Rooftop Revival

At the end of last summer we had some work done our roof and I had to move the one remaining rooftop hive elsewhere. I really missed being able to look out of the window every day and watch the bees. But, we are back in business on the roof. It has become my nuc yard where, at the moment, I have 4 nucs growing up. If you have seen old pictures of the roof, you'll notice that we used to have it white-coated. For now it is black, which makes it REALLY hot up there on a sunny day. I'll have it white coated again, but probably not until next year.

Two of the nucs were made from some of my multi-year survivor stock. I let the queens mate locally and they are both laying well. The other two nucs were made with queen cells from Jeff Eckel of Instar Apiaries. Jeff has been raising queens in Philly for the past few years. I got two queen cells from him and installed them in queenless nucs that I had prepared. These queen cells were special - they were from a "Purdue ankle-biter" breeder queen.  These bees have been bred with a special hygienic behavior, they bite the legs of varroa mites off, which kills the mites (click the Purdue link to see pictures of the mites with their itty bitty legs bitten off). Both queens mated despite our wet and cool May and they are both laying strong. Here are a couple of different views of the nuc yard, including into Center City.

 

Comcast Center and Tower in the distance

Climbing out of the window to get to my rooftop hives is a bit of a pain (actually more of a pain every year!), but having these mini hives out there is relatively manageable because at least I didn't have to haul full size boxes out of the window. I plan on moving these to my other yards when it is time to put them in full size hives (well, maybe I will keep one out there for my viewing pleasure!).

Bees at Marathon Farm

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

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!

From the Green Mountains to the Concrete Jungle

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!!

Bye Bye Boys...Hellooooo Honey!

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!

Great Beekeeping Video and Some Basics

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...