Bees Need Water May 15, 2010

A bee loading up with water to take back to the colony.

Here’s an amazing photo of one our bees drinking water at our bird bath (I just have to say that my husband has been taking most of the photos I’ve posted here…thanks sweetie!).  Bees, like most creatures, need water, and I modified our bird bath setup with them in mind.  I simply added a couple of rocks that you can find at an aquarium/fish supply store.  I thought that the rough nature of the rocks would help them have a surface they could hang on to, since a friend of mine had a lot of trouble with wind blowing his bees into the water, resulting in drowning.  But you can also see from the photo, that the rough rock has lots of nooks and crannies that hold water, and the bees regularly drink from them.  This bee has her proboscis extended to drink.

One of the many jobs of worker bees is to collect water for the colony.  A worker bee on water duty will go and fill up her stomach with water, fly back to the hive, and act as a living ‘water tank’ for other bees in the colony.  Just as bees feed each other nectar and honey, they will give each other water.  Cool, huh?

If you are keeping bees in an urban or suburban setting, it is friendly to your neighbors to provide a water source for your bees.  Once they locate a source, it is rather difficult to divert them from it, and if one of your neighbors has a swimming pool, you don’t really want the bees going there to get a drink!  Not only will your neighbors be annoyed, but lots of your bees will probably fall into the pool and drown.

Happily, our bees come to drink at our bird bath, which sits right on our front porch.  This gives us a lovely diversion everytime we come and go from the house.  🙂

Building Up! April 22, 2010

Queen is slightly off center. In the background of the honeycomb, you can see larvae.

The bees have been very busy!   It has been 4 weeks since I caught my first swarm and installed it into a hive in my front yard.  After only two days, the bees had begun drawing comb.   Six days after installation of the swarm, I found eggs and was assured that a queen was present.  Eggs hatch in 1-3 days.  After that, the small larvae lay in their cells, curved in a small C-shape, and the adult workers feed them royal jelly, pollen, nectar, and honey.  All larvae receive royal jelly for about 3 days and then are switched to other food for another three days.

Several Larvae in their cells.

Here are a few cells with eggs (click on image to see a magnified view).

At that point (6 days post hatching), the larvae have grown significantly and begin to pupate.   At this point the cells are capped, and the pupae develop for several days until they emerge as fully developed adult bees.  The entire process (hatching from egg to emerging as an adult) takes 16 days for a queen, 21 days for a worker, and 24 days for a drone.  So after 4 weeks, I am expecting an increase in activity around the hive as new adults begin to emerge and add to the work force in the colony.

Pupa in her cell. This cell will be capped soon.

While I was checking the hive, I did indeed find evidence of newly cleaned out cells, indicating that brood had emerged and that workers had cleaned out all remaining nectar/debris from the cell so that it would be ready the queen to lay another egg.   In fact, I also saw a few capped cells that were showing signs of activity as the encapsulated adult worker was beginning to eat her way out. One worker had managed to get most of her cap out of the way and was peeking out at the world.  There are still plenty of capped brood and plenty of larvae and a few new eggs, indicating that the queen is still doing her job as well.  It is exciting to see the colony building up their numbers to take advantage of the nectar in the neighborhood!

Evidence of a Queen April 1, 2010

This black bee is not from my hive and many like it are frequenting my rosemary bush. Although, it is only slightly larger than a honey bee, it has been identified as a bumble bee.

The swarm hive has been in place for a week now.  I had to go in and check to see if I could find the queen.  It was early evening and warm, so I decided to go for it, even though this is not typically the best time of day to bother the bees.

Clear evidence that this was a small swarm is that these bees are still only occupying about half of the frames in the hive body.  They are busy drawing comb in these four frames, and I saw plenty of collected nectar and some pollen stores.  But my mission was to locate the queen.

After examining all four frames, I returned to the third frame from the western side of the hive.  The comb is the deepest on this frame, so I thought this was the most likely place to find any eggs that might have been laid.  I was momentarily distracted though…a relatively small cluster of bees was hanging around at the bottom corner of the frame, apart from the larger cluster covering the top half of the frame.

As I observed this smaller cluster, I saw a bee that looked significantly longer than the others.  Could it be the queen?  She moved around a bit and I could see that she did indeed look longer to me.  While I feel a bit insecure about identifying the queen, I think this was her!

