Everbody's Prepping for Spring ....

The Bee Girls are awake. Although the temps dip below freezing on many nights, still, the daytime temps are reaching up into the 50's. Things are warming up! The rain is not so incessant, so there are more and longer sun-breaks.(strange for Jan in the Willamette Valley, but I am not gonna rant about Planetary Heating in this post.) Enough so that the forager ladies are out and about most late mornings, bringing in loads of pastel yellow pollen from plants unknown. (Aspen? Maple? Willow? ... Calendula???) I set up a couple of Boardman feeders just in case my two most at-risk colonies need some short-term nutritional assistance. The liquid is disappearing from both feeders at the rate of about a quart per week.

Today I took a trip to Glory Bee and got some stuff to make another Biodynamic Lang - this one for Jenny and Mitch. And I'm going to add another 'Western Super' to my own BDL. I got the garage cleared out enough to operate the table saw and set up my brand new compressor and brad gun. (Thanks, Santa Molly!!!) I'll make my wonderful patented Lang/Warré hive-stand-bottom-board, a telescoping top, and a set of top bars for the Redwood Warré's last new box. I've decided it's not making any difference whether the bottom boards are screened or solid. I'll do either style as the mood strikes me and the Goddess commands .... I'd make my own deeps and supers for more Biodynamc Lang hives, but I don't have the jig to do the fine rabbets (hint hint).

Anyway, Glory Bee usually has the cheaper unassembled boxes on sale so that it's hardly worth the extra labor to build them from scratch. If I were a commercial guy instead of a newbeek "hobby" beekeeper, it would prolly make even more sense to buy the precut supers, no doubt.

This weekend I guess I better print out some more swarm-attracting flyers to hang up on the community bulletin boards. (Got Bees? ....) Wouldn't hurt to go by and remind the Fire Dept, the DOT Highway guys, and the hardware store that I'm here and ready to deal with swarms and maybe some cut-outs this year. I've got the local nursery guys ordering me some more of those cardboard fiber pots so I can continue to assemble more swarm trap/baithives and get them placed before too much longer. I'm going to try some smaller eight-inch pots as well as my twelve-inch beauties. (Yes, I'll let you know ...)

I guess I ought to go over to the Keeper of the Bee Tree Grove and remind him too, unless I can get Karen to do it. (hint hint) I wonder ... should I get some little business cards printed up offering to come get bees, mention my Warré/ Lang/TBH hive-building skills and my wise fool (sophomore) advice on setting up for beekeeping, etc?

Hmmmm ... yeah, you're right ... maybe not.

Oh, hey,  .... check out Adam Schreiber's Bee Blog - For the Time Beeing. He has lots of pictures, great words, and he's a city beek! Makes a nice contrast to our rural Cascade Foothills location. It's also linked over there <---- on the blog list.

Mason Bee Houses

There was this larger-than-ever growth in beekeeping starting in about 2006, when the first hubris over the Death Of All The Honeybees In The Universe began, along with subsequent publicity over CCD, Bayer pesticides and all of that. Well, now that all of us Newbeeks have kinda got our "feet on the ground" about the fundamentals of honey beekeeping, our attention has been expanding to include concern for all the pollinators in general -- from bats to birds, to other non-honeybee insects. I've noticed a growing interest in Mason Bees among all my fellow beeks here in the Willamette Valley. Lots of us are promoting their best interests here lately. It's not hard to raise and manage some. Look at our friend The Luddite's blog: her latest post has just a whole buncha really good stuff about Orchard Mason Bees. (You can also click on her blog over there to the left in our Bee Blog List to keep up with her thoughts.)

I actually started building Mason Bee houses before I began this odyssey into honey beekeeping. I give the bee blocks away whenever I can find any takers. This was because there was a year there when all of us noticed a distinct dearth of honeybees and seemed to observe a subsequent lack of blooms in our gardens. It seemed prudent to begin to do something about it. My oldest Mason Bee house is usually populated with several cocoons in the little holes. Here's a current picture of it, complete with bird-poop roof shingling:

 A close look reveals at least a half dozen full Orchard Mason Bee cocoons in the cylindrical holes I drilled. (There is a smaller set of holes below them for another variety of mason bee that I dunno the exact name of. The Leaf Cutter bees use 'em too. There are some full cocoons of theirs in this bee block as well.)

The Mason Bee nesting blocks or houses are really easy to build (don't worry I'm not gonna post another long set of instructions, just go here - or here -  if you wanna build some, or you can buy them in many garden stores and nurseries, or online).
The owner of the secretly-located feral bee grove puts me and most of the other bee house builders to shame. He has an absolutely amazing number of different shapes sizes and woods for Mason Bee houses, hung all over his garage, shed and behind his house. I'm hoping to get some good pictures this spring of all of them. It seems to work for us all, the Mason Bee population seems to be growing around here.

Seque: Since he asked very nicely, I promised Amy Leigh's boyfriend, Danny, that I would mention his article, 21 Things You Didn't Know About Honey Bees. The blog has been added to our Bee Blog List, as well. (I'm kinda hoping he'll link to us on their blog as well ....)

