Birdchick

Ah, where did the summer go?  I ask that on October 10 when we have had our first snow of the season–that’s a little insane, even for the Twin Cities.  I’m prepared for snow by Halloween, this is too early.  We have barely taken the full measures to get our hives ready for winter and already the snow has hit.  We only got a dusting and most of it melted but is was a brutal reminder nonetheless.

Kitty was in town and snapped most of the photos in this entry.  Above, I’m making fall nectar to help our bees get a little extra food stores in place before winter hits hard.  This concoction is even too much for hummingbirds.  Basically, I fill one of those pails with table sugar to the top and then add enough water to dissolve it.  It’s a heavy duty nectar recipe to fortify the hives for winter.  I mostly posted this photo to drive my mother crazy.  She’s not a fan of my recently acquired red hair, she feels that blond suits me better.

The pails go on the tops of the hive, above the ceiling so the workers can have easy access to the food.  As you can see from the above photo, the nectar is a hit with the girls.  They fly right to the pail even as we place it on the top of the hives.  So much is uncertain with the hives in the winter. You can have a seemingly healthy hive in the fall and then something unknown can go wrong over winter like too much moisture or the hive cluster travels too far from the stores starving to death because its too cold and slow to move to food elsewhere in the hive.  We hope all will go well and all will survive, but there’s a good possibility we could lose some, if not all of them.

All of the hives look like they have good stores.  Above, Kitty got a shot of a frame full of honey stores.  We like to see lots of this in the fall.  There was some concern that our red hive was failing, she was much quieter than our other hives and bee wolves were going into the hive.  It was by no means a dead hive, there were many workers, but I would say half the work force of our other hives.  This one had swarmed, had made a new queen and was producing larvae.  But half the hive was elsewhere in the woods starting a new colony.  Each brood box has a few empty frames in each box.  We rearranged the frames so that the the bottom two boxes were chock full and the top box had the empty frames.  Hopefully with the nectar pail up there, they will finish filling the top box and be good to go for the winter.

Some of the hives had some moisture in the top–deadly to a hive in winter.  We took those hives completely apart and put a ventilation base at the bottom to see if that would help.  From the massive amount of bees around and on Mr. Neil, you can see that they really were not too thrilled about the situation.  Here’s a video to give you an idea of the mood of the hive, we had just bumped the bottom box and the hive had gone from mildly irritated to PISSED.  You can hear me announcing how angry the hive was (I sound like Robbie the Robot, “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”  You can also hear bees bonking the camera warning they are about to sting.  Mr. Neil remains in a zen like trans:

Mr. Neil opted to without the full bee suit, going for the half bee suit, regular trousers with wellingtons.  This worked surprisingly well around the angry bees…even when I accidentally dropped a frame so full of bees that we could barely see the capped honey underneath right on his boot.  Half the bees fell to the ground, the other half landed somewhere on his person…mostly in the trouser region.  I froze like Ralphie in a Christmas Story when he looses the nuts for the spare tire, “Oh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge,” I said in my hand.  Everyone else assessed the situation and the amount of bees gathering in a rather unfortunate area on Mr. Neil’s pants.

Mr. Neil quietly requested assistance, Hans (our muscle in the beekeeping operation) looked away.  Kitty just stared in wonder at all the bees around her.  I looked at Lorraine and said, “You’re the personal assistant, you can brush the bees away from his pants.”

He came out unscathed and all I can say is thank goodness for smokers and bee brushes.

Hans had a breech of security in his bee suit.  I felt bad, especially since before we walked to the hives, we were tossing around Letterman jokes and I threatened to create a hostile work environment for him.  Little did I know I would do that, but not in a wacky sexual way, more with a few thousand angry worker bees kind of way.  A worker found her way to the tender region between the bottom hem of his bee suit and the top of his shoe.  I tried to puff some smoke on the area to prevent the stinging bee’s pheromone from alerting others to sting the same area.  Alas, it was in vain, more bees rushed to Hans’s shoe and I think he got stung about five or six times.  Two bees got caught in his shoe laces and I think they attracted more angry workers.  Way more hostile than I intend.  I also got stung in the same area and learned that it’s true, the more I get stung, the less it hurts.  It’s still not pleasant, but it’s not the pulsating ouch fest like the first sting.

