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.