Day 15: Mean Bees

There was a really good title for today's post... Oh yes, Zaga just reminded me, "Off with her head!" We came up with that title after a really big Negroni each, and now I can't remember why it was so funny--and so apropos. Today was a regular bee maintenance day, and Zaga had no end of amusement at my expense because I felt the bees did not like me. Hives three and four seemed--to me--to be more aggressive today than they were two weeks ago. There was even a bee that chased me all the way back to my front door. I was sure she was going to sting me she was so mad at me. Zaga says they are insects and just want to kill us anyway so I shouldn't take it so personally, but I want my bees to like me! The first day we were all so zen. Now at least a couple of the hives--maybe three of the four--seem really cranky to me. I may or may not have been stung today--I'm leaning towards not, though Zaga is still laughing at the way I screamed when I thought it happened. In my defense, I thought a bee was in my sandal and had stung me, and when I yelled "Holy Shit!" it was more in anticipation of further pain to come rather than actual hurt.

So "Off with her head!" felt to me to be the sentiment the bees were showing me today. I, of course was in a dress, veil and gloves with bare arms, back, and legs below the shins. Zaga was completely covered in a beesuit, veil, gloves and closed shoes. She could afford to be sanguine about the bees' irritation as there was no way she was going to get stung through all that clothing.

Stats for the day:

Hive #1--The hive with the cracked feeder that spilled syrup all over the hive on Wednesday : This is the Lang with the older nuc (the one with the established queen) in it. The feeder was not empty of sugar syrup, but it was also filled with bee corpses. We were so rattled by all the dead bees in the syrup that we forgot to take a count of the filled frames. There were a lot of them, however. We did not find the queen.

Hive #2: This is the Lang with the package in it and I was really pleased to see how they're doing. Of the nine frames, 5-1/2 of them were drawn out and in the process of being filled. Filled with what, we are not sure, but filled nonetheless. We did not find the queen, but otherwise the hive looked really good. The feeder was completely empty.

Hive #3: I'm beginning to think these bees don't like me. This was one of the new nucs (nucs that had a queen in a cage vs. already established in the hive) and it is the hybrid hive. The feeder was completely empty. The bees were drawing out comb on the bottom of the frames they were so out of space, but they were ignoring the extra plastic frames which had come with the Mann Lake hive and which I had put in this hive to fill it out. The feeder was completely empty, and I moved it from the third slot from the right, all the way to the left to encourage the bees to spread out more--maybe even to start filling in the adjacent TopBar honey super. We did find the queen in this one (yay!). There were four empty frames in this hive.

Hive #4: These bees really don't like me. This is the Flow and it is populated with one of the two new nucs. We did not find the queen today for the second week in a row. I think this hive has been taken over by Satan Queen and the workers are all Satan Spawn. There were six very full frames in this hive--out of seven--and one of them was completely drawn from a foundationless frame. Very cool. The feeder was also completely empty.

What I most learned from today is that I can't tell brood comb from any other comb (with the exception of capped honey) with any certainty. Clearly this week we need to get an experienced beekeeper in to work with us on our hive inspection, and we need to take some really good notes--and maybe pictures.

I didn't want to go back into the hives a second time today, but I really wasn't expecting the feeders to be dry since Wednesday--especially since I put a gallon of sugar in each of the feeders. But they were dry so I went back in and split a gallon of syrup between the four of them (all I hd made up). Hive #1 we took the feeder out, dumped out the sugar syrup and dead bees that were in it, refilled it, dropped a sheet of Beetle Bee Gone in the bottom of the box, and replaced the feeder. Hives #2 and #3 also got Beetle Bee Gone and more sugar syrup, hive #4 only got the additional sugar syrup (I didn't want to mess around with the cranky bees again).

I still love my bees, but each time I go into the hive just serves to highlight how little I know about them, therefore how much I have to learn, and how much it feels like I'm just winging it. I need to get someone to do the hive examinations with Zaga and me who is experienced and can tell what the heck (s)he is looking at in all the seething cells and if there is anything we should be doing. I also want to know if we should still be feeding because the bees went through about 18 lbs of sugar in water since Wednesday...