New musings at Sweetpea's Bees

The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary and Sweetpea's Bees have gone on hiatus. We are making our last trip of the season to the bee yard on Monday to remove all the combed out frames inside The Turquoise Bee. After having mice take up house in Crazy Comb I don't want to leave a single frame in an empty hive. December 1st I will order three packages of bees and then we are free until early March. In the mean time I am launching "Updates from LA Fitness" for my off season musings.

Beyond bees and honey we had an over the top year last year. We are on an academic calendar around here so when talking about a year in review I am talking September to September. Tina was on sabbatical and we had way too much fun. Too much fun led to too much eating. Too much eating led to too little exercise. Too little exercise led to too much weight gain and too much weigh gain led to a very unhappy camper. I wouldn't take the year back but I do wish I had not eaten my way though it like there weren't any consequences.

Once upon a time, not too long ago I was an avid walker, 10 miles a day, every day starting at the crack of dawn. I am one of those people who get up to watch the moon set. I loved my walking. Rain, shine or 30 below zero I left the house at 5 am and logged 10 or more miles. It was a routine I took for granted for the past 15 years. When we vacation in Florida I often put in a few 20 mile days. I guess you could say I am/was a distance walker. When I had my first bone density scan the endocrinologist who read my scan actually wrote in my report "bone density of a postal worker". I was flattered and relieved since Celiac Disease can lead to osteopenia. I am no stranger to extreme fitness adventures either having completed the Chicago Marathon in 1986 in under 4.5 hours and riding a three speed bike from St. Paul to Chicago in five days in 1996, I am quite capable when I set my mind to it.

 About a year ago I stopped walking and took up space in a chair, in our kitchen. A leather lazy-boy like chair. I monitored the news like it were my job and I planned one fabulous trip after another and one fabulous meal after another. We traveled well and we ate well. Now all I have to show for it, other than some really good memories, are 30 plus pounds right in my middle. I am not much for appearances. I could really care less what I look like but the fact of the matter is that I don't feel good. My clothes don't fit and I don't have any energy. The idea of going outside for a walk is more than I can face.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I lost 100 pounds. This isn't a new problem. I kept it off, most of it for 10 years.  The I started jumped up and down 10-15 pounds, moment to moment. It was just that easy to gain 15, lose 10, gain 5, lose three. You can see that eventually  the math started gaining on me. So when this particular episode got underway I was probably up by 10 from my baseline and then went on to add another 30 pounds. My usual methods of dropping 15 pounds simply aren't going to work this time around.  I've considered just getting back out there walking again but it hasn't come easily. After contemplating my options I finally decided the routine was so off kilter it would need a real jarring to fix.

 I decided join a fitness club which admittedly makes me groan. I hate health clubs. I hate paying money to do something I can do outside on my own. I hate how they smell. I hate all the skinny girls running around in skimpy outfits. I hate spending time getting there and getting home. I don't like "working out" and I don't like exercising with other people. I don't share space very well. All that and I haven't even mentioned the equipment. I loathe exercise equipment including weights.

I am smart. I operate very sophisticated live saving equipment at work. I program pumps to deliver complicated medications. I hook up all kinds of monitoring equipment. Hell I can even calibrate a scale to weigh a diaper. But turning on a damn treadmill is so complicated it takes me 10 minutes. I am dumbfounded by how difficult it is to simply program the treadmill to go for 40 minutes and a certain pace. I am not a quick study so once I finally get it going I have no idea what particular combination of buttons I pushed actually made it start so when I return the next day it is like starting all over again. If the treadmill isn't mind boggling enough let me tell you about the recumbent bike. That little stinker isn't even programmable until you actually start to pedal. Seriously, how I figured that out I'll never know.

I decided to join LA fitness for several reasons. Most importantly I can pay month to month. I didn't want to be locked in for a year or more. It is close to home, another important feature. When I visited the facility I was impressed with how clean it was. I also love to swim and there is a lovely lap pool. So I joined and have been going for three days in a row.

