Bee Art at the Hambidge Center in Rabun County

On Betty's Creek Road in Rabun County is a gem of a place called the Hambidge Center.  Mary Hambidge was an artist/weaver who started the Hambidge Center in 1934.  She believed in art and sustainable farming.  I took a weaving class there about 30 years ago.  The Center has a gallery associated with it where art is displayed and sometimes sold.

My friends and I went to the mountains for the Memorial Day weekend.  We walked a trail on the Hambidge property (it covers 600 acres) and visited the Hambidge Center Gallery.  My dog Hannah swam in the N Georgia creek on the trail!

 To my surprise one of the items on display was this:

The sculptor had put sculpted busts into the beehive and let the bees have their way with them!

My friends put me with one of the hives for a photo:

While in Rabun county, I drove to the garden to check on my hive there.  To my shock as I drove up, I could see that the top of the hive was upturned on the ground.  The hive had the inner cover slightly askew.  I ran over to the hive.  One of the gardeners said he thought the wind had blown the top off.  

There is a surround box on top of the inner cover with a Rapid Feeder inside it on that hive.  As a result the top cover isn't propolized as it would be if it were directly on top of the inner cover.  

I checked on the hive which didn't need a new box, but I gave them a new box anyway since I may not be up there for another month and the blackberry is in voluminous bloom right now in that county.  I don't understand why the bees don't do really well in that location, but they don't seem to.

I left the hive with a brick on top of the top cover. 

Spring Report on Rabun County Bees

On Sunday I drove up to Rabun County just for the day to check on the bees there.  I took Hannah, my dog, with me.  Hannah had a delightful time - she is a dog to whom rules do not apply: she sleeps on my bed; sits on the furniture; and loves to run off-leash on trails with stern signs at the beginning:  ALL DOGS MUST BE ON LEASH.

When we go to the community garden in Rabun County, I let her run free out of the car.  While I am checking bees, she is racing up and down the creek banks and running through the water.  She had fun.  I did not.














I found no bees in the remaining Rabun hive.  The first Rabun hive was dead before winter and someone/something destroyed the equipment.  The remaining Rabun hive was populated by a swarm last spring and the bees were still going strong in December.  Now, however, there are no bees.  They left the hive full of honey.   On the top of the slatted rack were dead hive beetles.

On the screened bottom board were less than 20 dead bees.

I brought the honey home and crushed it to feed to the new hives.  I hope there isn't anything wrong with the honey but I assume with honey's antiseptic qualities that the risk of the honey being OK is pretty high.

The only frame I could find with any brood looked like this:

I feel a need to explain that my brood comb typically doesn't look this dark and dirty.  I usually replace it every year, but a swarm moved into this hive with old comb before I knew they were there, so the hive didn't get its usual culling out of comb previous to spring.

Even with the SHB on the slatted racks, the honey had not been slimed.  I brought home six frames of honey that tasted like kudzu.

I put the hive back together and left it as a 2 box hive.  I smeared swarm lure (olive oil, beeswax and lemongrass oil) on the landing, under the inner cover and in several other places.  Maybe the feral hive in the wall of the abandoned school nearby will send a swarm my way.

Meanwhile, I'll make several nucs in Atlanta with the idea of taking one of them up to Rabun to have bees there this year.  My sweet friend, Julia, gave me a frame with at least one queen cell on it to do just that.  I added frames from the Morningside apiary to make the nuc and if it succeeds, I'll take it to Rabun County.

Rabun County Marauder

I don't know where the fall went.  It's November and I have no idea what happened to autumn.  Today I'm in Rabun County.  I've missed being up here and have entirely missed the fall leaves.  I haven't done a good job of checking on the bees up here, so I wanted both to check on the bees and turn on the heat at my house so that the pipes won't freeze as the winter arrives.

I arrived at the School House Garden and was shocked with what I found.  As you remember, one of the hives had died.  I left one box on the cinder blocks - a slatted rack, a screened bottom board, one hive box, an inner cover and a telescoping cover.  My hope was that in the spring a hive might move in as a swarm.

Today here's what the empty hive looked like:

I don't  know how to think of this - the cover on the hive box could not have been off for long because the wood is not discolored and I haven't been here in two months.  The slatted rack and screened bottom board are discolored and wrecked.  I don't know if an animal did this or since the weeds had been cut back, if a tractor ran over the whole thing.

At the remaining live hive, I saw an occasional bee enter.  The bees all entered on the same side of the entry, but there were very few of them.  

