Happy Holidays

Maraschino Bees

The New York Times has an awesome story about bees in Brooklyn, NY that have been puzzling beekeepers by storing a bright red liquid, which is reported to taste like cough syrup, instead of honey. It turns out that the bees have been foraging at the local maraschino cherry factory, and the nectar they were storing was full of Red Dye #40.

You can read the story here.

More Results

Will a hive that has a mite count of 70 do better than a hive with only one mite? Will the hive with fewer mites be the only one to survive the winter?

I'll know the answers to these questions next spring.

After turning my hives into gas chambers with formic acid, I did a mite count to determine the current levels of infestation. Droogie 1, always the over-achiever, had one mite on its sticky board after 24 hours. Droogie 2, however, had 70. I think the difference is due to the number of boxes on each hive when I treated them. Droogie 1 only had two medium hive bodies, while Droogie 2 had three medium hive bodies. I think the formic acid may not have been sufficiently concentrated to be effective in Droogie 2 due to the increased volume of the hive.

So I'm encouraged by the numbers in Droogie 1, have learned an important lesson (only treat with two mediums on the hive) and will be able to see how the bees do with the rainy season and cooler temperatures now upon us.

This brings my first amazing season of beekeeping to a close. Wintertime is good for ordering and assembling new beekeeping supplies, and I plan to take advantage of a rainy weekend to make candles with the wax Ellie and I have in our freezer left over from the honey harvest. I'll definitely post some pictures when we've made them.

How 'bout them mites?

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything about my bees, but lately I haven't been seeing much of them. That's because I decided to treat them with formic acid for the mite problem and the treatment requires them to be undisturbed for three weeks. I was very fortunate to get some pads for free from a beekeeper who shares the beeyard. He also let me borrow the extra woodenware that is needed to place the pads on top of the hive. Thanks!

So they've been treated and I removed the formic acid pads last Friday. I'm going to do a mite count this week to see how it worked. When I visited them today, there was lots of activity at the entrance of each hive, more activity than the neighboring hives, which leads me to believe they are doing well.

Halloween

Bee math

I am teaching a general biology course right now, and one of my students asked about why he sees so many dead bees on campus. Is this because of colony collapse disorder (CCD)? Or all the radiation from cell phones or the hospital?

Good question! And I really don't know the answer. I don't think our hives have been suffering from CCD or are dying more than average. Here is what I came up with, making a few assumptions and using a few facts about honey bee biology:

There are about 50 hives tucked into the corner of campus and in the summer each hive probably contains about 50,000 bees.

That is about 2.5 million bees! Since bees are working so hard in the summer, they have an average life-span of only about 6 weeks.

So if 2.5 million bees are dying every six weeks, that means 59,523 die every day, 2,480 die every hour, or a bee flies off to bee heaven once every 1.5 seconds.

I think the most likely explanation for the dead bees he's observed on campus is that there is a larger than average bee population here and thus more dead bees around.

What do you think?

Results

Powdered sugar is great. For donuts. Not so much for bees.

After a month of diligently dusting the bees every 3-4 days, I was finally able to measure the mite loads on Friday.

The results are not good: 100 per day for Droogie 1, 60 per day for Droogie 2. This huge increase in mites from the numbers that I counted in September is despite having fewer bees in each hive.

Here is a close-up picture of the sticky board that I put under the hive to do the mite count. I've put an arrow by several of the mites; many more are not marked.


This makes me sad. I haven't decided if I'll treat the bees or not- there is a small chance that they will survive the winter if I do nothing. But I'll probably order some formic acid pads and see if I can save them.

French bees

This is a great photo of the beehives in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris sent to me by a colleague. Apparently, the beehives have been at this site since 1856.

I wonder if French bees get more holiday than their American counterparts. Do they go on strike? Does the honey taste better because it is French?

They certainly have better hive covers.

White Russians

Sting, Stang, Stung

Last Thursday, while trying to shake powdered sugar all over my beehives, I received my first sting. It certainly wasn't the first bee sting in my life, not even the first in the last month; I was stung in the hand while Ellie and I were camping in Arroyo Seco in August. But this was the first time my bees thought I deserved some venom.

