The Bee Mobil

Meet the Bee Mobil! Little did Tina know four years ago when she gave me this car as a gift that it would turn into The Bee Mobil!

I didn't need a car. The car I had was just fine and had less than 70,000 miles on it, but Tina decided I did need a new car.  She and our nephew Chase picked out this spanking new Sapphire Blue Honda Fit. Sapphire Blue just happens to be my favorite color.

She surprised me, out of the blue one August afternoon and asked me to meet her in a parking lot out in Eagan, near her mother's house. She wouldn't tell me what was up, just that she needed me.

I remember being a little put out. It was hot and I was anxiously waiting for some biopsy results and didn't want to be away from the phone in case my physician called.

When I arrived and saw this cool little car I was confused and thought she had purchased it for herself. It seemed an odd choice for someone who spent an hour commuting to work each day.

Adding to the confusion was a mass of people waiting for my reaction, nieces, nephews, sister-in-law, mother-in-law . . . Once it sunk in that it was my new car, and she had even sold my old car I was very excited.

When I took up hobby beekeeping three years ago I didn't realize at the time how great a vehicle I had for such an endeavor. The Bee Mobil is a hatch back, perfect for loading and unloading. It has a huge amount of space inside, despite its small stature from the outside. The back seat folds down three different ways, opening up the entire back of the vehicle or leaving either one or two seats open for passengers.

As you can see I have it packed with equipment I need at the bee yard, smoker, smoker fuel, bee suites, extra hive boxes, and tool boxes with my hive tools, nails, baggies for scrap wax, magnifying glasses,  and a plethora of other bee stuff. I don't like to get caught without something. The bee yard is too far away for that. I keep a shovel and a weed whipper on hand as well as we find ourselves leveling land and keeping the grass in the yard cut back. Rarely if ever do we need more space than the Bee Mobil offers. However, come harvest time this year I think we are going to need a pick-up truck to hall the supers home. There's no way all the supers will fit into the Bee Mobil but I don't really want honey dripping all over my honda fit.

I will admit the Bee Mobil smells of smoke and honey. It is impossible to temper the smoky reside from the smoker we use at the hives to temper the bees and mask the alarm phermone from the guard bees. Personally I love the smell of smoke, especially from the bee smoker so I don't mind the lingering effect in the car. Since Tina is not so fond of the smoke we almost always drive her car when we are together which is another little perk if you ask me. I love being driven around town. There is also the persistent smell of honey coming from spare frames and the scraps of wax we collect while doing our hive inspections.

The bees like to comb out any spare space in the hives. We could spend all day removing the burr and brace comb that isn't needed and messes up the hives. It is a never ending job and in the middle of a nectar flow the wax is packed with honey. When we scrap off the excess from the frames we collect it into plastic bags. By the end of a visit we might have a pint of scrap wax dripping with honey that we place into a zip lock bag, occasionally trapping a bee or two. The wax goes into the freezer and in the fall, after the harvest Paula will turn it into candles.

I spent the day reorganizing the Bee Mobil today to fit in the new brood boxes and supers we need to bring down on Thursday, saving one seat in the back for our third beekeeper, Colleen. It always feels good to clean out the cabin and collect the scrap wax for the freezer. I try and keep it clean and organized through out the summer and in the fall, when the season is over I treat the Bee Mobil to a full cleaning and detailing.

Queen Bees Stump! Lesbian lovers or a slow supersedure?

I don't know what the heck is going on in Mr. Abbott's Little Bee but quite possibly we have a harmonious co-existence of two Queens. Could they be lovers? Lesbian Queen Bees? All joking asking, beekeeping 101: Apis Mellifera Queens are notorious for their royal battles, fighting it out until one remains. I have never heard of two Queens in one hive unless the beekeeper has set up a deliberate system called a two queen hive which is really a misnomer if you ask me because the queens are separated.

Mr. Abbott is our "child" hive from a divide off of The Turquoise Bee, a troubled hive from the get go when we did the divide and queened her. In my opinion the Yellow Lady never took so to speak. The population in the hive has been poor and her laying pattern has been spotty at best. There isn't a lick of nectar in the hive and not much comb. She has always been easy to spot, bright yellow, making her way slowing across a frame with few bees. We saw her every single week until the day before I left for Europe. Besides not seeing her, the brood pattern looked particularly awful that day and I thought the hive was headed for drone. While I was gone Paula checked on them and saw a plump unmarked queen. I was dumbfounded. Last week when I checked the I hive I saw our Yellow Lady, clear as day and her brood patterned seemed a little better. Yesterday we couldn't find her but both of us saw the unmarked Queen.

