tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-114686152024-03-07T16:11:28.515-05:00City Bees Blogspot<a href="http://www.citybees.com/">Looking for <strong><u>City Bees San Francisco?</u></strong></a>Phanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11241590817326972746noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11468615.post-19388060204546977712012-05-12T13:30:00.001-04:002012-09-27T19:24:10.961-04:00Beige, I think I'll Paint It Beige...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_8836bfVj7C93s3U-T9Vhmr0Nhu3j98TShFF57fW7FfnnU0Sw7S_Mrrm7K2STKBb74KJqCl54J2yNFEMLB6JwDOH03Dc079VKbMyM8e6Mbqeif7oFwdx152CX1iUCnWzYTwKX/s1600/hivebody-beige.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_8836bfVj7C93s3U-T9Vhmr0Nhu3j98TShFF57fW7FfnnU0Sw7S_Mrrm7K2STKBb74KJqCl54J2yNFEMLB6JwDOH03Dc079VKbMyM8e6Mbqeif7oFwdx152CX1iUCnWzYTwKX/s400/hivebody-beige.jpg" /></a></div>
<p>There is a terrible joke that goes with the title of this post, but there is a less humorous strategy behind the color choice. This year's color for woodenware matches the shade used for <a href="http://www.rubbermaid.com/Assets/images/Product/3747-xlarge.jpg" alt="image of garden shed" target="_blank">Rubbermaid garden sheds</a> and that is no accident. It's a strategem for "hide in plain sight," one of many means a large number of us use to integrate beehives into complex, populated areas without either sowing fear or surrendering to ignorance. I do not feel that my fellow citizens need an "in your face" introduction to beekeeping, and truly believe that behaving in that manner will hurt all of us (<strong>and</strong> the honeybees). But the bees can make major contributions—and knowledgeable beekeepers can continue to learn and grow—in many locations where "out of sight, out of mind" is not an option.</p><p>
This blog has languished for the same reason that urban beekeeping can land in a load of trouble if beekeepers are not careful: lack of equilibrium. Every sustainable habitat has one—a unique combination of opportunities and compromises for life that works across different co-located populations, season after season. Ever since starting as a beekeeper, I have tried to hammer home that anyone who really cares about the bees has to make sure that they are good neighbors through insightful and attentive management. I am gonna yammer on about the beauty of that a bit more.
An example of what I mean: As anyone who ever had to maintain a house knows, water is both a good thing and a bad thing. Water is a basic input of life and health, and a break in service would be a major crisis in most American homes. Water is also insidious, insistent, and a relentless finder of gaps, reservoirs, and interactions with the substances all around us. Water out of place is also an emergency.</p><p>
Living things are like water to the third power: your honeybees are not only pollinators and progenitors, they are constant explorers of the surrounding ecosystem, looking for forage and future home places and water sources and, sometimes, other bees of whom to take advantage. They are dynamic, intelligent in ways of which we continue to learn more each year, and dedicated to the pursuit of that ecological niche that will help their family grow and prosper. This means they may be tempted to swarm in your neighbor's yard, and then move into her/his attic. They might be prefer the water fountain at a park on your block. If they get into a robbing frenzy, the pheromone in the air can lead them to sting unsuspecting creatures. It is your absolute responsibility as a beekeeper to work against any such possibility, and to remediate any situation that develops, whether its your bees or not. In fact, one reason to have urban beekeepers is to make sure that some of them are around to address situations like this that <strong>do</strong> happen with feral colonies. </p><p>
You can now buy a beehive from Williams-Sonoma (with no bees, thank goodness), and there are "services" in most major American cities that will allow you to order a hive with bees in it to be delivered. People think harder about buying birdfeeders, I think.</p><p>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLpK8FDgaAjFL6HWzKgILZtQ14y0CUVdbpZsWc3MSWvVVsTqXkqbFSzPSQOnpJYGi8xvQq1NJd66TfY0xzL3WLj_-ODz6T-GRRe4CQYrBRqYnMYEy8JyoSJ01qk9BtMvEEtPC5/s1600/garrison-street.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLpK8FDgaAjFL6HWzKgILZtQ14y0CUVdbpZsWc3MSWvVVsTqXkqbFSzPSQOnpJYGi8xvQq1NJd66TfY0xzL3WLj_-ODz6T-GRRe4CQYrBRqYnMYEy8JyoSJ01qk9BtMvEEtPC5/s400/garrison-street.jpg" /></a></div>
But people can be crazy cool, too, and I think many are just trying to be on the right side of protecting the pollinators. We were called to a construction site near Nationals Park a couple of weeks ago, and the site supervisor stopped work, and eventually moved us beekeepers around in a front end loader, in order to hive a swarm that had landed on some heavy equipment. ALl the guys on site did everything they could to help. I got a call for a bee tree in Upper NW last week from a guy who was just passing by as a crew took down a dying maple that turned out to have 50,000 bees in it. A beekeeper friend came running to help, another turned up with a pickup, and two others helped me take apart the trunk (chainsaw lessons!) and hive the bees next day. </p><p>
Ask me offline about the Planned Parenthood swarm though!</p><p>
The bees' pursuit of living places and forages is their search for equilibrium, and my efforts to educate DC beekeepers and rescue as many good Apis mellifera genes as possible is mine. Some opportunities always do get away in the complicated, multi-variable natural world. But I think a lot about something called "The Nash Equilibrium," which is a theory that, in multi-player environments (meaning anything from real life) the situation is almost never "winner take all" or "you win, I lose." It means that there are usually multiple points where well-being is optimised, and our job as the cerebellum-rich species around here is to try to identify and get to those. </p><p>
