BEES: Summer Slowdown, Lessons & Decor

written by Tom

So, okay, I'm a cartoonist AND a beek. Naturally I had to decorate my hives, appropriate for Russian Bees. Here's Boris, from the "Rocky & Bullwinkle Show".

I'd never drawn him before. I warmed up with a couple of sketches, then went for it.

It was a lot of work, but I managed to somehow enjoy it.

Okay, painting on a hive box is a LOT different than drawing on paper with ink. Steady ... steady ... steady ... .

Not bad, not bad.

Since I'm splitting my hive in a month to make two, I went ahead, built out the hive deep boxes and two medium supers, painted them all yellow, and then finalized the deal with Natasha's likeness on one of the deeps. She was SO much fun to draw!

Now came the hard part. It was time for another inspection. Somehow I had to switch out the top brood box on hive Boris with my newly decorated Boris box. I was nervous! One thing I did well without realizing it is holding my hive tool in my hand while holding the frames. I didn't realize I had figured out this little beekeeping trick until I saw this photo. A great sign on the top box, another newly drawn frame with a tight brood pattern.

I'd stopped feeding them for two weeks, suspecting robbing was going on. I later realized it was not robbing, but orientation flights of new bees I was witnessing. To verify, I made several visits during one such event. There were no balls of bees fighting to the death, no alarm phermone smell (bananas), and in three visits in shorts and flip flops I got no stings. So that was good. Now, back to the inspection.

I'm smiling in this photo, but really I was disappointed to see that they'd done very little work on this frame.

I expected this frame to have been drawn out in the two weeks since I'd last inspected, but it was only drawn fully on one side and about a third of the other side had been drawn. Hmmmmm. I will have to start feeding them again.

There were several more undrawn frames I'd hoped would be drawn out and ready to harvest for Hive Natasha.So far, out of the 18 frames in the two hive boxes, they'd drawn out 13.5 frames. A GREAT sign I'll be able to split. But only one honey frame was found on this visit that I could remove.

I inspected and placed all of the top box frames into a working box. The queen was not spotted up top, though I did see a few tight brood frames, so she'd been busy up there within the last nine days. Onto the bottom box. The end frames were undrawn, but the frames next to them that used to be undrawn were mostly filled out. There were LOTS of bees. My hive has more than doubled in size, another great sign.

This freshly drawn frame had some brood and a lot of capped honey cells. But there was a knob of capped brood in the center of the frame that was troublesome. I still worry about it.

Here's a closer view. Were these emergency supercedure cells? If drone cells all were on the bottom of the frames, then it doesn't make sense these in the middle were drone cells, but rather supercedure cells. Still, they weren't all that big, AND they weren't pointing down, but rather up and at weird diagonals. Was Boris now queenless and they were trying to create a replacement queen? My alarm quickly grew, as did my panic. On my next inspection if there are more of these and I'm seeing two or three eggs had been laid per cell then I'll know for sure that Hive Boris has gone queenless. I sure hope that's not the case.

Holy crap, this had a lot of bees and brood. No queen was spotted in the bottom box, either. But I did see more brood than I ever had in both the top and bottom boxes. This frame used to be spotty, but now had a tight capped brood pattern. I also noticed that for the first time there were capped drone cells in the hive. These were mostly along the bottom of the frames in the bottom box only, except for that one weird frame where there were large capped cells at frame's center. Unfortunately, I also just spotted a queen cup on this frame, in the upper right quadrant of the frame. They're preparing to either replace their queen or they're frantically trying to create a replacement due to an unfortunate accident (such as an ignorant beek killing her without realizing it ... I swear I put her frame back in gently as soon as I saw her last time, honest!). Or, maybe they're just practicing, keeping up their chops on how to build queen cells?

See? Lots of bees, I'm not lying. I'm still holding my hive tool without realizing it.

Again no queen, but lots of brood cells and more drone cells. My alarm was raising, and the bees were getting louder.

This was what I came to get this inspection, a honey frame. I wanted to remove them from the hive and make Boris redraw out fresh foundation into comb so that when I split the hive, the new weaker colony will have a jump start with frames of drawn comb I'd set aside for them. This honey frame (not true honey, but capped simple syrup I'd been feeding the bees) weighed a lot and was quite beautiful. I put the frame in the freezer for at least 48 hours (I left it in there a week until Yvonne reminded me to get it out of her freezer, PRONTO!). I'd hoped for four such frames, but only one was ready, located as a next-to-end frame on the East side of the hive.

It was time to harvest the honey frame. I used a bee brush as quickly and gently as I could to brush the bees into the bottom box. I quickly discovered that the bees did NOT like this in the least. Oh, crap, they're flying everywhere!! And I'm not wearing gloves. And I'm sweating. And ... and ... BAM! I got stung. Finally, my first sting of the year. Silly me figured that reflexively shaking my hand around would be a good idea while handling bees. WRONG!!! Yes, it is way easier to handle the bees gloveless. But you're still going to accidentally kill some here and there (sorry, girls), and if you're not protected and are nervous, you'll get popped.

