For The Time Beeing

A Busy Summer Part 2 - Swarms!

2011-10-04T23:04:00.000-04:00

This is the continuation of my Summer of Fun post...

Honey bee swarms are a colony's way of reproducing and perpetuating their genetics. While there are multiple possible triggers for the swarming instinct, one of the major causes of swarming is overcrowded conditions in a hive. Preparations for swarming begin several weeks before the swarm actually happens. Because the current queen of the colony will leave with the swarm, the workers must make a new queen in order to replace the queen that leaves. The workers will produce multiple queen cells and they will prohibit the current queen from killing off the developing queens in those cells. Additionally, the workers will stop feeding the current queen in order to get her to slim down for her flight with the swarm (she hasn't flown since her mating flight which may have been a year or more ago). The entire process of swarming is a finely tuned dance that shows us the incredible decision-making process that honey bees are capable of.

Around the time when the new queens hatch, the old queen and 50-65% of the workers leave the hive in a massive cloud of bees - they are leaving the parent colony behind and will search for a new home. They gorge on honey so that they have energy for the next few days, when they will not have access to food like they would in their old home. After leaving the hive, they gather in a large cluster on a tree limb or fencepost or some other convenient spot not too far from the original hive. While they are stationed at this temporary "home", they will send out scout bees to look for the best possible cavity to make their new home in. The decision of where to make their new home is another amazing example of democratic decision-making (Honeybee Democracy is a book about this process). Once they have decided on the place, the entire cluster will fly to the new spot and begin to make their new home. Now, if the beekeeper can get to the swarm while they are clustered at their temporary home (they may stay clustered like this for a few days), it is relatively easy to catch the entire swarm, queen and all, and place them in a hive. Because they don't really have a home to defend and they are honey-drunk, swarm bees are generally very docile (see this video here).

Meanwhile, back at the parent colony, the new queens are hatching and killing each other, its survival of the fittest. The most bad-ass queen wins! (Although sometimes a hive will "throw multiple swarms" and a few bad-ass queens can win.)

In general, if a swarm leaves from one of your hives and you don't catch it, you are a sad beekeeper - you just lost a bunch of bees and a lot of honey! But, if you catch a swarm from a wild hive or someone else's hive - FREE BEES!

Alright alright, on to the story of my swarm captures this summer...

The Bleacher Swarm
I got a call one afternoon about a swarm near a church on Cheltenham Avenue not too far off of Route 611. I packed my car, hopped in and drove to the scene. I arrived to see this, pretty freakin' cool...

Just hanging out!

View from below

I brought the bee-vac setup (without the vacuum) because its a good way to transport bees, it offers good ventilation and an easy setup once you get the bees to the apiary. It worked out really well. I basically put the box under the cluster and gently dislodged the cluster, they fell into the box.

Stragglers making their way into the box to be with queenie

A few bees with their butts sticking up in the air, spreading pheromones to let the others know the queen is in the house

This capture went super smoothly, very easy. I closed up the box and drove them home. I set this swarm up in a hive on my roof. They are doing great.

The Honda Swarm
This swarm call didn't go so smoothly because I was unprepared and rushed. I will let the pictures get the story rolling...

Swarm is near the ground under this bush


I clipped off the branch into this nuc box, about half of the bees went into the box

My first mistake was closing this box. You can see the bees gathering on it because the queen is inside with the other half of the bees. I closed it because I was in a rush and I didn't want the bees inside to fly away. I also think it was a mistake to use this box because it is screened, and therefore open to the light, on the top and the bottom. At this point I figured well OK, I will place this entire box into my large Rubbermaid container and I'll put it all in my trunk and drive home. Problem was that the nuc box didn't fit into my other container (and the Rubbermaid didn't fit into the trunk!). So I decided, my second mistake, to place this box on my passenger seat and drive home this way. The worst that could happen is that the bees on the outside of the box would fly around a bit, but at least I had the queen locked up in the box. Besides, I had to get back to work!

Well, you can see that the bees didn't stay in place!

Flying all over the place! I kept my protective gear on while driving

Rear window

What a sight I must have been! Driving down Kelly Drive with my veil on and 20,000 bees flying around my car! As I was driving I reminded myself that at least the queen was in the box and when I got to the apiary I could set her up in a hive and all of these loose bees will find her and move into the box with her and the rest of the bees. Don't know if you have guessed by now, but I was wrong again! It turns out the the nuc box wasn't closed tightly and the bees that had been in there were also out, the entire swarm was flying free in my car!! I didn't figure out that ALL of the bees were free until I got to my apiary.

I pulled my car into this little alley near my Francisville beeyard and proceeded to discover that the nuc box was now pretty much empty of bees. After a failed attempt at finding the queen and also trying to lure her into another box, I left my car parked in that alley with the doors open and all of the bees flying around and in my car. I had to go to work for a few hours and I figured I would come back and deal with it later. I came back with a vacuum to suck up the bees and I returned to my car and found a surprise! After vacuuming up a bunch of bees, something caught my eye...

Can you see the little beady bee eyes peaking out from behind my door handle?

Now you can see them! They moved INTO MY DOOR!

Another view

Yep, inside the speaker too!!

As an aside, while I was home gathering my vacuum and equipment there's a knock on my front door. Its a policeman -

Cop: "Are you Adam Schreiber?"

Me: "Yes, that's me."

Cop: "Do you know your car is sitting on Field St with its doors open?"

Me: "Yep, I know, with a bunch of bees flying around in it!"

Cop: "Oh, OK, we just wanted to make sure it wasn't stolen or something."

He didn't really care about the bees! I was impressed with how quickly they responded to the "problem". Actually this wasn't the only police involvement in the story, but I'll get to that in a minute.

So anyway, I vacuumed what I thought was the majority of the bees and drove the car back to my street so I could deal with the rest the next day. I left the bees in the car overnight, put a box in the car with honey, thinking they might migrate into the box. No such luck - in the morning I saw that none of the bees had taken the honey bait, they were still all in the door peering out at me! I would vacuum them in dribs and drabs as they would come out to investigate. It was a slow process. I tried banging on the door to get them to come out, which only helped a bit. At this point I am thinking that I might have to remove my entire door panel to get to them.

Then Eureka! - for once in this whole ordeal, I had a good idea! I lit a smoker and proceeded to puff smoke into the door through whatever tiny holes I could find. Aside from having my car smell like a campfire for weeks, this worked well, the bees came pouring out to escape the smoke. As they left the safety of the door, I'd suck them into the vacuum. I even saw the queen pop out a few times and I tried to grab her, unsuccessfully. Here's a good view of how things looked...

No big deal, so there are some bees in our car.

Daddy is crazy!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot police involvement #2. I am in front of the house sucking up bees - wearing a veil, vacuum screaming, smoker smoking - when a cop comes up to me. Obviously he can see I am dealing with a "situation", but he is nonplussed. He has come to tell me that I need to move my car forward because it is impinging upon the handicapped space next to my house! I swear, the car was no more than 2 feet into the spot, which is more than big enough to fit a car anyway. My neighbor called the cops on me and this officer didn't care what I was dealing with, he said, with bees buzzing around his noggin, "Just move the car up." So of course, being the law-abiding citizen that I am, I moved it and then renewed my efforts at extracting the rest of the bees.

Once I finally had removed all of the bees, I saw that they had started building honeycomb inside my door! Incredible! Somehow they thought they were going to set up house in my car! Anyway, a significant number of bees died throughout this whole fiasco, but within a month's time, this hive was back on track and they have done nicely at their new home in Fairmount Park.

I don't have any pictures from my third swarm, but suffice it to say that with the timely help of fellow beekeeper Daniel Duffy and a maintenance man with a big ladder, things went very well. That third swarm has also built up nicely this summer. Even though one never knows where swarms come from, it is great fun to catch them and also nice to add genetic diversity to your beeyards. There is always a chance that the bees are from feral, survivor stock and this is something that every beekeeper wants. Some beekeepers worry about picking up diseases from swarms but I ain't worried and besides, if I didn't capture swarms I wouldn't have such great stories to tell!

What A Summer!

2011-10-04T15:46:00.000-04:00

Well it's been a long time since I wrote but that's not because there hasn't been anything interesting going on. Between family, work, being president of the Guild, caring for my 9 hives, editing a book and trying to have some fun, I haven't had much time to write. There is so much to tell that I split this entry into two - be sure to see the "Swarm!" entry for some great pictures and a hilarious story.

As I mentioned, I have 9 hives this year, the most I have ever had. Here's the breakdown of the hives and then I will update the status of each -

Overwintered hive from last year
Hive from Oakland cemetery bees
I ordered 4 packages from the Seaborns this spring - two were placed at Woodford Mansion
and two at Marathon Farm.
I bought one nuc from Don Sausser in Delaware.
I caught 3 swarms this year.

(Yes, I know that adds up to 10 hives, but you'll see what happened!)

My over-wintered hive from last year did great this summer. They grew to 7 boxes tall and are as healthy as ever. I harvested about 60 pounds of honey from this hive in July. At a recent inspection I saw signs that this hive had swarmed - the population was smaller than usual, there wasn't as much honey in the hive and there were lots of hatched queen cells in the hive. I'm not too worried about them but the swarm and the loss of population and honey could be a potential problem heading into winter. There was a new queen present and she was laying well. And the nuc from Don Sausser has done well too, they are on my roof. I harvested about 35 lbs of honey from them. Although one thing I will say about these bees is that they are a bit feisty and they don't always take kindly to my bumbling inspections! My total honey harvest this summer was about 150 lbs - most of which is already gone (either sold or given away!).

The last time I wrote was way back in April and I was writing about the removal at Oakland cemetery. The bees from that removal have done quite well for themselves this summer. Unfortunately we did kill the queen in the removal process but the girls quickly made a new queen and therefore perpetuated the genetics of this feral hive. The colony proceeded to settle in to their new home in Francisville and they have built up nicely over the course of the summer. About 6 weeks after this removal job, I got another call from Jackie. It turned out that she hadn't had a chance to fix the window and roof and another swarm of bees moved in to the same exact spot!! So we went back to the cemetery and removed that colony. It was an easy job because the comb was being built right out in the open.

