Click here to view the embedded video.

No bees harmed in the making of this video and most were scooped up off the ground and gently placed back in.

When you smoke them it always reminds me of office workers who suddenly realized the boss is walking through and they all need to look busy, it’s a joke I’ve done before but it still cracks me up.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t want to get all Ned Stark on you, but Winter is coming.  You are bees of summer and it’s been fun to fly around and explore, but seriously, dudettes, you need to start some serious storage to make it through the winter.

See, this whole socializing and not storing honey business is not going to do you any good.  I know, I know, Mr. Neil has been away for awhile and I’ve been busy counting birds this summer and you’ve been able to do your own thing, but that’s because I believed you could handle the responsibility of being an adult worker.  And I realize that some of you are Russian Bees and that you have a reputation for keeping the hive small and still surviving the winter.  But all of you are bees of summer and bees of the south–what do you know of Winter?

I’m willing to compromise.  I know some books say you should have 3 deep brood boxes full of honey to get you through our northern winters, but we’ve had bees do just fine with only 2 boxes.  If that’s all you want to do and not give us any excess honey this year–that’s fine.  We’ll help you with that.  But this business of only using one box and completely ignoring the second is not going to work, you must band together and get to work.

I know you think you’re being clever by filling in any area that violates “bee space” but that’s not enough.  And though we will subsidize you with food in a 2 box system well into fall and possibly early winter, we can’t help you come February, that’s when your stores are crucial.  And do understand, if you don’t have enough honey, your hive will fail and you will die.  And though we will mourn you, we will loot your hive like the Hound loots a corpse.

I love you, but I understand that you are all insects and that you have to do as much for yourself as you can.  So, I hope you read my blog between gathering pollen and half-heartedly storing honey to understand how serious I am about your need to bump up production in order to survive the winter.  I also hope Mr. Neil doesn’t mind me referencing another writer in a post about our hives.

Your Obedient Beekeeper,

Shaz

After having all of our beehives die this past winter, it’s so nice to finally have a warm spring day and look in to see bees industriously tending brood and filling up empty comb.  Our Italian bees are filling up hives like crazy, but the Russians and Carniolans are at a slow and steady pace.

Russians are known for smaller hives and to always have queen cells on hand to replace a failing queen if need be.  Even though this Russian hive had plenty of space, she had queen cells ready to go.  I doubt she’ll swarm, but if she does, we have an empty hive near by that they are welcome to move into.  It was just Non Birding Bill and I out at the hives this time and we noted that the Russians make more noise than our other hives, but didn’t bonk us to warn us they were about to sting.

One of my favorite things to watch for in the spring–fresh comb and lots of queen eggs.  Even though we didn’t see the queen in this particular hive, we knew she was there and busy with all of these fresh eggs.  The yellow stuff in the bottom of the comb in the upper right corner is pollen workers have been bringing in.

Here’s a bunch of healthy, gooey larvae–soon to be new bees.

We combined a couple of new hives in mid May using the newspaper method.  That worked well, you could see all the chewed bits of the newspaper in the bottom of the hive.  There were some queen cells and lots of drone cells but given the Russian tendency to rear queens I don’t think it’s a sign of a problem.

The hive had some good freshly capped brood and larvae in the empty holes.  This is a little more spotty than I’d like, but considering this is in a combined hive and the new and old workers had to work out some differences, I think this is a good sign.

At the end of the day, it’s fun to go out and watch 6 healthy hives and see bees return laden with pollen and nectar, despite our chilly and rainy spring.

However, one of our other Russian hives is queenless–that queen was alive when we installed it, she was the most active queen we had.  But there are no eggs and after searching for her three times we’ve concluded that something happened to her.

So, we decided to combine the queenless bees to the colony with one killer queen via the newspaper method. The box with the queen and colony is on the bottom.  We put a piece of newspaper on top, then the box from the queenless colony above the newspaper.  Above that is a box with a feeder pail.  The idea is that the bees from the queenless colony and the box with the queenright colony will chew through the news paper over the next day or two and in that time the queenless bees will absorb the queens pheromone and everyone will get along.  So, we’ve gone from seven hives to six but it’s all good.

Our bees are ignoring the pollen patties that we provide as a supplement and seem to be hard at work gathering pollen from dandelions.  Many were returning with thick yellow baskets on their legs–yay!