I quickly reached for my gloves. Here's a shot of what I put on my hands after resmoking them.TA-DAAAAA, holes chewed into one of the thumbs, some of the fingers and along the palm thanks to a handy mouse in my storage room off the carport. Instead of putting my beekeeping gloves away in a chest of drawers I have out there, I left them on the shelf. Apparently mice think goatskin is akin to caviar.

As soon as I got the gloves on a bee entered my thumb hole and I thought my eyes were going to bug outta my head. "I'm in trouble!" I shouted to Yvonne. Ever the yoga teacher, she made me recompose as I quickly took the gloves back off. Fortunately I didn't get stung a second time, but I deserved it. Yvonne said, "Relax." And that was all. I took some deep breaths, applied a lot of smoke to thousands of angry bees flying all around me, and went back to work.

Even though I don't use chemicals in the hive, I will use every natural method of helping the bees keep Varroa and tracheal mites in check. My friend Hernan reminded me that summertime was time for sugar dusting. I saw a suggestion in "Bee Culture" ( I love that magazine ) to dust using a flour sifter. It worked like a charm. I used a family heirloom, my Aunt Anne's flour sifter. It was super fast and effective. I did this on both boxes as my hand kept reminding me how stupid I'd acted while in the hive this visit. Oh, well, at least I found out the hard way that I was not allergic to honeybees! I must admit I felt some sense of "so THERE, you stingy bees!!!" while coating them in powdered sugar. "Take THAT!"

After dusting both boxes and putting the top feeder back in place, it was time to take a look at the freshly decorated Boris hive. He looks pretty much up to something ... a visual reminder that you have to be careful, gentle AND smart when you're working bees of any kind. On my next visit, I'll know if I need to order a second Russian queen instead of just one. Any longtime beekeepers out there reading, please let me know your thoughts. In the meantime I'll check the books and hope for the best.

VEG: A very long post

written by Yvonne

This is a fairly long post because it spans two weeks.  I'll try to keep it short and to the point.

June 25-26, 2011

No one informed this batch of kale that it's supposed to be a cool-weather crop. It is growing like crazy and enjoying all of this summer heat. Further down you'll see one of the things I did with the kale.

A few basil plants doing well. Not enough for the amount of pesto our household requires, but it's on its way.

The red okra is coming along - as are the weeds and grass. (Embarrassing.)

These are rainbow peppers which we are excited about. However we are not as excited about the weeds and grass. (Further embarrassment.)

Oregano and more grass.

Lots of new squash blossoms but I think the majority of squash is done. We trimmed these way back and we'll see if the flowers produce anything more.

Pretty marigolds next to the cucumbers.

Do you see all of these cucumber flowers?  Do you?  Well each one is turning into a lovely, refreshing cucumber. Yvonne is very happy.

This is the amount that we picked just in the last two days.

We also harvested a few more squash (no surprise there), some carrots, and burgundy beans...

and a bunch of kale.

The Borlotto beans were big and plump so we felt it was time to harvest them.

We pulled everything off the vine, not knowing if more will take their place or not. Something tells us these will not keep producing (like the burgundy beans do).

We poured some adult beverages and sat around the table and shelled the entire basket-full of beans. Tom said he did this with his family as a kid, and I've heard others talk about sitting on the porch, shelling beans in the warm summer. Now that I've done it for the first time, I can see why people have fond memories of this activity. Yes, it may be hot (although we were in the nice air conditioning), and yes it can be a tedious task, but it also makes you slow down and just talk with the person you're with. We both found it very enjoyable!

We ended up with about 6-cups of beans. Once we had them all shelled, we discovered that we probably pulled them a bit early.  The ones that had a lot of red on the shell produced beans that were white with a bit of red. The shells that were more green had beans that were also green. But that's OK. It was a learning experience and we certainly ate them anyway.  To cook them, I had to find a recipe that used fresh beans. Recipes with canned beans and/or dried beans are everywhere. But I've never cooked fresh beans before so I wasn't sure how. The source I found said to put just enough water to cover the fresh beans and cook for about 45 minutes. At the end of the cooking time I added basil, tomatoes, s&p, and topped with Parmesan cheese. HOLY COW were they good! You would have thought I'd thrown a ham hock in them because they were so flavorful, but there was nothing of the kind involved.

July 3-4, 2011

This weekend we did a LOT harvesting, a LOT of weeding, and some planting. After a week we decided that the Borlotto beans were not going to put out any more beans so we ripped those plants out.

We harvested the remainder of the garlic, more squash , burgundy beans, carrots, and a BUNCH of cucumbers. How many cucumbers, you ask?

A sink full! And how many is a sink full? 47! Mind you, this is what we harvested this weekend, not what has been harvest to date. I went from being the happiest cucumber lover on the planet to a gal with a problem. What are we going to do with all these? We can't even fit them into the refrigerator! One way I've been using them is by making cucumber water - like they do at spas. Just a sliced-up cucumber in the water pitcher in the fridge. It's SO refreshing - and it uses up one cucumber a day. But geez, even at that rate it will be two months before we get through all these, and they certainly won't last that long. What to do, what to do....

