Day 8: First Official Inspection

At last, after several days of watching the hives from a distance to make sure bees were still flying in and out of each of them, we got to open them up for our first official observation. We started with Hive #2--by the next post we will have actual names for our hives. I'm leaning towards famous buildings like the Taj Mahal, Casa Batlló, Notre Dame, and the Prince of Wales Hotel. But I could be talked into stars, planets, cities, National Parks, or some other theme (like US Presidents!--trust me, there will NEVER be a Trump).

So the Hive #2, the Langstroth that got the package of bees last Saturday, was buzzing with activity (heh), and after I gently smoked it, I opened it up, removed the empty package and replaced it with five foundation frames. Zaga filled the divider feeder which was completely dry--we should have filled it more last time. Even though I'm not supposed to go in for another week, I am going to check on Wednesday or Thursday to make sure there is sugar syrup in the hive. We examined every frame and though they were covered with bees, we didn't find the queen, and we didn't identify any brood cells. I'm going to look again Wednesday. There were a lot of bees in the hive, I didn't see any queen cells, and the workers were busy drawing out new comb on at least two new frames.

Hive #3 was next--we saved #1 for last as we wanted to swap the frames into a new box and didn't want to be near it afterward. Hive #3 is the hybrid which got one of he two big new nucs. We removed the queen cage, which was empty, and we quickly spotted the very busy queen bee. There was lots of brood,  as well as a good quantity of pollen and honey. The bees had built some major protrusions out of the sides of the frames where the queen cage had been so I scraped those off (they were honey, not brood) and put the hive back together with all the frames nice and snug against each other. Last week I had left the queen excluder between the Top Bar side of this hive and the Langstroth side and I had put the divider behind one top bar. This week, based on how full all of the Langstroth frames were, I moved the divider back one more bar so there are two bars for the bees to draw down. I am curious to see what the bees make of the Top Bar side as they have foundation frames in the Lang side, but only the bars with wooden wedges in the Top Bar side.

Then it was time for Hive #1. This is the hive where I had to borrow the deep box from Zaga because my nuc frames wouldn't fit into my shallow brood box. First we smoked the bees, then I lifted the whole bood box and Zaga swapped out the bottom tray. Then I put the brood box back on the new bottom, and we opened it up. As with the previous hives, the divider feeder was empty in this hive so Zaga filled it up--not full, about 1/2 as we only had one gallon of syrup for all four hives. We'll make more for Wednesday. After she filled it, she put it into the new brood box which we had set on a cooler next to the hive stand. Then I pulled each frame one at a time and looked at them. This was the hive installed from the oldest nuc which had a queen in it--not in a queen cage. We immediately found the queen in this one too, along with cells of brood, pollen and nectar. We examined each frame and put them into the new box with the heaviest frames of brood and the queen in the middle. Then we put the inner cover and the top on the new brood box, lifted the old box down to the ground--there were still a lot of bees milling around the inside of that box--and put the new brood box on the bottom tray on the stand.

And at last we were on to Hive #4, the Flow hive which got one of the two newer nucs installed last Monday morning.When we opened up this hive we also found a lot of comb being drawn where we didn't want it. The first surprise we had was when I took off the inner cover and found a long oval piece of comb attached to it and hanging down into the space between the frames holding the queen cage. The Flow is only an 8-frame box, unlike all the other which are 10-frame boxes. The divider takes up one spot, then I had a Flow frame (which is foundationless), then the four frames from the nuc which were packed with pollen, nectar, and brood from the nuc, and then we had one more foundationless Flow frame. The bees had seriously packed the original four frames, but they had not begun drawinf=g out on the foundationless frames at all. We also didn't find the queen in this hive--though we did see one big bee that looked like a queen, but she wasn't marked or clipped, which mine was supposed to be. I'm not sure if this was the hive or not, but one of the nucs I got had several queen cells in it and I'm wondering if the queen in this hive was superceded already. I am going to check this hive out again more closely on Wednesday when I check the feeders.