I love this shot of Kitty.  She’s covered in bees, getting the full experience but you can also see a couple of angry bees going right in to bonk her on the front screen of her bee suit.  She got some lovely photos.  Besides rearranging the hives, we took the last remaining honey supers back for extraction.  A few stragglers hid among the frames and followed us into the house.

One hid surreptitiously on the tea kettle.  What a clever girl!  The Englishman likes his tea and many people would prepare hot water throughout the day.  They would grab the handle to pour and then she would be ready to make her move and strike upon the unsuspecting fingers.

However, she was discovered and many photos were taken of her.  After a few rounds of the flashes of the camera she flew off to unknown regions of the house.  We hoped that like the rest of her friends that she found a way outside.  At the end of the day, I gathered all of my stuff to head home.

I turned to say goodbye and noticed a steady stream of smoke coming from the light above the kitchen table.  “Um, Kitty? Should that light be smoking?”

We stood on chairs to assess the situation.  I was still too short to see the cause, but Kitty looked inside and said that it was a honey bee.  It was at that point you could get a faint whiff of something smoky sweet.  Poor, tea kettle bee!  Her plans thwarted, she took the noble end of a fiery death in dining room light fixture.

I can’t end this on a Viking Bee Funeral.  So, I end this post with a video of Neil demonstrating his mad bee flicking technique.  He was taking frames from our honey supers and flicking all the bees off to go back into their hives.  He’s quite good at it:

There you have it.  Neil Gaiman, talented bee flicker.

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We did some work out at the hives today.  Kitty came along and got a photo of me petting one of our bees.

This bee was from our oh so mellow Lebowski Hive.  Not all were so mellow.  I got stung on the ankle (and it’s true, the stings hurt less over time).  Poor Hans got stung 5-6 times on the ankle.

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Look at all the little white bee necks!  Cute!  I love it when you see bees craning their heads.

Lorraine and I checked the hives on Wednesday and most is going very well.  The yellow Hannah hive and the green Wendy hive are still working their honey supers.  We removed the bell jar from the Wendy hive, the bees weren’t really building in it and we also noticed that the honey right cells right below the bell jar was not capped.  Groundskeeper Hans check the hives last weekend and thought he saw condensation inside the jar too.  I decided to remove it, fearing that the recent heat and humidity was affecting the hive.

The red Juliet hive appears to have swarmed.  It was quieter in the front and there did not seem to be as many workers in the hive.  We took out a frame and found some in progress queen cells…and now I just noticed an egg in that empty cell on the left, maybe she hasn’t swarmed yet?  This hive is behaving very much like our very first Kitty hive.  I remember Kitty was a little behind and still had some space in her hive, but still went into swarm mode.  The red Juliet hive had plenty of room, I added a third brood box early and both the middle and top boxes were not completely filled and this hive apparently still feels crowded and swarming is a good idea.  I’m concerned about this hive filling out her box enough for winter, but not so much about the swarm.

If she wants to swarm, I’m not going to stop her.  We have set up an empty hive in our bee yard in the hopes that a swarm will move in, but that’s has far as I want to go.  Bees do what they want to do sometimes.

After the bee inspection, I went around to take photos.  I was just about to leave when I thought that it’s been kind of humid, I should check the oak for sulphur shelf. Alas, no sulphur shelf and I thought, “I should check the other oak for Hen of the Woods, but it seems early.”  I almost turned around to leave but thought that I walked that far, I might as well check.

Boy, am I glad I did!  I found Hen of the Woods!  A whole month earlier than I normally do thanks to our very cool summer weather–this is my FAVORITE edible mushroom.  I ran back to the house grabbed Lorraine and Groundskeeper Hans to show them.  As I was harvesting the tasty edible fungus, I marveled at how we almost missed it and found some start up of more Hen of the Woods next to this large clump, so hopefully more will come.  This was a bit older than what I normally harvest, but I was able to get all the bugs out before I froze it.

This wood frog hopped out of the clump as I cut off the brackets.  I’m sure it was after all the bugs crawling around it.  I left some behind in the hopes that spores would grow more fungus and so the frog could have some bugs since I disturbed his bug buffet.

