For The Love of Bees

You know it's spring if Alex is posting about bees - even though Wisconsin woke up to 1.5" of snow on the ground this morning!! WTH?

Here's what this morning looked like:

Photo credit: Muskrat John

Photo credit: Muskrat John

Seriously. It's April 15. I love Wisconsin but this must be some kind of cosmic joke.

Anyway, on to happier subjects... BEES!

As you all probably know, I started my first hive last year. If you're interested in reading (or re-reading) about my adventure, here are the posts: Home At Last (Part 1); Home At Last (Part 2). Also, this is a fun post about keeping the bees: Feeding Bees.

So, last year I didn't actually get  my bees into their hive until mid-June. This is super-late in the summer if you're a bee-keeper as it only gave them about 10 weeks to build up to a critical mass strong enough to survive a brutal Wisconsin winter. Add to that the fact that my bees "lost" their queen partway through the summer and started over with a new queen and I'll bet you can guess what happened... The hive died.

There may be nothing as sad as a hive full of dead bees. It was heartbreaking. Fortunately, I anticipated that this might happen and put in an order for a 2 lbs "package" of bees. This is, quite literally, a box of bees with the queen in a separate box. Like this:

So, I cleaned out the hive, watched a video on how to install a package, and went to pick them up.

Side story... my dogs went with me out to the farm to pick up the bees. They had a blast running around the grounds and smelling all the smells. They refused to go anywhere near the outbuilding where the packaged bees were - they know the sound of bees and they avoid them. :)  Then, I loaded the dogs in the car, brushed the bees off the outside of the box, and put the box into the way-back of my station wagon. The dogs could hear the buzzing and totally freaked out. They spent 10 minutes of the drive home in a panic, watching over their heads for flying stingers. Poor pumpkins.

My new bees are beautiful. They're golden-yellow, fat, and super-docile. They took to the hive right away - immediately cleaning, foraging, and just generally being bees. After a few days, I released the queen from her box and she disappeared into the hive. At some point in the next week or so, I'll take the boxes apart and try to find her - just to make sure she's doing her queenly duties.

I'm pretty sure that my bees are either Italian or Buckfast - two of the breed types of honey bees. These two types are yellow, like mine. The Carniolan bees are mostly black and much smaller. Here's a great article on the types of bees and their traits: Major Types of Honeybees.

Finally, here are a few pictures I took about a week after they were installed in their new home. I'll keep you all posted on how things are going this summer. I like to think that, because I got an earlier start and I'm blessed with such healthy bees, I might actually build up a hive that will survive next winter. Fingers crossed!

- Alex

Enjoying the sun

Pollen patty and sugar syrup - YUM

Enjoying a mid-day meal

Checking out the new person

Feeding the Bees

Who would have thunk it? Sometimes bees need to be fed. 

Last week a very helpful fellow beekeeper came over to give me a hand with my weekly hive check. I had one, main concern and that was finding a queen - either the one I'd started with (whom I hadn't seen in three weeks) or a new one (which my bees were hell-bent on making).

This is a "queen cell" where a new queen grows. My bees made about 10 of these...

After digging around in the hive for about 30 minutes, we found her. A brand, new queen - already laying eggs. Whew!! I was relieved. Then my new friend said something that concerned me. It turns out that my bees had spent so much time making new bees to fill out the colony and worked so hard at making a new queen, they really hadn't spent enough time making honey. This is bad because they could, potentially, not have enough stores to get them through the winter.

So, what does one do? Well, it turns out that you feed them sugar syrup that they make "honey" out of. It's honey that's good enough for them to live off of for the winter but it's not really "proper" honey because it's not made from nectar. At this point, I just want to make sure I still have bees come spring time so it was off to the market to buy a bunch of plain, white, granulated sugar for me.

When you feed a bee sugar syrup in the autumn, you feed a thicker 2:1 (sugar to water) by weight concoction. I did the math and I needed 2.25 cups of sugar to 2 cups of water. Then I checked out the various methods of delivering the syrup. Most people just punch a few small holes in the top of a mason jar and place that over the frames in the hive. The syrup drips, the bees eat, and there you go. Then there's the Ziplock bag method (I love this one) where you fill a gallon Ziplock back 3/4 full with sugar syrup, lay it on the top of the frames, and then cut a 1" slit into the top of the bag with a razor blade. The bees eat from the slit in the bag. Pretty efficient and not as drippy as the mason jar version. Then I stumble on the delivery system I decided I liked best - the chicken waterer.