I had brought an empty 10 frame box to act as a surround for a rapid feeder.  So I set up the rapid feeder over the inner cover and filled it with honey.  It was 62 degrees.  Generally when a hive is in need of stores, when you put on the feeder, at least one or two bees immediately show up in the tube to sample the new honey.  

Not a bee appeared.

I lifted the hive from the bottom hand hold.  It seemed relatively heavy as if they had put on a good amount of stores.  

I get really cautious when I've lost a hive, so I didn't go into the box and just left to go to WalMart.  While I perused the aisles at WalMart, I kept thinking about the bees.  Were those hive bees or were they marauding bees from the nearby hive in the wall of the old school building?  Should I have left all of that good honey on a deadout when there are hives that could use it in Atlanta?  

Needless to say, after I checked out of WalMart, I drove back over to the community garden and opened up the hive box.  

The top box held honey but no bees.  But on the second and bottom box there were bees covering four frames in each box (8 frames of bees in all).  I knew they had clustered there the night before when the temperatures were in the 30s, and I felt relieved to see them.

Still cautious, I didn't check any further to see if there were a queen, but instead closed up the hive with a sigh of relief.  I'll check them again in a few weeks.

I rode home wearing my sunglasses this morning because as probably all of you know, during the fall, leaves look more colorful through sunglasses than they actually are so I could have the illusion that I didn't miss the fall leaves in North Georgia!

Rabun County Bees

A couple of weeks ago when I went to Asheville for the Natural Beekeeping meeting, I stayed at my house in Rabun County.  On the way up I saw the bear in the misty rain at Black Rock Mountain Lake.    The day after the conference, the lake was sunny and beautiful and while I didn't see a bear again, I did see Joe Pye weed and goldenrod, evidence of the fall flow (for what it's worth).

Before I drove back to Atlanta, I checked on the Rabun bees.  The last time I was up at the mountain house, I discovered that one of the hives was almost dead and had small hive beetles all through it.

I didn't really check out the cause of the problem when I was there before because I was so upset, so I opened the hive on this visit and brought the boxes back home.  Clearly the hive had been robbed out, and left so weakened that the small hive beetle took advantage of the opportunity.

Two things are evident in this picture.  The edges of the cells are ragged, indicating a robbery.  There were dead bees littering the ground in front of the hive.  And you can see the slime of the small hive beetle.  I brought four boxes back to Atlanta and could hardly stand the sicky sweet smell in the car of the SHB's destruction.

The other hive was almost completely covered with weeds.  It was totally in the shade and had kudzu and other brambles all over the entry.  I didn't take a before picture, but I wish I had.  The bees were still flying happily in and out of the hive.  I knew this vegetation situation was likely so I brought my hedge clippers with me.  I went to work and freed the hive from most of the vegetation.

When I opened it, I was shocked (in all the previous shade) to find that I only saw one small hive beetle in the hive.  Perhaps they were all satiated on the frames from the other hive?

This hive has honey in all three boxes and brood in the bottom box.  I really wanted to taste their honey.  The top box is likely sourwood, but they had not completely capped the honey in those frames, so I brought back a frame from the middle box.

I didn't come prepared for harvest transport, so after brushing off the bees, I put the frame into a pillow case (I'm now using them for hive drapes like Julia taught me), and brought it back to Atlanta.  I crushed and strained it and now have three pounds of luscious grape-flavored honey, likely from the kudzu all around the creek bed where the hive is located!

(The HIDDEN honey frame).

Rabun Hives are Honey-Less

Before going on vacation this past week, I went up to Rabun County to check on the bees on June 6.  Both hives had bees but both were WITHOUT honey.  They didn't even have honey on the corners of the brood frames.

I had read in the The Macon Beekeeper (the monthly newsletter of the bee group in Franklin, NC) that there was little nectar in the area - here's the quote:

"Reports from all over indicate that at this point the honey crop is a failure. With one exception beekeepers report that their honey supers are, essentially, empty. A few are feeding their bees to hold off starvation.

It’s no different here. The tulip poplar did bloom. I do see some dark nectar in a few colonies. However, in reality, the nectar flow did not happen. My bees continue to work, and they are not starving. But there is no excess honey. It’s hard to take, but that’s agriculture."

My bees are about 10 miles south of Otto, NC, which is the area referenced in the above quote, so I'm not surprised, but sad to find that they had eaten through earlier honey stores.  That's just the way it is.