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Lorraine and I headed out to the county fair to get photos of our award winning honey. On the right is our very light extracted honey and our comb honey. Some people came by and took a look our stuff, we puffed up bigger than prairie chickens on a lek–just overwhelmed with pride in our girls.

And to show you what a swanky affair the county fair can be, check out the entertainment: The Hypno Cowboy…it reads on his flyer that he is certified…where does one go to be certified as a hypno cowboy?

A week ago, Mr. Neil added a bell jar to one of our hives.  The idea is based on this website, to get the bees to make some cool looking comb inside the glass jar.  At first he just put in the jar, but then after looking at the photos, decided to add some strips of foundation to get the bees started.  We covered with an empty brood box to shade and keep it dark (bees like it in the dark). Lorraine and I checked it over the weekend and discovered that things are running a bit amok in the bell jar.  Part of it is that the wax foundation has melted off in a few places.

Some of the strips were on the ground and the bees appeared to be drawing out comb there…I’m not sure how this is going to work having comb all over the ceiling.

One of the very cool things about the bell jar is that it gives you a chance to see the underside of the bees–look at that little bee tummy in all its furry glory–I just want to tickle it!  It was challenging to get photos, the girls were running around very fast and the bell jar’s imperfections made it hard to focus.

As they were running around, I noticed quite a few of the girls were carrying wax in their mandibles.  Note the bee in the lower right corner–she’s blurry, but she definitely has wax in her mouth–a view of active comb construction that I’ve never seen before.  Since they were crawling on the glass, I thought, “Cool, they’re drawing out comb on the sides anyway.  Then I noticed a bee running around with a “circle” of wax.

As a matter of fact, it was the perfect shape to match that hole in the foundation above.  I began to suspect that the bees may not have been drawing out comb on the foundation left on the sides of the bell jar, but were taking that wax away and reallocating it inside the hive.  Bees produce wax from glands on their body, down along the segments on the lower part of their body.  They secret and work it with the mandibles and add it for making comb.

As I watched the bees working the the wax with their mandibles, I was trying to determine if they were removing wax or adding it in…not an easy feat with hundreds of bees running around in various directions in a bell jar.  As I watched, I noticed that I could hear a sound coming from the bell jar…a crackly kind of sound…a sound like mandibles snapping on wax.  I tried to get a video of the sound.  If you use headphones listening to the video below, you can kind of hear the sound I’m talking about.  At about 29 seconds, there’s a bee on the right side of the foundation, removing a piece of the wax foundation, she’ll walk around to the other side and you will see her with the wax bit in her mouth.  At a 1:04, you’ll see series of bees crawling on the glass in the right side with pieces of wax in their mandibles too.  Here it is:

So, I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the bell jar bees.  I’m not too worried, we have hives producing honey for jars and comb honey, and hives working to fill their stores for winter and mostly happy bees.  We’ll see what happens over the next month.

Whatever happens, it’s been an incredible view of watching them work.

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I am just so giddy!  Our bees won the county fair for the second year in a row!  And this time, we took both the honey ribbons–one for extracted honey and the other for cut comb honey.  It’s official, our cured bee vomit is the best bee vomit!

It’s the oddest sensation, the bees essentially did the work, we just took it out of the hive and presented it to the fair officials and they judged it to be what we already suspected–super tasty.  However, I still feel a deep satisfaction in it.  And no, we are not the only entrants in the county fair–there were others and the local bee club does have a booth at the fair, we are certainly not the only beekeepers in the area.

Beekeeping is the coolest thing and I love that I do it, I love watching my bees. I don’t know what the secret to our hive flavor is. I’ve never been a fan of honey.  When we started our beekeeping operation and Mr. Neil said that we would split the honey down the middle, I didn’t care.  I was strictly interested in beekeeping from a natural history point of view.  Honey had always had an odd after taste that I never cared for.  I did like Really Raw Honey brand, that was the first time I found honey a pleasure to eat.  We were warned that in our beekeeping class that our honey that our own bees produce would be the best tasting honey ever and we would be spoiled for any other kind.

