The newbies on the block

Last week I got some new bees, a package from Wyoming. Last year's bees swarmed and the hive never recovered. I was rather worried about this batch; the delivery was rather earlier than I would have liked, followed by a week of bitter cold and snow. Unlike a swarm, package bees don't have the opportunity to stuff themselves with honey before their journey, so their resources were thin. Basically, just the sugar water I placed in a feeder inside the hive. I need to track down a source of clean, untreated honey I can feed them with. Sugar water will do in a pinch, but it's not optimal.

Still, the weather warmed up yesterday and I came home to find bees hovering around the hive entrance, and they had drained the feeder. So that's a good sign. And they are finding the few flowers blooming.

More snow is on the way Monday.

No, I'm not dead

I left my old job and got a new job and that's been quite an adjustment.

But I'm doing fine. The Sergeant's fine. The cats and poodles are fine.

The bees are kind of hot, so they've been hanging out on the hive leg. I'm debating whether to loosen the bottom board to give them some more air circulation.

I hope you are staying cool!

Working hard

Life has been busy lately, for me and the bees.

Three days after installing that package at my friends' place, I went back to release the queen. Her cage was completely covered with workers who were keeping her warm and fed. I brushed them off and tried to get the cork out, but only succeeded in breaking it off and pushing half of it into the cage. I had to leave the cage flat in the bottom of the hive so the queen could scramble past the cork once the workers chewed through the marshmallow I'd left in its place.

My friends retrieved the empty cage later and now report that 10 combs have been built out and all appears well, so that's a relief.

Meanwhile, our own hive swarmed (!) while I was at work. The swarm landed 20 feet up in a tree and disappeared later that day. But the bees that remain appear abundant and calm, so I have to assume they've managed to produce a new queen. I'll try to do an inspection next week just to make sure. And perhaps harvest some honey, too.

I received three swarm calls otherwise (two from a local garden center), which I passed along to others. I just didn't have the time to get them.
The alliums I planted last fall have been blooming like crazy, including Allium "Ambassador," a softball-sized bloom that was worth the $8 I paid for it from Brent and Becky's. It's simply spectacular.

Our poppies have self-seeded in random parts of the yard and are also happily blooming. The bees adore them, even after the petals fall off.
I hope your days are busy and blooming, too!

We interrupt this travelogue ...

... to bring you a post about bees.

Some friends ordered a package of bees for their hive this year. The swarm that took up residence last year did not survive the winter and they didn't want to gamble on getting another swarm from me. Good thing, since I haven't gotten any swarm calls this year, surprisingly.

The bees were supposed to be ready a couple of weeks ago, but delivery was pushed back to today – when my friends were out of town. So it was up to me to collect them. I should've asked how many packages the beekeeper started with; probably three times as many as you see above, as pickups were divided into three time slots and I was in the last slot.

He was also selling individual queens, which he sent home with their new owners in red plastic cups with perforated tinfoil on top.

Before the bees went out, they were given a spritz of sugar water by the beekeeper's kids. (I was impressed when the little girl came over and said, "Daddy, I have a bee in my hair." She knew not to try to get it out herself and risk getting stung!)

The day was hot, so I didn't dilly-dally. The bees rode in the back of the Subaru. A few loose ones hovered around back there, but I had the air conditioning blasting so they wouldn't be tempted to come forward.

My friends' hive was all set up. I rearranged it a little to make the space they would be in smaller. It's supposed to cool off for a couple of days and it's better if they don't feel too exposed in a big hive.

There was one sheet of foundation to give them a head start. (I hung the queen next to it.)

And feeders at both ends, with sugar syrup. Since these bees are not a natural swarm, they did not stock up on honey and will be hungry.

If you have patience, you can watch the video. I didn't get any pictures of the process since I was by myself. I didn't edit it down, sorry. If I start messing around with iMovie it'll take hours.


So. Took the feeder can out, took the queen in her cage and hung her in the hive, then shook the rest of the bees in and replaced the top bars. In a couple of days I'll go back and release the queen, by which time the workers should have accepted her as their own.

As I was saying ...

Here's the beehive yesterday:

And the hive today:
We got about 6 inches in our back yard, which was on the low end of what was predicted. But it has wreaked havoc with trees across the city, as many had not yet lost their leaves. The extra weight of the snow on all those leaves resulted in lots of downed limbs. And power lines.

I'm very sorry to say that our crabapple lost a big branch and some of its trunk. It broke sometime this afternoon while I was at work.

Snow in October is not unusual, but this much at once is. More unusual has been the very fine, warm weather we've had up to this point. We'll have it back in a day or two.

A cruel blow

The dog park bee tree is not faring well.
The photo on the left is from June 2, the one on the right from Sept. 23. I noticed a couple of weeks earlier that yet another trunk had blown down, but I kept forgetting to take my camera and veil with me so I could get some closeups.

I had my camera on Friday, but no veil, and the light was not great, but so it goes.
The hive is still quite active, despite being miserably exposed. Lots of traffic meant I couldn't get very close.

I feel very sorry for these bees, who probably won't survive the winter. I think about how I could help them. A piece of waterproof canvas? A three-sided box? It's probably not feasible to try to remove them – the queen would just hide in a crevice, and bees without a queen have no hope at all.
I will keep checking on them as the year advances and the temperatures drop.

Meanwhile, my own bees are working from sunrise until after sunset to prepare for winter in their cozy box.
The Sergeant planted marigolds underneath it and added a mini-sprinkler. The marigolds flourished, as well as a couple of squash vines that meandered over from the vegetable garden.
There's one good-sized pumpkin under there, and a buttercup squash. We've started seeing some powdery mildew on the squash leaves, but there's not much to be done about that this late in the year.
You can see that the bees have nearly filled the box with comb. It looks to me like they're putting their honey closer to the entrance, where it will be added insulation.