I wish they had some handout on fitness club etiquette. I like to know the rules. For example since everyone else seems to have on headsets can I just go ahead and sing out loud. I don't really like music except for Christmas music which is all I have loaded on my ipod. I just want to belt out the lyrics but I am not sure that's a good idea. This morning I was very troubled to find the only treadmill open was in front of the TV stuck on fox news. I can't actually get the sound but just the idea of exercising to Fox news was disturbing. I tried to distract myself, following along to the fake track of multicolored blinking lights in my "dashboard" but that only amused me for so long. Then I got a little excited about my next door neighbors reading material "Making your way to sexy curves" only to realize she wasn't reading about highway 1 in CA. So I came back to the blinking track pondering why there were three different colored lights blinking at different intervals. So boring. My reward, after 40 minutes on the mill and 10 on the bike is 10 laps in the pool.

I am nothing if not determined. My goal this week is to just get another routine going. We are entertaining Tina's colleagues from Budapest tonight. Crab cakes, smoked porterhouse, Minnesota wild rice with chanterelle mushrooms, green beans with gremolata and creme brulee. Starting tomorrow food is going to look very different around here until I get these 30 pounds reined in.

So, jump on board and cheer me on. I need all the motivation I can get. I'll be musing here every once and awhile about my progress so stay tuned. Hopefully by the time the new girls arrive in April I will be back in shape.

Uninvited House Guests Take Up Residency in Crazy Comb

You can't imagine our surprise to find a nest of mice had take up house in Crazy Comb. Thank goodness we had removed all but one box and all of the frames three weeks ago. Otherwise the mice who moved in would have had a hay day with our beautiful comb.

We went down to the bee yard today, hoping to pull all the frames out of The Turquoise Bee. It was a warm sunny day 60 degree, very unusual for the end of November. We were hoping to find a pile of dead bees inside Turquoise and we thought it would be easy, just pull out the frames and load everything into our car. It was to be our last visit to the bee yard. We would say good night to the girls and be done for the season.

We we so confident we headed into the yard without any of our protective gear on only to find a flurry of activity coming from Mr. Abbott and The Turquoise bee. Katran'a Drone Den seemed quite but not dead with a few bees flying about. We had one box standing from the demise of Crazy Comb. Last time we came down we pulled all her frames and all but one box. I was perplexed, why had we left a box in place. Paula wanted to make sure it was indeed empty, that we hadn't left a few frames for some reason. When she opened the lid we both took a step back as about 7 mice looked up at us. Whoa, what a nest they had made. I actually had to admire the work and the determination and wondered where in the world they had gotten the beautiful ornamental reddish orange feathers. They stirred a bit and Paula quickly put the lid on. How in the world had they gotten in, the mouse trap was in place. Then Paula noticed the cork was missing from the hive hole that we usually plug and had plugged weeks ago. Some how the cork plug was dislodged and was laying on the ground next to the hive. I quickly ran to the car to get my camera to capture some images of the little critters before kicking them out. I don't like mice and yet these little pile of rodents sort of captured my attention. I tried to visualize them haling in all that stuff to make their next, almost wishing we had a video camera pointed on the hive so we could watch this kind of activity.

We suited up and tacked The Turquoise Bee. We had two boxes full of frames and when we opened the hive I think both of us were surprised by how many bees were still there. We got the first box emptied but the ill tempered girls were giving us a run for our money so we closed her up after pulling the top box and decided we would have to come back in a few weeks for the last box. We have never gotten a good idea of how strong this hive really was, I guess the population was much stronger than we thought. A few more weeks should take care of the rest of them. We will have to get down there and pull the frames before mice decide to move in. I would be sick to loose a box full of drawn out comb and pollen to field mice.

Back to the mice and giving them the boot. Oh so sad but they had to go. Paula dismantled the box, pulling it off the hive stand which was covered with maggots. Ew, how gross! Before Paula turned the box onto its side so the mice could scamper out she asked how I felt  about mice running a muck, even up my leg. Well, I wasn't keen about the idea but I knew they had to go. So I just said go for it. The mice scampered out, ran about a bit and then took off so we  dumped the nest and stacked the hive stand behind Katrina's Drone Den, hoping rain might clean off the maggots.