I’ve always kept that in the back of my head. Even the first time when we ate honey from our hives and the four of us on our bee team literally devoured a frame in twenty minutes.  I had never tasted anything like it.  The honey was warm from the summer sun, the wax was fresh and chewy.  The honey was light in flavor, that tasted the way the local wildflower smelled, with just a hint of a peppery bite in the finish.  I thought it was the best, but still in the back of my mind, I thought it was because they were our bees. Even if friends told me it was the best honey ever, I was still suspicious.  Who well tell a beekeeper that their bees make “ok honey” or just “edible honey” or even “sucky honey?” No one is going to say that (at the very least to be polite but also because the beekeeper could send bees to sting them). I was cautiously optimistic about how great our honey is.

So, for a lark we entered a jar in the county fair last year and we won.

I was shocked–was our honey really that good?  Was it just a fluke, were we just new entrants and judges thought, “Oh, here’s somebody new, let’s give it to them!”  We entered again this year and I tried to keep my hopes low–we might not win this year, our honey tastes a bit different with a hint of mint, maybe someone has an all basswood honey that would blow the judges out of the water, or maybe someone else has a turn to win this year–and our extracted honey won again!  We must have talented bees with a knack for producing great honey.

We also thought we would enter in our comb honey, but Lorraine noticed that the entry rules read, “cut comb honey” and worried that our use of Ross Rounds may not count.  Cut comb honey comes from the type of supers where you literally cut the wax comb into squares and put them in either plastic boxes or in a jar with more honey–you can eat the wax along with they honey.  Ross Rounds are the best way that I have found to do comb honey.  There are plastic circles that fit into the frames of the Ross Round.  The bees build out the foundation inside the white circle.  When they cap over the honey, you remove the frames, easily pop out the white circle and put a lid on either side–badda bing, badda boom, you’re done.  There’s no cutting (apart from trimming away excess frame foundation).  Here is a blog entry on how to extract you comb from Ross Rounds.  The holders and lids make for a great presentation, especially if you found on where every single cell is capped.  But I wondered if that would be considered cheating–you essentially are putting the container for holding the comb in the hive for the bees to build in.  I told Lorraine that we should be rebels and to enter it anyway…and we won!

I find comb honey far easier to harvest and I enjoy it the most–I love chewing the wax. It’s also the more valuable honey–you tend to pay more for it. However, when I give comb honey to friends, many are kind of wierded out about the wax.  I found out through a friend on Facebook that Mr. Neil had gifted him some comb honey and he confessed he hadn’t eaten it because he wasn’t too keen to eat wax.  So we have extracted honey.

Perhaps Lorraine’s method of extracting our honey helps with the flavor?  We have a big fancy extractor, but she prefers to strain our honey through cheesecloth. We do not heat our honey (some beekeepers do to make it stay in a liquid state for a longer period of time–which also affects the flavor of the honey and causes that weird after taste ). If you do not heat your honey, it can “granulate” over time, which is fine, it’s just a tad thicker.  It’s safe and works fine in tea, but some people think granulated honey is inferior and will not buy it, that’s why many commercial honeys are heated, so it will stay liquid and consumers will purchase it. If you wish to turn granulated honey into liquid honey, just put the jar in warm water for a few minutes.

We are all now warming in the afterglow of our second consecutive win and our clean sweep of all the honey awards at the county fair.  I’ll try to head out this weekend to get photos.

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I saw this red-tailed perched on the exit ramp on my way out to the bees on Sunday. The fuzz is very serious in their enforcement of no parking on the exit ramp!

I tell you, the type of summer we are having with our hives, is the type of summer I would wish for any new beekeeper.  Well, apart from the fact that the people we ordered our Russian bees from have taken the money and not delivered the bees…and seem to feel that when we say we would rather have the money back, that we mean we want to be on a list for Russian bees from them next year.  I’m not too keen to order any bees from Long Creek Apiaries again.  They apparently had a bad spring, which is understandable, but rather than telling us, “Hey, we shouldn’t have taken your order, we can’t deliver those bees, we apologize, would you be willing to carry your order over to next year,” they didn’t answer the phone, or if they did they would say, “uh next week, for sure,” or at one point, just hung up on us. I found out through Twitter that if you went to their website, they had a message reading, “If you ordered bees from us and didn’t get them yet, you won’t be getting them this year. We apologize.”

