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!

The Tucson Diet for Bees 3-10-11

Humans brag about the South Beach Diet---I think bees would pick the Tucson Diet. MegaBee--The Tucson Bee Diet--comes in a large bag as a fine powder that has to be mixed with a sugar liquid. The directions say to measure by weight and use 1 unit of powder to 1.7 of liquid. (fructose) I used karo syrup the first time and have since been making sugar water (1:1 sugar to water) and using that instead of syrup. I can't really tell the difference and the bees seem to like it both ways.



















I've definitely had a better experience by making sure the mixture is very dense (almost impossible to stir) and then letting it sit over-night.




It gets less sticky and more like taffy if it is cold. I kept it in the refrigerator all night and then used the Mega Bee as if it were flour to roll out the mixture, using wax paper under and above the mixture.









If I am careful with the "flour", I can then remove the patty from the wax paper. The first time I didn't use this approach and was never able to get the patties to detach from the wax paper. I'm not sure if bees eat the wax paper or just eat the food, but the wax paper "disappeared" inside the hive. I was concerned about that, so using this alternative approach allows me to put the patties in the hive without the wax paper.

Dead Bees at the Doorstep 3-3-11

This is the winter location for the bees. We didn't think they would make it at ~8000 feet all winter, so we moved them to this location north of Longmont at about 5000 feet. The hives are sitting in a location that has a windblock from the back (augmented with styrofoam sheets behind them) and each hive is wrapped with black paper. We put the solid bottom board under them (removing the screened bottom board) and wrapped them tightly last Fall. There are styromfoam sheets protecting them from the "windy" side, too. They get a full day's sun and have water right beside the hives. Our hope is that this helped them survive the winter. I'm checking on the bees today because it is warm and they are out-and-about.

We strapped them down to a pallet so the winter winds (or a creature) would not have a chance to turn the hives over. I wanted to check inside and see how things are going, so I pulled the top box on the stronger hive. It weighed somewhere between 40 and 50 pounds. Tim had explained to me that bees go UP, not DOWN. So it may be that all the bees are "upstairs" and I need to swap the top and bottom super. He instructed me to look at both supers, determine the location of the bees and the brood. If the food is gone from the upper super (having eaten the pollen and honey during the winter) then the Queen will have moved upstairs and will be laying brood in the top box. If all the brood is there, then just swap the top and bottom. If there are frames of brood in both top and bottom, I would need to "mix and match" to get the brood in the bottom super. Thankfully, it appeared that most everything was up top and we just swaped boxes. We also pulled much of the tar paper off the sides. It is warming up!!!!

Looking through the pallet slats, I noticed a number of dead bees lying down below. I don't know if these are bees that died from cold/lack of food, or bees that were forced out of the hive---or some other explanation! Below you can see a close-up of the dead bees.

Superfine Sugar and Karo 12-10-10

Tim suggested that I make a new food for the bees. Because they had little stores of food going into the winter, he wants me to augment their winter diet. I can't use sugar water; it will freeze. And the bees are in a ball in the center of the hive staying warm, so the food has to be inside the hive and available on those days when they start moving around and find it waiting for them. I mixed superfine sugar with karo syrup and let it sit overnight. It turns into an almost "non-sticky" solid.



























I mashed the mixture into flat patties and laid the food on top newspaper on the tops of the frames in the lower super. I am to keep feeding them as much as they will eat.

Bees Making Honey 9-8-10

The bees have required sugar water all year. This is their first year as a hive, so they've spent all summer filling in the frames (making cells to fill with brood, honey and pollen). The wet, cold Spring/into Summer slowed them down as well as they stayed inside a lot to avoid the bad weather. Now they are feverishly working to store both pollen and honey. You can see the pollen on the bees back legs (in their pollen sacks), as they head back inside to store it away for winter food.





















We removed the lid to check the hive.

















The lid stands to the side while I inspect the frames to see what progress is being made inside the hive.






















The bees are definitely beginning to store honey. YOu can see the center cells are full of honey and "capped" with a waxy top. Their are cells on the outer edges of the "capped" cells that are being filled with honey---and then the cells further out have nothing in them. More work to be done!

Adding Screen-Bottom Board 8-29-10

The bees have natural enemies---mites being high on the list. The screen-bottom board helps manage mites as the mites fall off the bees and go through the screen. Apparently, then, they can't get back to the bees. It's time to add the screen-bottom board to the hives.





