harvesting honey

We had many frames of capped honey from the contaminated hive that needed to be extracted manually. If extracted in a machine we run the risk of spreading the bacterial spores to clean frames.  I am not sure how other people do this but I took a metal spatula and scraped the comb off the wax foundation and plopped it into a large glass jar and set it out in the sun to melt. 

After two days in the sun I poured it through the strainers and into a plastic bucket with a spout attached for easy bottling.  It took about an hour to drain through the three layers of mesh strainers and the paint straining sock.  It looked like about a gallon of honey.  The wax comb got tossed into the compost and covered with straw.  The mouse that lives in the bin will be pretty excited about its sweet windfall. 

I stuck a spoon into the bucket and pulled out a spoonful of honey and noticed that it had a weird rubbery gelatinous texture.  It did not flow like honey but sort of stretched like thin jello.  It tasted fine but the texture was gross.  Not sure what is the matter with it but I do not want to give it to anyone as a gift, that is for sure.  It could be that the honey has less water in it than usual.  The bees dehydrate the nectar until it is the correct ratio of water and sugar.  Maybe this batch somehow was dehydrated too much.  I am thinking about taking a little of it and adding water to see if I can get it to the right consistency.   If that works then I will add water to the rest and have about a gallon of usable honey.  Or I can give it to my friend, Bill, who makes honey mead.  The consistency will not matter to him.  I have another batch sitting in the sun today from another box and hope it does not have the same problem.

surprise in the second hive

pollen

The second hive also seemed to be doing well this spring.  This is the hive I saw queen supercedure cells in a few weeks ago and was kicking myself for not doing something about them at the time.  We opened the top box and saw that there was not much activity.  I had thrown the box on to give them more space in case they were considering swarming.  Peter S. wanted to have a look at one of the frames and since there were hardly any bees in the top box I just grabbed a random frame and yanked it out so he could get at the others easily.  Normally, one gently removes the second frame in and sets it aside to make space to work and then each frame is gingerly removed so as not to roll or squash any bees...especially the queen.  He took a look at the one I pulled and noted that the comb was not fully drawn yet.  Then he sort of gave a yell and shouted "Here she is!  The queen!  She's on this frame!"

My heart lurched.  I could have squashed or injured the queen with my carelessness.  The chance of her being on that frame was so small I did not even consider it a risk.  But from now on I will assume she could be anywhere in the hive and to act like she might be on any frame I pull out.

I got some good pictures of her wandering around while Peter S. held the frame in the sunlight for me.  She is dead center in the picture below.  Notice how she is elongated and the color of polished wood rather than golden and striped like the worker bees. 

 The Queen!

We set her aside in an empty hive box out of the way from harm and continued our inspection.  In particular, I wanted to see those supercedure cells in case they had hatched.  The brood pattern was healthy.  There were a few drones (male bees) wandering around but I did not get a picture of them. 

About halfway through the hive we spotted the queen cells and had Peter S. look at them to tell us if they were new or already hatched.  He could not tell but had us look inside to note that there was no egg or larvae at the bottom surrounded by royal jelly so most likely they were old.   A beekeeper can predict the behavior of the hive by noting where the queen cells are located.  If they are hanging off the bottom of the frame they are swarm cells and the hive is preparing to fly the coop, taking your workforce and honey producers along with it.  The beekeeper can scrape those swarm cells off in an attempt to discourage the bees from swarming. 

If the cells are more in the center of the frame like these are, the hive is making a new queen for itself to succeed the current queen who may be laying poorly, injured or dead.  It is best to leave those cells alone.  Or, if you see plenty of eggs and larvae and a laying queen you can take that frame out of the colony and place it in a new empty box along with some frames of brood and nurse bees to make a brand new colony.  That is what we were hoping to do with this colony but since the queen cells were not in use we decided to just leave the hive alone. 

