Third Swarm's A Charm!

Yesterday we went to check out our trailer of bees to determine which beehives needed honey boxes or which small Nuks needed to be placed into larger brood boxes. A Nuk is a small, 5 frame hive that we start new colonies in, and a brood box is a 9 or 10 frame hive where the queen bee lives.


From earlier observations, we knew that the first Nuk on the trailer was slammed full of bees and needed a larger dwelling.  When we opened it up we found plenty of bees, spotted a small queen, but found no eggs or larvae. My initial reaction was that she was a lousy queen, not producing eggs, and that we needed to re-queen this hive.  We placed the five frames into the larger brood box anyway, and I made a note to purchase another queen.

Typically with a good laying queen bee all the cells would be full of eggs and larvae, but these were empty. Note the cotton fields in the background. They are just beginning to flower.

 We continued to open up all ten hives, finding boxes full of capped honey and adding new, empty honey boxes where needed.

 Everything was going fine until we opened up the very last box.  As soon as Bob pulled out the first frame the bees began to boil out and sting him. Time to go. My tendency is to freeze, so there I stood, debating whether or not I would go and put the lid back on the hive.

I was moving slowly toward the hive when I started getting pinged.  When bees are agitated they will not necessarily start stinging right away, but they will begin to bombard you - bouncing off and buzzing you - generally around your face and head. That's the cue to get out of there. Once you're stung, you emit a pheremone scent that attracts more bees to sting. Bees can follow for quite a distance and sometimes don't give up and return to the hive easily. I've learned in those instances it's best to find a tree, lean up against it and "Be the tree." I once had a bee keep me pinned to a tree for 30 minutes. Each time I was sure she had given up and I stepped away from the tree, there she was again pinging me and letting me know who was boss!

As I stood against the tree for just a moment (this bee retreated right away) I happened to look up and noticed THIS...

A swarm of bees in the tree I happened to take refuge in!  Was that random or what?!!

So now it all made sense. This swarm had come from the first hive we opened. They had bugged out sometime that morning before we got there. The queen we saw was little becasue she had just hatched and had not begun to lay eggs. And here was the old queen with most of the bees from the hive and all the honey stores!

Now all we had to do was capture it!  Bob clipped away branches..

 But as he made the very last cutting to clear away unnecessary branches, half of the ball of bees fell to the ground!
Now we had time to kill while we waited for the bees on the ground to fly back up into the tree. What a mess!  An hour or so later we returned and finished the job. In the dark. My husband held the branch while I made the cut and he carried the bees out of the cow pasture to place in the Nuk hive in the back of the  truck.

The way that is done is by taking out three frames from the Nuk box and giving the branch a hard quick jerk, sending the ball of bees falling into the bee box. Then the frames are again added. We try not to leave bees behind so Bob brushed as many stray bees into the box as he could before closing the lid and driving home.  We were totally unprepared to do this and had no brush with us, so he used toilet paper to gently move the bees into the box. He was amazed how heavy they were!

This is the hive this morning.

If you'd like to read more about swarms you can find another article I wrote HERE and HERE and HERE

HONEY! I'm Home!

This weekend we spent some time moving bees. We have 10 hives on a trailer that has been in town for the past month or so - quite neglected I'm afraid. At dusk on Friday night we drove to town to bring them home.  You have to plan to move bees at night so that all the bees are back from the fields, but it makes for an interesting scenerio. In the heat of the summer many bees will gather on the front door of the hive, in no hurry to enter so we use smoke to coax them in. Timing is everything. Once the bees are smoked into the hive, the doorway is stuffed with cloth or wood to keep them in during travel. If you do this too early, bees returning from foraging are locked out and again you will have a group of bees clustered on the front doorstep wondering what's going on. The less unhappy bees in the work area, the better.  If you wait too late and it gets too dark to see, then you need a light, and bees are attracted to light. This particular evening all went well - just a sting or two. Mine was due to leaning on a bee that I didn't notice on my jeans.
 We then trailered the beehives to the farm overnight.

In the morning, however, we were able to quickly surmise that our hives weren't as secure as we had hoped. It's quite a bumpy, rough trip on the highway at 60 mph and then down the dirt road to home, and though the hives are all cinched down, the wood and cloth in the doorways sometimes gets jarred loose. As the sun rose, unhappy bees began to try to figure out where they were. This wouldn't be a problem if they were parked for a period of time. They would then begin to navigate according to the position of the sun and lock in this location as "home."  They take short flights back and forth from the hive learing their new location, and even if several hives are placed next to one another, their homing skills are so accurate that they will not enter a neighboring hive but fly directly into their own.
Unfortunately, this was not the case today. We we on our way to another farm to drop the hives for the next honey crop, and knew that we would lose any escaped bees, so we hurried to finish morning chores and drive off early.
We brought the trailer to a cotton field 30 miles from home and again, bumped them along over rough terrain.

