GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: inside the hive

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 23)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 23)

    Pollen is the topic of this post. In this image you can see quite a bit of it in the comb. It is of various colors and what I’ve seen them bringing in, at least the day of this hive inspection, is yellow. In fact, if you look closely at this picture you’ll see a couple of bees with what looks like little yellow corn kernels on them. This yellow substance is pollen and it is held in the pollen baskets on their legs.

    Bees, like humans, require protein to survive and pollen provides that protein. The honeybees mix this with some nectar and produce something we call “bee bread” which is fed to the larva. Without this source of protein, the bees won’t develop. Some beekeepers will provide “pollen patties” to their hives. This is a man-made substitute for pollen which they will, apparently, use like pollen. I have not had any experience with pollen patties at this point.

    Pollen is a little bundle of cells covered in a protective coating. The cells include vegetative ones and also a couple of reproductive ones. Pollen is the sperm of the plant and is a necessary component for reproduction. Plants which utilize pollinators like honeybees produce pollen which sticks easily to these pollinators and is carried from the anther to the stigma, thus reproduction in the plant. That’s really the main reason plants have flowers – to reproduce.

    Bees, flies and other pollinators live in symbiotic harmony with flowering plants. These plants produce lots of pollen and some of it gets moved from the anther to stigma, helping to ensure reproduction in the plant. The plant relies upon these pollinators. The plants, in return, provide the protein needed for the bee to reproduce.

    Happy beekeeping,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) likes pickled cucumbers but not pickled beets. He thinks matrix math is cool. Matt wishes there were less lawyers and more scientists in the world. He knows there are some serious steering issues with Fred Flintstone’s car that nobody else seems to care about… oh yeah, folks… chuckle away at that stone-age humor. Haha very funny. Matt’s not amused by Hanna-Barbera’s lack of knowledge about vehicles and engineering, let alone physics. 

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 22)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 22)

    Here I’ve got a photo from my recent hive inspection of hive #2. As you can see, the bees don’t all look alike. Oh, sure they have wings and are  about the same size but their coloration varies. Along the bottom of that frame in the middle you can see some very yellow-orange bodied honeybees and some that are black/dark gray and a dull grayish yellow. In fact there is quite a variety of coloration and banding on this frame.

    Why is that?

    Mostly this is due to genetic variation among these honeybees. The queen mates with many different drones and so there is almost certainly going to be a bit of a “melting pot” in the hive. Over in hive #1, I had an Italian honeybee queen and most of the initial workers in that hive looked like Italian bees. But as the hive has grown, there has been a bit more variety in the bees in that hive, but certainly not as much as in hive #2, which my beekeeping mentor, Lindi, called “mutt bees” – I suspect the queen in that hive is some cross. Mix the genes of this queen with a variety of drones and the genetic diversity increases.

    Genetic diversity in a hive is a good thing.

    If all the bees in a hive were genetically identical – clones if you will – their particular genetic makeup might make them less hardy in adverse weather conditions, maybe it would make them more prone to succumbing to disease. You get the idea. The hive thrives by having a diverse population. The idea behind natural selection is that those traits which are advantageous for survival given the current situation will give the bees having those traits a leg up on those that don’t have those traits. So in a hive where the population is heterogenous, some might succumb to a disease or perhaps mites while others may be less inclined to be affected by that disease or the mite infestation. If the queen is one of those survivors or some of her drones are among those with superior genetics, the result will be that those traits will have an opportunity to be passed on via sperm and egg. The queen that doesn’t make it, or the drones that don’t make it won’t pass their traits along, of course.

    This doesn’t, of course, mean that these honeybees are moving toward perfection… their population is just affected by their genetic makeup and the world around them. What affected population N and caused certain members of population N to die off might not affect population N+M. In fact, it is possible that population N+M might be affected by something to which those from population N that died were better suited to survive. Interesting, huh? Well, at least to me. The point is that the world is a dynamic place and selection doesn’t always mean improvement. When the conditions change, populations have to adapt or they won’t survive. Genetic diversity provides better odds that the population will survive.

    Happy beekeeping,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony but he’d be happy if the folks that can’t carry a tune would just hush it already. Seriously folks, you’re killing him with your off-key renditions of “Call Me Maybe”. Matt loves to play backgammon, go, and chess. He stinks at two of the three of those – guess which? His favorite Partridge was Laurie, of course.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 21)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 21)

    Propolis – that sticky, gooey substance that honeybees make from plant resins – is strong stuff. Anyone who has tried to separate one super from the one below it can testify to the holding power of propolis. As I’ve written before, bees use this to fill in small cracks and seal up anything needing to be sealed up.

    Apparently, they needed to seal this frame in its box very well. Between a bunch of burr comb and an abundance of propolis, this frame simply would not come out. As you can see, the nails and glue failed before the propolis did. I honestly didn’t expect that to be the case. I was very careful when building these frames and if you look closely, you can see that some wood tore away on this frame… maybe it was just weak wood.

    I two-tooled the frame out after pushing my hive tools down between the frames a couple of times. I’ll probably swap that out in the spring and I tapped it back together and noted which one it is.