I am stumped? Are both of them in there? We never seem to see both of them at the same time. Is this some sort of slow supersedure mother daughter combo in action? Yesterday the brood pattern looked much better,  not great but better. Still there isn't much comb and there isn't any nectar and there are not many bees. It would make perfect sense to me that the girls tried to replace the Yellow Lady but why have they let her run amuck while another Queen is taking over. I am going to my monthly Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Meeting tomorrow night where smarter minds will prevail and hopefully provide some insight.

We got to the bottom of Crazy Comb and I just have to say I am not convinced she swarmed. Her population is busting and we saw more swarm cells and queen cups. We didn't see a Queen but we have lots of beautiful brood and a super full of honey that the girls are starting to cap. We also poked out heads inside Royal Ruckus and The Drone Den. Unfortunately we have brood in the honey supers in both of them. Clearly they need more room so I ordered another brood box for both of them that will arrive tomorrow. Hopefully we can find our Queens, slip in queen excluders and hatch out the brood above. We have full supers on each of them and the girls are starting to comb out their second super.

The Turquoise Bee was aggressive and difficult again yesterday. We got to the bottom box but had to close her up, just too much activity and I am not in the mood for another sting just yet. Her population seems a little small. We didn't see any swarm cells or queen cups but I am thinking it may have been this hive that swarmed, not Crazy Comb. I guess time will tell. She has a full super and the bees are combing out a second box.

If the bees cap everything off we will have a minimum of 10 gallons of honey but I am not sure they are done. If they continue to pack second supers we could be talking 20 gallons. I have been waiting three years to host a harvesting party so get ready folks. I think this is the year.

A Simple Glossary

Ziva Jane spent the night laying on my foot, helping me nurse the bee sting or stings I got the other day. The power of pets and a tincture of time . . . I woke up this morning with less swelling and less redness but the itching is making me crazy. I am already feeling more productive and instead of stalking facebook walls and scouring the internet for the perfect Baltic cruise I am going to make good use of the few hours I have before picking up Tina from the airport and heading to my brothers cabin for the 4th of July. It is hotter than hell here, just like everywhere else in the US and I am hoping my bees behave and weather the weather. Even if they have ample space the heat can provoke swarming and I don't want another one of those. We didn't get back down on Monday, my foot was just too swollen and wouldn't even fit into a shoe and it was too painful to stand and walk, hence the indulgent day on the internet.

So just what is a Queen excluder anyway and what is the difference between a drone and a worker? For those of you reading who are not beekeepers I thought it would be helpful to define some simple beekeeping vocabulary, words I throw out there without context or definition. I would imagine you might be wondering what some of really means.

So a Queen excluder is just that, something to "exclude the Queen" or prevent her from moving from one box to another. It is usually placed between the brood nest and the honey supers so that she does not move into the honey supers and start laying eggs. We used them religiously our first year, sporadically last year and this year we have nearly band them! I don't like them unless they are serving a very specific purpose like locating the Queen. I would call them a bee excluder. Whenever we have placed them between our brood nest and our honey supers we find that the workers don't move up into the honey super which is completely counter productive! Having had so much trouble getting the bees to pass the excluder we decided to remove them and see what happened. So far our queens have never moved up, we have never had brood in our supers. Even if that happened it really isn't a big deal. We could use a queen excluder at the end of the season to isolate her and hatch out any brood in the honey supers. So we are done with anything other than season use to isolate her for some reason. You can see an excluder in the photo above, it is just a metal frame of sorts. The slots are narrow enough for a worker to pass through but too narrow for the Queen to pass through.

Brood box: Also know as brood chamber or brood nest. These are the bottom boxes of a hive that are used for brood rearing. They are generally larger than super boxes and hold between 8 and 10 frames. The Queen hangs out in the brood boxes laying eggs all day long. Worker bees tend to the brood, feeding the brood, tending to the Queen and cleaning out the cells after a hatch. In the photo above you can see the box and a frame.