Basically, you can buy these things for about $4 that fit on a mason jar. For chickens, you fill the mason jar with water, screw on the contraption, flip the whole thing over and the chicken drink from the little bowl. I like it because it means less syrup "drip" in my hive. The one thing most folks don't know is that bees are prone to drowning. They need something to sit on in order to drink from a pool of anything (including water) or they will, in fact, just drown. So I had to "fix" the waterer so the bees could use it. My beekeeper friends suggested using wire - so, this is how it happened:

Mark the wire mesh where you want to cut it.

Snip with tin-snips.

Ta-da!

Push the wire mesh into place.

Fill the mason jar with sugar syrup.

 Screw on the waterer and you're off!

The waterer gets placed on the top cover, like so.

You place an empty hive box around the food supply and then put the lid on the whole thing.

My bees ate two quarts of sugar syrup in less than 24 hours.

So, I was kind of freaked out by how fast they ate what I put out for them. One of my fellow beekeepers said that I needed to think in terms of GALLONS of syrup, not quarts. LOL  Turns out bees are sort of piggy.

Here's the new batch I made last night. Just shy of 10 lbs of sugar made a gallon and a quarter of syrup. I get the feeling I'll be doing this a lot for the next couple of months. 

- Alex the sticky beekeeper

Home, Home At Last (Part Two)

If you missed part one, you can catch up here.

Finally. After 8 days in the bee condo (the cardboard nucleus box that the bees came in), my new "pets" moved into their permanent home.

The "old" pet checking out the new pets.

I picked up the bees on a Sunday. The following Thursday I was on a plane to Florida with a return on Monday. I knew that I wasn't supposed to bother the bees for about a week (most people advocate weekly hive checks) and leaving town was the best way to keep my nose out of their space. It was all I could do (and, honestly, still all I can do) to keep myself from poking at them constantly. They're infinitely fascinating and, in that first week, I just wanted to sit and watch them do their thing. Unfortunately, poking around the hive kind of stresses them out so an out-of-state trip was the best way to give them the peace they needed to settle in quietly.

While I was away, the hive I ordered arrived in one giant box - which I found on my front porch when I got home late Monday afternoon. Needless to say, I put down my suitcase, changed my clothes, and immediately unpacked the box.

In the end, after months of research, discussions with veteran beekeepers, and online searching, I went with a medium-frame Langstroth hive instead of the less-standard top-bar or Warre hives. This gave me a lot of options to purchase both locally and from the web. Most hives are made from pine and painted (on the outside). I found a place in Indiana called Legacy Apiaries that makes the most gorgeous, high-quality hives from western red cedar. They promised quality and they delivered! I adore my hive and I hope the bees will too. The crazy part is, this beautiful, cedar hive was no more expensive than a pine one...

Yes, this beehive is set up in my living room. It's empty.

After pulling out all my equipment, I fired up the smoker, donned the veil and gloves, tucked my pants into my socks (so the bees can't crawl up your leg), and I set about moving the frames from the condo to the house. Here, in photos, is my adventure:

This is the new brood box. Notice it's not made of red cedar.

The one thing that threw a wrench into my plans for the most beautiful hive ever, is that the bees came to me living on "deep frames". That means that the box I transferred them into had to be able to accommodate their frame size. My cedar hive is made up of medium boxes (they're shallower) so I had to go out and buy one deep box that sits at the bottom of the totem pole.

This is what it looks like with one deep (on the bottom) and one medium.

My tools: A smoker, a "hive tool" to separate and lift the frames, and an entrance reducer.

You can barely see it but the smoker is working!

This is what the frames look like inside the cardboard box.

Me, loosening a frame to take it out of the box.

My bees, hard at work.

This is what a frame of honey looks like. Very yellow and very heavy.

Whereas brood comb (where the babies are made) is dark brown.

Nucleus frames in the center, new frames on the outside. In the new hive!

For the most part, my first hive check and move to the new home went well. I was able to identify the work that was being done, the bees were amenable to the process, and they settled in right away. The one hitch was when, while observing one of the frames, I accidentally dropped it on the grass. The bees didn't like that much and there was a lot of high pitched buzzing and flying about. No stings though!! I stepped away, blasted them with a few puffs of smoke, and then moved the frame back into the box. I had to scoop some confused bees up off the grass but it didn't seem like any harm was done.

Three weeks later and the bees seem to be in great shape. They love their home and are busy building new comb and making more bees. Lately, they've been building new comb on the "empty" frames in the lower box and every day I see more bees exploring the upper box.