[May 2012 update: For a really informative, recent, discussion of solitary bee living quarters as well as a great tutorial on building nesting blocks go here to our friend The Luddite's blog.]

Year-end Update

I know I have been neglecting this blog! It's just that the Bee Girls have been so self-sufficient that I have had no real news to report. Anyway, I decided I ought to get one more post in before the new year, so here's a kind of status report:

City bees and Country bees - both doing fine. They venture out on a few flights on the sunny winter days, there's always a little ivy flowering, plus the abundance of roadside flowers and plants the neighbors have cultivated. With all the doug fir and other evergreens there's always some pine resin to be had for propolis.

The City bees are in the 36" kTBH, with about 2/3 of the bars carrying comb. They stay at the far end away from the entrance and don't ball up much, but are kind of 'slowly active' over the combs.

The Country bees are in the 30" kTBH and are about equally active, although the little brats have been mean since October and the onset of colder weather. They like to clump up on the combs closest to the entrance end of the hive.

I opened both these hives' observation windows; the City bees just looked up and said "huh"? and sent out a few scouts to check me out. The Country bees, however, jumped at the chance to boil out a couple dozen angry ladies who needed to sting me just to show who was boss. I got two nice stings and quickly closed up their window.  Both hives seem to have gone through about half their stores, so I'll be checking often now that it got colder (down to +28F last night) and feed them if necessary. I figure about another 6-8 weeks before there is a viable resurgence of springtime blooms here in the Willamette Valley/Cascade Foothills location.) I'm waiting for the grocery store Xmas candy canes to go on clearance sale, when I can load them up. I'm toying with the idea of cooking up some fondant and adding some pollen patties. Looking around for good recipes. (hint, hint)

Karen and Maria's Hive -- is that 48" kTBH that has the main swarm the City bees cast last spring. They are a big thriving colony, still doing quite well. They are tucked in for winter, too. I plan on monitoring them about as closely as the City /Country hives from now until spring. They'll get some candy canes too.

The Hard Luck Warré -- Has done the best of any of my colonies. It began this winter with three full Warré boxes, with a large population of bees. I don't take any honey, as the idea is to 'keep' the bees, and promote healthy swarms with as little interference by me as I can manage.  I put another box on just before the rains came. (and I mean right before they came!) These are that first colony I received from the farmer's stock over in Creswell. These bees turned out to be "Golden Bees", a variety of very yellow, very pretty Italian species. A member of one of the bee listserves read that I had them and wants a nuc this spring. T'will be interesting to try my hand at splitting and "nuc-ing" this colony. Stay tuned.

Here's the hive a couple of days before New Year's, everybody inside and staying warm in the +29F degree weather and the snow. (You can hear them buzzing inside if you put your ear to the boxes. Nobody comes out to object or I'd have a stung ear, btw.) It hasn't been warm enough since then to see them doing any outside flights, but I expect the first warm day will bring them out.  I've been careful to slightly tip the hive every so often to check and see if it feels like there's any honey stores left. So far so good, but they'll get fed if they seem to need it.

The Biodynamic Lang -- has been quiet. They were the second of the Golden Bee colonies from the Creswell farmer. They filled the bottom brood box with rapid growth. The bees built a lot of combs on the foundationless frames I put in there. However, they seem not to want to build up into that first super on top, although they have propolized the entire interior of both boxes where they felt they needed to. I worry most about this hive, as it had a lot of bees inside with only that one large deep for resources. It still feels heavy to heft it, but the first warmer day we get in January I'm going to set up the feeder (and stick a mirror in there to see how things are going.)

So, I end 2010 with just five colonies. The small 24" kTBH managed to lose its short occupancy of a small swarm we captured in mid-summer; and the redwood Warré never got populated, despite my best intentions. (I kept giving swarms and swarm opportunities to newbeeks.) I think the redwood hive will get some modifications before spring -- it'll prolly be the first one I try those little porthole openings on. I'm also set to produce a bunch more of my famous-unpatented-oversized-paperflowerpot swarm traps, as soon as I get the garage cleaned up. I reckon that by the end of Feburary I can spread the traps around, put my little "Got Bees?" notices up and get ready to acquire a bunch more swarms. (wish me luck!)

Okay, Solstice has passed, the New Year is upon us, and we're headed for the light. Happy 2011 beekeeping, y'all.

Smoker Irony

Yeah ... well ... I don't use my smoker a lot. Obviously. Looks new, doesn't it? I think I've only had it lit about twice. Nobody uses one with horizontal kTBHs, I think. Like a lot of other newbeeks of the biodynamic/organic persuasion, I've been working without it when I open the vertical hives. I mean, I just haven't seen the need to use it. So these wasps were able to turn the neglected smoker into a nice home. I s'pose if I ever start moving around lots of supers or Warré boxes and do more harvesting and splitting and stuff, I may rile up the bees enough to start using smoke.

