Midwinter Bee Maintenance

I maintain my one top-bar hive "au natural", meaning that I don't spray for mites or fungus, and I don't give them antibiotics or take their honey away and feed them sugar water throughout the winter. This is my first winter with bees, so the learning curve is pretty steep, but we're getting there.

During the super cold snap we had in December (where it got into single digits overnight and rarely jumped above 25 during the day) I wrapped the hive with some tarping to trap a little more heat for the girls, and I used an entrance reducer to keep in more of their heat. Well, since then I've left both of those winterization bits in place, but the weather has warmed up significantly, to the point where it's been over 50 in the daytime and we haven't had a frost since that cold snap. (Seriously, an entire month with no frost. Weird weather patterns. But that'll be the next post.)

Went out to check on the girls last week, and noticed that not only were the bees out foraging, they were bringing back saddlebags full of yellow pollen from somewhere. I haven't seen a single blooming flower around here, not even my pieris or hellebore is blooming, but the bees are better at finding food than I am at spotting flowers. My guess is perhaps they found a nearby house or houses with primroses or pansies, but maybe there's something else blooming. At any rate, they seemed pretty vigorous.

Went back out yesterday to check on them, and noticed that the front of the hive was smeared with streaks of something. As I contemplated it, I realized what it was: bee poo. The girls have a mild case of dysentery (no, not the human kind, just the bee kind.) Oh dear.

Dysentery in bees isn't all that uncommon in the winter, and it isn't usually fatal by itself. In extreme cases, the bees get so weakened they fall prey to other diseases or parasites and the hive dies, or they get so much waste material piled up in the hive that they have a hard time cleaning it. It is often caused by Nosema, a single-celled, gut-invading organism. Hives can survive a Nosema outbreak if they're otherwise healthy and strong, but it can be treated with antibiotics as well.

Dysentery can also be caused by the simple conditions of winter weather for bees. If they are feeding on honey with a high proportion of non-digestible material, their guts become laden with waste matter. Usually they take care of that with a "voiding flight", where they fly out and do their business away from the hive. If the weather is below 50 for an extended period, or extremely rainy and windy as it was the past week or so for us, they can't get out for that voiding flight, and eventually they end up having to void in the hive, or just outside on the front of the hive. Given that my hive's case seems pretty mild so far, I suspect that's the problem, rather than a major Nosema infestation, though things can change quickly so I'll just have to keep an eye on it. Apparently hive conditions can also cause issues, especially lack of ventilation and moisture buildup. I noticed a few weeks ago that they were having condensation issues on the inside of the viewing window, so I know the ventilation is pretty low.

Turns out, one of the reasons commercial beekeepers feed their hives sugar water in the winter is to help prevent dysentery. Sugar water, though almost completely lacking in nutritional value, also has almost no non-digestible matter. Bees eating sugar water don't build up waste matter in their guts, and therefore don't have to void inside or outside the hive. I think that's probably penny-wise and pound-foolish, though. Imagine if you were on a "clear liquid" diet where all you were allowed to injest was lemon-lime soda or energy drinks. Sure, you'd have energy, you'd probably continue to function, but you wouldn't be getting any nutrition. Your muscles would atrophy from lack of protein, you would start to suffer from lack of vitamins and trace minerals, and your immune system would be damped down. Similar situation with the bees; honey is a complex food full of enzymes and nutrients, whereas processed sugar isn't. They still have energy, they are getting calories to sustain themselves, but they're not getting actual food. I can't imagine bees would have evolved over millions of years to not be able to digest their own winter food, so I am going to continue to let them eat it and deal with the bathroom breaks as they can.

Jacqueline Freeman, who lives at Friendly Haven Rise Farm and teaches holistic beekeeping classes, also recommended that I give them a weak tea made of nettles, horsetail, and/or chamomile plus some of their own honey and offer it back to them in a dish with moss on top (to prevent drowning). Between that and removing the rain tarp and opening up the entrance reducer to increase ventilation, hopefully I can stop the problem before it gets worse.

Synchronici-bee

I've had a hive of bees now for about 3 months. Wow. Seems like it's been longer than that, but it hasn't. I took my first class back in April, got my hive together by May, and got a swarm of bees to take up residence after one failed attempt, and that was in late June. That makes their industriousness even more impressive to me; in that time, they've gone from a completely empty hive to one with bar after bar full of comb, honey, pollen, brood, and nectar, and that's even given that they have to build their own comb completely from scratch in the Top Bar hive, unlike Langstroth hives where they get a foundation frame.

Anyway, I've been interested in bees for much longer than the three months I've had them living in my yard, and I've read many articles and websites and theories about the big threats to the honeybee population, primarily CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). With CCD, there is often no evidence of what happened; the bees just up and disappear, leaving brood, pollen, honey, everything. No thousands of bodies piled up around the hive, just gone. (My personal theory? They returned to Melissa Majoria. Sorry, Doctor Who geek inside joke.)

In science magazines, the focus has been on varroa and tracheal mites, foulbrood disease, fungi and other diseases, and even the effect of artificial lighting, cell phones, and electrical lines. Each time researchers find something new affecting bees, they wonder if they've found the "real" problem. New treatments are developed, new management techniques employed, new advice generated, and the cycle begins anew. Right now, some apiaries around the US are suffering yearly winter losses of 25 - 50% or more. It's really putting a spin into the commercial honey production business, but of even greater importance, it's putting a strain on agriculture, since a huge amount of our nation's food production relies on bees for pollination.

So what's really going on? Well, I'm not actually a scientist, so I have only a mishmash conglomeration of opinions and facts I've gathered from various sources, including my own theories and observations. Seems to me, since bees have been around for literally tens of millions of years, we're a little arrogant to think we know what's best for the bees in terms of frame size, food supply, location and such. It's common in commercial apiculture to harvest all the honey in the fall, then give the bees *corn syrup* or even sugar water to survive the winter. Does that seem wrong to anyone except me? Bees are often trucked thousands of miles from where they originated, then forced to forage within a vast monocultural landscape, feeding on only one source of food for days or weeks at a time, then moved to another type of monoculture field repeatedly until the end of the season. Now almond or apple blossoms may be a perfectly viable source of pollen and nectar, but they're not complete. Think of it this way: oatmeal is very good for you, but if that's all you got to eat you'd be missing some vital nutrients. And if you relied on the properties of herbs and flowers to help combat disease or fungus, you'd be out of luck if all you could have was one source of food.

With the Langstroth hives that are common in commercial apiculture (because they're easy to increase, move, and harvest), bees are typically given frames for their hives. This means they spend less time drawing out their own comb and therefore can breed faster and store honey quicker. However, is that what the *bees* need? They're geared, through millennia of evolution, to spend their first few weeks of life on household chores like comb building. They vary the size of their comb cells in nature, for reasons clear mostly to the bees. For one thing, the size of the comb cells helps determine the gestation period of the bee larvae, and therefore determines what kind of bee will result. Interestingly, the gestation period of common mites are matched to the bees, and a small variation will cause the bees to hatch before the mites, resulting in mites starving because they lack a host. Another problem with providing frame comb is that the combs are either plastic (with the resultant chemicals and deterioration) or made from recycled wax. One recent study found over 100 kinds of chemicals in a frame; this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows how the frames are made, as every fungus, virus, fungicde, miticide, and pesticide ever brought into or poured into the hive will be recycled along with the contaminated wax. Seems suboptimal to me.