The super has to be set on top of the screen-bottom board.
























The bees are out actively working as we are adding the new bottom board. This bee found a hollyhock and is covered in pollen!

The hummingbirds also love the hollyhocks. Hollyhocks are some of my favorite flowers. When I was a kid, we had them growing along the fences out by the garage at our farm in the country. They come in so many colors....and last late into the summer.


Veronica is also very attractive to bees.

Feeding Pollen Patties--Pulling Honey Supers 8-17-10

Tim, Dean and his brother Darren came to visit the hives today. Darren came from California where they have 600 hives. Their hives are moved from crop-to-crop and serve as pollinators for many of the commercial crops across California (melons, nuts and others). Thank goodness they are supplying bees to help pollinate the foods we all want!


We opened my weaker hive. Thankfully, the queen is active. She is either a new queen (not very productive or just beginning) or a weak queen. We think she is a new queen as the old one was very weak and there are lots of larvae now.


I cracked the lid so that we could feed the bees extra pollen. They need to store sufficient pollen and honey to survive the winter--and a little boost will help. When we opened the hive, it pulled some comb/cells apart. You can see the larvae laying on top of the frames. The queen is laying drone cells in burr comb. The professionals advised me to make sure my frames were closer together---a tight lay-out will discourage the queen from producing too many drones. If the frames are close together and the spaces small; the queen will produce more workers.


The food is laying in a square patty on the super. It is a mixture that Darren and Dean make for their bees: lemon grass, spearmint, an egg mixture for protein and BEE Healthy (a soy protein). You can also buy pollen patties pre-made.


The stronger of my two hives seems to be storing pollen well. You can see the various colors--lots of different kinds of pollen from a variety of flowers.

One of their objectives today is to remove some of the honey supers. When they open up their hives and check to confirm that they honey supers are full, the bees are still working inside the honey super. To remove them, they brought a fume board and a spray called BEE GO. It is a non-toxic, almond scented spray that helps remove the bees from the honey supers.

Dean is sprayin the fume board with the BEE GO. He then let it set in the sun for 15 minutes--and all the bees left the honey super.

This is a shot of the materials they brought today: BEE GO, pollen patties and mite pads. Dean was smoking the bees. Tim said that smoking the bees is important, if even you don't think you need to. Bees may "ball the queen" and kill her if they are agitated and you aren't using smoke. He encouraged me to use my smoker when I'm working inside the hive. And another professionals trick: they took fresh grass and shoved it in the spout of the smoker to kill the fire, when done with the smoke. We were checking the weaker of my two hives to see if other queens were being formed; since my prior queen had been so weak. We found queen cells, but they were empty. The Royal Jelly was very old inside the cell, so their is no danger that another queen will come from these cells.

Checking the Weak Hive 8-15-10

I was checking on the weaker hive today. It is way behind the other hive---the queen bee has definitely not been as productive as the hive needed. They were still in a single super and very little progress has been made. We'll have to decide whether we think they can make it through the winter.... A stray bee entered the hive and several other bees attacked and killed it. You can see the dead bee on the floor of the hive and the resident bees are preparing to remove it from the hive.



This the bee activity in the weaker hive. Only a few of the frames have been filled in. We're hoping they can really get going for the rest of the summer and fall.

Bees love flowers 8-11-10

This is a visiting bee (not one of our bees). (S)He joined in enjoying the flowers.

The bees love these purple globe flowers. I need to look them up and get their technical name. We've been planting specific species according to the advice in books I've been reading. So many flowers that we enjoy (gladiolas, dahlias, tulips, geraniums and more) apparently are useful for bees.

This bee is on a wild geranium. The wild version apparently provide bees with food--and thankfully the grow "voluntarily" around here.

I caught the bees and the butterflies enjoying the echinacea.

This is a bee on spirea. They LOVE this plant. It blooms late into the summer and the bees

totally cover the spirea this time of year. The plant seems to be ALIVE with bees!!

This is the bloom from a Virgina Creeper. I never expected the bees to find any value in this bloom--it is not obvious by looking. The bees clearly disagreed! They covered the vines climbing the fences below the yard.

This photo captures two visiting bumblees on the mint. Mint blooms early to late here---and the bees and all their bee cousins have really enjoyed it.