Well, I got some fun bee news today. The City of Minneapolis is considering allowing beekeeping in the metro area (although with a license). There's a hearing on April 15.
I also just got a copy of the second edition of Beekeeping for Dummies and one of my photos is in it. Whoot. It's the one of me hand feeding the girls and you can tell it's my finger--green nail polish!
DON'T FORGET:There is still time to get your entries in for the Swarovski Guest Blogging Contest. A chance for you to have a blog entry posted here for the day (and getting some of my readers a taste of your writing) and a cool prize while I'm birding in Guatemala!
Well, the weather has been above freezing and all of us just happened to be in town for a moment so Mr. Neil, Non Birding Bill, Fabulous Lorraine and myself decided that it was time to do a winter bee inspection to determine how many bees and supplies to order for this spring.
Since we would be digging about inside the hive to check the food stores the hives had left, we decided to go with our bee suits on. With his hat and bee suit, NBB almost looked more like seaman from the movie The Life Aquatic than a member of a team of award winning beekeepers.
We have two hives that we are over wintering. Above is the Kelli hive. She is three deep brood boxes, wrapped in insulation, with two moisture boards (stuff they use in your bathroom walls to absorb moisture), and some newspaper. You worry more about your hives getting wet in winter than you do the cold. The bees can take the cold, but moisture in a hive just messes everything up. Kitty is two boxes without insulation and just newspaper for moisture. We were running a couple of experiments: for overwintering, do we want to do three boxes instead of two and do we want to use insulation or not. There are arguments for both. It's possible for bees to survive with only two boxes--fewer places to go and therefore the cluster won't be at risk of being too far from food. Insulation on the hive could fool the bees into thinking it's warmer outside than it really is and they fly out too soon and die.
Before we opened them, I put my ear up to each hive to see if I could hear them buzzing. I could! Kitty was not as loud as Kelli, but both hives were totally alive and had survived the harsh January temperatures so far! After we opened the Kelli hive, I held up my camera to the open frames so you could hear a hive buzzing in winter (you can see the green Kitty hive in the background):
We didn't dig too deep in Kelli, she was loud, just glancing at the top frames, she had plenty of food, and if we have learned anything, it's that the more you leave your bees alone to just bee, the better off they are.
We did make sure that bother bottom and top entrances were open for good ventilation. She was incredibly dry. Even her news paper was bone dry. The moisture board was working well and there weren't too many dead bees at the entrance and we could see a couple come in and out. The three box system, with insulation, and the moisture boards appeared to be working very, very well.
Kitty was a different story. She was alive, but her cluster was very small. If you look between NBB and Mr. Neil in the above photo, you can see part of it. Mr. Neil is holding a spray bottle, he sprayed some homemade bee nectar around them and we made sure that the frames closest to them were full of food, so if the cluster ran out of food where they were, they would not need to go far.
The cluster of bees stays together to stay warm. If it gets so cold that they cannot move far and they have eaten all the nearby food, they may starve before they can move to where there is food in the hive. As we moved the frames around, the hive was incredibly wet.
Even the newspaper on top was wet. There were thousands of dead bees on the inside. We took out a bunch of the dead wet bees. We have some concerns about this hive. Her cluster is small. If the rest of the winter is mild, she should survive. If we get some more subzero days, we're afraid that the remaining cluster of bees is so small it won't be able to stay warm enough. There's not much more we can do at this point.
So, I think two things to take from this are: 1. That white moisture absorbing material used for bathroom walls helps to keep a wintering hive dry. 2. That a two brood box hive probably could survive, but I don't know if we would do it again without insulation. We want to have six hives going this summer and we think what is going to happen is that we will split the healthy Kelli hive into two hives and that Kitty will most likely die and we will need to restart her.
Some good, some bad with the hive inspection, but it was fun to get a taste of our beekeeping operation. I really do miss it. I love birding and I love travel, but I think beekeeping is one of the coolest things you can ever try in life. It's more fun than I ever realized.
After we were finished we had to put the hives back together and put the bricks back on to make sure a strong winter wind didn't knock their covers off...and I can never resist working a Father Ted reference:
We are hardy folk, we northern beekeepers! Mr. Neil and I pose around a snow surrounded Kitty beehive. We came out to make sure that the snow wasn't blocking key ventilation areas in the beehives and to see if they were alive.
Mr. Neil and Non Birding Bill also checked to see if our electric bear-proof (and skunk-proof) fence was still in working order. Not that we need to worry about bears at this exact moment, but better to find out now if there is a problem with the solar panel now than in the spring when a bear has breached the fence and made a mess of the hives.