Then there's the problem of fungicides and miticides themselves. Most obviously, trying to find a miticide (a targeted type of insecticide) that will kill the mites without also killing the bees is complicated. Fungicides are less problematic in that respect, but problematic in their own right. First of all, do we really know what the biological mechanisms of a healthy hive are? (Answer: No.) And applying repeated doses of any -cide has the interesting side effect of generally breeding a stronger species of whatever you're trying to wipe out, and making your pathogen or pest resistant to your current batch of -cides, so that you have to continually develop new poisons to stay ahead of the problem, and you create an endless feedback cycle of poison - resistance - new poison. It's the same principle as with the overuse of antibiotics and the failure of most patients to take their full dose of antibiotics: You kill off the weakest of the pathogens and leave a few alive, the very ones which are more resistant to the poison and stronger in general, and they breed the next generation of pathogen. Mites and fungal diseases are no different. With the current treatments, we're selecting for stronger mites and fungi, and weaker bees. Again, suboptimal.

So what's the alternative to the cycle of poisons and treatments and winter feeding and over-management of hives? It's essentially the same question as people are now beginning to apply to factory farming practices with animals like chickens. It may be more convenient for the humans to have the chickens packed in tightly, with beaks cut and eggs dropped directly into a chute, but it's not healthy for the chickens, the eggs, or the humans consuming the products. The costs of free-range, cage-free, or pastured chickens may be higher, but they are consistently better for you in terms of both nutrition and pathogen-transmission. The costs of honey will be higher if we begin to rely on smaller beekeeping methods, but the bees may be given the chance to recover. The one major question we'll have to answer which is very different from those in other factory farming methodologies is the question about using trucked-in bees for pollination of our major food crops. Right now, about 1/3 of our major food sources in the US are dependent upon bees for pollination, and with giant agricultural companies relying on vast monocultural orchards and fields, the only way to get bees into the heart of the operation is to truck them in. Solving the problem may require a major shift in the way farmers and agricultural companies think, with a return to a more blended, varied cultural practice which was the standard up until fairly recently. Instead of 500 acres of just almond trees, farmers may have to go for mixed orchards of almonds, peaches, apples, low growing berries, and chickens running loose to provide pest control and fertilizer. While this works very well for small to mid-scale farms, the vast commercial ventures that provide much of the nation's food will not be able to make the shift without significant increases to their costs, and I'm pretty sure they're not willing to give up their monopoly on food production and turn it over to smaller-scale farmers again. It'll be interesting to see where the system breaks first. Me, I'm ramping up my own farming and animal husbandry so that if and when it truly does break, we'll be set up to mitigate some of the impact on my own family and friends.

So where do small-scale beekeepers come in? I know our local commercial beekeepers are constantly sending out reminders about feeding hives, applying miticides, applying fungicides, checking for this disease or that disease, and really managing the bees. In my hive I've gone for a minimally-invasive, low-maintenance theory of beekeeping; I assume the bees know what they're doing and leave them alone. I've been told by commercial keepers that "you can't do it that way", but I know many other hobby and small-scale keepers who are in fact "doing it that way", quite successfully. We allow our hives to swarm if they wish, and take it as a sign of a very vigorous hive, and just deal with the reduced honey production that results. We also attempt only minimal treatments if something goes wrong with the hive, and sometimes choose to allow a weak or immune-compromised hive to die off instead of trying desperately to save a weak hive. Most of us don't smoke our bees (which is very stressful) and open only a few bars of a hive at a time, which the bees look at as a repair job rather than a full-scale invasion.

I originally titled this post "Synchronici-bee" because I've come across two articles in the past couple of days that are about Bee issues very close to my heart. The first is an article in the October 2009 issue of Discover Magazine titled "Buzz Off", and subtitled "The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all; industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point." Hallelujah! Someone gets it. I'm sure they'll get a lot of criticism from scientists and the public for stating it so clearly and making a case for getting bees back to a more natural state, but good for them for putting the pieces together. Seems like most of the researchers have been so focused on finding one cause or one disease or a set of circumstances that they've missed the obvious. I suspect it comes partly because most people look at bees as individuals, when really they're a hive-being; each hive is a critter, and when you start messing around with the critter and assuming you know better than the critter's own instincts, you end up weakening it. (Common practice: squash your Queen bee every year or so, and replace her with a commercially-bred, completely unrelated Queen from a totally different climate. Does that make sense to ANYONE? Seriously??)

"We've looked at bees as robots that would keep on trucking no matter what," says Heather Mattila of Wellesley College, who studies honeybee behavior and genetics. "They can't be pushed and pushed."

Scary fact: A study published in July showed that honeybee Queen breeders use only 500 select mothers annually to produce a million Queen bees. And the bees are chosen on some mostly-random factors the breeders consider important, not on factors the BEES consider important. Same with the drones selected for the artificial insemination process; they aren't selected by the Queens, they're selected based on what a human thinks is important. Yikes.

In the end, the article says, "Bees have been doing this for 80 million years...all we have to do is get out of their way." And that's what many backyard beekeepers seem to be doing, at least here in the We're-So-Green-You-Could-Plant-Us-In-The-Dirt Pacific Northwest. Many of us prefer wild-caught swarms and low-management practices. It remains to be seen how that will pan out in the long run, but the practice of keeping bees in urban and suburban environments is NOT just a fad us Pac NWers came up with!

In the second "Synchronici-bee" moment, I purchased a magazine called "Gleanings in Bee Culture" from February of 1910. Yes, almost exactly 100 years ago. (You can find anything on eBay, I'm convinced.) And in it, there is an article entitled "Bees in the Garret". For those of us living in the 21st century, that means "Bees in the Attic", more or less...the garret being a room on the top floor with a pitched roof, what we would think of as an attic room. The article was written by Charles Stewart of Toledo, OH, who seems to have been very forward-thinking when it comes to the keeping of bees in an urban environment!

"Bee-keeping is classed among rural industries; yet it is not necessary to live in the country or even in the suburbs or in a village to taste the pleasure of the pursuit, for it is a genuine pleasure - it is even more; it is a delightful and seductive charm; and for the city man who retains many of his original illusions and all his love for the simple life of rural industry, keeping bees is the least depressing method of being "stung."

(I do note that beekeeping was a "gentlemanly" pursuit. Wonder what he'd have thought of me wearing jeans and short sleeves and poking around at my hive and generally being not-too-ladylike...)

He goes on to suggest that one can keep a colony of bees in the attic, and that one should make a start during the swarming season! He notes that most urban bees don't swarm, and recommends a style of hive called a Danzenbaker, though I'm not certain what those are.

"You can put a colony in your garret; and if it has sufficient hive room, the chances are a hundred to one the bees will not disturb your neighbors nor dissipate your expectations of a honey-yield by swarming."

I still have a lot to learn about bees; seems to me that keeping bees is a lot like anything else, in that the more you learn the more you need to learn, and the longer you're at it the more you realize how little you know. But it's nice to read articles like these two and gather a little more information, and a little more reassurance that keeping bees in a "natural" manner only a foot from my house isn't as insane as it sounds!

When Nerds Keep Bees

I've posted pictures of my Top Bar Beehive before. It's a lovely creation which my husband made for me out of pine and alder, and for which he created probably the sturdiest, most weatherproof roof in the history of beehives. But it just needed...something.

