Confused Bees

The early Spring weather certainly has our local honey bees wondering if it is safe to start flying just yet. We went from a snow covered hive at the end of January to a warm and active hive in mid February to a foot of snow on the first days of Spring.

Hopefully all the weather extremes are now done for this season and our hives can back to work to prepare for the next winter.

Stink Bugs Attack Honey Bees

Well, I saw something new this weekend. Around the outside of one hive were about 8 stink bugs (squash bugs) happily chomping on our honey bees. Apparently the bugs will sometimes turn into predators instead of infesting our squash gardens.

We removed the ones we found and so far have not had any new ones show up. I will redesign our support system for the next season so as to provide larger water traps on each upright. The existing ones were designed to keep ants out - stink bugs have a longer reach.

Fall Bees

I realized that with running the hives and life in general it's been a long time since I added to this information. That was completely unintentional since I planned on talking my way though the process of starting new hives so someone new could read and see what was involved. Time to rectify this and show what I am doing to save honey bees.

A new package I installed this spring is going into Fall for the first time. There was a good supply of pollen and nectar early this Summer but I had to feed them some sugar syrup during early August since I saw honey supplies being depleted rather than being made. That worked and they continued strong growth and harvesting.

Now I see them driving off the drones for the winter to come. The queen is still laying a good number of eggs for the winter bees. We have had a lot of wet weather but on dry days you can see strong numbers of foragers once it warms up.

The bees are just like teenagers though and enjoy sleeping in until noon when the temps are low.

The Queen Is Working

I opened the hive on Saturday afternoon and found the queen out and busy on the comb. I added the last three frames and refilled the level of the boardman feeder. There were a lot of bees carrying large pollen balls and a lot of new comb over 4 of the frames. I removed the queen cage and used it to talk with the children about how queens are accepted by the hives..

We got the next brood body assembled and painted on Saturday as well as the 5 shallow supers we expect to use for the Bee Pac honeycomb collection.

Michael is starting to take an interest in hive management. He and I sat out near the hive on Sunday afternoon to watch the activity levels. We saw a couple of workers removing dead bees - they would pick them up and fly away toward the west. I didn't see where they dropped them but it wasn't on their doorstep. Michael could tell me several facts about basic bee structure and wants his own veil so he can look inside too.

As long as I see good activity around the entrance this week I won't open the hive again until Saturday - we had a cool, windy day yesterday and a heavy frost this morning.

Queen on her way to escape.

I checked the new hive last night as I was refilling the pint jar boardman feeder. Inside I found the candy plug mostly eaten away so I expect the queen to emerge today or tomorrow.

There were still a number of dead bees on the floor that haven't been removed by the workers yet but they have been feeding well and I see a lot of them at the entrance. Some appear to be orienting themselves since I was able to observe short flights of only a few yards by several bees.

The weather has been stormy with high wind conditions since the package arrived. We had 60 mph gusts forecast for Wednesday so I used a ratcheting tie-down to secure the new hive to it's foundation. Once it has the comb drawn out it will be much heavier but it is a pristine hive from all new parts.

I plan to check the hive again tomorrow afternoon. Photos are coming - I just haven't had the time to get the camera out there yet this week.

This week's sting score:

• Me - I received the package at work before 8:30 AM so I could feed them all day. My rural mail carrier would have had them in his truck all day long since we are the last stop on his 118 mile route. I tipped the cage over to drizzle sugar water on the screen and incautiously had the tip of my thumb against the corner of the cage. One of them was quick to show me they were annoyed by my handling.
• My grandson (Derick) who is almost 4. He decided to go look at the hive by himself and got a couple of stings in the palm of his right hand. Lynn (my wife) was quick to give him some anti-histamines and his discomfort quickly went away. He went back out with me that evening and I found him only 15 feet away when I looked up after opening the hive. He is the same way with the goats - fearless and comfortable moving them around.

New Bees in Page

I am installing a new beehive in Page, OK today. The reason I picked this area had to do with many different factors but one stands out.

All the news stories I hear about bee colonies dying talks about the commercial polination services who move across the country. Hives are wintered in the southern states and moved slowly northward as spring progresses. As the hives are moved the colonies are exposed to many different pesticides, herbicides and even waters contaminated by our own medications. As the scientists try to pin down the losses to a specific culprit I wonder if the problem doesn't have more to do with how the hives have been managed.

Even the hives that are not moved could be contaminated as transient hives are moved through the area. As a culture we are accustomed to finding very specific answers to problems but I think that we need to think in a larger context to find the problems with bees.

Bottom line for me is that the hive I start today will help replace a lost hive somewhere in the world. I plan to nurture our local polinators with as much care as they need to thrive and multiply. Even if answers to the dying bees do not come from the experts we will be one step closer to preserving our food supplies.