beekeeping – tIDbits

First Swarm of the Season Captured

Got a call yesterday via the Maine State Beekeepers Association Swarm Team Hotline: (207) 619-4BEE for a local swarm and went to grab it at dusk with my friend JCF.

Thank goodness the homeowners gave us a shout as they had received two bits of bad advice – a local exterminator was going to charge them $350 to spray the bees with poison (dumb idea – see: Why not Kill Them, by prominent beekeeper Cindy Bee – yes, that is her REAL name) and a local beekeeper (who really should know better) wasn’t patient enough to hear them out and find out where the bees really were (hanging off of the house) and only listened to the first few panicked words “the bees are IN my house” (they were not) and sent her to the exterminators. Very lazy way to deal with a “civilian” who is understandably afraid of 20,000 stinging insects on their home. Swarming honey bees are not going to attack anybody, and it is the responsibility of a beekeeper to help walk folks through that. As a matter of fact. part of the EAS Master Beekeeper requirements are “can present this information to the beekeeping and non-beekeeping public in a detailed, accurate, clear and authoritative manner.” and “knowledge and ability to communicate effectively to both beekeepers and public”.

Anyway, off my soap box.

The swarm was under the eaves of a log-style home (see red circle) and fortunately they had a sturdy ladder on hand, so we didn’t have to drag one over.

Up the Ladder to Capture the First Swarm of the Season — Big J. suiting up. Then up the ladder we go to capture the first swarm of the season

I am guessing it was around 4 or 5 pounds of our little flying friends – they were very docile. Just sprayed them with a little sugar water and scooped them into the “lucky” swarm box (see the video of it in action from last year).

Combined them with a very weak hive in the apiary by putting a sheet of newspaper between two supers and letting them chew through (the top super also had a hole for them to fly, and let the stray bees come in) overnight. Went to check at lunch today and there was lots of activity around the entrance and lots of happy bees. Will go in tomorrow to check on progress and perhaps even add another super.

All-in-all a successful bee rescue.

Happy Combined Hive (note the newspaper sticking out)

Taylor’s Aerosol Hive Bomb

How about this for a wacky beekeeping product idea: Taylor’s Aerosol Hive Bomb “The Push-Button Bee Smoker”? An aerosol can with fake smoke to calm your hives down before inspecting.

Well, it is real. It was manufactured for Dadant & Sons (a formidable beekeeping supply company) I am guessing in the 1970’s (anybody have an old catalogue they could verify it in?) judging from the label and where I found it in my fathers beekeeping supplies.

One look at the caution label on the back gives me even further pause as to why it would have been produced and vexes me as to why my father would have purchased it. But the can feels pretty full, so I am guessing it was just a failed experiment – and old-time version of this goofy thing. Learn how to light a smoker folks, it really isn’t that hard.

Taylor's Aerosol Hive Bomb Warning Label

Removing Bees from a House

Some very nice folks in Brunswick had some bees in their house (see previous post). So the Cumberland County Beekeepers came to the rescue by turning it into a learning opportunity and holding a Bee Removal Workshop.

Master Beekeeper (and Maine State Beekeepers Assn. President) Erin MacGregor-Forbes agreed to lead a group through a live removal of honeybees from a building.

The rain held out, and we were in business.

These images will walk you through the process.

The homeowner set up scaffolding for the group to work (above) and the rest of us bought out the gear. It looked like a beekeepers yard sale.

John, Keith and Chris getting the bee removal equipment ready.

We had three different kinds of bee-vacs, lots of empty frames, buckets, nucs, tools – you name it.

Chris and Erin starting to pry open the facia.

We got to work getting things opened up in a manner that would not destroy the house.

Chris and Keith trimming nails on the interior, so that no one would get poked during the operation.

The house had originally had a flat roof, so there was some funkiness inside that had to be dealt with by the crew.

Erin (in Overland garb) and Chris continue the dismantling.

Opening up the house went pretty quickly.

To quote Peggy Lee: "Is that all there is?"

So the crew got it opened up and was surprised to find only a couple of small combs and a couple of hundred bees.

Small colony of Honey Bees and an empty Paper Wasp nest.

So here we were with a small colony and a Paper Wasp nest (inactive). It seemed as if the bees I had snagged a couple of weeks earlier were actually the bulk of the swarm, and that they had just arrived when I had come by to scoop them up. I had assumed that they had been there for a while, and were just coming out for some air on a very hot day. One of the reasons for this theory is that the homeowners had previously had honeybees in a similar cavity in the house. We had just figured that new bees had smelled the last occupants and had figured out that the cavity was perfect for them. The reality is probably that I had captured most of the swarm and these were the pioneers of the colony who were inside the house at the time.

So Erin and Chris got to vacuuming the bees out with a special bee-vac (note the smooth tube, so that the bees don’t get too clobbered on the way in).

The vacuum is set up so that it doesn’t suck them in too hard and kill all the bees.

Erin rubber banding comb into empty frames

The comb is removed from the structure and loosely rubber banded into empty frames. All the while looking for the queen, brood and eggs. Only a small patch of eggs were found.

Joel borrowed a “bee suit” and helped with the process. I think he was very happy to have the bees out of his house.

The bees that were sucked up by the "bee-vac"

We used a very nifty contraption that sucked the bees into “cartridges” that were made of of the packages that bees come in (when you order them from down South) and was housed in a modified “nuc” box.

All finished. Emptied out cavity in the house.

In conclusion, for me, even though it went very quickly and we didn’t have tons of bees to pull out of the structure it was a highly successful endeavor. We all learned the process and steps one goes through to prep and remove honeybees from a structure form an experienced bee-remover. We also got hands on training with the specialized equipment that is frequently used. From what I understand, the only thing missing was hordes of angry stinging bees. That is fine with me.

Many thanks to all who participated for a fine afternoon.

The QR Code for this website

A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994.

The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.
– from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

I recently got interested in them when I started using Beetight, online bee hive tracking and record keeping software.

It does this nifty thing, where it creates QR code that you can staple (laminated, of course) on each of your hives. When you get to the bee-yard, all you need to do is scan the code and and, viola!, you are at the right place to do hive data entry. Brilliant, in my book.

They suggested BeeTagg to read the labels on the hives (with an iPhone). It has worked quite well for me, do far.

There is also this reader for other kinds of mobile devices: http://reader.kaywa.com/

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.