Blue Hive Journals

2012-01-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

You might not think much is happening this time of year in the hive, but you'd be totally wrong! Lots of stuff still happens in the winter although it doesn't take much care from me.

The queen has started laying eggs again. Yikes, you say - isn't it too cold. The worker bees (the girls who emerged in October and November) are using their body heat to warm up the hive from a nice 60' to 93'F. They aren't warming up the whole hive, just the part around the eggs. And we aren't talking hundreds of eggs yet, more like a handful at a time.

The bees are going out for their cleansing flights. Bees don't pee or poop in the hive so on balmy days like tomorrow is supposed to be in our area, they will go out and do their business. If you look carefully in the picture, all the little yellow spots are ... well bee pee. Expect it again tomorrow!

And what are beekeepers doing in the winter? We this one is missing her girls and planning the spring split. I am going to take a few frames from my strongest hive and start a new colony. I am also assessing what equipment I need to purchase, repair and build. Being one hive short has given me plenty of equipment, but I need to get better landing board/bottom board combos. Right now they don't fit. The landing board is just where the bees land when they come into the hive. While not strictly necessary, I think it looks good.

I am also going to have to make a pile of new frames. The dying hive got wax worms - {shiver} yeck! So a number of frames are going to have the wax cut out and new foundation put in its place. I usually replace the foundation in about 1/5 of my frames each year, but this year I plan to do a bigger replacement.

Why you ask? Well at a conference last summer I learned about all the pesticides that build up in wax and decided that this spring we will be more rigorous about getting rid of wax older than five years.

I have also been reading. A lot. Which is no surprise to any of you who know me well. The librarians all recognize my voice from "hello" when I call. I will share my reading shelf in another post!

And that is what beekeepers do in the winter.

Honey Bottling

2011-12-04T15:33:00.001-08:00

We do! We bottled the last of this year's honey and we have about 25 lbs for sale (in 1 lb Papa Bear plastic bottles). If you are interested, just let us know. The honey is a rich red amber color and has a wonderful figgy flavor. This would be perfect for baking, drizzling over goat cheese, or pouring over pancakes.

Snow!

2011-11-02T06:10:00.001-07:00

We got snow over the weekend and this post is late because we were without power for three days. The bees seem to have weathered the storm fine and there were no branches down that impacted the girls. We cut down the one tree that touched the hives after the Ice Storm of 2008.

You can see that I started to winterize the hives with insulation around three sides and an extension to the roof. I still need to get hay bales behind them to cut off the wind. Once all the leaves drop, there is a good wind corridor behind them.

Today should be warm enough with temps expected near 60' to go out into the hives to complete winter preparation. Crazy weather.

Honey Tasting

2011-10-11T10:26:00.001-07:00

I am so excited to be gathering gorgeous varietal honey and decadent honey sweetened goodies for the Honey Tasting at the library.

What is varietal honey, you ask?

Varietal honey is just like varietal wine - honey made from a single kind of nectar. For example, cranberry honey is made from the nectar from cranberry flowers. Bees will get on a type of flower and work it until it is exhausted (the flower not the bee). A beekeeper will put on a fresh honey super at the beginning of a flower flow and take it off when the flowering ends. That is a varietal honey.

What is so special about it?

Varietal honey has strong notes of a single flower - but it is rarely that simple. The flavors are normally highly complex and will echo the flower, the sun and the season of collection.

If you want to check out some varietal honey, I am leading a honey tasting at the Millbury Public Library on October 25. There are still some spaces available. Here are the details:

October 25, 2011

6:00pm - 7:30pm

Millbury Public Library

Goodies will be sent home with participants!

We're famous!

2011-10-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

Check out the article in the DailyMillbury.com here.

Steve, the reporter was very brave - tho he never mentioned his own adventures in the story. He didn't blink an eye when I brought out the suit and veil for him. He suited up and dove in to the bees with me.

And thanks Steve, not just for a great story about bees but for your service to our country too! He was Special Forces -so perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise he wasn't concerned about a 80,000 venomous stinging insects.

Drone Chucking Day

2011-10-07T10:37:00.001-07:00

As I am slowly cleaning up for the fall so are the bees. I went out this morning to find a few dead bees on the entrance to the hives. What?

Then I chuckled, they were mostly drones.

The drones are chucked out when the weather starts getting really cold. Drones don't over winter as they don't really do a lot for the hive in the cold weather so the workers forcibly remove them.

I am getting ready to remove all the honey supers from the girls this weekend. Sun's hive is just impressively strong. Magenta's hive also looks great. I will do a deep check this weekend. I think Sun has screened bottom board which I usually cover in the winter or just switch out.

Here's to a last summer moment - sweet!

The bee inspector and a loss

2011-09-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

When I arrived home today after meeting a client and having lunch, there was a white car in the driveway. As soon as I saw the state tags I knew - the bee inspector had arrived. This has been a challenging year for the state inspector's office. They did not hire the two part time inspectors so the state inspector has had to do all the inspections.

He's actually been to my hives before. A few years ago, he came out with our local inspector.

This inspection he was really pleased with the amount of bees and how I am managing the hives. The queens are doing well, still laying a few eggs and there are gobs, yes GOBS of larvae. Yay!! The more bees there are now that are larvae or newly emerged, the more bees to keep the queen warm over the winter.

While we were poking I got to actually see Magenta! She is soo much lighter than her daughters. I was really surprised to see such a difference. They must take after their dads.

Mind you, I've been helping them out with some extra pollen which can push out the date that the queen stops laying in the fall. What can I say - I am ever optimistic about fall and that there will be plenty of warm days like today.

On a sad note, yesterday when I was in the hives (and got stung!), it was clear that True was gone. Long gone too - her hive has nasty wax moths. Yuck!!! So I took down one box and will put the frames it the freezer to kill the moths. I will take the honey off in a few days and then I will let that hive die out.

In the spring, I will split our remaining hives - so that we can have a new hive and a daughter queen from one of these hives. In the spring we will determine which hive is strongest and if they can remain strong if we take some bees out.

Quick Update

2011-09-11T13:30:00.001-07:00

We have a new beekeeper in the house - my daughter, age 7, decided she wanted to be in the hives with the girls, so I got her a bee suit and here she is. She doesn't really run the smoker yet, it gets too hot, but she does a great job of helping, handing and holding while standing next to the bees.

We took our medication off the hives today. With the extra help it went super fast. We gave them all more honey - one hive, Magenta's, was very light which is worrisome. Her girls got an extra quart of honey. This is the only hive where the bees have done much of anything with the pollen patties. They have eaten down half of one and they did a great job on the honey we gave them last week.

I am so glad we gave them all extra honey. We had over three days of solid rain. Generally the girls did a great job and took about 3/4 of a quart down in a week. Given that we have nice pollen and nectar sources right now, that's not bad.

I do hope that True's hive has enough bees to make it through the winter, they seem a little slim on population right now. We will see in another week how they are doing.

Go bees!

Care and feeding of honey

2011-09-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

I've had a few folks ask me about crystallized honey. Crystallized honey is perfectly safe to eat and hasn't gone bad. Honey contains so little water that it can crystallize over time. Here are three things you can do with it:

1. Use it as is - it might be grainy feeling on your tongue, but it will measure and taste the same.

2. Warm it up - pour water hot from your kitchen tap into a pot. Put the jar of honey in the pot for a while and it will eventually liquefy. Don't heat the honey up, it can change the characteristics and damage some of the nutrients.

3. Put it in the sun - if you have a sunny window sill, you can put the honey in the sun and it will eventually liquefy. Sun exposure may darken your honey but it won't hurt it.

If you really don't want your honey to crystallize, consider keeping it in the freezer. Crystals form best at room temperature, so put a large container in the freezer and use it fill up a smaller container for daily use.

Keep your honey at room temperature so it doesn't absorb moisture. With proper care honey can last forever. That is if you can resist eating it!

Spence Fair

2011-09-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

I had a great time at the Spencer Fair this year. We got a second place ribbon and I was blown away by this. Our honey is the most competitive class of honey - amber. The exhibit was just too linty this year to be blue-ribbon quality.

We also have a new beekeeper, Rob McNeil, in town and I helped him with his exhibit. His honey is darker and he got a blue ribbon!! {happy dance}

We volunteer at the honey booth every year and for me, the time just flew by. I spent about 5 hours talking about bees to everyone and anyone who stood still for more than three seconds. There were two live bee exhibits and the bees were great to hang out with. The barn got really hot as the afternoon wore on and I think we were all in danger of melting.

Other than the bees, we petted chicks, checked out the cows, squished alpaca yarn, and got in all the military vehicles. And we ate from one end of the fair to the other. What more can you ask for?

Blue Hive in the news!

2011-09-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Check it out - the farmer's market in Millbury was in the news and Blue Hive Honey was photographed.

This was the last market of the season so if you still need honey, let me know. We have one more extraction to go and bears filled with golden amber honey ready to go right now!

Honey Harvest

2011-08-31T12:25:00.001-07:00

We extracted honey last night and I am amazed at what a color difference there is between spring and summer honey. We are getting pretty fast at the extraction but it never stops being fun. As the honey spins out, the air becomes filled with the sweet scent of honey and my daughter tries to taste the air.

The bees help with the clean up and were really quick this time. We had about 13-14 frames and all our boxes. They look like they will be done before dark tonight.

This bee was taking a break from clean up to get her picture taken.

Irene and the bees

2011-08-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

The bees came through the storm just fine. There were plenty of branches and leaves all over the bee deck, but I had taken frames and supers off of the hives on Saturday morning. It was misting lightly at the end and I felt like I was rushing.

The girls seem to be doing well but not producing a lot of honey. This is a dearth - few plants are producing nectar right now. I noticed no nectar at all in any of the hives. Bees will often start eating their honey stores at this time of year if the queen continues to lay eggs. With mostly-Italian queens, they continue to lay so honey stores are very important.

Earlier this year I took honey out of the brood supers since I wanted the queens to have plenty of space to lay. Since today looks great and the kids are FINALLY back to school, I am going to give them back some of that honey. I will diluted it slightly so it can flow out of my feeders.

Honey

2011-08-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

At EAS, I got to meet and talk with Marina Marchese from Red Bee. She wrote a book about her adventures as a beekeeper, Honeybees Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper. It was cool to hear about her book it was AMAZING to do a honey tasting with her. She elevates it to an art form. Everything was gorgeous from the glasses to the honey to atmosphere. She really set a great tone to the event.

She set up about a dozen wine glasses each filled half way with honey and arranged lightest to darkest. We got tasting spoons and were give a list of characteristics to smell, look and taste for. I was about honey-ed out by the end and the last couple blurred together. I don't generally care for dark honey anyway so it was no big deal to me. However, dark honey got my attention with the Tulip Poplar, while dark, is quite fruity and lovely smelling.

She also offered some tropical honey and Manuka honey. Manuka is from the Tea Tree plant and is possibly the most horrific thing I have ever eaten. It brought tears to my eyes it was so awful tasting.

All in all, it was an unforgettable experience. Marina was generous with her knowledge and joy of bees and all things honey. Check out her website, www.RedBee.com.

Splits and Natural Bees

2011-08-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to hear a great speaker, Mike Palmer, from Vermont discuss how to make a summer split. A split is when you take one hive and split it into two, three or four smaller hives. He showed some really ingenious methods of doing this that will allow these smaller hives to overwinter by sharing a wall. He essentially made his hives from single family dwellings to duplexes. Very cool.

The end of the afternoon was a bit slow for me and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do so I checked out natural beekeeping with Buddy Marterre. It is very difficult to be an organic beekeeper in the US. You have to have your hives in an area where they are not going to be picking up non-organic pollen and nectar. Then you have certain restrictions on wax and pesticide use. Anyway, just listening to him list what it took was exhausting. There is no way my little suburban apiary was going to qualify especially when I have a neighbor down the street who got a visit from Terminix today.

But not to despair, he offered a solution called Certified Natural - sort of a half way to organic. It is really focused on how the beekeeper runs their apiary. I am going to look into it as it looked I qualified already.

One of the biggest issues I heard about over and over again was that the most common pesticides found in beeswax were ones that beekeepers used. This really does make sense, but it also got me to thinking hard about what I use and don't use here.