Woodford Hives with some great 'shrooms from all of the rain this summer

Another view of the 3 Woodford Hives

In late March when I installed my new packages at Woodford Mansion and Marathon Farm, I tried a new queen installation method where I placed the queen in the front door of the hive instead of placing her between frames inside of the hive. Well, that experiment was a TOTAL FAILURE!! I lost 3 out of 4 of those queens!! It turns out that the weather was too cold for that kind of queen introduction and the bees basically abandoned their queens to die on the bottom boards. At Woodford, one of the queens actually survived and the bees from the hive next door (who had lost their queen) all moved into the hive with the healthy queen! When I opened that hive it was bursting with bees (6 lbs worth) and the hive next door was empty! I was going to split this hive back into two hives but when I caught some swarms, I decided to leave this super hive alone. (This is why I only have 9 hives instead of 10.)

The other 2 hives at Marathon had no eggs to grow themselves a new queen, so this lead to a situation known as having a "laying worker". Basically this is when some of the worker bees start laying eggs because of a lack of a queen. Sounds great and pretty amazing, right? But the problem is that laying workers can only lay unfertilized eggs, which produce drones, the male bees. So if you don't remedy the situation, the hive will eventually die out. The solution for both of these hives was to donate frames of worker eggs from my other hives so that the queenless hives could make themselves a proper queen (this is when it really pays to have multiple hives). It took a few weeks but both hives eventually made themselves a new queen.

Because these hives lost so much time, they didn't grow to be big enough to make it through the winter, so I recently combined the two hives. I removed the queen from one hive and placed her in a nuc with some other bees as an insurance policy just in case something went wrong with the combine (the nuc is in my backyard, not sure what I will do with it). Then I simply stacked all of the boxes from both hives on top of each other with a sheet of newspaper between them. The newspaper helps to temporarily separate the hives from each other so they don't fight. In the time it takes the bees to chew through the newspaper, they will accept each other and not fight. It's a neat little trick.

Notice the bees flying around on the left, trying to figure out where their home went!

The next day - see the little green fuzzy stuff in the corner of the bottom board?

And a big pile of green fuzzy stuff on the ground next to the hive? That's chewed up newspaper!!

Combining these two hives greatly improves their chances of surviving the winter. We'll see how it goes. If they survive the winter I can split them back into 2 hives in the spring.

My 3 other new hives are made up of swarms that I caught this summer. In the interest of telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I made a separate blog post about my swarm stories from the summer, including the very funny story of "The Honda Swarm". Go read it!

Bee Removal at Oakland Cemetery

2011-04-20T22:57:00.002-04:00

Philadelphia Honey Bee Rescue and Removal has done our first bee removal of the year and it went very well. The bees were living in the walls above the window of an old stone house at Oakland Cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia. Jackie and her family live on the grounds of the cemetery and through a mutual friend she contacted us for help in removing the bees. Jackie was super nice and helpful - she even fed us fresh fruit and awesome homemade carrot cake. One of the coolest things about this job was that many years ago Jackie's father used to keep bees at the cemetery. She showed us and offered to give us an old honey extractor that was being stored in the attic of one of the buildings. The grounds of the cemetery are quite beautiful and Jackie told us it used to be farmland. There are several large greenhouses on the property and the family still uses them to grow and sell some annual flowers.

Entrance to the cemetery from inside

Bees living above 3rd floor window on the right

In addition to the 3 of us (Daniel, Joel and I), we had some help from Jackie's 5 year-old son Aidan. Here he is, ready to go!

The bees had been living in this house for at least 3 years and fortunately we were able to do this job from inside of the house - makes our lives a lot easier! I was excited to try my new bee vac, especially because the one we used last year ended up killing more bees than it rescued! With some help from bee mentor and master woodworker Vicco Von Voss, I built the Bushkill Bee Vac. The Bushkill vac was awesome - there were very few dead bees when the job was all said and done. There are a few tweaks I need to make to it, but overall I was really happy with how it worked, thanks Robo.

The basic idea behind the Bushkill vac is that you have a top and a bottom and in between them you can place as many supers/hive bodies as you would like. You can see in the bottom picture I have two medium supers in between the top and bottom. This set-up allows you to vacuum the bees directly into a hive, which maximizes the space available to them and minimizes the disturbance to the bees when you have to get them into a new hive after removing them. The design allows for plenty of ventilation so the bees don't get overheated (a problem with some other designs). I was even able to put some water inside the vacuum for the bees to drink by filling a few frames of drawn comb with water. The bees get vacuumed into the bottom (see top picture) and then can settle into the supers. The vacuum gets hooked to the top, where there is a screen in order to prevent the bees from getting sucked into the shop vac.

Here you can see the top of the vac - one hole is where the vacuum hose goes, and the other hole has a small piece of wood covering it that pivots in order to moderate the amount of suction. There's Aidan again, doing quality control supervision!

We could clearly see where the bees were entering from the outside, but it is always a bit of a mystery knowing exactly where they have built their comb. We had to make a few holes in the walls to help define the boundaries of the hive.

It turned out that the hive was located directly over the window, right above Joel's head in the bottom picture. There was a lot of traffic going in and out of the hive, so we were expecting a large colony. As we removed comb the bees flew towards the light and gathered on the window. The bees will cluster there and stay there, so we left them alone until the end of the job. It's actually better to minimize their time in the vacuum and have them on the window instead. When we were done cutting out comb, we easily vacuumed up the large cluster of bees that had gathered on the window.

Clustering on the window

The job took us about 5 hours, including a leisurely lunch (and the delicious carrot cake!). In the end, the space that the colony occupied was fairly small, although it was densely packed with bees. Below is a view looking straight up into the now-empty space that the colony had occupied.

We ended up with about 7 medium frames of brood comb. There was very little honey in the hive, it looked like they were living hand-to-mouth. Because of the small size of the space, we figured that this colony must have been swarming fairly regularly. Jackie had seen at least one swarm a few years ago.

I took the bees home and quickly set them up in a new home. Because of the bee vac, setting up the new hive was very easy, with minimal disturbance to the bees. I removed the top and bottom of the vac, placed the supers on a bottom board, filled the supers with frames of honey and drawn comb from my dead hives, placed the super with the brood comb on top and closed them up.

Here's a little video of the girls as they settle in...

And here they are all tucked in...

Given what happens during a bee removal, it amazes me that the bees are as calm as they are. Sure, they fly around in confusion, but they are not aggressive at all. We each got a few stings, but mostly because of our own carelessness. We are not sure if we got the queen alive, but I will give them a week or two to settle in and then check for signs of the queen. I have been watching the activity at the entrance to the hive and the bees are behaving as if they do have a queen but we'll see. If they don't have one, I will give them a frame or two of eggs from the hive next door so that they can make a new queen. All in all it was a great day and things went very smoothly. Thanks Jackie for looking out for the bees and giving us the opportunity to relocate them!

Bees at Marathon Farm

2011-04-03T19:12:00.002-04:00

In addition to Woodford Mansion, I am super excited about my other new apiary location this year. Thanks to friend and fellow acupuncturist Laura Hawley, I learned about the Marathon Farm project a few months ago. It's a project of the mini-chain of Marathon restaurants in Philly. In a nutshell, they are taking a big vacant lot at 27th and Master in the Brewerytown neighborhood and transforming it into an urban farm. The food grown at the farm will be bought by the restaurants and also sold to the community via a small farmers market near the site. You can read more about the farm and their progress here. When I learned about the project I immediately emailed farmer Patrick and asked if they would be interested in having bees at the farm. He spoke with the owner of Marathon and everyone was really excited about it, so it was a go.

With the support of an incredible array of volunteers, the farm has come together quickly and seeds have already been sown. There are a bunch of raised beds and a small greenhouse. There are plans for a picnic area and a small play area for kids. These are the kinds of projects that we need more of, especially with the ridiculous number of vacant lots in our fair city!

Since my packages of bees for this site came earlier than I expected, we had to scramble to get the site ready. Including myself, there are now 3 Adams involved in the Marathon Farm project - the farm manager and the education director are both Adam too. Farmer Adam, the owner of the Marathon Grill, Cary and I cleared a spot for the hives in a location where they should receive nice early morning sun. We plan on putting some kind of low barrier around the hives to discourage people from getting too close.

Checking out the queen with farmer Adam.

I meant to do the same type of front door queen introduction that I did at Woodford, but I forgot to bring a little stick to attach to the queen cage and I couldn't find anything on site. So instead I just laid the queen cage on the bottom board.

Dumping the bees in on top of the queen

Check out the "hive stands", rounds of tree from some of the weed trees that they cut down as they were clearing the lot (remember that if you click on images, you can see them full size).


First hive set up, getting ready for the second


Second hive

In the next picture you can see the raised beds of the farm and the greenhouse. Across the street from the farm is a recreation center with some ball fields.

Both hives set up, view of the farm and greenhouse

This is the view looking in the opposite direction. You can see this is an oddly shaped lot, triangular, with long brick walls that must have been part of a large building. The lot just goes back into a corner. This is where they plan to put in a kids play area.


Future site of kids play area

The weather last week after installing all 4 of my packages was pretty nasty, cold and rainy. The bees didn't have much chance to forage, but they should be fine with all of the honey and pollen that I gave them. I was able to look in the hives this weekend to check on things. One of the hives was bringing in bright yellow pollen, it didn't take them long to find food! Mainly I wanted to see if the queens had been released from their cages and three out of four of them were released. One of the queens at Woodford was still in her cage, all of the attendant bees in her cage were dead but she was fine. The bees in the hive didn't release her for some reason, it actually kind of looked like they were ignoring her. I am learning that you can tell a lot about a hive by observing the activity in front of it and the bees in front of this hive were acting weird, they were not aggressive but they looked disorganized. I opened the queen cage and gently placed her on top of the frames and watched her scoot down into the hive. Hopefully everything will be fine, but only time will tell. Once the weather warms up a bit, I'll do a more thorough inspection of all hives to see if I can see signs of healthy, laying queens.

Winter Recap and a Fresh Start

2011-03-29T23:01:00.004-04:00

And what a winter it has been, snowy and cold like last year. Bee-wise it has been flat-out depressing. Following the debacle of the Francisville stolen honey frames, things only went downhill. Two more of my hives died, making a total of 4 dead and only one colony remaining. Those are some bad numbers - if I was a baseball player I'd be hitting .200 and riding the bench! As far as I can tell, these two hives met their demise because their populations were too small - both of these hives were queenless for a long period of time last summer and this hurt their numbers going into winter. One of the hives had zero pollen in it, which probably isn't enough to kill them but it certainly didn't help.

