Today is the day!!

Bees don't pee or poop inside their hives so when we have a long stretch of weather that keeps them inside, well, you can imagine the number of crossed legs!  Today it was over 50' at 7 am so the girls were out and doing what beekeepers call a cleansing flight.

A cleansing flight on a warm day like today gets everyone out of the hive and is a great opportunity to assess the health of a hive. I am so pleased with the number of bees in both hives.

They were also looking pretty healthy. Both hives tossed out some dead bees and were crowding around their entrances.

There was no poop on the outside of the hive, so they were strong enough to head out and don't seem to have dysentery.

And they were calm. Bee behavior will often give you a good indication of the health of a hive. Testy bees generally have some stress and calm bees are happy bees. That is my arm and a couple of bees landed on me and then left after a moment.

Go bee!

Fall in the bee yard

Last night was one of my very least favorite activities I have to do as a beekeeper. M and I combined our two weak hives. It is hard, ugly work.

Here is how it goes. First you have to knock down the two hives so they are using as little space as possible. In this case, both hives lost honey supers and that was it. One hive was only using a single brood box. No way they could possibly have enough bees to make it through the winter.

So was it that cute little single-box hive that had to be moved? Oh noo. It was the bigger two box hive that moved.  Moving it was eye opening and in no small measure, scary. First it is dark out. Then we are ticking off a few thousand venomous stinging insects.

The hive that was a swarm was really light. They have not stored nearly enough honey for the winter. Their honey super (where people honey lives) was empty.

Then comes the actual combining of hives,  and it is just as it sounds. We put one hive on top of the other - in the dark so they can reorient and find their new home in the light. A single sheet of newspaper goes between them to slow down the introduction of bees. We used the obituaries. Turns out that is the only sheet of newsprint we could find that was all black and white. And since one queen would be dying, it seemed fitting to our sadness.

This is the second time I've had to combine hives and in so many ways this was easier. The temperature last night was steady which helped the bees to fly home and not get stuck on us. Second, we had an idea of what we were going to do. Finally, we had done the prep work well. Like so many things in life, good preparation really helps hard jobs go more smoothly.

Not entirely surprisingly, we both got stung. What was surprising was that it was only once each. We headed back to the house after the event and found that M had brought in a dozen bees stuck in the folds of his gear. I had one caught in my veil.  There were some very exciting (read scary) moments dealing with these newly warmed up bees, but they were all taken care of quickly. It is a real challenge to find good gear for such a tall man.

Checking on the hive this morning, it was clear that something was going on. The lower colony has many bees on the outside. Not surprising given the nice weather and that they lost about a third of their space. In a few days the paper will be gone and they will have many new sisters and plenty more space.

And our beeyard will be down to two hives again.

Update from June 19

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!