We do use what are called "soft" pesticides. I use MiteAway II pads that are made of formic acid. This is a natural pesticide for mites and just annoys the bees but doesn't seem to hurt them. In the past I also used Fumagillin for some gut parasites, but I am seriously rethinking that. It doesn't seem to harm bees but it can hurt people. So that is on the table.

Red and Green

2011-08-04T13:29:00.001-07:00

My family is scattered across a few states at the moment affording me about 36 hours of solitude. Now like most women, I do have some commitments during that time, but about 30 of them are mine to behold.

Thursdays find me at a local farmers market in the town next to me and I was surprised at the end of an hour to have spent exactly the same amount that I spend when the whole family is around. I also got more - lots more - glorious green goodness.

Normally I come home with a lot of fruit - usually berries - because that is what my two beans like to eat. Hubby too for that matter. Me, I went for mixed baby greens, two bundles of basil because one is just never enough, an entire pound of beets, peaches, apples, and eggplant.

I stopped at my local market and picked up tomatoes, because I was surprised, no one had any big ones yet that were red. Small cherry and a few heirloom green ones, but no red tomatoes. I also got a ball of mozzarella. I sat down and ate caprese salad. The red and the green didn't for a moment remind me of winter holidays, but of the fecundity of summer. Basil is the essence of summer and my kitchen cannot smell of it often enough.

I am going to assuage some of my need for solitude and have green beans and red beets for summer and my own peach crisp.

EAS - lessons learned

2011-08-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

This was my first time at an all out beekeeper's conference and I must say, I was a bit underwhelmed. A few months ago I borrowed notes from a fellow beekeeper from a meeting two years ago. Her notes were filled with science and it felt quite academic.

This EAS was not academic tho there were a few talks that were leaning that direction. Perhaps I missed the hard core science and they had it all on Wednesday. I didn't choose to do the microscopy and that must have been hard science.

On Thursday the first two talks were on a review of the USDA Honey Bee Health program. I've heard Jeff Pettis speak before and he never disappoints. This was interesting and informative. Then I heard Randy Olive discuss Bee Health Basics.

After listing closely to Randy for two days, I was eager to check my pollen stores. He finds in California that if he gives a pollen supplement in the fall, the next year the bees have fewer mites and he has gone treatment free. It is also important not to feed more than the bees can eat in a few days or you run the risk of small hive beetles.

Hmm. I do expect that New England might be different climatologically, but he might be onto something too. I am going to keep an eye on pollen and see where we are over the next few weeks to see if it makes a difference.

Come back tomorrow to hear what I learned in the afternoon!

Quality time with the bees

2011-07-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

I spent nearly three hours with the bees today. I had to refill my smoker twice, but it stayed lit! I feel like I haven't really spent a lot of time with the bees this summer - life has just gotten in the way and I have been more of a bee-haver than a beekeeper. This is just not how I want to live my life - keeping bees just helps to keep me in a good place.

We are experiencing a dearth right now. This means that there are very very few plants with nectar and pollen. Leave the clover in your lawn if you can.

Soo what's happening in the hives, you wonder and how about that honey...

Well, Sun's hive is just fabulous. There are gobs of bees and they are working to fill the four honey supers on there. I way over did it and they would be fine with three, but had the extra one and they are working it. They don't have a lot of pollen, which is a concern. She has a great laying pattern.

While I was working the colony, I had it open for a while. We got an unexpected visitor. Look on the bottom of the picture on the edge of the box. A bumble bee flew in and walked down in the frames. I was so surprised. She actually went down on a frame and only popped out a few moments later. The honeybees just ignored her.

Magenta's hive is doing well. They aren't putting up much honey but that is fine. There was a good amount of larvae but once again, not quite as much pollen as I would like to see. I took a couple of frames of honey from them.

True's hive is a hot mess. They are once again superceding. This is not an emergency supercedure - there are four cells that I could fine and they all are pretty big. Only three have larvae in them. If you look carefully you can see one of the princess in the top most cell - there is a blob of white. That blob is a combination of the larva and the royal jelly they are feeding her. She is positively swimming which means that they are doing well as a colony.

The other things on the frame that look like bullets are drone cells. Drones are bigger than worker bees so their cells stick out a bit.

Strangely enough, these bees were really calm even though I had to take their hive down nearly to the bottom board. They have some honey put up but I didn't take any yet.

I am going to try and get honey extracted for the fair again this year. I will be defending champ and there are no duplicate names on the trophy I have. My expectations are quite low since I am extracting quite late, but we shall see.

Guess what I've been doing?

2011-07-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last two days at the Eastern Apiculture Society summer conference in Rhode Island. It was two days of nothing but bees and hanging out with beekeepers. It was AMAZING. I got some new equipment and books too.

My brain is still buzzing! Beekeepers are some of the nicest people in the world. I guess it takes a special kind of person to love a bug that can sting you.

As I digest all I learned, I will share.

Update from June 19

2011-06-20T06:36:00.001-07:00

I spent most of my time with Joy's former hive. They have GOBS of honey. This is a frame that is full of honey and almost all of it capped in the top honey super (that's the box).
This is looking down on the lower honey super. The bees are still building it out. I run nine frames in a super than can hold ten frames so the bees build out the wax farther out from the frame. This makes it easier to extract. You can see the number 10 on the frame. That frame went into production in 2010 and will be discarded in three or four years. That keeps any pesticide residue down and keeps the bees healthier.

This is our new project for the year: Ross Rounds. These are special frames that the bees build out in circles. There is no wire on the wax so we can just cut it out and sell honey still in the wax. This is very popular in eastern Europe and was common during the depression. I think it may be making the bees a bit testy though and I might be putting it on another hive next week.
And now for the big Ta Da! This is True's supercedure cell. Yep, that's were True grew to adulthood. I have not seen any eggs yet and she has about a week to get laying. I added a blank frame right next to this so she could find an empty spot to lay into. I can't wait to see what she's like as a queen. I was really hoping that she'd be laying by now.

The bees were really quite jumpy so they are ready for a fabulous queen too. I used a lot of smoke and my new favorite bee-calmer: honey in a spray bottle. I've used that for a while with Sun's hive as they get testy when I smoke them. Nonetheless, yesterday everybody got smoked. I had to refill my smoker three times. While my smoke was long-lasting and gorgeous, I was rather surprised none of my neighbors called the fire dept!

I am so lucky to have great neighbors. Four of my neighbors know we have bees. One house to the north, two to the south and one random neighbor from down the street. When I first had bees (and had those nasty uber-aggressive girls) he used to walk his dog around the pond behind our house. He and his dog would use our path and walk through our yard. Not surprisingly, that stopped! He's stopped to meet the new, kinder and gentler bees but he and his new dog stick to the road now!
I noticed another animal had been hanging out with the bees. There is a round nail head in the picture and that should give you some scale - but there are half a dozen squirrel poos on the railing. My tracking teacher would be so proud of me for not only finding this but remembering what animal made them!

Bees and water

2011-06-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

This morning I was puzzled by the sounds of many bees outside my office window. We have been sprouting all sorts of things in pots this year and have quite the container garden going. However, with all the wet weather this spring, nothing has buds let alone flowers, so what were the bees doing?

They were drinking!

Some foragers forage for water and the wet (not damp!) soil in the plants on the deck were a perfect way to get water and not drown. They loved the lettuce plants and were diving down in to the plants but taking a picture of lettuce with a bee under it wasn't going to help.

Update from June 5

2011-06-06T07:26:00.001-07:00

I have one 1 lb jar of honey left at the moment from last year. Let me know if you are interested in purchasing it.

Ah, but what about this year? It is official, there is people honey! Out of three hives, only ONE hive has honey at this point. Sigh. I really had hoped that we'd have more going on by now. But on to the official report.

Ruby's hive is looking quite fine. I am baffled by their insistence of having both swarm cells and a partially constructed supercedure cell, but nothing is happening in either one of them. I saw eggs, but not many in the top box. My husband and kids helped me out by spinning out two frames from the brood chamber and I replaced them. This will give the queen more space to lay eggs. Their two honey supers were empty.

Sun's hive is amazing! What a boatload of bees they have in there. I had put on two honey supers and a ross round super for making honey with the comb still in it. Alas, my best wax makers failed me. I took the ross round super off as well as the queen excluder. They had no honey in the supers, but I gave them a fresh frame to build out and an empty for the queen to start laying in.

True's hive - yes, the new queen is OUT - is doing fantastically! She has to be out as they are much gentler than last time I was in the hive. I didn't mess around in the hive - I will give it one more week and then dive in. But, and this is the amazing part, there is honey in the supers. Yes, we have HONEY! I gave them the ross round super just to see. They are slow wax builders so it might not work this year, but I have high hopes.

Yay!!

Report from 5/1

2011-05-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

As is typical around here, things are a bit unpredictable. I spent hours, yes HOURS, in the hives yesterday. I cleaned them down to their cinder blocks and it was pretty disgusting at points. Nonetheless, there are few better ways to spend a warm afternoon that upto my neck in honeybees.

Joy is the oldest, so let's go to her first. She's just finished her second winter and that is getting pretty old for a honeybee queen. They can live as long as four years, but generally two is tops. Joy has a nice strong laying pattern and a fair number of larvae coming up. I didn't see many tiny larvae so that had me a but concerned. What really concerned me was that these bees were jumpy. So I looked carefully through the hive and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a tiny swarm cell with a princess inside. Joy is going to be leaving and taking bees with her and a new baby will be out soon. This hive has had Hope and Joy as queens. Any suggestions on the new queen's name?

Sun is about two weeks younger that Joy and she has a nice laying pattern too. Not quite as strong, but there is little evidence of swarming and they are building cells nicely on the foundation I gave them. This hive had the oldest, ugliest frames, so I switched them out and gave them the next best ones I had so in the end, they got four new frames.

I don't think Ruby has a clue what to do. She is a young queen and started out this spring looking good - nice laying pattern and lots and lots of brood. Well, now things have changed. She's a mess. Her laying pattern is patchy. So I was not entirely surprised to see a supercedure cell being started - this means the bees think she needs replacing. It wasn't complete but I marked the frame and will go check in a few days. They also had a ton of queen cups. This is just the start of a swarm cell but they were all dry and empty.

I would prefer a supercedure of a queen over a swarm. With a swarm you not only loose a queen but a bunch of your most experienced bees as well. A swarm can set you back nearly seven weeks, and a supercedure maybe four weeks.

It is shaping up to be a dramatic spring around here.

While there is a lot of drama going on, I did put people honey frames out. No idea what that's going to do for the bees, but just in case they feel like putting up some honey, they have room.

Report from 4/18

2011-04-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

The girls are doing well - they all have babies cooking and the foragers are flying.

All the hives have swarm cells though. This is completely confusing. There is plenty to do, the queens all have space to lay and yet there are swarm cells?? hmmm.

Perhaps they don't have enough to do or are just in wax making mode without a genuine outlet. Well, I gave them outlet. I took out five frames that were the oldest frames in the top boxes and let the girls start fresh with foundation. So they have plenty to do. As soon as these get going well, I will do it again and again so that each hive has between 25 and 33% fresh frames. As the wax gets older, it not only accumulates pesticides and other nasty chemical, it also gets just plain dirty.

And the big news - we saw our first Dandelion in the yard - two bright yellow faces that had already been pollinated so the bees already got there. This means it is time to give the girls some people honey frames!

Yay for honey!

New website

2011-04-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

I am writing for a new website, Insteading.com and they have all kinds of great articles on sustainability and self-sufficiency, some of which I wrote. Yay!

Two of my articles are on bees. The first is on how to start a beehive - check it out here. The second is on why bees are dying - check this out here. Both feature pretty pictures of my bees.

Pollen! Part 2

2011-03-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

Today was a spectacular bee day. The girls were flying like it was the middle of summer - busy as, well bees. I popped out just to get my fix of watching them and I was rewarded with loads of beautiful bees.

I am really quite shameless. I love my bees and I just like to go and watch them. If I had an observation hive, where I could watch them inside, I would never leave.

Check out the photo. The bee on the left has been visiting a skunk cabbage and the other bee has been either to pussy willow or maybe an early maple. The skunk cabbage visiting bees had pollen on their backs and a few had pollen on their butts. I tried so hard to get a picture but the bees were just too busy to slow down for a photo op!

After hearing so many other beekeepers share stories of heavy bee losses this winter, I just want to go an hug each and every bee!

Catch the buzz!

Pollen!