A bee got me in the ankle where I had pulled up my socks to cover the cuffs of my jeans. I tried to remove the stinger quickly to prevent additional venom from being injected, but it is possible that I missed it since I couldn't see where the stinger was and I was distracted by all the other bees that were thinking I needed a sting.

On Friday my foot began to swell and I developed a couple blisters around the sting site. I believe this is only a local immune reaction and so I'm not concerned about a systemic allergic response or anaphylaxis should I be stung again soon. However, it would be nice to be able to see the bones in my foot again.

Terrorist steals honey from a couch

This video made me laugh repeatedly. Some of the language used may not be safe for work, depending on where you work and whether or not you wear headphones.

Yikes! Mites!

One of the problems with factory farming is that it allows pests to build up and easily transfer from one host to another. Something similar might be happening with my bees. I think that having so many hives in our Stanford bee yard may contribute to a big problem with Varroa mites.

Varroa mites attach to bees as they develop and feed on the larva. This can prevent the bee from developing properly and they also carry viruses that can destroy a hive. Here are some pictures of the mites.

Scott Bauer, USDA Agricultural Research Service, www.forestryimages.org

I did a mite count last week to determine if there are any Varroa mites in the hive, and if so, how many. The way that I do this is to put a sticky sheet of paper under the screen that serves as the floor of the hive. Occasionally, the mites will fall off of the bees and through the screen at the bottom of the hive, thus getting trapped on the sticky paper. At the end of a few days I retrieved the paper and counted the number of mites. Here are the counts:

Droogie 1: 186 mites /4 days = 47 mites/day average

Droogie 2: 35 mites /4 days = 9 mites/day average


Bad news! The levels that a hive can tolerate would be around 2-3 mites falling per day. I doubt that my colonies will be able to survive the winter with this level of infestation. After seeing this shocking number of mites in my hives, I now understand why the neighboring hives don't usually survive the winter. He uses Italian bees, which are much more susceptible to mites than my Russian strain.

So what do I do now? I really, really don't want to use any pesticides in the hive. That said, when I'm surrounded by other hives that aren't well taken care of and are mite-infested, it is almost certain that my hives will succumb to this pest.

I've decided to try an organic approach first, and measure the mite loads after I've finished. If I cannot bring the levels down, I'll try using formic acid, which has been proven to work and supposedly doesn't leave a residue behind.

The organic approach that I will take is to dust the bees with powdered sugar. Once they are covered with sugar, bees then groom each other to remove the powdered sugar and remove mites in the process. It sounds reasonable. However, there aren't any studies that show that it is effective. Based on what I've read, I have decided to dust the bees with powdered sugar 2X per week for three weeks, and will do another mite count at that time.

What's next?

I just spent a little time reading the bee forums to figure out how I need to prepare my hives for winter. While browsing the site, I found a post from this man, who had 11 supers on his hive in Palo Alto, which yielded about 300 lbs. of honey. dude...


The posts suggest that we live in the best area in the US for beekeeping, in that we never have real winters. The temperature remains warm enough for the bees to continue foraging throughout the winter months, and eucalyptus trees bloom starting in late October through February. They will usually fill up a super by February if they aren't infested with mites.

This means that I'll probably just keep hives with the 3 full mediums going into next month. I'll add a fourth super to both hives with empty frames and they can fill them as they see fit. I'm going to begin to measure mite loads with a sticky board and will try some of the non-chemical methods to reduce mite numbers if they seem high.

Honey, Honey Everywhere

And lots of drops to drink.

We transferred the honey from the bucket into jars last night. It was wonderful to watch it flow out of the honey gate, and having a box on the floor underneath it kept our kitchen from getting sticky.

The good news is that the honey continues to taste wonderful and is a beautiful amber color. We had it for dessert last night over frozen yogurt.

I can't really taste the lavender in it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Ellie and I tried a lavender-infused honey at a farmers market once; Ellie said the lavender flavor was overwhelming and I thought it just tasted like honey...