Queen supercedure cells

We had the entire colony cracked open and spread out all over the bee yard.  Each of us had a frame of bees in our hands.  I was sorting through some boxes to find extra deep frames when Peter S. again yelled out that we had a problem.  He gathered us around and showed us a cracked brood cell and that is when I smelled it.  Foulbrood.  It smells rotten, like really old dirty laundry, or rotting bugs and fermented honey.  I thought I had smelled it earlier when we were sorting through some of the frames filled with honey but I just thought it was something on my gloves or some other funk.  I should have spoken up. 

Then all hell broke loose.  We had stuff strewn all over the yard and now we realized that we had no way of knowing for sure if it came out of the sick hive or was leftover from working with the healthy hive.  The reason we needed to know is that all frames in the sick hive had to be destroyed and all the boxes needed to be scorched.  We had just made a lot of work for ourselves.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle while we threw out ideas for how to fix this problem.  In the end we decided to shake all the bees into a new empty box of frames with new wax foundation and have them start over from scratch.  We put down one deep with empty frames and one super with drawn comb so the queen would have somewhere to begin laying as soon as the workers cleaned out the comb.

The first shake rained a shower of contaminated nectar into the new boxes.  So then we had to shake out the nectar onto the ground and then the bees into the hive.  It was heartbreaking to see all the beautiful comb and brood and nectar go into the big black trash bags.  All that work just thrown away.   I ran in the house to get the antibiotic, Terramyacin, and mixed it with powdered sugar to treat the hive. 

 powdered antibiotic on the ends of each frame

After everything was put back together Charley collected all the hive tools so he could sanitize them.  I went back and boiled up some 1:1 sugar syrup, waited for it to cool and poured it into a ziplock bag.  I put one ziplock bag into each hive and poked holes in it so they could get to the sugar water.  Feeding them this sugar water will give them the energy to build out all the new comb they will need to build up their population again.

Splitting the Superstar Hive

Peter H. and Charley wait for Peter S. to get done with his phone call.  

Tuesday we headed out to the beeyard to split the big superstar colony,  hopefully preventing it from swarming this spring. The idea is that the beekeeper interrupts the bees' process of preparing for a swarm by dividing it in half and refocusing the bees on to building comb and building up their population. When a colony swarms, a totally natural springtime event that propagates the bee species, the end result is two colonies. A swarm is a beautiful sight to behold. It sounds like a freight train steaming through your yard and to see 20,000 golden buzzing insects in flight is breathtaking. The problem with swarming for the beekeeper is that you might not be there to catch the swarm and place it in a new hive box, plus the colony that stays behind will not produce much honey that year. For urban beekeepers, the bigger problem is freaking out your neighbors when 20,000 bees move into their attic or garage en masse. Managing the colonies to prevent swarming is the most responsible thing to do in an urban setting, it is beneficial to the beekeeper because you keep both colonies in your beeyard and perhaps beneficial to the bees...since they have expanded to two colonies without the effort of building up a swarm and do not have to look around for a new home.

My beekeeper friend, Peter S., came over to lend his experience and my co-beekeepers, Peter H. and Charley were also on hand for the excitement and to lend their brute strength (full hive boxes are heavy). I planned on standing back and taking lots of photos. 

We started by opening up the hive and having a look at what they were up to on this fine spring morning. The hive was bubbling over with bees and they contentedly worked away as we lifted frame after frame and inspected them for a healthy brood pattern, the queen and any possible problems. 

Peter H. and Charley look for the queen.

Peter H.  hoping for his first glimpse of an egg.

We looked and looked but could not locate the queen. She was in there, because we saw many freshly laid eggs. This queen has a very healthy laying pattern.  We saw a lot of capped and uncapped brood.  I was able to see some eggs and larvae in various stages of development. 

frame of uncapped larvae and eggs.  The queen is probably on this frame or one nearby.

uncapped larvae

freshly laid eggs and a larger larvae

Since this hive was so healthy and active we decided it was a good candidate for a split.  It was a little annoying  that we could not find the queen and set her aside during the split, but even if we could not find her we knew she would end up in one or the other boxes.  It is just better to keep her out of the way so nothing bad happens to her while moving all the frames and boxes around.  