And as usual the silver lining is that I have lots of honey, pollen and drawn comb from my 4 dead-outs. After cleaning out the hives of bees I piled the equipment in my backyard - must have at least 80 pounds of honey sitting back there. Most, if not all, of that honey will go towards feeding my new colonies this spring (I'll get to that in a minute). My remaining living hive looks really strong and they should hopefully pull through the rest of this cold spring with no problem. If this hive is strong and the weather warms up a bit, I will split it into two hives in a few weeks.

Contrary to my beekeeping, this has been an awesome winter for me and the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild. In January I was elected President of the Guild. Then in February we had a hugely successful event when Ross Conrad came to speak to us. We had over 100 attendees come to Penn Charter School to see Ross and everyone was extremely happy with how the day went. After Ross gave his two talks, we had a showing of a documentary called Vanishing of the Bees. It was a great event which we hope to replicate in some form next winter.

In March the Guild held its first Beginner Beekeepers Course. Four of the Guild officers, myself included, planned and taught the course. We had 20 "students" and this day also went really well. For me it felt great to be teaching again, something I haven't done for quite a few years. We plan to offer more and longer courses in the future.

OK, back to the bees. To make up for my losses this winter I ordered 4 small cell packages from the Seaborns at Wolf Creek Apiaries. I have already installed two of the packages at one of my new apiary locations. Woodford Mansion is located in East Fairmount Park and was built in 1756. I want to say a quick thank you to Bruce Schimmel and Martha Moffat for helping this apiary location happen (Martha also took some of the pictures of me below). Here is the front of the house...

This site should be a great home for the bees - in addition to tons of nearby red maple trees (an important source of early spring pollen), there is a new orchard that was recently planted around the grounds of the house. And the bees will have the run of the entire East Park, they should find plenty of food. Here are some more pics...

A new home

Two packages in trunk of my car

Beautiful frame of pollen from one of my other hives

Queen cage with attendant bees

When bee "packages" such as these are made up by suppliers, they take a queen from one hive and worker bees from multiple other hives. So the workers and queen don't "know each other" yet and if the queen was not caged, the workers would likely kill her. So when you are setting up a new hive from a package, you generally give the workers a few extra days to ensure that they accept the queen. The workers will release the queen by eating the candy (the white stuff on the left side of the cage) and revealing a hole which she can crawl out of and then get to work. There are many ways to introduce the queen and I tried a new technique this time. I attached a small piece of wood to the queen cage and slipped it under the front door, with the end of the wood sticking out of the front door for easy retrieval. The most typical way of introducing the queen is to stick the cage in between frames inside the hive. One problem with this method is that in a few days when you go back to check if the queen has been released, you have to disturb the bees and frames in the new hive. The "front door method" allows me to just pull the stick and queen cage out of the front door with minimal disruption to the hive. We'll see how it goes when I check on the hive in a few days.


Queen cage slipped under front door and into hive

Workers dumped on top of queen cage

Frames are in, dumping the stragglers into the hive

I installed two packages and everything went very smoothly, no problems. I will go back in a few days to check on the queen and see how the bees are taking to their new home. Here's hoping this year is better than last for the bees!

Support a Great Project!

2011-02-05T13:56:00.001-05:00

Friend and fellow Guild officer Daniel Duffy is starting a project in West Philly that will train youth how to keep bees. They will also sell their beehive products at farmers markets in Philly. Watch the video below and if you are so inclined, make a donation to this project by clicking on the "KICKSTARTER" link in the lower right-hand corner of the video -

CSI: Francisville

2011-01-22T21:05:00.000-05:00

Well, unfortunately my suspicions were confirmed. Someone was indeed meddling with at least one of the hives that recently died. How do I know, you may ask? Well, I broke down the hives in order to do a post-mortem and to see if I could determine the cause of their demise. As I was taking down one of the hives at the park, I quickly noticed that one frame was missing from one of the boxes - hmmm, I thought, it is unlikely that I neglected to replace a frame during my inspections, but hey, anything is possible. When I got everything home and took a closer look, I saw that it was actually two frames that were missing. Now, I might be forgetful sometimes, but there is no way that I put a hive back together with two whole frames missing. Then, as I continue to examine the hive, I see this -

The honeycomb from this frame was cut out - look closely and you can see the thin vertical wire from the foundation in the middle of the frame. Someone just went and cut out the comb - amazing!
When I saw the frame with the comb cut out of it, I was kind of in shock. It took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at, because I never expected to see something like this. So, this confirmed it beyond the shadow of a doubt. There's a honey thief in my 'hood!! More important than the pilfered honey is that I will never know how often this person was messing with the hives and I'll never know how much of a role that played in the death of these hives. So I don't stand to learn much about beekeeping from this, except that I need to be much more careful about hive placement in the future. Here is a picture of part of the tiny cluster that I found in the robbed-out hive, there were so few bees in there it was sad -

The other hive had quite a bit more bees in it (though not a ton) and no obvious signs of tampering, so who knows what killed them. There was still a lot of honey and pollen left in both hives, so the thieves did not take it all. The drawn comb and all of that surplus honey (about 3 medium supers full) will give my new bees a great head start in the spring. And if necessary, I can feed this honey to my other existing hives if they are running low.

Just another day in the wacky world of beekeeping in the city, I am undeterred...

Winter is Here

2011-01-13T15:52:00.001-05:00

So it looks like this winter is shaping up to be just like last year, lots of snow. We've already had 3 little storms, nothing like last year's blizzards but still Philadelphia has already surpassed it's average annual snowfall of 20".

So much has happened since last I wrote, I'm not sure where to start. I guess the bad news first. The two hives in the little park where the tree was cut down have already died (these were the awesome bees from Vermont). I was worried about them being kind of small in population and I guess I was right. There was still honey in the hive so they didn't starve. I am pretty sure some unknown person/people were messing with the hives. There were several times when I went to check on these hives and I could tell that things were not as I left them. I also got reports from others that they saw people "leaning on the hives" - hard to imagine but stranger things have happened. This situation was not helped by the fact that the chain-link fence surrounding this park was destroyed by the tree removal and this allowed anyone to just walk right up to the hives.

I was pretty bummed by the loss of these bees and by the overall failure of this site but the silver lining to the dead bees is that they made lots of nice, drawn-out honeycomb last year. This drawn comb is a valuable resource and it will help my new bees to get a quick start on building their new home. I was planning on moving these 2 hives to Woodford Mansion in East Fairmount Park, but since they didn't make it, instead I have ordered 2 new packages of bees from the Seaborns and will install them at Woodford in early April.

My 3 other hives appear to be doing well. On a recent warmish day in December the bees in my home hive were busy cleaning house. They were dragging out the dead and relieving themselves in the snow. When we were out on the roof one little bee landed on Jolie and proceeded to poop right on her shirt! Hopefully these 3 hives survive the winter.

This spring I am hoping to do more bee removals and swarm captures. This will help me to either grow my apiary or be able to provide other beekeepers with some bees.

As a follow-up to the the Langstroth celebration and Honey Fest, which was a huge success, the Guild is bringing Ross Conrad to speak in Philadelphia in February. Ross is the author of Natural Beekeeping, which is a book on keeping bees using organic management techniques. Registration has already begun and it looks like it is going to be a great turnout.

There's more to write but I just wanted to get a quick update written. Stay tuned...

Interview, Video and Pics from Honey Fest

2010-09-15T23:05:00.002-04:00

I recently did an interview with Bradd DelMuto for his Philly based blog 22nd and Philly. Have a look at the interview and the rest of Bradd's blog here.

Also, Philadelphia Honey Fest happened last weekend and it was a huge success. Here are some pictures and a video montage of the weekend events. And here is a great story from a Temple journalism student.

Get Outta My Bedroom!

2010-09-10T22:23:00.003-04:00

Earlier this summer I got a call about some bees living in a house in Southwest Philadelphia. I went to check out the situation and what I saw was hundreds of dead bees (and some live ones) in what used to be a 6 year-old's bedroom (he hadn't stayed in his room for 6 months because of the bees). There was even honey dripping through the ceiling and landing in a honey puddle on the floor. The bees were entering the house through the flashing of the exterior roof and they had made their home in the ceiling of the bedroom. As far as we could tell, the bees had been there for at least one-and-a-half years. In order to remove the bees we'd have to rip open the ceiling, cut out all of the honeycomb and get all of the bees out of there.

More hands make easier work so I enlisted the help of world famous president of The Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild, Joel Eckel. We had a great time and everything went amazingly smooth. The first order of business was to locate the hive exactly and determine how big it was, which meant opening up the ceiling (remember you can click on images to enlarge them).

Believe it or not, the bees were pretty damn calm, especially given that we were completely destroying their home. After getting an idea of how large the hive was and where its boundaries were, we began gathering the bees. The easiest and best way to do that is with a vacuum - yes, a bee vacuum. There are many different variations of the bee-vac out there, but the one I purchased is basically like a wooden hive body that gets hooked up to a shop vac. The bees get sucked into the hive body and theoretically hang out in there until you take them to their new home (later you'll see why I say "theoretically") . Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of the bee vac but here's a little demo:

That huge chunk of honeycomb that you see in the beginning on top of the bucket was packed with a few pounds of honey. After vacuuming a big bunch of bees, Joel began cutting the comb off of the ceiling and the walls. If the comb was filled with honey, we put it in a bucket to deal with later. We harvested about 40 pounds of honey from this hive, most of which will be fed back to these bees or to my other bees if they need it. If the comb was filled with brood, we tried to preserve it by rubberbanding it into frames so that it could be placed into a hive body. Here's how that went:

So we would vacuum some bees, cut out some comb and repeat. It took us about 4 hours in total. That included some help from the owners of the building, Alex (video below) and Chris (pic below). They really got into it and were amazed by the bees and the process of removing them.

Once we cut out all of the comb and vacuumed as many bees as possible, we cleaned up and left. We knew that many of the forager bees were out foraging and would return later in the day. So I returned to the house after dusk and there were a few more softball-sized clusters of bees hanging out near the window. I did one last vacuum job and then packed up for home. After my traumatic swarm incident, I wanted to get these bees set up in a new hive ASAP. I brought the hive body with the rubberbanded brood frames and I put it on my roof, where this hive would live for the time beeing.

I went to dump the bees out from the vacuum box into the new hive and was shocked and dismayed to see that once again, a lot of the bees were dead.

So, bee carnage part 2? Well, it wasn't quite as bad this time. It seemed like there were enough living bees that this hive might have a fighting chance to re-establish itself. But, in retrospect I do think that the bee vacuum box was just way too small and there were too many bees in there and it was too hot. Nonetheless, in the days following the relocation, the bees seemed to be adjusting to their new home.

