Second Swarm

The bees swarmed a second time this week. Peter H. saw them flying around the fig tree and had us all come out and check the two football sized swarms hanging in a low branch. We suited up and gingerly shook them into a cardboard box, then carried them over to their new home. Luckily, we had a spare deep box with frames and wax foundation ready to go. Peter H. and Charley quickly built a bottom board and cover. So now we have five colonies. One has a queen for sure, but with the other four we will have to wait and see.

Native California Bees

I went to a presentation on native bees in California given by Gordon Frankie, UC Berkeley entomologist and director of the Urban Bee Project.

There are at least 1600 species of California native bees, 81 of which have been identified in the Bay Area. They pollinate 1/3 of our vegetable, fruit and nut crops and most of our wildflowers. They are solitary, not social like honey bees. They make nests in the ground or in fallen logs or living trees.

He brought along a case of labeled specimens on pins, which always makes me sad, but the variety of colors and forms was quite amazing. Some were iridescent green and yellow, others looked like beautifully polished wood.











You can read
this article from the March/April 2008 issue of Orion Magazine by Matt Jenkins and this fascinating article on Buzz Pollination by Sue Rosenthal in Bay Nature magazine. Bumble bees pollinate flowers not just by walking around and collecting the pollen on their bodies, but actually grab hold of the anthers and vibrate the pollen off. I love nature!

Cold Wet Moldy Bees

While I was away in Florida there were two weeks of intense wind and rain storms in San Francisco. The colony that first got me into beekeeping experienced a major setback during these storms. Somehow, the waterproof cover leaked and left the bees with a soggy cold wet home. This colony had been going like gangbusters in the summer and fall, but today there were just a few depressed bees loitering around the entrance. I opened up the hive and was sad to see that about 60-70% of the bees were gone and blue mold was covering the brood comb.

Outside the hive on the ground were hundreds of waxy white brood, tossed out by the worker bees. I reduced the hive down to one box and managed to find 10 frames that were not too moldy. I felt terrible for the creatures having to live in the cold wet hive for the duration of the bad weather. I hoped that they would recover. I opened the stronger hive and took out two frames of capped brood and stuck it into the weaker hive hoping it would boost their population fast enough for them to make a comeback.

I did manage to get a few frames of capped honey the smaller hive would not be needing.

Kitchen Honey Extraction

Honey is heavier than wax.  I had a jar of globbed up honey and wax left over from the extraction  explosion I wanted to work with so I stuck it in the oven on low all day today and checked on it every so often.  Eventually, the wax rose to the top and the honey sunk to the bottom of the jar.  Then I spooned the wax out onto a tin tray where it hardened almost instantaneously.  My kitchen was a dripping sticky mess by the end of this process but I did get about 5 more jars of honey out of it.

First Honey Harvest

We harvested about 5 pounds of honey from the larger colony this week and took it over to Peter's house to have him show us how the extraction process works. 


The frames I carefully wired together in the summer were now full of drawn comb filled with honey and capped with wax. Each frame was "uncapped" with a hot electric knife.  The hot blade cuts through the wax caps and exposes the honey below.  We placed each uncapped frame into the extractor, a large steel drum with a lid that whirls the frames around and flings the honey against the sides of the drum. Unfortunately, my first wiring job was not secure enough to withstand the centrifugal force of the extractor and the wax and honey blew out of the frames and globbed all over the insides of the drum.  The whole point is to tidily separate the honey from the wax, not mash it all together, so the first extraction was not really much of a technical success. But as far as honey...success.

We ended up having to pour all the honey into a strainer anyway to get the wax out that had mingled during the extractor explosion.  I think Peter could have done without all the mishaps, but we were all focused on how tasty the honey was.

Bee Line

Bee line, originally uploaded by Doxieone.

Removing the Swarm

Philip showed up this morning to extract the swarm from the wall in my office.  I asked him if we could have an audience since friends and neighbors all expressed interest.  I think he was a little taken aback by the human swarm that was pressed into my little apartment.  We all promised to be quiet and stay out of the way, but the excitement was palpable.  Charley had been problem solving the easiest and tidiest way to remove the drywall and keep my office clean, but Philip thought he could handle it.  I wish I had insisted on letting Charley do the prep work because the place was a sticky dusty mess at the end and that could have been prevented. 

The amazing thing is that the bees were not disturbed by the sound or vibration of an electric jigsaw cutting into their home.  When Philip removed the square of drywall and exposed the nest the bees flew up en masse for a second and then settled peacefully back into their routine.

 

Look at how much they built in three weeks.  They picked a space that was too cramped and probably would have had to move out in a few more weeks.  What you are looking to the left is the brand new fresh white comb they are building to make room for more brood.  To the right is the newly capped off brood, the golden sandy colored area.  They are already capping off honey in the upper right of the nest.  This queen is very productive!  A good sign for us. 

I did not take any pictures during the removal because I was helping Philip vacuum up the bees and gently cut out and remove the comb as carefully as possible.  We put the brood and honey filled comb into 5 gallon plastic buckets and he vacuumed the bees up into a screened wooden box using a modified low horsepower shop vac motor and hose.  It is strong enough to suck them off the comb but gentle enough not to harm them.  There is always a concern in these extractions that the queen may be lost, harmed or that she will simply fly away in the confusion.  But since there were plenty of freshly laid eggs (three days old or less) the colony would be able to make a new queen if necessary.  But hopefully, she would be right there in the middle of the cluster of bees in the screened box. 

There was a little scare as the last comb came out.  An old exposed electric wire from probably 50 years ago became visible and Philip saw his life flash before his eyes.  The wire was not live and probably had been disconnected for decades, but he was not amused. 

After the entire colony and all the comb was removed, Charley screwed a metal plate over the hole so the field bees would not keep trying to get into the knothole and end up flying all around my apartment looking for their lost home.

Philip pointed out that there was some very old comb down at the bottom along with some mouse poop and nesting materials.  He suggested that there had been a colony in this same spot years ago and that a happy mouse had used it as a home after that.

The bees left beautiful patterns of wax on the dark old wood.  I wish I had more time to photograph it, but we had a lot of work ahead of us. The nest was cleared out of my wall, the brood was waiting in buckets to be fastened into empty frames, and the bees were anxious to be reunited with their home. 

 

The field bees did their best to get into the blocked up hole and some of them succeeded in squeezing their little bodies in between the wood and the metal.  I ended up with about 100 loose bees floating around in the office banging against the windows trying to figure out what the heck happened.  

Much to my surprise and dismay, Philip packed up his gear and cleared out as soon as I paid him, leaving a huge mess of honey footprints and hand prints all over the carpet and walls and drywall dust on my desk and computer and couch.  I guess I should have asked him to be more specific about what exactly the service entailed.  I just assumed it included cleaning up after the main part of the job.   I was surprised that he left such a mess.   I won't be able to recommend him now to anyone else in the same predicament. 

Next up...setting up the hive box for the bees new home.