Enter me with my woodburner. Yeah. Now hand me an English/Quenya* dictionary and an online Tengwar* translator, and stand back.

The result:



The crossbar is translated into Quenya. It reads "Laure Niernore", which more or less means "Golden Honeybee Dwelling." The left and right sides are not translated into Quenya, but are merely rough phonetic translations of two quotes about honeybees, minus punctuation and reformatted for space...


"Listen! O, listen!
Here come the hum the golden bees
Underneath full blossomed trees,
At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned. "
- James Russell Lowell, The Sirens (l. 94)


"In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?"
- Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (ep. I, 219)


* Quenya is a form of Elvish language from JRR Tolkein's books about Middle Earth, including The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tengwar is the script in which the language is written. If you're with me so far, you'll know why I was so tickled that my town's name translates as "Dagorlad". If not, you're not missing anything.

Mason Bees!

I don't remember where I left off on the Saga of the Mason Bees, so I'll just pick up with today's discovery. We'd put our mason bee and leafcutter bee houses up on a freestanding board out by the garden, because we had no really good place to put them on any of our buildings. By mid-June, I had one hole on the mason bee house filled and one started, and then nothing. I assumed the mason bee who was busy filling those two holes probably met with an untimely death. Not long after, the one hole she had managed to fill was torn open by something, so no bees in there at all. Bummer. I'd intended to take down the houses and store them until next spring, but never got around to it.

Turns out, my procrastination was a good thing in this case. I happened to be out watering some nearby plants, and glanced up at the mason bee house, contemplating moving it today. Then I noticed a full hole. And another. And another. Six altogether, which probably means a single mason bee discovered the house. Neat! No holes filled in the aphid eater wasp house, but there are three holes filled on the leafcutter bee house. Neat again!

This means I need to let the houses just sort of hang out until about October, when I'll bring them into the garage for the winter. By then, the little bees should be pupated, and it should be before the brunt of the winter storms. (Unfortunately, the best, sunniest place in the yard is also the one that takes it full-on from winter storm winds, which almost always approach us from the south.)

Go bees!

The Random Report

There's a local radio station that plays something called the "Random Report". And it is random, as is their musical selection. Probably explains why I like the station. Anyway, I'm often given to making random reports as well...and they look something like this:

Mint Ice Cream
Verdict - Not very much like storebought mint ice cream, not even like the "All Natural" storebought mint ice cream. It is green, even without additional coloring. I liked it, though I found it took a bit of adjustment. It tastes like a mint plant. Not like mint extract, not like mint candy, but like a mint plant. It's good, but chlorophyll-esque, which might put off some folks. It was soundly rejected by my four year old. Husband liked it, except he spit out the chocolate I added. Best friend tasted it, and proceeded to finish off the remainder of the container, so I assume she also approved. She did comment that the texture was good and smooth. Yay for first ice cream efforts! Next up...fresh strawberry ice cream made with my own strawberries! And then perhaps some rosemary lemon sorbet.

Deer Repellent
The repellent seems to have been a success. Whether it was the "100% Dried Blood" stakes or the spray, there's been no new damage this week. I will re-spray the plants weekly and hope to simply encourage the deer to eat elsewhere. Our neighbor says his garden is pretty much decimated, so while I feel badly about that, it does kind of let me know that I am making the deer pick tastier salad bars. Oh, and the whole idea that the concoction gets better upon ripening in the sun? If by "better" they mean "smells like something ate it, threw it up, rolled in it and then died", that'd be accurate.

Broody Hen
I have a hen who has decided she's going to be a Momma. Without my intervention, this is an impossibility for a couple of reasons. First, we have no rooster, so we have only infertile eggs which will never, ever hatch no matter how long the hen sits on them. And second, she's actually sitting on a couple of golf balls.

Okay, for those of you who don't know chickens, that might need some explanation. Yes, hens do lay eggs without having a rooster present. That's all hens are built for: eating, sleeping, pooping, and laying eggs. Good layers lay approximately one egg per day for several years. Poor layers lay a few a week for several years. They are not smart critters, though...the golf balls are there as a prompt to let them know where to lay their eggs.

Having a rooster present does several things for a flock of chickens including providing some protection from predators, but primarily it's how the eggs become fertile and available for hatching. However, most chickens have been bred to NOT sit on their eggs, so they wouldn't hatch out without help from humans anyway. Every once in a while, though, a hen goes "broody" like mine. She thinks she's building up a pile of eggs to sit on, and she pecks me when I open the egg door to gather the eggs, and refuses to get off the nest. What to do with a broody hen? You can give them a bath and remove them from the coop for a few days, and that usually breaks the broody cycle. You can wait it out, though while they are broody they aren't laying, so if you miss the eggs you'll want to choose another option. Or you can do as I'm attempting to do: give her some actual fertile eggs to sit on and see what kind of a momma she really can be. More reports on this later, if I acquire some eggs while she's still broody.

The Bees Knees
The bees continue to fascinate and amuse me. They have now managed to attach the first three combs nearest the observation window all the way down the window itself. They've got six open bars towards the back they haven't yet touched, and the rest have comb built or being built. Watching them create the comb is really something. The comb is created by young worker bees, who secrete the wax between their bodily plates on their abdomens, and then chew it before packing it into place where it needs to be. Really industrious little geometricians! So far the edges of the combs aren't full, so I can't see exactly what's going to be brood and what's nectar and honey at the moment, but shouldn't be long. I do wish I'd gotten another hive up and going this year, but next year for sure!

One thing I love watching the bees do is "sweep". They get busy on the floor of the hive and make little scooping, kicking motions with their front two legs, sweeping junk and dust out of their way. I am not entirely sure what they're actually trying to accomplish, but it looks for all the world like they're simply sweeping the floor.

Laure Niernore*

The bees are working busily! They are working on attaching the combs to the side of the hive, which can be seen along the viewing window, and they've built comb more than halfway back. By my calculations, they should be hatching out new workers soon, if they aren't already. Excellent!

They have one of the sturdiest roofs I've seen on a hive, built out of random scraps and leftovers we had hanging around our garage:


The entrance to the hive is at the bottom front, that thin "crack" where you can just make out a couple of bees hanging about. The viewing window is on the right side, with the wooden cover in place over it. The whole hive and stand are bolted to a concrete pad on the south side of our house, buffered on the east side by a large rhododendron to screen it from the street and keep the flight path away from the majority of the front lawn. Although most of our weather comes in from the south, which is the direction the opening faces, there are a couple of large trees between the hive and the incoming weather, which should help mitigate any winds.

In order to try to coax the bees to make the straightest comb possible, we are using top bars with a fully triangular cross-section, instead of ones with a thin strip inlaid as a guide. We've also made sure it's level front-back and side-side; bees don't care about aesthetics or straight comb, but they do react to gravity, so if your top bar or frameless bars are not level, the bees will probably build wonky comb, rendering it difficult to harvest cleanly. This is all purely for ease of harvest for the humans, as the bees don't care what cross-section the bars have, or if their combs cross or wobble.

* Allowing my geekiness to shine for a moment, this is the phrase I'll be woodburning on the cross bar under the roof, only I'll be writing in Tengwar script. It's Elvish, roughly translating to "Golden Honeybee Dwelling". Laure Nierlonde ("Golden Honeybee Haven") was another possibility, but that seems to apply more to the yard than the hive itself, so I chose the former. This is what happens when nerds decide to move to the country...