2011-03-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

I took a quick look at the girls today - just a howdy-do. I didn't open the hives because it is still pretty chilly - only about 40'. I wasn't expecting much in the way of activity.

Joy and Sun's hives were quiet, snuggling in the chill.

Ruby's hive on the other hand were out and had been gathering pollen! I am going to guess pussy willow pollen. When a bee gets pollen from skunk cabbage, they get pollen on their backs - it is pretty cool. Check out pictures from last year. These bees only had pollen in their pollen baskets.

Whoo, hoo - this means we have babies!

Hive Update

2011-03-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

I went to a monthly beekeepers meeting on Saturday and have been in a stew ever since. The number of people reporting dead hives from this spring was quite high. It had been a while since I had checked the girls, so I've been worried.

I have spent a ton of time fretting about the girls starving and trying to make good bee candy. Bee candy is not made out of bees, but is a sugar/corn syrup mixture that you boil and stir like crazy to make in to a hard candy.

Well that is what is supposed to be anyway. Mine last two batches I just didn't agitate quite enough so it became an oozy mess at room temperature. Sigh.

Yesterday I decide to stop spending time fretting and spend that energy actually feeding the bees. It was a bit chilly to be mucking about in the hives too much, but I was so done worrying.

So finally here is the report:

The hives are FINE.

I did take a picture of some of the bees, but I realized that this time of year the hives look terrible. They so need to be painted and the winter crud scraped off. So I am not showing you my winter crud right now.

Ruby's hive is the only one that had eaten the sugar I put on in February, so they were the only ones who got sugar. Joy and Sun's girls have only eaten about 20% of the sugar. I gave all three hives a pollen patty. Pollen patties are just squished up pollen and contain a lot protein the bees use to feed babies. I don't normally give pollen, but after a look around the area this weekend, I found two, yes TWO skunk cabbage flowers and that was it. Normally at this time of year, I can't count the flowers. Pussy willows and maples are sporting swollen buds, so spring is coming.

Really. I promise.

Bee School

2011-03-04T06:19:00.000-08:00

I love Bee School - I took beekeeper school for the first time four years ago. It seems like yesterday. I love talking with others about their hives or the hives they want, learning about new methods, and my favorite class is about the pollen and nectar sources in the area. Guess I am a sucker for pretty pictures of flowers.

Since I am no longer considered a new beekeeper, I help out. With about 200 people at the class, many hands are needed to get the registration moving smoothly.

If you want to join in the fun, it is not too late to start. The information is here.

Beeschool is also a sure sign of spring. And I can't wait for a real taste of spring!

We have a WINNER

2011-03-01T09:49:00.000-08:00

I have contacted the winner, Audra and will be sending her package out this week.

Thanks to everyone who started following Blue Hive Journals and as always, thanks to those who have been with me since the beginning!

~Me and the "girls"

Winter Blues

2011-02-24T04:18:00.000-08:00

The temperature today is supposed to be around 40' today and I am going to go out and look at the hives. Yep, just look at them. A few brave souls might fly around, but mostly the bees will stay in. I am getting cabin fever right about now and want to get my hands in the hives and get my garden started, but there is still about 12 inches of snow covering the garden and the bees are staying in.

I will have to assuage my longing for spring with a few bee magazines and some seed catalogs. Sigh.

A Honey of a Lip Balm Tutorial and GIVEAWAY

2011-02-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

When I started keeping bees I expected I’d have gobs of bees wax and make gorgeous long taper candles for everyone that first Christmas. Wow was I wrong. I might have had enough wax to make half a dozen votives.

Quickly I realized that there were other luscious gifts the bees and I could make to show gratitude to my family for their supporting my new hobby of beekeeping. I started making hand cream my first year and last year, I began making lip balm.

Lip balm is super easy and makes a welcome gift for everyone on your list. I have tried many different recipes and I really like this one for how consistently it comes out and how well it protects my lips.

You will need:

6 Tbls. Grated Beeswax - it ends up being less than half an ounce grated or pelleted

10 Tbls. Carrier oil - I use grape seed oil, sweet almond oil, sunflower or any light flavored oil

2 tsp. Honey - I recommend using a light local honey

Glass jar and small pot

Eye dropper/ pipette

6 - 8 Containers/tubes 0.15 ml - have more on hand than you think you will need! I have two sources I love here for small orders (with no minimum order!) and here for larger orders.

Here are my ingredients: honey, grape seed oil, and grated beeswax.

I just use a regular grater to grate my wax. It is a pain to get clean afterward, so I dedicate one I got at a yard sale to just wax. If you can't do that, I recommend popping it in the freezer afterward and using a brush to clean under cool water. Hot water just makes the wax sticky.

Put the wax and oil into the super clean glass jar then put the jar in the pot with water. Heat on low until the shreds or pellets melt. This will take a few moments but don't hurry it.

Once the wax is melted, add the honey and stir like a crazy. Leave the jar in the hot water until the honey is well mixed in. This can take a few moments if your honey is crystallized, but keep stirring. I just use my dropper to mix.

Once everything is smoothly melted, you can add an essential flavoring oil if you like - just a few drops. I prefer mine with just the smell of the wax, but I have a colleague who uses peppermint, orange, lemon and ginger flavorings. Ginger is amazing.

Fill the tubes or pots until they have a nice bubble on the top. These aren't my prettiest filling but I was trying to take a picture at the same time! Don't try filling the tubes by pouring from the jar - take my word for it, it makes a mess.

If your lip balm starts to get hard to work with, just put it back in the pot and remelt it a bit. I use a plastic pipette and just squeeze out the lip balm if it cools too much.

Once it cools, put the caps on and label it. I use regular white address labels and cut off the end that hangs over. You can personalized them easily. If you have translucent tubes, use clear labels.

Now for a GIVEAWAY of a Lip Balm Kit!

1 oz of bees wax, 6 lip balm tubes, 1 pipette and 4 oz honey bear

There are two ways to enter, you can comment on THIS post with at least one way that you are going to help honeybees this year (check the right column of my blog for ideas)

become a follower of this blog. Just put in the comments on THIS post that you became a follower.

Drawing will be by random number generator and closes February 28, 2011.

~Enjoy

Snow Day!

2011-01-31T12:30:00.000-08:00

In New England we have a lot of snow right now. I mean a LOT of snow - over three feet on the ground and where to put the snow is becoming a critical issue. The snow is quite the issue for the bees too - their hives are quite covered with snow. It acts as a good insulator as long as the entrance is open.

You can see where I've had to go in and shovel out the bees. I like to keep the lower entrances open even though they also have an upper entrance. This keeps the flow of air going in the hive and keeps the bees from freezing if they happen to get damp.

I just had abdominal surgery at the beginning of the year and this was the first spot I shoveled. While my incisions are healed, my stomach muscles assured me they had not fully knitted back together. Nice to know that there is still plenty of snow coming this week so I can continue to build back strength in my belly!

And while it breaks my heart to find dead bees at the entrance to each hive, I am content to know that this is an indication of live bees on the inside. So for the moment, all three hives are alive. I can only hope that the next few storms - because it is still January - will go gently on the bees.

Think warm thoughts!

Crystalized Honey

2011-01-24T06:18:00.001-08:00

Does that little bit of honey at the bottom of the jar have crystals in it? Did your jar turn solid in your cupboard?

No worries! Your honey has not gone bad. In fact honey doesn't spoil. Honey was found in jars in Egyptian tombs and was still delicious.

You can do one of two things:
1. Nothing - crystallized honey can be used in any way liquid honey is used.
2. Re-liquefy it - just put the jar or plastic bottle in warm water from the tap. Let it sit until the honey is liquid or the water cools. Repeat until liquid.

Microwave? I don't recommend microwaving the honey more than 5-10 seconds TOTAL. The pollen and delicate flavors can be destroyed by very high temperatures.

Go honey!

Happy New Year

2011-01-02T12:26:00.000-08:00

It is a happy New Year in the bee yard. All three hives had girls flying yesterday.

Ruby's hive looked amazing! There were crowds of bees at the entrance and the were really stretching their wings.

Sun's hive also looked great. These bees prefer to use every entrance other than their front door - they are such New Englanders! They were coming and going with great purpose.

Joy's hive looked quite sad in comparison. There were bees coming and going but the traffic was significantly less. There is nothing I can do about it right now other than cross my fingers and hope they make it thru the next few months.

I am going to give the bees some "bee candy" which is a sugar patty they can eat if they cannot get honey. Each of the hives should have plenty of honey, but the sugar patty is just insurance. It is like having a fridge full of good food and the take out menu under a magnet - just in case!

Here are my bee-related goals for the year:

1. Keep three hives going all year (and overwintered)

2. Continue to build up the local peer-network of beekeepers (so if you know a beekeeper in Millbury MA -send them my way)

3. Finish my book on aggressive bees

Go Bees!

Winter preparation

2010-12-01T09:02:00.001-08:00

Just as we are putting on our hats and mittens more frequently, the bees are getting ready for the winter as well. I have been feeding them honey for a while and it has been just too cold to continue with that for a while. I tried to feed a bit of 2:1 sugar water, but they have officially stopped taking that now.

2:1 sugar water is 2 parts sugar to 1 part water. This means the bees have to less work to store it. Is it as good as honey, no, but it can get them through in a pinch. Think of it as ramen noodles - not your staple food, but will keep you alive.

Today I took apart the hives for the last time this year. The weather is warm but rain is threatening. I took out all the feeding bottles and only one hive even took the sugar water. All three hives looked amazing. There were plenty of bees, they were flying in small numbers, and they were gorgeous.

I love being a beekeeper. Days like today are precious - I worked the hives while everyone else is going about their lives at school and work, and the bees and I had our secret moments of gratitude and worship.

Awards

2010-11-15T17:27:00.001-08:00

The girls are doing great - enjoying the warmish weather. I have completed their winter preparations with some extra insulation. I am trying to get them to take a ton of honey and nectar that I extracted this fall.

On a beekeeping note, I attended the Worcester County Beekeepers Association Thanksgiving Banquet. It was there that I got to pick up my spiffy silver cup award for having the Best In Show Honey from the Spencer fall this fall.

This cup I get to keep for a year. You can see my name right below Peter Niemi's name. I asked Peter last winter for his secrets to winning Spencer and he generously gave them to me. I followed them to the letter and ta da! the cup is mine for a year (and Peter didn't enter the fair this year!). If you ask me what he said, I will share.

This pretty glass trophy I get to keep forever. It is really beautiful.

But the evening wasn't over.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from Ken Warchol, the Bee Inspector. I got a management award for beeing a good beekeeper.

I got a beautiful plaque - sorry about the glare - it is such an honor to be thought of as a good beekeeper and be recognized by my fellow beekeepers. This is still a pretty new award and I am still blown away that Ken thinks I am doing a good job.

I am still gobsmacked.

Fall Feeding

2010-10-20T18:28:00.000-07:00

I made the hives really tall - it is funny to see them tall again. I took down the fall medications I use for mites. Varroa mites attach to bees when the are little larvae and then when the adult emerges from the cell, the mite is already attached. They suck the life out of bees - not all the life, but just a little at a time. The makes the whole hive just a little bit less able to fight infection. The more mites, the less able the hive is able to fight infection.

And did I mention that the more mites a hive has, the meaner they get!? Oh, yeah the bees in my first hive -the meanest bees in Worcester County- had high mite levels. Not wanting to go there again, I treat my bees with a miticide that is gentle to the bees and to me.

I added a hive box and gave the girls lots of honey to help them keep warm in our chilly mornings. They seem like they are doing well. Unlike last fall, Sun's hive is the weakest of the three. The other two hives have more bees, but all three seem to be quite happy and doing well.

I did discover we need a new cover for Ruby's hive. The cover is old and rotting underneath. It is letting in moisture and that can be fatal for the bees in the winter - if they get wet in the winter they can freeze and die.

Over the next month or so we will be tucking the girls away for the winter. They will be getting a partial wrap around the hives to help keep in the heat and protect them from snow covering the entrance way. I also put a few bales of hay outside of the bee-deck to help with the wind. I don't know if it really really helps, but it makes me feel better.

I miss the bees already!

Bee porn, slutty queens and vegetarianism...

2010-10-02T17:23:00.000-07:00

We had three speakers at the fall Massachusetts Bee Meeting - a queen breeder, a researcher who studies queen quality among other things, and Harvard profession who studies public health.

