Bees: What's in a name?

It seems that most backyard beekeepers give names to their hives. I'm not sure what compels people to anthropomorphize their possessions. It seems most prominent with pets. My chickens don't have names. My oldest daughter named one of them Big Bock and another Little Chicky. I couldn't even guess which is which at this point. Right now naming the hives is not really an issue. I only have 1 hive, so it's not tough to figure out which one I am referring to.

However, it seems that this hobby is self-replicating. Even though all sources highly recommend starting with 2 hives, I really only have "good" space for 1. With some clever screening and accepting neighbors, I could probably squeeze in a total of 5, but I think I would get complaints. There is always the possibility that I could install hives at my in-laws' house. So should I name my first hive so that I could differentiate them in the future?

My first inclination is to just call it "hive #: 1." It seems fitting, but it's a little long and doesn't really roll off the mouth. I could call it something bee-related like "Honey" or "Buzz" but that seems a bit too corny, even for me. How about "Polly" because I really got it primarily for pollination? Maybe... I like it, but I really want to commemorate its significance as my first hive. So, here's my decision... My hive is called "Prime". It is my first (primary) hive and it references my love of Transformers when I was a kid.

Small progress today. It was supposed to be really hot, so I removed the entrance reducer. Also, I added a third medium box. Here is a photo:

Bees: Action shots

One of the primary reasons I got bees was because I need more pollination for my fruits and vegetables. Getting them the first week of May meant that they didn't have enough of a population of foragers to be able to exploit the blueberries, apples and pears. That said, I have a large patch of black and red raspberries plus some blackberries. The bees have been gorging themselves on this close, easy nectar. If we get some rain here and there throughout the summer, I might just be lucky and harvest some honey from this first year hive. Anyway, here are some action shots I took of the bees on the brambles.

Sweet, sweet nectar.

Another one of my girls.

A cousin bee. Big, fuzzy bumblebees are fun too.

Chickens: 1 Year And Counting

Hard to believe we have had chickens for a full year. We went through the cute, fluffy stage all the way to the squawking, egg laying stage in a few months. Now, it's been mostly just feed-water-collect eggs. The funny thing is that it seems like we have always had them.We did lose one out of six. I did a quick post-mortem external check. From what I could tell, her neck was broken. My nearest guess is that she tried to jump down from the roost, landed on one of her sisters and slammed her head and neck into the wall. She had no signs of parasites, was laying well, and seemed active the day before. Oh well, no one lives forever.

Anyway, here are a couple photos I took yesterday in honor of their couple days belated birthday.

A birds eye view of birds.

Strutting her stuff.

The stink-eye because I fed them all the swiss chard I had.

Bees: Inspection - 04 June 2007

At four weeks after installation, it was time to do another inspection. I gathered my stuff together to start working. Right off the bat, I learned something. I really need to put a shelf in my shed with all the stuff (newspaper, dry kindling, matches, smoker fuel, smoker, and hive tool) I need for an inspection. It took me 10 minutes just to get ready to begin because I had to walk back and forth and in and out numerous times. Organization is key.

I am still having some trouble getting the smoker started. My fire-starting has always been in open or semi-open places like pits or fireplaces or grills. Starting a fire and keeping it lit at the bottom of a stainless steel tube is tough. It's made even more difficult when you consider our typical windy conditions. One good breeze across the top of the open smoker snuffs the fire quicker than water. I think I am going to preset the smoker up with a layer of paper, twigs, sticks, and slightly thicker sticks now, so it's ready for next time. That should eliminate the struggle to find dry stuff of appropriate size.Also, I'm still not confident that the smoker fuel is worth much of anything. It does burn smokey, but I'm not sure how it's better than leaves or grass or shavings or whatnot. Whatever the case, I got the smoker going eventually. I found that a terracotta flower pot saucer with some kids play sand in the bottom makes a great hot plate for the smoker. It fit perfectly inside and was stable and secure and didn't burn the grass or table.

I began, like always* by removing the outer and inner covers. checked for the unlikely scenario of the queen being on either cover. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect for drawn comb. I've read accounts where people add a second box, only to find that the bees have done nothing after a couple weeks. The first frame I pulled was totally empty. The second frame, however, was full of bees, larvae and capped brood. By the fourth frame, I convinced my father to come closer to see a frame of baby bees and larvae, when who should pop over the frame but her royal highness, the queen. Apparently, I missed her on the first side, which offended her royal sensibilities. She gave me a second chance to notice though, and I couldn't be happier with her grace and charm (and egg laying).

The queen sporting her paint.