We filled up almost all the mason jars that we had in the house, 33 cups in total, or 29 jars of various sizes. That translates to about 25 lbs. of honey using the "Bee Honey Conversion Calculator". The shocking fact is that this came from one hive, and being the first year, I was only able to take six frames from it. If both hives produce like they should next year, we'll have 3-4x this amount! I don't think we'll have enough friends to give it all away.

We also have a good amount of wax left over, which we'll use sometime this winter during a rainy weekend to make candles. Thanks again to the bees! They are truly amazing creatures.

Honey Harvest, part II

Ellie and I prepared the kitchen for harvesting honey by placing cardboard boxes on the floor and counter to catch errant drips of honey. Then we started the process of extracting the honey from the comb. We used the crush and strain method, which means we cut out the comb from the frames, crushed it with a potato masher, and then poured the mixture of honey and crushed comb into a strainer. The honey goes through the filter, leaving the wax behind, and we should be able to bottle it today or tomorrow. I think that we'll make candles from the wax sometime this winter.

The honey was amazing. It has a zing to it. I think it has a hint of citrus. Ellie described as cough drop flavor but in a good way, which I didn't taste, but everyone has different buds. Here are some pictures from extracting along with a video of Ellie doing the crushing. Thanks be to the Droogies!

Ellie cutting out the comb.

Beautiful honeycomb about to be squashed.

Happy to be smushing.

Mmmmm.

Honey Harvest, part I

Hooray! Droogie 1 was kind enough to make us some honey! Yesterday I removed 6 frames from the hive. I removed the bees from the frames by shaking and then brushing them off with a bee brush. I've read that this process of removing bees can be a little intimidating for the novice beekeeper, and it was! I would have tried using my one way bee doors (Porter bee escapes) but I lent them to a colleague who hasn't returned them. In the video below, you can see my process of shaking the bees off of the frames and then brushing them. I was really surprised by how the bees then gathered around the entrance of the hive. Maybe they were waiting in line to go in?

Most of the bees were kind enough to stay behind with the hive, but a few stayed on the box that I put in the trunk, and a couple explorer bees found a way into the car through the rear speakers. This meant that I drove the hour home with the windows wide open, hoping that the wind would keep them stuck in the rear window. They were kind enough not to sting me while I was driving too fast down the interstate.

O.P.H. Part II

I took a stroll over to visit the Droogies during my lunch hour today and was astonished to see how the activity at the entrance of my hive compared to the hives around it. As you might recall, I've been jealous of the amount of bees going in and out of the neighbor's hives, but I don't have to be jealous anymore. It is a bit of the "Tortoises and the Hares." His hives were gangbusters earlier this summer, having started with 4 lb packages of Italians, whereas I started a few weeks later with 3 lb packages of Russians. However, my hives now have much more activity and many more bees than those around them. Why might this be? I can think of a couple possibilities:

• Feeding: I fed my bees longer after installing them in the hive. This might have encouraged the queen to lay more, but I doubt that this is the reason.

• Swarms: I think he might have had some swarming. His packages were installed in a deep hive body, and still only have one deep and one medium on them, which makes me think that they would be very crowded by now. His hive that overwintered almost definitely swarmed. There were soooo many bees in that hive at the beginning of spring, and now it looks like his other hives.

• Disease: I hate to say it, but I think his hives might be suffering from mites. I don't think he uses screen boards or any other form of pest management, including treatment for the hive that overwintered. His bees are also Italians, which may be more susceptible to mites than my Russians.


The commercial beekeeper who has many hives in the yard next to ours has harvested his honey recently. His hives, which were six or seven supers tall, are now just a deep and a medium. I wonder if he'll start medicating his hives in preparation for winter, and if this will affect the honey that I'm planning to take from my hives in a couple weeks. I sure hope not.

Hive inspection, August 6th

Here's what I observed today while inspecting the hives.

• Droogie 1 is drawing new comb in the top (4th) box and storing nectar. I'm surprised that there is still nectar available out there, but glad to see it!