I had set up an empty hive box at the end of the beeyard a few days before just in case they swarmed and happened to find the box inviting.  We took a frame with eggs and uncapped larvae and moved it into the middle of the empty box.  Then we found another frame of mostly capped larvae and nurse bees and moved that one into the new box next. One either end of the box we placed a full frame of capped honey.  Then just in from that a frame of pollen. I scrounged up 4 frames of empty drawn comb and we filled up the rest of the ten frame box with those so the queen would have someplace to lay her eggs. 

The bees were getting a little irritable so we quickly closed the new hive up and went back to what was left of the original hive and filled in the empty spaces with new frames of wax foundation so they could get going on drawing out new comb.  I had set a deep box on the hive the week before to give them space and maybe keep them from swarming until we could get out there and give them a proper inspection.  That was not really a smart move because now the bees were putting capped honey in the deep frames which means we would have to extract a really heavy box of honey later on.  But it was already started so we found some other half filled frames of honey and stuck them in the deep with a queen excluder separating the brood nest from the honey, hoping that they would fill those frames up in the next week or so and then we could extract them and use them in the brood chamber once they were empty of honey. 

The split of the superstar hive went very smoothly.  The two new hives seemed to be set up pretty well for spring. One of them contains an already laying queen and the other enough eggs and nurse bees so that they can create a new queen by feeding a few of the eggs royal jelly.  Hopefully, if we keep up on them and give them all the space the queens need to lay eggs, we may have acted early enough to prevent any swarms this season.  Of course, the bees do what they want, so they may decide to swarm later anyway. 

Tomorrow I will write more about what we found when we opened the second hive.

Queen of the Sun

"Taggart Siegel, the director of "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" embarks on a pilgrimage across continents and centuries in his new upcoming film Queen of The Sun. Queen highlights unsung heroes who are dedicated to the survival of bees: from poets and philosophers to scientists and shamans, from political activists to biodynamic beekeepers. Across the globe Queen exposes the long-term effects of modern agriculture, and the industrial practices of beekeeping while sharing the mystery of the honeybee..."

I saw The Real Dirt on Farmer John in a tiny theater in the Marina District that seated about 20 people.  It was so tiny but came complete with red velvety floor to ceiling curtains and plush cushiony chairs.  I was the only one at the screening.  Too bad because it is a great film.  You can see it on netflix and I think it is worth it.  so  I am excited the director is making this film about bees. 
link to their site here
and then see some photos on their flickr site here

Swarm Class

I spent the most beautiful day we have had all year in the basement of a museum taking a class on controlling swarms and making splits out of healthy hives.  All I could think about was that if I was a bee colony, this would be the day I would swarm.  And my beekeeper would be out of commission till 4 so I could probably make a clean getaway.

The class was long and a little scattered but the teacher packed a lot of information into the day, Unfortunately, only about a fourth of the alotted time was spent discussing swarms and swarm control.  The rest was random Q&A about diseases, hive set up and bee behavior.  My advice to teachers...do not let the students run the class with endless questions.  Give your presentation, take questions at the end of each section of info, and do not do the hour and a half every one in the room introduce yourself to the class segment if there are 50 people and we only have 5 hours.   Boring.  And a waste of precious time.

I learned some cool equipment tricks, like cutting out tines from the ends of the queen excluder  so that the field bees are encouraged to head right up into the honey supers with their cargo.  You want to keep the queen out of the honey supers because the last thing you want is larvae in your honey.  ick.  She is too big to fit between the tines of the excluder but the worker bees fit just fine.  or so I thought.  But it seems that when the bees are full of honey in their bellies they do not fit so well between the tines and it is uncomfortable for them and it slows them down.  Sometimes it even discourages them and they drop off their honey below in the brood box.  So if you cut out a few wider spaces they will move up and down through the excluder much faster.  The field bees come in the front entrance and walk right up the inner wall of the hive to the top of the boxes.  The queen stays mostly in the middle of the box, so even though she can fit through the newly made openings in the excluder she probably won't even go over that far in the box to notice there is a new passageway. 