    Happy beekeeping,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) doesn’t like those cutesy flower-topped pens that businesses use to discourage folks from taking them. He doesn’t understand why people like eating liver at all. There are much better things to eat in life. His favorite stooge is Moe because he is grumpy and has a smart looking haircut. Just kidding… he’s not that grumpy. Matt is one of the nine people in North America that listened to AM radio last week. If you haven’t listened to AM in awhile… it hasn’t improved.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 20)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 20)

     

    Varoa Destructor!

    Ominous sounding name, huh?

    This little sucker (literally) is one of the many pests which can affect the health and well being of a hive. Varoa is a mite  which latches onto the honeybee and sucks the hemolymph from the bee. You can think of hemolymph as being like our own blood though it doesn’t serve exactly the same purpose in the bee as blood does in humans. For one thing, bees don’t need to have oxygen circulated throughout their bodies because they respirate (breathe) directly through the spiracles on their sides. Another type of mite, the tracheal mite, sets up home inside the bee’s trachea and block the airways. You can’t see those with your naked eye.

    There’s a Varoa mite prominently displayed right in the center of the picture behind that center bee’s eyes. If you closely under the left wing of the second bee from the left on the bottom, you can see another Varoa mite. Without my reading glasses (yes, I’m getting old and my eyesight stinks) I can’t see these mites, so I generally need to rely upon examining the pictures I take when inspecting my hive. I saw other Varoa mites in other pictures but not a lot of them. I will be treating for these in the next week using powdered sugar. Essentially you dust the bees with it and it helps to dislodge some of the mites as part of the process. The bees don’t mind the powered sugar but it does actually result in some of the mites falling off.

    Varoa reduces the life of a honeybee and so it is important to treat for these pests to keep them in check. Hives will have them – in fact most every hive is going to have Varoa mites. But the presence of these mites doesn’t mean that your hive is doomed. A simple method for checking them is to treat with powered sugar and stick a slide-in card in your screened bottom board. The mites will fall off – at least many will – and you can count them to gauge how your hive is doing. It would be nearly impossible to prevent Varoa since bees don’t live in a closed system – they are out and about and likely to pick up Varoa and bring it back to the hive. Our job as beekeepers is to treat for and keep account of the Varoa population rather than attempt to eliminate them – that’s not going to happen. Varoa poses no direct threat to humans or animals as far as I know. It doesn’t affect the honey either. It is simply a pest that affects the life of the bee directly.

    Happy beekeeping,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) is not a fan of seersucker suits, NASCAR or zydeco music. He prefers sausage over bacon and bacon over Canadian bacon. His favorite pizza topping is black olives, at least today. Matt thinks right now is a great time for a nap.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 19)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 19)

    After eight days in the wonderful state of Maine on a much needed vacation, I did a quick “hey howya doin’” on the hives this afternoon. As a first year beekeeper, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the best thing I can do for the hives is not rob them of honey so instead I’m feeding them a 1:1 sugar water to help them draw out comb and create strong first year hives. During today’s check on the hives my son and I added another super to each hive (they’d completely drawn out all the frames on the top super and filled most of it with honey) so they’d have something to do with their time. Idle mandibles are the devil’s workshop… or something like that.

    It was hot and we’d already decided that today wasn’t the day to do a full hive inspection unless we saw something obviously bad when we opened the hives. Everything was humming along smoothly and the bees were calm so a quick look to see how the top frames were doing (fully drawn, mostly capped honey) and then we added our supers and refreshed their bug juice.

    Buttoning up things, I noticed this odd little insect busy stealing some sugar water off the lid of the inverted mason jar and so did the honey bees. I’ve not yet identified it and first thought it might be a syrphid fly but it has a head more like a wasp. I’m going to check with my online bug guru buddy Debbie Hadley to see if she can identify it from my admittedly bad pictures.

    Honeybees aren’t much for sharing and definitely didn’t like this little bugger anywhere near their hive. Within seconds there were a half dozen of them ganging up on it and they quickly dispatched with the intruder. This was the best shot I got of the attack and it is tough to see the prey. Two workers in the center had it locked up and a third had come in from above.

    Bees may be vegetarians but they are fierce fighters and territorial creatures. On previous inspections I’ve seen them going at it with both bumble bees and horse flies that ventured near their hives.

    Moral of the story – if you’re going to venture into a hive, bring along some friends or you’ll be sorely outnumbered.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) is quite enamored with the low bush variety of blueberries. These smaller berries are  sweet and delicious. He loves to kayak and take pictures; neither of these things does he do particularly well. He thinks most people would benefit from having a canine companion. His favorite Brady was Marsha, of course.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 18)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 18)

    The last half of June and the first week of July 2012 have been HOT here in Virginia. I live in the Piedmont region and…

    Stop. Geography Time!

    I’m doing the MC Hammer shuffle dance right now. It ain’t pretty, folks, but I try to imagine that it looks good. Humor me. I have almost no rhythm and I paid a fortune for these parachute pants.