On my way out to the Horicon Marsh Bird Festival, I stopped at Mr. Neil’s for a quick check of our new beehives and some birding.  The warblers have arrived and the cool weather has forced those who arrive early in migration to search for alternate sources of food.  Yellow-rumped warblers like these would prefer insects.  Far too cool and far too few available, so the enterprising early migrants explored the bird feeders.

Despite the fact that Baltimore orioles are in the area and singing, none came to the feeders.  Yellow-rumps gladly took advantage of the grape jelly.

The warblers even jockeyed for position at the suet feeder among the four species of woodpecker that normally feed here.

Pine warblers are also hitting the feeders.  Whereas the yellow-rumps go for the suet and jelly, the pine goes for sunflower hearts.  It will also go for the suet, but seems content to eat the seeds.

While I was working around the garage, I noticed Neil’s groundskeeper Hans had put out some old bee frames.  We do this so the bees from active hives will fly in and clean out the old honey.  These frames were from the hives that died over the winter.  The bees found it.  While I was working around the garage, I noticed warbles hanging out in the area.  At first, I thought the warblers were after the live bees and even said allowed, “I know you’re desperate for insects, but you’re far too small for eating bees.”

Then, right about dusk when the honeybees were all tucked in their hives for the day, I noticed the warblers on the frames, pecking at them.  The light was dim but thanks to the auto timer on my Nikon D40 I was able to digiscope a Nashville warbler and a yellow-rumped warbler on the frames.

Based on the holes in the frame it looked like the warblers were going for dead bees.  Some of the frames had capped larvae that never hatched, so I figured the warblers were after the protein of old squishy non-hatched larvae.  We had more frames of dead larvae and honey in the garage so I set more out.  I figured the warblers could clean out the larvae and the bees could clean out the honey and help get a head start on their hives for the season.

The next morning when I went out for some birding, I checked the frames, they were covered in warblers.  Above are two yellow-rumped warblers and one Nashville warbler.  These were a small cross-section of about two dozen warblers waiting in line to feed off of my old beehive frames.  There were at least four species in the flock, the above two and pine warblers and orange-crowned.  I didn’t get photos of the other two species, but got plenty of shots of the feeding frenzy.

Here are four warblers on one frame.  As I took pictures and watched them feed, it became clear that old bee larvae was not the only sustenance they were after.  They were very certainly eating honey.  I had a moment of panic…should birds be eating honey?  Honeybees are a fairly new species to North America, they came over with the early settlers.  Warblers did not evolve with honeybees.  Could they safely process honey and still migrate?

As I watched them I noticed that they tugged and chipped at wax foundation too.  Is that safe?  I’ve seen honeybees that have built comb out in the open on a bare branch, I remember seeing some abandon ones in Arizona and Texas…perhaps warblers have had exposure to this.

The air was so cold and their food scarce, I didn’t want to take this source of food away if they were still trying to load up for their journey north.  I couldn’t find anything about it on the Internet other than not using honey as a means to make nectar.  I wanted to plant myself in front of the frames all day long see how many species of warbler would come in but I had to go.

I also noted that as the sun got higher in the sky and our honeybees became more active, the bees didn’t tolerate the warblers in close proximity and chased them off.  A few warblers still came in for the bounty but not four on a frame like at dawn.

I’m not sure if this is a good thing but if the warblers figured honey out, no doubt other birds will and I don’t know if they should.  We already had one casualty of a tufted titmouse getting covered in honey while it explored some of our dead beehives.  I’m going to have to seek out an avian nutritionist to find out if this is a safe thing to offer birds.  If it is, this may be a new way to enjoy birds and bees and a new product to offer at bird stores.

This is Kelly McCullough, he came out with us to help hive four more packages of bees on Sunday.  His family kept bees when he was kid and I have to say, he’s the first person I’ve ever seen get almost every single bee out of the travel cage.  I can’t remember if it was in the comments or on Twitter, but they wanted to know how the bees got into the travel crate.  They were sucked out by vaccuum and put into the crate with a new queen in a cage.  It’s pretty incredible when you think about all the “trauma” these bees have been through.