What a great day! One of the speakers was late so we heard both talks by the Joe Latshaw (http://www.latshawapiaries.com/). While he produces queens for commercial beekeepers and works on a scale that is way beyond my wildest dreams, he explained to us - hobbyist beekeepers - how to use what he's learned and some of his techniques to become our own queen breeders on a small scale. What I took away from Joe's talks is that I need to think about the sustainability of my own apiary and I now have the tools (ok at least the directions) to select and rear my own queens to make that happen. Joe also stressed keeping records. This resonated with the scientist in me!

Our second speaker was Alex Lu from Harvard. He titled his talk "Putting your health in your hands" and was a great talk. I can see how much of what he spoke about being applicable to my hives - preventative care is way less expensive and more sustainable than treatment. I love the reminder to eat vegetarian before 6pm - save the world and your body by consuming less meat which contains high levels of chemicals and antibiotics.

The final speaker was David Tarpy from North Carolina State University. He explained why we need genetic diversity in our bee yards and that slutty queens are better. On average, honey bee queens mate with a dozen drones - but some will mate with that many in one day and still go out the next day for more! He showed us a great video of a queen on her nuptial or mating flight. Wow - bee sex is brutal and a one shot deal for the drone! Aside the idea that more is better for the queen, I learned a great deal about the reproductive health of honeybee queens. They are pretty amazing girls!

Bee meetings are great for socializing with other beekeepers too. I got to sit with two of the other beekeepers in Millbury - always a good time!

Final Harvest

2010-09-29T12:16:00.001-07:00

We made our final harvest of the year and reaped maybe 25 lbs. This brings our total for the year just over 100lbs from two hives. This is really terrific and we are so happy with the girls.

This fall honey is much darker in color and deeper in flavor than our spring honey. As you walk around different parts of the yard or when I go in the hives, the odor of nectar is quite over powering. The bees are ON goldenrod like crazy. This is one of the most pungent flowers ever in my opinion. Until this year I had never really noticed that it had any fragrance, but now, I smell it all the time on the flowers.

This is a picture of our back deck and the tray is holding wax. The tray is covered with buttery yellow wax. But that is all brown you say - well yes, the buttery wax is COVERED in bees. The lovely girls are sucking out every morsel of honey from the wax and tucking it away for the winter. All the flying specks are bees coming to find a space on the wax. The sound of the bees and smell of the wax is intoxicating.

The other cool thing we noticed is all the bee relatives who have visited the honey. We have other kinds of bees and wasps of every flavor and color. This was best viewed from inside the house!

~Go bees!

Bee's Knees Brownies

2010-09-22T09:26:00.000-07:00

1 cup butter, the real stuff
1 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cup honey from happy bees
1 tsp good vanilla
3 large eggs from a local farm
1/3 cup cocoa
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup of pecans, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 350' and grease a 9x12 pan.

Melt butter and chocolate in a water bath (for me that is a glass bowl nestled in a small pot with water it). Mix until very smooth. Add honey and vanilla and let cool. Whip the eggs until frothy and add a small amount of the chocolate to temper the eggs. Then add the remaining chocolate. Add cocoa and flour and stir until just moistened. Pour in to pan and top with nuts.

Bake 35 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before cutting and use a very sharp knife when you do.

Best in Show

2010-09-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

Our honey won not only a blue ribbon but BEST IN SHOW! Whooo hoo. Good job bees!!

We had a great time volunteering at the Worcester County Beekeepers Association booth. We sold lots of honey, honey sticks and S had a wonderful time making beeswax candles.

And now for the brownie news:

Now my friend Andrea is going to challenge me to do something else next year! I must say the brownies were popular with the judges - they loved the distinct honey flavor and the moistness. I will post the recipe this week.

Brownies for the fair

2010-09-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

After much experimenting and many emails from the talented Andrea, I think I've got it. I changed a few ingredients, but mostly changed the preparation of the brownies. They are really good. You can see they are dusted with cocoa on top, but with the amount of honey in the recipe, it will be absorbed in no time!

As you can see, there are two lovey jars of golden goodness perched next to the brownies. I am bringing honey again this year. This will be our third year exhibiting honey and I expect to be in the light amber category. Last year our honey was much darker.

The honey this year is mighty tasty, but if you've been reading this blog for over a year, you might remember that the Spencer Fair is a beauty contest. A mere 10 out of 100 points are awarded for taste. The remainder is all about looks, baby. I've been polishing and banishing bubbles all morning. The honey looks great. Let's hope the judges agree!

Normally I'd say I had butterflies, but perhaps today I should rephrase that and say I have honeybees in my stomach. Judging is tonight after 6pm.

We are going to the fair to help with the WCBA Honey booth on Saturday afternoon. If you are in the area, come on by and say hello.

Brownie Batch #2

2010-08-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

I cheated a bit and found a recipe that won a blue ribbon at another fair. I had high expectations; alas they were dashed. This batch tasted good, but more like a sponge cake than a brownie. The texture was rubbery.

Sooo, I am back to baking. I grabbed a new round of supplies and plan to make some changes to this recipe. I am going to add more chocolate to start with and bake it in a slightly smaller pan to make it more dense and luscious - more brownie-like.

Stay tuned...

Brownies

2010-08-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

I am trying to make brownies with just honey as a sweetener to enter in the Spencer Fair. The fair is next weekend, so I've left it a bit late especially since I don't have a recipe that actually uses honey. My first experiment was going to be using three chocolates: unsweetened, bittersweet and cocoa. Alas, my lovely friend Andrea gently pointed out that bittersweet chocolate has sugar in it.

So in addition to switching the sugar out, I also switched out the bittersweet chocolate and substituted unsweetened.

Experiment #1 - total failure. The brownies are terrible!! They have the weirdest texture and are, believe it or not, too chocolaty.

Tomorrow will be Experiment #2 - I am going to actually change two things, which is generally one too many for most scientists, but this girl has a deadline and it is soon! I am going to jump ahead and I think this will be much closer to real brownies moist, rich and oh so sweet.

Now this is science I can love!

Good friends

2010-08-23T10:36:00.001-07:00

I have the nicest friends!! A lovely friend of mine gave me a book called The Hive Detectives.
This is targeted to middle school aged readers but is a great book for adults. Loree, the author, visited with many beekeepers and scientists to explore colony collapse disorder.

If you open the book, the first pages show a beekeeper, Mary, who is my mentor! I have visited her beautiful purple and gray hives. Totally cool.

Good reading and I never tire of looking at beautiful bees.
:)

Honey Harvest

2010-08-09T08:33:00.001-07:00

We harvested honey for a second time this year and got about 50lbs. It was a long day but made extra fun by my mom, my husband's mom, his grandmother, and my sister joining in on the fun. We were hoping for a larger harvest but were foiled by Joy.

Yes Joy - the queen who likes to do her own thing got on top of the queen excluder and well, did what queens do, she laid eggs. Sigh. So we took the offending excluder off.

A queen excluder is a grid with openings that are too narrow for the queen to go thru. You place it above your brood boxes, where the queen is suppose to live to keep her out of the honey boxes. Now we have learned the lesson that it can work both ways - it will keep her out of the brood boxes if she's in the honey super.

My six year old, was in the honey and wax from the first cut and declared the honey GREAT!

The New Queen

2010-07-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

We loved all the suggestions folks came up with for the queen's name. Finally it just clicked. My six-year old came up with the new queen's name.

Daughter of Rose will be...

Ruby.

The good, the bad and the painful

2010-07-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

First the bad.
We didn't find any young larvae in Joy's hive. We went in to give them some empty frames so she'd have room to lay eggs. We found plenty of capped brood, meaning the larvae are at least nine days old. We gave the hive a frame with young eggs (under three days) just in case. Just in case what you wonder... in case Joy is no more. They can make a new queen out of any old tiny egg. If she is there and doing well, then these eggs will be just a bit more brood - no harm done..

The good.
Sun's hive is rockin'! We took seven frames of people honey from her hive - yep you read right - PEOPLE HONEY. Whoo hoo. Sun had lots of brood and honey. We extracted honey from ten frames in total and got about three gallons. Yay!

The fabulous.
Rose's daughter is gorgeous! Yep, we actually got to see her in all her magnificence. She's a really nice size and the bees are quite plentiful in this hive despite swarming. (Which, we never did see.) I would have taken pictures, but I was too scared to remember! No name yet, but I am still taking suggestions.

The painful.
After coming in from extracting, I thought to myself that it has been over a year since I'd gotten stung. Ahhh the hubris. Sure enough, I went out to plant some basil I got at the Millbury MOMS Club Annual Banquet and a bee got caught in my hair. You can guess the rest of the story. Mike was amazing and got the stinger out super fast.

Let me know if you are interested in purchasing honey this year - we will be selling again in August! Yay bees.

Inspector's Report

2010-07-04T13:17:00.001-07:00

We got a visit from the State Bee Inspector last week. Ken Warchol, our local inspector, must check our hives at least once per year. He checks for diseases, pests, honey, equipment, and how well you keep your bee yard.

This was a milestone year for us. We are no longer "New Beekeepers" on the inspection sheet.

He confirmed exactly what we found in Rose's (formerly Pink's) hive - they are going to swarm (if they haven't by now) and he found five capped swarm cells. This is great - there will be plenty of strong contenders for the throne.

Sun's hive is in lovely shape with lots of people honey and good stores of bee honey.

Joy's hive is getting honeybound AGAIN.

So, this was a good report. Ken kindly stopped by on his way home just to chat and have some lemonade. I learn so much from him about my hives and he is a generous teacher.

Yay bees!

The good, the great and the downright Joyful...

2010-07-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

First the Joyful
Joy's hive is honeybound. We spent last weekend checking the bees, took out six of her 20 frames, spun out the honey and returned two of those, plus four "blanks" for the bees to make in to honeycomb. And less than a week later, they are filling those up with honey AGAIN! Hello Joy... make babies and put the honey in the people-honey boxes.

There is at least 25lbs of people honey in her hive. There just should be more.

The great!
Sun is AWESOME! She's makin' babies like crazy and filling up the people-honey boxes, or honey supers in bee keeper lingo. Her girls are always a bit jumpier that everyone else, but that seems to be the personality of the hive.

Then the good
Rose is clearly a good queen. The bees are super calm and there are LOTS of them. She might be be just too good of a queen. With all the bees in her hive, even with three honey supers, they are going to swarm. Yep, Rose is leaving and taking a bunch of bees with her. I expect the swarm to leave any day now. When we checked the hive, the very first frame I pulled and an uncapped queen cell and a lovely capped cell. Sigh.

I will keep my eye out for the swarm, but I am not really interested in a fourth hive right now. If I did find it and get it into a box (and that alone would be worth taping for the laugh factor!), I would have to get them going in their own hive. I could combine them with my weakest hive in the fall, but as it is right now, they are going well.

Rose does have a lot of honey on the hive. They have at least 25lbs of people honey ready to go, so I am confident that even with a new queen (who better be a slut and mate with a LOT of drones), we will still have plenty of bees for the winter.

Any name ideas for the daughter of Rose?

Mowing

2010-06-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

I feel like such a bad beekeeper. I mowed our lawn Saturday - what a job. We've had a lot of rain on the weekends lately and our lawn has made that inexorable shift to meadow. We have lots of pretty clover and hawkweed flowers appearing in the lawn. The bees have been loving it.

Then came the day where I had to mow. There were a few brave bees who tried to grab the last of the nectar before I mowed and I hope they all got out of the way in time!

If you can, help support the bees and leave a small section of your lawn unmowed to grow clover or other meadow flowers. It is a key nectar source this time of year as most of the trees are done flowering but big summer sources of nectar aren't peaking yet. Good summer nectar sources are wild roses, daisies, and blackeyed Susans.

Go bees go!

All Hail the New Queen

2010-05-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

Without a queen in Pink's hive, thing were going to get ugly. I needed to get a queen and get a queen fast. Luck was with me when George O'Neil of Autumn Morning Farms had a New England breed queen available. He delivered this package to Mary Duane, my friend and mentor. Mary works at a high school and the kids took a look at the bees under the 'scope. All the wings, legs and other bits were intact.

This is a picture of her before I set her in the new hive. She is at the top of her queen cage with a worker just under her. You can see how a young queen is very similar in size to a worker. The more eggs she lays, the bigger she will get.