The Kitty bees are in a smaller hive this winter (an experiment to see if we can overwinter bees in a two hive system instead of three). This time of year, the workers and queen are all clustered together to stay warm. We opened the roof and they were right at the top. A couple even flew out at us! Mr. Neil asked, should we go inside and see what's going on, maybe we could add a frame of honey for them."
NBB quickly said, "No!"
"But do we--"
"No!"
We didn't have a smoker and two of us were dressed in black--the color a bee is most likely to sting. So we didn't go much further. Her humming sounded very healthy. Here's a video I made just to pick up the sound of their buzzing in twenty degree temperatures:
Things over that the Kelli hive were just as happy:
We could hear them inside the hive. The snow had piled up over the bottom entrance and Mr. Neil shoveled the front. As soon as it was clear, a couple of bees came out--one even took out a dead be. Bless our OCD Minnesota Hygienic Bees--"Must be clean, must be clean," they chant in their little buzzy voices.
Both seem content and healthy. They still have a few months to go and we'll check them again. This reminds me that it's getting time for me to order our bees for the spring! I think we'll have a total of six hives this summer! We'll probably divide Kelli and order three new packages of bees.
On our way out to the hives NBB found some feathers scattered on the snow. Above is one of the clumps. We found them in the spot where we have seen a saw-whet owl in the past. We were trying to figure out what kind of bird the feathers came from. The coloring of this clump looked like morning dove.
But then we found these secondaries (with a little blood ), looks too small for mourning dove to me. I think this might be junco. Possible for a saw-whet to take out, but also prey for a sharp-shinned hawk which also hangs out in Mr. Neil's woods in winter. I didn't see any owl poop on the snow, but then again, find white on white is kinda hard. But a fun mystery to chew on.
I just got the current issue of WildBird Magazine in the mail and there's a photo of me at the beehives! I'm so proud, part of our award winning Kelli Hive is pictured in a birding magazine. I feel like I'm crossing some sort of border by getting bees in a birding magazine. Now sure what that border is exactly, but it's cool in my little brain. Incidentally, you can send in your own photo of yourself reading WildBird, you just need to make sure to take it someplace where you do a lot of birding. Which for me happens to be around my beehives. Check out this killer titmouse photo I got near the hives on Sunday:
Nothing like mixed nuts and brush pile to make a titmouse come in and give you his sexy side.
We went out to our two remaining beehives to prep them for winter (the lovely lady above is the Kitty namesake). We are running a couple of experiments. There are beekeepers of two camps: 1 is to insulate your hives in the winter and the other is to not insulate. In our neck of the woods where subzero is the norm in January and February, insulating your hive makes sense. However, some beekeepers feel that a strong hive can stay warm without the insulation and that the insulation gives the hive a false sense of how cold it really is outside. Foragers come out too soon and die, weakening the hive.
We decided to insulate the Kelli hive and this year, Non Birding Bill made sure the insulation was not going to come off like it did last year. He duct taped the crap out of it.
We decided to not insulate the Kitty hive and to take her down to two boxes instead of three. Mr. Neil has read that this will work in our neck of the woods and I was skeptical but he brought me around to his way of thinking. The idea is that the cluster of bees does not have to travel as far to get to the food storage. Last winter, the Kitty hive died because the cluster got stuck were there was no food and starved to death. So with lack of insulation and a small space to keep warm, she should be good to go.
Note how Mr. Neil and NBB are a good distance from the hive? We foolishly went out to the hives with no beesuits or smokers. As we checked inside the Kitty Hive (and true to her cranky nature) some bees flew out and one stung me through my winter glove. Everyone took a step back. Interestingly enough--the sting did not hurt nearly as much as my first sting. It is true, the more you get stung, the less painful the sting--although it has been rather itchy the last two days.
We were a tad worried about Kitty when we came out, her buzz was not as loud as Kelli's and when the hive was opened, I thought I heard that kind of dissonant buzz that you get when your hive has gone queenless. It may just be the winter low-key buzz. I'm not going to worry about it. Requeening just does not work out for us and I refuse to intervene on that any more.
We will check on our girls a bit in the winter. Mr. Neil suggested we go out with a spray bottle of sugar water to spray the cells if they look low on food. We are also trying to use some newspaper in the tops of the hive to absorb moisture and that will need to be replaced.
The next Birds and Beers is this Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 6pm at Merlin's Rest.
This weekend was kind of a blur, I'm still trying to catch up. This early winter weather is just perfect for a one last hurrah before the hardcore cold temperatures force us inside. Non Birding Bill got Mr. Neil to host a bonfire gathering.