Much to my delight, when I checked on the bees earlier this week, they had made some queen cells in an effort to replace their deceased queen. They had also begun to secure the comb into the frames. You can see a video of me checking on this hive and an excellent article on urban beekeeping right here. I am also feeding their honey back to them.

The chances that this hive will make it through the winter are still slim - mainly because their population was so decimated and they will lose a few weeks of growth due to the fact that they needed to make a queen from one of the existing larvae. But, you never know and worst case scenario is that I have 40 pounds of surplus, chemical-free honey to feed my other bees AND most importantly, the little boy who lost his bedroom to the bees can now have it back!

From Bee Hero to Bee Zero

2010-08-04T22:44:00.001-04:00

It hurts to write this post but I feel obliged to report it. The excitement of last week's swarm capture quickly disappeared when I went to set up the swarm in its new home the day after catching it.

At about 11 AM the next day I went to get the nuc box and bring it to one of my apiaries to set up a new hive and install the swarm. When I grabbed the nuc box I saw something that kind of didn't look right - there were a bunch of lifeless looking bees hanging out near the screened entrance. I took a quick peak inside and I saw a mass of soggy-looking, lifeless bees on the floor of the nuc. I rushed to try to take them to the apiary, not knowing that at that point, 95% of the bees were already dead.

When I got to the apiary I finally opened the box totally and saw for sure what I had feared - I had killed the bees, basically cooked them. I thought that they would be OK in the little nuc box for one night and I thought that there was enough ventilation, but apparently I was wrong. Sorry girls :(

This is what the bees looked like when I dumped them out -

I was really bummed and pissed at myself for making such a stupid mistake. I should have either put them in a bigger box immediately or maybe kept them in the air-conditioned house for the night. Like everything in this beekeeping adventure, I chalk it up to a lesson learned - one I will not forget.

Fortunately there was a bit of good news - earlier this summer a bunch of us from the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild were interviewed by a reporter for United Airlines Hemispheres Magazine. They were doing a feature article on urban beekeeping in Philadelphia. The article was published in the August issue and you can read it here. It is a great article with amazing photos that were taken by Keliy Anderson-Staley with an old view camera and processed on glass plate negatives. You can read more about the camera and the developing process here and also see some of the photographers other work.

So goes life, so goes beekeeping - gotta take the good with the bad.

Swarm!

2010-07-29T11:05:00.000-04:00

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, but a swarm in July isn't worth a fly - so the saying goes. Well, I just got myself a fly! Yesterday while I was at work I got a call from Abigail about a swarm of bees on her block near 21st and Fitzwater. I couldn't leave work until 7:00 so I was hoping the bees stayed put and fortunately they did. My first chance for a swarm capture - I was pretty damn excited.

I loaded up the car with equipment and the family and headed across town. We arrived and saw the smallish swarm about 12 feet up in a Callery Pear tree (it's the light brown colored mass at the top of the picture) -

Here's a close-up -

I only had a 6 foot ladder which wouldn't be high enough. My lovely wife had the idea of pulling the car underneath the swarm and putting the ladder on top of the car. Then, helpful neighbors Abigail and Chad grabbed a perfect sized piece of plywood to put under the ladder to give it some extra stability. Here's the set-up -

The swarm was very mellow (as they usually are), it's an amazing site to see this roiling mass of bees hanging out on a tree limb. Swarms are usually not aggressive because they have no home to defend and, before they leave their home hive they fill up their bellies with honey for the trip into the unknown and this helps keep them calm (like the post-Thanksgiving dinner kind of feel). So all I had to do was clip the branch off and drop it into a nuc box that I had handy. The scariest part wasn't the bees but being on the ladder, on top of the car.

Here are the girls in the nuc. I would say that 95% of them stayed on the branch as I dropped it into the box. The few that were flying eventually made their way into the box on their own.

Again, none of the bees were at all aggressive, they paid virtually no mind to any of the humans nearby. I had about 50 on my hand at one point but they were just hanging out, not trying to sting me.

So my job for today is to get this swarm set up in a new home. There is a good chance that they will not make it through the winter because they won't have enough time or population to build a strong colony but I figure it's worth a try. Worst case scenario is that maybe they will draw some nice honeycomb for me that I can use in the future.

Here's helpful neighbor Chad, first time wearing a veil. Thanks again for the help!

Growing Up

2010-06-09T16:15:00.005-04:00

In the last week I have checked on all 5 hives and they are all doing well. I have added new boxes to all of the hives as they grow their population. The queens need room to lay more eggs so that the colonies can expand and prepare for the rest of the nectar flow. Some of the hives were stronger than others, some had better laying queens but we'll see how the hives progress through the rest of the summer. There is a bunch of honey in the hive at my house and the larger two hives at the Field St site. I am going to harvest some of it next week and bring it to the next meeting of the Beekeepers Guild. We are going to do an extraction demo and I will be doing the crush and strain method. We'll also demo how to use a honey extractor.

For the most part things were unremarkable when I checked on each hive, but one of the hives at Folsom St (this is the site where the tree was cut down) was sharing its home. I opened the hive to see tens of thousands of little black ants and their eggs scurrying around on the inner cover of the hive (unfortunately I didn't get any pictures). It looked as though they were living in the outer cover - between the aluminum and wood. I quickly took the cover and dumped it off on the other side of the park. The bees didn't seemed bothered by the ants but this hive did seem a little weaker than the one right next to it. There are so many variables that it's hard to know if the ants were a problem. (I have been back to check on this hive and it is fine. The ants are gone and the bees are carrying on with their business.)

Here are a few other observations and pictures.

We had some really hot days in the past few weeks, some near 90 degrees. On one of those days I was watching the hive on the roof and I saw this -

Look closely at the front of the hive and you will see a bunch of the girls with their butts sticking up and facing outwards from the opening of the hive. They move their wings while they are in this position in order to create a current of air to help keep the hive cool on really hot days. Basically, air conditioning!

In this shot you can see a new bee about to emerge from its cell. On the left side of the photo look at the cell with the little hole in it. The bee is chewing her way out the cell in order to join her sisters. Pretty amazing to watch (I tried video but my little camera didn't do well with the close up). The glistening liquid in the adjacent cells is nectar on its way to becoming honey - yum!!

Here is some beautiful foundationless comb being drawn. These are the Carniolan bees from Vermont - you can notice that some of the bees are much darker, almost grayish-black in color.

On this particular day of inspections, I did take a few stings. You can see how I react - my left hand took one sting on the knuckle.

This was about 24 hours after the sting, when the swelling was at its worst. The itching wasn't too bad this time. I am hoping that as time goes on and I get stung more that my reaction is not quite as severe. From what I gather, it can go either way - you can become less sensitive or more sensitive.

Thanks to fellow Guild member Dave Harrod, I found a book called Clan Apis - it is a graphic novel that basically describes in accurate detail what life is like inside of a honeybee colony, told through the eyes and mouth of "Nyuki" the honeybee. It is an entertaining and informative read. I am currently reading it to my daughter and she loves it. To get a sense of his style, click on Clan Apis link above and then click the link on the right called "Killer Bee" and you can read a true story about the author (a bee researcher) rendered in his cartoon style.

From the Green Mountains to the Concrete Jungle

2010-05-06T20:49:00.001-04:00

I promised more stories so here they are...

When I ordered bees way back in February, like last year I ordered two packages from the Seaborns in Tennessee and I ordered two small-cell nucs from Denny White in Williamsville, VT. Small-cell nucs are not easy to find and Denny does not ship bees so I would need to drive to Vermont to pick them up - a bit of a long drive but I figured it would be a beautiful one.

So I left Philly on Saturday afternoon and drove to Pittsfield, MA where I spent the night with my friend Nicole (thanks Nicole!). Then I woke up early and drove 2 more hours to get to Williamsville. I arrived and Denny was ready to pack up the nucs for the trip back to Philly. I was picking up two for me and two for another member of the Philadelphia Beekeeping Guild. We drove a short distance from Denny's house to one of his beeyards. The setting was absolutely beautiful and idyllic - all I could think was "Wow, these bees are going to have a much different view when we get back home!"

Being up in the mountains presents different challenges than urban beekeeping. Denny has had bears disturb his hives in the past. The white fence is electrified and that slab of meat on the fence is bacon - the idea being to get the bears to go after the bacon and touch the fence and ZAP!

As we packed up the nucs Denny and I had a little chance to talk about beekeeping and related topics. He is a great guy and I could tell by the way he handled the bees and talked about them that he really cares deeply for the bees. I think I could learn a ton from him and it's too bad we don't live closer - he would be a great mentor. It is not easy to find people who have a lot of experience practicing small-cell, organic beekeeping and Denny is one of those people.

After packing up all of the bees and making sure there were no holes for the girls to escape from, we loaded them in the car. I drove home with 50,000 or so bees riding in the trunk behind me. Fortunately we had done a good job sealing them up!

After about 5.5 hours driving, I was back in Philly. I installed the bees in their new home right away - with some help from my assistant. This site is a small abandoned park a few blocks from the other site. Penny is planning on using it as a staging area for plants for her greening projects and also for raising cut flowers.

Here's a good shot of the queen - she is marked with a blue dot. This makes her easier to find but also each year has a designated color so that you can know how old your queen is.

The installation went very smoothly. The bees were mellow and no stings at all. They were set up in their new city home. I came back the next day to check on them and to feed them some honey to help get them started. Much to my surprise, I arrived to a scene of destruction. This was the view right outside the park.

Somehow, one day after I installed the bees, the owner of the vacant lot next to the park had decided he wanted to have the LARGE tree, which overhung the park, cut down. I mean, give me a freakin' break - look at that tree, it has to be at least 15 years old if not more. What are the chances that the day after the beehives were installed, the tree has to get cut down? I go inside the park and this is what I see - a large branch at least 6 inches in diameter is literally touching one of the hives. The hive had moved a few inches but nothing was broken or damaged - unbelievable! A few more inches and the hive could have been toast!

I was in complete shock. I called Penny and she had no idea that this was going to happen. The guys that were cutting down the tree had no idea there were bees in the park, just a few feet from the tree they were cutting down. I showed them and they came in and cleaned up the area and were more careful with finishing their job.

So, the Green Mountain bees got a rude introduction to city life, but I think it will just make them tougher! The plan for now is to keep them in this spot, but as I have quickly learned, with beekeeping you never know what will happen next!!