• There are about 5 capped frames of honey in boxes 3 and 4, and more will be capped soon. I'll probably harvest a few frames in early September.

• There was lots of activity at the entrance of both hives. I think there are more bees now than ever.

• Droogie 2 continues its strange habbits. The queen is laying all the way up in the top box (3rd), and they don't have much honey stored away. The brood pattern is really dense on some frames, and then she'll skip a frame for some reason, and then there is more brood on the next frame. I'm not sure what is the reason for this. Perhaps the comb isn't the right size? I think the wavy foundation might have had a negative impact on the way the bees were able to draw out the comb. I'm only going to use foundationless frames in that hive from now on. They also continue to leave the combs on the side of the boxes alone.

Dog days

July and August are slow months for beekeeping, and I expect they'll be slower months for the blog as well. All my favorite bee blogs (including this one) are also quiet these days.

The bees have established themselves in their hives and really don't need tending until later in the summer or early fall, when it will be time to treat them for mites and help them prepare for winter. It's actually better to leave them be (bee?) except for a hive inspection every 10-14 days.

Today was day 14, however, and I was excited to take a look at what's been happening. Droogie 1, by far my better hive, is 4 boxes tall. The top box has three of the ten frames fully drawn out with wax, and two of those frames are being filled with honey. The third box is almost full of honey, some of it beginning to be capped! This is great news, because I think I'll be able to take some of this and still leave them with enough to last them through winter. The first and second box are filled with bees and there is lots of evidence of a healthy, busy queen (eggs, larva, capped brood).

Here is a picture of a frame that has capped honey, and below that is one filled with honey but hasn't yet been capped (The bees dehydrate the nectar until it has the appropriate water content, which we call honey, at which time the cover the cell with wax). I'm thrilled that I'll be able to harvest some honey this year- I was dubious for a while.





Droogie 2 remains a laggard, and for some reason the bees have ignored four or five frames in each of the three boxes. I saw some eggs and so I know the queen is there and doing fine, but this hive just doesn't seem to be thriving. Unless they pick it up, I'll have to move drawn frames from the upper boxes down to the bottom boxes for winter, and I doubt I'll be taking any honey from this hive.

Orientation flights

When bees are born, they don't inherently know how to find their hive once they've gone out foraging. In order to learn to recognize their own house, they do what are called "orientation flights." Typically this happens in the late afternoon, which was the time of day I was heading out to check out my hives (smelling like a mouse).

What happens is that all of the spry young bees fly out of the entrance, turn and face the hive, and fly in little circles right in front of their joint.

I had not seen bees doing this until Wednesday. It was impressive.

Here's a video of what I observed. The hive that I filmed was one in the adjacent bee yard.

Bees and mice are not friends

Sometimes I have to play with mice as part of my job. And by play, I mean use them for experiments. It isn't something I feel great about, but some biological processes can only be studied in living organisms. And so I treat them with respect, and thank them for helping us learn about our universe.

It occurred to me that mice and bees are natural enemies. Mice will get into a hive in the winter, when the bees are all clustered at the top of the hive, and build a nest at the bottom of the hive. It is warm, provides protection from the elements, and the mice can eat the bees once they die. However, once spring arrives and the bees are free to un-cluster, the bees unleash their pent-up anger and kill the mouse.

After some days at work, I'm positive that I smell more like a mouse than a human. I can smell it on myself, and I know that if I smell it, it must be bad. Today is one of those days. And despite my better judgment, I'm about to inspect the hives and add another super. I hope this is not the precursor to the awesome blog title, "Wrath of My Bees," that Ellie mentioned.

O.P.H.

I had an opportunity yesterday to go to the bee yard with the scientist who allows me to keep my bees next to his. It is always fun to peek at other people's hives. Every time I visit my bees, I am amazed at how many bees are at the entrance of his hives and was excited to be able to see inside.

This hive is 6 boxes tall and is one that survived last winter in great condition. The top two supers are full of capped honey, which he's planning to harvest next week.*



This frame is full of capped honey. I thought that the honey was dark but he said that it looks that way because the frame had previously been used for brood.