Long Live the Queen!

Yesterday I peeped at my hive again, just to get a better look at that beautiful white comb. I also took some pictures of my girls coming in and out of the hive, being extra busy. I didn't see any drones hanging about, but I did see several of the girls with their pollen baskets heavily laden with pollen. What was really cool was seeing the huge range of colors the pollen was! Some had dark reddish orange pollen, some had almost white pollen, some had lemon yellow or peachy. Just beautiful stuff. And a good sign that all is well in the hive and little bees are being hatched, as they won't usually carry in pollen unless they have brood to feed.

As I was watching through the window, I peered between a couple of sheets of comb, and noticed a little cleared patch with bees around it. And then I got a good look...the queen! She had a HUGELY long abdomen, and she was busily laying eggs in empty cells, while being attended by workers. So. Cool!

And daily I notice the bees are building more and more comb. Considering they haven't been in the hive very long, I'm sure if all goes well they'll have the whole thing full by the end of summer. I'm still wishing I could have gotten the other hive up and running this year, but I'll wait until next spring and see if I can attract a swarm on my own.

I've noticed as I talk about bees both online and in person that many people seem to classify everything that flies and maybe stings and is stripey-blackish-and-yellowish as a "bee", and to further place all "bees" in the category of "swat or spray on sight." And much to my shock, people seem to be unaware that bees are hugely important pollinators, responsible for the production of much of our fruits and vegetables. This distresses me to no end. Pretty soon I'll write up a bit on what is and is not an actual bee, and why bees need to be respected and protected, cuz apparently not everyone gets it!

Bees!

The second swarm of bees installed in my Top Bar Hive has indeed settled in nicely, and is busy busy busy. You know, like bees. I've been peeking probably more than necessary, through the little portal window on the side, but I'm curious and was a little nervous about their health and inclination to stay.

I was, until today.

Opened up the peeper window, and FINALLY got to see what was inside that mass of bees. Usually when I open the window, the bees are all clustered up towards the front quarter of the hive, hanging on to each other and generally being mellow. That's because I usually check in the evening, when I have time...and when the bees are all in for the night. Crowded digs make it hard to see what's going on. But today, I opened it up midafternoon, and saw several sheet-straight, beautifully white combs being made. Rock on. Go little buggers go! The wax is so amazingly white, not at all like the yellow beeswax you see being sold after it's been used in a hive. And did you know that wax is secreted by the bees themselves? It's like bee sweat!

I observed them for a little while, and darned if I didn't see several GINORMOUS bees coming in and out. Big, shiny eyes and huge abdomens, almost black. Drones. They're the males of the colony, whose only purpose in life is to go hang out in some Drone Bar In The Sky, waiting for virgin queens to fly by so they can all make a nab for her. The rest of the time they just hang out and bum food off the worker bees. I know some men like that...fortunately for them, humans don't also follow the bees' practice of kicking all the drones out to freeze to death at the start of winter.

One of the things that made me decide to peer in the hive at midafternoon when the bees were all very active was the fact that yesterday I got my new Sheriff-style beekeeping jacket and leather long-sleeved gloves. It is totally the bomb. Easy to put on, zippered at the neck so the hood can be thrown back, secured with velcro as well to keep the truly intrepid bees from finding their way through the opening where the zippers all meet. Double plus bonus, it actually fits me, which was of some concern as I'm not a tiny woman. Found it on eBay, though they also sell them in various beekeeping shops online, and at Ruhl's Bee Supply in Portland, OR.

Speaking of Ruhl's, I picked up another little tidbit of "country wisdom" from them today. When the blackberry petals fall, the supply of food for the bees has about run its course. Soon after, hives are prone to robbing and predation by yellow jackets. Given how much clover we have in our grass, and how long its growing season is, I'll be waiting to see if that's the case. I hope my girls can get their combs built and filled before the growing season is over!

Things keep rolling even when I'm not...

I've been sick for over two solid weeks now. I came down with my husband's cold the Saturday I was in Boise for my second cousin's graduation. And then it just hung on. Coughing, lost voice, fatigue, lots of fun. Apparently I had some severe allergy attacks on top of the cold, which triggered my mostly-latent asthma. I ended up having to go to the doctor to get a Proventil inhaler, then hit the MucinexD hard. (Side note: in my state, you practically have to sign over your first born child to acquire MucinexD, due to the pseudoephedrine content. I don't care. It works.) Then the cottonwood bloomed like a summer blizzard, and took me out again. Finally got smart and slept the entire day on Saturday, and almost felt human today. Almost. I'm getting there.

But while I was sick, things kept moving along, as they tend to do. Last Friday I got a call from Will Dart letting me know he had another huge swarm of bees for me, to try again. This time I was home to see the installation, though I had to watch from inside because I was feeling so awful. Fortunately, we put the hive directly below one of the screened living room windows, so I could chat with Will and Todd while Evie and I watched from inside. After the bees were offloaded into their home, I went out with a plate of honey water as an offering, and went back inside to watch them drink it all up. The good news is, this time the bees seem to have approved of their new home. They are still there a couple of days later, doing their bee-thing.

I went out tonight and moved the false back of the hive to the second to last top bar slot, vastly increasing their home space. While I was doing this, the neighbor kids came over to watch, and I let them all look inside the viewing window briefly since it was cool and late in the evening, so almost all the bees were inside and completely disinterested in any goings-on outside the hive. I've been deemed "cool" and asked if I had any more interesting things in my yard. So, I showed them the empty robins' nest and where the bumblebees live.

Yes, the robin nest is empty. The three baby robins have grown over the last couple of weeks, and finally fledged this morning. The mother robin was chasing one of the "teenagers" around the yard and into the arborvitae hedge, still trying to stuff it full of worms. Silly momma. I'm leaving the nest for now in case she decides to reuse it, but in the fall I'll bring it in the house.

The second batch of Old World Sparrows has fledged out of the front birdhouse as well. The mother and father bird are making overtures towards one another and the nest that make me think we might have a third clutch coming up very soon as well. Prolific little critters; explains why we have so many of them in the yard!

Of Bumblebees and Lilies

I've had hardy water lilies in a pot for several years now. They moved with me from the old house. Each year they send up lots of pretty green lily pads, and nothing else. This year, they signaled their approval of the new house by giving me a bright, beautiful water lily blossom!

That weird sticky thing next to it is a limb off our old corkscrew willow tree. We'd cut it back in preparation for selling the house, and we'd thrown the limbs in a pile to use in backyard projects. Lo and behold, some of them sprouted leaves, so we stuck two of them into our pot of water lilies, and they've rooted. As soon as we figure out where to put them, we'll plant them and have beautiful new corkscrew willows!

And completely unrelated to the lily, I took some photos of our bumblebees at the entrance to their home. I'm still not telling where they're located, but they seem to be busy and happy and fat and beautiful, so we're just leaving them alone. I checked my bumblebee field guide, and I believe they are Bombus rufocinctus. They are listed as liking to nest in walls and buildings, and as being testy around their nest (hence my husband being stung when he bothered them.) I can't be certain about that without consulting an entomologist specializing in bees, but it's close enough for my tastes. Beautiful little guys, they are!

