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.