His other hives were started from packages a few weeks before I started mine and have much more capped honey. The late start for my bees probably meant that they weren't ready to take advantage of the early nectar flow. Hopefully the droogies will be ready for next year and will be able to keep up with the Joneses' bees.


*I didn't actually go back in time to take those photos- just didn't know how to work the time-stamp feature on a borrowed camera.

Coming and Going

Happy 4th of July!

Late Bloomer

My second hive, also known as Droogie 2, has been lagging behind Droogie 1. When Ellie and I last inspected the hives, Droogie 2 only had about 6 frames drawn in each of the bottom two boxes. I removed the empty third (top) box and continued to feed them a 1:1 solution of sugar and water, which they've been guzzling.

You can see the two hives in the picture below. Droogie 1 has more bees going in and out, and even though the hives appear to be the same height, Droogie 1 has three boxes of frames while the top box on Droogie 2 is just there to protect the feeder. You can see the wooden inner cover that separates the hive bodies from the feeder.

I refilled the feeder on Monday, and on Wednesday it was empty again. After completing my duty as Sugar Daddy, I couldn't help myself from having a peek under the cover to see what they've been up to.

Wow! They've done some remodeling. It was almost like that show "While You Were Out" where a crew comes in and redecorates your house while you are out golfing with your buddies. Or not.

Almost all of the frames are now drawn out, and there is a lot of brood in the top hive body. They've also socked away a few jar loads of sugar in their comb. I think the population has grown since the last inspection and they appear to be doing much better.

I don't know why they've taken so long to get these boxes filled (its been two months since I installed them), but I'm happy to see that they are expanding and the queen is laying well. I'll bring a super down for them on Tuesday.

Sugar Daddy

I've been going back and forth on whether or not to keep feeding my bees sugar syrup.

Feeding them simulates a strong nectar flow, which we aren't having right now, and encourages the bees to produce wax, draw comb, store away food, and raise babies. In other words, it makes them do all the things bees are good at doing.

What's the drawback? The food they are storing comes from table sugar, and so if you harvest that as honey, it won't have all the wonderful floral tastes that honey is known for.

I might not get any honey from these hives this year regardless, and my goal is to help them survive the winter. So I've decided to feed them until they've filled two medium hive bodies with drawn comb, which should be enough to get them through winter. After that, they are on their own, with no more sugar daddy.

Can you hear me now?

New research suggests that radiation from cell phones could be a cause of colony collapse disorder. Scientists in India have attached cell phones to hives and observed that the colony reduced in size. So far, I have not been able to look at the study to see for myself whether it was well designed and whether their conclusions may be due to chance. But for now, I'll leave my phone behind when I visit my bees.

Here is a video from CNN about the finding:

She looks so Russian!

My bees are Russian, so called because they are from the Primorsky region. I decided to try this particular variety because it is known to have natural resistance to varroa mites, which often plague hives in North America.

In reading the beekeeping forums, I've learned that Russian queens can be hard for some people to find. I'm not sure why though- she is very distinct! She has a really long black abdomen that is unlike any other bee in the hive.

When Ellie and I inspected the hives together, we spotted the queen in Droogie 2, the hive which isn't doing very well. Here is a picture of the frame with her on it. Can you spot her?


Here's the same picture with her circled:



And here you can see her walking around of the frame. Ellie provides some color commentary.

The Beekeeping Bible

One of the books I'm reading about beekeeping was originally published in 1853 and was written by Rev. L. L. Langstroth, who is considered to be the "Father of American Beekeeping." He was a pastor in Massachusetts and redesigned the beehive so that frames could be removed, which made manipulating the hive without enraging the bees possible. His design is still in use today and the basis for my hives.