Brood: a term used to refer to the embryo, egg, larva and pupa stages of life of a bee or other insect. In the photo above you can see various stages of development. When I report that we have eggs on a frame I am referring to a very early stage of development and when I say we have brood I am referring to the capped cells you see above. It is important for beekeepers to be able to see eggs and identify various stages of development of brood as it gives them a good indication of the health and existence of an elusive Queen that can't be found. As the population in a hive grows it becomes more difficult to locate the Queen. If you can't find her but you can see eggs in an early stage of development you know she is there and she is healthy.

Queen-right: a term used to suggest the Queen is in the hive and is laying well.

Brood pattern: a term used to describe the pattern of brood on a frame. A good brood pattern like the one in the photo above  is one in which the Queen is laying in every single cell, not missing a cell in a concentric circular pattern on the frame with nectar and capped honey around the rim of the frame. You can see capped honey on the rim of the frame in the photo above and a fairly nice brood pattern. This is how most of our frames look in our brood boxes.

Spotty brood: A pattern in which the queen is missing cells and laying helter skelter. It is usually an indication that the Queen is not healthy or that there is a disease in the hive. This is what we are seeing in Mr. Abbott's Little Bee right now. Since dividing the Turquoise bee and taking half the bees from her to this new hive with a new Queen we have had nothing but poor performance. The brood pattern has been spotty at best, the population is low and we have had some questions about our Queen. Originally we put in a new marked Queen, Yellow to be exact. After a few weeks of spotty laying she disappeared. I could not find her to save my sole and yet it should have been easy since the population was so low. Worker bees will often make a new Queen if they think the one they have is sick or not laying well and while I was gone Paula is sure she saw an unmarked queen in there. While I never saw any queen cells it would have been possible for them to have replaced her. However this weekend when Colleen and I checked the hive she was there. So who knows what happened, maybe they made a new Queen and killed her. Regardless we have nothing to show but spotty brood in this hive. We won't make any effort to overwinter these bees and if the bees don't take care of the Queen themselves we will be forced to.

Drone Brood: Brood that develops from unfertilized eggs that is slightly larger than the worker brood seen in the brood pattern photo. In a healthy hive about 10% of the population is drone. In a hive that goes queen-less worker bees, the females will start to lay unfertilized eggs and the hive will go to drone which simply means over about a 6 week period of time you will end up with only drones and no reproductive capability in the hive and the hive will parish.

Worker, Queen, Drone: The workers are the female bees, the workforce of the hive. About 90% of the hive is made up of worker bees. In the course of their life they will assume multiple roles in the hive. Initially they are nurse bees and assist in the brood rearing and cleaning of cells. The may graduate to guard bee and help guard the hive from unwanted predators and on occasion medaling beekeepers. Eventually they become foragers and bring pollen and nectar back to the hive where other workers help convert all of this to honey and cap it off. Drones are the male bottom dwellers who do precious little other than leave the hive to meet a Queen on a mating flight. The Queen of course is the reproductive mama. She goes on one mating flight in her life heading out to a Drone Congregating Area and mates with multiple drones and the returns to the hive and lays eggs for the rest of her life. Workers and Drones live about 6-8 weeks but a healthy Queen can live for years.

Honey Super: A box, usually smaller than the brood box with frames on which the bees pack pollen and nectar converted to honey and capped off. In the photo above you can see nice comb packed with capped honey.

The Hazards of Beekeeping and a Promotion

OUCH another whopper of a sting! It pales in comparison to the stinging frenzy of last August but the itching is pure torture. It stings, it itches, it is hot, it hurts to touch and my ankle is getting stiff. I just have to remind myself the bees are only trying to defend themselves and they have no idea I am trying to help. I react plain and simple. Getting stung over and over has not tempered my reactions. By tomorrow the redness and swelling will have ballooned up my leg (as if it hasn't already) and the itching will consume me. All this for the love of bees.