I carefully placed her queen cage on top of the bees to gage their reaction. I was looking for curiosity and not aggression. If they became aggressive that would imply there was already a queen and either she's a virgin or she's just returned from her mating flight. Either one of these scenarios would explain the lack of eggs.

Bees were curious...

really curious...

and before I could snap another picture, they covered her cage, I put down the camera, and grabbed her! My fear was that they were going to ball her. Essentially that means the bees cover her cage and suffocate her.

I made a quick call to Mary who came over. We enacted the same steps and then Mary (my expert!) called Ken Warchol (our local bee inspector and her expert!). Ken had a great suggestion - put her in the hive for two days but leave her cage so that the bees cannot release her or harm her. Reassess at that point and remove her if they are aggressive toward her or release her if they are calm.

Having a plan helped me relax. Having Mary there helped too. We watched the bees' behavior and they seemed focused but not aggressive.

I have a good feeling.

And a name for her. I'll tell ya in two days if she makes it.

Colony Collapse Disorder

2010-05-26T05:58:00.000-07:00

Looks like finally there is some glimmer of understanding of Colony Collapse Disorder. At a recent scientific meeting it was revealed that the interaction of two pathogens, one a fungus and the other a microbe, might be responsible for killing bees.

While understanding of the causes of CCD has been a huge challenge, treating it maybe even more challenging.

CCD is not much of an issue for hobby beekeepers like me. I treat my bees for the microbes as do most other beekeepers. So what is different about commercial beekeepers? Commercial beekeepers move their bees around, often feed them sugar water, feed them a single nectar source, and let the temperatures in the hive fluctuate. This stresses the bees significantly and we know what our immune system is like when we are stressed - it doesn't work well.

Food for thought.

The good, the bad, and the down right terrible

2010-05-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

The good:
Sun is rocking. Her hive is just humming along so well I gave them a new honey super. That is a box for people honey. I only took a through the top two boxes, but that is all I needed. There were a few queen cups - indicating a desire to swarm. This is totally normal for this time of year and there were no eggs in any of them. So the bees are just planning for a rainy day.

They are still using the back door entrance so checking on them is always a challenge. I have to stand somewhere but it is always best not to stand in front of an entrance to a hive. Where do I stand if they use the front AND the back!?

The bad:
Joy still has some larvae in the top honey super that have not emerged so I cannot get another super on them yet. I did get to see some really adorable eggs and larvae in the brood chamber - where they belong. They do have about six cells of capped honey and lots and lots of near honey. With the awesome weather coming up this week I am confident that they will cap more honey.

The down right terrible:
Pink is gone.

It was clear something was amiss in the hive. The smell was wrong and there is very little pollen coming in. I couldn't find eggs or even young larvae. The bees are filling up the brood chamber with honey and they are wicked productive, let me tell you. I could barely lift the brood chamber it had so much honey.

What ever happened was a surprise to the bees because there is no supercedure cell. That is the way a hive usually makes a new queen - they start a queen cell in the middle of a frame. I looked carefully and found nothing even close to a supercedure cell.

This leaves me with two choices 1) give them some eggs from one of the other hives and let them make a new queen or 2) buy a mated queen from a local beekeeper.

Given that there are still a boatload of bees in the hive and they are still fairly calm I am leaning toward buying a new queen from the same dealer I purchased Red, Pink's mom three years ago. I hate to loose too much time just before the peak of nectar flow.

I am really quite sad to see this line end. I have always loved belonging to Red and Pink. They both had a real gentle streak that made me so happy to be a beekeeper.

Joy's hive

2010-05-04T12:56:00.001-07:00

Now looking at this, you'd think it would be clear to me that her laying pattern is upside down. This was taken at the beginning of April, before I put on the darn honey super. You can see the patch of brood, or baby bees, as the light tan in the middle. This is surrounded by yellow pollen and there is nectar on the corners.

If you flip this over, it is a great pattern. Joy is so her own girl!

Still learning

2010-05-02T18:16:00.001-07:00

I checked on the girls today and they look great. It looks like the skunk guard got tipped as some point recently and something (possibly black and white) was biting or scratching Sun's hive. The bees have a funny bottom board that they like to use as a back door entrance. I think this is why the beastie was bothering the girls in middle. Given that they are New England bees, that is no surprise - no one around here seems to actually use their front doors!

Joy is teaching me yet again that she knows how to be a bee better than I know how to be a beekeeper! I put honey supers on all the hives a couple of weeks ago. Joy's bees had done nothing on the bottom super so I expected that the honey super would be merely a plaything for them for a while. Alas no. The wax on the bottom super needs to be cleaned out - dead bees, bits of wax, and other detritus litters the frames.

They are either being lazy or just don't like that wax because Joy decided to lay eggs in the honey super frames! Grr. I don't like using a queen excluder between the brood boxes and the honey supers as I don't think the bees like to go thru them and I get less honey. Nonetheless, I put one on today - after assuring myself that she was in the brood box. (She is a really pretty queen!)

Pink's hive is doing beautifully. I could watch her bees all day long. Pink's laying pattern looks like not only did she read all the books, she probably wrote them! We have our first capped honey cell - yep - cell singular! Her hive smells so good - all business and wax.

It was a great check - and my smoker stayed lit the whole time!

Movin' day

2010-04-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

After much discussion and shadow watching, we've decided to move Joy's hive. The bees just aren't building up much steam. We had a skunk bothering the bees two springs ago so we are still concerned about that. We've moved our compost pile ffaaarrr away from hives and enclosed the deck they were sitting on.

Now Joy will be ... outside the fence. Deep breath! We are going to have explore some other skunk-foiling measures: rolled chicken wire and tack boards.

A skunk walks up to a hive and knocks on it. The bees, being concerned, come out. The skunk grabs them, rolls them on the ground until dead, and eats them.

The chicken wire and sharp nails sticking up foil the skunk's attempt at a free lunch. {evil laugh here}

To move the hive we need a nice day, lots of courage, some wire, staples, and straps. Maybe even a few friends.

Bugs, bugs, bugs!

2010-03-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Bees are the only bugs I expect to see at the hives so I was quite surprised to see that the hives are a buzz with all kinds of insect activity in addition to bees.

There are a ton of flies everywhere. I they were just flying around, not really hanging out on anything so I am wondering if there is ... well a body of a mouse or something near by. I didn't smell anything other than the musky scent of the bees so any more is just a guess.

I saw my first wasp of the season. She was just basking in the sun and was a solitary wasp, not the nest making kind. Solitary wasps are often fairly gentle. They lay one to a handful of eggs in one spot, then move anther spot and do the same. Without a single nest to defend, these creatures are fairly non-aggressive.

The most fun find was a butterfly! Usually my first butterfly of the season is a Spring Azure.

But not today! Keep in mind I am a beekeeper, not a butterfly keeper. I THINK the butterfly I saw was a Question Mark. They generally fly first in April, but with the nice weather it is possible it is out earlier. It was too fast for me to get a good picture and only held still in positions that were unphotographable!

The photos are from the Butterfly Atlas - a great project from Massachusetts Audubon Society. Check out the entire atlas and the great pictures here.

Checkin' in...

2010-03-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

The girls are doing GREAT! I checked my notebooks from last year at this time and I was a very sad beekeeper: one hive had died and the other (Red's) looked like it wasn't going to make it. Well Red made it and was replaced by her daughter Pink.

Sun's hive is the weakest, they are using about 3-4 frames up top. They had sugar and pollen left. They were quite active and bringing back plenty of pollen and the only reason for pollen is BABIES! I still had three jars of honey from last year, so I gave them honey. The little rectangle in the middle is the opening to the hive. The honey is on risers so the bees can get under the lid and drink the honey from the holes. I put their outer lid over the top of this empty box.
Joy's girls were occupying about 5 frames in the upper box and that is great. They were pretty active when I opened the hive. Since my sweetheart and I had already moved frames this weekend, I didn't muck about too much, mostly just said hello and put the honey on them.

Pink's hive made my heart happy. I dug in to see where the empty frames were in the top box and found BROOD. Yep, I saw babies {happy dance}. It was a small patch but they were about ready to hatch out. Mazel tov Pink.

Since it was such a beautiful day, I just hung out at the end of all this and just enjoyed the bees. I got this picture of a bee with pollen. If you look carefully you can see a light line on her back between her wings. That is also pollen that her sisters will clean off her when she goes into the hive. The pollen is a weird green color too and comes from skunk cabbage. Skunk cabbage has its pollen inside the spathe. The odd shape often gets pollen on the bee's back. Check out a picture here.

Next pollen should be pussy willows and red maple - start looking for them soon. Spring is here!

Greeter

2010-03-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

I was greeted by a beautiful sight when I came home today. This bee hovered around me until I just had to go in. She's still out there - flying around and landing on the rug. It is rare that I get to interact with an individual bee like that - lovely.

got honey?

2010-03-15T16:45:00.000-07:00

I am working on bee school tee shirts this year. As soon as I get a sample, I'll post a picture. In the mean time, here is the logo:

got honey? will be on the back. EM Screen Systems in Millbury is doing the shirts and they are fabulous to work with. It is especially nice to work with Bernard, the office dog!

Joy!

2010-03-09T06:17:00.001-08:00

My wonderful sweetheart and I donned our bee suits and checked on Joy's girls Sunday. We have been concerned that our strongest hive going into winter just didn't have that many bees flying in and out. So we checked on them.

They are doing fine. We opened the hive and found that the cluster of bees are hanging out on the sunny side of the hive - no surprise - and cover about 5 1/2 frames. That is just peachy for this time of year. Whew! and Whew again!

We decided that now is not the time to clean out the hive because it really is a bit chilly. The bees keep the hive a balmy 92' to keep the baby larvae at the right temperature for proper bee development. If we left the hive open too long, they might get chilly. We did move some frames of honey closer to the cluster so the bees didn't have to work so hard.

Then I couldn't get all the frames back in! {blush} I worked to cram that last frame in and finally gave up. Until I can clean the box properly, it ain't goin' back in. It is an empty frame, the bees ate all the honey out of it anyway.

I am helping with Beekeeper School. I've taken it two times and now it is my turn to give back. I helped with registrations and we had over 100 walk in registrants. In total we have over 160 registrations - with many of them families. The room is packed!

I was put in charge of tee shirts too. I love my shirt from last year but it is a bit dark. People have to get kinda close to see what is on it and I'd rather keep my personal space... well personal. So I am going with only light colors. Interviewing printers has been a hoot so far. One more to go and then I will decide. I am amazed where ever I go, I find people who love the bees. Makes me smile.

The girls are flying!

2010-03-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

I got buzzed around noon today and thought it might be a stray girl, but I just checked and there are LOTS of bees out and about from all three hives. It was a bit concerning that Joy's hive, my strongest going into the winter, had the fewest bees out. I am just hoping it is because the were all out already or that they were using the upper entrance to the hive.

So what are they looking for you wonder....

Skunk Cabbage is my guess. I haven't checked the wetlands behind the house in the last few days, but often the SK is out early in the spring.

HUGE SIGH! Many hives lost last year were lost in March, so my fingers are still crossed, but my toes can relax.

Bee School starts Thursday and rather than participate as a student, I am helping as a volunteer. I would love to say it is because I know it all {wink!}, but it would feel a bit odd saying I was a beginner when I am... well an experienced beginner now. It is more that is my turn to give back to the community that continually nurtures me and my bees.

Eeewww!

2010-02-23T06:08:00.001-08:00

As I expected, the warm sunny weather this past weekend brought the bees out of the hives. While my kids used the time to play, the bees used it to pee. And pee a LOT! Every one of those little brown spots is PEE.

The girls even flew to the front of the house to go. We found one bee on the porch.

Bees don't pee in their hives, so they've been holding it since the beginning of December - the last day we had that was near 50'. I was quite surprised how much they went. I was amazed that I could actually smell it. Kinda gross but it was a ...well a lot of pee - which I see as a great sign. All three hives had bees flying and the more bees in the hives, the stronger they are.

Bees and beer

2010-02-20T17:33:00.000-08:00

The Worcester County Beekeepers Association held their Feb. meeting last week and decided on what they call a chefs supper. I call it a pot luck!

And while many folks felt that this was not the best pot luck, there was very little left over at the end!