Frame after frame of this inspection showed a really prolific queen laying as fast as she can. They had a bit of nectar and pollen, although little was capped. I can only guess that they are using it almost as fast as they can bring it in. Given what my allergies are doing, I would have expected more pollen. One problematic issue that I found was that they were building bridge comb between the top and bottom frames. The last inspection showed the same thing, except that there was only 1 box at that point. I can only think that there is some impetus which I can't see that tells them they need to close the gap between the top center frame of the bottom box and whatever is above it. Unfortunately, there was capped brood in this bridge comb which tore open when I pulled out the middle frame. I had only intended to inspect the top box of frames, but that meant that I had to pull the box and scrape that comb off to prevent it from becoming a problem later.

The bridge comb between the top and bottom frames.

Two different sized bee larvae which fell out of the scraped comb. Looks like good eating... for the chickens.

The bees had drawn out five out of the eight frames in the new box. In the lower box, they still hadn't touched the outer most frames though. I swapped the lower box outer frames with its neighbor. Hopefully, with drawn comb on either side, the bees will feel compelled to draw out these frames. If this is still the case at the next inspection, I might move drawn frames down and put the undrawn comb up in their places. Otherwise, I don't know if they will ever draw them out. I'm probably going to check them in another week to see if they need another box. It will probably just be a quick peek just to see.

A couple One last things... Today (05 June), I notice the bees seem to have found a major nectar source. You can tell if a bee is full of nectar by watching them come in for a landing. They are flying in a bit lower than usual, struggling to stay in the air and just barely (or not) make it to the bottom edge of the landing board. They walk the last couple inches to their hive. Also, I have noticed that my bees have started changing from predominantly dark striped bees to a bright yellow which is indicates that my queen's hatched brood are starting to take over for the original package. If only it were that easy to transition security over to the Afghan Police Force.

Gratuitous bee photo with eggs, pollen and nectar.

* - Always meaning "like last time" since I've only done this twice.

Garden: Playing Catch-up

I've been playing catch-up in the garden. There were a whole ton of things going on this year in March and April this year. I have spent all of May trying to get done all the things from those months plus May's work. I still have dozens of plants to plant plus corn, squash and beans. It is getting to a concern point now. Hopefully, I will be able to knock the planting out plus do some.weeding this weekend. On a plus note, everything I planted (aside from basil) has done really well.

Bees: First Full Inspection

Last time, I wrote about checking for the release of the queen. While that was technically an inspection, I really didn't do anything to the frames other than slide them apart and push them back together again. Now that two weeks (May 20th) had passed, it was time to check and see how they were settling in to their new home.

When I did the queen check, I lit the smoker, got a coal bed and shoved in a fist full of damp leaves. Once it was going, I got some smoke, but it was kind of a pain. I happened to have some smoker fuel that I got as a gift from my loving wife, so I decided I would try that. This stuff looks like a packed cylinder of dryer lint. Supposedly it is cotton, but when it burned, it smelled like hemp. It didn't come with any instructions, so I began the process of building a coal bed. Unfortunately, it rained heavily the previous night so all the various twigs and sticks were wet. After a total failure to get the wood to light, I grabbed some finish wood scraps, split it into "twigs" and got the fire going in no time. The wood was so dry, however, that I got it going a little too well. I managed to keep from singing my eyebrows... just barely.

Once the coal bed was in place, I broke off a chunk of this fuel and dropped it in. Immediately, the smell of concerts (pot) filled my nose. As I said, supposedly this stuff is cotton, but it sure didn't smell like cotton. I was really unimpressed. I got even less smoke than the damp leaves and it took longer and it cost money and the smoke was warm instead of cool like it should be. After the inspection, I found something that said you just drop the whole cylinder in and light the top. I guess I'll try that next time. If it doesn't work, I guess refusing to rake leaves will finally pay off.

I gave a small amount of smoke to the entrance, plus under the inner and outer covers. I set the smoker down behind me and went to work. I carefully removed the outer cover and placed it on the ground. The first thing I noticed was that the bees decided to build burr comb in the hole in the inner cover. I'm guessing that is because their upper entrance is close and they just treated it like empty space. I didn't really care until I realized that the wax sealed the inner cover to the two center frames. Using my hive tool, I gently pushed the frames apart from the cover, hoping not to squish bees and make them angry. After removing the inner cover, I held it over the hive, carefully inspecting the bees on it to ensure none of them were the queen. I placed the inner cover on top of the outer cover at a 45 degree bias. Now that this was done, the real inspection could begin.

The first frame was relatively uninteresting. They hadn't touched it. There were probably only 10 bees on it total. Needless to say, the queen was not on this frame. To give myself space to work, I placed this frame on the inner cover. The next frame was much more impressive. It was almost entirely drawn out with comb.

The second frame mostly drawn out.

The next frame was jam packed with nectar (sugar syrup?) and pollen. It is pretty impressive. I didn't even notice them bringing pollen in to the hive until my wife pointed it out. Apparently, they have been busy as, well, bees. In the picture, below, you can see the pollen and nectar. I'm not sure where the red pollen came from. I watched them for about 20 minutes one day and saw them bring in bright yellow, light yellow, tan, and gray pollen. I'm also not sure where they are getting it from. I haven't seen a single bee on my blueberries, apples or pear tree which are all in full bloom.

