Adventures in Beekeeping - Installment #2

Greetings Internet!

So... I have some fun updates on the bees and have been waiting to share with all of you.

First, my bees have successfully made a new queen.  I was able to spot her in the hive a few weeks ago... but due to some pretty crappy weather, I was also very afraid that she did not get a chance to leave the hive and mate...  But upon seeing new larvae in some of the comb, I added another "super" to the hive so it looked like this:

The new super is the unweathered box in the middle...
Note that this moved the hive entrance up by about 14 inches and the bees were a little confused.
That's why they are crawling all over the box, looking for the entrance

I had hoped that adding another super would encourage the bees to draw out more comb for the queen to lay in, but as it turns out, bees are best at wax making when they are young and by now, most of my bees are pretty old.  So the new frames will be waiting for when the new bees hatch out.  They can get straight to work!

Speaking of which, I found this when I opened the hive last week:

Photo courtesy of my brother, b, who is visiting right now

What you can see there in light yellow are what is called "capped young"... This means the little white larvae I saw in there before are now old enough to pupate and become real adult bees.  What's also good is that the queen laid all those eggs in a pretty consistent pattern across all the comb and didn't skip too many cells... that hopefully says she's a nice efficient queen who will be able to grow the hive rapidly.  There is also a little bit of white on the frame in the upper right corner near my right hand... that is actually capped honey.  Eventually, the bees will store honey and raise young in separate areas... but for now, since they didn't have a queen and also didn't have anything better to do while they were waiting for a new one... they stored a little honey here.  That's ok and it will get sorted eventually.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day for bee activity and they were super busy!   I suspected that some of the new queen's young have hatched out because I saw a little bee dance at the front of the hive today.  I tried to take a video but the iPhone wouldn't let me zoom in so it's all grainy and you can't really see it. But you can see a better one here (that is not my hive).

I, too, think that this little bee was acting as the beaconing device for all her little sisters who had flown out of the hive for the first time today. This bee was shouting "OVER HERE!  This is where you left from!"  At least, I hope that's what they were doing :)

Now that I can kind of relax and stop worrying about the queen for a little while... I've turned my attention to pest control!

Bees have about a MILLION pests and parasites just waiting to take advantage of them, their honey stores and their nice, clean, well-maintained home. My new problem is this guy:

Small Hive Beetle (left) and unidentified wormy thing that is not a beetle larvae (right)
and general pollen and wax debris from the bottom of the hive (everywhere)

Small hive beetles are probably the least worrisome pest to have, so I'm kind of glad that this is the first one I get to deal with... all the others sound pretty scary to deal with and I'd rather ease into it!  Basically, these little guys are taking advantage of the warm, clean house that the bees provide.  Their larvae also like to eat the pollen and other debris that fall to the bottom of the hive and will eventually move on to eating stored food in the honeycomb if left unchecked.  Since they are relatively big, I can see them scurrying around my hive when I open it up.  They like the crevices between the frames and the wall of the hive. 

Since I have no interest in introducing any chemicals into my hive (or the HONEY!), the solution to hive beetle is pretty simple: kill the ones you find!

After I confirmed the presence of hive beetles in the hive by pulling out the bottom board (pictured above), I went ahead and knocked everything into a bucket of soapy water.  Then I sprayed off everything else with a hose and cleaned the board with ethanol, both because it would sanitize the mess and because it would aid in the water evaporation:

Clean white corrugated plastic hive bottom

I then spread the Aquaphor all over it (in the mistaken belief that this would make bugs sticky and less likely to be able to crawl around... I don't think it does.  Oops!).  And then I put it back in (look at that pic of the hive and you can see the white sheet near the bottom of the hive...). 

Today after I checked the hive (and SAW THE QUEEN!  HOORAY!  She's STILL there!!), I pulled the sheet out again and about 10 of the little buggers had fallen onto the sheet while trying to escape the light/run from the bees being more active and... dumped them right into a bucket of soapy water!  I also discovered some larvae in a pollen patty I was feeding the bees so I took that out and threw it in the freezer (and got stung by a dead bee that was stuck to it!  ouch!).

So there it is.  Phase one of Integrative Pest Management (IPM).  I just ordered a bunch of new beekeeping supplies so I can talk more about IPM in a future post.

As a fun side note:  What's a little entertaining is that these beetles are big enough for the bees to see but too small for the bees to get a hold of and sting to death (what they would normally do to hive invaders).  My beekeeping teacher likens it to holding a soccer ball between your elbows and then trying to kick it...  But man, the bees are not pleased to have these guys in their home... you can actually watch the bees chase the beetles around until they can hide in a crevice and the bee will still stand sentry, trying to get at the beetle.

Here's a video of one... it only happens once between 0:04 and 0:06... no need to watch the whole video because it doesn't happen again.  Poor bees... they're so mad at these "house guests"...