    Ahem…

    Virginia is broken up into five physiographic regions:

    1. Appalachian Plateau – way down in southwest Virginia. Factoid:  Virginia actually extends west of Detroit.
    2. Valley and Ridge – western part of the state. Beautiful and so different than heavily populated NoVA.
    3. Blue Ridge – picturesque and home to some great hiking and camping opportunities.
    4. Piedmont – rolling hills and some plateaus.
    5. Coastal Plain – typically we call that “Tidewater” around these parts. GF’s Rick lives in the Coastal Plain region.

    As I was saying, I live in the Piedmont region and it comprises the largest area of the state. We’re west of the Tidewater and the fall line separates the two regions. It is higher than Tidewater and it is also HOT here in the summertime for man and beast alike. August can be brutal here. This year it’s been pretty hot since my kids got out of school. Anyhow…

    So my lovely bride and I were out working on our garden fence (pictures soon) one evening and noticed that the bees were doing something interesting. This picture shows them doing something called “bearding” which is different from the bee bearding that some folks do where they get bees to hang all over their face. I don’t understand doing that at all, quite honestly. Hanging bees off one’s face is akin to sword swallowing, running with the bulls and juggling running chainsaws – they all fall into the same category entitled “Activities Which May End Badly”.

    Bearding is something honeybees do when it is hot. It helps with ventilation in the hive and is a normal thing when it is hot. I use, as I’ve written before, a screened bottom board so that helps somewhat with ventilation. I do need to, however, vent the hives a bit at the top (you can do this by propping the outer cover open with a stick) when I’m home. I’ve also seen folks offset a honey super a bit to help let some of the heat escape. It isn’t absolutely critical but every bit helps.

    I thought it was interesting that both hives were doing this and the patterns were similar. They definitely were making use of the landing boards (those slanted boars on the bottom) and stayed out there until well after 8:30PM. I don’t believe that bearding is any indication that there is a problem in the hive, just that it is hot.

    Bees are quite good at regulating the temperature in the hive. They’ll flap their wings to help cool things off. If you are quiet and put your ear up to the back of the hive – it is quite safe back there – you can hear them inside, buzzing away and flapping their wings. I think that sound is cool. They also will bring water into the hive so I keep a large plastic pan filled with large rocks and water nearby to provide them with easy access to water if they need it. The rocks give them someplace to land without drowning in the water. They also weigh down the pan during windy times.

    Enjoy and stay cool!

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) enjoys the music of the Punch Brothers, Crooked Still and The Greencards. He is a fan of pepper jack cheese. He doesn’t like liver of any sort. He believes the world would be a far better place with more folks like the late Fred Rogers in it.


     

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 17)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 17)

    Having the right tool for the job makes all the difference. You can try to drive a nail into the wall with your shoe to hang that picture and it might work but even a crappy dollar store hammer will make that job a cinch because the hammer is specifically designed to accomplish that task. Those Top-Siders… well, not so much.

    Tools for beekeeping are no different and today I want to introduce the hive tool to you. There are a few different types and I’ve got two of them. The one I’m not talking about in this post is flat with a 90 degree bend on one end. Both ends narrow down and can be used for prying or scraping. I like it. I’ll talk about it in the future.

    But in this photo you can see my other hive tool – the J-hook style hive tool in action. It has a flat end that tapers to a narrow blade and this is also useful for prying apart hive bodies, particularly when they are stuck together due to propolis. Visible in the picture is the J-hook end that is great for lifting up one end of a frame in order to grab hold of it. This is quite helpful when removing the first frame in the box because there isn’t a lot of room anyway and adding a bunch of bees to the mix only makes it that much more difficult to get a good grip on the frame. Those (as GardenFork’s own Rick would call them) “bugs in a box” seem to have a keen sense for being exactly where I need to put my fingers. Not wanting to crush any bees (or get stung in the process), I just use the tool to carefully move the frame into a position where I can more easily grab it.

    There are a few other tools that are useful when inspecting a hive. I’ll write about those in the future.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) can be found most summer weekends mowing grass. He’s nonplussed about trimming the ditch along his farm’s road frontage. He stinks at throwing a baseball and really isn’t particularly skilled at throwing objects in general. Matt likes his steaks grilled medium and never uses steak sauce. 

     

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 16)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 16)

    When folks talk about beehives – average, non-beekeeping folks, that is – they’ll probably mention honey, honey comb, the queen bee, maybe pollen. Those are things most folks would know. Today I want to talk about something that few folk outside the beekeeper community would know about – propolis.

    In this image you can see what look like dirty peanut butter along the edge of the hive body. This is a resinous substance known as propolis. It is produced by the bees from the plant resins and sap. It is a sticky, gooey mess when it is warm and I am told it is hard and brittle when cold. The color will vary a bit based on what plants the bees use to produce the propolis.

    Bees use propolis in the hive to do a few things:  fill in small cracks, seal up anything they think needs to be sealed, coat anything they cannot remove from the hive (such as a dead mouse). Personally I’ve not seen bees do the latter (yet) but I’ve certainly seen them seal up gaps.

