November 5, 2014…On an unusually warm November day, I spotted these hebes growing in front of Bill Sweet Insurance Agency. The bees were loving it. Thanks, Bill.
While the east coast is getting hammered by the polar vortex cold weather, the west coast is enjoying warm sunny days into early November. At this time of year there are very few sources of nectar, so it’s good that the honeybees are getting a lot from the hebes. Nectar provides an important energy source (carbohydrate) for the bees.
Many thanks to Steve Montana who has let me use his musical talents as background to the video. “GaelaMae On The Bluffs” was written by Steve and the banjo music was written by Buell Kasey back in the late 1800’s. Watch Steve Montana play banjo at the beginning of Sustainable World. Click on “Soldier’s Joy.”
January 15, 2014…I noticed a bunch of varroa mites on the bottom board. What was I going to do about it? “NOTHING!” (I was hoping the bees would know what to do)
A pile of dead bees that had been dumped out of the hive sometime earlier. This picture was taken from a video I shot in April. The dead bees had been there for a while, but I just couldn’t bring myself to photograph them. Too depressing. It’s possible these are all drones with deformed wing virus. I wish I had looked closer and examined them. I guess I should be happy that the other bees cleaned them out of the hive. It shows there are healthy bees that are cleaning up.
April 18, 2014…Box #3 is almost full, I’d better add a 4th box, which is what I did, but that was before the hive started to swarm. Compare the numbers to May 20th below.
May 10, 2014…The second swarm that came out of Warre2 in less than two weeks. I was able to transfer this swarm into a third Warre hive which is doing fine as of this date. (I just noticed some evidence of DWV bees being evicted in October ’14.)
May 20…Ten days after the second swarm, there’s only a few bees left in this the third box.
June 11…There’s been a small group of bees milling around the entrance for weeks. They don’t seem to have any ambition. Are they sick? Maybe.
July 14…Even fewer bees in July. That means (to me) only one thing. This hive is going nowhere. It’s all over except for the robbing.
July 14…this is a shot at the middle box showing very few bees. I’m just waiting for the robbing to start, but after tilting the hive, I realize there’s really no honey to rob.
I’ve seen a hive get robbed. It isn’t pretty. Once it starts there’s no stopping it. If it did get robbed, I was planning to take the new comb, freeze it (in case of wax moths), and save for future bait hives.
July and August came and went. No robbing took place. A swarm from my log hive presented itself on August 6. I contemplated combining it with this weak hive, but in the end, that swarm went into Bee Beard log hive of it’s own accord.
September 20…It’s possible there are a few more bees showing in this top box.
September 20…There are definitely more bees here in the middle box than in the July 14 view. The hive is building back up.
September 28…the activity around the hive has picked up dramatically. No more milling about. Bees are bringing in pollen.
Could this mean the hive has come back? Could it be that by taking this long brood break, the hive has reduced the varroa mite population naturally and now has started building up it’s numbers again?
A look through the observation windows in the back of the hive shows the top box full of empty comb, the middle box being full of bees and comb, and the bottom box with bees and old comb. The question is…why aren’t the bees working the empty comb in the top box?
A short video showing how fast the honeycomb built up. Luckily we are having an Indian summer into October. I’m athinking I won’t have to feed this hive this year as our winters are fairly mild and they have honey stores now.
We planted fennel this year to attract bees and butterflies. We never saw the butterflies, but we spotted the caterpillars and later on the bees.
August 22, 2014…we started seeing caterpillars on the fennel.
Caterpillars are voracious eaters. Michael Marlow has an up close video of one eating a stem. It doesn’t waste any time. I started noticing my fennel branches were getting bare, then I saw the caterpillars.
This is could be one of the earlier stages of growth. The life cycle of the Black Swallowtail Butterflies can be found here.
Fennel can grow quite tall. This one is at least 7 ft. tall. I wonder if the chrysalis will be hidden in the undergrowth.
The honeybees have been visiting the fennel since early September. I don’t know what the insect at the top is, but it’s very colorful. My wife thinks its a Great Golden Digger Wasp.
September 8, 2014…Post swarm day 33. There’s a shadow across her face. I hope that’s not a bad sign, but the bee math doesn’t look good for her.
I’ve looked at various charts explaining Bee Math, but I like the way Michael Bush puts it best…”If a hive just swarmed today, how long before the new queen is laying? Assuming this was the primary swarm, it usually leaves the day the first queen cell gets capped. So that means a new queen will emerge in 8 days. That queen may leave with another swarm or the workers may allow her to kill all the others and stay. Assuming she kills all the others (which are staggered in age, so they will emerge at different times if they do afterswarm) then she should be laying most likely two weeks later. So that’s about three weeks give or take a week. (two to four weeks).”
Bee-atrice swarmed a month and two days ago. That makes it 33 days…(well past four weeks) She had built up fast having gotten occupied by a wild swarm only two months prior on June 6, 2014.
July 27, 2014…The most advanced stage of comb building before the swarm on August 7. (I had planned to post a two month update on her strong progress, but she up and swarmed on me)
August 8, 2014…Bee-atrice through the observation window exactly one month ago. This shows how much comb was built in the two months the wild swarm occupied her. This is the day after she had swarmed.
August 8, 2014…Temperature holding steady at 93F…good for brood rearing.
September 8, 2014…And this is today. Doesn’t look like any more comb has been built, The number of bees hasn’t increased, and…
…and this is the awful final sign that things are not going well. 62F (16C) means there are no eggs being laid.
Maybe I’m wrong, but math is math, and the numbers don’t look good for Bee-atrice.
August 16, 2014…This anemone dahlia serves as a rest stop.