10,005 dependents

Hello internets!

So yesterday was Mother's Day... (I called mine, did you call yours??).  Hope all you mom's out there had a great day.  My hope is also that all the moms who read this are actively participating in the unstated collective goal of releasing fewer jerky people out into the world.  Someday, I hope to "join the cause."  In the meantime... we're all counting on you, moms... keep fighting the good fight. :)

After spending a rather exhausting (but fun!) weekend of whitewater rafting and car camping in the rain, we pulled ourselves together long enough to take the in-laws out for a fine celebratory Mother's Day dinner.  Upon dropping them off, j's dad took me into the family greenhouse to go "shopping" for some additional plants for my nascent garden.  I came home with 4 buckets of herbs (basil, rosemary, mint and parsley) as well as smaller pots for transplant full of: Cherokee tomato (2), eggplant, Malabar spinach, sage, and 2 types of cilantro. These little plants rode home with me, in a tray, in the front seat.

I had to try very hard not to do this into my pad thai last night

As soon as we got into the car, j turned to me and said "I am not doing any household work when we get home.  I can't even watch Game of Thrones.  Let's go to bed."  To which I had to respond... "Except feeding the dog.  That has to happen."

And then we looked at the plants in my lap.  And then we looked at each other. And j said:

"So MANY living things dependent on us!"

And that's my realization for the weekend.  While j and I are not yet mothers, we have recently had an exponential increase in the number of living-things-dependent-on-us. In addition, while this change has been exciting and welcome, we're also apparently at our current limit.  Both of us were exactly on the same page in that one moment of looking a tray of garden transplants.  We have reached our current threshold of household dependency.

Newest living-thing-dependent-on-us... in a rare state of serenity

We spent part of the car ride home listing the living-things-dependent-on-us and it looked something like this:

3 cats.
5 houseplants.
10,000 bees.
1 foster dog with separation anxiety.
1 vegetable garden.
1 flower garden.
1 herb garden.
for k: j
for j: k

Of course the garden can also be broken out into:
20 bean plants
2 ground cherry plants
6 tomato plants
16 carrots
16 beets
5 kale plants
16 chard plants
1 eggplant
1 Malabar spinach
6 cucumber plants
1 basil plant
1 parsley
1 sage
2 cilantros
1 rosemary
1 mint
At least 50 flowering plants

On the home front, we have acquired the majority of this (10,000 bees, three gardens and a dog) in the past 12 weeks.  As I mentioned in my last post, the bees have become a bit of a worry... in that I don't know if they are going to survive. Last Thursday, I inspected and found a brand new queen roaming around the comb. This was extraordinarily good news and I was quite happy about it.  And then it rained all weekend and has been in the high 50s/low 60s for two days.  This is worrisome because the new queen only has a small window of time to go out of the hive and mate with drones.  Once she does, she will never need to leave the hive again.  I am worried that she was unable to do this due to weather limitations (bees will not fly out of the hive in the rain OR when it is less than 55 degrees out).  Thus, I continue to be concerned that my beehive may be dying... and I was a failure to these initial 10,000 living-things-dependent-on-me.  If I do not see eggs when I next open the hive, I will need to order a new queen off the internet. 

Queen bee... same type as the one in my hive... Mine needs to "get busy"...

Back to our car ride: After some silence, j turned and said, "And 400 undergraduates."  More silence followed, and I knew what she meant.

Of course, these undergraduates don't depend ENTIRELY on her... but they sure do lean on her a lot and I can definitely see the toll it takes.  In fact, this semester j has discovered that being a professor would be a whole lot more productive if there weren't so many students!  This sounds silly, of course, to those who are not entirely familiar with the standard undergraduate institution these days.  After all, what does a professor do if not "interact with students"?  And the answer is: More than you think.  Between grant writing and lesson writing and spearheading the construction of a new "design studio," j is more than occupied each and every moment of her waking day... and then there is the actual teaching.  However, due to others on sabbatical this semester, j has also become the main "go-to" faculty person for advising undergraduates in the department.  And let's be honest, even if she wasn't the only one around, the students vastly prefer coming to her to talk.  As one of very few women faculty in her mostly male faculty AND male student department, she has inadvertently become the "mom" figure.

How j's students apparently see her

Here at home, we find this new role endlessly surprising and amusing.  Let's just say that between the two of us, we would both imagine that I would be the one most stereotyped as "mom-like"... and while I would not say j is "dad-like," she does spend a lot less time thinking about and processing emotional information than I do.  Of course, most of her students do not know me and are not comparing me to her, but rather her to all the other available faculty.  Suddenly, processing young adult male emotions is now a significant part of her job.  They drop into her office whether she has posted office hours or not.  When bottom lips start to quiver, she has to ask them to close the door because she knows they are about to announce something emotional.  Any time her door is open, they quietly lean on the door jam until she looks up from her computer and asks what they need.  They stop her in the halls. They form a sitting down line in the hallway whenever she DOES hold office hours, 4 times a week.