That means making honeybees at home near people who do not necessarily want to know about them, making green spaces flourish even when its a low priority for many members of the community, and making people who generally support beekeeping understand where the amount of time and attention they can afford to share works toward balance and peace for us all.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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(I guess that means that DC is now the owner of yet another chunk of hive gear!) <br />My last visit took place on July 8, just before travel. At that time, I checked that the queen was still laying, gave them that green medium super with a few frames of comb, filled the feeder and hoped for the best. Those hopes were truly fufilled!<br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/090804_lederer_bees.jpg" align="left" width="225" height="300" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="lederer bees eating honey drips between boxes">I also brought cappings and honey to put in the feeder, but decided to take a bit of a look inside since so much time had passed. <br />Here's a confession: even though it had been almost a month since I had even looked at this hive, even though it is a particularly important and privileged colony, it took every bit of self-discipline I had to push forward> You see, it was about 95 degrees F (33 degrees C) by the time I arrived, and I had been stupid enough not to bring any water or socks into which to tuck my jeans! <br />But the reward was great. Sweet, good-tempered bees were present throughout the top box, and by peeking between the frames I could see that every single one was filled with capped honey. And some drone brood. Hmmm.<br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/090804_lederer_comb.jpg" align="left" width="225" height="300" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="lederer capped honey frame">This was the second frame in, even the frame at the edge of the box was completely drawn and filled. Somewhat worrisome: the third frame in had a mass of drone brood, and nothing but drone brood. This was a concern because I have dealt with three unreliable young queens this year, and even though the weather is frying-hot at this time of year, we really have to be thinking about the upcoming winter and whether the queen who is in place will be producing that big batch of fat, healthy cold weather bees we need to take us from October through the end of January (at least). <br />So once again I had the rare privilege of hefting an 80-pound (about 30 kg) box full of bees and honey gently to its resting place on an inverted telescoping hive cover. <em>Sigh.</em> Luckily, even though it is August, the bees were in no mood to get sting-y and I had enough coordination to keep from squishing anyone. <br />Also luckily, the first deep frame I pulled from the top brood box was full full full of lovely flat-capped worker brood: mom just laid all those drones in some frame that was warped when I transferred it over before vacation!<br />So I put back the frame, cleaned up those blobs of honey on top of the whole box (the ones that the girls above are eating) and reserved them to give back, replaced the honey medium, added the extracted box, replaced the hive top feeder, filled it with the blobs I had scraped and several pounds of cappings and honey, and closed up for a while. If I play it right, I can let the girls clean up for about a week, come back to get the now-clean wax (I use it for making soap), and begin the heavy feeding regime that helps keep the hive happy and ready for the season ahead.<br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/090804_lederer2.jpg" align="left" width="225" height="300" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="lederer hive after visit">Here's the newly-extended hive! Let's be honest: I've been worried how this season would go–anxious about potyential vandalism, about inadvertent interactions with the public, about being able to make the bees relevant to the whole gardening programme. The first two issues have simply not applied: the bees have a perfect location with the most desired flight path heading right over a field of corn, straight at a tree-lined creek. There are visual barriers and lines of trees and shrubs that keep anyone who is not already looking for the hive from stumbling across it. <br />I'd like to do better for the people–especially the kids–who use that garden, and my usual ideas (a soap making seminar, a presentation with an observation hive) are not bad, but they are not really tuned in to the garden's specifics. So there is room for growth there, too.<div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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It was also quite a show.<br />Before any beginner hive-minders could say, "Um, what?" middle-aged beekeepers sprang into action! Some ran for ladders, some ran for hive parts, one grabbed (I kid you not) a small saw, a 50 foot rope, and a bedsheet from out of his car (just happens to keep them around: don't you?) Another started dinging two pieces of metal together: an old wives' tale says you can get a swarm to settle if you bang pans.<br />A father of three soon sprang 20-feet-plus up the side of that tree, from which he sawed off a limb with a large swarm on it. Compatriots caught the branch in the sheet, and then set the hive entrance near the swarm. David, the tree climber, was down in a flash, and picked the queen out of that mess of bees and saw her inside. Swarm hived!<br />Four years and a bit later, I still cannot pick out the queen from a loose mass of bees, but I nonetheless hardly recognize myself. I've caught three swarms this Spring: one mine (*sigh*), one at the White House, and this one.<br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/090608_handinswarm.jpg" width="225" height="300" alt="hand in swarm" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" />I actually object to the title for this post, but it is hard to find a better way to put it. Compared to the story above, the craziest thing about my adventure was a 20-mile trip across metro Washington at rush hour, though the decision was based merely on a non-expert's assessment that a whole lot of bees were hanging out in a convenient bunch right at eye level.<br />The thing about swarm-catching is that non-beekeepers always say the same few things:<ol><li>It's definitely bees;</li><li>There are an enormous number; and</li><li>The safety of the known universe is at stake</li></ol><br />The usual case is that it is either yellowjackets, there are only a handful of bees, or they have disappeared by the time you arrive.<br />In spite of this track record, why did I drive to Reston on June 8 at 5 PM with two sets of bee catching gear (a nuc box for a small swarm, a deep hive body and all the trimmings in case the size was as-billed)? Three more things:<ol><li>Karen, the woman who called me, did not seem like the freaky sort, and she had gone to the trouble of calling over to Colvin Run Mill, where my Virginia bees live, to find a beekeeper just because she remembered the apiary there;</li><li>Karen also asked her husband not to call an exterminator before she tried to find a beekeeper in order to give these critters a chance; and</li><li>She swore that the swarm, whatever it's size, was hanging on the lower limb of a really young Maple tree in her front yard, so no ladders, drywall removal, or other shenanigans were required.