We packed up the car and skipped our good byes knowing we will have at least one more visit in the next few weeks. I guess it was a good thing we found the mice now and not in the spring when we might have just had an infestation. Seven mice is enough for any beekeeper, a box full of mice would be too much!

Some Girls Have all the Moxie

I am coming down from my relief about Colleen's Royal Ruckus, disappointed yes, but the relief that I don't have AFB is just tremendous! Finally I can focus enough to get our winterizing plan mobilized.

At the last Minnesota Hobby Beekeeper's meeting a beekeeper asked for donations to a research project. He was looking for weak hives, less than five frames of bees that probably wouldn't overwinter. I thought of Mr. Abbott, our little divide from The Turquoise Bee.  Although they seemed to be making some momentum they would fit his criteria. They didn't have any honey and probably wouldn't make it through the winter. I gave the beekeeper a call, offering the bees but said I needed one more week to make a final check on them. I was actually worried they wouldn't make it through the week and didn't want him to get his hopes up. I just can't wrap my mind around what these girls are working off.

Paula and I headed down to the bee yard early with a brilliant sky blue pink on the horizon and barely a chill in the air. We had more mouse guards and winter covers for the hives. I was curious about what we would find. Would more hives have absconded? Would Crazy Comb be dying off without her queen? Would The Turquoise Bee behave so we could inspect her? Would we find a great deal more honey in Drone Den from robbing? If was full of questions.

We moved all of our gear out of the car and down to the bee yard. Paula couldn't get the smoker light so we just move ahead without smoke.  First things first, get the mouse guards in place while there wasn't a bee stirring. The hammering would surely rile the bees and we couldn't wear gloves while getting the nails in place. It would be easier to get them in now before any activity from the bees. We did a cursory inspection in Katrina's Drone Den. I do think these girls may have robbed Royal Ruckus. They have great honey stores, more than I remember and seem strong. Note to self, we should probably keep better records of our frame inventories in each hive. We would have been wise to do a powdered sugar test for mites. Doing so would tell us our mite load which would be a good predictor of surviving through the winter. After the vanishing act of Royal Ruckus I am starting to rethink our mite management. I am not contemplating treating but knowing mite loads could help us make other decisions about how we manage wintering and maybe even help us figure out how many new packages to order. Food for thought. We fitted Drone Den for her cover, made a cut out for the bees and placed the moisture board in place. One hive tucked in for winter.

Next we looked through Mr. Abbott and found a robust group of bees. true grit and spirit to boot. These girls have some moxie to be sure! I started wondering about their genetics. The more populated they got the more they acted like The Turquoise Bee. I wondered if we could figure out their lineage. Brood and bees moved from Turquoise but a new Queen would reset the genetic make up in any hive but we had two queens running amok in Mr. Abbott for at least a month. Did the unmarked queen come from Turquoise Brood?  I told Paula I was rethinking the donation. But without any honey it didn't make since to keep them.

I was anxious to see how Crazy Comb was doing without their queen. When we open up the hive it was clear the population was declining and they had a fair amount of honey. Paula suggested we move frames of honey over to Mr. Abbott and try to keep her going. I agreed it was a great idea. We had two boxes to go through and could pick out the heaviest frames to move. As we started sorting I noticed we had queen cup after queen cup. Holy mother of Apis these girls are fixing to re-queen themselves. We took our time and removed every single queen cup and agreed, we would need to come back next week to check on them. After taking out the queen it would be something if they re-queened. I don't know if a queen could actually take a mating flight at this time of year but I didn't want to risk it. We painstakingly removed every queen cell we saw. Paula had some news paper in the car so instead of brushing the bees off the frames of honey we wanted to move we placed newspaper between the old and new box. By the time the bees ate through the newspaper they would be attracted to their new queen and wouldn't have a brawl on our hands. It was a lot easier than brushing bees even though there weren't that many bees. As we worked I noticed that the bees from Mr. Abbott seemed riled up and I reiterated my concern about their lineage. We put her winter cover on and moisture board in place. Two hives tucked in for winter. I'd have to call David, the beekeeper hoping to get some bees from me and tell him no go.

