Bee Insomnia

The bees have certainly been keeping me on my toes. After making the “queen cell” split and having a swarm, things got confusing and stressful. Many wee-hour wakings, thinking of what I should have done with this, that and the other thing. I had worries that there were no queens, or at least no well-mated queens in the three new hives. So I did some bee juggling to keep them contented, and eventually recombined two hives into one. I envisioned recombining the potentially queenless or dud queen hives with Boudicca’s and Ekaterina’s, and winding up with bee high rises that would require aviation warning lights.

This last weekend I gave up on the home-grown queens, and ordered a couple of new ones for the two “queenless” hives. On Monday I did an inspection with the fellow from whom I bought the Russians. Sure enough, Garrett found the “swarm queen” all plump & ready to lay eggs. Then we found eggs and larvae in the other hive (Boudicca’s original residence, from which all this fun started). Garrett says that sometimes queens can take longer to mate & lay eggs than the textbooks say. Another example of how bees never read the manual

Garrett recommended hanging onto the new bought queens until I can evaluate how well the home-grown girls will do. If they do well, I have two takers for the spare queens. So I scrambled to finish setting up a couple of “nucleus” hives, which are half the size of a regular deep hive box. They are used for a variety of uses, including temporary housing for new queens. I had to set up the “nucs” with frames of brood, food and bees from other hives. Fortunately Boudicca & Ekaterina’s hives are doing well, and had supplies to spare.

Karin had a small fit when she thought there would be five hives in the garden, and didn’t give me a chance to finish telling about my plans. Just because I’m mean, I haven’t completed the whole story. But she seems to have accepted the possibility that bees are taking over the world, and hasn’t stamped her not-so-little feet any more.

The new queens arrived last night, and I installed them in their little cottages. For a few days they’ll remain in their “queen cages” so the workers can get used to each queen and accept her as their fearless leader. On Saturday I’ll probably release them. Hopefully I’ll remember to get a photo of them in the queen cage before then. It’s so hard to remember to take photos when one is elbow-deep in bees.

I’ve been getting stung a bit lately – always some dumb little thing that puts the squeeze on a poor little bee. I suppose it depends on where I get stung, because legs and arms puff up something awful, and hands do so just a bit. I’m waiting for the immunity to kick in. …Any day now… In the meantime, I’ve been researching bee sting cures, and plan to try some with the next stings. Karin stepped on one last night, and I ran for the toothpaste (cure No. 1). This morning she said it was a bit sore, but not too bad. Hmmm. Next will be clay and lavender oil. After that, tobacco paste. So far my luck with plantain has been mixed.

During all this bee juggling, I removed a frame which had one side filled with honey. I figured we could have a sample, so cut off the cappings and turned the frame on one side over a baking dish. Honey doesn’t easily drip out of the opened comb. After a few days and getting only a small puddle, I dug out comb and honey together. After about five minutes in the microwave on the defrost setting, the wax had melted and separated from the honey. From one side of a frame, I got a half-pint jar of honey. Yummy stuff.

During the inspection with Garrett, we found some frames loaded with “bee bread”. This is pollen mixed with honey. The bees store it for food later on. Garrett dug out a couple of chunks, and we had a snack. It tasted rather like dried apricots and raspberries – more yumminess. Much better than pollen balls off the bottom board.

Swarm!

The fun never stops around here. At least I didn’t get stung today (yet).

I was a bit drowsy from antihistamines this morning, so didn’t feel up to an excursion with Karin & Kate. Perking up a little later, I figured I needed to work on wooden ware for the bees. It took a little while for the loud humming to attract my attention, but finally I looked out to see what the bees were up to. A cloud of swarming bees is impressive. I guess none of the neighbors noticed, because I heard no panicked shrieks.

After running in several directions at once, I pulled together my brain cells and developed a plan of action. I had heard that vanilla has chemicals that are the same as some that bees use in their homing pheromones, so I drenched some cotton pads with vanilla extract and waved them upwind. I have no idea if that got their attention, but they soon settled on a branch of our apple tree. I quickly made some sugar syrup and got my gear together.

Not knowing that the bees were likely to hang on the tree for a while, I was in haste, and didn't take any photos until after the action was over. Too bad. The big cloud of bees was impressive, and the hanging cluster was pretty nifty.

I climbed the ladder, sprayed the bees with syrup (it distracts them) and cut off the branches from which they were hanging. I shook them into a hive box (my last one!), sprayed them with more syrup, put a vanilla pad on the landing board, and watched them call their sisters to their new home. Almost immediately they had their butts in the air, fanning homing pheromones. They’re so cute. Bees remaining on the branches that I cut off marched into the hive, and the few still in the tree soon came down. Within a half hour they were pretty much settled.