Here are the bees from the surprise move-in swarm hive happily (or not) entering their hive.


Note the corner of this frame by my thumb - NO honey for the brood.


I did see nectar on a few frames.  The sourwood was just starting to bloom when I was up there on the 6th.  My house up there is on a mountain of sourwood and the trees each had a few blooms.  My bees are at the Rabun County Civic center and not at my house, but they may have found some blooming sourwood to put the nectar in these frames.



This hive with five boxes on it had two full boxes of capped honey when I was here at the beginning of May.  Now they are empty.



Another sign that they may be finding a little nectar now is that they had begun building beautiful wax on this frame.  Just a little, but it takes nectar to do that.



The hive seemed listless, though, and the population was down although I saw eggs in both hives so I know the queens are OK.  The queen won't lay more eggs than the bees can support, though so she may have slowed down.



There are eggs and young larvae in the frame below.



Again, here's a little capped honey and some nectar being stored now.  Since the sourwood flow is starting, I took one box off of the tall hive and left them with room to store sourwood.  I didn't change the configuration of the surprise swarm hive, so their house is like it was the day they moved into it.

Location, Location, Location: What a Difference a Zip Code Makes

My hives in my Atlanta locations: 30342, 30306, 30316 are thriving.  I have honey boxes on all of the overwintered hives, sometimes stacking up to seven boxes.  The new hives are rocking along as well, with most now up to three boxes on the hives.

My hives in Clayton (30568) are a different story.  The nectar flow in Rabun County about 120 miles north is about a month behind Atlanta.  So these hives are really moving slowly.

A lazy spider has the luxury of creating her abode under the top cover of the Rabun Blue hive.



That hive hasn't drawn out the box I gave it on the 20th of April.  I adjusted a few things but didn't add a box although I had one with me for that purpose.



The frames in the top two boxes that were being used were filled with nectar, which is a good sing, but none of it capped as it would be in Atlanta.



The green swarm hive in Rabun is drawing that pretty yellow wax I frequently see in hives in Rabun at this time of year.  And they are raising brood and growing.  But they, too, didn't need any more space.




By the way, I think this swarm came from a feral hive that lives in this old abandoned school that is on the edge of the meadow where the community garden is.  I've shown pictures of this hive before.  I walked over to look at it on Thursday when I was there, and they were still busy as bees.

Rabun Report - Bees Doing Well

Rabun County is literally a month behind Atlanta only a couple of hours to the south.  In Atlanta, we've been able to plant spring plants since the middle of March.  In Rabun county only now is it warm enough to plant anything.

I last checked the Rabun hives on Friday the 13th.  It is only a week later, but I had to come to Young Harris to a conference (a psychology conference - the bee institute is in May) so I stopped by again today.  I won't be back up here until the Bee Institute at Young Harris on May 10, so I wanted to make sure the hives had plenty of room as it is now the nectar flow should begin up here.

The swarm hive had good bee activity on the 13th (see below)



The queen was laying eggs and you can see c-shaped larvae in these cells.


I saw two bees like the one in the lower center who were completely covered in yellow pollen!

The lovely frame below is one I had stuck in on the side of the box with remnants of old comb.  The bees had incorporated the black comb into new fresh wax in the center!


In the blue hive on the 13th the bees were building wax and festooning.


Grass was growing up in front of the hive making access a little difficult, so I took a piece of cardboard and tamped the grass down with it.


Today on the 20th, the bees were making use of the cardboard as a place to drag out the dead.  Actually they do that anyway, just without the cardboard, the dead get lost in the grass.

Inside the hive, the bees hadn't used much new real estate.  I had brought a new box with me and although I didn't put the box on the hive, I took a full frame out of it and gave them a better ladder in their latest empty box.  I didn't put any new box on the green hive either because they are only in half of the second box.


Also in the blue hive, I saw the opened queen cell in the photo below, indicating that the hive had probably swarmed and requeened itself.  The queen is laying so maybe I missed this the last time I was here.

I'm trying to keep up with my hive boxes this year so before I left, I numbered these boxes.  I now have numbers on all of my 8 frame mediums that are currently on hives.  I also have some numbers on the boxes that are stored, not yet used at my house and at Jeff's. 

This way I can keep up with where honey comes from (that is to say, which hive produces the honey) and also make an effort to return harvested boxes back to the hive from which they came in an effort to keep the hives healthier.