</li></ol><br />The picture of me, above, shows my ungloved hand, near my unveiled head, featuring an uncensored smile, next to a honking huge swarm of bees that somebody out there must sorely miss! I was able to pull my car up within 6 feet of the swarm, which would be considered "shoulder length" if we were all at the hair salon!<br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/090608_capture.jpg" heigh="225" width="300" alt="grabbing the swarm" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" />Here you can see the whole set up: there I am with my bed sheet on the ground, my clippers in hand, my hive body at the ready. Yes, I had most of the stuff in the car before Karen even made the call. I was hoping that, since it was after 6 PM by now, that most of the bees had returned from the field. I sat around for a while making sure that everyone was heading into my hive body, but it turns out that another couple thousand bees returned later, and I came back the next day to get them, too.<br />Because my two new Monastery hives are not doing well, I thought about bringing these bees all the way into the city, but I decided that they belonged out at Colvin Run Mill, all things considered. When I got them there, I peeked inside to be sure all was well, and the bees were already festooning all over the place, beginning to draw comb and make themselves at home. When I brought their laggard sisters the next day, I also brought another hive body and some feeders to help them along with all that wax production. <br />All in all, I would have done better to leave my capture hive out there that first night, returning back during early early rush hour the next day to ensure that I got more of the bees all at once. I feel sorry for the scouts that got left behind, and hope they managed to wrangle their way back into their home hive, or some other. <br />And the back of the car in the picture above still houses a small saw, pruners, a bed sheet, and a transportation strap. Just in case, you know?<div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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Thanks, Charlie!</p><p>Before I go on, this needs to be said: everything touching on that particular place tends to get wrapped up in spotlights and drama, and there is a real danger of feeling self-important or personally special just because of that place and this time. When I share this with you, please keep in mind what this is really about: the bees, and their way of both supporting our environment and inspiring great wonder in those who look after them. I feel that we all owe Charlie a whole lot, and I want him and the Obamas (remember, it's their back yard right now!) and Sam Kass (whose garden project makes it all possible) to get their credit, too.</p><p>But I bet you want a look in, too.</p><p><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/wh_hive_scaff.jpg" alt="how to work first hive" align="left" vspace="4" width="300" height="436" hspace="4" />With apologies for the rough crop of the photo, this is how you work the White House bees: on a board set on two sawhorses. It helps to coordinate your movements and to balance anything you are up to with the other person up there! It is a surprisingly stable solution, with the plus that the bees that fall during a manipulation don't end up getting stomped, and you don't have to tuck in your socks to keep them from crawling up a pants leg! The groovy piece of woodenware (the one shielded by some plexiglass near the holes) is a vent of Charlie's own design. The plexi helps moderate high winds, whether natural or from helicopters. One unforeseen benefit of the hive scaffold: it is really easy to look up through the screened bottom board to see where/how tight the bees are clustering.</p><p>As you might imagine, a couple of key concerns for bees in this location are swarm control, and monitoring temperament. Our visit today was mostly around the former: to keep tabs on how they are building up and reverse the hive bodies if that seemed useful, and to make sure there were enough supers in place for the current and soon-to-be-upcoming nectar flow.</p><p><a href="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/wh_bees_4-17-09_queen.jpg" target="_blank" alt="somewhat larger picture"><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/wh_bees_4-17-09_queen_sm.jpg" alt="First Queen Bee" align="left" vspace="4" width="300" height="236" hspace="4" /></a>To my mind, Charlie's queen is a good one for the job. The bees were extremely peaceful and gentle, and her pattern was OK, though not gangbusters. In a situation like this, I am all for the happy medium in terms of brood production! The drone brood was in the right place, she seemed to lay more from right to left than in a spiral starting in the center of the frame. You can click that picture of her for a slightly larger version.</p><p>When we opened some drone brood, there was a minimal presence of varroa. There were no k-wings and I saw no mites on bees. The hive has three medium supers with drawn comb, there is a fair amount of nectar in the first two, so Charlie is out ahead of this one. They had put aside some honey down below, but I am seeing that at home, too. Nice white cappings.</p><p><a href="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/wh_bees_4-17-09_swarm.jpg" target="_blank" alt="somewhat larger picture"><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/wh_bees_4-17-09_swarm_sm.jpg" alt="small swarm" align="left" vspace="4" width="300" height="225" hspace="4" /></a>Finally, as I was saying goodbye, Charlie got a call about<em>another</em> swarm at the north gate! I said I would take it if accessible. So we checked it out. It was clearly a second swarm, probably thrown off of the same nearby hive that produced the famous one last week: about 2 pounds (1 kg) of bees (image is clickable for a better view). Since I am giving away a split this weekend, I thought my friend might want this queen to go with it!</p><p>Charlie got me a box, poked some holes in it with a nail, and we borrowed some bolt cutters from the carpentry shop to lop a small limb off the swarm bush. Sorry bush! He sealed the box shut with blue gaffer's tape, and in a supporting page (a bit later) I will tell you about my hapless adventures in hiving it when I got home.</p><p>So once again, thank you for including me in this adventure, for doing such a wonderful thing, and for taking care of those girls the way any one of us would hope our own home hives get tended. I hope you get as much help as you could possibly need in helping them thrive so close to the heart of our nation!