The bees permanent home, nestled in the mint.

 My goal is to build a strong hive that will live through the winter. Honey production will have to wait until next year. So far anyway, I feel like we're off to a good start. Hopefully, this will be home, sweet home for a long time to come.

- Alex

Home, Home At Last (Part One)

Today, I begin the tale of an epic journey taken by a colony of bees - from the wilds of Middleton, WI to the urban jungle of Madison - a long, arduous trip of ten whole miles.

On a sunny, Sunday afternoon, I headed to the west side of town, past the little airport and into an area that is somwhere between suburban and slightly rural. There are lots of spots like that around here - farmland that was sold off to developers and turned into communities with names like Golden Prairie Estates. The land still has a country feel to it but the horizon is filled with houses that all look vaguely similar and every yard is cluttered with Fisher Price toys.

The veteran beekeeper who so graciously agreed to sell me some of her bees lives in one of the older communities in this area. Not converted farmland but a long, winding street where every unique house is on about an acre of land. Her lot, in particular, was extremely impressive - with a massive garden, well-chosen trees and plantings, a pond with a duck, a few chickens, and (of course) beehives. The place felt a little bit like paradise and, as much as I wanted to, I felt like it was an intrusion to ask to take pictures.

Most swarms head into a tree.

There are two ways to buy bees - by the pound, in a shoebox sized screen box with a queen in her own, seperate queen box, or already established frames of bees. I was getting the already established kind. Here's how this happens: when a beehive gets "full" of bees, the bees will naturally split themselves into two groups. The queen will leave the hive, taking about 1/2 the workers and the drones with her. This is called a swarm.

The bees that remain, create a new queen and continue on. However, a conscientious beekeeper can intentionally split their hive before the hive swarms on it's own, creating what's called a "nucleus" or "nuc" for short. The beekeeper will then sell the nuc to late-comers like myself. It's a great way for the hobby to pay for itself.

The nuc comes in a "nuc box", which is just temporary housing until you get them into their hive. I called it the condo. My supplier uses cardboard nuc boxes that each hold five, established frames of comb. I was given four frames of "brood comb", which is where the queen lays eggs and the workers feed the babies, and one frame of honey comb so the bees had something to eat.

The bee condo (aka: nuc box)

My new mentor (we became fast friends, bonding over bees, knitting, quilting, and upholstery!) taped the top of the box down and I loaded them into the back of the car. After fumbling around with some twine in an effort to secure the box so it wouldn't bounce around on the way home, I bid goodbye to my new friend and headed home.

I had already prepped the area where the bees would live - in the space that used to be occupied by the rain barrel - so it was just a matter of carrying the box to the spot, setting it down, and opening up their entrance hole.

My dogs were fascinated. I think they could smell the honey and the sound was driving them nuts. The first casualty was my dog Caesar who, in his intense curiousity, ended up stepping on a bee and getting stung on the foot. It gave him the perfect opportunity to limp around acting like it was the end of the world for the remainder of the day.

Caesar was the first casualty.

Lilly was less impressed but felt the need to get involved.

Air vent for the condo

The condo was great - sturdy and perfect for transporting the frames I was given. But, as we all know, cardboard doesn't hold up to rain and we had a couple of doozy thunderstorms over the week that they were in it. After the first rain I realized that I had to cover the condo somehow so I bought a tarp and some twine and went home to fashion an awning over their area. I didn't take any pictures of the finished product because, frankly, it looked like a crazy person's tent but at least it did the trick! (Just to give you a visual, It was staked with a variety of implements including three of those tall, curly tomato stakes, a black plastic fencing stake, and a random assortment of tiki torches.) During the worst thunderstorms, the condo stayed dry and the bees stayed safe. Thank goodness!

In part two of Home, Home At Last, we'll look at the move from the condo to the permenant home - a beautiful western red cedar hive from Legacy Apiaries in Indiana.

- Alex

I'm a Little Buzzed...

Oh lord... get your mind out of the gutter, people! I'm talking about bees again. Seriously, do I talk about much else these days?

Hard at work! (Bee trivia - all worker bees are female!)

Everybody do the bee dance! I got word last night (Sunday) that my bees are nearly ready to come home. The estimate is about nine more days - which is perfect because I'm still waiting for my equipment to show up!!

