First Check of the Honey Supers

The weather this week has been absolutely gorgoeus with cool breezes, sunshine, and temperatures in the mid-80's. The bees have been happily buzzing about their activities and we've spent several evenings watching them from our lawn chairs as they bring in pollen and nectar. The sunflowers and grasses we planted next to the hives have grown tall and are starting to provide shade for the bees.

Diana is faithful in keeping the water bowls filled for the bees, though the neighbors behind us have just put up a big plastic swimming pool. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed that the bees don't notice the swimming pool and find water either in our yard or farther away. The baby bees are quickly becoming foragers and mature bees. Diana had a little bee land on her arm last night as we sat watching the hives. We were able to follow the bee for some time as she groomed and stretched on Diana's arm, seemingly unaware of our presence. Such amazing little creatures.

I checked out a stack of old texts from the University library on bee keeping and we've been looking up various questions regarding our hives. One of the things that has been puzzling us is the large number of girls that hang out on Hive 1 and just seem to linger on the flight deck and up the front of the hive boxes. We found a paragraph in one of the books that called this behavior "washboarding" because they seem to move back and forth slightly as they sit on the hive. No one is sure why they are doing this, but it seems to increase as the day goes on. I wondered if it was fanning behavior to cool the hive and evaporate excess water from the nectar....but their wings don't seem to be moving while they sit there on the deck or hive front. I suppose some things are meant to be a mystery.

We decided to open the hives this morning--it has been over a week since we placed a honey super on each one. The bees were very docile and hardly seemed to notice our presence. Hive 2 has begun working on drawing out the new comb in probably 4 of the 10 frames. Hive 1 has done nothing and there were maybe 15 or 20 bees in the top super as compared to a good 40 or 50 in Hive 2. We'll just have to wait and see what happens! We are in the middle of the honey flow here so I assume they still have nectar and pollen to gather, but maybe they're still focused on feeding brood and drawing out comb in the brood boxes below the honey super. In any case, it was a very pleasant visit and we were glad to have disturbed them so little this time around.

Pictures from June Meltdown Hive Check

As we checked the hives, the outer cover and feeder were removed first and set aside. Then we bravely lifted the top two brood boxes and set them on the hive cover. The two brood boxes were almost too heavy for us to lift together! The bees are supposed to go down between the frames when smoke is blown gently across them....but as you can see our bees are not so obliging during this check of the hive.

A Pool, A Storm, A Hive Visit, A Healing Meltdown

For this entry, I would like to begin with a story and, I promise, it will tie in with the subject of beekeeping eventually....

Several years ago, Erin and I attended a Special Olympics swim meet. One race involved children of various physical challenges swimming one lap in the pool. They were off to a grand start with fantastic splashing when, about halfway, a girl with Down's Syndrome stopped, raised her head above water, shouted "I'M NERVOUS!"--and then continued her swim. It has always struck me as one of the most endearing and honest moments I've ever witnessed. How many of us, inwardly, stop and yell, "I'm nervous!"? And what would it be like to recognize this in ourselves and feel safe in sharing it with others?

Let's fast forward to our hive visit yesterday morning. In retrospect, our tension and anxiety has been brewing like a storm a-coming since the visit where Erin was stung. It wasn't the sting that bothered us so much as all the wild comb, burr comb, brood, and bees we disturbed that day, all in the name of proper beekeeping management. We've told ourselves we did the best thing--that's what the books advise, and so on. But it hasn't truly felt "right" since then. Meanwhile, we are experiencing a bee population boom, which is wonderful, but also means working with the girls becomes a little more complicated. Our doubt and anxiety has silently increased. Yesterday's hive visit released the brewing storm of all these issues.

We had a few goals: move the front cement block underneath hive 1 forward several inches to allow for increased ventilation; check outermost frames to see if they were still empty--if so, move them inward one position; check on the progress of the newest (3rd) brood supers; and decide if we need to add honey supers yet.

Within the first five minutes of looking into Hive 1, I got stung while replacing a frame and nearly squashing (accidently) a bee. It was an intense pain in my thumb. I immediately used the hive tool to scrape off the stinger, Erin smoked the area, and I left the area for a minute to spray cold water on my thumb and softly curse. We put the gloves on when I returned. We were able to dig out the cement block and move it forward, even though the hive bodies are very noticeably heavier. But with everything else, we just felt like bumbling giants tearing apart the beehive, causing major mayhem and upheaval, and squashing countless bees trying to place each heavy, awkward super back in place. This was just awful for two nurturing types of people. We were upset and shaken.