</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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But it is Spring for my bees, too, and it is time to stop being dazzled by the limelight and to get back to the sunshine of my own beeyard (once the Sun does come back again).<br /><p>Basically, I've got a lot more apiaries to visit this year, though not the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW (Charlie might have me over at some point, if some skilled free labor is ever necessary). </p>This Spring, I've come out as a beekeeper to the Office of the Mayor and to my City Council representative, figuring this is the year to make beekeeping more legally welcome in the city. In response, the District of Columbia has invited me to place hives in two Parks Department-run youth gardens, and USDA has opened some doors at the National Arboretum. Two other beekeepers will take one of the DC gardens, a mentee and one of the staff at the Arboretum will (tentatively) have bees there, and I will cover the other D.C. park. We'll be placing hives and giving presentations to Summer camps. This is <em>in addition</em> to the sessions at Colvin Run Mill, where I am planning to put two new hives from packages.<br /><p><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/observation001_scale.jpg" alt="observation hive" align="left" vspace="4" width="289" height="386" hspace="4" /><br />All of this means that there will be <em><strong>lots</strong></em> of summmer camps, at four locations, plus whatever comes up along the way. So I finally bought my own Observation Hive, this one from <a href="http://www.betterbee.com/products.asp?dept=538" alt="betterbee purchase info" target="_blank">Betterbee.</a></p><p></p>I have borrowed many observation hives in my day, and think that <a href="http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/prodinfo.asp?number=U501" target="_blank" alt="link to purchase info">MaryEllen's Ulster hive</a> has been the best so far. I wish it could show more than one frame, however, and I am not really looking for a hive where the bees can live all season, so I decided to try this format. Most observation hives require you to slip a frame of bees into the equivalent of glass envelope, and most of the time some bees get squished. Inevitably, the smartest, nicest kid you present to points this out, too.<p></p>This observation hive works more like a narrow glass closet, and shows two frames. Let's see how it goes. Right now I am cursing the fact that I have one more complicated thing to paint.<br /><p>The hive bodies you see way above will house the nucs that will begin hives on the roof of the Fairmont Hotel here. Those girls are due on April 23rd.</p>I was going to get packages for the hotel, too, but my go-to-guy, Larry, ended up with a more successful nuc progam than predicted this Spring, and I thought they offered a better chance for early success, and a partial harvest, which seemed a big goal for the hotel. The chefs at the Fairmont (whom I will be teaching-by-doing) seem a little hesitant all of a sudden, but I am willing to take their bees and this cute-i-fied equipment if they bail out.<br /><p>But let's hope they don't read this blog, right?</p>My bees have wintered well: I lost just the nuc which was an experiment. Six mature hives survived.It seems to be a trend here to try to winter nucs, and accomplished beekeepers do it, but I'm missing the point, I guess. And missing those lost bees.Three of my hives are monsters that need to be split, and there are three OK ones. I'm giving one split to Joe at the monastery, because he lost some girls this winter and he is a good beekeeper.<br /><p>Everyone has their first supers on, there have been several hive operations this Spring, and I will post more details on a supporting page in a bit. With the order of three nucs and five packages to cover all this, I will have 10 hives in my own apiaries, two in a city park, and four being managed by mentees.</p>I believe I have lost my mind.<br /><p>This is the year for urban beekeeping, though, and as fearful as I am of taking a public role, there has never been so much public support, interest from new beekeepers, emphasis on "greening" the city, and coverage in the press (even <a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=urban-beekeeping-pollinators" target="_blank" alt="scientific american article link">a sidebar on city beekeeping in Scientific American</a>!) I might get shut down, at least downtown, but I have the chance to reach thousands of childrens (and their parents) before that happens, if it happens. My friends in the 'burbs will help me find a place to hide out, if necessary! Please keep my girls in your thoughts as we begin this new phase of adventure.</p>Please keep all of us, famous, shy, winged, walking, and looking forward to the Sun, in your thoughts as this important season arrives.<div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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The simple answer is that I still manage six live hives, and everyone that went into the winter came out again: no small victory! The harder-to-explain answer is that I have never been less sure of myself as a beekeeper. The picture above shows Wilde, the roof hive that worried the most during my first year. Right now, that hive is on track to deliver perhaps 200 lbs of honey when we harvest in 2 to 3 weeks. That equals last year's entire harvest. You can see a light colored line across the middle of the hive. That's a queen excluder, my first year using them. Below the excluder is the brood nest of over 60,000 bees, but a really narrow chimney of a brood nest. There is almost as much honey below as above!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/080424_tulipoplar.jpg" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="300" height="220" alt="tulip poplar at congressional cemetery">I can tell you one story after another about this year, each one ending with "In about a week when I check back in I hope to be able to give you an answer." This picture was taken on April 24, the date of the first tulip poplar bloom in my neighborhood, and the official beginning of the one great flow of nectar goodness that the bees enjoy each year. It also marks the last time I saw eggs in any of my in-town hives. Let me show you what I mean...<br /><br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/080521_broodquest.jpg" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="300" height="220" alt="3-5 day old brood no eggs">I'm wearing even stronger glasses this year, so at first I thought my eyes were failing me, and I used my camera to take close ups of the frames — back at my desk I can look at them at high resolution and often see things that get by me in real life. The camera only saw what I did, though: over and over again, I found only 3+ day old brood in the city colonies. <em>All four colonies.