Finally we decided we had to check The Turquoise Bee, it was now or never. We have not dealt with those renegade girls in months. We had to get a better idea of what was going on in that hive and hopefully extract the queen. As always they were agitated beyond measure. There was a reasonable amount of honey and a fair amount of brood. I immediately caught sight of an unmarked queen. When had Snow White been replaced? How long had this queen been at it? I'd have to go back in our records and see when we last saw her. I took her out, swiftly! These girls have to go, no matter what. I was delighted with myself for locating her and doing the deed with such precision. That being said there is a tun of brood and probably some eggs in the hive leaving the girls plenty to work with to re-queen themselves. We will have to watch them like a hawk for the next three weeks and remove any attempts they make.

Our work is hardly done. We will have to return weekly for the next three weeks or so making sure Crazy Comb and Turquoise Bee meet their demise and then pull the boxes and store the frames. Anything with honey, well we might be begging for some walk in freezer space to store it. Nothing would be better than a few frames of frozen honey to slip into an over wintered hive in the spring. We loaded Paula's minivan up, throwing in our workbench and headed for coffee. I was was pleased with myself and my queen spotting skills and had to brag a bit on the way home.

The Anxious Bee Keeper

Bee with Varroa Mite, that red dot on the head of the bee.

I am an anxious person. I fret, I stew, I worry. It is who I am. Half measures avail me nothing so I do it well and I do it with enthusiasm. Colleen's Royal Ruckus has been the object of my worry since we last went to the bee yard. After reading and consulting as many folks as possible, I just couldn't get AFB out of my head. Experienced beekeeper after experienced beekeeper weighed in. They all said Verroa. It was unanimous. Not a single bee keeper suggested something other than demise from the mighty mite! I meant to bring some of the frames from Royal Ruckus to the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers meeting earlier this month but I was so preoccupied with Marla showing up as the guest speaker that I forgot.

To make matters worse, Gary, Marla's side kick and beekeeper extraordinaire decided it would be a good night for show and tell and brought in some frames with AFB. "Can you smell that?" he asked the group. The telling sign of AFB, its stench. I moved closer to the desk to inspect and smell the frames. Damn they smell and look like my frames. Gary started pulling out the scales left on the bees from the AFB spores and used an ultraviolet light to show them to us. I started to panic, my heart was pounding.

I was sick, really. It was like discovering I had sexually transmitted disease. I felt dirty! All of my equipment would need to be burned to the ground. Nothing short of that would stop the spread of the disease. I imagined my next trip to the bee yard finding more hives gone. I could hardly listen to Marla. I wanted to get home and look at my frames again. I "borrowed a UV light" thinking somehow I might see the scales Gary showed up. Mostly the sweet stench of the frames stayed in my nose.

I inspected, smelled, inspected, smelled some more, watched ytube videos, read and looked at those frames until my anxiety completely consumed me. Finally I got up the courage to email Jim. Before I got my bees from Kentucky I ordered bees from Jim. He emailed back immediately. "You are more than welcome to bring the frames to me to look at but your bees left because of Verroa" I stewed all day until 4pm and then packed the bee mobile with my over sized Tupperware containers filled with frames from Royal Ruckus. I had to know for sure. When I got to Jim's and started unloading containers from the car, all three of them he laughed. "Verroa, Verroa, Verroa".  I explained that after Gary's show and tell at the last meeting I just couldn't get AFB out of my head and that the smell of my frames was just like the AFB frames Gary had. Jim opened the Tupperware. "These smell fine, that's just the smell of dead brood. Your bees had Verroa." He looked through the frames, opened a few caps and then commented on how much pollen and wax there was. "These will be great in the spring, just spray them with sugar water and put them in a new package. You will have honey in June." He also confirmed that robbing had taken place. I more or less knew that from the torn open cells but since I had never seen it before I showed him some of the super frames that were all torn apart.

Before I left Jim advised me to put the frames out in the cold and make sure they get frozen through and through. I could have small hive beetle or wax moths in the frames and the only way to kill them is to freeze them. As soon as it is cold enough leave them outside until they freeze through, he told me. I sort of figured I should do this but I can use all the help I can get! It would be just as shameful to loose all my comb to wax moth as it would be to have AFB. Well maybe not just as shameful but it would be really sad and wasteful especially since I can prevent that.