We moved onto Hive 2, found burr comb (one piece resembled The Great Pyramid), tried to clean the tops of bee frames while separating the supers, squashed many more bees--and had a meltdown afterward. I won't go into details. If only we had been able to emulate the beautiful girl in the pool that day, to be sensitive enough to stop and say, "I'm nervous!"....I believe we would have saved ourselves (and possibly the bees) a lot of trouble. We would have placed our energies into finding helpful solutions rather than building anxiety and tension. But you know what? We won't be hard on ourselves. At least we finally DID reach the point of recognizing we were anxious and doubtful while trying to learn so much at once.

The strange thing is, all that we saw in the hives yesterday looked VERY good and VERY healthy! There were tons of new fuzzy baby bees, pink larvae, gorgeously drawn comb, and juicy nectar. We just aren't at all pleased with our current way of working with the bees--it feels more like working against them! We know bees getting squashed here and there is a fact of life, especially as the populations increase. But we are not happy in the role of systematically destroying things as we've been led to believe is necessary by the books and articles we've read. Are we really expected to check the whole broodnest for wild comb and burr comb, etc. every time? Once the broodnest is established, what is the real benefit of doing so every visit? Why would we even need to tear apart an established broodnest (unless we had a very specific reason) if everything else looks healthy and productive? Truly the books are often unclear and even conflicting in the information about hive upkeep so maybe there is another way.

We don't plan on becoming vigilante beekeepers, but we feel like it's time to make some adaptions (even just small ones), perhaps comparable to organic vs. conventional gardening. We are organic gardeners at heart, and have practiced this way with our friend Joan for five years now. For us, this is beyond matters of techniques and non-chemicals and such--it's a way of seeing the world, one that recognizes interconnection. I'm not sure what an "organic beekeeping" style would look like, or if there is much information to guide us, but we are determined to find a style which suits us much better and allows for a higher level of enjoyment and harmony. Viewed this way, the meltdown (athough uncomfortable at the time) has been healing, has become a very important turn in the road. It forced us to check in with ourselves, and we are very grateful and unified in working for the highest good of ourselves AND the bees.

Let's Talk Pheromones.....and Dancing!

The more we learn about bees, the more fascinated we become. Let's talk pheromones! They are chemical scents produced to trigger behavioral responses from members of the same species. For honey bees, pheromones are the glue that holds the colony together. They let the entire hive know the queen is alive and well, stimulate worker bees in their wide and varied activities (foraging, brood rearing, fanning, etc), regulate drone (male bee) production, help guide foragers back home, produce an alarm to signal intruders, and allow worker bees to recognize the brood's gender, stage of development, and feeding needs. One book suggests there are many pheromones in a bee's life yet to be discovered!

In bee school, Erin and I heard a lot about being odor-neutral....bathing, as well as avoiding using scented shampoos, lotions, etc. while working the bees. It was Erin who realized one day: it's not that the bees are simply finicky. If we were to visit the hives with any strong scent, we would overpower their main system of communication and interfere with all the activities I've just described! What creature wouldn't become upset and reactionary??

I read an article about a follow-up training for beekeepers in Ghana. Because of the intense heat, strong odors became an issue. They were taught to bathe or smoke themselves before opening the hives, wear protective clothing, scour their skin and clothing with cassava leaves, and to work the bees at night during cooler temperatures. Which is a beautiful example of how interconnection works, all the various elements influencing one another so that beekeeping in Ghana is slightly different than beekeeping in the southern US. If you want to know the truth, I don't even know what cassava leaves belong to--a tree?

We want to also mention another important mode of communication for honey bees: dancing! When foraging bees return to the hive, there are "dances" they perform to share information about sources of necter, pollen, or water. Two such dances are the round dance, and the waggle dance (I was sounding so scientific until just now), and we have seen both on our flight deck! The round dance is used to describe a source within a 100 meter radius of the hive. The waggle dance is performed for sources beyond 100 meters. The dancing conveys important information, as well as exciting the waiting forager bees, and pausing to give them a taste of the goodies!

Thank you to all who have been reading this blog and supporting our learning process!