</em> <br /><br />I need to see eggs to see if the queens are doing well, and to figure out whether the bees need space, and where they need it (Brood nest? Honey super?). It makes no sense to come back time after time and see older brood, but never the new stuff. <br /><br /><strong>Warning: Geeky Beekeeper Speculation Ensues</strong> <br /><br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/080521_freshpollen.jpg" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="300" height="220" alt="fresh pollen stores">MaryEllen hazarded an explanation based on our weird Winter and the pattern of Spring weather: the bees came through strong and populous because the cold weather was not that cold, and they ate alot of the stored pollen. She knows that I have never supplemented pollen (<a href="http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/prodinfo.asp?number=618" target="_blank" alt="link to pollen supplier">yes, kids, you can actually buy pollen supplements</a>), because we are basically awash in it, and for the first time I had actually culled pollen bound frames in the autumn. This picture shows brand-spanking new pollen recently stored when I opened the hive. In other words, the only pollen I found was so new that it appears true that the bees had run through everything they had until very recently.<br /><br />We had a very rainy pattern this Spring. Days of rain and cold, followed by a brief sunny opening when a person could visit a hive. MaryEllen pointed out that, in times of pollen dearth, the bees can cannibalize eggs in order to focus what they have on older larvae. They have more invested in the older brood, and perhaps my pattern of inspecting the hives so closely reflected the intervals when weather kept the forager bees inside that I never had the hive open on a day when the queen had the opportunity to lay some new eggs that had a chance to be fed. <br /><br />I was not really buying this: I was sure I'd messed something up. But I have now seen no eggs in two months, yet I continue to see capped brood and new bees, so there's no other explanation I can figure. Other beekeepers who have no reason to pity me have found this theory plausible! <br /><br /><strong>Swarms: The Big Story of 2008</strong><br /><br />Even if "The Mystery of the Missing Eggs" had not cost me some sleep, my yearly inability to prevent swarms would. But then again, it happened to everyone this year. Everyone's bees came through the Winter strong, got to feeling crowded when trapped inside, hit an all-at-once flow of all the early, mid, and late-season nectar sources, and decided to swarm.<br /><br />The beekeepers of this region have, as a group, made the best effort in decades to re-establish the feral honeybee population, as involuntary as it was. <br /><br />But I had sworn this year to be a better beekeeper: to keep better records, to do all the reversals and frame rearrangements and overall space management necessary to keep the girls home and safe, and I failed. I did my first reversals — re-ordering the boxes so that there was always a bunch of extra brood space above the queen's location — in March, my first checkerboardings (inserting empty comb into crowded brood areas) in April. It basically did not matter.<br /><br />Three of my six hives swarmed, mostly after the nectar flow, though. The big hive pictured above was stopped only when I inadvertently made a split with the old queen in it. This was unfortunate because I was intending to make a new colony to house a locally bred queen I had just purchased from a beekeeper I really like. (Sorry, Leigh: I could not bring myself to tell you any other way). I had reached into that monster hive to grab just 5 varied frames from the over 60 that were in there, and somehow I missed the fact that I had grabbed the queen on one of them. The workers in the new nuc killed my new local queen in the introduction cage. I am such an oaf, so irresponsible, in such a rush. It was just terrible to see how I had sentenced her to die in fear. And she was such a carefully produced monarch from a thoughtful fellow beekeeper!<br /><br />It appears, however, that by taking the old queen, I stopped the Wilde colony from swarming like practically everybody else did, so there will be a harvest this year. Wouldn't it be nice if some forethought and care had something to do with it?<br /><br />This is enough updating for now. I will try to tell you more about the monastery, mill, and mentee colonies that have also needed some care this year. This post might not measure up any more than I feel my beekeeping does, but I hope that those of you who were worried aren't anymore, and those of you who are rooting for the bees are only working harder at it in the light of my mistakes!<div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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From what goes on in face-to-face bee presentations and courses, this means that many, many others are too shy to step forward.<br /><br />Well, you should, because you have friends out here, friends who are deeply committed to helping you and our six-legged (five-eyed, four winged…)friends.<br /><br />To provide more immediate help, I want to mention some common threads that are emerging this year:<ol><li>Siting an urban or suburban hive;</li><li>Choosing a race of bees;</li><li>What about Top Bar Hives (TBH)?</li><li>Finding local help; and</li><li>What about the neighbors?</li></ol><br />Before taking any of my advice, though, you should do two things: buy a good book (<a href="http://www.google.com/products?q=diane+sammataro+beekeeper+handbook&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS210US211&um=1" ALT="THE BEEKEEPERS HANDBOOK BY DIANE SAMMATARO" target="_blank">here's a good one</a>, but it could use an update), and meet a local beekeeper. When it all comes together in front of the hive, all the decisions will be yours, but you should expose yourself to as many sources of info as possible to make your choices as good as they can be(e).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1. Siting Your Hive</span><br />The place you put your bees' home is an important question for <span style="font-style:italic;">everyone,</span> but beekeepers in crowded locations face special extra concerns. The idyllic bee location is in a spot with strong morning sun, a bit of afternoon shade, facing South, near water, but not in a moist place. It should be out of sight of well-travelled roads or paths, and should not be in the same place as cows, horses, or other critters who can knock hives over or be trapped and stung up. Read your book to learn more about these particulars…<br /><br />But, for the urban beekeeper, compromise is more likely. But be(e) of good cheer: some studies show that <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4621184.stm" alt="french study of urban hives" target="_blank">urban bees are thriving</a> when their rural or even suburban sisters are struggling a bit more.