Dead Outs in The Polar Vortex

It is a beekeepers worst fear. Dead outs. We have three of them. All three colonies in the top box, none of them looked like they broke the cluster. We didn't leave much honey but it seems that would not have mattered. In at least one of the hives we found the dead bees were situated right next to a large rim of honey. They were simply too cold to move to the honey sources and starved to death.

It has been bitter cold here with temps dropping into the -60 degrees with the wind chill factor for several nights last week. I had very little hope that we would find any thriving colonies. Still it makes one very sad. I try to think of the silver linings, an opportunity to clean equipment, get rid of old comb and start new. Still, I am sad and as silly as it sounds I wonder what I could have done differently to save them. I know I don't have magical powers to fight old man winter but I can't shake the "bad beekeeper" feeling.

This is what it looks like to clean out the hive, a very grim sight indeed. We wanted to scatter as many of the dead bees as we could on the ground, the bees will make for good compost in the spring. We only got through the top two boxes of this hive and left a box full of bees to deal with later. Altogether we took four boxes down.

So far I have harvested about 20 brood frames of old comb. Comb which I believe it too old to keep using. It is dry, brittle and packed with pollen that probably harbors pesticide. That pollen is what the nurse bees feed the brood. I don't want my bees getting toxic pesticide from the get go. So, for the first time we are pulling all the wax from the brood frames and in some instances even getting rid of the frames. It's been five years. This housekeeping measure is long over due. I am guessing I have gotten through about half the frames and have filled a very large bin with wax to make candles. I like knowing the wax won't go to waste.

Winter, usually it is a time for the beekeeper to wait. We wait patiently to see who will survive the cold.  The work room is filled with the scent of comb. We can dip beeswax candles, stir honey into yogurt, inventory and clean equipment but mostly we wait to see. It can be hard, all that waiting, not knowing.

 For me the waiting is over. I know what I face, total replacement. I am spending hours tinkering with equipment, reorganizing, making lists and making strategies for two bee yards this spring. There is new equipment to be ordered, old equipment to be repaired and painted and the opportunity to be still and be quite and listen. These are good days even if the bees are gone.

Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary is Expanding

It's official. The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary is expanding. Our second location is about an hour west of St. Paul, in Hamburg, MN. It is a lovely 10 acre  Permaculture Farm. Our host, "Farmer Charlie" is my brother-in-law. Charlie purchased this beautiful historic farm complete with a granary, a silo and Elizabeth, a tractor he brought back to life.

I don't know much about permaculture other than knowing it is a way of designing systems and ways of interaction that support the natural rhythms and patterns of the elements of those systems. As such, "Bees are the embodiment of the permaculture principle of concentrating limited resources - foraging large territories, and extracting sweet essence from the impoverished ecosystems that surround most of us, regardless of climate of location. Bees essentially feed themselves and through pollination, feed us, other creatures and the soil." Their honey is delicious, anti-bacterial, full of enzymes, minerals and complex sugars and is the best burn ointment. Propolis can be used for infections, sore throats, care of gums and teeth and treatment of sulfurs. Bees wax is ideal for candles, salve, and lip balm. Bee venom can stimulate the auto-immune system and ease arthritis. Keeping bees inherently increases our connection with the land, the seasons, local economy and food production. So, we have been invited to keep bees at the farm and kick off the permaculture endeavor. 

When I first visited the farm I was struck by how much clover was on the property and of course bees love clover so I knew it would be an ideal spot for some bees. Additionally Charlie has always been interested in our beekeeping adventure, visiting The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary with  fearless fascination, an essential ingredient to hosting hives.

Right now the farm is blanketed in snow. But come Spring time it will be a sunny, spacious place for some Italian girls and their Queen. I ordered two new packages for the farm today and after the first of the year I will get equipment ordered, painted and set up. We are contemplating dabbling in harvesting comb honey this year which is not something we have done officially. If it seems like the girls on the farm like their nutritional sources and have potential for good production then we might just invest in a Ross Comb Super.

In the meantime we are nurturing three colonies of bees in Northfield who just might have the gumption to make it through the winter. If so we will have two new hives in Northfeild, and three overwintered hives that might need splits. If that's the case we will be way over our heads in managing our little hobby apiaries. 

Fall check up!

Oh my goodness! Paula and I went to check on the bees today and we have three really strong healthy colonies. Colleen's Royal Ruckus, The Turquoise Bee and Katrina's Drone Den, all packed with bees in all three boxes. We have had an amazing Indian summer, warm days even up until now. Lots of local beekeepers are reporting loads of pollen coming into their hives. I didn't see the bees bringing any pollen in today but there was lots of new pollen in the top boxes of all three hives. The finding is sort of a mixed bag for us as we have a major problem with the comb in our brood boxes, all of them.

