we should start seeing some green leaves on them as well. We're definitely looking forward to lots of homegrown food this summer!

P.S. We are t-minus two weeks and counting until the bees arrive!!

Beekeeping 101, Part 3

The third, and last, in our series of beekeeping classes was largely a review. We started by discussing how to hive bees in a top bar hive. This is pretty much the same as hiving them in a Langstroth hive, with two main differences.  First, after you dump out as many of the bees as possible, rather than leaning the mostly empty package against the entrance (a top bar hive is elevated off the ground), you clothespin a sheet to the entrance board and drape it down to the ground. Place the package on the sheet so that the bees can crawl out of the package and up to the entrance. Second, you band the queen cage to one of the middle bars, rather than suspending her by the wire in the top. Otherwise the process seems pretty much the same.

We also talked about “setting up” the top bar hive. The teacher of the class recommended using a thin (about ½” wide) spacer at the end to keep the top bar closest to the entrance from being close enough that the bees will glue the comb to the front wall. She said it also allows a little more room when you need to remove the first bar. One of the most important things with a top bar hive is making sure the bees are off all the upper surfaces before putting the bars back in. This avoids squishing bees (bad: kills bees and releases the alert pheromone which stirs up the rest of the hive) and trapping them in the upper section of the hive (bad: if the bees get trapped up top they’ll start building comb there). You want to start with about seven bars, with the follower board behind them. When the bees start filling those up, simply add more bars. It’s apparently a good idea to try to keep five empty bars throughout the summer.

We talked about lighting the smoker. This is assuming that you use it very often (more on that in another post), but even if you don’t, you’ll surely need it from time-to-time. We got ours in our first batch of supplies. I’ve enjoyed taking it apart and checking it out. It’s recommended that you learn how to light it before your bees arrive and you need to use it. It takes a while to get the hang of it, and it takes a while to get it going good. It’s best to light the smoker before heading out to the hives. Get some paper or shavings going at the bottom (nothing potentially carcinogenic like charcoal), then add your burn material slowly until it starts smoldering. It’s best to use juniper bark because that smoke kills off some of the mites that like to camp out on bees.

We talked about supplemental feeding too. This is important if the bees run out of stored up honey to eat. At the end of the summer, you have to leave lots of honey for the bees to feed on over the winter. When the winter is very cold, the bee population decreases some; and the bees fly very little – really only to get water. If they fly very little, they eat a lot less. But if the winter is mild, like this one has been, the bees fly a lot more, which means they eat a lot more. It’s a good idea to check the hives in February to make sure they have enough to eat. This can be done in a Langstroth hive by simply lifting it. If it’s still heavy, there’s probably still enough honey. With a top bar hive, you kind of have to open it up.  Unless you have windows like we will! Then you should just be able to peek in without disturbing the bees! If you find they don’t have enough honey, you have to feed them. Plain white sugar is the best. Or sugar water made from plain white sugar and water. You can modify one of those gallon size chicken feeders by using a circle of #8 hardware cloth to cover the feeding tray. This is so the bees can walk on the cloth and suck the sugar water through it, without falling into the water and drowning. (For the same reason you will want to put something the bees can light on while drinking in the water source you have planned for the bees. We are going to get some sturdy pool toys – or the like – to float in the pond, as we plan on that being the bees’ main water source.)

And finally we talked about planting for bees: apparently blue is their favorite color. For that reason, in this area, it is recommended to plant blue sage, Russian sage, borage, bachelor’s buttons, and blue lupine, but bees also love all kinds of fruit trees, willow trees, lavender, white clover, lilac, bee balm, hollyhocks, and roses (among numerous others). We already have six apple trees, a pear, Russian sage, lavender, hollyhocks, lilac, and five roses, in addition to the blossoms that occur in the garden (the various squashes, cucumbers, pumpkins, etc.). But we’ll also be planting others this year especially for the bees. I’m most excited about the borage because that has great use for fertilizer, and is really good for “heating up” the compost pile, as well.