When we were done we doffed our beekeeping gear and headed back to our houses. I was almost to my front door when I realized I had left the pitcher we used to pour the sugar syrup into he feeders out by Hive #4. I went back out and picked it up and as I was walking away from the hive, I was chased by a big that dive-bombed me and stung me on the top right of my back. My first sting! Zaga asked me what it felt like and I said it was a frisson of fire followed by a little electrical zing that went down my arm. I told her it was over then, but for a half hour or so here would be little zips of pain in that area. Now I don't feel it at all--and I'm still breathing so go me!

At the end of it all I'm not sure what I really saw quantitatively, but I think it will be better next time because we won't actually be moving the frames around anymore as the package and all of the queen cages are out. I still need to figure out some way of easily logging my weekly data. One way I could do it would be to makepictures of of frames that I could use to do a quick sketch of what I see--I think they would be more accurate and easier than trying to estimate quantities in words. That way I could document brood and store numbers, type and placement of frames, etc., and I could store that data to graph out. Right now I'm trying hard not to be overwhelmed just looking at the seething mass of bodies that is a bee colony. It's not like they're going to sit still and let me count them or move away from the frames so I can get a completely accurate picture!

Day 3: Beginner's Mistakes

This is my last catch-up post on the bees! So Day 3 is the day everything went sideways. All the bees were in all the hives, and they were to sit for a week without interference. To get my bee fix, I sat and re-read the instructions for installing the package and the nucs to make sure I had done everything right. Oops.

I don't know how I did it, but twice I read 6-8 Tbs in a gallon of water for the sugar syrup instead of 6-8 lbs. That's a pretty major mistake so Zaga suited up, I put on veil and gloves (my new beekeeping attire), and off we went to renourish the bees. We mixed a new syrup with the correct ratio. Then as quickly and efficiently as we could, we removed the divider feeders, dumped the liquid in them on the ground, and refilled each feeder 2/3-3/4 full with the new syrup. In hindsight we should have filled them all the way. We put the sticks back into them so that if bees should happen to fall in they could climb out.

Then we got out of our gear and headed back to our homes. I settled back onto the couch on the deck to read some more bee install porn. Oh no. When I reread the part about hanging the queen cage, I finally absorbed the part where it said to hang it with the mesh sides facing out so the worker bees could get to them. Damn. I remembered to hang it vertically. I remembered to take the corks out. (At least I remembered during the session where I was installing them--I did have to go back and take the queen cage out of the first hive I set up as I had forgotten to pull the cork the first time I put it in the hive. I didn't put that in my first post, but honesty about mistakes compels me to add it here). But I hung them with the mesh sides towards the foundation frames as I was trying to minimize the space between the frames so the bees wouldn't build comb out into it.

Thus came the decision crisis: I had already been in the hive once on a day when I shouldn't be in it at all. So which would be worse, to go in and mess with the bees again today, or to wait until tomorrow to turn the queen cages. Clearly the correct answer is way above my pay grade, so I called Bee Weaver to ask them. This is the ONLY thing I don't like about Bee Weaver apiaries and bee good store: They don't have a phone number you can call to speak to someone who knows anything about bees. They have an answering service. If it's urgent, they pass on your message and someone will call you back. Or not. Then you call again. Then someone calls you back. And they're very nice and very helpful when they do call. I just would like to be able to ask "to go in or not to go in, that is the question", and get an answer in one phone call. At least during business hours.

But I left my message, then I called back again and asked for another call back, then I finally heard from Danny Weaver and he said, yes, better to go in today. We had our chat after I had had a couple of glasses of wine, or maybe a negroni, but I was game. So I texted Zaga, and out we toddled to flip around the queens. I did the minimal suit-up thing as I am over clothes, and when I pulled the queen cages it looked like they had already been eaten through in two of the three cages. I dutifully reinstalled them correctly anyway, and sealed up the hives for the rest of the week.

Day 2: Installing Newly-Made Nucs

I barely slept the first night after installing the bees. And when I did, I dreamt about them with great joy. First thing Tuesday it was time to install the the two new nucs. Zaga came out, and while the contractors worked around us, we suited up and rehomed bees. The contractors unloaded the minivan for me and took out my new hybrid hive--it is so pretty! We set it up so that I can get to all the appropriate sides as I need to (viewing window in the back, top bars in the front, and Langstroth brood in the front left). Then we leveled it, and prepared it for its new occupants. First I took out five frames and replaced them with the divider feeder 2/3 full of sugar water (with sticks floating in the bottom of it so the bees have something to climb out on if they fall in), and the four frames. I carefully smoked the bees as I went and when all the frames were in, I gently took the cork out of the bottom of the queen cage (by the candy) and tacked it between two of the center frames. Then I moved on to the Flow hive.