The book is great. I love reading old texts and realizing that he probably knew more about bees in the 1830s than many authors know about them now. The language is also wonderful. Here is a passage where Langstroth quotes from an earlier text on the ANGER OF BEES:

"Listen to the words of an old writer:- If thou wilt have the favour of thy bees, that they sting thee not, thou must avoid such things as offend them: thou must not be unchaste or uncleanly; for impurity and sluttiness (themselves being most chaste and neat) they utterly abhor; thou must not come among them smelling of sweat, or having a stinking breath, caused either through eating of leeks, onions, garlick, and the like, or by any other means, the noisomeness whereof is corrected by a cup of beer; thou must not be given to surfeiting or drunkenness; thou must not come puffing or blowing unto them, neither hastily stir among them, nor resolutely defend thyself when they seem to threaten thee; but softly moving thy hand before thy face, gently put them by; and lastly, thou must be no stranger unto them."

Not wanting to elicit the wrath of my bees, I will try not to be slutty and will drink a cup of beer before every inspection.

Ellie and Emerson visit the Droogies

I had to work on Saturday and so we decided to make a family trip to visit the bees. Ellie and I first took a class on beekeeping together in June of 2009 and she was excited to finally be able to visit our hives. Emerson couldn't be left behind in the car, so, as responsible parents, we wrapped his car seat in mosquito netting and brought him along with us, where he slept peacefully through the entire event.

Ellie took some wonderful pictures. In this picture, you can see the bees festooning from the frame, holding on to each other while they form wax into comb.




Here are a few more from the inspection.






It was clear from the inspection that Droogie 1, which was started on foundationless frames, is doing much better than Droogie 2, which was started on standard foundation. Droogie 1 has two full boxes of frames drawn and is working on the third, with lots of honey and brood, while Droogie 2 only has about 6 frames drawn in each of the two hive bodies. There are also many fewer bees in Droogie 2. Ellie and I did see the queen in that hive, so we know she's there, but for some reason they aren't thriving. I'm wondering if she just might not be a great layer. The brood pattern was not awesome. I removed the super that I put on the other day and added a couple foundationless frames in place of undrawn wired foundation. I don't know what else to do other than watch and see if they improve.

Buzz, Buzz, etc.

"Vuvuzela" goes on the list of new words I've learned this year, behind "beastmode" and before "blowout preventer," which is actually two words. As I understand it, the vuvuzela is a traditional South African plastic horn that is blown en masse at soccer games and has been one of the controversies surrounding this year's World Cup. Many find them annoying and think they should be banned.

I've read several articles that describe the drone of many vuvuzelas blasting at once as bee-like, and I agree. However, bees buzz at different frequencies, which allows one to know if the bees are happy or pissed off. Vuvuzelas have just one pitch. Which leaves me wondering, are the fans particularly pleased with what is happening, or are they blasting away as a way of voicing disagreement? Or both? It all sounds the same to me, which isn't bee-like at all.

Snapshots

I use a Flip HD video camera when I film my hive inspections. The quality of the video is awesome and the software has an easy way of taking stills from the video. Here are a few from the last hive inspection.


In this image, the bees are in the process of making comb and you can see it isn't drawn all the way to the bottom or sides of the frame. You can also see some uncapped honey glistening in the cells.



The bees are getting close to filling this frame with honey. The sections on the top are capped and I imagine that the rest of the frame will also be capped by the next inspection. Once the frame is all capped, it can be harvested!



This frame has a lot of honey in it, but also has some capped brood in the lower center. I'm surprised that the bees are filling so much of the area with honey if the queen is also laying in the frame.

In and Out

From what I've read, just monitoring the activity at the hive entrance can tell an experienced beekeeper a lot about what is going on with the hive. It takes time to learn this skill and hopefully I'll also have such Jedi-like abilities in the future. Here is a short video in which you can see the comings and goings of both hives.

The video was taken on June 10th, which was a sunny day. It is interesting to compare the amount of activity in this video, taken a month earlier.

Wildflowers

The El Niño has brought more rain to the area than usual, which has been great for wildflowers. I pass a huge field of them everyday when I'm riding my bike in to work, and everyday the same Tom Petty song gets stuck in my head.

Fifth Hive Inspection

I decided to put another hive body on both hives today. I suppose they could be called supers but I wouldn't mind if the queens were to lay in them. I didn't put an excluder on either hive, so the queens are welcome to move up if they'd like.