Encouraged, I returned my focus to the upper half of the frame.  The bees were not terribly cooperative about allowing me to look into the cells of their honeycomb, so I blew on them gently, which seems to encourage them to scatter a bit.  I saw something slightly different, examined it more closely, and was pleased to see several cells of comb that contained one egg each.  This is a happy sight!  Eggs in the hive means a laying queen is in residence, and that I should start to see new adult workers in about three weeks.

Contrary to popular belief, workers can lay eggs; however, it is usually easy to tell when they are laying instead of the queen.  Workers tend to lay multiple eggs in a cell and to lay haphazardly.  A healthy queen will lay one egg per cell, right in the middle of the bottom of the cell.  The egg is oblong, less than 1 mm wide and about 3 mm long.  Sorry, I didn’t get a picture, but maybe when I get more adept at handling the hive frames I’ll be able to take my camera out, too.

Checking in with my first hive March 30, 2010

My swarm's new home

Saturday, about two days after installing my captured swarm in one of my fully assembled hives, I decided to take my first trip into the hive to see how they were

doing. It was a little early to do so, but I was too excited to wait and wanted to see if I could find evidence of the queen.

First I got out my smoker, a vital piece of equipment for beekeepers, because I needed to figure out just how to use it. The smoker is basically a large aluminum can with a bellows attached to blow the smoke and funnel spout on top to direct the smoke. I had learned about operating a smoker, but I decided that I needed a dry run. So I gathered up some pine straw with my daughter and got out some matches.

Lighting pine straw, it turns out, is incredibly easy. It burns really easily and smolders well, producing a ‘cool’ smoke—after all, we don’t want to scald the bees, just calm them down. (The smoke disrupts the bees’ alarm system, thus reducing the likelihood of an aggressive response to my invasion of their home.) After lighting some pine straw, I stuffed it down into the smoker, made sure it was burning well, and then added a lot of pine straw to make sure it would keep burning while I worked. Of course, the first time I loaded the smoker, I wasn’t sure what to do with a little metal spacer that was inside the smoker. I soon learned that it was to keep the burning pine straw off the bottom of the smoker. This appears to be to avoid flames exiting the smoker through the air hole that the bellows blows into. After a few puffs, I saw the flames backwash through this hole and realized that was a potential hazard, particularly since the bellows has wooden parts. So for all you newbies like me out there, put the spacer in the bottom of the smoker, then add the burning pine straw. 🙂

The hive is open...

After getting the hang of the smoker, I started gathering my other equipment: long sleeve gloves, hat and veil, hive tool, epipen (I am not allergic to bee stings, but one never knows when an allergy may develop), and lighted smoker. I headed out to my small bee yard, and Robert came armed with his camera.

First I applied some smoke at the entrance of the hive to calm the bees. This seemed to cause them to fly around a bit more, but they certainly did not appear to become aggressive. I stepped around to the back of the hive to work. I removed the outer, telescoping cover, and the inner cover. The underside of the inner cover had 50-100 bees on it, so I carefully leaned it against a nearby tree trunk. Turning back to the hive I immediately noticed that my small swarm was actively inhabiting only three of eight frames in the hive. I pulled a frame out and began to examine it.

The bees were already beginning to draw comb, and it was beautifully white, just as it should be. The perfectly hexagonal cells were being formed on at least two of the frames. The cells tip up toward the sky just a bit to keep collected nectar and eventual honey from spilling out before the cells are capped. But today I wasn’t looking for honey, I was looking for eggs.

A frame loaded up with bees.

I spent about 15 minutes looking for the queen and for eggs. Since this hive was started from a wild swarm, I couldn’t rely on a marked queen and had to hope that I could spot her based on her size. I never did spot her, but the bees that were on the frame were so densely packed that it was hard to tell any difference in size. I did notice that the bees would generally quickly move up the frame that I was examining. The huddled group would move over the top of the frame and over to the side opposite from me. I remembered later that the queen is quick to run away from any perceived danger, so I wondered if this movement of bees was simply the workers following the queen around.

Although I looked very carefully, I did not find any eggs. It was probably too early—most of the comb did not look deep enough to house brood, and I suspect that the queen would not lay in that case. After talking to a more experienced beekeeper, I will try to be patient and wait until at least one week after the initial installation of the swarm into the hive to look for eggs or brood. He also indicated that the presence of drawn comb is very suggestive of the presence of a queen, so I think that my little swarm is well on its way.