I also learned that in the olden days beekeepers would find the queen and PUT HER IN THEIR MOUTH!  to keep track of her while they inspected the hive.  She has a hard time using her stinger when she is full of eggs so the beekeeper is not likely to be stung.  Now there is a special clip that you can catch her in and it holds her gently until you release her back into the hive.

Tuesday I will be making a split out of one of the hives.  It had some swarm cells in it the last time I inspected the hive and I do not want it to fly away into the blue sky.  My beekeeper friend, Peter, is coming over in the morning to help me go through the hives so I will put up some photos of that whole process.

Recording of Swarm Signals

A beekeeper emailed me this link from BBC Earth News site of a video recording of the piping sound scout bees make when signaling the colony to begin the swarm.

"During the reproductive season, large honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies synchronise an explosive departure of most of their workers and the queen.  This causes a swarm as the honeybees travel to form a new colony in a new location.  The sudden departure of bees has been known about for centuries and bee keepers have even found ways to avoid it happening and avoid loosing valuable bees.
But scientists have only recently begun to understand how the bees coordinate their departure and mass exodus...
read more and watch the video after the jump

Point of View

Insects have their own point of view about civilization 
A man thinks he amounts to a great deal 
But to a flea or a mosquito
A human being is merely  something good to eat
Don Marquis Archy and Mehitabel (1927)

Practical Farmer

Not sure where this comes from. A beekeeper I know sends these tidbits out on the San Francisco Beekeepers' list serve and I like to post them here for all to enjoy.

Mail - February 19, 1875, Hagerstown, Maryland

Why Do Bees Swarm ? -The question is
often asked why do bees swarm?
We answer, simply because they were so
created. Like the animal and insect world
to multiply and increase their species, which
is just as natural when conditions are favor
able as "the sparks to fly upwards;" but one
tells us "they only swarm when they are
forced to it." This is contrary to the law of
nature. From the beginning of time bees
have bees known to swarm, and strange to
any their flight has been towards the "setting
sun"—yes, even in advance of civilization
they have reached the "far West," Bee
will swarm when the conditions are favorable, 
even when their domicile is not on
fourth filled.—Practical Farmer.

Cleaning Moldy Frames

Today I grabbed all the moldy fuzzy frames and hosed them out. Underneath the mold were beautiful swirls of pollen.  Another beekeeper told me that as long as the bees are not overwhelmed by the mold they can usually handle cleaning it out themselves.  He said they even have been know to eat the mold and blend it into their bee bread.  These frames were pretty fuzzy, so I figured I would give them the upper hand and hose some of it out for them. 

I knew it was going to rain the next day so I stacked all the frames up on my sweet pea tower to hopefully dry out before the rain.  The bees found them right away and started cleaning out the cells and carrying back the good stuff they could salvage back to their hives.

More on the Honey Guides

Honeyguides

"It has been reported that the ratel’s inclination for honey has resulted in a mutualistic relationship with sub-Saharan African birds called greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator). Honeyguides derive their name from a well-supported mutualistic relationship with humans where the bird actually guides humans to bee hives, using calls to recruit humans before guiding them to a known hive on their territory. The Bushmen that tend to cooperate with honeyguides incapacitate bees using smoke. The birds, along with eating larva, honey, and wax from the hives are often offered honey as a “thank you” by the Bushmen. While the relationship between humans and honeyguides is well documented and studied, many scientists argue that the relationship between honeyguides and badgers is not mutualistic and may be seen as an association due to honeyguides taking advantage of the opened hive. Regardless, the birds find it difficult to near impossible to access honeybee hives without the assistance of something like a large mammal (human or badger)." more from Scientific-Illustration

Got em

Lots of mites.  Every little red dot in this photo is a dead mite.  The golden specks are wax and pollen that has fallen through the screen.  There must have been 30 or so on each board.  Not great.  That is a lot of mites.  I'll shower them with more powdered sugar next week and see if I knocked the population back.