Disappointed

Got a call last night from Will Dart, saying he had a nice swarm to bring me today. Got it arranged, and he dropped the swarm off in my hive around 9:30am. Had them all settled, and he left.

By the time I got home at 1pm, things looked a little wonky...very few bees hanging around, some doing a little orienting flying but none fanning, and really, not the volume I would have expected. And no buzzing sound, and he'd said this was a very strong, large swarm.

By 3:30 no bees were in evidence at all. I opened the observation port, and they were all gone. Well, I had two or three confused stragglers and one dead one. Little bit of bee poop, a few spots where it looked like they might have been attempting to start some wax attachments on the bars, and that was it. No signs of trauma, wasn't super hot in the box, nothing. No idea why they left. I'm really, really disappointed.

I've never heard of a swarm leaving a hive, but the guy who brought me mine said it's the second one in a week he's had vacate the new hive. He couldn't find anything wrong with mine...good construction, appropriate woods, unstained, untreated, no glue, nothing. My thought was perhaps a really large swarm deemed the space too small (it's a relatively small hive). I don't know. And now I don't know if I can try to house another swarm in it or not.

I have a call in to two other beekeeper contacts, but have yet to hear anything. I did a little poking around on the web, and as far as I can tell, it's highly unusual for a homeless swarm to reject a decent new home. And I was really looking forward to having them here. Monday I will be assembling my Warre hive and beginning the search for a colony to install in it, but my hopeful level has dropped significantly.

And in other bee related news, it turns out I have a colony of bumblebees already happily living on my property. Not quite what I'd hoped for, but they're more than welcome here. I'm reading a book about them called Humblebee Bumblebee. It's really quite good, by the same person who wrote the Orchard Mason Bee book I like. I will definitely be attempting to provide good overwintering and hibernation spots for the fall queens, and then to provide good nesting sites in the spring.

Apitherapy

The more I learn about bees, the more amazing the little critters are to me. Of course it's cool that they make honey and wax, and that they pollinate our crops...but they can do so much more!

Apitherapy is the practice of using bee products for health care and medicinal purposes. It includes taking honey for sore throats and taking bee pollen, propolis, and royal jelly for health related purposes. One major breakthrough in the battle against Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) appears to be the application of Manuka Honey! It's a very thick, dark, strong-tasting honey made from the nectar of the Tea Tree bush in Australia, and like all honey it possesses antibiotic properties. Unlike most honeys and even most antibiotics, Manuka honey applied directly to a wound containing MRSA seems to be capable of clearing the infection, without side effects and without drugs. Keep watching the news on this product...at least one drug company is patenting manuka-honey-infused bandages!

In practice, however, the term "apitherapy" is generally used specifically to refer to the practice of injecting bee venom to help with arthritis, bursitis, tendinitis, and other medical problems While the scientific community says there are no studies that prove it to be beneficial or effective, many people do believe in the therapy. I find it rather similar to acupuncture in that respect, though with far fewer practitioners OR studies.

I happen to be a more science-oriented person than many, especially within the "organic" and "green" movement, seem to be, at least in my experience. If someone makes an extraordinary claim, I want to see the proof. I want to look at the experimental data. I want to know about the confounding factors. But, I'm also firmly of the belief that "if it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid". I don't necessarily need to disprove everything, and if it works for someone, I'm good with it. I look askance at many of the more unproven health claims of alternative medicine; at the same time, I benefit from some that I've tried. In that vein, I was rather skeptical of the idea that bee venom could be helpful for arthritis or inflammatory problems, especially given how little venom a bee actually delivers.

Well, color me a believer.

I noted in my last post that I got stung at my class, right on the top of my head. What I didn't note was that for 2 months prior, I'd been suffering from what I'm assuming is a bursitis attack in my left shoulder, and probable early arthritis in my right hand, at the first knuckle of my index finger. This had been bothering me quite a bit, considering I've taken up fiddle playing as a hobby, and I use that hand for playing. And the morning after I was stung, I woke up pain free. The absence of pain was strange in itself. But it's been several days, and the two activities which used to trigger the most pain, typing and fiddling, no longer hurt.

I can't prove that the sting had anything to do with it, but it sure seems like a weird coincidence. The over the counter pain relievers and anti-inflammatories hadn't been doing anything at all, and I hadn't done anything else differently. Anyway, just one more anecdotal story to add to the large pile of non-scientific evidence!

BeeMused

Yesterday I attended yet another workshop on "Organic" beekeeping. When I say "Organic", I mean methods which avoid drugs and chemicals, and interfere as little as possible with the bees' activities. It's my third workshop, and I still have no actual bees! Well, there's always something new to be learned, and probably better done before the bees' depend on it!

A few years ago, I started getting interested in having honeybees. I didn't really pursue it much, being on a city lot and not even remotely sure where to start. I did discover that my great grandfather and my best friend's grandfather had both been backyard beekeepers, which I thought was both interesting and cool. But the setup of the Langstroth hives and all the suits and smoke and chemicals involved kind of put me off the entire idea of beekeeping...until I discovered that's not the only way to do it.

The first classes I took, which I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog, were on Top Bar Hives. The instructor, Will Dart, advocates a very non-chemical, low-invasion approach to beekeeping. He disdains all antibiotics and miticides/fungicides, and doesn't even advocate smoking the bees. He does, however, advocate harvesting the honey, which some organic beekeepers (or "bee guardians") view as something only to be done in the event of accidents or damage to the hive requiring removal of some comb. His approach used only Top Bar Hives, one of which I now own, though it's still empty of bees.

Yesterday's workshop was even more bee-oriented. It was taught at Friendly Haven Rise Farm, out in Venersborg, Washington. The owners of the farm, Jacqueline and Joseph Freeman, advocate a very bee-oriented approach to keeping bees, where the foremost question is always, "What is best for the bees?" They didn't advocate any particular style of hive, and we got to examine Langstroth, Top Bar, and Warre Hives (pronounced Wah-REH, and also known as Garden Hives.) I would definitely recommend this class to anyone who can manage to make it to the location; we had one attendee from Duvall, Washington, which is about a 4 hour drive. The farm owners do allow for overnight stays, so one possibility would be to arrive a day early, stay at the farm overnight, and then take the class the next day.

As part of the class, we went out to examine a Top Bar Hive that had tipped over in a windstorm a couple of weeks ago. As you might imagine, this was rather catastrophic for the bees. Jacqueline and Joseph tipped the hive upright, and replaced as much comb as possible, then just waited. In opening it yesterday, they were intending to move the brood, queen, and as much of the comb as possible to a new hive. The hive, however, had other ideas. Turns out they'd been busily repairing as much of the damage as possible, and were thriving. The queen was uninjured, and the bees were active and aggressive.

I was near the hive without a bee suit, and doing just fine until one of them pinged off my head and got caught in my hair. Fantastic. Poor little thing got all agitated, probably thinking it was trapped in a spiderweb, and as I tried to comb it out, it eventually just gave up and stung me right on the top of my head. Ow. Drat. Worst part was immediately after, when all the other bees smelled Eau du Dead Bee and kept bombing my head, checking me out to see who was killing bees. I had three or four MORE get stuck in my hair. Those I did manage to shake out without getting stung, at which point I gave up and retreated to the house to wait for the rest of the folks to come back down.

