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Honey Harvest

September 3, 2010 By Linda Medero View Comments

I’m so excited, I almost can’t stand it.  I’ve ordered the glass jars, found a way to press the honey without a lot of trouble, got a food grade bucket to put the extracted honey, made up labels for the jars…. IT’S HONEY HARVEST TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   I hope……..  

In a few days when the jars arrive, I’ll don my bee suit and take a top box off at least one hive, to see how things look.  My only concern is estimating 50 lbs of honey…. that’s approximately what I need to leave on the hives.  If I wasn’t such a kid about it I would wait til Spring to take any honey off, but I can’t….  I’m hoping to have some 2 oz jars for folks who want to buy just enough to taste the honey first and some 8 oz. jars for the hard core honey folks.    

Please let there be honey, please let there be honey, please let there be honey…………..

Honey flow

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A Honey Bee’s Hive Is Her Castle

July 7, 2010 By Linda Medero View Comments

And the girls will defend their castle to the death, literally. I found that out the hard way.

 It just one of those really stupid things to do.  Trying to write about it now, with hands swollen enough to look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, makes matters worse. The itching and burning make it down right miserable.  Hang on, gotta soak my hands in ice water some more……

AAHHH, back again… Who would have guessed the sensation of impending frost-bite would feel ab-so-lute-ly luxurious compared to the reaction from multiple bee stings? 

It was my own damn fault.  One of the dogs had eaten a beekeeper glove and I decided to try a pair of gardening gloves, the ones with rubber fingers and palm and cloth backing, thinking it would offer better manual dexterity. Yeah! Found out soon enough that the cloth backing is NOT thick enough to prevent stings.  Spent last night trying to convince myself that scratching would do more harm than good, only to wake myself up at 2AM raking my nails over every inch of my hands. 

I eventually woke up enough to stumble to the freezer and get some ice packs, propped them on top of my hands and got back to sleep.  Today was spent trying antihistamines, cortisone cream and just a little while ago I remembered the arnica sitting on the pantry shelf. Hang on…..

AAAAHHHHH…… frost-bite, take me away…..

I didn’t think much of it at first, as I had gotten stung a month or so ago and it didn’t amount to much, but that was one sting vs about 10-15 on my hands yesterday.

I’ve heard that beekeepers eventually don’t react to the stings and even that the venom somehow helps symptoms of arthritis and some neurological disorders.  I guess as soon as the swelling goes down enough to be able to make a fist, I’ll have the joints of a 20 yr old again. 

The reason for all this, was my need to check to see if the two boxes were full of comb and ready for a third to be added to the bottom of the hive. The bees were busy, and as careful as I could be, I realized the two boxes were glued together with propolis, so inspection would take some careful prying apart. 

I recall reading how the bees draw comb down to the bars of the box beneath them and then STOP and begin a whole new comb on the bottom set of bars. HA! Not my bees.  No, no, no.  The comb was drawn and attached to the bars in the bottom box, so as I gently lifted the top box, it tore open the comb, leaving oozing honey and agitated bees.  That was the beginning of our misunderstanding.  

The quiet before the storm

Considering the reaction of the bees, I thought it better to add the box now rather than come back a few weeks from now and bother them yet again. I put the boxes back together and slowly eased it off the stand down to the ground.  That made a situation where the bees could no longer go in and out of the hive.  They became a little more perturbed at me. 

Busy Honeybees Entering the Hive

Now, I can lift 50 lbs, but any more than that is a no-go for me.  Not to mention the awkward squatting position needed to lift these hives made it all the more difficult.  I found it impossible to lift 2 boxes (hopefully) heavy with comb, honey and brood high enough to put them on top of the new, empty box underneath. The bees were getting really ticked off by now.  And as much as I love my bees, the thought of my hugging the boxes in order to get the balance to lift straight up was just too… too…. up close and personal even with the beekeeper suit and veil. So, I pried the boxes apart again.  Oh, my! Before I knew it — zap-zap-zapzapzapzap-zap-zap!

I’m certainly happy the bees are productive enough to have hives heavy with honey but unless I can figure a way to use the lift I had built for me, (without any slips/oops!), there is no way I’m gonna be able to add to those hives later this summer.

Oh, now… here’s a new sensation…tiny needles of glass sticking me all over the backs of my hands… hmmm, interesting.

Ice water, soak in ice water………….. back in a jiffy……..

Needless to say, after the SNAFU with the first hive, there was no “inspection” of the others to see their progress and determine if another box was needed.  They just got one, necessary or not.  Had to go thru the same process of separating the boxes but  it went much quicker having done it before and not bothering to see much of what was going on . It wasn’t pleasant for bees nor me, but there were no more stings at least.