I would have been more sympathetic had they told us that during one of our many calls and I’m curious to see if we will get a refund.

But apart from that, our four little Minnesota Hygienic Italian beehives are going very well and are just so friendly when we visit. Even when they do get irritated with us and we can hear their buzzing become impatient, it’s nothing like the anger felt at the now defunct Kitty Hive.

They are going propolis crazy (propolis is bee duct tape). See the yellowish stalagmites? That’s propolis that the girls had used to seal the roof of the hive to the walls.  It smells wonderful, but once it gets on your hands, it’s next to impossible to get off. I have washed my hands several times, and now almost 48 hours later, I can still see some propolis on my hand.

We did a wee bit of harvesting to prepare an entry for the county fair.  Last year, our extracted honey got the blue ribbon–we are defending champions.  Here is a look at a full frame of honey from one our supers. This is from the former stoner hive, Hannah. She’s already working on filling a second honey super.  When the cells are capped, that is when we know the bees have converted the flower nectar into true honey and it’s ready for harvest.  When bees bring nectar to the hive, it is about 60% water. The bees fan it with their wings to evaporate some of the moisture until it is about 18 -19% water and then they cap it.  At this point, it has a very long shelf last and could literally for centuries. You can harvest honey before it’s capped, but it is more likely to ferment over time.

We also thought we would try our hand at entering some comb honey this year. Our green Wendy hive is a natural at producing comb honey. And again, I say to all who have been told that first year bee colonies will not do comb honey, this is the third year we have done it successfully with new hives. It’s usually the girls who have a knack for making feral comb, they seem to be the ones who like to try something funky and will give Ross Round honey supers a go.  We also smear some honey on top of the new super and wedge in a small piece of comb on the top of the super to encourage them to build up.  We removed one frame of our rounds to enter one of the rounds in the fair. Wendy was doing so well and had completely filled up one comb honey super that we added a second and she’s already drawing out comb–go girls, go!

Mr. Neil is conducting an experiment on our hives–the bell jar (and a little more about it here).  We’re hoping to get some funky comb built inside the glass jar. We did not want to disturb our honey makers (Hannah and Wendy) and our little purple Yvaine hive is doing well, but really needs to focus on getting her honey stores together for winter, we don’t want to bother them with the bell jar. The red Juliet hive is about full and had one honey super, so we thought we would try there (the bell jar is in the box with the bat symbol on it).  After a few days there had been no activity in the bell jar.  We decided that since Wendy is all for making strange comb, we would move the bell jar on top of her comb honey supers and see if Juliet will make some proper comb.

I forgot that we had put in a honey super in the Juliet brood box.  I do that so the girls will start to build on it, then I add to the honey super.  The smell of fresh comb seems to draw the bees up in the super so they will fill it up.  They did do some comb on it, but really went to town adding drone cells (boy bees) to the bottom of the frame.  We scraped it off and put the frame back in the super.  Some of the drone larvae fell in the hive and it was amazing to watch a worker swiftly scoop him up, presumably to try and fit him a cell else where.

So, here we are with our frame of comb honey and our frame to extract into a jar.  Lorraine will take it to the judges today for judging.  Will our girls win again?  We started the extraction process in the kitchen, the comb didn’t take much time to put together, just pop it out of the frames and put some lids on it…we did have one challenge, you want the comb honey to be filled and completely capped and for some reason, our girls built a tunnel for traveling through most of the rounds, but we found at least one perfect one for judging.

Mr. Neil held the frame for the extracted honey over a bucket with cheese cloth, while Lorraine scraped away the wax and honey. He received an important phone call, so I gave him the phone and took his place holding the frame. When Lorraine finished, we saw a bit of honey residue still on the frame and like our first year with a frame full of honey, began licking it…let me tell you, Hell hath no fury like Mr. Neil missing out on a hive,s first honey!  He yelled at us to stop and save some for him.  We paused, waited for him to leave the room and gave the frame a few more licks.

The honey tastes like mint.

