Hungry bees

Hello Bee Peeple:

So here is the embarrassing truth: I forgot my password to get back into this blog. Duh! I had written it down somewhere, but well, couldn't remember where I'd put it. Reverse engineered my way back to it somehow and here we are.

So my bees are at risk of starvation - not both hives, just Elizabeth who swarmed first, back in the early summer. Since she took off before the main nectar flow and left her daughters no queen and a diminished workforce, they didn't build up enough honey storage to get through fall, let alone winter. My bee mentor advised me to feed them as much sugar water as they will take.

Kathryn, on the other hand, swarmed late in the season, so she left a super full of honey. Happy hive: apparently one should go into the winter with at least one full honey super. I am feeding both hives to get them through the fall and get stores enough for the cold.

Interesting the difference that the timing of swarming makes. Always something going on.

Her Boadiceous Majesty Elizabeth II

We have a new queen!! One of the four queen cells in Elizabeth's hive that the girls raised hatched into a kick-ass new queenlet who knocked out her rivals and is now happily making babies! I looked for her (as noted a few weeks ago) and couldn't find her - but last Saturday there was lots of new capped and uncapped brood, so she's in business. I am so relieved.

For the sake of lineal clarity (I am making up all kinds of words today), we are keeping the names of each queen consistent (Elizabeth and Kathryn) but adding qualifiers (like I and II which are boring but useful) and in this case: Boadicea, becoz my girl had to battle 4 rivals in a truly bodacious fashion). Get it?

However (she said ominously), in neighboring Kathryn's hive I found two swarm cells! ARRGH! Kathryn has been powering along, raised a ton of brood, and packing away a lot of honey. I have 5 hive bodies on now which is a towering inferno of bees; my chin is level with the top box when I take off the roof.

So as I said, I checked everyone the day before leaving on vacation and there they were: swarm cells. darnitdarnitdarnit. I scraped off one and then stopped and thought: what the heck? So they swarm. This is a powerful hive, there is a lot of brood waiting and honey stored up, let them go. My efforts last time didn't do anything but make me queenless for a while, so ok then: build up the neighborhood bee population.

If I hadn't been leaving for vacation I would have pulled out the frames with queen cells on them and out them in their own hive box and started a new hive....just for fun. Next time.

When I get home I expect a quieter beeyard which will be a little sad but: go Kathryn !

Missing: thousands of bees and an adventuresome new queen

I was told several times when starting this adventure that we are "bee-HAVERS" not "bee-KEEPERS."

Queen Elizabeth's hive swarmed yesterday and it was a magnificent (though exasperating) sight. I checked the hives for swarm cells as I described in my last 2 posts and was sure I didn't see any last Saturday, but Queen Bess and her ladies in waiting hid one from me.

I came home for lunch yesterday, checked the fish in the water barrel we keep for the bees (bees like rainwater and the fish eat the mosquito wigglers). Said hello to my brother in law, Charlie, who was working on our back deck, and went in for a sandwich. It was a gorgeous spring day, we've had heaps of rain and unusually cool weather lately, but yesterday was one of those crystalline May days when everything looks possible.

So must have thought the new queen, daughter of Queen Elizabeth, whom we will call "Mary Queen of Scots" for the historical Queen Eliz I's rival. I was inside eating my sandwich when Charlie yelled, "you'd better come out here- your bees are acting crazy."

I ran out and the air was literally full of bees, thousands of them careening around the yard in a chaotic vortex. They were marching out of the hive in a river flow and taking wing. If you looked up at the sky you could see them high up at tree top level, swirling. And the BUZZING - it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I stood in the middle of it and the feeling was electric.

In about 5 minutes they all balled together about 50 feet up in a tulip poplar tree - not a very easy spot from which to reclaim them as many beekeepers succeed in doing. The queen alights and waits, the other bees cluster around her and scouts go out to find another hive spot. They come back and dance their information to the group and somehow, mysteriously, they decide which place sounds best and they go.

When I got home from work yesterday evening they were gone. The hive still has a small crew of bees (how many I don't know. Why do some stay? How do they know who leaves?), plus Queen Elizabeth should still be there. I haven't checked yet.

I felt like I'd witnessed a birth. I was elated and exhausted all afternoon.

And while I am sad my work force took flight I am also thrilled that I got to witness it - and since the larger point of this for me is to increase the bee population, then things are good.