We had a great bonfire going and we burned some unusable beehive frames which made for some spectacular pyrotechnic effects with the old wood. Speaking of frames, we still have some frames full of honey to extract and a big fancy extractor. I thought that maybe we could do some extracting at the bonfire gathering--lots of friends over, "Hey, don't you want to be a junior beekeeper and extract some honey?" We could all take turns, running the crank. Alas, much like all the beekeeping equipment out there, NO INSTRUCTIONS (beekeeping equipment manufacturers--that sucks and makes me not like your products and is off putting to new beekeepers).
This morning we woke up to a dusting of snow and LOTS of finches at the feeders. Non Birding Bill and I headed out to our remaining hives we are going to over winter--Kitty and Kelli. We were going to screw in the metal entrance reducers so the girls would have less area to defend and to also keep mice from moving inside.
When we arrived, we found paw prints which looked remarkably like skunk at the entrance of both hives. This snow fell in the early morning hours. That jerk skunk had just been there a mere few hours before NBB and myself. Skunks knock at the entrance of a hive. This makes the bees angry and they come out to attack, the skunk eats them, apparently unfazed by the stinging. We have carpet tacking around the entrances to prevent this (when the skunks come knocking, they get pricked by the nails), but it's gotten strewn around this past bee season. So NBB and I rearranged it to give that skunk a few good pricks if it comes back. Hanz (the guy who does yard maintenance) built our bees a wicked bad electric fence to keep bears out, Lorraine is going to ask him to add one more line of electricity, closer to the ground and closer to skunk height to encourage the b@stard to look for food elsewhere.
NBB and I put our ears to both hives and heard contented buzzing from within each hive. Love that!
Early plans for next season--six hives! We'll divide Kelli into 2 hives (cause she's gonna swarm and if we divide her, we can control the swarm), 3 new hives, and Kitty...well, that's our angriest hive and we're just gonna let her do whatever she wants to do. If she wants to swarm, then she can swarm. I'm not gonna argue that hive.
There was a constant flow of goldfinches all morning. None of them were banded, so it was just a steady stream of hundreds visiting. The day before, I had noticed a couple of pine siskins and the more I watched the goldfinches...
...the more I would see streaky pine siskins mingle in among the flock. Which is right on target according to the Winter Finch Forecast: "A conifer seed specialist in winter, most siskins should leave the province this fall because the spruce cone crop is poor in the boreal forest. It is uncertain whether the huge white pine seed crop will keep some siskins in central and northern Ontario this winter."
I put some fine ground sunflower hearts and thistle on the tree stump. Goldfinches flew in for it, as did juncos and (of course) pine siskins. In the above photo, you can see some of that yellow edging on the wing feathers of the siskins. If you have goldfinches in your yard and you've never noticed a pine siskin before, take a closer look at your finches. Pine siskins can be easily mistaken for goldfinches in winter plumage. But look at the breast. If it's clear, it's a goldfinch, if it's super streaky, it's a pine siskin.
Once two or three siskins were on the stump, more moved in. It wasn't too long before the siskins outnumbered the goldfinches! I didn't get a photo of it, but we did have one crazy pine siskin going to the no melt peanut butter suet. I'd never seen a siskin on suet before, I thought they were strick seed eaters.
Birds, Beers, Bald Eagles, Bees, and Rio Grande Valley Fest
Holy Buckets, I am in love with the boys at the Golden Valley, MN National Camera Exchange. My all-time favorite point and shoot digital camera to use for digiscoping is a Fuji FinePix E900. It's been discontinued and hard to find. They found one for me. I'm takin' that bad boy to Texas. The Canon A570 I'm currently using is okay, but the color quality is just not as good as the Fuji. Thank you National Camera in Golden Valley, you boys are the best!
A bird that's believed to be the oldest banded bald eagle on record in the upper Midwest has been returned to the wild. The 31-year-old female was hit by a car on state Highway 47 near Fence Lake last month. After recovering, the eagle was released by wildlife officials in Lac du Flambeau on Friday.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the bird was among 6,000 eagles banded in 1977. The average age of adult eagles is 10-12 years old.
So, I think I'm kinda grateful for my insanely busy schedule this fall. Mr. Neil wanted to move the Kitty hive so it would be inside the newly installed "bear proof fence" before the winter. This is our least friendly hive and the best time to move a hive is at night. I'm sure you can tell how fun and exciting this is just be rereading that last sentence. I alas could not go this week but you can read all about it over at Lorraine's blog. Of the four of us: Non Birding Bill, Mr. Neil, Me, and Lorraine, only NBB is not the bee sting virgin. Lorraine got her's last night.
