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!!!