bee – tIDbits

The Bees are Back in Town

It was the first time looking at the bees since November.

Good news and bad news.

The good news is that 4 of the colonies are doing great. Below is an image of one of the Nucs that wintered on top of an Overland Over-winter-inator-ator^tm. You can see that there are plenty of bees grouped in an area (the cluster). And what you can’t see is that there are plenty of honey stores left – so these bees have (in my book) made it through the winter.

OK, now the bad news. The full-sized hive underneath the Over-winter-inator-ator^tm (Roger) didn’t make it. They all ended up in one of the top corners of the hive and starved. Below you can see them all in one area. On the surrounding frames there were many bees all the way into the cells where they died eating the last drops of honey that were in their vicinity.

Cluster of Dead (starved) Bees on a Frame

Below is the ball of bees as they died. The sad part is that there is plenty of honey and pollen left in the hive. I think that the problem was that they did not start out in the bottom box, then they moved up and to the side and got stranded in the corner.

The sad, but amazing testament to the way a beehive works, is that in this (very blurry-sorry) photograph below you can see the red dot on the back of the queen (2008) at the absolute top of the heap. The colony did their very best to keep her alive all the way until the end.

Lousy photograph, but you can see the red dot on the queen to the upper left.

But the show must go on, and the lessons learned absorbed for the next season. The remaining 4 colonies will be the backbone of our micro-apiary for the coming year as we continue expansion and education.

And even better, the flowers are starting to bloom and Spring has arrived in Maine…

Hope to see you out in the bee yard.

Be good to your bees; they can recognize you!

Bees Can Recognize Human Faces

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=bees-can-recognize-human-faces-10-02-01

Apiary Update – Up to 6 Hives

Lots of activity in the bee yard this weekend…

Found some queen cups and cells in Macintosh – here you can see a new queen is chewing her way out of the bottom of the circled cell.

The bees have started capping honey for the winter. Hope there will be enough good weather and plants for them to make some for us, too.

With the new queen emerging from Mac, I split her off into her own “nuc” (nucleus hive). The newest one is the third from the left with the blue-colored center box. So we are up to 3 full size hives (for honey production) and 3 nucs (to overwinter for full hives next season).

Is that a honey bee in a buoy?

My friend Juli thought she might have a swarm of honey bees in a lobster buoy on her front porch (this is, after all, Maine).

So, I went over to look at lunchtime, as the prospect of a swarm to plop in a nuc (nucleus hive) was appealing (free-bees).

Sadly, she had nasty yellow jackets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_jacket)

For those of you who think you might have a swarm of bees, here are a few clues (in this particular instance):

• The yellow jacket nest looks a bit like like gray paper (see detail photo below)
vs. a honey bee hive, where they would build hexagonal comb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Honey_comb.jpg

• Yellow jackets are (mostly) shiny and the yellow is VERY yellow – their abdomens look kind of like armor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_wasp_white_bg.jpg

• Honey bees are fuzzy all over and more of an orange/tan color
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drinking_Bee.jpg

• Honey bees are a lot “nicer” (yes, I am biased) in that they are not really interested in stinging you – if they sting you they will die – they will only sting if they feel you are threatening the entire hive.

detail: lobster buoy with yellow jacket nest

How to get rid of ants in a honey bee hive

Damn ants took advantage of my two weak nuc (nucleus) hives and crawled up and infested the place. They were there to steal the 1:1 sugar:water syrup that I had left to feed weak bees, as it was going to be a rainy week. The nucs were made with bees from one of my stronger hives (James) and super-fancy queens that were bred by Michael Palmer in Vermont. Acquired the Queens at a Nuc Workshop run by the Cumberland County Beekeepers Association‘s own Erin Forbes and Larry Peiffer. A very helpful class that I would highly recommend (I think they are going to do it again next year).

Anyway, back to getting rid of the ants. Ground cinnamon sprinkled around the base of the hive and inside the top of the hive are a well know way of keeping the ants at bay – but I learned a super-nifty trick from Erin – I propped the entire nucs up on cinnamon sticks, too (see the red circles in the photo). That way any ant that wants to steal from my bees will have to physically traverse the cinnamon (which apparently they abhor). Take that, ants!

I propped the nucs up on cinnamon stick to fend off the ants — I propped the nucs up on cinnamon sticks to fend off the ants