<br /><br />Your priorities may differ, but mine go like this: <ul><li>determining whether bees can live in my neighborhood</li><li>keeping bees and people from ruining each others' day</li><li>ensuring that my access to the bees is safe for me; and</li><li>perfecting (as well as I can) the location that meets the criteria above.</li></ul><br />Can bees live with you? Almost certainly: people raise bees from the hot roofs of Texas to the cold plains of Alberta and beyond. So climate is probably not a problem. But it might not be legal to keep bees in your community: in many places it isn't. My commitment to the bees is such that I don't worry much about this, and am working to change laws and minds. In some places, especially those where Africanized bees are a real threat, you might not take it so casually. So if beekeeping is a shady business where you are, take precautions to stay below the radar, and try to understand why before moving forward. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/071227_decemberbefore.jpg" align="left" alt="bees on roof" height="300" width="225">Staying on the down-low plays into my next point: find a place where your bees cannot be seen easily from public pathways or roads if at all possible. Vandalism (and theft!) are major sources of bee losses. Consider investing in potted shrubs or privacy fencing, if possible. If you have no place on your property which is suitably private, I strongly suggest finding an "outyard" nearby. Beekeeping clubs get calls all the time from people seeking bees for their gardens or parks, etc. I have bees in two such locations, and they are a real resource when I have to manage the roof girls.<br /><br />Next, sun versus shade, and the direction in which the hive faces are usually not 100% in control of the urban dweller, and your bees can cope. Your first concerns, the safety of passersby and the security of your bees, will probably limit this choice, anyway. I suggest that ANY sun is better than none, and situating a hive entrance AWAY from the wind can help with a lack of sun. My home hives don't have a southern exposure, and they are fine. If you think your site will be unusually hot, consider available cooling options (provide shade artificially, or use a <a href="http://www.beecoolventilators.com/" alt="link to bee cool site" target="_blank">Bee-Cool</a>, for instance).<br /><br />Finally, it can be useful to get your bees to fly upwards as soon as possible—above person height—by placing the hive entrance opposite (maybe 2 feet away from) a fence or a hedge or some other vertical obstacle. The less time the bees spent below 6 feet (or two meters) the better. By the way, getting the bees to fly high is one reason why balconies and porches, as well as your roof, can make great hive locations. Just remember, you have to be able to get to the location while carrying many pounds of tools and supplies (like sugar water). While you are there you will be manipulating woodenware and (eventually) carrying away 60-90 pound honey supers!<br /><br />Some of you may wonder why I did not put anything in here about placing certain plants around the hives, or ensuring that your yard has a garden, etc. The reason is this, oh urban dweller: your bees will forage for 2 miles in every direction, making millions of trips to hundreds of thousands of plants. What you can plant in your city yard could not support one tenth of a hive. When you place your hive(s) in your city backyard, you are placing a bet on the viability of your entire environment, and the planting choices of your neighbors, your city park managers, and the people who water the tree boxes along the streets. Gulp! But it seems to work.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. What Race of Bees?</span><br />There are lots of races, but there are only two I know much about: Italians and Carniolans. If there was a third, it might be "local," but those are genetics I am only just learning about, and you should, too. I've heard good and bad things about Russian stock, but that's all hearsay, and I can give a shout out to this one beekeeper in Philadelphia who keeps Buckfast bees, but this is what I have to say.<br /><br />Italian bees seem to require higher temperatures in order to work than the Carnies, and they need to winter over in larger numbers, but they are less likely to swarm and they are really gentle. A good starter bee. They are easy to find.<br /><br />But I have had Carnies, too, and they have done well. They come from Eastern Europe, where growing seasons are short and temperatures are lower. Because the weather is easier here, the bees tend to build up large populations and, therefore, to swarm. This can be tricky for a new beekeeper to avoid. <br /><br />Now, there are other things beyond race to think about. You can get hygienic stock: I have worked with Hygienic Kona Carniolans, with good luck. Hygienic bees have been bred to be clean freaks, and get some disease resistance that way. Keep in mind, the time that the bees spend cleaning is not used for foraging or raising young, etc. That means somewhat less productive hives. <br /><br />Finally, if you can possibly get locally bred bees, whatever your locale might be, that is the best thing to do. As Colony Collapse Disorder ravages the beekeeping business, regions that are able to produce stock adapted to their place and plants and weather will also be ensuring that the biosphere will have a surviving stock of bees to keep things blooming.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3. Top Bar Hives (TBH)</span><br />This section will be much shorter. New beekeepers seem to be very into the idea of TBH this year, and it worries me. I am intrigued by TBH and am interested in experimenting, but thus far have found that beginning beekeepers need immediate, practical access to other experienced beekeepers in order to get themselves up to speed and their hives up to stable population and health. There is MUCH less help around for TBH, and the format is native to places that are extremely different from where I live. Since having the bees here, I have continuously called on other beekeepers to borrow some equipment, to get advice, or to compare notes. <br /><br />That being said, there are helpful people online, and maybe near you. <a href="http://www.bushfarms.com/beestopbarhives.htm" alt="link to TBH expert" target="_blank">Michael Bush</a> at Bush Bee Farms has helped alot of people, and knows much more about TBH. Folks, I'm not sure why all you have such an interest, though. You can do organic beekeeping in a Langstroth hive, after all, and the girls are fascinating in any housing arrangement.