    Hives bodies (the boxes holding frames of comb) are challenging enough to handle when they are full – they get heavy quickly. Propolis adds to the challenge by sticking them together, making it harder to separate hive bodies so you can lift them. I had to really work hard to get the hive body above this one in the picture off and found my hive tool worked pretty well to gain some leverage and pop it apart.

    Propolis, I’m told, is quite effective at hermetically sealing nasty stuff in the hive (such as that dead mouse) so that it doesn’t foul up the hive. It apparently has some antimicrobial and anti-fungal qualities depending upon what plants resins are used. I’ve witnessed that honeybees are pretty clean creatures and act in a very methodical way to maintain order. If I ever have an opportunity to capture them coating something (other than the cracks of the hive) with propolis, I’ll be sure to snap a picture.

    There are folks who use propolis for medicinal reasons. I’m told you can find it in heath food stores and that claims are made as to its efficacy in the treatment or prevention of this or that. I don’t have any personal experience here so I can’t really say. I’d probably want to see some scientific evidence of this before plunking down any cash on this. I’m not sure that there is even any requirement to prove its efficacy before selling it. And if there’s (potentially considerable) variability in its makeup, it might be difficult to know if that propolis you’re buying is going to do you any good. Again, I’ve got no experience here but I’d be reluctant to shell out too many of my greenbacks on a substance that might not be regulated and may not provide any real benefit. I simply don’t know enough about this to definitively come down on one side or the other. Caveat emptor.

    Beekeepers wanting to collect propolis (and potentially make some cash by selling it) can put a screen in the hive – these are available from the various beekeeping supply companies – and the bees will coat the holes with propolis. Personally, I’d rather that they make honey but who knows… I might try this in the future.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) enjoys making his own carbonated drinks with his Soda Stream. He is not a fan of horse flies but prefers them to deer flies since he can hear them flying around. He is tired of replacing rotted wood in his raised bed gardens and wants to move to brick ones. First, he’ll need to get some mad mason skillz(TM) to accomplish that task.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 15)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 15)

    The bees in hive #2 (the hive formerly known as “the nuc hive”) have been very productive. Three weeks ago we put a medium super with new foundation atop this hive and when we checked it on Father’s Day, we found not only drawn comb but drawn comb filled with nectar in the process of being turned into honey. All ten frames were drawn and most of them were full of nectar or were in the process of being capped so we put another super on this hive to provide them more room.

    In this image you can see a sample of what I mean. The bees are very busy working to create honey. This is accomplished via enzymes within the bees which break down the complex sugars into simpler sugars. This is called inversion. Then the water content is reduced by the bees via fanning. Once it has reached the proper moisture content, it is capped by the bees.

    I personally find bees amazing. There are so many aspects of their lives which make me wonder, not the least of which is how do these bees know when to cap the honey. I suspect it is passed down through their genes but still… it is fascinating that they create a substance which has an insanely long shelf life. Cool huh?

    One other thing.

    A medium super of honey is pretty heavy. I can completely understand why some folks opt for the 8-frame mediums vice the 10-frame ones.

    And don’t get me started about the weight of a deep hive body full of brood and bees. But that’s a topic for another time.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) is not a fan of Bermuda grass. He likes Art Deco but not Zydeco. He prefers to make greeting cards rather than buy them. Twenty-eight years later he still can play (albeit poorly) a tenor sax solo he had to memorize for jazz band concert in high school.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 14)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 14)

    It was a Father’s Day hive inspection. Dad (that’s me) and son checking out our two hives. Beautiful day. 78 degrees Fahrenheit and just a light breeze. Quite a few things to say and show about this inspection so expect more posts from me in the coming days.

    There are a LOT of bees in these hives. I think non-beekeepers (as well as this first year beekeeper) just don’t get how many bees can live in a hive. It’s incredible quite honestly when you pop open the hive and there is just frame after frame of bees – often so many of them that you can hardly see the comb underneath. The frames with brood on them are just teeming with bees.

    I’ve written before about pheromones and how the hive uses these to communicate. One pheromone they use quite effectively is the alarm pheromone. I understand folks say it smells like bananas. I’ve got a particularly poor sense of smell and am not sure I personally could smell it. At least I haven’t noticed it yet.

    Here is a closeup of my glove. Yes, there’s some goo on it – white shows every stain – but right in the center of the shot is the topic of this post.

    The stinger.

    Today we were on the business end of the stinger. Not the place you want to be, quite frankly.

    My son was taking the lead on the inspection and the bees weren’t all that happy that we were bothering them today. We used the smoker a couple of times and it helped a bit but they were head  butting us from the beginning. They were crawling all over my son’s gloves and that, pardon the pun, bugged him out a  bit. I think he was worried about squashing them as he lifted up frames.

    He got stung on the index finger through his glove while trying to take out the sixth frame and let the frame drop, maybe only an inch, back into the hive body. That didn’t, as you might guess, improve the hive’s disposition. The stinger stuck in the glove and a bit of the venom went into his finger. He wasn’t happy. They weren’t happy. We stepped away, I took the hive tool in my hand and scraped the stinger off the glove. That step is important. The sooner the stinger is removed, the less venom ends up in the body and the less it will hurt. Scrape it, don’t grab and squeeze.

