Hive Personalities

Monday, July 24, 2017

Sunrise: 5:54 am
Sunset: 7:48 pm
Temperature at Noon: 79 degrees
Sun's Angle: 78 degrees
UV: Very High
Humidity: 72%


At the height of the day the front of hive #1 looks a little sparse, yet activity inside the hive indicates a healthy population. The coming and going from the entrance is constant. At night time everyone is pretty much tucked up inside and no one really comes out till morning.





Hive #2 is a completely different ball of beeswax. Throughout the day there is a constant gathering of chatterboxes pretty much over the front of the whole hive. There is, just like with #1, a constant coming and going, even though it is said we are well past the honey/nectar flow. At night the whole front and landing board is completed covered with little bodies -- unless the temperature is cool, then everyone is inside.



The difference between the two colonies is remarkable. Presently I don't have the experience to know if I should be concerned. This is definitely normal -- for now -- and there doesn't appear to be any distress ... with either hive. I'm keeping a daily eye on things, so we'll see.

The buckwheat has resurfaced.   Last time it took two weeks to flower.  We're watching.

Re-planting the Buckwheat

Wednesday July 19, 2017

Sunrise: 5:51 am
Sunset: 7:51 pm
Temperature at Noon: 90 degrees
Sun's Angle: 78 degrees
UV: Extreme
Humidity: 60%

A couple of days ago I began preparation for tilling the returned-to-seed buckwheat back in.  Things went like this:

• Late in the evening I mowed down the buckwheat which had gone to seed in the field

• Next day I bought and spread two tons of agricultural lime over the acre I mowed down — $30 a ton with free use of the spreader pulled around the field behind our 4WD Silverado

• Later that day I began tilling the seed back in to a depth of about 3-4 inches

• Got lucky with the rain later which drizzled on the newly-tilled field

• Next day pulled a drag around the field to smooth things out (drag looks more or less like this to the left — nothing fancy or complicated)

The field looks gorgeous right now.  We're waiting to see what comes up ... maybe something ... maybe nothing.  We'll see.

Bee Stings Resurrected a Week Later

While preparing to move the hive I was adopting I received a smattering of bee stings; some on the hands (I was wearing a not-thick-enough pair of rubber gloves, since replaced with better) and a couple on the face where the veil touched my chin a time or two.  Honey bees see heat, and so detected that my skin was touching the veil.

At first my skin reacted as it does when I get a fire ant bite: swelling, itchy spots, redness, which later turn into small pus-filled blisters.  The sensation wasn't so bad, and within a few days the stings had more or less disappeared.

About a week later I woke in the middle of the night to the sensation of inconsolable itchiness where every one of those stings had been.  Ice was the only thing that calmed the skin down.  The back of my right hand swelled to almost twice its normal size.  The finger joints were stiff.  I was miserable for the better part of another week.

I did some online research and learned that this reaction was apparently quite normal for first-time honey bee stings.  I've been stung by other critters throughout my life, but this was the first time by honey bees.  I haven't again been stung during the months that have followed moving the hive, so I have yet to see if this response will be true for me.  We'll see ....

As a closing thought, it's best to do all you can to avoid being stung by your bee-babies — not because it's uncomfortable, but because when the honey bee stings you the stinger and a portion of the bee's abdomen remains attached to your skin as the bee pulls away, ultimately resulting in the death of one of the critters you have chosen to take charge of.  Of the two of you, the only survivor will be you — unless, of course, you learn that you have a mortal allergy to honey bee venom.

Calming Down a Feisty Hive

Soon after we purchased our first hive and installed (for want of a better word) a family, or colony, of bees, we inherited another colony.  The colony's owner discovered he had an allergy to bee venom and didn't take care of the hive's needs as he would like to have done.  Over time the colony became used to stillness around its borders and the bees became irritable when approached.

I have no words to describe the fierce activity surrounding me as I prepared the hive to be moved to its new location.  Needless to say, the atmosphere was noisy.

For about a week, as I made attempts to visit our numbers 1 and 2 hives, the new family spotted me coming and sent out a posse to head me off.  It was frustrating.  I eventually kept a water misting bottle with me whenever I was planning to be anywhere close to the hive.  That helped, but it wasn't very peaceful.