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">4. Finding Local Help</span><br />If there is one law of beekeeping, it should be this: no one should get their hands on bees before spending time with a beekeeper. Hey, I was a smarty-pants college kid with good homework habits once myself, and I can assure you that book learning is no great comfort the first time you go about installing a package of bees. Then in the panicky weeks after, when I assure you that at least 60% of new beekeepers become convinced that they have killed their queen, you will want someone to call. Or several someones. And maybe someone to come over and have a look (and a beer). Folks: this is the truth I am telling you.<br /><br />So find a local club. Take a local short course: they are cheap or free, will hook you up with local bee suppliers, and will give you a basic clue about what to expect in your first year and all the seasons to follow. I don't care if you are shy (believe it or not, I'm an introvert). Just go. And try to be brave enough to ask questions: it is an incredible public service to the many people who will be more shy than you. <br /><br />How to find a local club? In the US, I would check out the links at the Eastern Apicultural Society (<a href="http://www.easternapiculture.org/links/state.shtml" alt="eas link" target="_blank">www.easternapiculture.org</a>) if you live east of the Mississippi. In the west, you should google your state beekeeper association. Anywhere else in the world, check out <a href="http://www.beehoo.com/f_the.php?theme=Association" alt="directory" target="_blank">www.beehoo.com</a>. If you run into trouble, ask me for a hand.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">5. What About the Neighbors?</span><br />This was the single most worrisome topic for me, and rightly so. I decided not to tell anyone, because my bees were a minority of the stinging insects on my block, they were placed responsibly, and I was worried that in these freaky times that people would carry on like, well, freaks.<br /><br />In my case, I needn't have worried. I mostly got found out, there were no problems (so far). Right now, the amount of news coverage devoted to the plight of the honeybee is definitely a support for your decision to keep bees. If you know your neighbors well, and think you might get a good collaboration/cooperation going with them on this, it might be worth the risk of telling them. In my experience though, more than 50% of the public absolutely believes that they are the 1 in 10,000 who will go into anaphylactic shock if stung by a honeybee. They have probably never even been landed on by a honeybee, but have had some nasty past pas-de-deux with a yellowjacket. It takes a lot of talking and a good personal relationship to get beyond that kind of fear. At this point, I am very glad to have outyards available to me, should I need to move my bees (and yes, moving bees is possible—it happens all the time). If you are worried about the neighbors, consider arranging an outyard. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Finally, the End</span><br />This got very long, and very bossy, it seems. I hope it did not dissuade you. One of the things about beekeeping is that there can suddenly be alot to know, and you can feel overwhelmed.<br /><br />But you DON'T need to know everything at once, and if you work alongside another person who has been through many of these things, it makes sense rather than seeming like a dreadfully long list of things to memorize. <br /><br />Even this long post is really a series of "if then, then this/if not, then that." It can be dizzying. <br /><br />But your case will be rather more specific, and special to you. Your honeybees will integrate in an important and beautiful way with that particular environment around you, and you will get a wonderful chance to learn its ins-and-outs. For anyone like me to spin out a series of guesses about how things might work out for you is necessarily confusing and ugly. But your honeybees will be anything but ugly: golden angels with a world made out of flowers and a wake made up of growth.<div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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You can very easily kill the creatures about whom you are curious. <br /><br />One cheap-and-cheerful way to see if they are still alive, whether they are near the end of their seasonal stores, and whether a more intrusive visit is warranted is to knock and to listen. George says he can tell by the type of sound that the queen is OK, and maybe a few other things. Myself, I just listen to hear whether there are a lot of bees, and where they are positioned in the hive.<br /><br />If I knock, and very clearly hear a big BUZZ, I know there are a lot of bees in there. I can also tell whether my ear is placed somewhere near their winter cluster, where the bees are all keeping each other warm. The position of that cluster tells me where the bees are with respect to their food supply. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/080126_wildeafter.jpg" width="300" height="225" align="left" alt="bees eating fondant in Wilde">When I put them to bed in the autumn, all my bees were in the bottom box of the stack, and I had placed supers full of honey above them. Because I am the worrying kind, I also put additional food above that. This is a picture of the Wilde bees chewing on some fondant I had put on earlier. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.tonitoni.org/images/080126_birdpoo.jpg" width="300" height="225" align="left" alt="bird poop on the roof">The Wilde hive had been worrying me for a while. There wasn't as much action out the front door as I like, and my knocking seemed to indicate very few bees in any one box, with the majority, perhaps, very high up! I did not see alot of dead bees around, but the presence of some concentrated crow poop meant that the birds may have finally taken to cleaning up departed buzzers, and I could have dying bees without a lot of visual clues.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong about this: I am very pleased to see this kind of interaction between species. I know you all might expect me to be horrified that anything would eat honeybees, but when you have 50,000 of the girls going into the winter, there are going to be some dead bees around later. If other critters can turn this grim reality into sustenance, this means that the bees have done yet another service to the health of the world. <br /><br />When knocking on the hives got me to thinking something might be wrong, I decided to do something that no one recommends: opening up a hive just before New Years Eve.