    I sent him in to put some ice on it.

    I decided then that it was time to button things up and try again another day. Their mood wasn’t going to improve.

    That’s the issue though with beekeeping. Unlike woodcarving or painting or playing the french horn, if  you need or want to stop, you can’t just walk away from the hive. If you’ve opened it up, you’ve got to close it back up. Even if the conditions stink. Even if they aren’t happy. Even if you’ve been stung. Some beekeeping friends of mine (Eric and Rick, to name two) have been stung way more than this and surely wanted to just walk away for the day. But you have to finish what you started because that hive won’t put itself back together.

    There were a dozen or so bees banging into me and buzzing that distinctive “I’m pissed at you” buzz. It took me about five minutes to get everything back together because A) the smoker had gone out and B) I needed to step away a few times because they were getting a bit overwhelming, quite honestly. Crawling over my hands, walking all over my veil, flying about, bouncing into me.

    Then they stung me in the hand. Just two or three times. I only felt one of them, looked down and instinctively wiped my one glove with the other. I scraped one more off that I saw before the camera guy in me said “you dummy, take a picture” and then I looked over the glove and found another. That’s the one you see here. This one, however, didn’t penetrate the skin.

    Fortunately my gloves are thick and it just felt like a pin prick as no venom reached my skin. I took a walk away from the hive for a minute or two to see if things calmed down. It did – at least enough to finish closing up the hive. And I got that picture, which was cool. We took one of my son’s finger post-sting but it didn’t turn out well and he wasn’t all that keen to have dad keep messing with it so I gave up on that shot.

    For the keeper, the poke of the stinger and the pain of the venom is a temporary thing. My son’s already over the sting and off to camp to enjoy a week of fun. For the bee, well… it means death… at least for the workers. The barbed stinger of the worker ends up sticking into the skin (or the glove in our case) and causes the back end of the bee to open up. The bee soon dies. Unlike the worker, the queen has no barb on her stinger so she could, in theory, sting you multiple times. In practice the queen isn’t likely to sting you. The male drones have no stinger, so one can pick those up barehanded without incident. The workers… yeah, they sting. A little smoke applied to the sting area helps to mask that alarm pheromone.

    Box checked. First stings have happened. There will be more. No worries.

    I plan to get back into the hive again later this week to finish what I started. I talked with my son and he was OK and said he’d definitely be back in his beesuit again. I’m glad for that.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) once went to timber framing school with his brother. He prefers homemade jam to store-bought. He loves the puzzles of Martin Gardner. He wonders why all milk products aren’t packaged in the same plastic as milk jugs.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 13)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 13)

    Bees, particularly those in new hives, require a lot of energy to draw out comb. To help jump-start the hive, a 1:1 sugar syrup can be used to help feed them during this time. I’m pretty certain they could make it without this feeding in the spring assuming there were sources of nectar around. But, since my hives are new and I’m not expecting or planning to take any honey this year, I’m OK about feeding them sugar syrup to provide them with the food they need to draw out comb on the frames this year.

    I started with baggy feeders but they are a bit messy and quite honestly I don’t like them because they are really a one-use feeder. I’ve got a bunch of canning jars and those can be reused so I’m trying some 1-quart jars in my hives as feeders. All one has to do is punch some small holes in the lid (I tapped a nail into the lid just a bit so that the smallest of holes was made.)  and fill the jar with sugar syrup. With the lid screwed on tight and inverted over the hole in the inner cover a vacuum is formed and the syrup will not run out. The bees can then slowly eat the syrup. When it’s emptied, I can just swap it out for a new one without disturbing the hive much at all.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) is a big fan of Punch Brothers and the music of Chris Thile in general. If putt putt doesn’t count, he has never played golf. This time next year he’ll be one year older.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 12)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 12)

    The queen is dead. Long live the queen.

    Well, not yet. And perhaps not for a while. But since I’ve got an interesting picture here, I want to write a bit about the topic.

    So, there is a bit of wiggle room in the hive – there’s space between the frames and if not spaced evenly by the beekeeper or if the frames don’t have drawn comb on them, the bees have space to make some non-uniform comb. In the center of this image you can see some comb that is sticking out from the rest of the generally uniform cells around it. These larger ball-shaped cells are called “queen cups” and are cells specifically set aside for raising queens. If an egg is deposited there by the existing queen and then the workers feed it a special diet of royal jelly, a queen will develop. The queen cup will eventually be extended out and look like a peanut, so they are easy to spot in a hive.

    Now, the location of these queen cups on the frame indicates that they would be used to create new queens to replace or “supersede” the current queen. The existing queen, if it begins to fail, will likely alert the other bees in the hive that they need to find a replacement for her. She does this through changes in the pheromones she produces. If the workers believe she is failing, they’ll go into “make a new queen” mode.

    Supersedure is a normal part of hive life. The hive needs to thrive and can’t do so with a weak, failing queen. The strongest new queen will typically kill off the other new queens, often before they’ve emerged, and take over the hive. This may sound harsh, but the hive’s survival depends upon a strong queen as only she has the ability to create workers – and new queens.