Beekeepers are the most generous folks in the world. I continue to be amazed by their generosity. I can show up anywhere any time at a hobby bee keeping meeting, send out emails to bee keepers I hardly know and they always respond quickly and with insight. They offer to look at anything, come down to my apiary, what ever might help to solve my delima. They offer up suggestions and ideas, never hiding behind the family recipe for success. They genuinely want everyone to be successful. I still feel like a novice, heck I had never seen comb torn up by robbing before and had to have someone look at my comb to tell me that is exactly what I was looking at. Right now my email box is hardly filling up with requests for help and no one is seeking me out at the meetings for an opinion but some day I hope to return the generosity and be there for that novice like myself who doesn't know the difference between the stench of dead brood and AFB.

Grim News: Royal Ruckus Has Vanished

I am too puzzled to be sad.

It has been cold here in Minnesota, last weekend there was snow up north and this weekend we had a hard frost in the cities. During our last trip to the bee yard, three weeks ago, we didn't really do any winterizing. It was 80 degrees that day. While it isn't quite time to cover up the hives it is time to put in mouse guards, plug up any openings and make some last minute calculations about survival. So Paula and I headed down to the bee yard yesterday morning, hammer in hand and boat load of news to catch up on between us. We gabbed the whole way down, didn't bother playing our theme song and then mapped out our plan. I had not really prepared so we were short on mouse guards but at least we could get the entrance reducers in.

The yard was quite. I expected this as it was chilly and early.  I found a few piles of drones in front of two of the hives, a good sign that the girls are getting ready to hunker down. When the weather changes the bees and the beekeeper get ready for winter. Worker bees kill all the drones and throw them out of the hive. They don't do anything other than consume honey stores so the girls just get rid of them. The queen slows down and eventually stops lay. The bees form a cluster and starting at the bottom of the hive they work their way through the winter stores moving up as they need. By spring time a happy beekeeper will find a cluster of bees still eating away at the honey left in the hive, usually in the top box. An unhappy beekeeper might find a dead out, bees that died of disease or starvation.

Winterizing for the beekeeper includes looking for evidence of disease, evaluating food stores and preparing the hive for winter. We looked around the yard. Typically we don't see any evidence of disease but we don't check to hard since we are not going to treat the bees. The most common disease is nosema, a condition that affects the intestinal health of the bees. You can usually catch this disease by very distinct markings of bee excrement on outside surface of the hive boxes. Basically bee diarrhea. It is more prevalent in the spring but we have a box or two that might have some of the characteristic markings.

 I started plugging holes and checking hives while Paula worked on the mouse guards which were too big and needed to be bent to get them in place. I felt foolish for not having ordered enough to go around and not having the right sizes for the smaller hives. Mice love to burrow in the warmth of a hive box during the winter and will destroy all and any comb. Paula worked long and hard to make sure we had adequate protection against these little rodents! Anything to protect our precious comb. I would be devastated to have all our comb torn apart by mice!

I was a little dumbfounded to find Mr. Abbott still thriving although there is some evidence of nosema outside her top box. I am confident they won't survive but it is really quite something to watch them just carry on.  The Turquoise Bee was her usual angry self and we couldn't really get in to check her out. We opened up Crazy Comb, found her Queen and "took her out".  I am really feeling guilty about it but it had to be done. Katrina's Drone Den seem to have more honey than I remember her having and like Crazy Comb, The Turquoise Bee and Mr. Abbott the bees all seemed to be clustered in the top box. I wasn't too happy about that as I think the bees should be in the bottom boxes going into winter. Could be a sign that they don't have enough honey to survive. Time will tell.

Then we went to check on Colleen's Royal Ruckus. Nothing in the top box at all, well maybe that was good and they were all in the bottom box. Nothing in the middle box. I starting wondering where all the honey was that was there three weeks ago. We put both boxes aside and then discovered there was nothing in the bottom box. NOTHING! No bees, no pile of dead bees at the bottom of the box, NOTHING. We started to rifle through the frames to see if we could figure out what happened. There was some scant patchy brood, nothing substantial at all. Bees won't abandon a brood nest ever but what was left hardly constituted a brood nest,  just patches of spotty brood here and there on about half the frames. There were some dead emerging bees, no evidence of disease save something weird looking on the outside of the middle box that looked sort of like nosema but not really. We looked closely at the frames, all the honey was gone, every last lick gone and the comb in some areas but not all seemed to be torn apart like it had been robbed out. The frames did seem full of pollen.

