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.

The Inner Bee

Thanks to Bill for this surprise image in my mailbox today.

Final moments of bee landing tactics revealed

"Landing is tricky: hit the ground too fast and you will crash and burn; too slow and you may stall and fall. Bees manage their approach by monitoring the speed of images moving across their eyes. By slowing so that the speed of the looming landing pad’s image on the retina remains constant, bees manage to control their approach. But what happens in the final few moments before touch down? And how do bees adapt to landing on surfaces ranging from the horizontal to upside-down ceilings...read more here

Human Bee Pollinator

In our scenario, we imagine that in the next future we could run out of the bees and in order to survive we will have to become “human bees”, collecting pollen and spreading it among the flowers. People would become new “bee” workers and also exchange pollen between themselves to improve the genetic exchange that former bees used to do before naturally...read more

Rainy Plum Blooms

The rain is here again.  Just in time to knock all the blooms off the plum tree.  The bees are flying this morning even though it is raining.  The newly opened flowers must have an irresistible nectar flow that they would brave the raindrops and cold.  I went out to get some dino kale out of the side garden this morning and was admiring and lamenting all the blossoms lying on the wet ground when I heard a weak buzzing sound.  I looked down and saw a young foraging bee walking around on the sidewalk.  She must have gotten knocked out of the air by the sudden hard rain a few minutes ago.  I picked her up on a leaf of kale and carried her back to the hives.  She was cold and weak when I set her on the landing board of what I hoped was her hive.  50/50 chance.  I hope she made it back inside to warm up.