Looking for eggs

Since Saturday, I have greatly enjoyed watching the bees explore the holly in our yard. After the rains on Sunday, we could really smell the holly flowers and knew that they were producing a lot of nectar. The bees have been working really hard, and I have started to spot honey bees with pollen in their little pollen ‘baskets’ on their back legs. I’ve also seen lots of bumble bees working the holly, and they are so large and clumsy that they make a lot of noise when their wings bang up against the holly leaves. By contrast, the honey bees are quiet and not quite as noticeable, except for the dashing in and out of the bushes that tends to catch one’s eye.

Many times during the day I want to simply stop and watch the bees working or just sit and listen and watch them come to and fro. I have been so busy with preparing the bee yard and getting ready for my package bees, which came today, that I have had little time to just sit and enjoy them. Finding the time to do this is my next priority.

The Swarm That Got Me Started March 26, 2010

March 25, 2010

One of our worker bees working our holly blossoms.

Last night I caught a swarm of bees!  This was a completely unexpected turn in my plans tobegin beekeeping, and in fact is what I feel has moved me from student to actual beekeeping.

I first heard about the swarm on a friend’s Facebook page.   She sounded curious but also seemed to want the swarm to leave.   As she put it, she would like to “encourage the bees to move on.”  I decided to call her up and see if the swarm was still there and whether it would be all right for me to come and retrieve it.  She agreed, and I set about convincing my family that I needed to go leave in the midst of bedtime routines for the children.  My daughter said that she would be fine and could do bedtime with her father, and he said, “Go, go!”   Happily I began to get ready.

I gathered protective clothing (my hat and veil, long sleeve gloves, a bulky sweatshirt, and rubberbands for my pants) and a few tools (a nuc box^†, a couple of pruning shears, and a flashlight).  This being my first time to do this, I wasn’t sure that I had everything that I needed, but I decided to be satisfied with this.  I fired up the car’s GPS, and I was ready to roll.

On the way, I tried to calm myself, worried that my adrenaline levels would make the bees more agitated.   In the end, this proved not to be a significant factor, because although I constantly felt charged up, I was able to remain calm and move carefully and slowly throughout the process.   When I found my friend’s home, we checked to see whether the bees were still there, and as I suspected, they had not moved away in the chilly evening.  I felt relatively sure that since night had fallen, this swarm would not be inclined to move on to their newly scouted out location for a new hive until the next day.

The swarm was wonderfully located for me, since this was my first experience.  It was in a small bush, about 3 feet from the ground, and only about 1 foot into the loosely defined shrub.  It was easy to move the branches surrounding the swarm without disturbing it.  The swarm itself was about the size of a very large grapefruit and very compact.   The bees were huddled together and buzzing quietly.  My friend helpfully positioned her car so that the headlights would light up the swarm while I worked.

After assessing the branch leading up to the swarm, I realized that I would not be able to cut it with my pruning tools without disturbing the swarm significantly, so I opted for a different approach.  I held my open nuc box under the swarm and jerked the branch sharply down onto the box, causing most of the swarm to drop into the box.   Of course, many of the bees were angered by this move, and they began flying around me rather aggressively.   I soon felt a prick of a stinger that had managed to penetrate my blue jeans at my hip.  However, I realized later that this stinger remained stuck in my pants and did not stay in my skin very long, so not much venom was delivered.

I carefully placed the lid back on the nuc box to contain as many of the bees in the swarm as possible.  I felt hopeful that the queen was in the box at this point, but I had already noticed that a significant number of bees were re-congregating on the bush at the same location.  I waited a short time for the bees to settle down, and the remaining bees formed a clump about the size of a baseball.  I wanted to be sure that I had obtained the queen, so I decided to take these bees as well.  I decided to try to cut off the branch to retrieve the remaining bees.  My friend lent me a small hand saw, and I managed to cut about halfway through the branch before I decided that the bees were getting a little too agitated by the vibration of sawing.  After a bit of gentle manipulation, I was able to break off the branch without overly disturbing the bees, although a few began buzzing around my head.

Now I had the branch in hand, and I carried it gently to the nuc box and laid it down on the driveway while I prepared to open the nuc box.  About this time, I was surprised to be stung on the forehead.  I checked my veil and realized that my hat had slipped underneath my veil and left an opening on the top of my head.  I rearranged my hat carefully before proceeding.