The woman supplying me my bees has offered to keep them and do some evaluation on the brood frames - these are the wooden frames that the bees build their comb on. She's also kindly said that I could come over and get a lesson on what to look for. I have to say this... as hobbies go, beekeepers are such a generous group of folks! Everyone has been super-helpful and really gone out of their way to ensure that I'm fully informed. Hmmmm... now that I think of it, maybe they're just trying to make sure I don't kill myself (or give beekeepers a bad name!) LOL

Anyway, all the basic stuff I need is ordered. I considered trying to save some money and buy stuff from Craig's List and eBay but, frankly, the convenience of being able to order everything from one place won out.

Here are some of the things I had to buy:

A hat and veil - so bees don't sting my face (this is kind of important)

I'm too sexy for my veil. Too sexy for my veil. So sexy I won't fail...

Gloves - so bees don't sting my hands while I'm poking around in their home.

I defy any bee to sting through that leather.

Tools - because... well... all beekeepers should have hobby-appropriate tools. My favorite tool, by far, is the smoker. There's something weirdly romantic about being able to calm the bees with a bit of smoke.

Just like in the movies! I'm going to smoke bees!

Yeah... it doesn't look like much but it's indispensable.

This is a thing. Not sure I really needed it but it was cheap.

Not sure I couldn't have just bought a brush at the dollar store but...

And, of course, the big-daddy of beekeeping purchases - the hive itself.

So gorgeous!

After much debate and emotional roller-coastering, I decided to go with a standard Langstroth hive. Well, not exactly standard - I'm using the smaller (less popular) model - but standard in that this is the style of hive most people use. In the end, I decided that adding a layer of complexity to my beekeeping was not how I wanted to start out my hobby. And, to be perfectly honest, I met an amazing woman who's been keeping bees for five years and she teaches beekeeping classes. She took all my concerns about Langstroth hives and all my reasons for thinking about other hive types and gave me answers and solutions to remove my worries. So, Langstroth it is. Maybe someday I'll experiment with some alternative hive options and see if I like them better. :)

I'm stoked about the hive I bought. It's made from red cedar (sustainably harvested, of course!) and looks gorgeous. The guys who run Legacy Apiaries seem like really fine people and I'm looking forward to a beautiful, long lasting hive in my yard.

So, stay tuned. I'll try to take some pics when I go meet my babies and, of course, when I bring them home and install them, I'll be sure to give you all a complete update. And, don't worry... I'll get distracted by something else again soon so it really won't be all-bees-all-the-time forever. :)

- Bzzzzzzzzzz Alex

"I'm Covered in Beeeeees!"

Here's a little something to start your week off right:



And, believe it or not, there's actually a reason for this small bit of comedy...


My first time in an official beekeeping suit!

This was me on Saturday!  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I finally donned a bee suit and took a beekeeping class. I know that I've talked about getting bees for a couple of years (post #1 and post #2) but this weekend I took the steps necessary to make it happen this year.

The class was awesome. It was taught by Nathan Clarke of Mad Urban Bees - a unique beekeeping operation in Madison, WI. Nathan has been keeping bees for seven years and moved from hobbiest to entreprenuer last year. He partners with Madisonians to house his hives in backyards around the city. He cares for the bees and harvests the honey and the host families get free honey in exchange for the use of their yards. The also get the benefit of having pollinators living with them... Any gardener knows the value of that alone.

Nathan Clarke - awesome teacher, beekeeper, and entreprenuer.

Nathan sells his honey at a few local, specialty markets as well as through a honey CSA (community supported agriculture). He teaches classes because he believes that everyone should keep bees and help rebuild the bee population. He is building a cool, unique business while being an incredible steward for the earth. I was very honored to be able to learn from him and to have him as a resource.

I learned so much in this class - and I thought I'd done all the reading I needed! As Nathan says, "Ask 10 beekeepers a question and you'll get 13 different answers". As it turns out, beekeeping is a very personal pursuit and everyone has their favorite ways of doing things. However, one of the best things I learned was about how to mitigate mites organically. I was afraid, after all my reading, that I'd end up having to use chemicals to deal with these awful, pesticide-resistent parasites that destroy entire bee colonies. But, as it turns out, there are a number of chemical-free things you can do to help keep them at bay.

The last thing I did this weekend was join the local beekeeping association. Yea! I'm on the path to being a backyard beekeeper for realz!

While it's late in the season for getting bees, I'm still hopeful that I'll be able to get my hands on some to start my hive in 2013. I need to get them established in the next four weeks so the heat is on (so to speak).

Here are some photos from my class. Enjoy!

- Alex the (soon to be) Beekeeper

How the hive is assembled

How the queen is shipped.

My class, suited up and READY!

Opening the brood box to check out the bees.



How to feed the brood.