Bees That Way Sometimes

2010-05-05T20:24:00.003-04:00

My stepdad has all these crazy sayings that he spouts when he wants to succintly comment on some absurdity of life (actually, usually he just says them because he likes to say them). Last week he busted one out that I hadn't heard in a while "Be(e)s that way sometimes" - now with my new hobby, that saying has taken on new meaning! (One of my other favorites is: "It's not so oft the cough that takes you off, it's more often the coffin they take you off in.)

What a spring we are having - the bees are loving it - the pollen and nectar are flowing and they are busy working. We have had some really hot days already - this past weekend it felt like July. We've also had some good rain, which will ensure that a good nectar flow continues for the bees.

With all of the crazy snow we had this winter, our roof sprang a few small leaks. I enlisted the help of Cory Suter, from BioNeighbors, to repair our roof. We agreed on him installing an environmentally friendly white roof coating. Other than Cory deciding to move the beehive by himself and getting stung on the head, everything went smoothly! The bees are happy with their new, cooler roof -

Unfortunately I will no longer be keeping bees at The Spring Gardens community garden. After the hive there died, I decided that I didn't want to keep trudging up to the top of that shipping container where the hive was. It was a pain in the ass and I didn't feel very safe up there either. I asked them if we could find a new spot within the garden for the hive but they were unwilling to allow the bees to be anywhere but up on the shipping container. It's kind of a shame because the garden is a great place and I would love to be able to keep bees there and use the hive as an educational tool. Oh well, their loss.

The good news is that I have made a great contact in our neighborhood who is totally supportive of the bees. Her name is Penny Giles - community activist, environmentalist, general go-getter and I would say, unofficial mayor of Francisville (this is the name of the neighborhood where I live). Penny has found me two sites where I can keep hives and I have already set up two hives at each of the new sites for a total of 4 new hives.

Here are some shots of the first spot. Penny is planning on putting in a bunch of grapevines and other garden beds in this lot -

While I was cleaning up the site, I saw a couple of these little guys - kind of cool to see them in the city. As totem animals, snakes are a sign of change - and change is coming to this run-down lot - so I saw it as a good sign.

Here are the two hives -

While installing the packages of bees, I royally screwed up the entire process. I lost one of the queens (she flew away!) and almost lost the other (so I had to order one replacement queen). In addition to that, I was stung 8 times on the head and face, which was tons 'o fun - here's a look -

Speaking of stings - here is a great article on remedies for bee stings - the winner for best drug remedy was caladryl and the best home remedy, toothpaste!

Something interesting happened while I was waiting for the replacement queen to arrive. I went back to check on the hives one week after installing them and I saw that the hives were incredibly unequal in terms of population. About 2/3 of the bees from the queenless hive had migrated to the queenright hive. This left the queenless hive very weak and low in population. But, because the queenright hive had so many bees, they were able to fill ten frames of comb with nectar and brood in just one week (that is fast!). Once the new queen arrived, I did a little switcheroo to try to equalize the populations of the hives. I installed the new queen and then swapped the positions of the two hives. Now, when all of the field bees from the strong hive returned they would, unbeknownst to them, become part of the weak hive. Well, it worked. I did that maneuver about two weeks ago and I checked on those hives today. The populations are not totally even but they are much closer than they were. The strong hive is still really strong and the other one is now about average size.

So, lessons learned from this adventure - wear my veil, be better prepared, don't rush, stay calm and most of all, be very careful with the queen!

I have some good stories from installing the other hives too, but I will post those adventures later.

What's in Your Honey?

2010-04-09T22:04:00.003-04:00

Think you know what's in your honey? Just plain ol' honey, made by honeybees, right?

Wrong! Think again! Unless you buy your honey from a farmer's market or direct from a beekeeper, you have no idea what is in that honey.

What are some of the things that could be in your honey - besides honey? How about white sugar? Or high fructose corn syrup? Or rice syrup? Or maybe chloramphenicol - a highly toxic anti-biotic?

And that doesn't just apply to raw honey, but especially to any foods that contain honey as an ingredient - like your healthy granola bar or your Honey Nut Cheerios.

Think that honey you just bought from Whole Foods is really organic?

Wrong again! There is no such thing as organic honey in the US.

Last year the Seatte Post-Intelligencer did some incredible investigative reporting on the state of honey production, importation and consumption in the US of A. Take some time to read this and you will be pretty shocked - here's a little excerpt -

"Big shipments of contaminated honey from China are frequently

laundered in other countries -- an illegal practice called "transshipping" --

in order to avoid U.S.import fees, protective tariffs or taxes

imposed on foreign products that intentionally undercut domestic prices."

and this too -

Since 2002, FDA has issued three "import alerts" to inspectors

at ports and border crossings to detain shipments of tainted Chinese
honey. The order in 2002 came after Canadian and European
food-safety agents seized more than 80 shipments containing
chloramphenicol, which can cause serious illness or death among a very
small percentage of people exposed to it."

Then there's this piece - this happened last week - busted! But he'll probably end up walking, free to continue his unscrupulous business practices.

Now howya like dem apples?

Spring is here!

2010-04-03T22:28:00.005-04:00

A lot has happened since my last post - all of the snow has melted, the sun came out and the trees are blooming. In other words, the winter that wouldn't end has finally ended. I wish I could say that all of the bees survived and are thriving but that is not the case - one of my hives didn't make it.

Shortly after my last post I went to check on the hive at The Spring Gardens and they were doing well - I was actually surprised to see that. This was the hive that was really weak going into the winter and I had been feeding them honey all winter. A month later on a warm sunny day I went to check on that hive again and this time the news wasn't so good - no activity at all in front of the hive and when I looked inside, all of the bees were dead. They still had ample honey in there so they didn't starve. Being that there was no obvious sign of disease, the most likely explanation is that the colony was too small to maintain the proper temperature inside the hive. When a hive doesn't make it through the winter, beekeepers call it a "dead-out". I was pretty bummed but not totally surprised. Here are some pics -

This is the view when I opened the cover, big pile of dead bees -

After removing all the boxes, lots of dead bees -

I tried to find the queen in this mess but I couldn't. Dead queens can be soaked in alcohol to make "eau-du-queen" - basically a tincture that can be used to attract swarms or wild bees to an empty hive.

A few of the frames looked like this:

This pretty much confirms that the bees were too cold - they climb into the cells in order to try to get warm. All those little bee butts sticking out - a sad sight.

There is a silver lining to the loss of this hive. All of the comb - some of which contained honey and pollen - can be used when I set up my new hives (oh yeah, I am getting 4 new hives this spring!). The energy that this colony used to draw the honeycomb and collect nectar and pollen will not be totally wasted. Using this drawn comb in the new hives will save them time and energy - they will have a nice head start. The honey in these combs should also be enough so that I won't have to feed my new colonies any additional honey. So I cleaned out this hive and separated all of the comb into 3 groups - comb with honey, comb with pollen and empty drawn comb. Even the empty comb is helpful as it takes the bees significant time and energy to build the wax combs. Here is a great shot of the start of some empty comb -

In honor of the fallen bees, I decided to take one of the frames of honey and harvest it for the family. I used the simplest method for harvesting honey - crush and strain - pretty self-explanatory. Cut some comb, mash it up and strain it -

There was over one pound of honey in that frame and it was only partially full. And let me tell you, that honey is AWESOME tasting - so flavorful. Hopefully there will be lots more of that this year - so far the weather this spring is shaping up to be a much better year for honey than last year. We shall see...

Check it out - email subscription!!

2010-02-20T11:48:00.002-05:00

So I am pretty new to the whole blogging thing - still trying to figure things out. I just recently added a "Subscribe via Email" link on the side - look to the right - there it is! This should make it easier for some folks to subscribe to the blog and follow it. So, what are you waiting for - click on that link!!! That way you won't miss a moment of the non-stop excitement in Beeland!!

More snow...

2010-02-19T22:31:00.004-05:00

Well, blizzard #2 has come and gone (though still lots of snow on the ground) and the bees have survived. Philadelphia has broken it's record for the most snow in a single season - 72.1" this year so far - average is 12.7" by this time of the year. We're far ahead of Portland, ME, Concord, MA and Albany, NY - all of which are usually pretty snowy places.

Here is the home hive -

I finally had a chance to check on the garden hive - I hadn't been there in about 6 weeks or so. I was worried that they had kicked the bucket, but to my surprise, there was a small cluster of bees still alive and buzzing. I fed them more honey while I was in the hive. Here's what it looked like - I had to shovel off the top of the shed because there was about 2 feet of snow on top of it -

In other exciting news, our fledgling beekeepers group is growing up. We have an official name - The Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild and a new website -

www.phillybeekeepers.org

There are some great events and classes upcoming too - they are listed on the website.

And, my plans to set up a new apiary in my neighborhood (technically called Francisville) are coming together. I have 3 new hives ordered for the spring and I have an awesome place to put them. They will be located on a vacant lot that is set to be transformed into an urban farm this year. I am very excited about it and it should be a great situation for the bees and for me. More to come on that...

Winter in Beeland

2010-02-09T22:19:00.006-05:00

It has been ages since I blogged - it's quiet time for the bees so I guess I was taking a break too. Also, there is not much observable activity going on with the hives during winter. But, there is activity going on in the hive - here is a great little article explaining some of what happens in the hive during winter.

On sunny, warmish days the bees will leave the hive to do "cleansing flights" (yes, they won't defecate in the hive so they hold in their poop until a nice warm day comes and then they take a little trip to do their business). They will also clean house on warm sunny winter days - they will drag out the dead bees that accumulate on the bottom of the hive. This is natural and actually a good sign that the bees are keeping their home tidy.

My home hive seems to be doing well - I have seen them flying on warmer days and they have done lots of housecleaning. This has been a record season for snow in Philadelphia but so far it hasn't seemed to bother the bees -

In fact, we are getting another blizzard as I type - I will have to take new pictures when the snow is done. I am not sure how the other hive at the garden is doing. I have been feeding them honey and the last time I checked on them, about a month ago, they were doing fine. I will check on them again on the next semi-warm, sunny day.

Otherwise, I have been planning for the spring. I am hoping to get three more hives this spring. I have them on order and I think I have a place in my neighborhood to house them on but it's not 100% guaranteed yet. Once I figure it out for sure I will write about the new apiary site. I have been getting my 3.5 year-old daughter excited about helping me with the bees this year - we did a little project together - we have the best looking bee boxes this side of Paris -

Next post I will talk about my first venture into bee-sting therapy! Fun Fun Fun...