Reenactment - Not j's actual students...

All this activity has now been boiled down to a single statement: "Dr. j, I have NEEDS."  Whenever she comes home and I ask how the day went, I can tell when I need to launch into a slump to the side and a whiny rendition of this statement... to get a smile and lighten the mood.  Truth is... 400 young people can have a lot of needs. 

So, that's where we are this Mother's Day.  Not yet mothers, waiting on a bee to become a mother while also mothering other mothers' children. Some Mother's Day in the future, we'll be part of the group being celebrated... but for now, this is truly enough.

Adventures in Beekeeping - Installment #1

Howdy, Internet!  It's a lovely day here in the fine state of Delaware!  Hope it's equally nice wherever you are.

So... I've been posting on my Facebook page about my new adventures in beekeeping... and only just realized how "popular" those posts were! In light of all the questions I've been getting, I decided that a longer format was necessary. 

For those of you who just want to know what's been going on since yesterday, you can scroll to the bottom of the page.  For those just joining me in this adventure, I'll give a little run down first (with pictures!): 

I installed my first hive of bees on Saturday, March 30, 2013.  It looked like this:

Me.  And 10,000 bees.

Inside that box there were about 10,000 bees.  Now, you might ask, WHERE do you find 10,000 bees let alone 10,000 bees in a box?  Well, the short answer is: You order them off the internet. Ha!  But before that, "package bees," as they are known, are generally the bees leftover from commercial pollination operations at the end of pollination season. 

Here's what happens - Crops like those in California (almonds!) and Georgia (peaches! and also this is where my bees are from) are very dependent on bee pollination.  Reflecting this importance, entire businesses exist solely to provide bee pollination to orchards.  These businesses drive tractor trailers full of operational bee hives and park them in an orchard (for a fee!) so that pollination can take place on the enormous scale needed to provide the United States with these tasty goodies.  Once all the pollination has taken place, however, the business has way more bees than they care to sustain over the remainder of the year.  So... they sell them to smaller operations that need bees... like ME!

Problem is, in order to sell someone a complete "hive-worth" of bees, you need to give them both worker bees AND one (and only one) queen bee.  Now, it would be insanely labor-intensive to open up all those hives on the back of a tractor trailer and catch the queen so you can put her in a tiny box (without killing her!).  So, through a process I'm still a bit hazy on (perhaps I'll investigate that for a future post!), they raise NEW queens.  Once you have a queen, you can open any hive, dump a bunch of bees in a box (about 3lbs), stick in the new queen in a cage and sell it on the internet for about $100.  So... THAT is where you find 10,000 bees in a box. 

Installing a new bee hive

"Installing" a beehive is pretty much the opposite of anything you've ever done to welcome a new pet or person to your household.  Normally, when expecting a new being you would create a complete, new space for your new friend.  A bed, a blanket, toys, a special area for food.  And you would introduce them slowly to their new surroundings.  Not for bees!  For bees, you buy a hive (more on equipment in a different post), dump the bees in (literally!) and close it up.  The bees have to make their own home.  They build the waxy comb that they use to both raise young and store honey. I did have to feed them (sugar syrup) but that's it.

Back to the queen: Bees communicate "us" versus "them" by smell.  If you're a bee, you can't just fly into any hive and make yourself home.  You have to smell "right" and you smell "right" if you have pheromones on you that match the queen's.  Remember, in my package of bees, the worker bees came from a different hive than the queen.  In fact, the workers had just met the queen the day before installation.  So these worker bees smell this new queen and want to KILL her because she does not smell right. Thus, they all need a few days to learn her new smell, realize she's the only queen around, and hopefully, bend to her will.

Five days later I went into the hive and "released" the queen from her cage.  It looked like this:

Releasing the queen

Thank you to aunt l for this shot.  You can also see my grandma in the window watching me.  She wasn't feeling quite as brave.

Everything seemed to be progressing as written in my bee books after that... bees were building comb and flying in and out of the hive.  I saw the queen outside her cage and walking around.  The workers were collecting nectar and pollen and storing it in the new comb.  

AND THEN... fast forward about 14 days.  I had to leave town for 2 weeks so I wasn't able to check on the hive (I only check once a week anyway).  I came home yesterday expecting to have a nice full hive with lots of baby bees in it.  In fact, I was looking forward to seeing baby bees!

Instead, I opened the hive and saw lots of capped honey (that's ok)... and no babies.

I actually saw something more like this:

www.elmoreshoney.com

This is not actually me.  I was working the hive alone this time so there was no one to take pictures.  The website I borrowed it from is cited.  Also, this picture is conveniently labeled so you can see what I'm talking about!  Also, my queen cells (yes cells, there are actually around 4) are smaller... but so are my bees.