Looking over Kathy’s dahlias at some of the 2500 kinds that must be whittled down to 100.
Kathy grows dahlias…lots of them. Knowing of my interest in bees, she has explained how bees have helped her to grow different kinds of dahlias. For many years, she hand pollinated the dahlias she wanted to hybridize. About a year and a half ago, a swarm of bees chose a nearby cedar tree as their future home and started visiting her dahlias. Kathy says she gets much better results from the bees’ pollination. She collected the seeds after pollination and grew over 2500 kinds. Of the 2500, she will select only about 100 that make the grade. (I’m glad I don’t have to decide, I like them all.)
This is one of 2500 varieties that Kathy grew this year. She must whittle it down to about “100 keepers.”
This is known as a giraffe pattern dahlia. Kathy says she is indebted to the bees for their pollination services. I am intrigued by the variety of styles.
An orchid form dahlia
August 16, 2014…Since the bees adopted this high up cavity in a cedar tree, Kathy has benefited from them pollinating her dahlias. In the video you can see how high up it is with a steady stream of bees flying in and out.
Is this a keeper or will it go into the compost? Kathy hasn’t decided yet, but she does like what she sees. It started opening up yesterday and will look different tomorrow, “it’s promising,” she says.
Kathy says she is indebted to the bees for making this one which she is planning to keep.
Sunspot…a mignon dahlia creation that Kathy has let us grow for our bees.
June 8, 2014…Bee-atrice has BEES. It’s been a rough time for her, but I think this one will take.
June 16, 2014…10th day of bees in Bee-atrice Log Hive. I think they will stay this time.
While I was out of town, a huge prime swarm chose Bee-atrice Log Hive for a home. I knew if we waited long enough, we’d get lucky…I just wish I could have witnessed the swarm moving in. Bee-atrice was happy. She had been rejected twice. I had tried to console her after she had been rejected by two small swarms that I had given her. I told her that “rejection” might more appropriately be referred to as “redirection.” Those small swarms would not have made it anyway. I told her that she just had to be patient until the right swarm came along.
April 27, 2014…I drop the little cast swarm into Bee-atrice log hive. They stay a total of two days, then take off for parts unknown.
May 25, 2014…A second chance presents itself, in the form of a swarm in the apple tree. I bag it and drop it into Bee-atrice. I thought for sure it would stay, but after 8 days, it took off for the Asian Pear tree. I started thinking something was wrong with Bee-atrice…then it dawned on me…maybe I was the problem. Maybe I should just back off and let nature take it’s course…thirteen days later (while I’m away), a huge swarm picks out Bee-atrice. She later tells me, SHE rejected those little swarms, not the other way around. I guess she didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
June 9. 2014…lots of bee traffic at the entrance.
June 10, 2014…This is the first time I’ve ever seen 94F degrees (34C) register on the thermometer. This is the optimal temperature for brood. Three days ago it read 60 degrees (the ambient temperature)
June 9, 2014…the bees can be seen through the observation window. If they stay, we’ll be able to watch the comb building process.
June 16, 2014…10th day, natural comb can be seen already, through the top side entrance.
June 19, 2014…Day 13, this is where the bees hang out at night while they are waiting for the comb to be built.
June 19, 2014…Day 13, in this slightly out of focus shot, you can see how far the bees have built the natural comb…almost to the top of the observation window…a length of about 14 inches (35 cm).
Drones dropping down every time I uncover the observation window…
May 29, 2014…My wife said there were five bees on this earlier, but when I grabbed the camera, I only caught one bee.
May 28, 2014…My neighbor’s New Zealand Cabbage trees are blooming. I’m glad it’s on someone else’s property because there is a strong odor associated with it. Our bees love it.
May 28, 2014…New Zealand Cabbage has been blooming awhile. Our bees are all over it, all day.
May 27, 2014…A skipper is probing the depths of this Pink Chintz Thyme for nectar. In the video, you can see it try several spots before finally succeeding. The bees love this plant as well.
May 11, 2014…This little nuc hive survived the winter in a tree without any help from me. No sugar feeding or pollen paddies supplied. (Tough love) No honey was taken. It came from a swarm on April 18, 2013. Now it’s ready to swarm.
Bees revving it up to make their move
Ten minutes later, the bees appear to be headed back into the hive. Later in the day, all was quiet.
May 19, 2014 (8 days later)…A swarm starts to form in the bamboo. Could this be two swarms from the same hive?
May 19, 2014…While the swarm is forming on the bamboo, bees are fanning at the entrance to the tree hive.
By late afternoon, all the bees returned to the tree hive.
May 20, 2014 (next day)…A small swarm in the blackberries…
…and a small swarm in the bamboo.
Again, a small group of bees are fanning at the entrance to the tree hive, while other bees are flying around the two swarms.
Could it be that the queen can’t/won’t fly? It came from a swarm, so I know it’s wings haven’t been clipped. I guess I’ll find out in the next few days what is going on, but if a more experienced beekeeper wants to hazard a guess, I’d be curious.
In looking back at where this swarm originated from…from my log hive, on April 18, 2013. The swarm picked this patch of bamboo to settle in.
May 21…I checked to see if the swarm was still in the bamboo this morning. It was.
A closer look reveals that while small, this swarm might be big enough to make it. I called Bob to see if he still was interested in getting swarms for his Kenyan Top Bar Hives. He was.
Bob bags his first swarm. Bee Beard Log Hive looks on, as patient and quiet as ever.
Bob said he was interested in getting the blackberry swarm too. It went very well. Here the bees are fanning to indicate the queen is within.
Bob gets his second swarm. “Two in one day,” not bad for a new beekeeper!
Adventures in Natural Beekeeping 