Bye Bye Boys...Hellooooo Honey!

2009-09-20T20:22:00.009-04:00

Well, it has been quite a while since I last wrote. Summer has been busy, not just for the bees but for me and my family too. I have been in the hives many times since my last blog entry and overall things are going well. The rooftop hive continues to look very strong - they have put away a full super of honey (pictures later) and the population seems large. They are still bringing in tons of pollen, which most likely means they are bringing in lots of nectar too, so they are still making honey. The late summer weather has been much more cooperative then the early summer, so this means a better nectar flow.

The garden hive is still a little behind but they are trying hard to catch up. I just added a 4th super on this hive (the rooftop hive has had 4 boxes for a while now). I also fed this hive some honey to give them a little extra boost - they gobbled up 3 pounds of honey in a few days (actually, they most likely just moved the honey I fed them into the hive's honeycomb for storage). I also took a full frame of honey from the rooftop hive and gave it to the garden hive. In the words of the outspoken, queen guru of small-cell, zero treatment beekeeping, Dee Lusby, this is the Robin Hood style of beekeeping - steal from the rich (strong) and give to the poor (weak). Hopefully we will continue to have nice mild fall weather so that the bees will have plenty more time to work. This is what a frame full of capped honey looks like (notice there are some uncapped cells on the sides) - it weighs about 3 pounds -

At this time of year, one of the interesting things that happens with the hives is the "expulsion of the drones". In preparation for cold weather and a smaller winter population, the worker bees get rid of most, if not all of the drones. Those poor boys get dragged, bitten and stung as the workers kick them out of the hive. The "hive-mind" views the drones as a drain on resources and as little help in maintaining the hive. The ground in front of the hive is littered with drones - some dead, some half-dead and some wandering around aimlessly. They will not be allowed to re-enter the hive should they try. I did at one point get to see one of the drones being dragged out - there were 3 workers herding and corralling the drone out the front door! The workers will also chew out and expel any drone brood that are growing in the comb. Don't mess with these girls!

A few other fun, bee-related things have happened in the past month. We went to visit our friends and one of my bee mentors, Vicco von Voss, at their farm on the Eastern shore of Maryland. While we were there, I helped Vicco check on his hives - he has five or six, most of which were swarms that he captured this year. Here are some pics of us at work -

Here we have taken comb from one of the cut-outs that Vicco did and rubber-banded it into a frame - the bees will fill in all of the gaps, attach the comb to the frame and chew up and discard the rubber band.

Love the satellite dish coming out of my head - really looking like a space cadet!

And finally, a very shaky video (Teresa was holding Jonah & trying to take video!)

And one other exciting development is the founding of the Philadelphia area beekeepers club. We had the inaugural meeting at the historic Wyck House in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. This effort is being led by Germantown brothers Joel and Jeff Eckel - who were recently part of a great article on hobbyist beekeeping in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Until now, Philly didn't have its own beekeeping club. This is why I have been hauling out to the Montgomery county beekeeping association for the beekeeping classes - but that is a good 45 minute drive - pain in the ass! There was a great turnout for the first meeting - about 25 people attended. I am excited to share with the group all that I have learned about small-cell, zero treatment beekeeping and I think that they will be quite receptive to hearing about these methods. Viva la small cell revolution!

Hot and Bothered

2009-08-05T22:08:00.009-04:00

We've had some real classic, hot and humid Philly summer days in the past two weeks - can you say muggy? I was checking on the bees on one of these 90+ degree days and I was pretty amazed at what I saw - this was the busiest I have ever seen the hive. Tons of bees were flying around the hive or gathering near the entrances. They were probably just trying to stay cool. Here is some video...

Then as I sat and watched the activity, I saw a yellow jacket flying around the area checking out the hive. The yellow jacket was trying to get into the hive but the bees wouldn't let him (her?) in. Instead, the yellow jacket was hanging out in front of the hive harassing a honeybee drone and a worker bee. The drone is the thick, fat bee hopping and flopping around. The yellow jacket is the long skinny black and yellow one with long wings. I got some good footage - it's not quite Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, not quite a cheetah taking down an antelope - but still kind of cool. By the way, a yellow jacket is a type of wasp - not a bee. What many people think are bee stings are actually yellow jacket stings.

This is a yellow jacket - looks pretty different than the honeybees when you actually look closely -

I didn't open the hive this time so I am not sure what is going on inside. I will open the hive some time this weekend to see what's happening. Maybe there will be some honey to take!

Summertime

2009-07-11T14:44:00.005-04:00

Finally our wet cool spring gave way to some beautiful, sunny, warm summer days. I have been in both hives a few times since I last wrote. For the most part, things are looking good - the rooftop hive is going really well. I just added the 4th medium super so the colony has grown nicely. I may be able to steal a frame or two of honey from them depending on how the rest of the summer goes - but I am not expecting much. The population of the hive has grown nicely.

Here is a look at a typical afternoon in front of the rooftop hive. A lot of the bees flying around the entrance are doing "orientation flights". These are bees that are just beginning to leave the hive to go forage - so they leave the hive and fly in circles around it to orient themselves to the hive's location. They orient to the sun and all of the structures around the hive.

The garden hive is going along slowly. The queen was released by the workers within 3-4 days of putting her in. I had to go in and retrieve the empty queen cage before the bees built comb all around it. About two weeks after releasing the queen, I put on a second medium super - it may have been a little early still but we'll see how it goes. I was at this hive today hoping to put on a 3rd super, but they are not ready for it. If you give them too much room, it is harder for them to manage the internal climate of the hive. This hive's late start could make things interesting later in the summer - I am not sure they will be strong enough to get through the winter. We shall see...

Bees in My Britches

2009-06-18T09:59:00.009-04:00

Queen bee survived the night in her cage and then I installed her in the hive at The Spring Gardens yesterday. All in all things went smoothly with a couple of small bumps on the way. Following the instructions of the bee supplier, the first order of business was to find and then destroy any queen cells that these workers had made in an effort to make themselves a new queen. When I installed the bees in this hive - 5 days prior - there weren't any queen cells at all, so it would be interesting to see how many there were - if any.

I had to go though each frame and look closely - if I missed any queen cells, there is a good chance that the bees would kill the queen that I was about to re-introduce to them. I could have just let the bees raise their own, new queen, but the hive would have lost a lot of population and time in that process. Well, there were plenty of queen cells - the bees had been busy. I found at least a dozen.

Here are some examples of what a queen cell looks like - the big droopy cell in the middle is a capped queen cell (just a reminder - ya gotta enlarge these shots - click on them - very cool!) -

A few more queen cells - there are 3 in this photo -

The one here is an uncapped queen cell - it is not as far along in its development as the capped cells. Look closely in the cup and you can see the larvae in the cell - when it gets to a certain stage of development, the bees will cap the cell and the queen will start to change into a pupa -

Exploded view - after I opened the queen cell. The white liquid surrounding the larvae is "bee milk". Also in this photo, you can see worker larvae (towards the bottom right corner) and directly above that, the little pea-shaped capped cell is a drone brood cell (drones are much bigger than workers, so their cells are bigger too) -

One more view (this was one of the most developed queen larvae) -

The bees were very calm in general - which is pretty amazing given what I was doing to their hive. I was in the hive for a good 20 minutes. There were a lot of bees flying around me because I had to brush them off the frames in order to find all of the queen cells.

So, I'm going about my business when, at one point I felt a tickling sensation on my chest - I thought, hmm kinda feels like a bee in there (I was wearing 2 long sleeved shirts and my veil). I remember thinking to myself "Stay calm" and somehow I did. I walked a few feet from the hive and pulled my shirt up - there she was, a bee crawling around on my hairy chest! That kind of got my adrenaline up a little!! But, not as high as it would go a few minutes later...

After shooing the bee out of my shirt, I went back to work. About 5 minutes later, I felt another tickling - this time, on my upper thigh - way too close to my crotch!! I thought I was just beeing paranoid after the first incident - but I was not about to take my chances on this one. So once again, I stepped away from the hive, dropped trou, and lo and behold - there was a bee crawling around on my skivvies!! Yikes!! I quickly flicked her off, checked for friends, then closed up my pants!! Now my heart was pumping pretty good! I didn't really believe it when I heard that bees like to crawl up pants - but now, call me a Believer!

Somehow I managed to finish what I needed to do - which was to destroy the queen cells and then install the new queen cage. The bees in the hive will release the queen over the course of a few days by eating the candy filling and opening a hole in the queen cage. Amazingly, I got no stings (praise the lord!). I got in my car, pushed in the clutch and my leg was shaking from being so amped up!!

But, really, I am having fun!!

Queen Update

2009-06-16T21:26:00.003-04:00

As I was finishing writing my last post, Teresa called me to tell me that the queen bee had arrived and was in our mailbox. I made Teresa open the sealed cardboard box that the queen was in - Teresa loved that! The queen is packed in a queen cage with some "attendants" - 4 out of 6 of these bees were dead - but the queen was fine. I got home too late to install her into the hive, but I will do it first thing tomorrow morning - hopefully she survives the night.

Here she is in her little cage (the pile at the bottom is dead bees - the white stuff at the top is "candy" for food during transport - when I install her in the hive, the bees in the hive will eat through this candy to open a hole which will help release the queen from this cage)...

Tough to get good shots of her in this cage, but here you can see her elongated, pointy abdomen -

That's her on the left...

Hopefully she makes it through the night. Then tomorrow I will reunite her with her hive.

The Waiting...Parts 2 and 3

2009-06-16T16:44:00.006-04:00

The second delivery of bees finally arrived on Saturday June 13th. After a few last minute preparations, I loaded the car with everything and called my helper/documentarian David (see pic below). We went over to The Spring Gardens to get the bees set-up in their new home.

This is what the "nuc" (short for nucleus hive) looked like when it arrived.

Prying it open - you can see there are 5 frames inside - a few frames of honey and a few of brood.

Here they are all tucked in to the new hive...

After examining each frame twice and looking for the queen, we were unsuccessful in finding her. I just assumed she was in there and I couldn't find her, but...

Immediately after returning home, I see an email message from the bee supplier -

"John is not sure whether or not he put a queen in your nuc. So I have sent one to you priority mail this morning. You should have her Mon or Tues. Please let me know how the bees look upon arrival and if you have a queen. The one we sent is yours."

OOOOPPPS!!!

When I was looking for the queen, I assumed she was roaming free with the other bees. But, in order to protect her during shipment, they typically put her in one of the little queen cages (like they do for package bees) - and there definitely was not one in the nuc. So they did forget to pack her!