And that was about it. I’m so excited about all of this, I can’t believe we still have another two months and 15 days before the bees arrive!

Beekeeping 101, Part 2b

As usual, all of this information is from the class and/or reading I've done ... and now it's time to talk about hiving the bees! This is what it's called when you receive your package of bees and move them into your hive, their new home. First, it's really important to have the hive built well in advance of getting your bees, especially if you plan to paint or stain it. It will take a good month for any chemicals, smells, etc that might be harmful - or even fatal - to your bees to dissipate, so getting it built and ready for the bees early is the best thing.

The day the bees arrive, set them aside in a cool, shady spot until late afternoon. Part of the reason to do this is because it's cooler, so the bees are calmer, but also bees are less likely to decide they hate your hive and leave if it's about to be dark. Bees apparently do very little flying at night. They also need a little more time to get used to their new queen. They will have been hanging out with her for only a few hours to a day or so, so more adjustment time is better. When you put them aside, and several more times during the day, check the sugar can to be sure there is still enough in there to keep feeding the bees. If you want, you can go ahead and mix up some sugar water (two cups of water to one pound of pure white sugar) and put it in a spray bottle. Periodically throughout the day lightly spray the screen on the outside of the package with the sugar water. The bees will lick it off. When they do that they get all fat and happy, which makes them calm.

Before you start, remove the middle-most frames from your hive to make room to put the bees in. When it's time to put them in, pick up the package, and give it a good shake downward to get most of the bees to the bottom of the package. Don't bang it on anything, that'll upset the bees. Remove the sugar can, gently reach in and remove the queen cage, then cover the hole with something. Have a mini marshmallow ready and remove the cork closing the queen cage. Cover the hole with your finger (you don't want her to escape!) until you have time to shove the mini marshmallow in it. Set her aside, being sure she can get plenty of air. Get the package and gently turn it upside down so that the hole is right over the gap in the hive. Then gently shake it around to get the bees out and into the hive. Most of them should come out, but if there are some left just lay the opening of the package next to the hive entrance and they should come out and into the hive on their own. Very slowly and gently (to avoid crushing any bees) replace the frames, leaving one out if necessary so there's still a space in the middle. Hang the queen, still in her cage, in this space. Make sure the screen is facing such that the queen won't suffocate. Then slowly and gently (so as to not crush any bees) close up the hive. As long as it's not freezing outside, provide sugar water in whatever manner your hive allows for so they have plenty to eat and can start making honeycomb. Over the next few days the bees will get more used to their new home, and their new queen. During this time they will eat through the marshmallow to release the queen. You'll want to leave them alone for a few days to allow this to happen, but check in about three to be sure she's out. They can apparently feed and groom her through the cage, but she needs to be out to start laying eggs in the comb the bees have been building.

Our bees are coming at the end of April, but there will be limited flowers at that time, so we'll give them sugar water for the first few weeks. That way they'll have made lots of nice comb and a good number of eggs will have hatched by the time the bees start going out and foraging for pollen. Then they'll start making honey and will be able to feed themselves. Yay for honey!

Beekeeping 101, Part 2a

The start of today's class was very exciting because I actually ordered our bees! We are getting one package of Carniolans, which are supposed to be very gentle and which originated in a climate (the Ukraine) that is similar to ours in that they have fairly short summers and fairly long - and sometimes very cold - winters. The class is being taught by last year's president of the local beekeepers club, and the club does bulk buys of bee packages for all their members, then actually goes and picks the bees up and brings them back here. The price for the package of bees itself isn't less, but the delivery is done in person, rather than through a shipper. This is great because someone who knows bees is in contact with them from the time they get put in the package at the farm until they get put in the hot little hands of their new keepers. According to her, this results in a lot fewer dead bees on arrival, which makes sense because they come straight here from the farm, rather than wherever the mail/shipper would route them, are handled less, have fewer altitude changes, and are very likely less crowded in. Plus the only packaging they need when they come this way is the wooden crate they come in, so they have more ventilation too. And given that our mail delivery person is a nice lady, it's good to save her from driving around all day with a package that won't stop buzzing. Anyway, the bees will arrive the morning of April 26th, so that's going to be a red-letter day on the calendar for sure!