You see in our over zealous effort to keep recycling our combed out brood box frames we seemed to have overdone it by at least a year. I didn't realize that while reusing comb is a good idea, it is only good for two, maybe three years. Our comb is four years old. You see if the bees are storing pollen collected from anything treated with pesticide then they are storing toxic waste in the hive which is what they feed the brood. Additionally the comb gets brittle and old. Frankly I think this may have been part of our problem this year with a poor honey harvest. Well that and the long cold wet spring and summer. In a perfect world our plan was to remove all those frames and start anew next year but I can't see my way to figuring out how to do this with hives that are busting at the seems with bees. Perhaps in a month or so the population will die down and we can do some of the replacement work. Otherwise we will have wait until spring and figure it all out then.

The sad news is that Patrick's Pollinator has died. When we reached the bee yard it was evident that something wasn't right. There was a flurry of activity outside every hive except for Patrick's Pollinator. On closer inspection we found a pile of dead bees outside the hive and evidence of Nosema, a disease that causes dysentery or bee diarrhea if you will. We saw streaks of bee waste outside on the top box of the hive which is sort of a dead give away. 

We have not had nosema before so it is sort of a bummer to find it now. It is contagious and it contaminates the comb so we took apart the hive today and will get rid of all the comb. Once we got to the bottom of the box we found a large pile of dead bees and what looks like dead larva but we are not sure.

This is  never ending adventure in which we learn something new with every visit to the bee yard. It continues to be full of astonishing surprises, utter disappointments but mostly giddy joy. We put all our mouse guards in place and don't plan to visit again until mid november. Hopefully by then we can remove the top brood boxes off Colleen's Royal Ruckus and Kattrina's Drone Den and make an effort to over winter these girls.

Ouch

The end of the season is always risky. Often both Paula and I make it until the end of August without getting stung. Honey bees are generally very docile especially during a nectar flow and when they have brood to tend to. However, in late August they get protective and guard their nest with great enthusiasm. It isn't just humans who want to take their honey but other honey bees, wasps and hornets as well. Guard bees can be seen hovering close by to go after any avenger.

Three weeks ago when we were pulling some honey for ourselves the bees went after me. I got at least 8 stings, mostly on my arm and one on my belly. I was wearing my suite but they can sting right through that. I should have had a long sleeve shirt on and didn't. Last week we went to try and pull some empty frames that the bees had cleaned and Paula got a bee inside her veil that stung her on her temple and then a few more stings. You see once a bee stings it sends out a warning signal to other bees and they tend to swarm and sting with enthusiasm. Paula left the bee yard right way to try and temper the bees while I got everything back in order. We abandoned the task and came back yesterday to finish the job. I actually didn't get stung until we were finished with our work and were leaving the bee yard when a single bee got to my ankle and stung me.

I do have boots that I typically were in the bee yard but they are literally falling apart with gaping holes so I left them behind yesterday and went in with some flimsy shoes. My next mission is to replace those boots, they are 10 years old and have served five of those years in the bee yard. I just hate to buy new shoes and boots, it is such a chore for someone with size 5 feet.

Anyway, yesterdays sting is a dozier, right on my ankle joint and my foot blew up like a balloon and is bruised and so tender I can't flex the foot at all. I am struggling to get into a pair of shoes to work a little princess shift this morning!  If you didn't know better you'd think I had sprained my ankle. All for the love of honey bees.

Oh Dear! Another Pest!

That would be Wax Moth from Achroia gisella better known as lesser wax moth which hatch from Waxworms, the caterpillar larvae of wax moths.  They live as parasites in beehives, eating pollen and shed skins of bees and chew through beeswax. If allowed to get out of hand they will destroy brood comb in no short order. Unfortunately for us we have been outwitted by the pest and had to destroy an entire box of brood comb and then some.

And it was all my fault!

I know about Wax Moth and I know how to prevent it. I got lazy and violated a simple rule and didn't store a box of brood comb properly. I know perfectly well brood comb must be stored in air tight containers. Period end of story. Simple no brainer. I also have more large air tight containers than anyone you know! When this happened those containers were sitting right next to the box of brood comb, empty! Watching Tashi Losar stalking a moth for over 30 minutes the other night should have been a red flag rather than a source of amusement for me.

Damn it anyway! Lesson learned. Why do we have to learn lessons about things we already know for pete sake? It was beautiful dark comb, an entire box, ready to be made into candle wax. I am only glad it was Paula and I who discovered the mess and not someone else who might have been completely freaked out!

Paula and I spent the morning extracting honey. No extracting party this year, just the two of us. We used electric de-capping knife to un-cap about 9 super frames and a scraping tool to open up some patchy areas on about 9 brood frames. We had a fair amount of un-capped honey and couldn't avoid mixing the two. The good news is that we did get 5 gallons. The bad news is that it is very high moisture honey, 19-20 on the refractometer which means it could ferment quickly!
There is still  a great deal of work to be done, mostly physical in nature. Removing all but two brood boxes from the hives in the yard, cleaning all the equipment and getting a game plan in place for next year. All of that is hard to face after Wax Moth, minimal honey and bees that just don't seem well. We managed to collect one large tub of wax for candles despite the loss from Wax Moth and we will get more when we pull the rest of the equipment from the bee yard.

Better days

This photo is from the spring, a day when we were full of hope and enthusiasm, when anything seemed possible.