So now, more waiting - for the queen to arrive! The bees will be OK without a queen for a little while - but they will begin the process of making a new queen. This means that when the original queen does come, I will have to seek out and destroy any "queen cells" that the bees have made on the comb - otherwise, they will kill the original queen when I re-introduce her.

Anyway, the hive sits on top of an 8 foot high steel shipping container and it is surrounded by a grove of bamboo. A very cool setting and out of the way of the main garden. My only concern is that the spot will be too cool temperature-wise for the bees, we shall see.

The Hive is Growing

2009-06-02T16:51:00.012-04:00

I have done a few quick inspections to see how things are progressing in the hive. And things seem to be going well. Progress is a little slower than I expected, but it is probably more about my impatience than anything else. It is hard to resist the temptation to open the hive every day - but it's really not a good idea to bug them that much.

That being said, I did need to check to see how the bees were coming along in drawing out the honeycomb. The rule of thumb is, when the first box is 80% full of drawn comb, it is time to add another super/box to the hive so that they can continue to grow.

So I opened up the hive and saw that they had almost drawn out 8 full frames of comb - close enough to add a new super. I looked for the queen but was unable to find her this time, though I saw evidence (lots of larvae) that she was doing her job. When putting on a new super, some beekeepers recommend taking two frames of brood from the original box, and moving it up to the new box in order to entice the queen to start laying eggs in the new super. So this is what I did - took two frames full of brood and put them in the new super, then replaced the brood frames that I took from the original super with two new empty frames for the bees to work on.

The bees were very mellow during this inspection, they didn't bother me at all. No stings. Here's some video - complete with family narration and participation!

A week or so later, I wanted to check the hive again because, well, for no good reason other than I just had to see what was going on. The bees had other ideas! As soon as I opened the hive, I was dive-bombed by a kamikaze worker bee. She stung me on my forearm! After dealing with the sting, I had a chance to take a quick look to see how they were doing in the new super. They were drawing out comb nicely - here is a cool shot of them working on new comb - this is called "festooning" (what a great word!) - they cling together and make a ladder of sorts as they excrete wax from their wax glands.

Here is a close-up view...

But overall, the ladies were very cranky and they were buzzing all around my head and veil. As I was looking at one of the frames, lo and behold, the queen walks right in front of my eyes. I wasn't even looking for her but there she was. This might explain why the bees were cranky and defensive, because the queen was right there where I was looking. It also could have been because, once a bee stings someone (or something) pheromones are released that alert the other bees that there is trouble nearby. So having just been sting, the alarm had been sounded.

After spotting the queen, I just closed up the hive, deciding that it was better just to leave them alone that day. Besides, there was no good reason for me to tear apart their home any more than I already had.

Update on second hive...
I have had a really tough time getting in touch with the people who I ordered my nuc from - they had not returned any of my emails. I finally heard from them this week - they said that they should be shipping the nuc later this week - but I have heard that before from them, so I'm not too confident. We'll see - the plan is still to keep them at the community garden.

Her Majesty is in The House

2009-05-14T14:37:00.010-04:00

Last weekend I did my first real hive inspection. This involves actually taking frames out of the hive to see what the girls have been up to. When you go in and essentially pull apart their home, the bees can get upset, so you want to go in with a clear plan and idea of what you are looking for in order to minimize disruption to the bees. The main thing I was looking for was evidence that the queen was doing her job - laying eggs. And not only did I see the evidence, but I had a fairly easy time finding the queen herself and I got to watch her for a bit. Very cool!

Besides seeing the queen, there was a lot to look at. The bees had drawn 5 frames of beautiful honey-comb. And in that comb, they had put honey, pollen and brood. I only have a few fuzzy pictures because I was trying to hold the frame and take a picture at the same time - not that easy - but you can still see the bees and some of the comb.

There was brood in all different stages of development and you can tell this just by looking. A brief recap of insect life-cycles - first the egg is laid (bee eggs are tiny and though you can see them if you look close enough, I didn't take the time to do this), then the larval stage - with bees, the larvae are "uncapped" - that means they are in one of the cells of the comb and the cell is open - you can see the little larvae hanging out in the cell. This allows the nurse bees to feed and care for the larvae. The cells are sealed (or "capped") for the next stage, the pupal stage. Then the bee makes a cocoon and finally emerges as an adult. For worker bees, this all happens in 21 days, for drones, 24 days.

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/bee4.htm

So now I am waiting for the second colony of bees to come. They should be coming next week. It looks like the plan to put them in the community garden is a go. Hopefully I can find someone to help me document the second installation with pics and video.

One week old and plans for hive #2

2009-04-30T18:52:00.006-04:00

Well, the girls (and a few boys too) seem to be doing great. They have gone through about 5 lbs of honey already, so they are eating well. Hopefully I won't have to feed them much more, but we'll see what happens with the weather. They have definitely started to make honey comb, but I haven't really gotten into the hive yet to see how much. I was watching them earlier today, which was a cool cloudy day, and they were bringing in tons of pollen. You could see some of the bees struggling to land and enter the hive because they were carrying such heavy loads. The colors of the pollen ranged from "curry yellow" to maroon to silvery yellow to bright orange. Here are some gratuitous pollen shots...

(BTW - if you haven't already figured it out, you can click individual pics for an enlarged image - which is especially cool with these shots)

If you look on the left-hand side of this picture, you can see a little sliver of comb down between the frames, that the girls have drawn out -

And this picture shows the difference in size between a drone and a worker. The guy hanging upside down towards the left side of the hive is a drone, all of the others are workers. The drones are almost twice as big,

Here is an interesting article that I came across that gives you a sense of how honeybees know their roles in the hive community, how they communicate and also how they locate flowers for nectar and pollen - pretty amazing for a little insect -

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/guest-column-lets-hear-it-for-the-bees/

The second colony should be coming in two weeks or so (this is the one that will come as a "nuc" - a mini-hive, as opposed to the "package"). A few months ago, I had the idea to see if I could keep one of the hives at our local community garden. The Spring Gardens is a huge, beautiful, well-established, 15 year-old community garden that is just a few blocks from our house - http://www.thespringgardens.org I contacted the garden and after some back and forth, I went to the garden today to meet with them and it looks like we are going to give it a try. They have a huge shipping container (approximately 10'x10'x20') that they use as a storage shed, which is surrounded by a big grove of bamboo. They suggested that I keep the bees on top of the shed in order to keep them out of the way. I am a little concerned that it might be too shady up there, but over the next few weeks, they will take a closer look at how much sun the roof of the shed actually gets. So that's an exciting possibility. It would give the bees a great source of food and also help pollinate the garden. I also just like the idea of connecting with the garden. If it works out well this year and all of the gardener's get more comfortable with the idea of having bees, I would love do some educational stuff with the hives or maybe keep a hive in the garden proper so that people could watch the bees.

I'll leave you with a little movie - turn up the volume and you can hear the buzzzzzzzzzz... (I was literally one foot away from the hive and not one bee even noticed me, they were too busy)

Finally...

2009-04-24T20:45:00.012-04:00

...the bees have arrived!! They were supposed to arrive Wednesday - which would have been great because I work near home on Wednesdays - but alas, I got a call from the post office to tell me they didn't arrive on Wednesday!! So Thursday afternoon I get the call from Fred - post office manager - telling me that "Your bees has arrived". Problem was, Thursdays I work 40 minutes from home and I wasn't finished until 7:00. So I called my neighbors, the Champagnes, and they came to the rescue - they went and picked up the bees (thanks guys!!). So I didn't get to see the looks on the postal worker's faces, but I was told that on the walk home from the post office, there were many questions from the neighbors about what David was carrying!

This is what a 3 pound package of bees looks like. They are all hanging onto each other around the feeder can (which you can't even see). The queen is in the middle of it all in her own little cage.

So anyway, I have to race home from work to try to get home before it's dark out so I can install the bees in their new home. I get home at 7:40 and still have a few things to do to prepare (hey, I was never a boy scout, what can I say). The light is fading fast and I am scrambling around. I could have left the bees in the cage for the night but since they had an extra day of travel, I really wanted to get them in the hive. There were a few hundred dead bees on the bottom of the cage, but that's pretty typical. It had gotten dark out so we needed to bring a lamp out onto the roof - wonder if any of the neighbors were watching!

It is pretty amazing to hear the package of bees buzzing and humming - as I carried them up to the 3rd floor of the house, the volume of the buzz would rise and fall - but 10,000 bees buzzing in unison is pretty loud. I think Jolie liked it too...

I bring the bees up to the roof to and I'm ready to go. So I popped the lid off of the cage and removed the can of sugar water (their travel rations). When the cage was opened, a few bees starting flying around, but 99% of them stayed in the cage. The queen comes in her own small cage which is suspended in the middle of the larger cage. When the bee suppliers prepare the packages, they take bees from many different hives - so the workers and drones don't really know the queen. If the queen were just dumped in from the start with strange bees, there is a good chance they would treat her as an invader and kill her. So, the queen cage allows the workers to get to know the queen and her pheromone so that they can accept the queen as their own.

I had already set up the hive and now I just had to dump the bees in. (This picture is actually after I had already dumped them in.)

The bees are all kind of clinging to the top of the cage and to each other - they hold onto each other and form a kind of daisy-chain - it almost looks like a net. A sharp rap of the cage on the ground (or roof in this case) makes all the bees fall to the bottom - and then I just turned the package over and literally shook the bees into the hive. It took a couple more sets of rap-flip-shake to get most of the bees into the hive. At this point there are many more bees flying around - but they are incredibly docile. And somehow, I felt totally calm - I was surprised myself. I had no idea how I would feel - if I would be scared or nervous - but for the most part, I was calm. I didn't wear a veil or gloves or anything other than the clothes I had been wearing all day.

Like everything in beekeeping, there are several different ways to release the queen from her cage. One end of the queen's cage is plugged with fondant/candy. A typical way to release the queen is to suspend her little cage between the frames in the hive and let the worker bees eat through the candy to release her - this usually takes a few days and gives all of the bees time to get acquainted with the queen so that when she finally gets out of her cage, everything is hunky-dory. One disadvantage to this is that you lose 3-4 days of the queen beginning her work of raising brood. Another disadvantage is that you have to open the hive/frames to check if the queen has been released and retrieve the empty cage and this is very disruptive to the hive. So, another way to release the queen is to pop open her cage and dump her into the hive with the rest of the bees - the so-called "direct release" method. The major risk here is that the other bees may kill the queen. Also there is a chance the queen could just up and fly away when you release her this way. The major advantage is that the queen is immediately able to settle into her new home and get to work laying eggs.