    If the queen cups were along the bottom of the frame, then that is an indication that there is the potential for a swarm to occur. Swarming is also a normal part of hive life, providing a mechanism to split the hive into two hives. When a swarm occurs, the old queen leaves the hive with a portion of the hive leaving a new queen behind with the remainder of the hive.

    I’ll certainly be on the lookout for changes to these queen cups and relay anything I learn about them.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) hated raw tomatoes for the first 40 years of his life but now enjoys them. One day he would like to hike the Appalachian Trail. He regularly torments his kids by making up advertising jingles for hole-in-the-wall businesses they see when driving down the road. His lovely bride puts up with his shenanigans.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 11)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 11)

    If someone were to ask me to make a list of adjectives describing the time in which we live, most certainly near or at the top of that list would be the word “connected”. Texting, email, Twitter, Facebook, online forums, Instagram, Skype, IRC, email, VoIP, cell phones, land lines and even snail mail. There are literally dozens of ways to stay in touch with what’s happening in your circle of friends, neighborhood, town, state, country and the world at large. Now we could argue whether all this is good or bad, but I won’t. That’s a discussion for another place and time.

    Honeybees are connected as well. They do some “dances” to communicate to one another about where things are – a good source of pollen, a good place to make the hive, etc. Before humans began scientifically studying honeybees, I’m not sure we recognized just how connected honeybees are. The scientific method, introduced in primary schools here in the States, includes the steps of Observation, Collection of data and Analysis. That skill of observation requires one have the ability to stop and focus, capture mentally what is happening and then record that information in some form so it can be reviewed. I don’t think early humans worried too much about whether bees communicated rather they were looking at the end products – honey and wax. The “waggle dance” wasn’t on their radar. Mostly the idea was “don’t get stung and get the honey” – simple and practical. It is easy to miss the subtleties of life when they don’t, seemingly, affect the day-to-day grind. Heck, we do this today, right? Lots goes on that we miss in our preoccupied, White Rabbit from Wonderland rush through the day.

    But, while they likely didn’t spend too much time observing bee behavior (beehavior?), early humans did recognize that the smoke from a torch was helpful to avoid getting stung when robbing hives found in caves and trees. These people didn’t understand the “why” but they did understand the “what” of the situation. Things haven’t changed much in the modern world – we often recognize correlation and infer causation without understanding things deeply. For our ancestors, getting the honey was all that mattered. Why the torch smoke made it easier wasn’t nearly so important. No doubt all sorts of conjectures were made by those who did ask why, but they lacked the faculties to discover the real answer back then.

    Enough rambling.

    What our ancestors didn’t know was that honeybees use pheromones for communication. Glands in the bee produce a variety of pheromones which tell one another that things are good, there’s trouble in the hive, the queen is failing and all sorts of other information. The presence or lack of a particular pheromone in the hive can signal that the hive needs to mobilize.

    Truly fascinating stuff. At least to me. Perhaps because I’m in “observation” mode these days.

    So, this image is of the modern equivalent of that ancient torch, the hive smoker. Made of metal,  it contains – ideally – a smoldering fire which produces a lot of smoke and not a lot of heat. Unlike most every other fire that humans make, the goal with the fire in a smoker is to maximize the smoke production.

    The smoker has bellows to draw air in from the outside and push it into the smoker’s firebox to stoke the fire a bit and to produce smoke which exits from the top. If you look closely, you can see some smoke escaping from it.

    Smoke, used judiciously and sparingly, severs that communications line within the hive temporarily. Without the ability to distribute the “alarm” pheromone through the hive, guard bees have a difficult time getting the message across to everyone else that there’s trouble in the hive. The smoke also signals to the bees to gorge themselves on honey because there might be a fire and they might need to flee that fire.

    Used excessively smoke will send bees into panic mode. Most of my beekeeper friends use it minimally if at all. Like much in life, less is more.

    Oh yeah – smokers can get hot. Metal transfers heat quickly and so you should take care when handling one.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) believes it is, as Tears for Fears sang, high time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man. He’s thinks the hokey pokey is what it’s all about. His favorite pizza topping is black olives. He loved the Furniture Guys and misses their show.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 10)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 10)

    Field Marshal of Obvious here. There are a lot of honeybees in a hive. I would say “more than you can shake a stick at” but then two things would happen:

    1. My sister, The Teacher, would lecture me on my poor English skills.
    2. Some idiot fine person would go shaking his (because it would be a guy) stick around a hive, annoying the bees an end up with hundreds of stings and probably anaphylaxis.
    I’m mostly concerned here, of course, with number one. The Teacher can be brutal with her critiques.

    Seriously, I think that it can be a bit overwhelming the first time one pulls a frame out of a hive body and sees all those bees crawling around on the comb. Personally I felt mixed emotions when I first put my J-hook hive tool under the end of a frame, raised it up with my thumb and index finger and then repeated the process on the other end of the frame so I could get a good grip on it. The bees are everywhere and are seemingly putting themselves right where my fingers need to be. I was a bit cautious, frankly a bit intimidated, and certainly exhilarated. And for the most part, the bees didn’t seem to mind all that much that I was getting up close and personal with their world. I had some buzzing about, whining their high-pitched “annoyed” whine and some were bouncing into me – “head butting” as some folks call it. But most were busy as… well, bees.