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I guess the beekeeping segment aired on MPR.  Alas, Lorraine and I didn’t make it on to the audio, but we did make it into the cool video Tom Weber shot and is on their website (you might also recognize a certain pooch in that video too):

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We had the coolest birds fly over the hive today. As we were suiting up in the bee yard and stoking our smoker, I heard a familiar gurgling trumpet call–distant sandhill cranes. Lorriane and Hans were with me and I asked if they heard it too, they did and this time, they sounded a bit closer. We watched the sky and about 30 seconds later, a pair of sandhills flew right over our hives. How cool. We have American redstarts, house wrens, and indigo buntings nesting at the bee yard, which are cool, but a sandhill crane flyover was just the icing on the cake. Lorraine and Hans both smiled at my complete abandon of all things beekeeping to catch a glimpse of the sandhills.

Lorraine blogged our bees here.

The nectar flow is on! After a slow and easy start with our hives, they are going gang busters now! The yellow Hannah hive which stared off as kind of the stoner/do nothing hive has become the hardest working. She was the first to need a honey super and when we looked in today, she was ready for a second.

Here’s a frame we took from the current super to put in the new super to encourage the girls to climb up and build further.  The purple Yvaine hive and the red Juliet hive were both ready for honey supers, so we put boxes on top of them as well.

The green Wendy hive was given a Ross Rounds honey super a week ago and that is a bit of a gamble–but she had just about filled it completely up. I’ve been told that new bees don’t do comb honey, but we always try with a new hive and they always make it. It’s trickier, because with regular wooden honey supers, I just put in a small frame in a big brood box, wait for them to draw out comb on the frame and then include that frame in the honey super, they smell the drawn out comb and it encourages to climb up. Ross rounds fit differently and you cannot just slide one easily into a brood box. I usually wedge a piece of feral comb at the top to get a little bee smell in. Anyway, if you are a first time beekeeper and you have new bees, don’t be afraid to try Ross Rounds comb honey supers, your bees may surprise you and fill them up.

It was interesting to note that almost all the foragers came back with very little pollen, they were focused on gathering nectar for honey. They don’t carry nectar on their back legs like pollen, they have a special stomach for carrying nectar that they gather for creating honey. All these are returning, fat and full of sweet sugary nectar.

There was no bonking or stinging at the hives today (except for poor Cabal, one bee did sting him in the paw), otherwise, all the bees were very mellow and Lorraine and I just watched them work. It’s such a pleasure to have happy bees this year. Last year, the Kitty hive was so angry and always so much work. This year, all seems to be going swimmingly, no one seems to be in the mood to swarm…and even if they did, I would let them go. We did take the extra step of setting up a small, empty hive on the off chance one of our hives swarms (or a neighbors’ hive swarms) and hopefully, they will decide on that box for a home.

I had another cool sign at the end of the day. As I was walking to my car, I looked up and saw a small blob of red hurtling through the air, right at my head. At first, I thought cardinal, but the bird suddenly shifted left, and I saw it was a scarlet tanager. I’m not sure if it was chasing a bug or what, not sure why it would fly at my head like that, but I enjoyed the view and felt relief that it didn’t actually make contact with my head. Wonder what that dud was doing so slow, usually they are higher int he trees.

After dodging the tanager, Lorraine and I headed out for dinner at quite possibly one of the worst restaurants ever. We had eaten there before last year and it was a decent Italian place, but things have greatly shifted.  The best part was the desert. Here’s a link to a photo of a piece of pecan pie that was served to us at the restaurant. That was before we even tasted it, the piece was that small. That set off a wave of giggles. Lorraine had a piece of cheesecake and we both took bites of our respective desserts at the same time. There was a pause and we just started giggling. I suggested we trade desserts and believe it or not, her cheesecake was worse than my pie size issues. What my pie lacked in size, Lorraine’s made up with salt…that’s right salt. It was very apparent that whoever made the cheesecake switched the amounts of sugar and salt. I’d never had such salty cheesecake. We were laughing so hard as we paid the bill, I’m sure our server suspected we were high on the wacky tabbacky.

