John's swarm

Just helped hive a swarm in Potrero. 1 million gay people from all over the world can't get me to walk one block from my apartment to join the party. But a swarm of bees will get me off the couch and into the bee suit in ten seconds flat.

My friend John called to ask what to do, his bees swarmed into the neighbor's apple tree.  I raced right over with a box and my suit.  The swarm was easy, it was on a low branch and John already had a ladder set up beneath it.  Ill I had to do was shake it into the cardboard box and dump them into their new home. 

He has access to a very cool piece of property behind his house that actually belongs to CalTran.  There is a buffer on either side of the freeway made up of weed trees and giant blackberry patches.  He cleared his out and put in a bunch of raised beds for vegetables and planted fruit trees.  Last year he tried beekeeping but his hive died.  This year his hive swarmed and now he has two!

red and black queen

We figured if the sun stays out long enough today we will be pulling honey frames out of the beehives and harvesting it all weekend.  We figured wrong.

No Honey. Bees are on strike. Each hive has its own issues and demands. None include giving us any extra honey. But we did find a red queen who is making blond and redheaded bees. And then a black queen who is laying dark black and gray bees. Wish I had the camera with me.

The Small Swarm and the School Yard Bees are not really thriving.  We could not find a queen  but it seemed like there was larvae.  The populations seem to be dwindling.  I did not smell or see foulbrood.  Maybe the old queens are just not laying well and they will make a new queen.  

The Split is doing OK after we treated them with antibiotics, but we would have liked to add a few frames of brood and nurse bees to boost the population to get them going.  Unfortunately, none of the other colonies had anything to spare.  We also realized that we should have pulled the capped honey frames out of the Split before we gave them antibiotics because now we cannot use it for human consumption.  

Our Big Hive looked like it was doing great so we did not open up the brood boxes.  They tend to be aggressive so we figured no need to bother them if they were doing OK.  Their honey supers were close to being finished but not quite ready.  We moved some of the capped and partially capped frames of honey from the smaller weaker hives into the Big Hive's supers so the Big Hive could finish them up quickly and we could harvest them maybe next week.  

Here's to the first (and late) harvest of 2011.

Wyoming Bees

I have been taking a painting class and decided to do something with the photos I took on a month long road trip across the country.  This is a painting from a photo of commercial beehives in Wyoming. 

eggs! up close and personal!

May Inspection

We took advantage of a nice sunny day to have a look at the new colonies and do a hive inspection in the apiary.  The Small Swarm and the School Yard Bees seem to be doing well.  Lot's of activity.

The Big Hive that we split a few months ago looks like it either is making a new queen for itself or is getting ready to swarm or both.  (Or already did....possible origin of Small Swarm.)  We found this perfect queen cell in the middle of the frame with some bees tending to it.  Or tearing it down.  It is so hard sometimes to tell what phase the bees are in.  We tried to look inside but could not see if there was a queen larvae in there or not. 

On the bottom of the frames we also found many many swarm cells.  Again, it was hard to tell if they were being built or had already hatched.

The Split we made from the Big Hive somehow has foulbrood.  It was doing so well I am not sure how this happened.  We put them in new and clean boxes with brand new frames.  I suppose some could have come over with the frames we split of from the Big Hive but it does not have foulbrood.  So question mark, question mark.   This disease is very irritating.  I am not sure how to fully eradicate it from our apiary. 

I have the antibiotics so we gave the Split its first dose today and will do the second one as recommended. 

Lots of pollen of all different colors and textures.  Four of the hives are doing well.  Hopefully the Split will bounce back.   Now that the weather has cleared up a bit they will be flying and building up their field forces for collecting nectar and pollen.

sealing off the entrance

The swarm we caught on 30th and Church, The School Yard Swarm, is building this waxy barrier at the entrance to their hive. It is sunny and hot so I am not sure what they are up to. But they know best, so we'll leave them alone for now.

Afterswarm

I went out to water the garden and noticed a swarm settling into a tree on our property line.  My neighbor had told me he saw a swarm yesterday that flew right over his head and down the public staircase at the end of my block.  "And then they took a hard right!" he said.   They may have come from our Big Hive and this might be a little afterswarm. 

The swarm located itself in a very hard to reach spot in this tree.  We had to work really hard to get a ladder up there but finally we figured out a safe way to catch them and bring them down into the box we had set out for them. 

A few of the bees fell into this Philadelphus shrub when we shook them out of the tree.  By dark they had all flown into the hive to be with their queen.  At least we THINK there is a queen.  We'll see in a few days if there are any eggs.