Powdered Sugar

The bees have varroa mites and one way to get rid of them is to sprinkle powdered sugar on them.  The mites slip off the wood and off the bees into the sticky board below.  It is suggested to use Vaseline, but that is a petroleum product and I want nothing to do with that.  I used it once and it was so nasty to clean up I decided I would look for something more natural that I could compost.  It was funny to send my friend on an errand into the Castro Walgreens to buy a giant sized tub of Vaseline, though.  This time I bought a giant tub of soy margarine from the health food store.  It is enormous and it made me wonder what on earth you would do with this much margarine if you did not have bees to take care of.  

The bottom board of the hive is a wooden frame with a screen on the bottom and a landing strip out front.  This allows for air circulation and to keep pests out of the hive and to allow condensation to leave the hive.  The hive boxes sit on top of that.  The one I have has a slot in it to slide the sticky board, thin white plastic rectangle, into the bottom board.  So I buttered up the sticky boards and slid them into the hive bottom boards of both hives.  Each sticky board has a little plastic loop so you can pull it back out again without having to use pliers. 

Then I took a sifter and showered about 1 cup of powdered sugar over the hive. 

The bees were a little startled but right away began grooming the powdered sugar off each other.  This is one of the ways they can knock the mites off each other.  I closed up the hives and let the bees take care of their new snowfall.  In 24 hours I will remove the sticky boards and see what I have caught. 

Honey Badger

I found a cool site called Scientific-Illustration while looking for some honey bee images. I have heard of these creatures but never saw pictures of them.

"The honey badger, consistent with its name, is known to raid honeybee hives. Not only is the badger after honey, but it also feeds on the honeybee larva. Naturally, the bees aren’t too pleased about the badger’s invasion, but have few options, with the badger being mostly resistant to their stings. While not immune to the stings, the badger’s thick skin and coarse, bristly hair offer protection from bee stings...read more here after the jump...

But be sure to come back and check out these amazing videos. It is interesting to see the difference in the tone we take now as compared to the 70's in nature shows. No more cute sound effects of bees stinging the nose. Now it is all about murderous and violent thugs in nature. I'd like to go back to the innocent "good old days".

Bees in Pakistan

Muhammad Khabbab, a visitor to Mr. E's Mysterious Bees via Kristin's blog, The Urban Field Guide,   is documenting his container garden in Lahore, Pakistan in his blog, Garden Geek .  I am amazed by the number of pollinators he has been able to photograph in his own garden over the year or so he has been blogging.  It makes me realize how few native pollinators we have in the city of San Francisco by comparison.

The bee in the top photo may actually be a fly that has evolved stripes to mimic those of the bee.  If a predator thinks you might sting its tongue, it thinks twice before trying to eat you.  I love the vertical stripes in the center segment and the horizontal stripes on the thorax.  It's a good look.

From the photos of all the flowers Muhammad is growing I thought that Lahore must be in a hot, humid tropical region.  I was right about the hot part,  Lahore is in a semi-arid region with long hot summers, as in well over a hundred degrees,  a monsoon season and then dry mild winters.   It is the capital of the Punjab province, with a population of 10 million, making it the second largest city in Pakistan and the 5th largest city in South Asia, 26th largest in the world.  It is known as the City of Gardens, which may explain, along with the climate, why so many insects flourish in such an urban area with a high human population.   When you see a container garden in a large urban city like Lahore covered with butterflies, moths, bees and flies, it makes you wonder how here in San Francisco, a city of a mere 800,000,  can emulate it and bring back some of the natural diversity to our own city.

This bee resembles the queen in a honeybee colony with its elongated body.  

But the queen is not usually out working on the flowers.  So this is some kind of native bee.  

This bee is possibly a carpenter bee.