It's March

The idea of catching up the months that have passed since I last blogged paralyzed my brain -- a season of canning; winter gardening; breeding, pregnancy and kidding; baby goats (pictured here is Breanna with Oreo, one of our retained doelings); life in general on the homestead, etc. The daunting task kept me from clicking the link labeled MY BLOG. And then I said to myself (they say it's not crazy to talk to yourself until you begin to answer back): Heck, don't catch up. Just begin again. That was very freeing. So here goes ...

It's March. Honey bee swarm month. We got a call from a friend of a friend who heard humming in her dining room ceiling. Paired with the large number of honey bees zooming in and out of the stone facade of her house next to the front door, she knew she had a problem. Given that her husband is deathly allergic to bee stings, she cried, "Death to the bees" and called the exterminator. You can imagine her distress when the exterminator informed her that honey bees are an endangered species protected by law from extermination.

Hence the phone call to us. Lucky for her, Scott is also a handyman by trade, accustomed to construction and home repair. Not only could he handle the bees, but he would tear out the ceiling in the least destructive manner possible.
After visiting her home, assessing the situation and consulting with a mentor Mr. Buzz (Ben Crawley -- a great guy if you need honey bee help), he gathered the supplies we would need. Waiting until evening when the bees would have come in for the night, we went to work. First, we sealed off the room with plastic so the bees would not get into the other part of the house and near her allergic husband.

Then, once the house and supplies were prepared, it was time to suit up. One tip Mr. Buzz gave that was invaluable is that bees can't see red light. Scott bought a headlamp from Lowe's that he wore so he could see the bees and they couldn't see him in the dark. (I must mention here that I did not have a lamp on my head, so I stood in the dark with the sound of bees swarming all around me. A little unnerving, to say the least!).

Then he closed up their entrance outside the house.

It was time for the most harrowing part of the task -- accessing the bees in the ceiling! After removing the sheet rock, we got our first glimpse of them. Thousands of them.

It took a couple of hours to corral all of them into the hive box. The key to success is moving the queen into the box ... without hurting her. The workers will stay with their queen. We sprayed sugar water on some frames to entice them into the box. The rest we vacuumed up and dumped in. Unfortunately, many girls lost their lives as we inadvertently stepped on them or crushed them between the lid and the box. However there were 5 girls who lost their lives that didn't sadden us ... the 5 that stung us. After closing all the girls into the box, we strapped it shut and onto the truck. Our only exit was out the window of the dining room because we had to leave the room sealed. It was almost midnight, we were VERY hot and tired, and it rained hard on us as we packed up. But we consoled ourselves knowing we have a large hive of girls who would make us lots of honey to eat and sell. It was worth it, we agreed. (We also agreed we would never to that again!)

And now, the rest of the story. The bees are gone. The hive is empty. Either we didn't get the queen after all or she was so mad at us that she took off with her entourage to get back at us. Queen bee 1, Scott and Amelia 0. A very disappointing loss.

Honey Extraction Lessons

Sometimes the best lessons are learned the hard way. Our honey extraction lesson this week, and a good tip for you today, is this:

~ Check the plug on the receiving bucket before opening the extractor to drain ~

We didn't, and wound up with about 2 gallons of honey on the floor. What a sticky mess ... not to mention $160 of honey harvest wasted.

In our hurry to not spend the day harvesting, we were spinning, draining, cutting caps and being a helper all at the same time. With our backs turned, the plug popped out and the honey oozed out of the bucket onto the floor. Fortunately, we both kept our sense of humor and looked on the bright side while we cleaned up. For instance: At least it wasn't more than 2 gallons. Thank goodness it spilled onto a cement floor rather than carpet. It's a blessing we don't rely on this harvest as our livelihood. I'm so glad your not mad at me and blaming me for this.

In spite of the goof, we ended with about 6 gallons of rich delicious honey. I have never seen honey so dark. It has the color and consistency of molasses, but the unbeatable flavor of honey.

A Swarm!

Swarm season is upon us. As hives become crowded and new queens are raised, honey bees will split their colony with a swarm. About 50-60% of bees will leave the original colony with the new queen in search of more room. Often, a swarm takes up residence in tree holes or roof eaves and becomes feral. We were fortunate this week to see the cluster of bees from one of our hives waiting on the fruit tree for the scouts to return with news of a suitable place to relocate. We were able to capture the queen and her entourage, as Scott is doing in the picture here, and not lose them and their wonderful honey-making and pollinating contribution.

It was a bit unnerving to draw near the swarm as we collected them into the bucket. The sound of thousands of bees buzzing evokes primal instincts to run and swat. The key is to relocate the queen and the workers will follow.

Here they are, pictured right, getting settled into the new hive we hurriedly prepared for them. You can see the bucket turned upside down on top of the hive box. After several hours, we removed the bucket and placed a top on the box. We left everything nearby so that stragglers would find their way to the queen by nightfall.

It will be awhile before they build up comb and begin honey production, so our honey crop will take a hit this year because of the hive split. But we didn't lose the bees, we have a 5th hive to replace the one we lost last year to AFB and look forward to an even better crop next year.

It's Swarm Season

I was naive to think that all you had to do was put a stack of those white boxes in your yard and you would have happy bees to pollinate your garden vegetables and fruit trees. Who knew beekeeping was so complicated?! Fortunately Scott had basic knowledge before we started with our own hives. I confess it was all Greek to me in the beginning. Now that we have gone a full year, through all the seasons of bees, I have some understanding upon which to hang new information.

Doesn't Scott look handsome in his new hood and jacket?!

Winter is over and spring daytime temperatures average over 60 degrees. It's warm enough for beekeepers to inspect their hives and determine what they need. Scott found one of our hives dying of what we suspected was American Foulbrood. That's a really bad thing and we called the Wake Co Bee Inspector to come verify our diagnosis. By the way ... what a wonderful service provided by the NC Department of Agriculture! The visit and advice were free. He is fumigating our equipment for a nominal charge. He will revisit in a couple of weeks to make sure our other hives remain AFB-free and also follow up with the farmer from whom we got the bees. His assessment is that the bees had AFB when we got them last summer, so the farmer probably has other infected hives. The inspector's main job is to protect all the bees, and ultimately all the crops in NC that require pollination, from the devastating effects of this deadly bee disease.

Scott also found that one of our hives showed signs it would swarm -- crowded conditions and new queen cells (as opposed to replacement queen cells. More about queens later.) Instinct dictates that when a hive becomes crowded, a new queen is raised and when hatched, she leads half the bees away to form a new colony. No beekeeper wants to lose "his girls", so the swarm can be pre-empted by dividing the hive.  

Scott took frames with the unhatched queen cells, brood, some bees and honey and made a new colony. The short hive on the far left is the first new colony. Within two weeks, he realized the original hive was ready to swarm again. So he divided again. This time, he followed a good tip from the bee inspector and placed the new colony in the original spot and moved the original colony to a new, nearby spot. A comparison of the two new hive shows what good advice that was! The short hive on the far right is the second new colony. So now, even after losing a hive over the winter, we have five hives.

We haven't harvested any honey yet. I misunderstood that a harvest is imminent. We may pull off as much honey as we dare because our bees also have Varrona Mites which must be treated with an antibiotic. We can't eat any new or existing honey in the hives once we treat. After the treatment period, we can start anew with honey production and harvest again in August, Lord willing.