My first thought was "BAD!  BAD!" because they teach you in beekeeping class that if the bees feel crowded, they will make (yes, make, more on that later) a new queen and fly off with her to find a new home.  This is something you must avoid as a beekeeper.  Mostly because it makes you a good citizen (NOT to be sending swarms of bees into your neighbors' yards... see... you're all doing that already!  Such good neighbors!) but also because it drains a lot of resources from your hive and it's just stressful for everyone involved.

But then I remembered that in bee class they ALSO said, if the queen cells are in the upper portions of the frames (like the one in the picture, not hanging off the bottom), it means the bees are looking to replace the queen, often because she is already dead.  Now, this isn't GREAT news, but it's also not the WORST news.  I took a look in the rest of the hive and could not locate my queen.  She is likely no more.  RIP Queen #1. 

I did peek in one of the cells (Dude, I know, I might have killed that baby bee... not sure...) because I didn't see ANY other baby bees and I thought "She must have died before laying any eggs!"... but no, there was one baby in there and there are probably more in the other capped cells too.  So I quickly closed everything up and ran inside and emailed the president of Delaware's Beekeeping Association.  No joke.  I really did.

Now what?  Well, on advice from experts, I am going to leave the hive to do what it deems best... and hope they raise their own queen from these who are developing.  If there are no eggs in 21 days, I do have a back up plan.  I can order just a queen off the internet and introduce her all over again. 

But k, you say, what's happening in the hive?  How can they MAKE a queen?  Well, all the bees have jobs... and it's kind of important to remember bee biology when looking after the bees (This is why I started keeping bees... I needed a science project... and now, as my friends have pointed out, this science project is going the way of nearly ALL science projects, which is to say, "not as expected"... I need to remember to be careful what I wish for...)

Bee Type #1: Drones
The drones are male and they pretty much exist as an investment in bees as a species, not in bees in the hive... Drones fly out and try and mate with new queens... mating happens in the air, not in the hive and with other queens, not their own (who is the drone's mother, not that bees care, per se, about incest, but genetically, it's better to outbreed).  In fact, they are so "useless" to the hive that in the winter, they will get excluded from the hive.  Drones don't get to eat up resources and survive the winter; the queen will just make more later.

Bee Type #2: Workers
The majority of the hive is full of female worker bees.  These worker bees cannot lay eggs, but do all the other jobs in the hive: make comb, feed baby bees, receive and store pollen and nectar from field workers and finally, gather nectar and pollen from the field. The workers will cycle through all the jobs in the hive, the last job being the field gatherer... then she will die, most likely away from the hive.  She will literally work herself to death.

Bee Type #3: Queen
The queen is the only bee that lays eggs.  She produces pheromones that direct all the actions of the hive. She only mates once and uses the same sperm for the rest of her egg-laying life.  In general, beekeepers replace their queen once per year or once every other year... the problem I'm having is that my hive isn't established fully yet so the TIMING is what is wrong, not that queens can't be replaced.

BUT what about the dead queen, you say... HOW do they replace her?  So, obviously, bees have a way to cope with this problem of mortal queen bees.  Bees have existed for millions of years before beekeepers :)  and it has to do with that "feeding baby bees" job I mentioned for the workers. 

When baby bees are very young (1-3 days), they all get fed the same thing: royal jelly.  The workers make it and feed it to the babies.  After day 3... if that baby bee is meant to be a worker... no more royal jelly for you!  You get fed on regular nectar and that's it, you develop into a worker bee with a stunted reproductive tract.  You're a worker.  Forever.

Babies that keep getting fed royal jelly post-day 3, however, develop a full reproductive tract and become fully functional queen bees! So...

Sometimes, the hive knows in advance that the queen is sick or on her way out, so they build the queen cells early and sometimes the new queen and the old one co-exist for a little while.  In the case of MY hive, the bees lost their (apparently) crappy queen unexpectedly.  She had only laid a few eggs.  So, the remaining workers probably ran around the hive to find all the larvae and said "YOU!  You are the right age to keep feeding royal jelly to... you will now keep eating royal jelly because we need a new queen!"  And my bees have done this with at least 4 larvae... the first queen to hatch out will kill the others and then go out of the hive to mate (hopefully). 

My job as the beekeeper is to keep watching to make sure a new queen happens and SOON.  Most worker bees only live 6-8 weeks... so I'm running out of time to have enough worker bees to keep feeding baby bees that might happen from the new queen.  So we need a new queen, laying new eggs to replace old workers ASAP.  If that cycle doesn't get fixed, the hive will die and I'll need to buy a new package of bees...

Until next time...

Trying to remain optimistic!  SCIENCE!!!