In the class, we started out talking about getting into the hive. General rules: wear light colors, move slowly, send the bees a little love throughout the process, make sure you are clean and fresh, but not wearing heavy scents like deodorants, lotions or perfumes (do you want them to think you're a flower?!), and don't eat anything with garlic or bananas in the hours before you go in. This last one surprised me a little, and also made me a little sad because I love garlic and bananas, though not generally together. There's good reason, though: both could make the bees attack you. For whatever reason, they don't like the smell of garlic, it makes them angry and aggressive, which is something you'd probably like to avoid. But in addition, bees communicate in two ways: through dance and through pheromones. One of the pheromones they excrete is one that alerts other bees to the fact that the hive is under attack, say there's a bear breaking in. It causes all the bees to go on high alert that it's time to defend the hive. That pheromone smells just like bananas. So even if your bees know you (more on that in a minute), they're going to want to drive you off if you pop your head in just as they are smelling that banana-y high alert scent. Other than that, as long as you're gentle with your bees, they are supposed to be pretty easy-going, docile little bugs.

About your bees knowing you, they have facial recognition! Kind of like a baby, they get to know and recognize the people who peek their heads into their cribs all the time. And they associate the way you treat them with your face! So if you are nice to them, gentle with them, and generally treat them well, they begin to expect that kind of treatment from you. This is nice, in part, because if you do accidentally squish one a little it probably won't sting a person who is usually nice and gentle because it kind of knows it was an accident. Now the drawback here is that bees (other than the queen) only live about 40 days, so you pretty much have to be on the nice list all the time. But that's still pretty awesome.

So back to getting into the hive: clean, light colors, move slowly, send them love, and have all your supplies ready. When getting into the hive, here's what you probably want to have close by: your feather or bee brush, your hive tool, a long knife (in case you need or want to cut comb or propolis), a tupperware container with a lid (in case you collect any honeycomb), a zip-top baggie (to dispose of any propolis you remove. Note: propolis does have some good uses too, such as in burn salve, so you may want to keep it), masking tape and a sharpie (to mark the bars/frames in your hive to help you keep up with what's going on in there), a toothpick or similar object (for opening cells if necessary), a queen cage (just in case anything crazy is going on and you need to remove her), and your smoker (there are debates about this in the beekeeping community, though, more on that in another post because we'll need to figure out our position on it). The woman teaching the class says she just keeps all that stuff in a tote bag because it is easier to keep up with as she's moving from hive to hive (she has lots, we'll only have one for now).

She recommends dating the bars/frames with the date you first put them in there. This is so you'll know approximately when the comb on it was started. Because the beeswax takes a lot more time and energy for the bees to make, you don't necessarily want to be removing it all time. Bees will reuse old comb, and the more time they spend making comb, the less time they have to make honey. This means you get less honey and/or could end up having to provide them with some if they don't have enough to get through the winter. So you may want to leave comb, but not for more than three years. By then it will be pretty black (from all the traffic of bees walking all over it and from the fact that the bees will put a thin layer of propolis over it before reusing) and old comb could harbor disease. One interesting thing about the comb is the different size cells the bees make. Larger, deeper cells are for growing drones; smaller, more shallow cells are for growing workers; cells in the middle are for storing honey. This is one benefit of going without foundation in your hive - the bees know what they need and will make it themselves if you don't try to force them into a one-size-fits-all box.


She also highly recommends keeping notes every time you get into the hive. She said this is important for beginners because it helps you figure out what works for you/your bees and what doesn't, but it's also important for experienced beekeepers because if something happens, you'll have more and better clues to help you figure out what it was. She lost a hive last year to Colony Collapse Disorder and wishes she'd been keeping notes because she feels like she might have a better idea of what led to it. Though not knowing seems to be a mark of CCD, so maybe she wouldn't, but she'd probably feel a little less unsure if it would've made a difference.