Happily chugging along with a queen in a hive in sunny California (or Texas or some other warm state).  Suddenly a big sucky beast invades their home, transports them into a darkness and then a cage.  They’ve lost their queen pheromone, the guiding force they’ve come to trust and are now in cage with thousands of other bees, suddenly a new queen pheromone works its way to them but they are trapped in a cage with no comb.  They have food, but just carbs, no protein.  Then they are shipped and jostled to colder parts of the country, colder than they have ever experienced in their lives.  A bit more jarring and tossing (akin to a huge earthquake and they are dropped into a mostly empty box.  A sense of duty based on age tells them to evaluate the home, explore the region and build.

Pretty resilient and pretty cool when you think about it and completely understandable that some bees look exhausted when they arrive.

The hiving of the four new packages went fairly well.  It’s interesting to me that at this point, I’m happy to fall into naturalist/educator mode for installing bee packages.  I think having done just about all of them since the first year that I enjoy letting anyone else who wants to hive a package a go and be there for moral support and help getting queen cages open.  Lorraine has been there for most but still has some understandable nervousness since she had an unfortunate wasp incident as a kid.  Phobias are hard to conquer, but she still goes for it.  Kelly got a video of her installation and you can view it on YouTube.  It’s kind of like watching some odd family therapy.

After all the new bees were installed Non Birding Bill and Kelly helped me check on the Russian bees we hived earlier in the week.  If you recall, there was concern that one of the queens was dead on arrival so Mr. Neil and Lorraine ordered a replacement.  Since that queen would be totally new to the hive, she would have to stay in her cage for a few days for the workers to absorb her pheromone.  Mr. Neil put her in on Thursday to give the workers a chance to get used to her.  Non Birding Bill checked it the next day and said, “She’s already out.”

That was too soon, I thought bees not used to the new queen could kill her.  But I figured we hope for the best and deal with this later.  When we were checking that hive on Sunday, we immediately found the queen because she’s marked with a white dot:

See the reddish large bee in the center with the white dot, that’s the queen.  Then NBB said, “Hey, the queen I saw had a much smaller dot.  I gave Kelly this frame to hold while I searched for a second queen on a different frame.

“There she is,” NBB said noting the second queen (she’s on the right).  We have 2 queens in 1 hive (insert sad trombone here).  Not sure what we’re going to do about this.  I was trying to formulate a plan and NBB said, “Don’t do anything, let the bees sort it out.  Every time we try to help, we screw them up and the hive fails.  Leave it alone.”

Sage advice indeed.

I know there are systems for 2 queen colonies, but that’s two well built colonies not two new ones.  If the queens find each other, they will fight to the death.  However, both could die in the fight.  We put the hive back together and I put a frame between the two queens.  Maybe if they survive the next couple of weeks we could try and set up something like this.  I have to admit that if one queen dies, I’ll feel bad for getting them in this situation.  Ah beekeeping, you always leave me with more questions than answers.

We started our first great bee experiment this year.  We’re going to have a total of 7 hives:  3 packages of Russian bees (why we’re trying Russians) arrived yesterday.  This weekend we’ll four more packages of bees: 2 Carniolans and 2 MN Hygienic bees.  For some reason, all of the bee talk got incredibly naughty yesterday–decidedly not safe for work.  I think it had to do with Mr. Neil.  In all the years we’ve been keeping bees, he’s never been home when we do an installation, always off doing writer/movie guy stuff/Doctor Who stuff.

I started by calling him a Bee Virgin and comparing him to girls who claim virginity because they’ve don’t everything but vaginal intercourse (what’s up with that anyway). It soon went to telling him not to be nervous about inserting his Russian package (that’s big like bull) into the hive for the first time.  Everybody is nervous the first time.  Non Birding Bill frequently asks if I’m 13 years old and I think I am.

Neil did well, he did all three packages–it’s only fair since we’ve done the rest.  I will say that he broke new ground.  No one has ever been stung when we hiving packages, Mr. Neil got stung twice!  He was a brave little toaster though and continued on with no squealing or flailing of limbs.

Here’s how you hive a package:

Remove 4 frames from an empty hive and block the entrance with loose leaves and grass (that encourages the bees to spend the night).  We used some of our frames from old hives, some that still had drawn comb, honey and pollen in there to help give them a head start.  We give all of our bees a food pail but that just sugar water.  Some wax foundation and food stores helps them have a head start.  And considering it’s April 20 and I woke up to the sound of a snow blower removing last night’s snow, I think the bees will appreciate it.