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Yesterday was an interesting day.  A couple of people from Minnesota Public Radio accompanied Lorraine and I out to the hives.  We’ve had Euan Kerr out before, but he was interviewing Mr. Neil.  For some reason, it really didn’t register to me what we would be doing when they asked to come out.  I love to show off our bees and I love to take people who have never been to a beehive out to our hives, but it didn’t register to me that Lorraine and I would be interviewed.  In my brain, they were out to interview the bees not me and I did not prepare for it the way I would prepare for a bird segment.  There were two people, Jessica Mador who took the audio and asked most of the questions (and was apparently a bit scared at the hives) and Tom Weber who came along to get video footage to go along with the story on the website.

Our hives were on their best bee-havior.  All four of our new Italian hives have been so mellow this bee season, they were perfect to introduce to newbies.  They pretty much just let Lorraine and I talk while they asked questions that most people ask the first time they visit our hives.  As I understand it, the gist of the segment is about the recent change in the law that allows beekeeping in Minneapolis.  One of the reasons that I started with bees at Mr. Neil’s was because it’s illegal to keep bees in Minneapolis when we started.  Since our operation is going well out there and my building manager doesn’t want anyone on the roof of the building, we will not bee keeping any hives on top of the roof of my home.

One theme of questioning that we seemed to get over and over again was something along the lines of, “How dangerous will this be for people if hives are in their neighborhood” and “what should you be worried about.”  As I said, Jessica did not seem comfortable around the hives–and that is totally understandable.  She kept her distance from the hives and even had Tom put her mic in front of the hive entrance for her.  Lorraine and I totally freaked the first time we worked with our bees, so I could understand her nervousness. Plus, I’m sure Euan had told her how he got stung right through the beesuit (the suit was a hair to small on him and the bee found the breach where his bicep was flexed…and we also made the mistake of taking him out to a very angry hive.

But I wondered if this was an article more along the lines of–are bees something really scary that people need to worry about in their neighborhood and I hope we conveyed the answer of, “Not really.” Bees are kind of like the big scary guy at the bar.  If you go about your business, stay polite, you’ll be fine and if you play close attention, might learn a thing or two.  However, if you go up, punch and kick him, he’s going to get defensive and quite possibly hurt you.

The bees were so chill, Lorraine demonstrated how to hand feed the girls.  I asked if Jess and Tom wanted to feed them.  Jess politely declined but Tom was all over it.  We also had another friend out named Beth (she was visiting from out of town and it was her first time at a hive too) and she was ready to hand feed the bees. I got a photo of it here.  Tom is the one filming his hand and Beth is the one in back.  Incidentally, Beth was a natural at the beehive.  Lorraine and I would be busy showing frames and larvae that when we’d ask for some puffs from the smoker or an extra hand–she was right there ready to help.

We did get into this whole weird conversation about talking to our bees and I really hope I don’t come off sounding like a hippie.  I was talking about all the times I have found comfort in our bees.  One of the awesome things about being a freelancer is that you can set your own schedule, the downside is that so can the people who pay you.  There have been times when we’ve been financially strapped because of waiting for a check or wondering what the next project will be.  Going out to the hives, watching the girls go about their work really comforts me.  I think it’s getting wrapped up in watching the live natural science right in front of me.  We also talked about the different personalities of all the hives and sometimes I even talk to the bees.  But for the record, I want everyone to know: I do not expect the bees to talk back to me.  I’m more of a Clint Eastwood type singing, “I talk to my beeeeeeeeeeeeees, but they never listen to me.”

I love this shot!  Beth is tasting honey freshly scraped right off the frame, I think she likes it.  She’s enjoying the flavor and her fabulous hair color works with the bucolic palette of our bee yard.  I think my favorite food period is honey freshly scraped off of an active hive in summer.  The wax is soft and warm.  Right now, our honey has a delicate sweet flavor with a hint of something peppery and surprise flavor of mint.  Earlier this summer, it totally tasted like lilacs.

All in all, it was fun to take people out and both Jess and Tom said we made them feel at ease visiting their first hives.  Which is good.  The last thing I want to be is the snarky and judgemental beekeeper screaming at a nervous newbie, “Get your butt over here and stick you hand in the hive.  Why are you crying?  There’s no crying at the beehive! Wuss!”