In Droogie 1, which you can see in the video below, the bees had drawn out nearly all the frames in the second hive body, and the lower body is also full. Most of the second hive body is filled with lots of capped honey and nectar, with a few frames having brood in the center. The super I added has foundationless frames as well as some frames where I installed wireless wax foundation. I moved two drawn frames filled with nectar and capped honey up to the super, and replaced the feeder. I may stop feeding after this week, but I want to make sure they are able to continue to draw comb.

Here is the video of the inspection. You can see some of the bees fanning on top of the frames.




It is clear that the hive started on foundationless frames (Droogie 1) is doing much better at drawing frames and expanding than the hive started on traditional wired foundation. Although I cannot attribute this solely to the difference in foundation, I'm going to use foundationless frames from now on. They are so much easier to prepare and the bees seem to love them.

Lavender Honey?

Stanford seemed to weather the "great recession" rather well. Their endowment certainly took a hit, but that didn't stop them from building two new, state-of-the-art buildings on the Medical School campus. As part of the new landscaping around the buildings, they also kindly planted rows and rows of lavender, which I noticed yesterday is covered with bees!

The beekeeper who allows me to keep my bees in his apiary said that the spring honey from his hives already had a nice lavender flavor, and it will probably increase with these new plants. I cannot wait to try my honey and see what flavors are present.

Bee Books

Ellie and I have been taking full advantage of the Potrero Hill branch of the San Francisco public library. It was recently renovated, has the best views of San Francisco, and is only two blocks away from our apartment (although they are two steep, uphill blocks). Ellie has been taking advantage of their extensive DVD collection to catch up on The Wire while on maternity leave, and I've been requesting every beekeeping book that they have in the SF system. Here are the books I'm currently reading:

A Year in the beeyard / Roger A. Morse

Hive management : a seasonal guide for beekeepers / Richard E. Bonney

Keeping bees / John Vivian ; illustrated by Liz Buel

The New comb honey book / by Richard Taylor.

Starting right with bees : a beginner's handbook on beekeeping / John A. Root.

The backyard beekeeper : an absolute beginner's guide to keeping bees in your yard and garden / Kim

These are currently checked out but I have a hold placed on them:

Beekeeping for dummies / by Howland Blackiston ; foreword by Kim Flottum.

The backyard beekeeper's honey handbook : a guide to creating, harvesting, and cooking with naturalhoneys/ by Kim Flottum

Langstroth's hive and the honey-bee : the classic beekeeper's manual / L.L. Langstroth.

Some of the books have been much more helpful and are more reader-friendly than others. I'll try to write a couple posts about the books I've especially enjoyed.

More videos of the Droogies

Here are a couple videos of the last hive inspection. The first shows the amount of activity at the entrance of both hives. I still have the entrance reducers on and read somewhere that the smaller entrance helps the guard bees keep tabs on everyone and doesn't hurt the productivity of the hive, sorta like the velvet rope at a club enabling the bouncers to control the flow. I may leave them on all season unless I read something to convince me otherwise (always a possibility!)

It is better if you click on these videos to watch them on Youtube. For some reason, I cannot get blogger to show the widescreen versions.




This video is long and shows the hive inspection of Droogie 1 from above. I thought you might enjoy being able to see into the hive this time.

Fourth Hive Inspection

I was able to visit the Droogies today. The hives are both doing well and drawing out more comb in the second hive body. I still do not see any capped brood in the top body, but perhaps it is still a bit too early for that.

I did take some pictures of one of the frames from Droogie 2. You can see a brood in the center of the frame with some capped honey around the upper edges.

Brood!!

I inspected the hives for the third time today. I've been out of town for a week and it had been rainy and cold before I left, so it has been longer than I would have liked. I was worried that the queens might not be laying since I didn't see any capped brood during my last inspection. However, this time both of the hives have lovely capped brood in the bottom hive body. It appears to be mostly worker brood. Neither hive seems very interested in the second hive body that I put on last time, although Droogie 2 has drawn out a couple frames in it.