  Needless to say they were not pleased when the truck came to a stop. The problem was, however, that we did not have time to wait until they quieted down to open the hives. The ideal situation is to place them at night, allowing the honeybees to calm down before opening the hives in the morning, but this day we needed to drop and run, and inevitably, that's exactly what we did.
The plan was that we would start at the back of the trailer and Bob and I would each open the hives on opposite sides of the trailer. Bob suggested that we place the cloths on top of the corresponding hive, but I decided it would be better to move along quickly pulling the cloth out and dropping it as I went. (I could carefully place the cloth on top another day.) Those bees boiled out like lave from a volcano! I was done in no time, but Bob was still carefully placing the entrance cloth on top of his hives - a slow moving target for agitated bees. I'm afraid he realized that a bit late and by the 2nd to end hive this is how he was removing the cloth,

but that doesn't take into account the last hive on the trailer! By this time angry bees had found us and it was time to move! This is not the first time we've had to drop everything and yell, "RUN!"  Actually, today was more like a brisk walk. Away from the bees. And the truck. And the last hive that still hadn't been opened!

Bob went back for the truck a few minutes later, but we decided that it would be wiser to allow the opened hives time to forget us and to begin to figure out where they were. We knew they would settle down shortly, so in the meantime we drove to the other side of the farm and loaded Buttercup into the trailer to take her home. On the way out we stopped and my husband pulled the plug on the last hive without incident.  We'll check back in a week or two - this cotton was planted later than neighboring fields so the timing was perfect! Flowers are just beginning to open and there are acres and acres of plants. We'll bring extra honey boxes and brood hives to transition the smaller Nuks (a five frame hive used to begin small colonies) into larger 10 frame boxes, and we've been invited to bring our remaining 8 or so hives to another cotton field nearby. Rain has been plenteous this summer so we should have a nice crop of cotton honey this fall. Lord willing.

And I think Buttercup is glad to be home.

Raccoons and Eagles

Yesterday morning, just as the dawn began to break, Bob closed up ten of our hives and loaded them onto the trailer for transport.  For the next month or two they will be in town where there is an abundance of Chinese Tallow trees aka Popcorn trees that make a fantastic honey. We upgraded from baling twine to cinch down straps to keep the lids secure en route. Honeybees collect resins, called propolis, from tree sap and flowers,  and use it for a sealant for their hives. It is a very sticky substance which in colder climates becomes hard and brittle. They seal alternative entrances, and glue the lids to the hive body with this resin, allowing for more stability and less vibration of the hive, but because we have been opening our hives quite regularly we could not count on the propolis alone to keep the lids secure during transportation.

When we moved to Florida from Virginia we brought several beehives with us in the bed of the pickup. I remember pulling into a rest stop for a bite to eat and noticing that a particular lid had become ajar allowing bees to escape. I'm afraid that as we pulled away to resume our trip a cloud of bees remained in the Burger King parking lot in South Carolina wondering "Where the heck are we?"

When Bob returned to the farm we hurried to finish chores before driving back to town for a Boy Scout Eagle Ceremony.
As we were getting ready to head out the door, Joel spotted a raccoon on the grill on our porch eating the cat's food. It was drooling. If you read THIS ARTICLE about Rabies, you'll remember that I had spotted a raccoon very near the house several weeks ago and was concerned that the animal was most likely infected. An animal that has the rabies virus eventually loses the ability to swallow and will begin to drool. This has typically been described as "foaming at the mouth". The other telltale sign of rabies was that this nocturnal raccoon was wandering outside during the day.

Bob went outside with his rifle and though the raccoon did begin to run off, it only went a few yards before it turned and faced my husband. This is another sign of infection. A healthy raccoon would not have stopped but would have kept running. This raccoon showed no fear and appeared to be about to return either to the food or in aggression, so Bob quickly and accurately shot the raccoon and buried it.  I asked him later if he would have shot it, had it not stopped and turned and he said, "Probably not."  I think he made a wise decision. This animal exhibited all the signs of a rabid raccoon, and with our cats, dogs and livestock we could not afford to take a chance. Our concern now though, is - Did she have babies this spring, and are they infected?

We were able to get to the Eagle Court of Honor in time for practice before the ceremony. Joel introduced the Color Guard and led the Scout Salute, Pledge of Allegiance and the Scout Law,

and we were very honored to be a part of  the recognition of Austin's achievements and advancement to the highest level of Scouting.      