Spray the bees inside the shipping container liberally with sugar water.

Bonk the box so that all the bees hanging on the food tin and queen cage fall to the bottom in a sugar water coated clump.  Use the hive tool to pry open the top of the box.

Remove the queen cage, flick off the outer attendants and put the cage in your pocket (or give it to your personal assistant, Lorraine).

Remove the feeder tin from the bee package and then spray the bees inside again with sugar water.

Shake the bees into the empty hive.  I know I posted this last night, but it makes me larf.

Spread the bees gently like pizza sauce–which they will also do as they explore the hive.

Then take out the queen cage in your pocket and gently pry open the staple holding the screen and release the queen.  Above, the screen is already gone but you can see our queen with her attendants.  She was marked with white spot to make it easier to find her in the hive later this summer.

These Russian queens were a bit different.  Normally, queens are moving fast and sometimes even attempt to fly away when we install bees.  The first queen we put in wouldn’t leave the cage, then crawled on Mr. Neil’s glove and wouldn’t get off, soon causing workers to crawl on to his glove.  It took some gentle nudging to get her onto one of the frames in the hive.  I’m pretty sure it was the cold that caused her to be so slow and sluggish.  The second queen was fast and running around all over–must be a bit more cold weather hardy.  The third queen…well…she looked dead.  Mr. Neil even tried blowing warm air on her to get to her to move in the cold–a little mouth to bee resuscitation.  She still looked dead.  The place we ordered the Russians from is sending us a new queen.  We’ll have to do the slow release method with her but I’m hopeful that all will still go well with that hive.

After we installed the queen, we gently replaced the frames we took out at the start, put in the feeder pail and a pollen patty and closed up the hive.  Hopefully, they will get to work drawing out comb and the hive will grow.

The bees are raring to go.  One of the boxes already at the start of a small piece of comb going–I think these Russian bees are going to do great things for us this year.

Something different this time was that our bees came with a few drones–we usually only get workers and a queen.  Drones don’t contribute to the hive, they don’t build and they really aren’t around in the winter.  I think these came from Tennessee so maybe it’s been warm enough there to produce drones.

Because of the cold weather, the bees didn’t fly around too much.  If they started to fly, they soon landed.  All of us had a good portion of sluggish bees on our suits when we were finished.

So, part one is complete.  Part two comes this weekend.

Mr. Neil is so excited to finally be home for installing our bees.  First time ever he was around to be a part of it.

Speaking of weird honey, Lorraine and I finally got around to putting some of our extracted honey into jars.  Kind of fascinated by our honey colors this year.  We usually only have light colored honey, but this year we have both light and dark.  Both taste fabulous, the darker honey is a bit more…rich in flavor, while the light is delicate and subtle in its sweetness.

I was not having the best day.  A project I have been working on for some time received a setback yesterday.  Every time I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with this project, I get the rug yanked out from under me.  This time it’s a financial setback on the project. Lorraine and I had planned on bottling honey today, but when I saw the snow and ice as I got out of bed this morning, I texted Lorraine that I was bad company and decided to stay home to brood a bit about my problem.  She called and said, “No, that’s not what you need to do, you need to come out here and help me with the honey and talk.”

Well…how could I argue with that?

We have some honey that has been drained from comb and then we have comb with honey called Ross Rounds.  Both are safe for human consumption.  We decided to get a little arty with our bottling and put chunks of wax and comb honey in our jars.  We’d then pour extracted honey over it.  It looked cool and it gives our friends the chance to try comb honey if they want but still get plenty of the straight liquid variety.  As we admired how cool the wax comb looked in the jars…we wondered what else we could put in there…like the above Buddah.  We were quite pleased with the results and wondered how far we could go with this madness.

I noticed a Weeping Angel figurine and told Lorriane that I wished we could try that.  She said, “It’s my figurine, let’s do it.”

The affect was cool and terrifying.  If you have seen the Doctor Who episode, you know why this is the most terrifying and dangerous honey ever.  If not…well…I guess Lorraine and I seem a little weird, but that’s okay.

The shenanigans helped put my project in perspective.  I’m always thrilled to rediscover that no matter what life throws at me on a long project, friends and beekeeping are a great escape.