Finally we went through step-by-step, and in great detail, how to go about hiving your bees. I'll go over that in the next post.

Beekeeping 101, Part 1

This past weekend I attended the first of a series of three of these classes. It was fairly basic, and the first part of the class focused on a lot of stuff I'd already read, but there was a lot of good information. For example, some of the wildlife you need to protect bees from? Bears (seemingly obvious, but they're actually after the brood chambers, not the honey), skunks, and raccoons. What?! Skunks and raccoons eat bees?! Yep. And what do the bees eat? Not pollen. Honey.

As most people know, the bees build pretty little beeswax and comb chambers, in which they store their honey. They also put little baby bees-to-be in them. Those are the brood chambers. For the first three days, the babies are just "eggs." They then develop into "larvae," and continue to develop for several more days. They are white and slimy and gross-looking at that point. I think the bees must get the gross-looking thing too, because at that point they put a little brown cap over the chamber the larvae is in, and it becomes known as a "capped larvae." This is the most important stage because this is when the wings and all of its other tiny little body parts develop. When it's all finished cooking, it breaks its way out of the chamber and is officially a bee! At that point, it gets to work on its first, but not last, job: being a nurse bee. The nurse bee cleans up its own little chamber, readying it for the queen to lay another egg there, then helps the other nurse bees to take care of the new eggs and larvae. When a new round of bees hatch, the previous round moves on to what will be their permanent jobs.

There are a handful of jobs in the hive, but most bees will either be workers (the girls) or drones (the boys). Workers, as you might guess, work. They make beeswax and honeycomb, collect the pollen, store it away, and make the honey. The drones fly to a certain place (probably the bee version of a bar) every morning, wait around for any girl bees to fly by needing to get fertilized, do the deed if the need arises, then fly back home that night. Hmmm ... sounds like a rough life, doesn't it? There are also a limited number of guards (they stand sentry and keep an eye on things to ensure the hive remains safe) and attendants (they meet every whim of the queen - feed her, clean her, groom her, ensure that she sleeps, and addresses any and every of her needs).

We also discussed the "must have" tools every beekeeper needs. These are: a hive and bees (duh), a veil (those wide brimmed hats with mesh hanging down to protect your face), a smoker (makes smoke from bark to calm the bees while you're getting into the hives), a hive tool (or several - these are like tiny, though much stronger, crowbars), and a bee brush or feather (to move the bees from where you don't want them without injuring them). That’s it apparently. That kind of surprised me. I figured you’d need all kinds of crap.

One of the most helpful parts of the discussion was about the different types of hives, which solidified the direction I'd been leaning. There is the Langstroth Hive and the Top Bar Hive. They each have benefits and drawbacks. The Langstroth Hive is the traditional, and most well known, hive. It looks like boxes stacked on top of each other. Frames hang inside these boxes, and the bees make their beeswax, honeycomb, and honey inside these frames. The boxes are super heavy and have to be moved about every time you want to access the hive, are very difficult to build yourself and a little expensive to purchase, and require quite a bit of equipment. But you get a lot more honey out of them.

The Top Bar Hives look like long houses with sides that slope in at the bottom. They have bars across the top, which hang along the top of the "house," and the bees build their honeycomb, and store their honey and brood chambers, hanging vertically from those top bars. They can be built by the average person at home for about $50.00, don't require any equipment other than the "must haves" discussed above, are lightweight, and don't have to be moved around to access the hive. You get less honey out of them, though.

After lots of thinking and discussion, I think we're going to go with a Top Bar Hive. We like the fact that we can build it (inexpensively!) ourselves, that the whole hive doesn't have to be moved around to access the hive (which means I can fiddle around with it even if C isn't home), and while we are super excited about getting honey, it isn't a top reason we are doing this. We are still debating about where to locate them, but we're thinking about somewhere near the back of the property as this places them away from people, will provide them with shade, and puts them right between two sources of water (the ditch behind the property and the irrigation pond in the middle of the yard).

So excited! Looking forward to the next class!