                                                         EAGLE SCOUT

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.     Isaiah 40:31

                        CONGRATULATIONS AUSTIN!

UH OH.

Uh Oh. This does not look good. I noticed this last night. Bob and I plan to open all our hives this weekend and get them ready for transport, but it looks like I'll need to do something today!

This is called "Bearding" and it occurs when the hive is too hot. In the summertime a hive stays a constant 95 - 97 degrees. On hot days, to cool a crowded hive, bees will encourage air flow by moving to the outside of the hive. Inside, water droplets are brought in and the brood chamber is cooled as the droplets collect the heat as the bees fan their wings over the water. The evaporated water is then ushered out of the hive reducing the temperature inside.

The opening to this beehive is too small and there is probably not enough room inside. When a home becomes over-crowded the bees inside begin preparations to find a bigger home - or "swarm".  For more about swarming read  THIS ARTICLE.
  Today I'll open this hive, inspect all the frames to look for queen cells - an indication of a pending swarm, remove any I find, add a queen excluder, and place an empty honey box on top, giving the hive more space and making it easier for the bees to regulate the temperature in the brood chamber, which is generally the larger bottom box of a hive body.

Our First Swarm of 2012

 Yesterday, as I was walking across the farm to fill water troughs, I heard a familiar sound. "Uh oh," I thought, "Bees." I looked up and there they were almost right overhead settling at the very top of a tree.

See that dark spot at the top of the tree? That's them.
When I called my husband at work to tell him about it he assured me that we would get them when he got home from work. I thought he was crazy. We've hived swarms in pretty high trees before - I was reminded of one in which he lashed two ladders together and set them in the bed of his pickup truck, and another way up in a pine tree...

                                                    Now THAT was a swarm!

 But this one, yesterday, seemed to me inaccessible. Not to mention the power lines are just outside the frame to the right of the tree. But Bob said he would bring home a giant ladder from work and that he would climb up and get them - until he realized that he had taken the car to work and there was NO WAY the ladder would fit on top of the car! I said to forget it - he wasn't going to be able to do it - too high. That was just the challange he needed.
  One of the motivating factors of catching this swarm was that they were OURS! We had been working with our hives all weekend: assessing, splitting (making two or more hives out of one) and adding honey boxes in preparation of the next honey flow. We've recently brought our hives back from the first honey flow of spring - Ti-ti, and the next will be Chinese Tallow, or Popcorn trees. Our kitchen is crowded, even as I type, with a honey extractor and 5 boxes of unspun honey, another stack of boxes out in the yard waiting for the honey to be removed from the frames - I'll explain more about spinning honey in a future post. Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that this swarm came out of one of our boxes, and it's heartbreaking to lose a large amount of bees ( approx 60%) after spending time working with them.
  Bob arrived home just as it was beginning to get dark. I fed the animals while he assessed the situation, certain that he would give up and come help me, but no, not my man! He had a plan, and up into the tree he went. Branches began falling like rain - which was ok, because the goats LOVE them! But I did bruise Bob's feelings when I said, "Please don't hurt the tree."
 I got a brood box ready with 8 empty frames of foundation for the bees to pull out, and two frames of spun honeycomb where the queen can begin to lay eggs.

This is to entice the swarm to stay. Sometimes, even under the best circumstances, the bees bug out and won't stay in the beautiful home you've prepared for them.
 Anyway, Bob climbed the tree, cut branches to make an exit hole and eventually severed the branch the bees were clinging to. By this time it was too dark to take pictures, but he managed to climb back down the tree holding the branch with the majority of the bees intact. A few were left in the tree on a nearby twig.

 Next, we carefully placed the honeybees on the top of their new home in hopes that they would climb right in.

Of course, they didn't. Our next course of action was to smoke them in.
When bees smell smoke they instantly react by burying their heads into their honey stores and tanking up. They are preparing for a flight to escape the fire and want to gather as much energy and stores to take with them as they can. This is why beekeepers use smoke to work their bees. When the bees are busy  gathering honey from their hive they are less likely to defend and sting - they are actually quite calm and pay very little attention to you. We used smoke to drive the swarm down into the new hive.

Notice the red headlamp? Bees are attracted to white light and in this situation they would have become quite aggressive to a flashlight beam (and the carrier thereof). They don't recognize a red light.
Oh, and My husband did go back up into the tree a second time to retrieve the small amount of remaining bees!
Once the bees were in the hive we removed the tree branch and put a lid on them. The door opening was stuffed with cloth and first thing this morning we drove them to a nearby neighbors'.
Had we placed them in our apiary they would have swarmed again. They must be moved to a location at least two miles away so they are not able to recognize their territory and therefore must refigure flight patterns and learn their new area. We'll move them back again in a few weeks.