Reminds me of a YouTube video I watched where the guy didn’t wear any suit and didn’t smoke the bees. I wondered at the time if he was really brave or really stupid…. I think he was just REALLY LUCKY.

So, right now I think I will ponder the fascinating activity of scratching my hands non-stop without any sensation of relief one normally gets.  Talk about wasted effort.

I wonder how many days to normalcy.

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My Honey Bees are Pigs

June 8, 2010 By Linda Medero View Comments

Three Warre Hives

Who would have guessed?  Feeding honey bees…. well, now that I’ve been keeping bees for all of a few months, I can see the need, at least in the beginning. They have no reserves from the previous year in their new hive and the nectar wasn’t flowing when they were installed in the early spring.       

So I had tried quail feeders at first but the bees drank the honey too fast to make it worth while. Then I moved to the 3 gallon chicken waterers because I happened to have some lying around.  That was better size-wise, but when the level got too low the bees would crawl into the reservoir and drown. So, just to last the next few weeks, I took the container off and left just the dish filled with wood shavings so the bees had something to stand on while drinking.  Very few drowned bees, but not so good in the rain for obvious reasons.        

Honeybees Feeding on Sugar Water

But, good golly, Miss Molly!! They suck up the sugar-water like there is no tomorrow.  I can’t tell you how many bags of sugar I’ve bought.. the 25 lb bags. I haven’t looked in the hives since the last time I wrote about them, but I’m wondering if I need to add another box to the Warre hive for all the sugar they are consuming. So on goes the bee suit, minus one glove that the dogs ate.  Just call me the Michael Jackson of beekeepers.  One of my English Shepherds, Cinnamon, gives me a look, that I swear, says very clearly, “WTF?!?! You look like a moron.”  Yeah, well, who ate the freakin’ glove, Missy?!?! PHRUMPF! I know she means the suit with the mesh headgear, not the missing glove, but I have to defend myself somehow…. We part ways in the middle field.   

For the future, I found a site that builds Warre Hives and they also have neat top feeders that I plan to get to make it easier to feed the bees… for the rest of the year, it seems.  PIGS!!!  The website, by the way, is appropriately called The Warre Store  . ( The hives pictured here are by a local guy in the Portland area.)  

Busy Honeybees Entering the Hive

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The (Beekeeping) Gloves Are Off!

April 26, 2010 By Linda Medero View Comments

Curiosity killed the cat and will probably kill my bees, but I went back again today… minus the gloves.  Not that I actually planned that.  It’s just with all the other crap I had to drag along, I forgot them.  Just as well.  It’s too flippin’ hard to handle top bars with those fat leather gloves. This was right after I got a call from Ruhl  Bee Supply in Portland.  Bee people are really nice.  Got some more hand holding but was told unfortunately, no Queens available today.  Talked about looking at the hive and seeing the larva but no definite answers on how long it takes the worker bees to decide to try to take over the job of laying (infertile) eggs if the Queen isn’t there.  Was told I could add the weak hive to one of the stronger ones rather than lose them. Was told pollen patties this time of year is good as well as more sugar-water…Apparently pollen is bread for the babies.  No bread no new bees. So I ask if they will send pollen patties instead of Queens  originally ordered.  

So, once again… checked the first hive and WOW!! I saw her… THE QUEEN!! For sure!! that plus more comb and more larva.  I’m happy and stop looking at that hive and move on to the pitiful one.  Just a small group of bees hanging on to the top bars with very little comb, very large cells and little honey and no brood. No Queen that I can see.  I’m heartbroken.  Go to the third hive and  I try smoking them to get them to move off the comb.  All the smoke does is make them buzz more. Softly blowing on them without smoke seems to work better. I see they are making comb like crazy and have more larva but can’t find the queen no matter what.  I figure, they must know something I don’t.   I watch the comings and goings of the bees and don’t see any yellow “pants”  of pollen attached to any of them… not good.  But at least they are active and foraging.

Go back to the house just as I get a call from Glorybee.  They have one Queen available for me. A miracle, exactly what I need!!! I hop in the car, smelling like a smoked sausage, pick up my little lady and her attendants, some pollen patties and back we go for another round.

The Queen is now installed, we await her emergence from her cage in a few days.  The bees have pollen patties and more sugar-water… going back in half an hour I see the quail waterers with some wood shavings in the bowl to prevent drowning placed by the opening to the hive is working just fine. (We won’t talk about the 1/2 gallon of sugar water I spilled in the house, or the swearing that followed.) The bees look like a bunch of guys at a bar, hanging onto the lip of the waterer with their front legs, heads tipped into the sugar-water, sucking it up. All lined up around the perimeter of the waterer. Guess they were hungry.