 It has been a sad summer for us, a summer of more questions than answers and more losses than gains. Our bees just have not thrived. July was a telling month. We lost Andrea's girls, and we struggled with long periods of not having brood or seeing our queens. None of the hives have produced much honey, and in most cases not enough for overwintering. I am not sure what we will do. Colleen's Royal Ruckus has one almost full super which will give us about 3 gallons and if we take anything from the other hives we might end up with 5 gallons. A far cry from the 20 gallons we got last year.

I am at a loss for the causes but I am well aware of the struggle bees are having. I worry that we don't have good nutritional sources, but how can that be after last year. I worry that the one farmer nearby who is using heavy chemicals is hurting our bees, but how can that be after last year. I worry that Varroa destructor is hurting our bees, but how can that be they were new packages. It was a long, cold and wet spring which didn't help the situation and we have not had great weather until recently which is just too late for the bees.

Maybe we just had bad bee juju this year, maybe we got hit hard by a combination of problems. I don't know. I just know how sad and painful it is and I can't imagine being a commercial beekeeper and dealing with losses of a greater magnitude. This is a hobby, an expensive one yes, but a still a hobby. We can recover and go at it again next year but it is a different story for commercial beekeepers who are loosing hundreds of hives and in some cases having to shut down.

I am sad I won't have honey for the Jewish New Year. I am sad I might not have enough honey for my wedding favors. I am sad my bees will die because they don't have enough stores for the winter. I am just sad about it all. I don't want to bemoan but it is hard to get my chin up. I love my bees and I love my time in the bee yard. The past 6 weeks have been a struggle and in the sprit of trying to keep my hopes up I kept all of this to myself. Now that the summer is coming to an end I just have to fess up and admit it has been a very bad year. So there you have it. If you have been fortunate enough to get honey from The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary your share may be very small this year.

Trousdale Family Farm An "Iowa Century Farm"

I did not know until yesterday that my people on my father's side were from Grundy Center, Iowa. My father grew up in Mott, North Dakota. We were taught a little rhyme about his roots growing up "Mott Mott the little spot that God forgot".  I grew up spending time on the family farm in Iowa but I never bothered to learn the history of this place.

For sometime now I have wanted to go back and see the farm, mostly to remember the fun of my childhood, chasing chickens around the barn, pulling up fresh rhubarb out of the ground, salting it and eating it raw and to just see the land again. So yesterday Tina and I and two of my paternal cousins took my 82 year old father back to the farm.

Jim Trousdale, Cari and Elmer and Bob Trousdale

In 1875 my paternal great grandparents, Mary and Thomas Trousdale purchased three farms in Grundy Center, Iowa. Mary and Thomas had three children, Vira, Robert and my grandfather Elmer. Each of the children inherited a farm. Each of Elmer's children inherited a third of their father's inheritance. By virtue of my mother's trust my siblings and I now own 1/6 of a third of this 330 acre farm. So I am a forth generation farm owner. We share ownership with four cousins and a uncle who will eventually pass his 1/3 to his three children. The farm has now been in the same family for 138 years.

Of course we don't farm the land ourselves but my father does manage and oversee to the management of the farm. In my lifetime I have known four tenant farmers. We cash lease the land and house to a tenant farmer who takes all the risk around the yield. While I have always know this about the farm I gained a much greater understanding of it all yesterday.

Once we reached the Iowa boarder it was just one farm after another but we all noticed something different growing than the corn of our childhood.

Rows and rows of seed corn all meticulously planted, recently pollinated and cut. I didn't expect to see seed corn, especially not on our property. After all this is the stuff of Monsanto and other GMO producers. I had to listen carefully to realize that we don't get to decide what is grown on the property, the tenant farmer makes those decisions. As I was piecing this all together  I am sure Jason, our tenant farmer and his mother were thinking here come the radical lesbians from the big city to tell us to stop the seed crop production. When I made the leap from seed corn to GMO's and then to Monsanto Jason's mother Kathy looked at me and said  "Well think about it, GMO's are really no different than natural evolution which is bound to happen, this way it is just happening faster so just think of it as accelerated evolution." Huh. When we got home I said to Tina "So really, my family is participating in this whole GMO thing".  "Yep, you are." So that was the second big revelation of the day. I am not sure how I feel about it but felt better after a conversation with a brother who said eventually we can probably prohibit the planting of seed corn on the property through a lease agreement. It may mean loosing the current tenant farmer and it surely won't be done until my father passes. While we may technically own the farm he still manages everything.

It was great to see the property and visit with Jasen, his wife and his mother and reminisce about the barn, building the current house and learning more about my family history. After visiting the farm Elmer took us to the Grundy Center Grave Yard where many of my relatives are buried. My grandfather, my great grandparents and several great aunts and uncles. It was here that my father told stories about growing up in Mott but spending summers in at his grand parents in Grundy Center and playing on the farm all summer long with his brother.

I am not entirely sure why I feel so connected to this place but I do. I am sure my connection to the land and memories from childhood somehow impacted my connection to the world today, my interest in slow food, food from scratch, the bees, canning and so on. It was a good trip, fun to spend time with my cousins who I rarely see and to take my dad back to a place he cares about deeply.