Ultimately, they decided to leave the hive as it was, and let it be a "seed" hive for swarms instead of attempting to harvest honey from it any more, so after they put it back together, we sat for the last part of the class. I came away with a kit for a Warre hive from Nick Hampshire of The Bee Space, which I will be assembling myself sometime this week. (One project my husband doesn't have to do!) Now if I can just get some swarm to cooperate and come live with me!

The Great Sunflower Project

I found this in a magazine called Hobby Farm Home, which is incidentally one of my new favorite magazines.

The Great Sunflower Project is asking folks all over to plant sunflowers in their yards, or in containers on their porches or decks, and then count the bees that visit the flowers. The counts are only twice a month, and take less than half an hour. You write down your starting time, then each time you see a bee, you write down how many minutes it's been since you started. If you start at noon, and the first bee visits at 12:05, you write down "5". If the next one visits at 12:12, you write down "12". You're done after 5 bees or half an hour, whichever comes first.

Not any kind of sunflower will do, as most have been bred for purposes other than prolific production of pollen. Apparently Lemon Queen sunflowers are the flower of choice, as they're packed with pollen and produce multiple blooms all summer long.

If you see a lot of bees on your flowers, that's great! If you see none, that's actually even more important information. And if you keep bees of your own, they're still interested, so it doesn't mean you're "cheating"!

The project is being led by Gretchen LeBuhn, an associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University. You can donate to the project, or ask for free seeds to participate in the project, at http://www.greatsunflower.org. You can also get the appropriate type of sunflower seeds at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds or Gurney's Seed & Nursery, among others.

Mason Bee Update

Our weather here has warmed up significantly; most of the trees are blooming (darn pollen anyway), and even our Rose of Sharon is budding out. I don't know how the neighbor's walnut tree is doing, but next time I see him I'll ask. Why? The walnut is their marker for "no more frosty nights", as apparently it's pretty reliable about only budding after danger of frost is past.

With the warming weather, two of the Mason Bee tubes have seen activity. The bees have chewed their way out and taken off in search of food and mortar. I happened to peer up at the nesting block tonight, and one of the holes is full! While I was watching, the little bee came back carrying a big ball of mud in her jaws, and she disappeared down another hole. I stood and watched her for a few more minutes, as she left and reappeared with more mud. I hope she has company, but even if she doesn't, at least I'll have some bees next year.

As for the mud, I'd almost forgotten the recommendation about digging a mud hole for the bees. Fortunately, we have a hole in the middle of our lawn where we had a tree topped, and as the top fell from some 90 feet up, it drilled itself into the ground. My husband had filled it partway up with some fill dirt from planting trees, and I stopped him from filling it all the way and added some water. Score! I saw at least two little mason bees busily flying to and from the mud pit, though I only saw the one reappear at the nesting block. Maybe the other was getting a drink, or just checking it out for suitability, or maybe she was nesting somewhere else.

Honey Harvest

Today I went to a honey harvesting class. The weather cooperated; it was a beautiful 75 degrees and sunny. The class was hosted at the home of a lady who has had her hive just under a year, so it was her first harvest. Our Bee Guy came out to show us the ins and outs of harvesting, and it was really nifty.

First, the lady's yard was really, really awesome. It was a fairly small city lot on a great corner, but she had it so completely tidy and filled with everything fun I could have spent all day exploring it. She had a great little sitting area next to her detached garage...


And a really fantastic chicken coop, with a large walk-in door in the "run" area as well as a regular people-sized door for the roosting/nest box area.


She also had some lovely espaliered apple trees out front, and some sweet plums, and several birdfeeders, a fountain, and a sweet cat that kept wandering around looking for attention until I think it had too close an encounter with a bee. Oops.

Our Bee Dude started off by talking to us about harvesting honey in general. He recommends harvesting when the weather turns warm in the spring, about the same time as all the plants begin to blossom, so the bees will be able to gather enough food to sustain themselves after you rob them of their stores.


At that point, he showed us his harvesting "equipment" and we had a general discussion of harvesting honey. He uses a long, flexible, serrated bread knife to separate the combs from the sides of the hives (and from one another if necessary). He has a pair of tongs for picking up any dropped comb bits out of the hive, and a potato masher for squashing up the comb for filtering. He also has a 5 in 1 drywall tool which he uses as a prybar to open up the tops of the hives and to pry apart the bars, which the bees glue down with propolis. His last tool is a large, soft paintbrush, used for brushing the bees off the extracted combs and off the sides of the hive when replacing the bars.



As for getting the honey out of the comb, he cuts apart and crushes the comb, then uses a combination of buckets with wire hardware cloth and then wire window screening as strainers, to allow the honey to drip through. I don't think there is a lot of equipment out there right now meant for harvesting top-bar style honeycomb; comb frames from Langstroth hives are fitted into a spinner, which centrifuges out the honey quite handily. The frames are then cleaned and replaced in the hive. With top bar hives, the entire comb is cut free. The bonus is that you get to keep and use the wax after you've strained out the honey. The problem is that you have to separate the honey from the wax!

Some of the folks in the crowd suggested using a cheese-press to squish the honey out of the comb, and I suspect that would be a good solution. A couple of other folks suggested hanging up a conical food-grade strainer, as one might use for jams or jellies or preserves, and letting that drip. One person said that wire window mesh didn't work for her, but I don't think she knew to spray the screening with water prior to beginning, as this helps break the surface tension and allows the honey to drip through more effectively. Even our main Bee Dude says his honey extraction is a work in progress, and we should all experiment to come up with efficient ways to extract it. One of the women said she got 100 ounces of honey out of one hive this spring, and about 30 of that was due to pressing the wax after she'd let the honey drip out as much as possible.

When Bee Dude opened the hive, first he removed the top. The bees hadn't sealed it down with propolis, so it was a fairly straightforward operation. Then he used his prybar to loosen a couple of the rearmost bars and remove them. They had been sealed down, but several had no comb at all, and one had only a little tiny portion of comb on it. He set four or five of them down on the grass, and then moved the one with the little starter comb to the back so he could work on the next ones up.



In theory, he should have been able to loosen the bar, then slide the knife down along the side to remove the anchor points where they attach 3 or 4 inches down the sides, and then pull the entire comb out. Well, not so much on this hive. It wasn't leveled when it was erected, and the bars were the old style with a thin "strip" down the middle instead of a completely triangular cross-section, so the comb wasn't straight. It had crossed over and welded to the neighboring combs on each side, and it was messy and ugly to cut it apart. He had to slide the knife between each pair of combs, and in doing so he ended up opening up much of the capped honey, spilling honey into the hive and coating (and thus killing) many bees.

In the end, he only removed two full bars of honey before deciding the hive had had enough poking for the day, and he told the owner he'd come back out to finish the job and help her put in the new type of bars and level out the hive.



He worked completely without protective equipment, and most of us were only a few feet from the hive. It was interesting to see the mood of the hive. At one point, when he removed the first full comb, they became a little agitated and the tone of the buzzing grew a little louder and the cloud of flying bees got a little bigger. It calmed down again after a few minutes. Our Bee Dude only got stung once, when sure enough one flew up his pantleg. Ouchie. But he had his hands in the hive, sometimes covered in honey, and he brushed the bees off the comb without upsetting them too much. Once the combs were cleared, he cut them from the bar (okay, one broke away and fell into the hive; he declared this about the biggest harvest disaster situation we could experience, and that we were probably lucky to be seeing it even though he didn't feel so lucky to be dealing with it!) Once the combs were in the bucket, he used the knife to cut open all the cells, and squashed it good with a potato masher, then let it filter through the mesh on the straining buckets.