Because my bees had a few days on the road to get to know the queen, I opted for the direct release method. I pried open her little cage and dumped her in. In reality, I can't say 100% that she is in the hive at this moment - besides the fact that it was getting dark out, she could have just taken off and said "I'm outta here". But I feel pretty good about it. I will know for sure when I open the hive for an inspection in a few weeks to check on what's happening - if there are eggs in the hive, you know that the queen is in there and doing her job. It is really discouraged to poke around in the hive a lot, especially in the first few weeks of a new hive setting up their home. It is hard to resist the temptation!!

Next I had to figure out the feeding situation. Until the hive gets more established, the weather gets consistently warmer and the nectar really starts to flow, they need a little help with food. Typically people use sugar water or honey to feed the bees. I opted for honey. I was using a method of feeding that involves filling a ziploc baggie with honey and laying it on top of the frames in the hive. You cut a few small slits in the bag, and the bees are able to get to the honey without it leaking all over the place (note to self - this only works if you have a ziploc that actually closes tightly!) So I am tearing through our kitchen trying to find a freakin' gallon ziploc that doesn't leak - yeah, the treehugger that I am, we wash and re-use our ziplocs and we didn't have one new bag in the whole house (I thought we did but I never actually checked!). So I finally found one that would hold water - or so I thought. I filled it with about 4 cups of honey and a little water to thin it out. I even turned it upside down just to check for leakage - all good. So I laid it on the top of the frames and made a few 3 inch slits with a razor and covered up the hive.

At this point I am just kind of hanging out and watching the bees. There are a decent number of bees flying around - some of them bumping into me or landing on me. But again, I was pretty calm. I felt a few bees on the back of my neck - hanging out on the fuzzy hair on the back of my neck. It didn't really phase me until I felt a little pinch. I honestly didn't realize I had been stung for a good five seconds - it barely hurt at all (not as bad as some acupuncture needles I've inserted!). I did get a little freaked and I went inside for a second to make sure the stinger was out - I had Teresa scrape it out. If you ever get stung by a honeybee, first thing you should do is get the stinger out - because as it sits in your skin, it pumps more venom into you. It stung a little bit, but really not bad (today it is just itchy like a mosquito bite). I went back outside to finish cleaning up. No biggie.

I woke up early this morning to check on the girls. When I looked outside - I saw a total mess! A river of honey was flowing from the bottom of the hive down to the gutter. Bees were drowning and getting covered in the sticky sweet liquid. I guess if you're a bee, there are worse ways to go - I think it's equivalent to us drowning in a vat of ice cream or maybe beer if that's your thing! My ziploc was unlocked!! This is definitely not how it is supposed to happen! After cleaning up as best I could, I just spent some time watching the bees settling into their new home. I think they'll be OK.

To be continued...

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part...

2009-04-11T19:17:00.003-04:00

I was supposed to get my bees this coming week but due to bad weather down south, the shipment has been delayed. Bummer - but this is part of the deal. When the weather is nasty you can't really handle the bees and open the hives, so the bee supply companies have to wait for better weather before they can package and ship the bees. There has also been some flooding down south where my bees are coming from. This might not have been as much of a problem if I had found a local source of bees but I was unable to because I started looking too late and everyone was sold out. Anyway, hopefully the bees won't be more than a week or so later than expected.

In reality, the delay is probably good for me because I am not really ready for the bees yet. So I will have some extra time to prepare. I had to buy some extra hive components because what Vicco gave me will not be enough for two complete hives. Typically, the standard configuration for a hive is two "Deeps" (these are the biggest boxes) for brood production and then as many "Mediums" or "Shallows" as you need on top of the deeps for honey production. The boxes used for honey production are called "Supers" (because they are placed on top of the brood boxes). One issue with this set-up is that you are left with at least two different sizes of equipment - you will need deep frames and foundation for the deeps, and medium or shallow frames and foundation for the honey supers. So all of your equipment is not interchangeable. This is not to mention the issue of weight - a Deep that is full of honey weighs over 90 pounds, while a Medium full of honey weighs 60 pounds (still not lightweight, but better than 90 pounds). With all of this said, there is a growing trend towards using all of the same sized boxes.

So in the interest of keeping thing simple, my plan is to use all medium supers. I will start one hive with all medium supers (the package bees) and the other hive I will initially use two deeps and the rest mediums (the bees in the nuc will come on deep frames, so I will need to put them in deeps). Eventually, I will phase out the deeps (not sure how to do this yet, but...). I needed to buy some extra medium supers and frames and here is what I got -

Divvied up into bags - the pieces for the frames are in the bags - tops, bottoms and sides -

Here is my workspace down in the dungeon -

After I assemble all of the medium supers, I will prime and paint them and then they'll be ready to go. I also went up on the roof today to check out the place where I want to keep the hives. Looks like it should be fine and not too conspicuous - as long as my neighbor doesn't stick his head out of his bedroom back window too often!

So, here I wait...

Great Beekeeping Video and Some Basics

2009-03-17T11:55:00.014-04:00

I wanted to share this video with y'all. It is a bit long - but even if you don't watch the whole thing, try to watch the first section to see him handle the bees and also to hear some of the explanation of what is he doing and why.

http://anarchyapiaries.org/hivetools/node/14

One thing you might notice is that he is not wearing any protective gear and you will also notice that because he is comfortable (I mean, come on, his name is Sam Comfort!) with the bees, they are not really concerned about his presence and they don't bother him. Sam is using what are called "Top Bar Hives" which are a different set-up than the typical rectangular Langstroth hives. I will be using Langstroth hives - which generally look something like this:

Here is another example of a top bar hive - from Michael Bush's website which is an incredible resource:

http://bushfarms.com/bees.htm

Another interesting thing to note is that he keeps his bees on what are called "foundationless" frames. The modern beekeeping industry uses frames with "foundation" - which is essentially a thin sheet of plastic or beeswax which has been embossed with the hexagonal pattern of honey comb (see pic below). In theory, this foundation saves the bees work - the idea being that it gives them a head-start in building their comb. But many people believe that bees can draw out their own comb faster without any foundation - hence, the foundationless folks. With foundationless hives, you basically let the bees build their own complete comb as they would in nature - you only give them a bar with a small guide on it (the popsicle stick that Sam Comfort pointed out) in order to give them a place to start building. I plan on using foundationless frames in my hives. Another bonus of foundationless is that it saves you a lot of effort and money because when you use foundation, first of all you have to buy it, and then you have to install it on each and every frame.

Another issue that some organic and biological beekeepers have with foundation is that historically, the individual cells in each sheet of foundation are one size, 5.4 mm wide and they feel that this is an unnaturally large size (the basic idea being that industry made the cells larger in order to increase honey yields). There is a school of thought that feels that, along with overuse of chemical treatments, the larger-than-natural cell sizes have lead to an increase in certain diseases (mainly, infestation with varroa mite). This has lead to the development of what is called "small cell foundation" - which is 4.9mm wide, closer to what bees make naturally (though there is some natural variation in cell sizes based on geography and other factors). This smaller cell size seems to offer the bees some protection from varroa mite infestation by disrupting the reproductive process of the mite. For those beekeepers who want to use more natural techniques but don't want to go foundationless, they can use the small cell foundation to closer approximate natural conditions. Or sometimes using small cell foundation can be a stepping stone towards going foundationless

So, in addition to using foundationelss frames, I am going to use "small cell bees" in my hives - that is, they have been raised on small cell foundation. If you order bees that have been raised on large cell foundation, there is a somewhat involved process of regressing them in order to get them to build the more natural small cell comb. More to come...

Let's Get Started

2009-03-07T22:41:00.007-05:00

Last weekend we loaded up the family and drove down to Centreville, MD to the von Voss homestead - otherwise known as Oak Leaf Farm. We met Vicco von Voss through our dear friend Jacqui Flisher - who married Vicco a few months ago. Vicco is a furniture maker and home-builder - but these words do not do justice to his work - go check out his website and you can see pictures of their incredible timber-frame house and some of his furniture designs - his work is unbelievable and even more so in person - http://www.viccovonvoss.com/

Among other things, Vicco has kept bees for about ten years. While hanging out with Jacqui and Vicco last fall, he unintentionally helped to plant the idea of keeping bees in my head. I had thought for a while about the idea of being able to provide locally produced honey to my acupuncture patients who suffered from seasonal allergies (the jury is not out on this, but there are people who feel that if you consume honey that is produced where you live, it can help with allergies - the honey acting as sort of a homeopathic dose of all of the local flower pollen) and finally meeting someone who kept bees helped me realize I could do it myself. Of course having my own supply of honey at home is an obvious motivation too!

So I went to the library and got out every book on beekeeping that I could find. Then Vicco sent me an entire set of other well-thumbed books to read. He also promised that he had a lot of equipment that he could loan me to help get me started in my first year of beekeeping. So, last weekend it was time to go pick up the goodies. Vicco provided me with two hives worth of equipment, a veil, a smoker and assorted other accessories (Thank you again Vicco!). You can see that the VW was packed to the gills.

Today I spent the day cleaning the equipment as it has been sitting in a shed for a while at Vicco's and it was pretty manky. I also placed my order for bees today - yes, they come in the mail! They get delivered in a package (2 or 3 pounds of bees - up to 10,000 bees and a queen) to your local post office and then they call you to come pick them up. I can't wait until they arrive at the post office around the corner from us - the looks on the faces will be priceless. So, in mid-April I will receive my bees. I actually ordered one 3 pound package and one "nuc". A nuc (short for nucleus) is basically like a mini-hive - it has brood, honey and pollen already in it. I plan on having two hives and I wanted to start one with a package of bees and one with a nuc to see how the two hives compare. I am going to keep one hive on a second story roof and one in the yard.

I started attending a beekeeping class with the Montgomery County, PA beekeepers association - it meets once a month and basically walks you through a full season of beekeeping. I also went to a separate one day seminar for beginning beekeepers. Of course as you might imagine, there is a ton of great info about beekeeping online. I have recently been reading about organic methods of beekeeping and definitely plan on trying to minimize my use of chemical interventions (which are very common in commercial and even hobbyist beekeeping). There is a growing and very active community of biological and organic beekeepers who like small organic farmers, are instituting practices which are healthier, more sustainable and more beneficial to the bees themselves. If you know me, you know this is right up my alley.