The program was how to make wine and beer. I was particularly interested in learning how to make wine. The wine maker, Peter West, is also a beekeeper and farmer. Dave Richardson, pictured below, is a fairly new beekeeper and knows a tremendous amount about beer making.

Both making wine and beer are complex processes. We had the opportunity to taste the wares of both wine maker and brewer. Mr. West had a vast array of wines from his own orchard. It takes a boatload of fruit to make wine.

As always, I learn the most from talking with other beekeepers. While most everyone has been listening to their hives or cracking the top to check on their bees, I have not. There really isn't anything I am going to *do* to or for the bees right now, so opening the hive is just for me. I just cannot justify harassing the bees just to satisfy my curiosity. Nonetheless, I am going to try hard to find a way to hear my bees without bugging them. My favorite husband has a car tool that acts like stethoscope. Looks like I might be raiding the garage for a new beekeeping tool!

I cornered the man who won the most awards for honey this year, Peter Niemi. Poor man - must have thought I was stalking him! He was kind and generous with his knowledge and gave me some tips on honey exibiting next year: bottle early, store in a warm spot, and keep the honey out of the sunlight.

At the end of a lovely evening spent with wonderful folks, I took home one new piece of knowledge: I don't think wine or beer making will be in my future.

Feeding time at the hives

2010-01-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year when the queen will start laying eggs to make more workers for the spring. The bees raise the temp from around 60 to 93 degrees.

Most beekeepers feed their bees sugar or pollen patties. I had three sugar patties left from last year, so I thought perfect - I have three hives why not use them. I went out wearing my regular orange coat and orange gloves - what a beautiful day!

I didn't exactly rip open the hives, I cracked the inner covers open about two inches and slipped a disk of bee candy in. The bee candy is sugar and corn syrup cooked and cooled in a pie plate until it forms a rather hard disk. One disk had cracked in to about 10 pieces, but they are all usable.

I checked on Pink's hive first and found a few girls out and about.

I slipped the sugary disk in and found part of their pollen patty from Oct still there. The girls should eat that soon.

Sun's hive was pretty much the same but there are way fewer bees. They had not consumed any of their pollen. I am most concerned about these bees and will keep a close on them.

Then I went to Joy's hive. WOW. I could hear them buzzing the moment I touched the outer lid of the hive. I made the mistake of trying to slip the broken patty into their hive. They were all up in arms and one tried to get in my hair.

Have I mentioned I HATE bees in my hair.

I closed the lid best I could and made a beeline to the shed to get a veil. Sheesh. So with veil on and hive tool in hand, I re-cracked open the hive lid and maneuvered the sugar pieces so that the lid would close properly. The sugar bits were COVERED with bees and there were a handful of girls still flying around.

If Sun's hive doesn't make it - and I hope they do! - I will manipulate things so that one of Joy's daughters becomes the new queen in that hive.

Joy ROCKS!

I love being a beekeeper.

Cold snap

2010-01-05T09:57:00.001-08:00

With the very cold weather, I am especially comforted by the extra insulation on the hives. Now I wish I knew if the bees felt the same way!

Although other beekeepers I know had a 50' day recently allowing their bees to get out and pee, we haven't gotten over 45'. The girls must be crossing their legs!

I do know right now that there are live bees in each hive. All three hives have dead bees on the door step. Bees will throw out any dead bees - so either these bees were tossed out or they flew out and got stuck. Either way, it is a good sign albeit a sad one.

Send some warm thoughts to the bees and keep your fingers crossed that they are warm and toasty in their blue homes.

Honey Cookies

2009-12-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

I've been making Honey Cookies since ... well since ever! I can remember making these when I was very young and covering them with frosting and then sprinkles of every shape, size and color. My favorite were the little silver balls.

Although I still have some of the cookie cutters I used as a kid, I prefer nice tall ones so I can make a thicker cookie.

This recipe comes from an OLD Betty Crocker cookbook that my mom got as a wedding present in 1963. There is no copyright info and many of the pages have evidence of use and notes of changes penciled in the margins.

Merry Christmas Cookies

1/3 cup soft shortening

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

2/3 cup honey

1tsp lemon flavoring

2 3/4 cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

Mix shortening, sugar, egg, honey and flavoring thoroughly. Measure flour by dip-level-pour method or by sifting. Blend flour, soda and salt: stir in. Chill dough. Heat oven to 375. Roll dough 1/4 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Place 1 inch apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes. When cool, ice and decorate as desired.

Now for the recipe I use! As many of you know, I just cannot leave a good recipe unchanged!

Honey Cookies

1/3 cup butter, NEVER EVER margarine

1/3 cup sugar (I have used as little as 1/4 cup)

1 egg

2/3 cup honey

1 tsp good vanilla flavor

2 3/4 - 3 cups flour - more makes softer cookies

1 tsp soda

Mix the sugar and butter until creamed. Add egg and mix. Pour in honey and scrape every last drop with a spatula. Mix well and add vanilla. Add the baking soda and slowly add the flour. Mix until very stiff dough forms. Chill at least and hour. Over night is much much better so the dough is very firm. Preheat your oven to 350. Dust your work surface with plenty of flour as this dough gets sticky when it gets warm. Roll out dough at least 1/4 inch thick. Dip cookie cutters into flour and cut. These cookies don't spread much but I still bake no more than 12 per sheet usually fewer to ensure even cooking. I add colored sugar to the tops now since I don't like to frost. Since they are made with honey that will affect the color of the dough and it will be darker and more flavorful than sugar cookies. Bake 8 minutes not 10. Let them cool on the sheet for a couple of minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Although the honey, in theory, will makes these cookies remain soft for longer periods than say... sugar cookies, I would know. They are always gone before any real testing could occur.

Enjoy!

Ready for winter

2009-12-08T10:13:00.001-08:00

I closed up the hives today - a bit late but with it being near 70 last week I'm not that late! With temperatures dipping below freezing at night it was critical that I take out the honey and sugar water containers. They can be the source of condensation in the hive, the moisture can drip in to the hive and the bees can freeze. It is moisture and cold that are a such a deadly combination for bees.

After talking with a more experienced beekeeper at the Worcester County Beekeepers Association Christmas party on Saturday, I gave the hives an extra bit of insulation. I wrapped three sides of the hives in a foil-coated bubble wrap and the top got foil coated foam. It looks really silly but he swears by this method. According to him, the bees adapted to living in trees that are much thicker generally than wooden hives so a bit of extra insulation mimics the trees.

One girl came and sat on my veil for a while I was cleaning up.

I miss my bees.

Honey Recipes

2009-12-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

This year's honey is darker and richer lending its rich flavor to cooking and baking. I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite honey-using recipes here.

Today is Morrocan Chicken which freezes really well. It was inspired by a Martha Stewart recipe, but as so many of you know, I can never leave a reciped untouched. Now that I've changed just about everthing except the chicken and zucchini, can I call it my own?

Regardless, this makes a great supper over couscous or rice.

Moroccan Chicken
Serves 4

4 Tablespoons oil
8 cloves garlic, minced
3 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoons black pepper
8 medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped (or 1 15 oz can of diced)
6 Tablespoons honey
¾ cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 – 1 ¼ lbs boneless chicken breast, whole if they are small or cut in chunks
1 lb zucchini, sliced (2 medium or about 3 ½ cups)

In a large skillet, heat oil and add garlic over medium heat. Cook for about a minute. Add tomatoes, ginger, coriander, salt, and pepper. Stir and cook for about 6-8 minutes or until about half the liquid is evaporated. Add the honey and stir. Add cilantro, chicken, and zucchini. Cook 10 minutes, turning the chicken at least once.

Place in a freezer bag and label if desired.

If frozen, defrost over night in the fridge. Heat in a microwave or saucepan until heated through. Garnish with fresh cilantro if you have it on hand.

Craft Fair

2009-11-30T07:17:00.000-08:00

I was pretty excited to send out this email today. This is my second craft fair but I am even more nervous this year than last. It was a blast last year - I shared a booth with my friend Liz Tuff who had sewn gifts for sale. This year I will be sharing with Felix Mimo who is a potter.

Email:
I will be selling local honey, hand cream, beeswax bars, and, for the first time, beeswax lip balm at the Millbury Chain of Lights this Sunday from 10-4pm. The Millbury Parents Club is hosting a craft fair at the Millbury High School and I will have a booth in the hallway near the entrance - look for Blue Hive Honey on your map.

If you would like to preorder honey or other products and pick up at the Craft Fair I will include honey sticks with each order. If you cannot make the craft fair, I will make other arrangements for delivery. Also, if you are interested in smaller sizes of hand cream, please contact me.

None of my products have added fragrance or colors - just the natural warm smell of honey and beeswax.

Prices for 2009:

1 lb Papa bear of honey - $7 ea or 2 for $12
4 oz beeswax handcream - $5
1 oz bar of pure beeswax - $2
lip balm - tube or pot - $2
honey sticks - 5/$1

More Please...

2009-11-28T18:10:00.000-08:00

On Thanksgiving I whipped up a batch of sugar water for the bees thinking that they might take a bit more before wrapping up for the season. I love it when my bees remind me that books will only take me so far and that experience is really the best teacher. There are many beekeeping books that will tell you that bees stop taking honey and sugar water around Halloween and my girls haven't read a single one of them.

Not only has each and every hive sucked dry the jars of sugar water set out for them they also inhailed the warm honey I put out. It was pretty crystalized here in the house and I expexted it would do the same in the hive so I warmed it on the stove until it was smooth and liquid again.

The bees were great - only Pink's girls were flying but the other hives were still quite active. None of my hives have clustered yet.

Bees don't hibernate, migrate or sleep for the winter, they cluster. Essentially bees cuddle to stay warm and keep the queen happy. She is kept fed and warm in the center of a big hug all winter. Once they cluster up, they stop taking sugar water, honey or even spend much time outside the hive.

It is great that the girls are taking on as much honey as possible. When it does get cold, and it will, they will be in a better position to use their stored food and start next year off with lots of bees.

The smell from just cracking the top covers off was amazing. I am slowly weaning myself off smoke as it really disturbs the communication of the bees. I am also learning more about how the hive smells at different times.

Happy Thanksgiving to Pink, Sum, and Joy!

Honey Harvest

2009-11-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

I am just as busy these days and the girls are. I am preparing for the craft show for the Chain of Lights here in Millbury on December 6. I will have a table to sell honey, beeswax, hand cream and for the first time this year, lip balm.

In a total panic yesterday I realized I had 20 (now 19) days to get ready. I got inspired and bottled all the remaining honey safe for the smidgen on the bottom of the bucket. Here's the final number for the year:

36.5 lbs

Sigh - it is about twice what a I though we'd get but way less than I hoped. The honey we have this year is so much more complex than last year's honey. This year is darker, richer, and very intensely floral.

In addition to bottling, I melted wax in to bars and small batches to make hand cream. The whole house had a faint smell of honey and wax all evening. The bars were made in the lovely molds that my dear husband gave me for Christmas last year. The bars came out smooth and shiny with a strong odor of bees, honey and the faint whiff of warmer days past.

My list is still long. I have to make hand cream, label all the honey bottles, get bags, tissue paper, and find some way to label the lip balm. Here's the hand cream recipe I use as my base. And as many of you would expect, I made some changes!

This weekend I will tackle learning to actually make lip balm.

Come visit me at my table at the fair and say hello!

Thanksgiving

2009-11-09T06:37:00.000-08:00

Saturday our whole family went to the Worcester County Beekeeper Association's Thanksgiving Banquet. This was downright horrible year for most of us beekeepers and for most everyone in agriculture. Nevertheless, we were challenged to find something to be thankful for. Here's my list...

My bees! - They are so beautiful and connect to my soul in ways that few others have. I am going into the winter in such a better place than last year. Even though I had a small honey and wax harvest, the bees are plentiful.
Being a beekeeper - I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn more and in some way help these beautiful girls.
Other beekeepers - I am ever so lucky to have the mentoring and fellowship of the wonderful beekeepers in this area. I have learned so much and feel supported in this adventure.
My kids - When faced with the challenge of finding something to be grateful for, both my kiddos immediately came up with a long list! They were grateful for the garden full of produce. They saw the glass as half full - what a beautiful way to look at the year.
My sweetheart - It was for him that I started keeping bees, but he's really risen to the challenge and adventure of it all. He created a screened bottom board out of his stash of wood in the garage to bring something to the Thanksgiving raffle. He does the same for me - building what I need for the bees.