Tonight after they tuck themselves into bed, I’ll move the hive to a more permanent spot. Right now they’re under the apple tree. I’ll probably take a box of honey from the hive they left, so they have more food. I don’t have any more hive boxes with which to house a feeder jar.








Next day: new location

This is probably “Elizabeth” and her courtiers who swarmed. I’m not sure yet if they swarmed because they decided to before I removed the other queen cells, or if I missed some. I’m waiting for an answer from my local beek group. I’ll probably be combining hives soon, because it’s doubtful that all three involved in this affair have viable queens. Gotta start coming up with some more queenly names. Maybe I’ll branch out into mother goddess names, too. Inanna, Durga & Isis have possibilities. But I hate to name my queens before they lay.

The Queen Pipes

Since splitting Boudicca’s hive a couple of weeks ago, I have been waiting for the queen cells in the original hive to hatch. On Thursday, I inspected the hive. As expected, there are only a few remaining capped worker and drone cells from Boudicca’s egg laying. I saw one drone emerging from his cell, which is a first for me, and so a bit special. Down in one box I heard a queen piping, so I knew that at least one had hatched out. The piping sounds like a tiny kazoo. She does this to locate rival queens and challenge them to a showdown. The rival will respond with a slightly different sound (more like a quack), even from within her cell. Here’s a link to a video with some queen piping, and the response: http://www.zunibee.com/community/viewVideo.php?fileID=49

I should have removed the frame holding the remaining queen cells, and started another hive, but I didn’t think about that until yesterday. That would have helped my chances of getting a mated queen from this batch. Live and learn. It’s probably too late by today, because they all should have hatched out by Friday or Saturday. But who knows? Perhaps I might find two young queens wandering about, and I can separate them. Unfortunately, my queen-spotting skills are poor. Even though I heard the one piping, I couldn’t find her when I inspected the frames. They’re quick little blighters.

As usual, the workers had built a bit of burr comb between frames. Now that the nectar flow is going strong, these bits of errant comb were full of near-honey. What a treat to have a taste of fresh honey still warm from the hive! When I inspected Boudicca’s summer home at Holly & Harvey’s, her hosts got to join me in this treat. Having honey on one’s hands does make it a bit difficult to work, because the bees crowd in to suck it all up. At left: burr comb with a queen cup.

I found that I prefer working in the hive without gloves. The gloves are a bit clumsy, and I can’t feel the bees. With bare hands, I can feel them buzz in mild irritation if I start to squash them, so I can let up. They don’t mind when I nudge them out of the way, and it tickles pleasantly to have them crawl on my hands.

On Saturday morning there was a small informal gathering of beeks who keep bees in the Bayside area. Although I am five or six miles away in Myrtletown, they let me join them. It is so nice to meet more beeks, and to build relationships. After gathering and talking bees for a while at Hank’s wonderful coffee house in Bayside, we wandered over to Garrett’s bee yard to see what was going on with a couple of his hives. Garrett had sold me Ekaterina, my Russian czarina, and is quite knowledgeable about things apian.

Although Garrett was thorough with smoking the bees, some were upset with a jostling, and I got stung on the hand. This joined a sting from Thursday, when a bee crawled under my shorts leg. Having become rather cavalier about the danger from stings, I had not strapped down sleeves or legs. Fortunately I had taken an antihistamine against this swollen & painful Thursday sting, and so far my hand is only a bit sore. Hopefully any future stings will be less severe.

Later…
Well what do you know? There were still sealed queen cells in Boudicca’s old hive. One looked like it had just opened, and there seemed to be someone inside. I took the two frames with queen cells, along with some that had food and workers on it, and put them in a new box. I also added another box nearly full of honey. The first virgin queen (“Elizabeth I” for now, though I hesitate to have the virginal reputation stick) was still piping, though once again I couldn’t find her. But by her piping I could tell she wasn’t on the frames I was transferring. No eggs yet. We’ll see if I can get at least one successfully mated queen out of this.

This time I didn’t move the hive with the queen cells across town, as I did with Boudicca. I’m trying another method, and moved them about 20 feet away. I placed some twigs in front of the entrance, and some potted plants in front of the hive. In theory, these things should cause the bees coming out to pause and reorient to their new home. This way, I hope they won’t return to their old home with Queen Bess.

I learned why one should not place a hive box directly on the lawn rather than on the lid. A number of bees had been clinging to their sisters on the comb and to the grass. As I lifted the box, they got riled, and once again I got stung. This time it was well deserved. Karin’s sister Kate is visiting this weekend, and she was out with me, observing and helping out. Fortunately she avoided injury, and was quite calm through this, while I was cussing a blue streak. I’m sorry there was no honey-laden bit of burr comb for her as a reward. We’ll have to send Kate a jar of honey after the harvest. Even Karin had come out earlier, as we snooped in Bess’ hive. Very brave of her, especially without a veil. She’ll become a Bee Girl yet.