The Flow hive is what kickstarted me into bees (pun intended) though I have wanted to keep them--or have them keep me--for years. The Flow is essentially a Langstroth brood box with a super duper honey super on top that can be cracked open so the honey just flows out. I am looking forward to seeing that flow, but it's probably going to be next year before I have any surplus honey. For the Flow set-up, I did everything just as I did for the previous Lang, and then I removed the Flow honey super on top so there was only the brood box left. I did that for all of the hives as you don't want to give the bees too much hive space to have to manage--that's a good way to get a hive beetle infestation.

So Day 2 felt pretty good, like I had everything under control. But then came Day 3 and everything went to hell. Stay tuned...

Day 1: Bringing Home the First Bees

Zaga in our class

As I just started with the bees, I think it's a good idea to document what I do, what they do, what's going on around them in the garden, and anything else I can think of that might give me insight into how to better manage them. No, that's the wrong word. I'm not a bee manager, I am a bee steward. I'm like a room steward on a cruise: I'm there to make sure the guests (bees) have everything they need to make them happy and comfortable. So here's how the first two days have gone.

Day 1: Zaga (my good friend and neighbor) and I took a brief class (two hours) on handling bees at Bee Weaver Apiary. We examined hives by pulling the frames from them, checking to see how much brood there was, how much pollen, how much nectar/honey, and we looked for the queen. If we found her, great. If we didn't, we looked for newly laid eggs that also tell us the queen is there. New eggs means the hive is queenright (has a queen), or was within the last couple of days. There are things you do if you think you've lost your queen, but I'll save writing about them until I do (as I know I eventually will). My main discovery during the egg-hunting process was determining that I am going to need reading glasses to do it.

Our instructor in just a veil

Our instructor Lauren (who wore far less gear than we did) also put together two fresh nucs (nucleus hives) of bees for us to bring home as one of the two I had pre-ordered was sold to someone else on Saturday and they were going to give me one with a queen already established in it and one that had just been combined into a nuc with a new queen. Because I wanted to put the nucs into two different types of hives and do a comparison with them, I wanted comparable nucs. So I kept the original older nuc, and added two more fresh identical ones. I also bought a package.

Me after ditching my gloves

Nucs have four frames made up of brood, pollen, and nectar. They also (usually) have an established queen. When you put a nuc into a new hive, you take out five of the frames in your hive and replace them with the four frames in the nuc and also a feeder that takes up one frame. The feeder is filled with sugar water that helps them with food until they get established in the new hive. Packages are a bit more wild and wooly. A package is a small wire box full of bees--three pounds of bees in my case (though I have no idea how they weigh them)--and a little matchbox thingie called a queen cage with a queen bee and maybe some of her attendants in it. The bees don't have any frames of brood or food. They also don't know the queen from Adam which is why she's in the cage: If you just threw her in the hive with them, they might kill her as a stranger. Because she's in the queen cage which has mesh sides, she releases her pheromones into the hive and it's passed along by the all the workers so that by the time she eats her way out of the queen cage or the workers eat their way in to her (there's a candy plug on the bottom) the other bees know and accept her.

Picking frames for the nucs

As you can guess, life is much harder on a new hive that comes from a package than it is on a new hive from a nuc. Even though two of my three nucs had new queens so the workers had to go through getting to know her and watching her gnaw her way out of the queen cage, they still started out with lots and lots of baby bees in different stages of development (brood) laid by some other queen (doesn't matter) and a bunch of frames full of food in both pollen and nectar form. When you install a package, you put the feeder in the hive just like with the nuc, but then you just shake the bees out of the package box into the new hive and let them fend for themselves. They have to get to know the queen (who can't lay any eggs until she's gnawed her way out the queen cage in a couple of days),. They have to draw out comb (build the wax on the foundation frame which just has the base of the cells or build the entire cells on a foundation-less frame made up of just a bar) where she will lay her eggs and also where the workers will put the pollen and nectar they gather. I haven't read or heard this anywhere, but logic tells me it's much more stressful for the bees and there is a probably a higher mortality rate in new hives from packages than there is for hives from nucs.