I feel satisfied I’ve done as much as I can do for now and leave them as the winds begin to pick up again.   I will add sugar-water tomorrow, and leave them alone til Friday when I check to see how the new Queen is doing…. She has a bright blue dot on her thorax so I should be able to see her.

So much more to learn….

I love my bees….

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The Clumsy Beekeeper

April 24, 2010 By Linda Medero View Comments

I must be, as my mother used to say, a glutton for punishment.  Like I don’t have enough to do with 2 part time jobs, 6 dogs, chickens, a soy free egg business, rabbits and a few ornery goats.  I decided having honey bees would be a good addition to the homestead. (I like honey in my tea) 

Anyway, I went to the “installing bees” introduction at Glorybee in Eugene, OR to see what I needed to do.  Of course I have a Warre hive and they demonstrated on the typical Langston box.  So, I realized I’d have to kinda fudge it.  Also, guess I must have missed it in my reading, but I am supposed to feed the little buggers!!  S**T!!! So there were a few days of makeshift feeders as the ones at Glorybee wouldn’t fit in a Warre hive.  I installed 3 packages of bees in the hives 2 weeks ago…. shake and shiver.  Never handled bees before.  Got the bee suit, smoker etc to make sure I don’t die of anaphylactic shock in the back field.  Found out the first day, honey bee stings are nothing compare to those G** D**N paper wasps.  Annoying but not exactly painful.  Good to know. Then I had to check to make sure the queen got out of her little cage.  Inspected day 2, still in the cage.  Gummy bears clogging the entrance are harder for my bees to eat thru than I imagined.  Either that, or I just crammed it in too tight.  At any rate, on day 4, I had to remove the plug manually. 

Two weeks later and I inspect again and can’t find the Queens in any of the 3 hives.  What are the chances, eh? So I call Glorybee for some hand-holding and advice and I was instructed to look again for eggs or larva if I can’t find the Queen.  I told the guy, I didn’t mean to be a racist, but they all look alike to me.  I could see a drone now and then (just a big bee vs the little workers), but a Queen, nope.    If I can’t find any, I probably should re-queen ASAP.  Unfortunately, they are all out of Queens and won’t have another shipment til May 4 or thereabouts, too late for my guys… BLAH!!!  I ’d have to find another supplier.  What made me think I could do this?

So I re-suit, (I feel like an astronaut) get my stuff together and trudge heavy-hearted out to my hives.  Now, if you’ve never looked at honeycomb before, the idea of looking for a white egg the size of a grain of rice, standing up in the cell, not lying flat (let’s make it a little tougher to see!) or a white larva curled up in a white comb cell, it sounds daunting to say the least.  I pray to the god of honeybees that luck will shine down on me.

Disturbing the hive yet again, I fumble with the heavy gloves and pick up each top bar and smoke away.  The bees don’t give a rat’s ass I’m there and refuse to move off the comb so I  can see it.  So, I brush with my handy-dandy bee brush. Most cells have clear or gold honey in them and are open. Most are still empty. A few capped with white. But, then…. I think I see some!! I think I see some!! Larva, not eggs!! Cool!! I’m all excited and can’t believe my luck.  Now I get greedy.  I don’t want just one hive with larva, I want ALL of them to have some. I go from “please God, just one hive”, to “if one can do it, so can the other two, d**n it!”  I’m so busy inspecting the hive, I don’t notice it’s started to rain.  Great, just what the bees need, more moisture in the hive.  If these bees don’t die on me, it will be a miracle.   I give up on finding the Queen and put everything hastily back together to minimize the damage done with the rain.

The rain stops and I inspect the second hive which has much less comb built and the bees are quieter.  No larva. No Queen…. No hope for them. sigh…..

The third hive has quite a bit of comb, good thing ’cause I promptly moved one top bar wrong and the comb let loose down into the hive. What a mess, I’m able to pull the comb out of the hive, put it in front of the entrance and brush the bees, for the most part back in the hive.  There is no larva in this comb, thank God. Honeybees are forgiving.  They just go back to their activity.  I should learn from their focus and lack of blaming that stupid, clumsy beekeeper for destroying so much of their hard work.  But again, on the remaining combs, I see larva!!!! WHAAAA HOO!!!  , congratulating myself on my very smart, very tolerant bees, I feel like I dodged a bullet.  Away from the hive I strip off the bee suit (which feels like getting out of straight jacket) and return to the house for my second cup of coffee and to write this.

Should be the end of the story for now, but as I write this, suspicion and concern replace satisfaction… bees other than the Queen can lay eggs and turn them into larva, but they will develop into infertile adults and the hive will still die off.  So how do I know whether it’s a Queen that laid them or another bee?  Groan.  I can’t go back to look for the Queens again. I just can’t.  Guess I’ll see if any local beekeepers have Italian Queens….. if not, it will be the shortest beekeeping experience in history…..

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