Tucking the bees in

My winter preparations in my house are well underway with the snowblower and the lawn mower trading places in the barn, pulling out the snowshoes and storing the kayak paddles, and buying pellets for the stove.

The bees have been preparing for winter too. Well, their beekeeper has been anyway. For the winter, I install mouse guards. As soon as the weather gets chilly at night, mice look for warm places to snug in and a bee hive is usually quite toasty. The mice do really do anything to the bees, but they can chew up the inside of a hive. I put metal gates across the front of the hive to keep them out and mice can't chew through the metal barrier.

I also add insulation around three sides of the hive and put an extension on their roof to keep the snow off the entrance.

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!

Winter Blues

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.

Snow Day!

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!

Happy New Year

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!

Eeewww!

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.