    This image is a closeup of a brood frame in my hive #2, the one from my mentor’s nucleus, or “nuc” hive. Over in hive #1, the bees originated from a package I purchased from Georgia and had a “marked” queen. Marking the queen, I believe, serves two purposes. First, the color often is used to identify how old the queen is, or at least I’ve been told that. Mine has a blue dot upon her back. That makes it relatively easy to spot her – likely the primary purpose for marking the queen. The blue is bright and stands out against the blacks, yellows, siennas and umbers of the hive. There just don’t tend to be blue things in a hive, so the dot stands out like a sore thumb. But that is over in hive #1.

    In hive #2 there isn’t a marked queen and so it is a bit of a “Where’s Waldo?” game to find the queen. Honestly, I didn’t spot her while doing my inspection, though there was ample evidence of her existence – plenty of capped brood, larva, I assume eggs (my eyes aren’t what they used to be and I didn’t have my reading glasses handy, so I couldn’t be sure) and activity. The hive was humming along and everything seemed, well, orderly so my assumption was that she was alive and well.

    But it is nice to find the queen.

    Take a look closely and there in center is the queen. You can see everything other than her head, which is hidden by the wing of one of the workers. A few points of interest are:

    1. The queen has an elongated abdomen where she stores her eggs and the sperm that she collected while mating with drones.
    2. The abdomen isn’t striped like that of her workers.
    3. Her wings are similar in size to that of the workers and so they look small compared to her length. That is what made her stand out in the picture. In the original picture, she isn’t in the center of the frame and blends in pretty well with the hundreds of workers on that side of the frame.

    One other interesting factoid is that the queen has a stinger but generally doesn’t sting. She can, however, repeatedly sting because unlike the workers, whose stingers are barbed, her stinger isn’t barbed.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) can do a pretty mediocre Bobby McFerrin chest thumping “Don’t Worry, Be  Happy” impression which he occasionally uses to aggravate his daughter at bedtime. He once saw Mike+The Mechanics and The Outfield in concert at Kings Dominion. One of his favorite musical chords is the Neapolitan Sixth. His favorite in-person drum corps performance is Rocky Point Holliday by the 1983 Garfield Cadets. Amazing stuff. 

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 9)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 9)

    One of these things is not like the other….

    Take a look at this close up of a frame and you’ll see around 40 adult bees, busily attending to their duties – cleaning out cells, feeding brood and capping cells. Most bees in a healthy hive are female workers. But in this image one of the adult bees is different than the others – the big one near the center of the picture. It  is a drone. A male honeybee whose sole purpose in life is to mate with a queen. The drones in a hive don’t do much of anything else other than mooch food from the working females.

    Ladies, go ahead and insert your quip here about how this isn’t much different than it is in the human population. I’ll wait.

    Ahem.

    So, beyond the obvious size difference, you’ll also notice that this drone has large eyes too. I suspect that this aids drones in searching for queens. Something that isn’t obvious in this picture is that drones cannot sting you. They have no stinger.

    In addition to the drone in this picture, you can see some larva in some cells, particularly on the right side of the image. These are fed by the workers until they are capped for the transition from larva to pupa. I think it is interesting that bees (and other insects) are essentially shut off from the world during this transition and I wonder about that sometimes. What exactly is the purpose in doing so? I think this is a question for my online insect friend, Debbie Hadley. I’ll talk to her about it and report back in the future on this.

    Finally, you’ll notice the glob of comb at the bottom of the frame. This is called “burr comb” and can show up just about anywhere in the hive. I guess any comb that isn’t where you want it to be can be called burr comb. The bees, however, treat it like any other comb and might put nectar, pollen or brood in it. In general  this burr comb is the result of excess space in the hive. Bees fill in the excess space with comb. You’ll also notice that much of the comb on this frame is darker in color and this is because the comb is probably at least a couple of years old. This frame came from my mentor’s nucleus hive so it has some age on it compared to the brand new frames and freshly drawn comb elsewhere in my hives.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) likes raised bed gardens and collecting rain water for watering his plants. If he’s going to eat fast food, he prefers Chipotle and Subway over burgers. He modified the computer bowling game in high school so that he could always bowl a 300 game. The teacher was not amused. He is allergic to rabbits and politicians.

     

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 8)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 8)

    Everything about honeybees is interesting to me. I have seen this brood layout in several hives and I think it is interesting that bees make this sunrise-shaped brood pattern. So, what you are seeing here is capped brood in the center of the frame with some open cells – some were cleaned out, some had larva in them. Outside that center brood pattern is capped and uncapped honey.