What I didn't mention was that about an hour after I noticed this swarm in the tree, ANOTHER swarm took off from our hives! I followed it across the property and down the hill, but they took off over the creek and were flying high so it was obvious they weren't going to settle anywhere nearby. Keep your eyes open. I once found (and captured) a hive in a little bitty tree in the middle of Sam's Club (Costco) parking lot.
                    
                        SWARMS ARE EVERYWHERE!

Honey Bee Swarms

They're not as scary as they look. This is a posed picture - really.

Swarming is when the old queen bee leaves the hive and takes about 60% of the worker bees with her. This is a natural means of honeybee reproduction and generally occurs in the spring.

 A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly
(Old English Poem)

What happens during swarming is this: For whatever reason - overcrowding being one, the queen determines that it is time to leave the hive. Scout bees are sent out to find a suitable home and queen cells are prepared within the hive to ensure the survival of the colony after she is gone. Fifty - 60% of the worker bees then tank up on honey for fuel for the flight and to begin their new hive. At the queen's signal the bees take flight and leave the hive, generally clustering on a nearby tree. From this initial resting place the scouts will agree upon a final location for their new home, but they may remain at their first rest stop for as many as three days. In most cases they will make several stops along the way because the queen is not able to fly long distances.

 Since my early 20's and Mother Earth News I've been intrigued with beekeeping. I always wanted to have hives, but then children came along and I just assumed that this would be an unfulfilled dream. Besides, I had never really experienced bees, other than mean, stinging yellow jackets - who didn't poke sticks into their nests as a youngster?!  

One  afternoon in 1990 I walked out into the backyard and there was a terrific commotion in the air.  I was living in Houston in a typical subdivision; house upon house, and the entire sky was aflurry - black and seething.  I found myself in the midst of a huge honeybee colony that had lost their queen. An exterminator was trying to rid the house behind us of their hive and in the process these millions of bees were EVERYWHERE!. It was the coolest thing I'd ever experienced! It was like being enveloped in a cloudburst of flying bees, yet not getting stung. They were thick and LOUD! What a commotion! I stood there, amazed that I could be in the midst of this honeybee explosion and not be bothered with. They were totally consumed with finding their queen and I was hooked!

That's what swarming bees are like. Their entire focus is staying with their queen. They have no brood to protect and very little food reserves and they are on their way to a new location so they are as docile as can bee. When they leave their hive they will generally light on a small tree, though not always (as my last article shows) The branch becomes heavy with the weight of sixty percent of a hive, and depending on how large the original hive was, it can be quite massive! The worker bees surround the queen to protect and keep her warm. We liken a swarm to a buzzing ball of jello. They are all holding on to one another so it jiggles and wiggles, but they don't sting. 

It's very likely that you have walked right past a swarm of bees without even noticing. They are inconspicuous, stealthy and oh, SO COOL!

Hiving a Swarm - Three Times!

We played with bees all weekend - we're still not done and I haven't yet written about our experience, but this happened last spring and I thought I'd whet your appetite. I posted this on Facebook but it is worthy of a blog of it's own. Here's the story...

It was late in the afternoon - dusk, and I had just begun the evening chores. We had had a really full day - I don't remember the specifics, but I do know that when Bob called, "Oh honey!"
I thought, "Oh no."
He had found a swarm.

                                     How To Hive a Swarm - Three Times:

STEP 1:  Find a swarm of bees at dusk





















STEP 2:  Clip branches away from swarm at night

3. STEP 3:  Climb tall ladder with heavy box and balance under the swarm. Shake the branch HARD and try to catch the bees as they fall.

STEP 4:   Once the majority of the bees are in the box lose your balance and send the box crashing upside down to the ground. Right the box and hope you didn't kill the queen.

STEP 5:   Return in the morning to find all the bees back in the tree

STEP 6:   This time place box securely on ladder under swarm and using a hook on a long pole shake the limb HARD and again try to catch all the bees.

STEP 7:   Return to find swarm UNDER the hive box

STEP 8:   Wait until 10:30 pm, disassemble hive box and gently carry swarm to yet another bee box with tee-shirt stuffed in the doorway.

STEP 9:  Use a paint brush to ever so gently brush entire ball into new home. Cover.

STEP 10:   Place new hive in field, remove tee shirt from doorway and hope they like their new home.