Settling into Winter

After returning from New Zealand, I found that the Varroa population in the hives had exploded. suddenly there were 80 to 400 mites on each board. I instituted a weekly powdered sugar treatment. After 4 weeks, the population had decreased, but not sufficiently. On the eighth week, I counted mites from one hive, and happily found a decline to "safe" levels. This week I plan to dust again, and count for all the hives. If all is well, I can back off to monthly monitoring.

I had heard that the bees can get rather defensive after the "honey flow" - the time in summer when they are bringing in lots of nectar. They have to watch out for robbers, usually bees from other hives and wasps. I hadn't noticed my bees being very defensive until one day... Fortunately it was only one hive, but I got stung three times during one inspection & dusting. I'm sure I wasn't being clumsy, and this was verified when one landed on my hand and immediately stung me. Fortunately the effect of bee venom is decreasing, so I only had a bit of swelling and fever at one sting site. Since then (knock wood), all the bees have been pretty mellow (like the one in the photo).

After reading more about a new and nasty bacterium, Nosema ceranae, I broke down and bought some antibiotic with which to treat my bees. I want to be chemical-free, but this new type of Nosema may be a major player in colony collapse disorder. Perhaps next year I'll treat some and leave the others, but I didn't want my first year to run such a big risk of heavy loss. A big bother with the treatment is that it is delivered in sugar syrup. That's good for the bees' food storage, but greatly increased the amount of moisture in the hives. Mildew and mold were beginning to grow, despite my efforts at providing ventillation.

The queens are still laying eggs, though in winter the brood size decreases. In colder winter areas, bees will often have no brood at this time. Although the bees are still foraging on flowers that are still blooming, they must not be getting the amount of nectar that they were during the blackberry bloom of summer. I do see a goodly amount of pollen coming in. Three hives have nearly cleared out the bottom box of honey. The antibiotic syrup helped bolster their supplies, though. Perhaps the powdered sugar has helped, too.

I should get an observation hive. I am so fascinated by what the bees are doing, but don't need to inspect them all the time. I just can't think of a good place where I can make a hole for them to access the outside world. Maybe it's time for that painting studio above the garage...

New Zealand 2008

*Sigh* There's no way I am going to load up all my NZ photos on here after organizing them so nicely on my Picasa site. Check them out there. There are several albums, one for each major region.

Karin was there for two weeks, and I for three. Our primary reason for the trip was to activate our residence visas, which would have otherwise expired in October. The secondary reason was to look for work, which in the current state of the global economy wasn’t very promising. In the end, our tertiary reason dominated – to go on holiday.

I caught myself getting extremely wordy here, and decided to scrap it all and let the photos do most of the storytelling. I've made a number of comments on photos along with the labels, and you are also welcome to ask questions. Otherwise I'll shut up now and let you peruse.

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OK, so I can't shut up for long. I realized that I had some videos that don't fit into the Picasa scheme. I've given up (for now) trying to rotate them. Sorry for any kinked necks they might engender.

In the Waikato folder, I semi-document the Move to NZ forum's Hamilton party. Dawn is a wild thang, as evidenced by this video of her trying to embarass Jay:


In the same folder there are photos of a magpie on our jaunt to Yarndley Bush. He must have been defending his territory, because he kept swooping down on us. Here's a video of that bird. Note the Cylon raider-like sound his wings make at the bottom of the swoop.

Settling into Autumn

Things have gotten quiet in the beeyard, at least from my point of view. All my queens are doing well, and the workers are happily visiting flowers in the garden. I didn't harvest any honey this year, but between the four hives there's enough to stock them all with the requisite amount to overwinter without needing to feed them sugar syrup. If the Italians hadn't been so eager to expand, I probably would have gotten a good little harvest. The Russians really did well in their quiet, unassuming way. Preparing for a Siberian winter, I suppose.

Honeyless, I still went to the local beekeeper's honey extracting party a couple of weeks ago. I pitched in, and got to sample bits of honey for my troubles. It was good to see the process in action, and learn what sorts of extra things I might want to have for next year's harvest. There was lots of socializing, which was another bonus. There are a lot of good folks I've been getting to know.

This last week I gave all the hives a powdered sugar dusting. This is an organic method to monitor and treat for a mite called Varroa. The sugar gets all over the bees, so they start grooming each other. During the process, they knock off mites that are riding on them. The sugar itself probably also dislodges the mites. The mites fall through the bottom screen, onto a sliding board underneath. After about an hour, I check the boards for mites. Two hives were clean, and the other two only had 10 & 25 mites on the boards. This suggests that there are about 100 and 250 mites developing in capped brood cells. That's not too bad, but I'd prefer to have none. When I get back from New Zealand, I can monitor again, and perhaps start an 8-week treatment.

Autumn weather has come to coastal Humboldt. We're finally getting some sunshiny days that start out crisp and become warm. It's really boosted my spirits after having a relatively overcast summer.

Honey Extraction Party

This little photo essay was posted a while after the event. Thus some comments in the next installment of my blog are repetitive.

I didn't have any honey to spare, but I still attended the big extracting party in Dick LaForge's barn.

Margaret, Joy and others uncapping honeycomb.

Uncapping is a messy business, but cleanup is delicious.



Mike, Dick and Elyse wait by the extractor.


Spinning out the honey



Second wave of honey harvesters

Being an often negligent photodocumentarian, I failed to capture the food table. There were many tasty Humboldt-style offerings. The most notable item was a honey cake baked in a skep mold. It was beautiful and delicious. I believe Naomi Klass baked it. I also missed out on the adventure into Dick's bee yard, when he collected his honey supers.

Phew!

A week after Garrett helped inspect my hives, and we saw eggs in my original hive, I looked in again. The queen was nowhere to be seen, but they can be pretty elusive. But then I found no eggs, and only very mature larvae and capped pupae. That means the queen is probably AWOL or dead. To make matters more definite, the vast majority of the capped brood was drones. That means she didn’t mate well, and is thus a dud. Make that a missing dud.

No worries, I thought. I have two brand-new bought queens with which to requeen. Unfortunately neither of them were laying, and I couldn’t see them. How can one miss a marked queen in a nucleus hive with only 8 frames? I wondered. Oh dear, did I release them from their protective cages too soon, and the bees in the nucs assassinate them? I’ll bet my swarm queen is a dud, too Now I’ll have to recombine all these hives back into two, and be out $45 for the queens. I’m kind of getting used to the insomnia.

I got reassurances from some other beeks, and got a little sleep.

After about a week, I reinspected the nucs. After all that fussing and worrying about my new queens, they seem to be fine. I found eggs and larvae in both nucs, and saw the queen in one. On Saturday night I combined one of these with my original hive, the source of all this melodrama. In about a week I’ll look in and see how they’re getting along.

My swarm queen is also laying. In about a week I can check on her too, and see if she’s “right”. I’ll need to see mostly worker brood rather than drone brood. If she is right, then I need to find a home for my other bought queen. …Or just keep her, and wait to see if Karin notices ; )

Yesterday and today I tended the beekeeper’s booth at the county fair. Yesterday was rather busy, with lots of people asking about Colony Collapse Disorder, how to get started in beekeeping, and who can they get to remove a feral hive from a wall or a desk (!). It was really tempting to collect that desk hive, and hope Karin didn’t notice. She’s probably lost count, and would figure that it had always been there - don’t you think?

Maybe I should be looking into Bees Anonymous.

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.