So what are you thankful for...

Mouse Guards

2009-11-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

I love reading all my friend's blogs about Halloween and potty training. I am happy to have a diverse group of friends because that is so not my life anymore. While many others were preparing for parties and buying value sized boxes of diapers, I was putting on mouse guards.

My daughter, nearly 6, checked out the hives this weekend for the first time. Unfortunately, she's still too small to see over the top of the boxes very easily as they are set up now, but she was so calm and moved so gracefully. I can see her keeping her own hive in a couple of years.

Naturally she has a fondness for Pink's hive and here's a picture of Pink's girls emerging from their inner cover opening. This is inside a box where I put honey for them to eat now. I am hoping that all three hives take some honey from me (that I robbed from them this summer when they were honey bound!) and put it up for the winter.

I also put mouse guards on two of the hives. These are metal gates that fit across the front of the hive that, as you guessed, keep out mice. Mice LOVE to overwinter in a hive where it is nice a warm and they can make a nest with the wooden frames and wax.

I have another guard on the way from one of my favorite bee equipment companies, Brushy Mountain.

So while my kids remain potty trained and we had no behavior problems at our big harvest dinner, I was so happy for our milestone: how joyous my daughter was to see the bees close up.

Stay of Execution

2009-10-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

I asked our bee inspector Ken Warchol to come visit my hives to help me get rid of Pink because I was planning on combining Pink and Sun's hives for the winter. I am SO glad I asked him to come over.

He said that Pink's have was the stronger of the two hives and that he thought all three hives were good and strong! Yay! And being the great teacher that he is, he explained to me how to tell - essentially if on a cool day the bees are still in the top box across all the frames, there are plenty of bees.

On the other hand, and isn't there always one, all three hives need more honey. I am trying to feed them honey but it might be too chilly for then to take a bunch of honey. With the extra cold weather these days I am going to offer them sugar water as well and then treat them in the spring for the intestinal parasites bees get.

On his way out, Ken had one of Pink's girls on his hat. She'd gotten a bit chilly, so I took her home.

Bee Meeting

2009-10-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I spent the whole day talking bees. The local beekeepers club was able to get two fabulous smart scientists to discuss their research.

Dr. Marla Spivak is well know for her work in to Minnesota Hygienic bees. Getting her to come to our meeting was no small feat. Hygienic bees are not girls who take more showers - they actually were selectively breed to keep the hive cleaner and groom each other. Mites that attach to larvae in the hive give these bees some small signal that gets them to remove the larvae with heavy mite loads. This does kill the larvae but also the mites. These bees also groom each other more and remove the mites from adult bees. Both of these behaviors can help to reduce the amount of medications that beekeepers use to keep bees alive.

She's moving out of this work and spoke at length about her new passion: Propolis. Wild bees line their nest cavitiesn with it and bees in boxes use it like caulking. Propolis has amazing properties including being an antibacterial, anti viral and anti fungus. Now this part is a bit complicated but essentially coating your house with propolys is like sealing it in a protective bubble that keeps nasty microbes on the outside. This allows the bees individual immune systems to relax a bit. Now how do I paint my house with it!

The second researcher is fairly local - Dr. Heather Mattila from Wellsley. Honeybees, unlike most other social insects, mate with many drones. And I am talking A LOT! Some species of honeybee queens make -on average - with more than 60 drones. Yep - SIXTY. My own girls tend to be a bit more modest mating with between 6 and 20 drones. She was studying the question is more better?

Well, more is ... more - in human terms the sluttier the better. The more drones a queen mates with the better for the colony. The bees are more active and the queen lays more babies. I am thinking, from the way she described the difference between a queen mated with one drone and a queen mated with many drones that both Red and Pink were not well mated queens.

In her second talk, Dr. Mattila talked about life in a swarm. This was soo cool. She and her students studied the waggle dances of new home-foragers. It was just amazing to see how each new space was "talked" about by the forager to the swarm, then how the swarm carried on the conversation about different potential new homes. It looked just like a social networking site on the Internet!

So what did I take away from this meeting:
1. I need to collect propolis as a hive product and now have the knowledge to do so - now I need to learn more about marketing and using it
2. Pink is not as well mated as Sun and should be the queen who overwinters
3. I want to more scientifically monitor my mite levels so I can better track which medications are needed and when to most effectively apply them

Sweet day

2009-10-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

Today I went apple picking with a bunch of my friends. I love having friends of all ages and still being included by my friends who have kids at home. We did find the amazing Spencer apple that I lust after every year. This year my expectations are low and my hopes high for some good treats. The apples were challenging to find and many were damaged.

And on a bee-note - many of the apples were not fully pollinated. When an apple gets fully pollinated it will be round and full. A partial pollination will result in an apple that is flat on one or more sides. Although we like to think of ourselves as outside of nature, we never can be. The weather affects the bees and that affects the food we eat. And here in New England apples are among a small handful of foods we identify ourselves with.

I pulled the last frames of people honey from Joy's hive today and it was a pretty sad experience. There were - at best - three full frames of honey. So for the year that brings us near 10 frames, just about half what we got last year.

On a happy note, the bees are all medicated. MEDICATED - you ask!? Yes, I do medicate the bees with formic acid - a soft and gentle method to help them get rid of the pesky mites that attack the bee's bodies and the tracheal mites that attach to their throats choking them. We need 21 days of 50' weather for Joy's hive to be fully medicated. (Pink and Sum are 10 days into their 21.)

As soon as I spin down the people honey, I will take out all the near-honey and nectar that the bees worked so hard on. This I will feed back to them. This time of year we often experience a dearth - a lack of nectar. The extra food - near-honey and some bee honey - will be put up for the winter.

Other sweet fall treats

2009-09-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

My daughter and I picked apples at a local orchard earlier this month. The apples, Paula Reds, were rapidly starting to fade. I had high hopes of their juiciness with the excessive rain we've had all year - alas my hopes were dashed. These apples were very tasty but not extra juicy.

I dried a handful of apples, made a bit of applesauce, but decided to make apple pie filling with the majority of them. This was my first time making apple pie filling to can and it worked pretty well. Next time I need to remember to pick the BIG apples so there is less peeling!

There are still a few weeks to go before my very favorite cooking apple is ripe: Spencer. Towns in this area all had apple cultivars names for them. Few still exist and the Spencer is a beauty. The apples are large, red globes with a perfect balance of crispness, sweetness and tongue-tingling tartness. They make apple pies good enough to write home about.

Spencer apples are ripe in about 3 weeks. Yum

Honey Clean-up

2009-09-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd enlist some help with the post-extraction clean up. Quite a few friends showed up. It took about 20 minutes and there was honey everywhere.

Stealin' Honey

2009-09-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

I am a honey thief. I sneak, in the dim of a cloudy day, and make off with honey. A teaspoon of honey is the life's work of merely a dozen bees.

I checked on Pink and Sun's hives a few days ago just to see if they liked the built out people honey frames. They didn't. Neither colony had a single solitary capped cell.

On the other hand, neither had much room for brood (the babies) in the top box either. Why is this worrisome, you wonder. We are coming to THE moment when the queen will begin laying the eggs that will hatch into the bees who will overwinter with her. Since bees cuddle to keep warm, more bees makes for a warmer queen.

Soo, I stole frames laden with dark honey. The box was so heavy I had to ask my neighbor to carry it. I will spin out the honey and put it in the the big plastic pretzel jars a lovely friend gave me last year. In about three weeks I will mix that honey with medication and feed it back to the bees.

People honey production is nearing the close. I will return these frames in the next couple of days and remove the honey supers for the year.

On a funny note, I am trying really hard to get over my need to be entirely separate from my bees with a full suit of armour. A wise, sweet beekeeper has been gently scolding me in the most delightfully and somewhat flirty way that I have to get over my gloves. (And he's right - I'll have a better feel for what I am doing and there won't be stray smells to alarm the bees.) Soo, I took off my veil, gloves and coat earlier than I usually do. Sure enough, I hear a buzz by my head and feel a visitor in my hair.

Did I mention I hate bees in my hair?

I shake my hair and the buzz stops so I go on my merry way cleaning up. I head in to use the facilities and while I am ... well sitting down... what do I hear... buzz buzz. I rapidly shake my hair (which may not be the wisest of moves) and onto the floor pops a wasp!

Yes, a wasp. Luckily it was a solitary wasp so she was unlikely to sting me, but she COULD. She was quite gorgeous in black and copper and of rather small stature.

Second Place

2009-09-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

98/100

2009-09-07T05:19:00.000-07:00

The judges knocked off two points, yep two measly little points, for a few crystals in the honey. And we came in second in the Amber honey category - two categories of color from last year's honey! So we got a pretty red ribbon!

When we take off the honey suppers - the people honey boxes - we spin out the honey and then put them away "wet." This can stimulate the bees to put honey back in the in the spring when we replace them on the hives. Alas, this also means that the tiny bits of honey in the frames crystallizes over the winter. Either we need to use completely fresh frames for the fair or heat the honey enough to decrystallize it. Personally I thinking heating the honey changes the flavor.

I am going to take the honey to the State honey show this year. It is going to be held at a big Worcester County Beekeeper's Association meeting in October.

Beauty Contest

2009-09-02T07:03:00.001-07:00

The Spencer Fair, like all fairs, judge honey on looks. Yes, this is totally a beauty contest. The judges use a 100 point scale and 90 of the points are pretty much evaluating looks.

Last year, my honey was a tall leggy platinum blond. This year, as you can see, my honey is totally brunette. This color of honey is far more common and will have very stiff competition. I am getting rid of the bubbles right now and will take a toy spoon and carefully remove any pesky minuscule bubbles that form along the top. When I get out to the fair, I will polish the bottles so that even the most skilled CSI couldn't tell they were mine removing all finger prints, dust and any trace of my existence. Finally, I will polish the inside of the cap.

Yes, you read that right - the INSIDE of the cap. That is a whopping 10 points - inner cap cleanliness.

So think of me tomorrow afternoon as I carefully drive my honey out to Spencer and hand off my pair of perfectly cleaned jars of honey.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Honey

2009-08-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

My wonderful mentor, Mary, came over ten days ago and we checked out the hives. Joy's hive yielded six, count them, six lovely frames of honey. Now before anyone starts licking their lips in anticipation, I had 19 frames of honey this time last year.

I used my new heated knife that I received as a Christmas gift. This was my first time extracting alone and it went very smoothly.

This year's honey is very different from last year's. Last year our honey was platinum blond and this year it is much darker. The flavor of the black locust tree is still the predominant after taste but the honey is bolder and richer this year.

The best part of the hive check with Mary is that we found low levels of mites. This means that unlike last year, where we had to start treating for mites now (and not collect honey), we will be collecting honey until around the first week of October!

I put the "wet" frames right back on the hives, but not on Joy's hive. Now, for the first time, Pink and Sum both have built out, honey-collecting frames to fill for ME! I am so hopeful that all three hives will produce some people honey this year.

I am planning on going to the fair on Thursday with my two gamber jars of honey that will be polished until they downright shine. Judging will take place Thursday night. I am nervous already.

Wish me luck.

Little Bee Buddy

2009-08-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

My friend Jack came out with me to check out the hives a couple of weeks ago. Jack saw a video last spring in school about honeybees. He's been asking ever since to come and see my bees. Finally we found a time. I put him in my suit and taped the sleeves so no bees could sneak up his sleeves.

He LOVED it - much to his mom's dismay! She's not ready to start a hive nor is she ready to bring Jack to me every week. I am hopeful that I can help find him a mentor who lives close to him and either has kids, or has worked hives with kids before.

The best part was that it inspired my son to want to take a look at the hive. He's never wanted to even get close to the hives before - way too many bees. Much to everyone's surprise, including his, he really like it.

It was pretty neat for me too. I've not been beekeeping long, about 18 months, and here I am already teaching the next generation of beekeepers. How cool is that!

National Honey Bee Awareness Day

2009-08-16T18:11:00.001-07:00

Happy Honey Bee Day!

Celebrate bees by slowing down and looking at them at work and then try the fruits of their labors - honey!

As a beekeeper I am in a really frustrating place right now. If I were further along in my beekeeping career, I'd have plenty of built out frames (where the bees built out honeycomb) and would be ready to jump in to the HUGE nectar flow that is happening right NOW.