I know they’re going to interview some other beekeepers too and I can’t wait to hear how it’s all going to come together…I just hope I don’t sound like the hippie beekeeper and I hope more people will be excited to take up beekeeping.  One thing is for sure, they will get a lot of different opinions.  Talk to three different beekeepers and ask them the same question, you’re likely to end up with seven different answers.  This should be up sometime next week and I’ll put up a notice.

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I’ve been doing so much traveling, I have not been able to visit much with our bees. Poor Lorraine had to take over beekeeping duties while both Mr. Neil and I were away. She did her best, making sure to give the bees more room to build as they filled in their hive boxes. We have one hive, the yellow Hannah hive that had been slow to build and draw out comb. Lorraine reported on Twitter that the hive had no new brood and whatever larvae was present was shriveled, other than that there was capped honey. We advised her to let the hive be, add a box if it needed it and maybe keep a food bucket on there. As soon as Mr. Neil returned from his trip and I returned from North Dakota, we’d check it and decide what do to. The shriveled larvae had me worried…did we have some new disease to deal with?

Non Birding Bill and I headed out to meet up with Mr. Neil and Lorraine for a hive inspection. We started with the presumed queenless hive. I wanted to see if the Hannah hive was failing and if a disease was the cause. If she was merely queenless, we thought we might combine her with another hive, but we weren’t going to do that if she had something like foulbrood. However, when we go there, we could see a fair number of bees going in and out, some even arriving with loaded pollen baskets.

There were a fair number of worker bees inside and they were rather laid back but did not have that queenless buzz, they sounded mellow but harmonious in their buzzing. We took out a frame to assess the situation.

Not only did we find capped brood (larvae pupating into new workers) but we found very fresh, healthy looking larvae and eggs. The queen was definitely alive and kicking into high gear producing some larvae. We told Lorraine that she did the right thing by just letting the hive be. What she thought was capped honey was capped brood. I didn’t see any shriveled larvae, just plump healthy larvae. I tested a couple of capped off cells for the presence of foulbrood but they were healthy. What a big sigh of relief–we still have four hive for the summer! We just adjusted the spacing of the frames in the hive and let Hannah keep growing.

The only big problem we encountered in any of the hives was the violation of bee space. The term “bee space” came from Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth who in the 1800s figured out that if a space of 3/8 inch is left in the hive for the bees to move around in, the bees will neither build comb in the space nor cork it up with propolis (bee duct tape). If you allow your frames to fall into violation of that space you get what’s called “feral comb.” As you can see in the above photo, the purple Yvaine hive had a major bee space violation going on. NBB and I had to pry off that excessive comb while Mr. Neil held the heavy brood box.

We carefully scraped it off to ensure that the queen was not there. We couldn’t just leave it, the oddly placed comb would have caused more problems with future inspections and encouraged unregulated comb construction. Mr. Neil took care to properly space all of the frames in all of our hives so we could avoid future violations. Above, he’s using a frame spacing tool along with a hive tool to set all the frames straight and into proper alignment for good bee space. I’d heard from more experienced beekeepers that frame spacing tools were a toy, but for newer beekeepers, they really do help cut down on the feral comb. I cannot eyeball bee space.

As we scraped of some of the feral comb, a few developing pupae came out. I felt bad, but again it’s worse in the long run to let the comb stay. The queen lays thousands upon thousands of eggs, a few lost larvae will not destroy the hive. Lorraine however, was a tad grossed out. Here’s a video of Mr. Neil properly scraping some feral comb with his tool and explaining larvae:

One happy surprise was that our Juliet hive which started as a bit of an angry hive is mellowing out.

We had to make some minor repairs to her base…well, NBB and Mr. Neil did. Lorraine and I sat and studied the chilled out bees while they worked (didn’t want to be in the way while the boys did the heavy lifting). It’s just so relaxing spending time with chill bees while they do what they do and how pretty they look, all golden in the sun. You can watch them here, if you would like to experience the mellow red Juliet hive.

Oh, one final note: How do the boys like to spend their time while working with the hives? They make up haiku:

What a joy to have happy harmonious hives without the drama of the previous summers. Let’s hope that holds when our Russians arrive.

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