Mr. E's Mysterious Bees: Spring Cleaning

San Francisco has been lashed by rain storm after rain storm this month. There has not been one dry sunny day to go out and check on the bees. I am leaving town for the month of April and need to get them set up for their spring buildup before I leave. Usually I have a day or two in March to get some spring cleaning done. Not this March. Rain Rain Rain.

I have been reading about setting up swarm traps in spring. Take your nastiest frames of moldy comb and fill up an old janky box and set it out somewhere in the sun, on top of a roof, anywhere that the scout bees might find it and they just might do you a favor and move into the box instead of the neighbor's attic. They are attracted to the familiar smell of honeycomb. It might catch a swarm from your own hives or maybe a swarm from out there in the world. Just don't forget to check the boxes every week or so since you want to get them into your apiary as soon as you can. Since they are in a box and not a tree or wall, all you have to do is move the box into your apiary after dark when all the field bees have returned. Some beekeepers say that if you put a few blades of grass or a stick at the entrance it will alert the bees in the morning when they make their first trip out for the day that they are in a new spot and will need to reorient themselves to find the new hive when they are making their way back home.

I am excited to try this trick this spring. Our hives usually swarm in April into the big fuchsia colored tea tree in the garden. Convenient that it is not in a neighbor's yard, but still there is the whole rigmarole of getting up on the ladder and snipping the branch. Every day this month I have been eying the sky worrying that the sun is going to pop out and trigger a big swarm event before I am ready for it. Or worse, that it will happen while I am gone!

Today is the first day in weeks that the sun has come out for a few minutes here and there. My fellow beekeeper, Peter, knocked on my door this morning and let me know that the bees were very active and wondered if I might like to have a look. You do not have to do much convincing to have me drop everything and play with the bees so I suited up and headed out to have a look see.

We have two hives that are booming. Three died in the winter. That is about normal for us so I was sad for them but not surprised. We hope to split the big hive this week in an attempt to keep them from swarming. Peter had to meet with his daughter's teacher so I was out there alone poking through our supplies and cleaning up from all the rain damage. I'd wait for him to get back before we opened the hives since he loves that part as much as I do but could care less about sorting and cleaning. I am the king of organizing, nothing gives me more pleasure, so I was happily sorting the good from the bad frames, moldy ones in this pile, brittle gray comb in this pile for the swarm trap box, white clean comb for the honey supers, brand new frames with wax foundation in this pile. After about an hour of cleaning out and scorching the boxes with the propane torch to kill mold and disease spores I had enough boxes for two swarm traps and three hives. The rest were for honey supers, about 10 stacked up in a pile taller than my head.

apiary after I cleaned it up and got it ready for another spring

The neighborhood blue jay was also happily working on eating up all the dead bees I had shaken out of the frames from the hives that did not survive. Windfall for him today. He sits on the beehives or the fence and swoops in and eats bees all day long. He also comes and taps on my kitchen window in the morning then sits in the plum tree and stares and squawks at me. (see below)

I took one of the traps and put it up on the back deck facing out into the garden. I'm not sure where to put the second one. Up on the roof? Any excuse to climb around on the house, right? Now it's time for a lunch break and then, if the sun is still out when Peter gets home, we'll make a split and find a place for the second swarm trap.