Don't forget, we got a couple of Birds and Beers coming up. Birds and Beers is an informal gathering of birders of all abilities--if you're interested in birds, you're invited. You can meet other birders--maybe find a carpool buddy, ask about where to find target birds, share cool research projects you might be working on, ask a bird feeding question, share life lists, share some digiscoping tips, promote your blog--the sky is the limit. It's low key and it's fun.
Here are the dates and note that the first date is in Harlingen, TX--in conjunction with the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest!
Thursday, November 6 at 7:45pm (or after the festival keynote speaker is finished that night). It will be held at The Lone Star, they are holding a table for us.
If anyone is on a Texas birding listserv and wants to post the Harlingen Birds and Beers there, please do. It's open to anyone, even if you are not part of the bird festival.
Speaking of the RGV bird fest, if you are a bird blogger and are going to be there, we're going to have a formal Bird Blogger Meeting in the Alcove at 4:30pm on Friday. This is your chance to meet other bloggers, ask questions, share ideas and network. We're a fun group and we're happy to see you be successful. Please come!
AND if you are someone who has no clue what bird blogging is all about or even what the heck a blog is, I'll be giving a program called Blogging: The New Nature Journal on what bird blogging is all about, how to start one, ideas for what you can blog about, highlights of my blog and other great birding blogs you can find on the Internet. The program is on Thursday at 2pm.
If you're in Texas, I look forward to meeting you. It's gonna be a great time!
We had so many people coming, that we were short on bee suits. NBB wore long pants, with a red shirt (the color red doesn't bother bees), just a helmet with a net and gloves--go NBB. Euan was there to interview Mr. Neil about his latest book, The Graveyard Book. What a brave man, you're scheduled to do an interview and told, "Hey, why don't don't you come out with us to our hives!" And he comes along in full bee suit to record part of the interview. What a good sport.
And then we put him to work! The honey supers (boxes where bees store excess honey and no brood) are incredibly heavy and you sometimes need two people to take them out. Now, last year, I used something called Bee Quick to get the bees out of the hive. It didn't work as well this year. I suspect that the bottle I purchased last year lost some of its potency because the bees did not vacate the supers quite like they should have. I think we'll just have to get a fresh bottle every year. Here's a video of Mr. Neil and Lorraine trying to shake out the last few bees from the honey super...and notice the irritated bee buzz:
Don't you just love the maniacal Lorraine giggle?
We checked the MimiKo hive first--no honey production--but the bees are so incredibly friendly, did some hand feeding. Next we checked the county-fair-blue-ribbon-winning Kelli hive next--three supers with honey in all (she made both comb honey and regular honey), but not willing to give up the supers, she got a little angry. We were talking about the differences between the two hives. How Mimi doesn't make much excess but she is so, so friendly and how Kelli works hard and made a terrific amount of honey her first year. Mr. Neil told me that the two women who painted the hives have been following their progress on the blog and discussed this as well. Kelli said, "When I painted my hive, I put in the message, 'Be productive.'" To which Mimi replied, "That's funny, I told my hive to 'Be friendly.'"
And that's what the hives are.
Then we checked the combined Kitty/Olga hive (and we actually had the Kitty namesake with us). We warned Kitty and Euan that we needed to be ready for this hive. Someone asked if she's a mean hive. This hive isn't a mean or angry hive, it's just that she's older and doesn't tolerate any shit. There really is no other way to explain it. We had the smoker at the ready, we took off the top lid--bam! Mr. Neil got stung through his sock near the ankle! It's one of those rare areas where a bee could breach the bee suit. Some beekeepers wear boots (Mr. Neil often does) others duct tape the bee suit pants over the shoes to prevent the breach, but we didn't and he got stung very quickly. Kitty/Olga was living up to her hype. We went back to work--bam! Euan got stung--right through the bee suit, a complete breach of the beesuit.
It was at this point we decided to put the fume board on top of the hive and leave it for 20 minutes to a half hour to really let the essential oils do their work--bees do not like the aroma of the Bee Quick and it pushes them deeper into the hive, leaving all the honey supers bee-less and allows es to harvest the honey relatively pain free. Also, leaving the hive for awhile meant Euan could continue his interview, the boys could also treat their stings and the rest of us could get a much needed break and have a snack.