After news of a swarm on Friday that we lost we would have to go deep into the hives to check on the bottom dwellings. All in an effort to determine who had swarmed. I know what to look for but unless I have a marked queen that I  am able to spot there is no telling for sure. It would be easy if I could find marked queens in The Turquoise Bee, Royal Ruckus and Drone Den. I usually can find them but as the season progresses and the population multiplies it gets harder, marked or unmarked.  It is unlikely one them had swarmed but you never know.  Mr. Abbott would be tricky. Last time I checked I could not find the Yellow Lady we placed in Mr. Abbott in May but a week later Paula spotted an unmarked queen. What happened is anyones guess but that was two weeks ago. If I were a betting girl I would bet on Crazy Comb and since her queen is unmarked there would be no telling for sure unless she didn't re-queen. Bees are complicated.

I called Colleen, she was at my house within two hours. It was 95 degrees out. I wasn't sure we would be able to get in all the hives because of the heat. I was unsure Colleen would hold up especially if the bees were agitated. Dang that girl deserves a full promotion to beekeeper. I could not have managed without her. No longer an apprentice, Colleen is our third beekeeper, maybe not ready for partnership but she getting there. I love her enthusiasm for the bees and her concern for their well being! She takes measures I don't to make sure a bee isn't sacrificed during our laboring and heavy lifting.

We decided to do the easy hives first, the small ones that we know were queen-right two weeks ago. Both Royal Ruckus and The Drone Den are in great shape. We did not spot a queen in either on of them but we did see great brood patterns and eggs. If a hive is going to swarm the queen will usually stop laying and slim down for the flight. It is unlikely either of these hives swarmed given the amount of eggs present. Both of them have one super that is completely combed out and packed with nectar! The second super box on both is empty but given how much nectar is in the first super box and how docile the bees were I am sure there is a good nectar flow on right now.

On to Mr. Abbott, the little trouble maker. The population in this hive remains very poor, it has been since the divide and the queen just doesn't seem to be laying much. Most of her brood is spotty with some areas of good cover but nothing to brag about. There isn't a lick of nectar coming in and nothing is combed out. But there was the Yellow Lady, our original marked queen! I don't know what Paula saw two weeks ago but I now doubt it was an unmarked queen. If it was she isn't there anymore.

We took on Crazy Comb next, all five boxes but we didn't get to the bottom box. We found lots of swarm cells and queen cups, little peanut like cells that hang off the frames. Some were sealed some were not. When hives are fixing to swarm or replace a queen they feed Royal Jelly to certain eggs to "make" a new queen. Usually they make several for good measure and let the queens battle it out in the end. Remember a hive only has one queen so if a new queen emerges in a queen-less hive and there are other queen cells with emerging queens the bees will kill the others. We probably shouldn't have been so quick to remove the cells especially since we didn't spot a queen, although there were so many that I am sure we missed some and there may be more in the bottom box. I would place bets on this being the hive that swarmed but the population seemed so robust. There was also a super full of nectar on Crazy Comb.

We tried to look inside The Turquoise Bee but her bees were really cranked and just after removing the supers and getting to the brood nest I got stung on the ankle and had to leave the bee yard. The bees were quite aggressive and buzzing all over. Colleen kept her cool and got the hive reassembled while I managed the stinger removal and getting some deodorant on the sting. Colleen swears by deodorant to temper the swelling and itching from the venom. I am not sure it does much for me but I went ahead and applied it. Bees will also get agitated and aggressive if they are queen-less so I should not be so quick to think it was Crazy Comb that fled. Obviously we have more work to do and in the end we many never know unless the hive that swarmed goes queen-less and we don't catch it which would be a real drag at this point in the season.

We plan to go back tomorrow and hopefully get a better look inside The Turquoise Bee and maybe re-inspect Crazy Comb to look for a queen. In the mean time I am nursing my sting and remain dumbfounded by the gravity of my reaction. My ankle has already swollen twice as much as when I took the photo on hour ago and I am stewing about all this to no end.  Woe is me.