What the heck? Is this what colony collapse looks like or is this just old school absconding? I don't really understand the difference to be honest. Absconding usually happens when conditions in the hive just are not right for survival. A desperate hive leaves with all the bees, queen and everything else except the honeycomb. Our honey was gone but the pollen was left behind. Colony Collapse Disorder is characterized by honey and pollen and brood all being left left behind and usually  the queen and a few nurse bees are left. Its all to weird and confusing to me. Some of the frames are torn apart like they were robbed but there was a patch of honey on one frame left undisturbed. When I got home I read threw my books and poked around online. For a fleeting moment I worried about American Foulbrood a disease that would mean burning all of our equipment and I mean all of it. It would mean starting over. It one point I even tried poking a match stick end into the brood to test for ropiness but who knows if the brood was past the point of maturity for this particular indicator.

I am going to my monthly beekeepers meeting tonight where wiser minds prevail. My other girlfriend Marla is the guest speaker so I am going to have to work extra hard to pay attention, focus. Hopefully I can get some answers about what may have happened to the hive from the more experienced beekeepers. I may just throw a box of the frames into the car and bring them in for those wiser minds to inspect and postulate over.

The work of Fall

It took three trips to the bee yard to collect all of the boxes and frames we needed to remove before fall. Yesterday, after a weekend of funeral events for Tina's father I couldn't have been happier to head to the bee yard with Paula. It has been awhile since we were there late in the afternoon. We tend to do our work in the morning. It was hot and the bee yard was full of activity. We were a little dumbfounded to find the bees completely unwilling to part with the cleaned out boxes. Hundreds of them clung for dear life to both the boxes and the frames. We used brushes to get the off the frames and placed the frames in our heavy construction bags getting tuns of bees trapped in the bags.

They weren't necessarily agitated just clamoring to stay on the frames and boxes. We decided to go ahead and do two full inspections starting with Royal Ruckus. We easily spotter the Yellow Lady in the top brood box. There wasn't much brood, the colony seems to be downsizing although we didn't find a pile of dead drones outside any of the hives but they have clearly moved into a fall mode. The queen  seemed to be sort of wandering the frame, not laying a thing during our watch. We kept her out for several minutes just watching her move about. The other bees didn't seem to interested in her or her activity. We also found our unmarked queen in Crazy Comb in the top brood box. Again, not much brood and she just seemed to be wandering around aimlessly. We don't want this hive to over winter and probably should have done away with her but neither of us had the heart in the moment. I am just still so unsettled about how to manage things.

Once we moved our bags and boxes up to the car it was very evident we had a huge problem. Bees, everywhere! Hundreds of them milling about the car, the bags, the boxes, the equipment. We have had bees follow us up to the car before but not more than a handful and always milling about us! There wasn't a prayer we were going to get the equipment back into the car without getting bees in the car. We finally decided to leave the empty boxes, get the bags into the car and we kept our bee suites on, turned down the windows and drove to a nearby parking lot to reassess our situation. Most of the bees had blown out of the car, enough that we felt comfortable taking off our suites and continuing home.

We returned this morning hoping to finish pulling everything and inspect a few more of the hives. It was a very cool morning with a light mist, darker than usually as the days are getting so much shorter. The bees were quite and docile and we didn't have any battles at all. It couldn't have taken us more than 30 minutes to get our work done and pack the car. Lesson learned pulling empties is much easier in the cool dark morning than a hot fall afternoon. We will have to remember this for next year.

We won't go back for a few weeks. In the mean time I need to do some home work and figure what we want to do in terms of over wintering decisions and management. Paula's daughter is interested in having a hive or two so we may just gift her some used equipment and keep our fingers crossed. If we end up with too many hives in the fall we can give some to Kristen and not get to worried about it right now.  I have the bags of frames siting on the back porch. I am going to wait a few days before opening them and getting them stored for the winter. All the empty boxes need to be scrapped and it is just too cold to tackle the job today. Besides the bags are full of bees right now and our bees suites are in the laundry after a misty muddy morning.