One of the combs had cells filled with dark pollen, which he cut away separately. He suggested that if we encounter that, we could remove the pollen from the cells and use it as a nutritional supplement rather like flax seed is used. It sells for a lot of money at Farmers' markets, and is supposed to be good for allergies, especially when it's local pollen. I don't know much beyond that about, though I'm sure I'll learn soon!

He let all of us taste some of the honey as we were harvesting it. It was almost molasses-like, much richer and darker tasting than I'm used to from commercial honey, and even a lot richer than the raw honey I've been eating lately. I broke off a little piece of comb and chewed on that, and the wax was almost pure white once I'd chewed out all the honey; because it's not reused, it has less of the propolis and layers of older wax that make commerical beeswax yellowy. Neat!

So, now it's time to wait for the swarms. I asked Bee Dude (whose name is Will Dart, incidentally) how many people he had on his swarm list, and he said about 20. Some of the folks had reserved "farmed" bees at the local bee store, but they're all out for the season, so I'm just hoping to be able to get one of the swarms when they come available sometime in the next 4-6 weeks, as the weather warms. Then I hope for the best after I pour the little buggers into my nice, sturdy hive and wait!

New Hive!

A couple of weekends ago, I took a class on Urban Beekeeping. Granted, I'm not exactly urban out here, but I'm not exactly in the middle of the country either, so I need to use methods for farming and animal husbandry that will be compatible with neighbors. I've wanted to have bees for some time now, though with the small backyard I had at my old house, it just seemed like it would be more trouble than it was worth. Now I have a beehive, and I'm also convinced that it would have been fine at my old house as well.

If you're anything like me and probably the majority of folks out there, when you think "beehive" you probably either picture the funky stepped-pyramid thing for which the hairdo is named, or the large white boxes that you can find in orchards and fields, and which are what commercial beekepers use. That's what I pictured, those white boxes with their layers of sheeting inside, and the full bee suits and the smokers and whatnot. Well, that's the Langstroth method for raising bees. And turns out, it's somewhat like factory farming for bees.

The traditional, historical method for raising bees is pretty basic. Find a swarm, dump them into a box or some stump or hollow area, raid them for honey in the spring. Easy peasy, but messy and not good for large scale operations or speed. The Langstroth method standardized hives, and made large scale workings and transportation of hives to fields much easier. Langstroth hives are built on a vertical principle, with a box of "brood" combs topped by one or several honey "supers". The hives are generally pre-laden with beeswax frames for the bees to use. Harvesting honey is fairly rapid, because the entire box is broken apart between the brood and the supers, and the supers are taken away and drained of honey, reloaded, and replaced.

The problem with Langstroth hives is that they don't really work with the bees' natural inclinations, and introduce some management methods that may ultimately be counterproductive for the bees. I'm coming to believe that the methodology of raising bees in this country is partly or even largely responsible for the current problem with Colony Collapse Disorder and several of the sub-problems including Varroa mites and funguses. When a Langstroth hive is harvested, the hive is cracked in half and opened to the sky, which stresses the bees enormously; they really don't like their brood comb exposed! In order to calm the bees enough to work with them, they are smoked. This causes a response in the bees which signals them to gorge on honey in preparation for a long flight out of a forest fire. Again, the gorging stresses them. Langstroth hives are typically painted, and though I have no reason to believe the paint is toxic or bad, it's not necessary. The frames in the hives are pre-set with beeswax combs. While beekeepers may claim that this reduces the work for the bees because they don't have to create their own wax and frame, it's really for the beekeeper's convenience; if the bees aren't spending time and energy making wax, they're spending time and energy making honey. And because the frames are of a set size, bees are unable to change the size of their combs according to need and instinct. Bees have several natural responses to invaders like Varroa mites, and one of their primary defenses is to vary their gestation time so that the mites are immature when the bees hatch, thus leaving the immature mites behind to starve, or so that the mites are ready too early, again dooming them. In a Langstroth hive, they only have one choice for cell size. And the pre-made wax frames may have been created of wax contaminated with funguses, viruses, or insecticides, as the wax is all recycled.

In comes the hive I have fallen for: the Top Bar Hive. Apparently traditional beekeepers may scoff at it and claim it can't be done, but people are doing it, quite successfully. It's a method designed for small scale and backyard operations, which is more natural for the bees and less work for the humans. Some of the more hard core folks refer to themselves as "Bee Guardians". It's a method which should appeal to organic farmers and "back to basics folks", as well as locavores and people who just like nifty keen garden toys.

I am hopeful that people will adopt this method of raising bees and increase the availability of pollinators both in variety and distribution. Those who are allergic to bees should not be overly concerned about having one near, though I certainly wouldn't recommend being the one to manage the hive. Bees are generally fairly gentle and primarily sting when stepped on, trapped in clothing, or caught in hair. Or when they're swatted at indiscriminately. They're not like hornets and yellow jackets, which seem to sting just because they are in a bad mood!

In essence, the hive is a giant box. It's got tapered sides, a little slit for the bees to enter and exit, a little window in the side so you can monitor the activity without opening the hive, and bars across the top. The bars have points on them to signal the bees to attach their combs, and the bees get to make the decisions about where the brood comb goes and how much honey to store (with a little subtle direction from the humans.) That's it. Open hive, dump in swarm, close hive, leave them alone. No smoking, no poking, no nothing. Harvest can be done one comb at a time throughout the year, or all at once in the spring. (Honey needs to be left over winter for the bees, as that's what they feed on. In spring, when they have new nectar and pollen, they can be robbed and they will happily store new honey instead of relying on older honey.) Brood combs don't have to be disturbed. It's not necessary to open more than a couple of inches of the hive at once, and the bees look at that more as a repair job than an invasion. "Hey Myrtle, get the propolis! We gotta big leak here!"

When I decided I wanted a hive, I was going to simply buy one. They have the top bar hives available at http://www.backyardhive.com. They have both an original design, and a Golden Mean hive which is based on the Golden Ratio and which fits well with how bees design their hives. They also have plans available on their site for free, for those who are DIY inclined and handy with woodworking. I am both DIY inclined and handy, but I am also busy with other things and hoping a swarm will arrive any time now, so I was intending to buy one. That is, until my husband caught wind of the price and declared that he would make me one. A week later, I now have a fully functional, ready to go hive!


The hive from the side, with the window closed and lid on.


End of the hive. The little gap is where the bees come in and out.


Window exposed, and lid off. The window has plexiglas in it. The divider you can see inside the hive is a "false back" that allows you to trick the bees into making less brood comb and farther forward, to give you more honey at the back when you remove it and they discover their house has grown.


Closeup of a bar. The bees attach the comb on the point, and it hangs down into the hive in a sheet.

(In the event that you're in the Greater Portland Area or Seattle area and want one, contact me; we might be able to work out a deal. I can even detail the top or sides with woodburning.)

Now all that is missing is the swarm! When one comes available, I'll post and let you know how it goes.

The Bee Corner

Bee things proceed apace! This week, I went out and purchased two large wooden planters for my "Bee Garden". Ordinarily I would put the plants directly into the ground, but I'm not entirely sure where I want these plants to wind up in the eventual garden scheme. So rather than transplant them one or more times, I decided to just put them in a container which I can move around the yard for a season or three before settling them into their final location.