Good stores of pollen and nectar.

When I pulled the next frame, I was shocked. I read that the queen would take a few days to be released and a few more days or even a week to start laying eggs. I figured I might see some eggs or even some larvae. I never figured I would see capped brood. Worker bees are capped around day 9 or 10. That means, worst (best) case scenario is that those eggs were laid four days after installing the package. There are also some almost-ready-to-be-capped larvae in the surrounding cells. Generally speaking, this seems like a good laying pattern to my untrained eye.

Capped brood.

So far, this inspection was going well. I had seen evidence of a good, strong starter colony. What I was really looking for was newly laid eggs or the queen herself. Ideally, I wanted to see both. Capped brood is a good sign, but all that really means is that 10 days earlier some bee was laying eggs. Well, on the next frame, I got one of those things. Almost every cell of both sides of the next frame had a single egg at the bottom of the cell. That means that I have a good, laying queen in the hive. I do not have a picture, however because a bee egg is about the size of a single grain of salt. I put the frame of eggs back and pulled out the next frame. One side was loaded with more eggs. As I flip the other side over, the queen is hanging out, just walking around looking for a good place to lay. She was easy to spot because I paid the extra couple bucks to have her marked. She was not that easy, however, for my wife to photograph.

Spot the queen. Look for the dot.

The next frame was as drawn out as the second frame on the other end. I didn't even bother to look at the last frame, figuring that bees build from the center towards the outside so there would likely be no difference between it and the first frame. If this were a 10-frame deep hive body which was always the "industry" standard, the bees would have drawn out 4 frames out of 10. This being an 8-frame medium hive, they were close to the 80% rule. Actually, "rule" is too strong a word. The rule I have seen says to add another box when the bees have drawn 7-10 frames of foundation out. My current plan is to inspect the hive every two weeks. Given that they were able to draw out 6+ frames in 14 days, they should have the remaining two drawn in 2 days or so. So, I quickly ran in the house, grabbed the second medium box with frames of foundation and added it on top. In the first box, I alternated between pure wax with vertical wires and black, wax coated plastic. The bees didn't seem to care which was which, so I just filled the second box with the pre-assembled black foundation. Hopefully, when I inspect the hive on the first weekend of June, they will have another 6 frames drawn out. If they do, theoretically, Father's Day weekend should be the point when I add another box.

Bees: Checking the queen

I read... A lot. I have a passion for knowledge. As such, doing new things give me a chance to learn all the different perspectives and ideas and theories around them. With "rural" things, there are overwhelming numbers of differing ideas. People are told something by someone who has always done it that way. It's amazing that there are so many different solutions.

The instructions that come with the package state explicitly that you should not disturb the bees for 6 full days after installation. I've read things that suggest 7-10 days is the appropriate length of time. I've also read things that suggest that you should release the queen immediately. The logic behind this last one suggests that, the bees will likely not kill the queen and if they do, you can just get another one.

The idea that made the most sense to me was to check for release after 4 days. That gives the bees the opportunity to get accustomed to the queen but not as much time to build insane amounts of burr comb to fill the extra space left by the cage. That was my plan. Of course, I forgot to tell the weather what my plan was.

The day I got the bees was beautiful, sunny and warm. The following 5 days were cold and windy and changed between showers and downpours. On day 6 (May 12th) it was sunny, although a little breezy. I happened to get home a little early from work and my wife had the kids at a playground. The bees were flying so I figured it was fine to open the hive even though all advice says never open the hive on a windy day.

I lit the smoker following the instructions in a book. I struggled to get it lit, keep it lit and when I finally did get it lit, there was very little smoke. What I learned is that I should rely on my instincts and skills instead of the book. The issue is that the book is written from someone who needs the smoker to stay lit all day while inspecting dozens or even hundreds of hives. I needed to inspect my single hive. I had copious amounts of billowing cool white smoke when trying to get a solid coal bed.

As it turned out, I didn't even need the smoke. These bees are ridiculously gentle. The bees didn't care in the slightest that a giant hand tore the roof off there home and reached in and stole there furniture. I know I would be pissed. I slid the frames apart slightly, removed the queen cage. Sure enough, she was free. I didn't want to risk too much disturbance to the hive, so I pushed the frames back together and put the inner cover back on. It was a little challenging, but I only squished one bee when I put the outer cover on. All in all, I would consider this a successful endeavor. Next time, I'll detail my first full inspection with more pictures. I didn't get any pictures by myself, but I'll include a picture of bee activity on the day after installation (May 7th).

The bees get adjusted to their new home and start foraging.