So we had our class, we put together a couple of really fat nucs, added a couple of queens, did a little more shopping, and headed home with the three nucs and the package in the back of the minivan. Something wasn't sealed well enough, but I'll get to that later. Of course, in order to accommodate all the bees we bought, I had to buy another physical hive. It wasn't a hardship at all as they had a new type that I hadn't seen: a hybrid between a a Langstroth and a Top Bar. The brood box (where the bees keep their brood, pollen and honey) on one side is based on a Langstroth, and then the super (where the extra honey goes) on the other side is based on a TopBar. The Langstroth side has foundation frames where the bees will put their brood, pollen and nectar. The TopBar side has foundation-less frames where the bees will draw out their comb and store extra honey. There is a panel in between the two sides that has holes too small for the queen to get through (called a queen excluder) so she won't go into the TopBar part and lay any brood, but the workers can get through (mostly) fine to lay up the honey stores. Zaga also bought a traditional Langstroth set-up from them in pretty shades of green and yellow.

Bees in a car!

So the ride home... Bee Weaver is down in Navasota, just over two hours from Austin. We loaded up the three nucs in the way back and put the package behind my seat. As we started down the road I started noticing bees on the inside of the way back window. I wasn't too worried as I knew there had been some loose bees on the boxes than might have ended up in the car. But as we went on, there were more and more bees. After about five minutes we pulled over and opened the hatchback to let a group of them free. But within ten minutes of starting up again, there was a plethora of bees bustling around the window and obviously communication with each other about what was going one. I don't think all the loose bees were from only one nuc as there was also quite a bit of fighting (to the death) going on on the window. While we did stop once more for a a hatchback-raising car cleanse, I wanted to save as many of the bees as I could (we started with around 40,000 in the car), so we on the rest of the way with just an occasional driver's side window-roll-down to keep concerned bees from stinging me while I drove.

We got home about 5:30 and immediately set about installing the package and the older nuc. On Lauren's recommendation, we held off on installing the two newly combined nucs till the morning of Day 2. Installation was both exciting and relaxing at the same time. Working with bees has its own zen and moving slowly and calmly, for me at least, is the natural state. I mixed the sugar syrup, donned a full beekeeper suit, assembled my tools (hive tool, smoker, bee brush, and electric match), lit the smoker, and Zaga (also all suited up) and I headed out into the yard. The package was the first to go in and we put it in the white Langstroth hive that I won in the auction at the Texas Beekeeper's meeting in December. The hive is situated at the back of the staggered row of bee hives, second from the left when you are looking at them from the garden side. I took the supers off and left only the deep brood box.



At first I tried to shake all the bees out of the package into the hive, but there were so many left in the package that I decided to try the other Bee Weaver recommended way which is to take four frames out of the box and put the package box into with the feeder removed and the big round opening on the top so the bees could get out. Before I put the package in, Zaga filled up the division board feeder with the sugar syrup, and I put it in the hive with space for the package box right next to it. Then I removed the cork from the bottom of the queen cage (the side with the candy) and hung it between the package box and the first empty foundation frame in the hive.



The second hive to be loaded was supposed to be my other Langstroth, but when I went to put the full division board feeder into the bottom box, it wasn't deep enough. That was when I realized that I had purchased three shallow boxes--one for brood and two for supers). Very fortunately, Zaga had purchased a standard Langstroth configuration (one deep box, one shallow), and I was able to borrow the cute little green deep (and the yellow bottom board that went with it) from her hive, put it on my first stand (the leftmost when viewing from the front) and put the well-queened nuc into it. I bought marked, clipped queens for all my hives, and this year's marking color is yellow so it was very easy to find the queen when I put the frames from the nuc in and to see that she was well and moving around.

With no more fuss, no drama (and no stings!) the first two hives were in.