In a post or two back I gave a link to a book I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to: "Telling the Bees" (go check it out); it was in this book that I learned of a very simple idea to calm down feisty families.  My version of the waving rag went something like this:

My wife spotted a design of a lawn flag that she liked, so I picked one up.  Later that evening when it got dark I snuck the flag out to the hive and stuck it in the ground about ten feet from the entrance.  The idea is that the flag gently flaps in the breeze where the bees can see it.  At first the flag was of a concern to the bees, but within a couple of days the bees got used to the activity and all the feisty was gone.  Now I visit them and they don't even see me coming; I can stand and enjoy the hive activities without any fear of setting off a revolution.  It's great.

White Clover Just About Gone in Early July

Early July 2017 and the volunteer white clover is all but gone from our fields.

Still flowers on the mimosas, but our bees don't appear terribly interested in our mimosas.  Very few field flowers growing elsewhere around our place.  

Lots of verbena up right now, but our bees don't seem interested in that either.

The buckwheat has turned back to seed.  Getting ready to till that back in and see what happens.

Here's a link to the Mann Lake website.  Some of the finest beekeeping supplies available:

https://www.mannlakeltd.com/

Let the Bees Do the Clean-up

Recently I harvested some honey from our #2 hive, the one we inherited as an ongoing concern.  The colony was fairly strong and, due to the absence of its owner, was somewhat aggressive when approached, especially during and after the move.  I'll share an observation about how we calmed them down, but first this:

I might have mentioned that I got a 2-frame extractor for my birthday this year, so getting to the honey was a fairly simple job.  At the end of a couple of hours' work, though, a person is left with a sticky mess to clean up.  The extractor drum is covered with stickiness that there is no hope of you getting into a jar.  The frames and what's left of the foundation is just — well — sticky.  A friend, who has been around commercial beekeepers and has had his own hives, suggested putting all the equipment and empty frames outside the hives and let the bees clean everything up.  Brilliant!  I thought, and so that's just what I did.


Within a couple of days the Bees had returned to the hive all the honey and pollen that I could do nothing with.  All that was left was a small pile of wax the bees deemed unusable.  I put everything out by the hives after dark, so as not to stir up an almost literal hornets' nest around the beehives.  By the next day around lunchtime, when everything had warmed up, just about half the population of our number 1 and 2 hives (thousands of bees) was out doing clean-up duty on the equipment.  It was quite a sight to see.

Now all the equipment needs is a good wash and dry, and it will be ready to store.

I'll share later what we did to calm down the feisty hive.  Suffice it to say, it work perfectly.

Here's a link to a fun-looking site entitled "Beekeeping Like a Girl."  My girls are interested in our hive activities, so I'm guessing some other young ladies would enjoy seeing this site.  Take a look:

http://beekeepinglikeagirl.com/5-creative-beehives/

A Great Read: "Telling the Bees."

I have listened to the audiobook version of this great read.

There is so much information shared regarding the art of beekeeping, all wrapped up in a complex murder mystery.

One listen is definitely not enough.

Can't recommend the book more highly.

Click the image below to follow a link to Amazon for a preview:

My First Observations - July 2017

• Our bees like white clover, any time of the day, and especially when it is in the sun.

• White clover grows well around here, with very little coaxing, and it comes up year after year ... stronger than the last.  It is apparently best to scatter clover seed before the first frost, then as the soil crystallizes and thaws the seed will drop into an ideal depth.

• In Central Alabama a 25lb bag of White Durana Clover will cost about $120, but is a perennial and will come up every spring.

• Our bees like buckwheat, which grows well around here.  Buckwheat grows best when you till it in a few inches.  We tried just scattering the seed and letting it sit, but won't waste our time doing it that way again, as very little came up.

• Buckwheat is visited by our bees mostly in the morning ... very little after noon.

• In Central Alabama a 50lb bag of buckwheat will cost about $40, but has to be replanted.  Our buckwheat just finished flowering (end of June) and has gone back to seed.  We're waiting for a soil test to come back, (which will tell us why some areas of our land are more productive than others), then we're going to till the seed back in and see what happens.

Here's an interesting link regarding grants for beekeeping:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/grants-starting-apiary-20755.html