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.

Smart bees

Checked the hives yesterday - no more swarm cells!  I was so proud. I had read in one of my favorite bee keeping books (by Sue Hubbell) that what she does to avert swarming is to reverse the box order. That is, take the bottom box and put it on top.  

I did that last week after noticing the babies had pretty much hatched out of the bottom box and that it was the top box that had swarm cells, presumably because Queen Elizabeth was feeling crowded. Putting the now mostly empty bottom box up top gave her wiggle room.  And since the queen seems to prefer to move upwards to lay eggs, she had a whole new box!

Strangely, I also put an entirely new box of frames with empty foundation on the very top of it all but the bees have drawn no comb at all in that - why not??

Swarm cells!

Opened my hives and found swarm cells! This means the hive is crowded and the bees are raising more queens in order to split the workforce and send out a new queen with a group of bees to start a new hive.

Needless to say, I am not, like most beekeepers, in support of this plan. I want my bees to stay home and make honey.

I had left my hives alone for about 2 weeks - one, it's been teeming with rain and also I wanted to let them get a good grip on their bee business.

{Note the pendulous, peanut shell-shaped queen swarm cells in the picture above. If they are at the bottom of the frame they are swarm cells; if they are in the middle of the frame they are "supersedure queens cells - those mean the bees don't like their old queen and are raising her replacement.}

One of my 2 queens (Elizabeth) originally started out with the majority of the packaged bees. It turns out she is very productive and over the past month has filled up two boxes full of brood and honey. When I opened her hive up I found 3 swarm cells! Yikes!

I removed them (and gave them to my son to take to science class) and gave her another box of frames for her workers to build comb in. Meanwhile my smaller hive (Kathryn's) had finally filled the first box so I gave her a second.

Here is the cool part: Since Elizabeth had too much brood and Kathryn not as much, I took two frames of brood from E. and put them in the new box for K. I smoked and brushed to get as many adult worker bees off as possible first (although I saw one death match afterward in the top feeder: bees will kill adults from another hive, but they will accept larvae and brood).

My bee mentor said this was all good - equalizing the population between hives is a good plan. But I needed to not overwhelm the weak hive with too many new babies to feed - moving capped brood, not open larvae (which needs feeding) was the thing to do (I think I did that).

Also now I have to assiduously check every week to make sure Elizabeth's workers are not continuing to raise more queens: once they start down that road it's hard to change their minds.

Then again, the bees are smarter than me. Who am I to try to change their minds??

Hiving a Package of Bees

Some of you all are awaiting your packages of bees and will be hiving them: this was a new experience for me too - but totally fascinating. Basically the bees are way smarter than we are in this process.

I watched an experienced beekeeper hive a package and the best part was after he poured the bees in, he dumped the ones that stuck in the package out on the ground in front of the hive, put up a little piece our wood as a sort of drawbridge, and (after getting themselves organized somehow), the bees walked up the bridge and into the hive. It took them maybe 10 minutes. Apparently they smell the wax and their queen inside and just figure it out. It was so cool.

Here is a video on hiving (note that he wears no protective gear - the bees generally do not sting during hiving because they are not defensive yet - they have no home to defend). Note also when he drops the queen cage in by accident... don't do that!

We have Larvae!

We have larvae! So exciting to check the hives on Sunday and to discover I am the proud parent of hundreds of little embryonic bees. My queens are doing a great job - both Elizabeth I and Kathryn the Great are filling up combs.

In the picture above (by Scott Camazine/ Science Photo Library) you can see little curled up larval baby bees in their cells. Next to them are "capped brood" cells colored sort of tan. The latter are in the final metamorphosis phase before hatching as full grown, fuzzy striped bees.

Bees go through 4 phases: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Development from egg to new worker typically takes two to three weeks. Great book on this: Tales From the Hive.

Egg
The eggs are described as having an appearance similar to sausage-shaped poppy seeds - except that they are white and standing on one end. They are really really hard to see. One of my beekeeping teachers said "don't worry about it - if you see larvae next week you'll know everything's ok." He was right. Hatching takes place three days after egg laying.

Larva
The larval stage lasts eight to nine days. Upon hatching, the larva resembles a small, white, curved, segmented worm lacking legs and eyes. For the first two days, all larvae are fed a diet of royal jelly. Beginning the third day, worker larvae are fed honey, pollen and water, while the larvae destined to become queens continue to receive royal jelly throughout their larval lives. Regardless of whether the larva is male or female, it molts five times during its larval stage.

Care of the larvae is constant. Each larva receives an estimated 10,000 meals during this stage. The nurse bees do all this feeding - they get water from the foraging worker bees and pollen that was stored in the comb around the brood cells. The bees are all about raising babies.

Larval stage durations vary:
5.5 days for queens (fertile females),
6 days for workers (sterile females), and
6.5 days for drones (fertile males) (Jean-Prost, 1994).

Pupa
The pupal stage is a stage of massive reorganization of tissues. Organs undergo a complete reorganization, while body changes from the wormlike larval body shape to the adult body shape with three distinct body regions. Pupation periods vary: queens require up to 7.5 days, drones require14.5 days, while workers require 12 days.

I can't wait to see a bee hatch!

Queen and worker pupae. Note the larger size of the queen pupa. Photo by Zach Huang.

Guest post, other bee species, and hummingbirds

I was thrilled and honored to be asked to do a guest post on beekeeping for Crunchy Chicken, a fabulous conversation about living sustainably - and great information resource. There are so many ways that the way we live can be either a negative or positive impact factor on our local (and global) environment. Beekeeping is just one small positive thing to do.

Someone commented on my post that I'd misspoke in saying that honeybee pollination was responsible for a third of our food, that other pollinators also play a role. This is totally true. In fact all pollinators are under stress and in decline. There are ways to "keep" native pollinators in your yard - check out this article: Backyard bees are all the buzz.

Last thing: on the East Coast hummingbirds (another important pollinator) are arriving. You can track their daily movement north on this map.

Hilarious

Check out Eddie Izzard on beekeeping (thanks to Greenpa for this link):

I wann keep bees!