Street-spam signs also make for good insulating material on the window covering.

I suppose I am a bad beekeeper for not inspecting the hive more thoroughly by opening the box and lifting out the frames. But since I have no intention of harvesting anything until their second year, there doesn't seem to be much of a point. I will cross that bridge next spring.

Hoe hoe hoe

It feels a little like Christmas in July, with all this rain we've gotten and consequent garden abundance.
The vegetable garden is perpetually on the verge of being overtaken by weeds. The tomatoes really are taking off. I've been trying to stay on top of keeping them tied up to their towers. I need to stay on top of the weeding, too.

The squash plants are a little frightening in size. And we have a lot of mystery plants, thanks to the Sergeant's liberal sowing of old seeds. "We might as well use them!" he said. The brassica that this bee is enjoying is one of them. It might be yu choi.

The entrance to the hive is a constant traffic jam, with no air traffic controllers in sight.

Chopped

I chopped the heck out of that fennel today, pulled out all the seedlings and tied the remainder up to the fence. I should've stayed more on top of it. There was one very dead perennial under it (I don't remember what it was), and a seriously struggling campanula and leggy artemesia.

The bees were all hovering around as I chopped, as if to say, "Hey, I'm still working on that!"
Sadly, that now-dead birch tree in the back yard is coming down tomorrow. I will miss its shade and its screening from the neighbors.

I'm thinking of putting a linden in its place.

Not a bee

A while back, I posted about a bee imitator that I thought was a syrphid, or flower fly, but it turned out to be a wool carder. Yesterday I found an actual syrphid on my daisies.
Though it buzzes and hovers like a bee, it does not sting or bite. The bee-like markings also help fool predators. The larvae eat garden pests such as aphids.
This one has a vertical black stripe, which drew my attention, and it has a white face and big fly-eyes. There's a poster of some Syrphidae on Wikipedia that shows some of the many varieties.

My garden sure is pollinator central!

Borage for forage

I weeded all around the house yesterday. Weeding is not my favorite task, but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I've tidied up the pathways and gotten the worst of the offenders out of the garden.

Weeds are sometimes "good" plants that show up where you don't want them. Borage being a case in point. There's a volunteer half-blocking one of the paths, but as I scootched closer and closer in my weeding progress, I could see how much the bees were loving it.

I'll wait until it's done flowering before I pull it out and make soup with it.

Busy bees

As the Sergeant and I were working in the garden the other day, I couldn't resist taking a peek at the bees' progress through the hive window. It had been about 3 1/2 weeks since I'd caught them, and while they seemed to have settled in well, judging from the steady traffic at the entrance, I was curious about how much comb they'd built, and where.

The Sergeant snapped this shot with his phone. The bees have built about 10 bars of comb. Oddly enough, they've started in the middle of the hive and not near the entrance. I should find out whether I need to move them closer to the front. My instinct says yes, but if you know for sure, please leave a comment.

Anyway, it's nice to see they're so industrious!

Deb & Erik get their bees

Deb has been helping me document my experience with bees since nearly the beginning. She came along on my second swarm capture and was wowed by it. She also helped me with hive inspections and honey harvest. Now she's got her urban homestead with greenhouse and chickens. Of course she wanted bees, too!
She and her honey, Erik, had just finished up their beekeeping class with the Backyardhive.com folks when I called them with news of a swarm at the community gardens where a couple of friends have plots. Yay friends! We arranged to meet there at 6 a.m. – Deb and Erik with their brand-new bee jackets and me with my swarm gear.
The bees were clustered on a tree branch about 6 feet off the ground. Because it was early and cool, they were in a nice tight bunch.
The 6-foot ladder we had was a little too tall to hold the box with enough room for branch-shaking, and the 4-footer too short, so Deb opted to hold the box as Erik shook the branch.
And shook it some more.
Things started to go south after Deb set the box down and discovered that some bees had gotten into her sleeves and under her pants cuffs. She started to panic a little (can you blame her?), and got stung a couple of times on her ankle.

She and I walked far enough away that she could get the bees out, while Erik stayed and tried to herd more bees into the box, which he put on the taller ladder. But it wasn't strapped down. You can guess what happened.

When Deb and I got back, there were bees all over the sheets we'd laid out, but still quite a few in the box.
It seemed best to go have breakfast and let the bees sort themselves out. Which they did.

When we returned, the queen was in the box with the bulk of her court.
Erik gently wrapped the box in sheets and carried it to the car.
At home Erik shook the bees into their waiting hive. Now, nearly two weeks later, Deb reports that the bees have a goodly amount of comb built out and are active and happy.

I have video of the whole thing, but it's quite long, so Deb or I will need to edit it down, and I'll let them decide if they want to post it. (To Erik's credit, he did not swear when the box fell. At least not audibly!)

Dog park bee tree

Out at the dog park there's a solitary bee tree. I had an idle hope earlier this year that I could get a swarm from it; those would be some great, hardy genetics.
The Sergeant and I were at the park a couple of days ago and I immediately noticed something amiss. The bees' trunk had fallen!
For comparison, here's a photo I took in May last year. You can see that the trunk that was behind Jackson is now on the ground.
Yet the bees' nest must be even lower in the tree, as there was a great cloud of them still hovering around the entrance. I wasn't willing to get closer without a veil; if I were them, I'd be a little freaked out by the recent disturbance. I did see some going in and out through the damaged pith of the tree; I imagine all the recent rains have played havoc with climate control in the hive.
I also wondered where they might be finding any nectar, as little is blooming out there at the park right now. And the wind can blow pretty well, making it hard to fly far.
Later in our walk we did find one flowering shrub – golden currant or Ribes aureum – next to the pond.
And sure enough, some busy bees.