The bees inside the box had settled somewhat, but I knew that they would be agitated when I opened the box again.   I pruned off some of the longer small branches that were protruding from the remaining cluster of bees.   Then I opened the nuc, placed the foliage with the cluster into the box, and closed the box again.

At this point, I had finished my task of retrieving the swarm.  I began to gather up my tools and moved the nuc away from the area in order to avoid a gathering of bees around the outside of the box.  Then I asked my friend if I could come inside and remove the stinger from my forehead.  It had been there for about 10 minutes, and it was a hurtin’!   On a side note, when removing a stinger, be careful not to squeeze the small venom sack that is attached to the stinger, or you will simply deliver more venom into your skin.  Gently scraping the stinger out of your skin is the best way to remove it.

After answering a few questions, I was ready to head home.  The homeowners were of course primarily concerned that the swarm was going to build a hive right there in their bush or perhaps try to take up residence in the structure of their home.  The latter is a valid concern, and this is a fine reason to ask a local beekeeper to come and remove a swarm from your property.  It is unclear whether many honey bee colonies are able to survive on their own due to the multiple insults they face in recent years.  For that reason, having a beekeeper come and take the swarm to a managed environment may be the best solution for the bees as well.

I was away from home less than 2 hours, and I believe that the removal of the swarm took about one hour.   This was a really easy situation to handle, which is a good thing for me.  This is my first experience handling any bees at all, and I made a few mistakes. There are things I would have liked to have done differently.

First, I should have taken the extra 10 minutes to stop by the pharmacy to pick up my epi-pen, which was waiting for me.  This is simply a safety precaution, as I have no known allergies to bee stings, but it definitely would have been smarter to do this.   Second, I should have taken a spray bottle with water or a sugar solution.   If I had sprayed the swarm with this before manipulating it, the bees would have been much calmer, and their ability to fly would have been hampered temporarily.  Third, I would have like to have had better pruning shears that I could handle one-handed on a one inch branch.  What seems obvious in retrospect is that one hand must be free to hold the branch leading up to the swarm so that it will not fall when cut off from the rest of the plant.

That being said, I had fun, and I believe that little harm came to the bees in my encounter.  Perhaps I would have managed to retrieve more of them had I brought the spray bottle, but I believe that I did manage to bring home 90% of the swarm.

After getting the bees safely back to my home, I sprayed them (through the screen of the nuc) with sugar syrup so that they would have some liquid and some calories to get them through the night. It was late enough by this time that I didn’t want to move them again.   I was afraid that if I acted too hastily, I might make more mistakes, and I was very tired.

This morning, I set up one of my wooden hives, which was ready to receive bees, in my yard. I also placed a drip feeder in the entrance of the hive.  I moved the nuc out to the yard, next to the hive.   When I looked inside through the screen, I could see that most of the bees were clustered on the inner cover of the box, while some were clustered around the branch that I had placed into the box.   I donned my protective equipment, sprayed the bees again with sugar syrup, and opened the box carefully.  Those bees on the inside of the lid of the box stayed with it, and I sprayed all around the cluster.   I placed the box lid over the hive body (I had removed 4 frames to make room for the swarm to hang into the hive body), then banged it onto the wooden box.  The swarm fell into the hive body. I did the same with the cluster on the branch, then began replacing the 4 frames gently.  I closed up the hive and left the mostly empty nuc next to the hive for a few minutes to allow any remaining bees to enter the new hive.  Then I cleaned up my tools and left the bees to explore their new digs.

Within a few hours, the bees were exploring the holly bushes in my yard, which are just beginning to bloom.  It is a wonderful sight to see them working the holly so quickly, and they are quite busy moving in and out of the hive.  At the end of the day, I took my 5 year old daughter out with her veil so that she could see the bees moving around the entrance of the hive.  She is very excited about all of this, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

In a couple of days, I will check on the inside of the hive to see if the bees are drawing comb and to see if I can locate the queen.  This will be my next big test as a beekeeper!

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†A nuc (short for nucleus) box is a cardboard box coated with beeswax that can hold 5 frames for honeycomb.  There are screened vents at each end of the box, and a small entrance that can be screened or left unobstructed at one end.  This box can serve as a temporary home for a small colony.   This box is also lightweight and a useful size for capturing a swarm, and can be closed securely, which is important for transporting bees in a vehicle.