I know! I'll make refrigerator pickles. Have I made them before? Of course not. But going by the name 'refrigerator pickles' one could deduce that you don't actually "can" the pickles, you just stick them in jars with flavorings and park them in the fridge. And that sounded like a fairly simple thing to do. So that's what I did. I consulted several recipes and triangulated among them to come up with a recipe that looked good.  I used some of our own, homegrown garlic.  The garlic wasn't completely dried which might be the reason for its pinkish color. Either that or it's a fungus of some kind that we'll die from, but I'm using them regardless.

After sterilizing the jars I cut up the cukes and boiled water, salt, sugar, and vinegar. I added a combination of spices (peppercorns, allspice, celery seed, mustard seed, garlic and fresh dill) to the jars, along with the cukes and then topped the jars with the liquid.

Volia! Refrigerator pickles. I made enough for four quarts which used about 10 cukes (only 37 more to go!). In about a week, I'll pull them out and give them a try.  The reviews for the main recipe I used said you couldn't tell a difference between these and Claussen. We'll see.

As far as the kale, I sprinkled them with olive oil and salt and put them in the oven at 250 for about an hour to make kale chips. Luckily we harvested enough for two batches because we've been eating them like crazy for two days. They are crunchy and salty just really darn good.

Since the tomato seeds we planted weeks ago never came up (bummer), Tom started some tomato seeds in peat pots.  This allowed us to keep the seeds moist until they germinated (half were up in 5 days, the others in 8). They have been in these pots for a few weeks now and they are ready to plant in the garden.

Tom put up stakes and growing spirals...

and then planted one tomato plant in the center of each. Although our friends Erin, Jennifer and Jill have 14 tomato plants that are bursting with fruit, which they assure us they will share.... well, it's just a matter of pride that we have successful tomatoes.

It was very hot and much sweat was produced. Nevertheless we got all of the beds weeded....

and planted carrots, cabbage, lima beans, marjoram, cilantro, parsley, and chives. Hopefully there is time left in the summer growing season for the herbs to produce.

BEES: Hitting the books (and checking them thrice)

written by Tom

So waiting for my girls to draw out the second hive body, I thought it was time to double-check the books and make sure they were doing things correctly. What good does reading all these books and magazines do for me, when it's the bees who really need to hear this stuff? So, I began reading one of my manuals to them.

I made sure to point out all of the great illustrations in my handbook, "The Backyard Beekeeper". I think some bees are more visual than others.

Once that chapter was completed, I left them with a bit of bedside reading they could get to, if they so desired.

All appeared to be going well. For the first time I could hear the buzzing from BOTH hive boxes when I visited my bees each night, usually after I get home from work. But one day I came home to a cloud of about 400 bees in front of the hive. The photo below doesn't do justice to what I was seeing, but believe me, it was a LOT of bees and kind of freaked me out. Was this a robbing incident? I called my mentors to find out their thoughts. I waited a little bit, then suited up, used lots of smoke and removed the feeder and syrup for the time being. That was two weeks ago. The other night the incident repeated itself at exactly the same time, 6:30. I double-checked my books three times, and visited the hive on three occasions with no protection on at all (unless flip flops and shorts count). There were no balls of bees fighting to the death. No corpses of bees on the ground from the battle that comes with defending the hive from robbing. And no smell of bananas. Most importantly, as I knelt two feet beside the entrance, even with the cloud of bees buzzing about, I received no stings. So I am convinced these were not robbing events, but orientation flights of young bees I was witnessing. My hive has definitely been growing.

A week after removing the feeder, I wondered if they'd continue to work on drawing out the frames in the second box. Here's a top view. Not bad, not bad at all.

One empty end-frame removed, and you can see a beautiful sight!

A closer view of one of the frames, fully drawn and filled with capped and uncapped sugar syrup "honey" from the feeder and whatever nectar they could find in the wild.

And another frame that had been empty just a week or two before was now complete and had a lot of capped brood in a tight pattern. The queen's been in the top box and laying well.

And another freshly drawn frame chock full of capped brood, and syrup honey around the edges.. Another similar frame had a tight pattern of larvae developing in the center (and no varroa mites visible to the naked eye).

And the other end frame, where you can see they've begun to draw out the comb. Wow, in just under two weeks, one of them without feeding, they'd drawn out six and a half of the seven fresh frames and foundation Richard and I had installed in the top box. We'd moved two other frames with brood and bees from the bottom box. Now, I need to see what's in the bottom box on my next visit, and remove some of the honey frames and replace them with empty undrawn foundation. My plan is for a split in early August, so I've got to put these girls to work so the split hive gets an easy start. I'll add in fresh deep frames and a medium super to see if I can get them to draw out comb for honey stores next year. I'll definitely replace the top feeder since nectar is low in the hazy depths of summer. Time to crack that whip!

With temps getting into the high 90s, up to 98 one day, I caught the girls doing a bit of festooning, or cooling off, one night around 9. When they're doing this they emit a beautiful low buzzing hum.