The above planter contains three of my "bee attractive" plants. The large one with the white bell flowers is a Pieris japonica, which will eventually get quite large and definitely need a permanent spot in the yard. (The largest one I've seen reached up to the roof of the nearby house.) The smallish broadleaf in the front is a Helleborous niger, also called Lenten rose or just plain hellebore. It blooms in the late winter and often continues to do so through spring. The pinkish one on the right is English heath, which most of us just call heather.



The above planter here shows a dwarf Pieris japonica, together with a pink flowering Viburnum, which will also definitely need a permanent spot in the ground eventually. The Viburnum has the added bonus of bird-attracting berries later in the year.

In finding a spot for my Mason bees, I examined the entire yard. It's best to give Mason bees a spot where they catch early morning sun so that they can warm quickly and get on with their work of pollinating; Mason bees cannot fly until they warm their bodies up to approximately 55 degrees Farenheight. I do have some walls that catch morning sun, but because of the orientation of my house and garage, and the placement of some large trees, I don't have a place on a building that both gets early sun and retains it for more than a couple of hours. So, I'm trying what is admittedly a bit of an experiment. I built a tall "faux wall" out near the greenhouse, and mounted the bee houses on it. It has an overhang to protect from the worst rain, and a little shelf under it for the bees to hang out and warm up after emerging from the block.

It's not advised to hang bee houses on fences or trees, so I have no idea how well this will work. I know the bees won't get the added bonus of a large, warmed structure behind them for additional heat, but they do have the height and the open flight path that would be afforded by a wall.



This picture is of the Wall O' Bees. You'll note my three bee blocks look kind of lonely and helter-skelter...the hope is that in future years I'll need to install more blocks for a growing horde of bees. Left side is the Mason bee house, empty and waiting. Middle is a smaller block for Aphid eating wasps. I haven't got many plants in the yard that attract aphids right now, so I don't know if I have a wild population of wasps or not. The right side is a Leafcutter bee house. In front of the entire operation I've stapled black bird netting; I realized that by placing these on a board with a nice landing pad in front, I'd basically created a diner for my downy woodpeckers, flickers, and jays. Right now the tube of hibernating bees is still in my refrigerator, though I will be putting it out in the next day or two as the Bee Plants open up.

With all of this preparation, the goal is to have a colony of Mason bees established for next spring. I'm in the middle of selecting fruit tree and berry varieties for planting in the next few weeks, with an eye towards the first real harvest being next year. One thing that's true for gardening; it can be an exercise in long-term planning!

Bee Garden

My previous post was regarding my Orchard Mason Bees. Being in a new house with a new yard which was previously tended by folks who didn't much like gardening, there isn't a lot around here to feed bees early in the spring, and I want to keep the bees here instead of having them fly off to play at the neighbors. I decided I really wanted to go dig up the giant Pieris japonicus from our old house, but I didn't know how it'd transplant, and as it's one of the few nice healthy shrubs in the backyard there, it seemed a little less than kind, too.

Instead, I went to Home Depot and found two smaller Pieris plants of two varieties, both loaded with not-yet-open blooms. I also picked up a not-yet-blooming-but-will-have-loads-of-flowers Viburnum, a Hellebore, and a pink Heather. After I selected them all, I realized...I was planting a bee garden. Seriously. A garden just to entice and retain early pollinators. Well why not? During the summer I plant borage just to entice the bees and other pollinators to come visit my vegetables, and it works like a charm. In fact, this year I plan to have the borage in pots that I can relocate around the vegetables as necessary. (The downside of that is how freely borage reseeds itself.) The key to being enticing to Mason Bees would be early and durable blooming; since I don't have fruit trees yet this year, the Pieris and heather should keep my little workers hanging around. Next year, hopefully I'll have both a large quantity of bees and many new fruit trees!

When we got home we moved the new pots of plants out near where the bird feeders are, and not 20 minutes later there was a honeybee on the heather. No kidding. March 3rd. Sweet! Bee garden looks like it will be a success.

I bought some more seeds, and found this wonderful invention...seed tape. It's biodegradable paper tape with the seeds already in it and spaced appropriately. How cool is that? Those little fiddly seeds always end up being a mess for me, and having an easy planting system like that would be a really back saver. I also bought 16 asparagus plants, which I plan to put with the rhubarbs in a perennial vegetable bed (never even considered the need for one of those until now). When I got home I also put up a new birdfeeder, got Todd to put up the greenhouse, did some pruning, and investigated a few plants I wasn't sure would overwinter. All of the plants seem to have survived even our extra-deep-freeze this year!

Orchard Mason Bees

I have bees in my refrigerator. I posted that elsewhere online, and one of my more astute friends said, "Knowing you, that's probably on purpose." Yes, yes it is. I have three little cardboard tubes of hibernating bees tucked into my salad crisper. And I'm ridiculously excited about it. In fact, last night I dreamed about bees.

In my dream, I was out walking my property, and I noticed that there were bees coming out of my bee houses. I observed that they had short antennae, and decided they were females. I patted them on the head. And I was very happy to have bees.

What I have in my fridge are cocooned, hibernating adults of Osmia lignaria, the Orchard Mason Bee or Blue Orchard Bee. They're little, they're bluish black, and they do a heck of a good job of pollinating yards and fruit trees. Unlike Apis mellifera, the European honeybee, Osmia are very localized in their habits. They are a "gregarious solitary" bee that likes to nest very close together, making them easy to propagate. The fact that they're solitary means each female bee has to gather pollen and nectar and lay eggs, and they're not invested in the survival of the colony, so they're very non-aggressive and stay close to home. Their entire range is only about 300 yards, if they can get their requirements (food, clay-laden mud, and a place to nest) within that space.

For years I've been hearing about Orchard bees, and native pollinators, and I've wanted some. The source of mine is http://www.knoxcellars.com, which is located in the Puget Sound area just north of me. I got both the hibernating bees and the bee houses...one designed to appeal to Orchard Mason bees and one designed to appeal to leafcutter bees. Although it's likely there are orchard mason bees or leafcutter bees already in my yard, I wanted to be sure I'd have a starting population. I also purchased an Aphid eater wasp house. Contemplating a bumblebee house too.

Since the native solitary bees aren't subject to varroa mites or tracheal mites like Honeybees, and aren't hive-dwelling and so not subject to colony collapse disorder, they're a great alternative for pollinating. 250 adult females can pollinate an acre. If you provide ample housing and food for them, 600% year over year growth in population is expected. By the time I have fruit trees blossoming next spring, I should have a decent colony established one way or the other. They're only active in the early spring, so they work best for fruit trees and early blooming plants.

Some of the leafcutter bees are active later in the year, hence my desire to encourage them as well. A few circles cut out of my leaves is a small price to pay for pollination and entertainment! (The first time I saw or even heard of a leafcutter bee was 10 or 15 years ago at my parents' house, when I dumped out a window box and found a succession of little leafy "cells" leading back from the drainage holes, which were apparently just the right size for a leafcutter bee to call home.)

I just finished reading "The Orchard Mason Bee" by Brian L. Griffin, and available on the Knox Cellars site above. Great, easy reading with lots of information about solitary bees and how to keep them. We'll see how the spring goes with my new little workers!