But I am still a newbee and barely have enough equipment for one hive let alone the three that grace my yard. And I need an extractor in the very worst way. I need one and I need it yesterday.

What's happening is that the bees are putting honey into the spots where babies should go because there is no where else to put it. (See I need more equipment!) So if there is honey where babies go, the queen will stop laying. This is soo bad. We need LOTS of bees to make it through the winter. They snuggle to keep warm and if there aren't enough bees, they will freeze to death.

That is what happened to one hive last year and I really don't want to experience that again.

Soo, to solve my lack of equipment problem, I need an extractor to get the honey out of the brood chamber so the queen can lay all the beautiful eggs she can. Then I need to put a people honey chamber on the hive so the workers have places to put the honey.

I will feed the girls back their honey in October when the need to fill the hive with honey for the long winter. The queen will have stopped laying eggs by then anyway.

My options are plentiful - many wonderful people are beekeepers and have offered to loan me their extractor. Alas, since I don't have my own, I have to spend the best days of honey production, not collecting honey for ME, but calling to borrow an extractor.

And after that, I will still need an extractor in two weeks to harvest the honey. Now that's a sweet thought!

Bees on the Radio

2009-08-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Bees are the focus on NPR's Science Friday. They are sharing the buzz on bees and ways that regular folks can help honeybees (and other pollinators) as well as urban beekeeping.

I love the ideas they put forth for everyday folks to help the bees. Become a beekeeper is one of the best ways to help bees. Short of becoming a beekeeper, you can provide nectar and pollen sources with native flowers. Who wouldn't love to have more flowers in their yard? It will help both honeybees and native bees as well.

Where I live feels suburban, yet I live near an urban area. Many urban areas, including New York City, outlaw beekeeping. I have friends who both keep bees in this city and some who've chosen not to because of neighbor issues. It is a tricky proposition and I am very thankful that I have great neighbors who love my bees.

Joy!

2009-08-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

I love the smell of fresh bees wax and when I opened Hope's hive it was nearly overpowering. The girls have been busy. I feared that with the wet weather the bees would eat the people honey. Wheew - there is still people honey though not a lot.

With Hope gone - and supposedly half the bees with her - we pebbled that hive. Three weeks ago there were four pebbles, one for each week until we saw larvae or had to get a new queen.

Well, part of the wait is over. I saw Hope's daughter and the new queen: Joy! This is the first time I've found an unmarked queen by myself in my very own hives. I did not see eggs or larvae yet so she is in the early stages of her reign.

I was so nervous - I didn't want her to be damaged by my poking around. I tried to get my camera one handed but with the gloves on, I couldn't quite get everything maneuvered safely so no picture this week.

Joy! Long may she reign.

Bugs

2009-07-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong, I really love bugs. Clearly I do - I keep thousands of them like pets in the backyard and study them as a citizen scientist.

Nonetheless, looking out the window right now is rather like being in one of those cheesy horror movies. You look out the window - you feel compelled to look even tho you know in your heart of hearts that it is just too creepy. Then you look and... it IS creepy.

I am totally blown away by the sheer volume of insect life that is around my windows. I am sure -in my head - that they are always there feeding the spiders that I am never more that three feet away from and all that. And now I can see that one rather large tasty bug is, hopefully, going to be some spider's dinner as it struggles, caught in the web a spider so elegantly woven next to my light.

Ah the circle of life.

Hopeless

2009-07-14T09:19:00.001-07:00

First the good news:

Hope's girls have been busy. I put an extra honey super on before I left. Honey supers are where bees store people honey. One super is nearly full and the other two are well on their way to full. I must say, I love the way a hive looks with three honey supers on it - nice and tall. The supers are heavy - I use small supers for that very reason. A small super is easier to lift when full weighing in at around 25 or more pounds.

The white on the frame is the caps wax on the honey. This keeps the moisture content perfect - about 17% moisture. If the honey is wetter it can mold (YECK) and if less than 14% it will crystalize.

The wax is white because the bees don't walk on it much so it stays nice and clean. Just like kids, bees track in all sorts of junk - whatever they walk in outside, they leave on the floor or wax.

And now for the bad news:

Hope is leaving.

This is a capped swarm cell and one of three capped queens I found. These girls were quick. Before I left there wasn't so much as a queen cup - the beginnings of the queen cell. They must have worked quickly during the wet weather. Just like the rest of us, they got squirrely being cooped up inside.

This was the largest queen cell of the bunch so I am guessing this is the one the workers want to have be the new queen. So even tho this was not a supercedure where the bees are unhappy with the queen, we are still without new eggs or small larvae.

So this is what the top of the hive looks like:

We have a four week window in which to see small larvae or eggs. If we don't then it will be a time to get a new queen or more likely, I will combine hives.

If I were going to be around, I could use these other queen cells to make new hives, but we are really full with three hives. I hope to expand next year if, and it is a big IF, we can make it over the winter. I know it is so strange to be thinking about winter while wearing sunscreen and shorts, but if don't work like a bee now, then we won't have bees next year.

Sigh. I am so sad to be Hopeless.

Tickled Pink

2009-07-13T12:37:00.001-07:00

Pink Rocks! This is a picture of her larvae. They are the white, grub-like "C"s in the cells. She obviously found time to mate in all rain, get her butt back in the hive, and start laying eggs like crazy.

In the picture on the right, you can see her eggs. They are the little white dashes in the bottom of the cells. I had to use a bright flashlight to get a really good view of them, but thanks to my new found knowledge from Rick R., I can tell they are less than 48 hours old. Wow!

I love the temperament of these bees. They are super sweet and very blond compared to my other hives. I love love love Pink!

I've found a name for Trey's daughter: Sum. This is the Mandarin word for three and is pronounced soom. Sum had lots of bees and plenty of honey the hive so I gave them a second story. I moved their two full frames of bee-honey upstairs and gave them some fresh frames to work on so Sum has plenty of room to make babies.

I realized that I am managing these hives for bees. I would love to see both hives strong enough to overwinter. Combining hives, like most blended families, is fraught with challenges. Where would they live? Who would be the queen? Soo I am hoping to have bucket fulls of bees in both hives soon.

Bees at Disneyland

2009-07-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Check it out - my mom surprised the kids with a short trip to Disneyland and I found bees! I couldn't get a good shot to see if she had on Mickey ears, but she is in a beautiful section of the California Adventure Park that is focused around the movie Bugs Life.

All the rides and activities in the bug section were very well thought out and over the top cute. This mini park was more targeted to kids younger than mine but we had tons of fun. Our favorite was the water park where it made us feel like we were the size of bugs. A sprinkler cooled us off and randomly squirting water kept us amused.
Not far was a beautiful pollinator's garden. The only pollinators we saw were bees. Honeybees were the easiest to see, but there were smaller native bees as well.

I love how they used a variety of native flowers that were all sorts of colors and shapes. I bet that there is something in bloom all year here. What a soothing sight after so many lights and bells and whistles.

I miss my bees.

Bees in Paradise

2009-07-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

We are visiting my mom in Arizona and it has been quite the vacation. We've been together for about 10 days and the kids are really wearing on each other. They can irritate each other faster than the speed of light. It is taxing my patience to play referee.

Of course no trip would be complete without bees. This is a Mexican Bird of Paradise in my mom's front yard. We've seen bees in it every day.

My mom had a funny lesson in the need for bees. She has an enclosed porch and has one of the upside down pots where she's growing a tomato. She's been quite unhappy with it because she hasn't gotten any tomatoes despite the lovely foliage. If you grow the tomato in a cage so the bees cannot pollinate the flowers, you will not have tomatoes. We moved it outside and are going to build it a canopy that is open to the bees.

I chatted with some local beekeepers at my mom's farmer's market. One person is a hobbyist like me and the other is a small apiary. The farmers are militantly organic, but had some interesting suggestions on how to manage my own bees in a gentler way.

Queenright

2009-06-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you following the soap opera that is my hives, I checked on the bees today.

We have BABIES!! Trey's daughter, who is currently nameless, has larvae and lots of them! I snuck in the hive today in a brief break in the rain and took a look. The bees were packed but that is to be expected since they haven't had decent bee weather. I only looked at two frames and there were lots of larvae of various ages.

After my workshop training I am confident that the biggest larvae are five to six days old. Now the colony can be called queenright where there is a healthy, mated queen laying a lot. Whew!

So any suggestions on her name?

A gross of beekeepers

2009-06-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Along with 143 other beekeepers, I spent the only nice day for weeks hanging out with someone else's bees! I went to the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association Annual Field Day. This was held in Deerfield at UMass Ag Center.

One of the things I wanted to learn about was using fewer chemicals in my hives. The most common chemicals found in a hive are those added by beekeepers. Delicately balancing the use of chemicals and reducing the mites, beetles, and harmful critters is critical to the survival of bees and us.

Ed K, from Norfolk County, pictured here uses a great method for helping his bees get rid of mites. He shakes powdered sugar in his hives. Yep, the same old stuff you dust on your cookies, we dusted on bees. It takes about 15 second and doesn't require the removal of honey from the hive.

The treatments I used last year are soft,gentle and even in CA are considered organic. Nonetheless, they take three weeks and I have to remove the honey. Sheesh - this was soo much easier. (Yes I glossed over the other three steps in the process, but they are a bit esoteric for non-beekeepers.)
One beekeeper brought a drone comb frame. This was amazing to see because they were emerging in waves!

What really made my day was the final talk I went to taught by Rick Reault. He was the source of Red, our beautiful queen. After watching him -and I was so enthralled I forgot to take pix!- I realized that he is the kind of beekeeper I want to become. He was so in love with the bees, he was calm, he moved so gracefully, and he was incredibly knowledgeable.

Rick explained the three clues that a hive is getting ready to swarm - and I'd only known about one before! He also had an intuitive, simple way to tell the age of larvae. During the workshop, he marked the queen and it was so simple! I thought the only way to do that was to catch the queen in a special grabber that looks remarkably like a hair clip. Not Rick - he just held the queen still for three seconds and touched her with the marker.

Wow.

Bee in Flight

2009-06-21T19:07:00.001-07:00

Check this out - I found a fellow blogger (Growing with Science) who has a Bug of the Week. Bees are this week's bug!

Her video of a Carpenter Bee in flight is amazing.

Go see: http://blog.growingwithscience.com/?p=229

Pebbles

2009-06-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

We have a new queen on the way! We are going to call her Pink since she is Red's daughter.

You can see the peanut shaped queen cell that was capped within the last week. We didn't see Red or any young larvae suggesting that she is no longer in the hive.

I am really sad to see the end of Red. She was the first queen I ever installed and the last remaining queen from last year. On the other hand, we loved her temperament - this hive has, until yesterday, been super sweet and gentle. We are very hopeful that Pink will be just a beautiful a queen as her mom.

Yesterday it was clear that things were not right in this hive as the bees were jumpier than I've ever seen them. Queenlessness is a very disturbing event for a colony. The queen exudes many pheromones including the one that a colony recognizes as home. Without her, there is no home.

Pink will be begin exuding her home pheromones shortly after mating. Her nuptials should take place a few days after she emerges from her natal cell. If all goes well, she will mate with many drones on her two or three nuptial flights.

You go girl!

The pebbles remind us that the colony has no larvae. Each week we will remove a pebble if there are no eggs or larvae present. Pink's subjects will only wait so long and without a strong, mated queen the colony will fall apart.

We've been there before and it isn't a pretty sight. Unmated workers will start laying and there are just bee that shouldn't be making babies. Workers can only make drones and drones don't help a colony. They have one job... and you know what that is!

Pink has a busy month a head of her. I hope she mates often and well.

Then gets her satiated butt back in the hive and lays lots of eggs!

Fairness

2009-06-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was reminded of a lesson I have struggled with my whole life and even more intensely since having my second child.

Fairness is about giving everyone what they need, not about giving everyone the same.

I struggle with giving my kids the same - yet they are wonderfully individual people with their own separate strengths and struggles. My youngest is heading out to kindergarten this fall and is very excited. She has gotten such a different slice of my undivided time by having that time while she is four and five rather than like her brother who was an only child until two.

I feel like it wasn't fair to me! I want that same delicious time with my son where we can actually -do- things together. When my son was a baby we were very active but the quality is wholly different. My daughter and I have created a shared space that is impenetrable and joyous. I want that with both my kids.

I want the same!