Losing a Swarm

Swarming is to the beekeeper what losing all of her calves is to a cattle-woman. Beekeepers try to anticipate swarming and assist the bees to reproduce in a more controlled fashion by splitting hives. This saves the "caves" and keeps the cow in condition to accomplish some work. I am not laissez-faire beekeeper. I am responsible and proactive and yet a hive has managed to swarm on me. There is an old English poem which reads:

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay;

A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon;

A swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly 

So in July let them fly. What does the beekeeper do on June 30th when they get the swarm call. I'd had a particularly horrific day at work and was looking forward to a picnic at my brother-in-laws. Brats, swimming, heck maybe even a bonfire. Driving home my cell phone rang, I didn't recognize the number with a 507 area code. "Cari, Steve Abbott here. I have a swarm in my yard, just like last August." The poem doesn't even mention a swarm in August which is almost unheard of. I had sort of doubted Steve last August when he told me weeks after the fact about a swarm he'd seen. However, early this spring it was clear Crazy Comb had re-queened so there was a possibility she'd swarmed. I sent Steve several emails this spring about swarms, what to do and who to call if he couldn't reach me. I made sure he knew if it happened again he should call so we could try and catch the swarm. Steve went on to describe the swarm, smaller than last August, hanging in a tree about four feet off the ground.

My heart skipped a beat or two,  I had a flood of emotion. How could this be?  Could I catch it? I'd never tried to catch a swarm before. I told Steve I would call him back as soon as I got home and got organized. I tried to reach Paula, my beekeeping partner. When she didn't answer I got a little more nervous. Could I do this myself? Shit was the only word that came to mind. The phone rang, it was Steve again.  "There moving north and up higher in pine tree. I have a ladder you can use." O.K. I knew I was over my head. I told Steve I would be home momentarily and would be making some calls to the Twin Cities Hobby Beekeepers Swarm Catchers hotline to get some help. I got no more than another few blocks and Steve called again. "They are not clustered, they are flying all around. I am not sure they are staying in the pine tree." I explained swarming behavior to Steve. They usually find an intermediary place to hang out while scout bees look for permanent home. Then they move again. It was weird they were not clustering and seemed disorganized. Maybe the queen didn't make it in the move. I would need some advice from the swarm catchers.

I was so glad when Bob answered the swarm hotline and explained the situation. Bob seemed to think they were on the move. He gave me the name of two swarm catchers in Northfield I could call. I knew the bees would need to cluster again before we could even consider catching them.

I called Steve back to tell him I was on my way down, it would take me an hour to get there. "There gone, not even on my property anymore. I can hardly see them and they don't seem to be in a cluster."

My heart sank, a lost swarm, even though it was nearly July I wanted those bees! I need those bees!  I couldn't believe it. Which hive I wondered. 8 days earlier I knew all the hives were stable. It couldn't be one of the new hives, or Mr. Abbott they have plenty of new room, new queens and no reason to bolt. Well, maybe Mr. Abbott but why would a small divide swarm, it didn't make since. The only hive we had not inspected deeply was Crazy Comb and she wasn't divided in the spring. I figured she had maybe swarmed in August and re-queened so I thought she would be o.k.

I am anxious to get down there and inspect the hives. Our apprentice beekeeper Colleen is going to help me since I can't reach Paula. Royal Ruckus is Colleen's namesake. She is a real trooper and after today I think she will probably be elevated from apprentice to beekeeper.

Girls Girls Girls GET WORKING!

I had a panic attack last night. I'll admit, I am prone to anxiety but I have not had full blown panic attack since going to a Melissa Etheridge concert about 7 years ago. We spent over 24 hours getting home from Istanbul and arrived home exhausted and hungry at midnight. I took a shower, ate some pizza and was in bed by 1230. At 1:15 I woke up with excruciating Charlie Horse pain that was completely paralysing in my right calf and foot. It was so intense and relentless that I started to panic. Initially I thought maybe I was having a pulmonary embolism until it started in the left leg. You can understand the logic; nurse with a little too much knowledge after a long plane ride combined with my anxiety, of course it made since to go straight to a PE. The pain went on for probably 10 minutes out of every hour for the next three hours, in both of my feet and legs. I was out of my mind by 6:00 am that I got up and sent a text to my beekeeping partner hoping to move up our trip to the bee yard. Maybe the bees would calm me down.

Mission accomplished. I don't know how they do it but here I am calm as a cucumber and no more muscle spasms. Gotta love the bees.

So the girls, what the heck? Lets start with Mr. Abbott's Little Bee. You might remember from my last post that it seemed the Queen may have gone missing. While we were gone Paula went down to check on them and found a whole lot of nothing in the box but spotted a big huge unmarked Queen. We had a Yellow Lady in that hive and saw her last on May 28th. I can't imagine she went missing and all that magic occurred. More likely she lost her marking. Anyway, the brood pattern seems to be slightly improved but the population is still low and there isn't much going on. These girls better hurry up and get to it!