It was also interesting to see some burr comb in between the two supers in Droogie 2, which has foundation. I haven't seen any burr comb in Droogie 1, which is using foundationless frames. I wonder if the bees in Droogie 2 need someplace to put drone comb because the foundation isn't the right size for it? Or maybe they just inspired to make some comb from scratch.

Because both hives have begun building comb in the second hive body but I did not see evidence of the queen having moved up there, I moved a couple frames of brood up into that chamber. Hopefully this will signal to the queen that she has free reign in the second level as well. I'm not sure if moving brood frames is a good idea, but I read on one of the forums that this might be helpful. It seems that for everyone who says something is a good idea, there are 10 other beekeepers who will disagree with them for one reason or another.

Second Hive inspection

It has been 12 days since the packages were installed and time for another inspection. This time I brought along the video camera so that I could show Ellie what the Droogies have been up to, and it also allows me to share it with you (warning: it is long and potentially boring)

Both hives are still taking lots of syrup. I didn't see any capped brood in either hive and had a hard time seeing eggs because the comb is so white. I'm a bit nervous that the queens are not laying, but it is potentially too early to see capped brood. I did see the queen in Droogie 2, so I am at least relieved that she's there. Both boxes have drawn out 7/10 of the frames and filled them with lots of nectar (probably mostly just the sugar water I've been feeding them) and pollen. I decided to add a second hive body on each of the hives for brood, just in case they need the extra space.

The Bee Yard

So this is where the Droogies reside. I've been given a bit of space by a scientist at Stanford who keeps about six hives. It seems to be a decent spot with lots of afternoon sun, and it will be very easy for me to check on them periodically when I'm leaving work or on my lunch break.

First Hive Inspection

The Droogies had been in their new joints for 4 days and so it was time to take a look to see if the queens had been released. Both of them had consumed all of the sugar syrup within the first 24 hours, and so I had replenished the feeders to give them more for the weekend. Both jars were completely empty when I went back on Monday- those are some hungry bees!

The queens had been released in both hives. Both hives have drawn out wax on about 6 of the frames. The comb in Droogie 1 was especially beautiful in its natural shape.

Installation

Installing the bees was very exciting. I had watched several instructional videos showing how to install a package so I knew the steps involved. However, the videos did not prepare me for the feeling of dumping thousands of bees from one box into another. It was almost like pouring liquid bees into the hive.

I have decided to try Droogie 1 with foundationless frames, also a recommendation from Michael Bush. For these frames, I've glued Popsicle sticks into the top groove. I also put in one frame of foundation in the middle of the hive body to act as a guide and hopefully prevent them from drawing the comb crosswise. Droogie 2 has normal wired wax foundation. It will be fun to see how they do.

I'm feeding both hives with recycled pasta sauce jars and a 1:1 sugar/water solution. I've punched holes in the top of the jar and have placed them over inner covers so the bees have easy access. The jar is within an empty hive body and topped off with my migratory covers.

The Droogies

Today I received two 3lb packages of Russian Bees from Noble Apiaries, which is located in Dixon, CA. The UPS man seemed a little shocked that he was actually delivering live bees to my doorstep. The package was physically vibrating with all 20,000 bees in the package buzzing in unison.

After letting Ellie and Emerson listen to their music, I brought them into the kitchen and tried calming them down by spraying the cages with water, which was recommended by Noble Apiaries.


They seemed to enjoy the shower and relaxed. I then loaded them up in the trunk with my gear and brought them down the peninsula to their new homes. Since these bees are Russians, I've decided to name the hives Droogie 1 and Droogie 2, which is a Nasdat word for "friends."

Supplies!

After deciding that I would like to have a couple hives, the next step was to figure out what equipment I would need. I spent many hours pouring over the bee blogs and forums to see what others recommended. After much consideration, I decided to take Michael Bush's advice to go with all medium hive bodies. I ordered almost everything from Mann Lake and saved a bundle on shipping by driving up to their CA location to pick it up. Here is what I bought: