Swarms in California, too! May 3, 2010

A friend living just north of San Francisco
wrote to report a swarm close to her house. Apparently someone noticed a swarm flying around and discovered a ball of bees in a tree, one attached to the mail box and 4 other balls in a different neighbor's tree...even one pile on the driveway!


They called a "bee guy" who found the originating location between two fences. He took apart the wall and found a 4 foot by 4 foot area completely covered in wax, honey, bees, and larvae. Each little ball had a queen. He said that it was unusual for there to be so many queens and for the groups of bees to be so small. He vacuumed them all up and took them to new homes.

A Third Hive and a Lost Swarm 4-30-11

Our two hives are down on the plains still and we are waiting until about May 15th to bring them back up to our altitude. We had planned to add a 3rd hive this year and had ordered a new queen and bees to start the 3rd hive. We also went to a great bee store in Denver called, TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE to buy the required additional hive supplies. I picked up a whole new hive already assembled including 2 supers, a bottom board, top board and lid. In addition, I bought 4 honey supers as I'm very optimistic about this year's honey harvest!. You can see Flat Stanley went with us because he was visiting from a friend in California.

This is all the hive parts and honey supers in the back of the car.

On Thursday, April 28, a friend called to say that she saw a swarm of bees leave our strongest hive and head in a CLOUD OF BEES to the apple tree near by. We hoped to capture them for our third hive, but they left within about 2 hours. I'm disappointed I allowed conditions to exist that led to a swarm. More to learn about how to prevent this in the future!



On Saturday morning, April 30th, Jack and I went to Boulder to pick up a new queen and bees for the 3rd hive. Highland Bees has been a great help to us in learning about the bees and it was a busy morning for them. Lots of other novice bee-keepers were picking up their new hive of bees. This wagon was loaded with new bee colonies in boxes!


Here's our new box of bees. The queen is suspended in a cage, inside this box. There is a screen around her that allows the other bees to feed and care for her, but she is trapped. All of the bees will learn her "smell" and will adopt her as their queen. The can in the center holds sugar water and is the source of feed for the bees while they are traveling.




The bottle on the right holds sugar water and will be the food-source for the hive at the beginning. The spray bottle also holds sugar water as it will allow me to spray the hive as we transport and relocate them, calming them down.



This is my bee-basket that holds gloves, tools and other supplies. You can see I've pulled some blades of grass to use to reduce the entrance to the hive, once the bees are installed. The smoker is full of small twigs so we can create smoke to keep the bees calm.







Jack is busy using the hive tool to open the box of bees.




















We removed 3 center frames from the new hive and dumped the bees inside.












We closed up the hive, added the sugar water feeder and stuff the grass in the entrance to reduce the space. The book says this helps the hive protect itself at the beginning as it is small and "raider-bees" could easily come in if the entrance is left wide-open. The box of bees is sitting outside the hive as some straggler bees need to move into the hive.
Wish me luck on #3!!!

Feeding Pollen 3-15-11

GingerB came to help feed the bees. She put on the full bee-suit and we opened up the hives.




















The bees are certainly busy! This hive is going strong. It did much better last year than the other hive and is starting out well. They eat everything I feed them---and are always ready for more. Today, we are adding pollen patties to support the queen in laying brood.









We used the smoker as I don't want anything to alarm the bees. Note that GB is COVERED in bees!


If you look closely at the picture below, you will see pollen sacks on the legs of most of the bees. I was told that the light pollen color is from Cottonwood trees. Supposedly cottonwoods and elms are both providing pollen right now.


























Unfortunately---one sting! This happened while removing the bee suits. A bee was caught on the clothing and stung. Bad for the bee! Bad for GB's arm!