Before I left I threw supers on all the hives, two each. In the two weeks I have been gone they have not done a darn thing. No comb, no nectar, no pollen, nothing to show for their time, save a bunch of burr comb in Katrina's Drone Den. I know we had a run of rain, wicked storms that knocked out a third of the farming crops in Northfield but seriously, nothing?  In addition they are not living up to their names which is good in some cases and in others no so good. For example, Katrina's Drone Den is hardly such which is a good thing but she seems to have the genetics of her cousins over in Crazy Comb. We had to clean out a tun of burr comb all over her today. We did see her Queen who seems to be loosing her white marking as well, half of it gone which is why I think maybe the marking came off the Queen in Mr. Abbott. Colleen's Royal Ruckus is hardly a ruckus. She if full of the best tempered bees ever and her Queen is going about her business. Now if only the girls would get working.

We have to reschedule our Puja as an important Tibetan Community event came up for the Monks. To be honest, as much as I was looking forward to the event I am so whipped from our trip that it feels more than just fine. When I told our land owner he was a little disappointed since the storms have taken a huge toll on his property and could really use the blessing right now! We are going to give the bees at least 10 days before checking on them again. Keep your fingers crossed I don't want another summer of slacker bees.

Awww Mr. Abbott What Have You Done With Your Queen?

I want to swear. Two days until I leave for Budapest and Istanbul and Mr. Abbott's Little Bee is misbehaving! All the tell tale signs are there of a queen gone missing. I am trying not to rush to judgment but I have seen this before in a slightly different context.

I am solo this week. Paula is vacationing in Jordan so I have been managing the apiary myself for the past two weeks. No big deal but I miss her input. Two bee geek brains are better than one.

It was a beautiful early morning, the rooster was out. The moon was setting in the west and the sun was rising into a clear blue sky. It was cool and breezy and I had a lot to do! There is a nectar flow on right now and I don't want to miss a drop! Plus I wanted to clean up the bee yard before the Tibetan Monks come down for the Puja in a few weeks.

Our two new hives, Katrina's Drone Den and Colleen's Royal Ruckus were very docile, thank you nectar! Both have beautiful brood nests and both queens have moved up to the second brood box. Their population is good! Nothing was drawn out in their supers but I went ahead and added second supers to each. Between the warm weather and the nectar flow they could build out quickly. I saw a brilliant orange pollen coming in as well. Its nice to see something other than the dandelion pollen. I was really pleased with what I found.

Moving on  to Mr. Abbott's Little Bee, you may remember this is our divide from The Turquoise Bee with a healthy new queen. I have been a little worried about this hive as population has not been great but last week it seemed to have perked up a bit. I noticed a slight improvement in the colony population and mediocre brood and spotted the queen. One week later and the little buggers are hissing and agitated, the brood pattern is very spotty and I didn't see the Queen. I didn't look too hard for her. One of hardest lessons in this endeavor is listening to the bees and letting them dictate the work. As long as they are willing to let me poke my head around fine but not today. They were just too pissey for words. I looked through about four frames, took notice of the constant hiss and spotty brood pattern and closed up the hive. I am not sure what to do. It is possible there has been a recent hatch but I am guarded! More than likely I will go back on Thursday and see if I can do a better inspection and really look for The Yellow Lady.  Otherwise Paula is simply going to have to deal with them when she gets back.

The Turquoise Bee and Crazy Comb are both doing well. Beautiful brood in all the brood boxes and I caught a glimpse of Snow White in The Turquoise Bee. She also has one supper that is completely drawn out so I threw on another box. Crazy Comb isn't drawing out in the super box yet but I added a second one on her as well for good measure.

It took close to two hours to get my work done and two complete burns in the smoker which is on its last leg. I am going to have to replace the smoker soon. When I was done I stood admiring the bee yard wishing I had a chair to pull up and just watch the activity. It was such a beautiful day and outside the disappointment of Mr. Abbott's Little Bee I was feeling happy. We are much further along this year than any other year so the honey whore is hopeful! Unless I go back on Thursday for another look at Mr. Abbott's Little Bee I won't see the bees until we have the puja the end of June.