<br /><br />The very first picture above shows you what I found: almost the entire cluster was in the top box. Bees eat their way up all winter: they will not usually go back down for food they overlooked. This means that all those upper-level bees were facing starvation.<br /><br />Having lost bees in the past, I can tell you that there is some comfort in knowing that you cannot control every force in nature. Disease will sometimes beat you. But I can also tell you this: I will have a hard time sleeping the day that my bees starve on my watch. Disease is tricky, but food is easy. <br /><br />I don't have many more pictures from inside Wilde that day. It was only 47 degrees F, right at the edge of feasibility, and I needed to get in and out quickly. This is what I found...<br /><br />The Wilde colony was clustering ABOVE its honey supply. Probably because I had fed so vigorously, they seem to have stored food all throughout the brood area on the warmer days. Bees have a hard time clustering over full cells of stores: it takes extra energy to warm up the diluted fondant, and it creates gaps between the shivering bees. My theory is that on cold days, they moved up over capped or empty cells, and clustered there. <br /><br />My job was, therefore, to put that top box (and the one directly under it, which also held a bunch of bees) on the bottom of the stack, and move the honey bound boxes back up above. In other words, totally disassemble a winter beehive, reshuffle the boxes, and re-stack them. And a deep full of stores weighs a ton, my friends. Why do I <em>*always*</em> end up stacking an 80 pound full deep box on top of all the mediums? Is Mother Nature <em>that</em> committed to building my upper body strength?<br /><br />And that really is the whole story. I was paying attention, thank goodness. The weather cooperated a little, as well, and with a little exertion and a few curse words, the bees got another chance.<div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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</script></div>Phanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11241590817326972746noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11468615.post-72250008948912083272007-12-01T13:16:00.000-05:002007-12-29T16:13:50.173-05:00Sunshine in Late Autumn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTZLT-xLyukf4kk-ha8oWggs6sTvI84DJWhXoTLH8GfzFsQgVSirYDjhxj25OGfQ54GqqEZDBgE9u3KeHRLl5BPeiusUpf3RfVo1jfG2Rnq-aTV1C16CBoiTIwgyQLLDhi6FR/s1600-h/071116_thankyou_short.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTZLT-xLyukf4kk-ha8oWggs6sTvI84DJWhXoTLH8GfzFsQgVSirYDjhxj25OGfQ54GqqEZDBgE9u3KeHRLl5BPeiusUpf3RfVo1jfG2Rnq-aTV1C16CBoiTIwgyQLLDhi6FR/s400/071116_thankyou_short.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149492524283437538" /></a>This is officially the "holiday season" around here, a time about which I am somewhat skeptical, but I have already received a terrific gift! <br /><br />In mid-November, a local elementary school asked me to give a last-minute presentation about honeybees to the whole first grade. I cringed a little: the month had been full of talks to garden clubs, a suburban 3rd grade, a church fair, and … well, you get the idea. I was tired, temperatures were getting lower and lower each day, and the bees were not in a good place to recover from late-season mistakes. So, of course, I agreed to do it. They gave me a late afternoon time slot, agreed to do it bees-or-no-bees, and I began to prepare. Again.<br /><br />I like to bring an observation colony to school presentations, but late November is not usually an appropriate time. Though the presence of the bees immediately focuses kids' attention, spurs more detailed and insightful questions, and demonstrates concepts in real life, it is awfully cold for opening hives, and it is foolish to even consider bringing a queen along: the workers can't replace her now that all the drones are gone! So I watched the temperatures, and we got to over 60 degrees. I packed up a deep frame of broodnest (without much brood) and a medium frame of honey (nicely full and capped), and took my borrowed observation hive to school.<br /><br />Where I immediately broke one pane of glass with my car door upon arrival! <br /><br />But I am finally becoming a true beekeeper, folks! I now travel with pliers and glue and old bed sheets and thumbtacks and window screen and, most importantly in this case, duct tape and printer paper to cover over the cracks. Several worker bees got out, but this time the school was less than two miles from my house, so I know that the girls were able to get home. <br /><br />In case you were wondering, my husband chronically despairs over the condition of my car nowadays.<br /><br />So, after arriving with two deep boxes, as well as a bottom board and telecover, and a skep, and bee-pollinated fruits and veggies (including a ten pound pumpkin), and honey samples, and gummy bears (they are coated with beeswax, if you want to use that gimmick yourself someday), and hive tools, and a smoker with fuel, and some handouts, I got to work.<br /><br />We were scheduled to be together for 45 minutes, but in what seemed a short while I started losing my train of thought. The kids' attention was waning, too, so it seemed to be a lackluster session. There just wasn't enough bee passion in me to make it through November! At that point, however, one of the teachers mentioned that we had been talking about bees for an hour and a half, and the kids needed to get ready to go home.<br /><br />Okay, then!<br /><br />As we began the laborious process of packing my car up, I brought the observation colony back outside — and groups of parents-picking-up and children-going-home quickly gathered around. No one, it seems, can resist a close look at a honeybee. There were lots of questions, but before very long the first-graders were all about, and I let them answer most of the queries. Way to warm a beekeeper's heart, kids! <br /><br />After 20 minutes or so, the bees really needed to get home, and I really needed to get horizontal, so we left. And that, apparently, was that.<br /><br />Except a couple of weeks later, one of the teachers left a <a href="http://www.tonitoni.org/photos24.html" target="_blank" alt="page with scrolling image of thank you from kids">thank-you scroll</a> on my doorstep. If you click on the link, you will get a new window containing my prideful, precious presentation of their lovely gift. My husband and I hung it just inside the front door, ensuring that everyone who visits us would be required to look. :-) <br /><br />Rock on, first graders! I hope to see you next November, too.<div class="blogger-post-footer">© 2007 Duck Defense League
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