I let a few wasp's nests stay around, for the sake of balance and biodiversity in the garden; but I encourage most of them to seek other habitat, since they do attack my bees. I think these guys are gonna have to go.

Vancouver and the Bees

So I was gone from the blog for awhile. One of the things I did while away was to travel to British Columbia ... an awfully nice part of the planet. For part of the vacation Molly and I traveled by ferry from Vancouver, BC to Victoria on Vancouver Island. On the ferry were several notices and stickers on port windows warning visitors to the island that it was prohibited to bring honeybees in. I since learned that the stickers are obsolete, the BC Government having relaxed some of their prohibitions against importing honeybees to restore their varroa-devastated honeybee stock. I'm not sure of the actions' consequences, but the sticker was a good indication that Canada has been addressing the problem.

One of the major attractions outside of Victoria is the Butchart Gardens, where they grow justabout every kinda flower imaginable that can survive the B.C. spring and summer. As we wandered through the different garden areas, I was pleasantly surprised to see the blooms attracting copious amounts of honeybees, bumblers, and other pollinators. It seems like the dearth of honeybees on Vancouver Island have been Mark Twain-ized a bit, in that the reports of the deaths of all those honeybees were a little premature.  There are lots of bees in the pic to the right, ... even if you can't see 'em.

Well ... you know me ... I just had to go and find the garden's beekeepers and get a look at their hives! I wandered around asking the staff, but nobody knew anything. Eventually I was directed to the information booth where there was a knowledgeable botanist lady who set me straight, "The Butchart doesn't have any honeybees, as we are not concerned with pollination or plant reproduction here. The bees you see are from outside the Gardens. We're glad they come, but we don't keep bees here." They have about 50 gardeners on staff, and several greenhouses were visible. I never did learn where their annuals appear from, nor how the perennials reappear, but apparently they just don't raise any stock that requires pollinators.  Hmmm, I wonder if this is true of other big garden operations? (Learn something new every day, huh?)

In a way it was a good sign. Vancouver Island may have suffered devastating losses in their apiaries, but out there in all those woods covering the island there still must be a lot of feral, escaped, and "unkept" bees. They seem to be doing just fine.

Link to book review

I've been recommending the Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping since before it was published. Here's a very literate, first rate review by David Heaf; emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses of the book -- particularly on the treatment-free and small cell issues. Mr. Heaf's own book is on the way, due to be out this month (Sept '10). I'm really looking forward to it as well. We can advance order his book here. (I'm hoping they'll ship to the US of A via this link.)

Oh, hey, while you're at it, Phil Chandler could use a little help keeping his web stuff going. Along with the basic TBH fundamental materials, he provides a bunch of important free stuff, so much vital information, as well as hosting biobees, and David Heaf's Warré sites! Go here and see what you can do to help, huh? (I sent him a cuppa joe.)

Bait Hive Success

"I don't personally know any one who has caught a swarm in a bait hive here in my area, ..." I wrote last time.  Well, consider that statement as inoperative now. My first bait hive just produced the results exactly as I had planned it!

My friend with the big bee tree called yesterday. Her bees had finally swarmed out of the tree cavity! They had swarmed up to the place we thought they would go: under the eaves of her detached out building. This is where the bees went the last two times that colony swarmed. Some days ago we had placed the bait hive just in front of the now-closed-off opening into the dead space under the roof. The hive was now occupied!

I collected the swarm in the evening, when all the scouts and foragers had returned. It was a simple matter to stuff some paper into the opening in the bait hive, tape it over and then just remove the hive from the hook where it was hanging under the eaves. I carried the whole shebang over to my friend Julie's apiary and let her have them as kind of restoration of my karmic balance for that last swarm of bees she had delivered to me even though she had lost a queen. 

Any worries I had had about how to do the transfer from the bait hive to a permanent hive were erased.  It was a simple matter to unscrew the four deck screws holding hive closed, without having the whole thing fall open when the screws came out. Opening it up disturbed a few of the bees, but the cluster in the bottom half remained in place until Julie shook them into a western super she had already set up and made ready for the transfer. The swarm was mainly in the upper half so it was a simple matter to shake the rest of the bees into a space where half the frames had been removed from the super.  She set a white sheet on the ground next to the super leading up to the entrance. The loose bees and the flying stragglers just marched in. In a few minutes all the bees were at home in the super.

Julie put the remaining frames back in place and covered the super. In a day or two when they are acclimatised she'll do the newspaper trick and add them to an underpopulated hive in her apiary. When we looked into the now-empty bait hive, there were three saucer-sized combs already attached to the underside of the hive roof. They had built that much in less than 24 hours, and filled the combs with nectar and a fair amount of blackberry pollen!

I'm glad this whole plan came together, and I have high hopes now for the other two hives I have set out.  I'll keep you all informed.

[Added July, 2010: Some inquired, "What will happen to the queen if she combines the swarm with a colony????" It's okay, through the auspices of the Beek Association the queen got a new home.]