Getting Stung Sucks Big Time

This is what I aspire to. I want to be the kind of beekeeper that is simply fearless and unwavering in confidence. When I began this endeavor I imagined I would be one of those beekeepers who worked the hives maybe wearing a veil, maybe not. Who the hell wore those bulky bee suites?

This of course if Marla, my other girlfriend, entomologist and beekeeper extraordinaire. She makes me weak in the knees and when she speaks I come undone.  Let me reassure my readers, Tina is the love of my life this is just a silly junior high like crush, I am sure we all have them.  Besides, Marla doesn't give me the time of day.  I don't think she even noticed when I was one of about 10 in a crowd of 200 that raised my hand when asked who had a good harvest this year during the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Meeting last night. Seriously Marla? I was one of a handful, don't you want to know what I did to get 20 gallons of honey? I may not have imagined donning a bee beard but I surely expected to be opening up hives with my bare hands, unencumbered by additional protective clothing. Then I got consumed by the idea of getting a tic, deer or wood, didn't matter and I went into full combat mode and ordered the bee suite, the veil, gloves and then some.

Well things have not panned out as I imagined.  For awhile I convinced myself I was just protecting myself from the tics. Then I started getting stung and the protective gear got a little more, well shall we say complicated. Now I can not imagine going into the bee yard without my veil, bee suite, gloves and today I am kicking myself in the butt for not putting on the calf high boots I usually wear.

My stings seem to get worse and worse each time I get stung. I would have expected them to temper over time but no such luck.  Paula and I had lofty ideas today, hoping to pull all of our empty boxes, 11 of them. We started with Mr. Abbott, the smallest and weakest hive. Good golly can you say population explosion! The bees had made their way up four boxes and while they did do some cleaning they mostly capped off small bits of honey in two full boxes of frames. Its all patchy and there isn't a prayer we could extract it, nor is it enough that it would be worth moving to another hive. It just isn't worthy of winter food stores. So we got started and dang if those girls didn't get agitated beyond measure. Paula got stung first and left the bee yard while I made a fleeting attempt to carry on but then I got stung and by the time I got to the car Paula got stung again. I got stung in the exact same spot as last time, right over the medial aspect of my ankle joint. I know perfectly well that by tomorrow morning my ankle is going to be so stiff and swollen that I won't be able to walk for a day or so. Paula, well she got stung in the same place on both of her ankles. Typically she doesn't react like I do but both of us felt like we got a hefty dose of venom.

We quickly regrouped and considered our situation, the bee yard now loaded with warning pheromone would not be too welcoming. We'd only pulled two out of 11 boxes. I suggested we go at this piecemeal and take it a hive a visit. Paula agreed but when we got back into the bee yard we decided to try to pull a few more boxes. All in all I think we pulled five which is a good start. The bees did an excellent job of cleaning the frames and the boxes. They are dry as a bone.  We put all the frames inside  four or five large construction bags and just tossed the boxes into the car. When we got in the car we sat in silence for a moment or two, listening to a few bees trapped inside the bags buzzing away. It is such a lovely sound in an odd sort of way.

During our ride home we tried in earnest to talk about the pros and cons of wintering and not wintering the bees. It is such an ethical dilemma for me personally. How can we not try to overwinter all of them? How can we deliberately compromise their ability to overwinter? I am not going to get into the merits of this conversation today, trust me it is a hard one to have. A beekeeping peer of mine likened it to feeling like the sorcerer's apprentice in that Mickey Mouse cartoon from Fantasia in which the brooms kept multiplying and Mickey kept falling further and further behind. Coming out of last winter with two hives that became five. Going into winter now with five could mean 10 in the spring and going into the following winter with 10 could me 20 in the spring and so on and so forth. You can see the problem at hand I am sure. I just want to be a four colony hobby beekeeper, nothing more, nothing less. How do I accomplish that in a way that is responsible and ethical and economical?