    I’ve been wondering why the bees tend to lay out their brood like this – certainly it is convenient to have stores near the brood. It is also interesting that they don’t mix brood and stores together, right? But I guess that just makes sense because otherwise the queen would need to work around the stores to find the cells where she can lay her eggs. Hives seem to be very orderly places where bees have their tasks to do, cells are neatly arranged and activities appear to be carried out automatically. Certainly there are a bucket of mysteries that still remain about honeybees despite the fact that they are the second most studied creature after humans.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) loves berries of all sorts though he’s not a fan of cherries. Weird, huh? He is neither tone deaf nor color blind but can’t carry a tune and is particularly unskilled at matching clothes. Matt loves to listen to Radio Lab and is quite jealous of Jad and Robert. They’ve got an awesome job.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 7)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 7)

    Hey there folks. In this scene from the hive, I’d like to show off something that my son and I saw today during our inspection of hive #2 (the hive from my mentor’s nuc). I almost missed this because it was quite hot out today with no breeze whatsoever. It was the first time we’d used the smoker and, quite honestly, it seemed to agitate the bees more. We’ll work on that.

    In the center of the picture you can see a bee emerging from its cell. When we pulled this frame, we could see her antennae poking out of the cell and within just a minute or two, she’d popped her head out.

    About 5 cells above this there is a bee which appears to be in the pupa stage (which is a capped stage) but it was open. Unfortunately the close-up of this didn’t turn out. I think it might have been dead. If you have thoughts on this, I’d like to hear them.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) enjoys the heck out of cooking and eating ribs and is particularly enamored with his brown sugar dry rub. Insanely delicious. Matt thinks This Old House’s Tom Silva is really cool. He likes iced tea with lemon and sharp cheddar cheese – not together, of course.

  • Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 6)

    Inside the Hive: Views from a First Year Beekeeper (Scene 6)

    I wanted to talk about a couple of topics related to this photo – mite control and wax production. There are two mites which are parasitic in the honeybee hive – the Varoa Mite, which literally sucks the life out of the bee externally and the Tracheal Mite which feeds of the bee from within its respiratory system. Varoa is large enough that one can see it with the naked eye while Tracheal mites are too small to see without a microscope. In the upper part of this picture are two “grease patties” which are made of equal parts of vegetable shortening and sugar. Mixed and formed into a patty, these are most easily handled by putting waxed paper between them. Sometimes folks will put some essential oils in the mixture, such as wintergreen. The idea here is that the bees are attracted to the sugar in the patty and get the vegetable shortening on them, greasing them up a bit. Tracheal mites are spread bee-to-bee and have considerable difficulty with the grease. There are a number of ways to deal with tracheal mites, some of which are more harsh than others. What I like about the grease patty approach is that it is something that is both inexpensive and harmless to the bees. These patties go a long way so you dont’ need a bunch of them – maybe one or two per hive per year. How effective is the grease patty treatment? I don’t know, quite honestly, but it is mentioned quite often.

    The zip-top bag (When J&J starts sponsoring GardenFork, I’ll consider using its brand name) in the picture is called a “baggy feeder” and is filled with a 1:1 sugar syrup (1:1 by weight, so 5 pints of water to a 5 pound bag of sugar) that is super simple to make – you could just put the water in the sun and stir the sugar in after a few hours of letting it heat up. Alternatively you can heat the water a bit on the stove (no need to boil it whatsoever), take it off the heat and stir in the sugar. Fill the bag and seal the top. Then lay the bag down on its side (making sure the top is zipped) and cut a small slit in the side of the bag so that the air escapes and the sugar syrup oozes out a bit. As the bees walk on it, they’ll be able to feed on the syrup that comes out.

    Now, the idea with the baggy feeder (or any feeder for that matter) is that the bees in this new hive require a considerable amount of energy to produce wax to create comb on the frames and to fly about and forage. They’ll certainly go out and find nectar but providing a ready source of sugar water gives them all the food they can eat right in the hive and helps the bees “draw out” the comb quickly. In a new hive there’s a lot of wax to produce and shape into comb and the bees will readily take this syrup up and produce remarkable amounts of wax in a short time. As I’m not getting honey from the hives this year (at least this is my expectation), I don’t mind the bees feeding off of sugar water. When they are producing honey for human consumption, you’ll want them to be creating it from nectar rather than just storing up sugar water. I wouldn’t want to purchase (or sell!) honey that was just converted sugar water.

    The nice thing about the baggy feeder is that it is cheap and convenient. The undesirable thing about the baggy feeder is that it is really a one-use feeder and can be a bit messy. I’m changing my hives over to inverted mason jars with punctured lids for feeders. Those are easily swapped out and will last for decades. There are many other feeders out there – frame feeders, hive top plastic feeders, entrance feeders. They all work but have their plusses and minuses. I’ll report later about how my mason jar feeders work.

    Enjoy,

    Matt

    Read all of Matt’s Inside the Hive Posts here

    Matt (twitter @MattInTheGarden) likes sudoku, minesweeper and the “Ticket to Ride” board game. He’s a huge fan of Ze Frank and enjoys the listening to Dan Carlin’s Common Sense. He’s got a “live and let live” attitude toward life and enjoys a good cheeseburger and baked potato wedges with roasted garlic spread on them. In his spare time he writes software.