I took a moment to take the Ross Rounds out of their frames--the easiest way to harvest honey if you can talk your bees into making comb honey (instructions for how to extract from Ross Rounds can be found here). It was weird having Euan along. He's a terrifically nice guy, and again, I must say that he was a very good sport to come out to our hives and still keep a genial nature after being stung. But the weird thing is that you hear him all the time on MPR (he's the dude with a hint of a Scottish brogue) and so it kind of felt like we were taking the radio out with us. I made sure that when he went home, that he got some fresh comb honey. We take a lot of people out to the hives and sometimes we just give them the smoker. It keeps them busy and if they get nervous at the hives, they have something to hold on to and most of the time we can work with minimal smoke. Euan went right in there, lifting the heavy supers, taking one for the team and getting stung, all while he was just trying to get an interview. When the interview is up, I'll post a link.
The summer has been quite busy and I haven't had too much quality time with my girls. I love this time of year and could literally spend hours watching the girls coming and going from the hive entrance, noting all the colors on their pollen baskets.
I was out this week with Lorraine just to check on honey production. I've noticed that there is a definite difference with boy beekeeping and girl beekeeping. When the girls are out checking the hives it's, "May I have the hive tool please? Thank you?" or "Could you puff a little smoke on my hand? Awesome, thank you."
With boys involved at the hive...it's different. It's more of "We need smoke here, now!" or "You're standing in the worst possible place." Not that we don't appreciate the boys at the hive, we love the boys, they are an important part of our beekeeping operating, but it's fun to note the dynamics.
The bees are in serious honey gathering mode. The Bickman hive (the award winning hive) has an almost full honey super and is about halfway through filling a comb honey super.
As we were checking the supers, Bickman had made some cells between the two supers and they were ripped apart when we moved them. All the girls came in right away to clean the mess.
Word soon spread to the hive that more tongues were needed and many workers came up to eat the spilled honey--those pheromone work great for mass communication--gotta love it. One super was almost full, the other was halfway and I wasn't sure when we'd be back, but we thought we would add a third just for the heck of it. We walked back to the house to grab a super and when we came back (which couldn't have been more than 15 minutes)...
They had licked the spilled honey dry! I think this is one of the many parts of beekeeping that is so enjoyable. You read about what bees are capable of, but as a beekeeper, you get the chance to actually witness this miraculous insect. I love beekeeping.
Here is a little video of the bees licking the honey. As usual, if you go to the actual YouTube page, you can click on "watch in high quality" button so the bees in full beauty:
Lorraine and I had to put the hives back together and with all the massive honey gathering and our short statures, it's a tad tricky (did miss the boys' help with that today. Lorraine and I struggled to put the hive back and when finished, I had a slight problem:
My beesuit got caught in the hive and mashed with some sticky propolis for good measure. It took some pulling and wedging, but I finally managed to get free.
So, we interrupt the shorebirding I was about to blog about to do a beekeeping update. I think when I last wrote about our humble beekeeping operation, we had combined the queenless Olga hive with the strong Kitty hive using the newspaper method. We took the remaining brood box with bees from Olga and placed it in Kitty, separating the box with a thin layer of newspaper. The bees would chew through the newspaper, giving the Olga bees a chance to absorb the pheromones of Queen Kitty and not start any fights.
When we check on them a week later, the newspaper on the bottom was completely eaten away.
They were still working their way through the top, but all seems to be going well and we are now a three hive operation. Not bad for our second year, not bad at all.
Meanwhile, the Bickman Bees have really set the tone for this summer--their honey won the blue ribbon at the county fair! It started as a wacky idea, I told Mr. Neil, Lorraine, and Non Birding Bill that we should enter our honey in the local fair. Having scoped out the rules and figuring we could afford the fifty cent entry fee, we gave it a go. I must say, Lorraine did the bulk of the work (apart from the bees): she extracted the honey and dealt with the slumgum, read up on what makes for an award winning entry, and walked it to the fair.
I was going to try and go out, but I was too swamped after my tv segment today--I still have not unpacked from last week! I got a phone call this afternoon Mr. Neil and Lorraine reported that the honey from our bees got the blue ribbon. Above is Lorraine posing with the entries.
It's beautiful too--a very pale color. I've had a couple of bites of feral comb from the hive, but have not tasted the official entry. Apparently, it tastes much different than Olga's honey last year.
I can't believe the overwhelming sense of pride I have in my hard workin' girls right now. This has been a pretty good year--I've got steady work that I enjoy, my second book came out, I've traveled to some fabulous places, but...I think seeing our bees take the blue ribbon has to top it. Not only because beekeeping is one of the most awesome things a person can do in life (aside from birding and living with a pet rabbit) but it's been a team effort with my husband and two really good friends.
...and now I have the A-Team Theme running through my head. Great.
