The Beekeeper's Car and the Parking Attendant

A friend of mine and I eat lunch every other Wednesday. Today we met at a restaurant where you have to valet park. We had a delicious lunch and at the end of lunch, we walked down to the valet stand and each handed the attendant our claim tickets.

Moments later David's car arrived; he got in it and rode away. The people behind me got their car; the people standing in back of them got their car. Mine had yet to appear.

Finally my car arrived from the parking deck. The attendant jumped out out of the car, and two bees flew out with him.

"M'am," he said, "There are bees in your car!"

My guess is that he arrived to get my car and saw bees on the driver's side window. He waited, hoping they would move, but when they didn't, he screwed his courage to the sticking place and finally got in anyway. Of course, he arrived with my car and without any stings, but he probably felt insecure for the whole fifty feet of the drive!

I told him that I was a beekeeper and that there are almost always bees in my car at this time of year. He and the other attendants, listening in, looked shocked and then laughed.

I haven't mentioned yet that last night my friend Gina gave me a swarm that she collected. I drove over to her house to get it at 7:15 last night and took it straight to the Stonehurst Inn where the I-Beam swarm had absconded. I have been desperate to get bees for them and was delighted to get the swarm.

I installed the swarm in the hive at Stonehurst, but as usual when one installs a swarm, some of the bees remained in the original cardboard nuc box in which Gina had dumped them.

Hive box ready for the dumping of the cardboard nuc box.

The bees are in this cardboard nuc box.

I'm ready to put the cover over the hive when I realized two things: there were bees clustered on the outside of the top box just beneath the edge of the inner cover on both the front and back of the hive.

I had put the nuc from which they came in front of the hive, but nobody was using the front door. 

Often when you install a swarm, the rest of the bees will just file in the entrance to join the queen. Not these bees.

So I shook and brushed the excess bees onto the inner cover. I used my bee brush to gently roll the bees on the upper edges of the top box up and onto the inner cover.

I noticed bees with their bottoms in the air, signaling to their sisters that the queen was in the hive. That felt comforting but the lack of use of the front door was distressing to me, since the I-Beam swarm hadn't taken to these quarters. 

The bees began to treat the hole in the inner cover as their entry and started moving into it. I love to watch the process - it's like a slow moving river of bees.

To me this view from farther back gives you the feel of the move to the center hole. To get this moving flow of bees, I had shaken the cardboard box, shaken the empty box I had used as a pouring funnel, and brushed the bees off of the hive sides to the top. 

Although typically I would have left the cardboard nuc until the next day, I wanted to return it to Gina because the restaurant where I ate lunch was close to her house. Also it was supposed to pour rain today and I didn't want the box to get ruined. I took the cardboard box (with the few remaining fifteen or so bees) to my car. 

Thus the adventure was created for the parking attendant! 

I was so concerned after the I-Beam swarm absconded. I returned to Stonehurst tonight to check and indeed, the bees had found the front entrance and were using it well. Typically I put in an entrance reducer, but decided to leave this one wide open for now. I can reduce the entrance in the next week's visit.

Impossible Swarm Day Two

I left the swarm all night with my swarm box with a ventilated hive cover on the top.  The cover was open 1/2 inch so that if the bees wanted to come into the box, they could.

I arrived at 7:30 before sunrise, although it was getting light, this morning.  A car was parked in the driveway - which had not been true the night before.  The bees I had scooped were clustered together in the box under the ventilated cover.

The majority of the swarm was still in the shrub.  This was not the scenario I had imagined, but as the sun came up, the scenario I HAD imagined began to come true.  As the sun came up, the bees in the box got all active.  The bees left the collection box and moved back to her Majesty in the shrub.  They used a branch as a bridge and all of them went across it as I watched.

Now I hadn't a clue as to what to do.  I drove home (less than 5 minutes), picked up a cardboard nuc box, loaded it with five medium frames of drawn comb, smeared the entry to the box with lemon grass oil.  I took it back to the swarm location.  I set the nuc box down with the entry near the shrub and left for my 9 AM appointment at my office with little hope for collecting this swarm.  Before I left I wrote a note and put it on windshield of the car in the driveway:

Dear Homeowner:

There is a swarm of bees in the shrub at the street end of your driveway.  

I am attempting to collect the bees.  All of my equipment and hopefully 

the bees will be gone at the end of the day.  Let me know if you have 

any questions.

Linda Tillman

Master Beekeeper

404-447-1943

At noon I had a break so I drove back over to the swarm (10 minutes from my office).  There I found an empty collection box and bees all snuggling up to each other in the shrub.  No action at all in the nuc box.

Disgusted with all the time I had spent on this, I threw the collection box into the car and changed the position of the nuc box.

Again I returned to the office.  Around 5 PM I got an email from Anne, who had helped me with her flashlight last night.  She had walked by the swarm and saw the nuc box.  She said there were no bees on the shrub and bees flying in and out of the box!

My grandkids went home at 5:30 so I rode over to see for myself.  There were bees flying in and out of the box.  I decided to wait until dark to remove it. 

At 8:35, I drove back over and closed up the nuc box.

From the second photo, you can see that a ton of bees were not flying in and out.  Maybe there are only a handful in there and the rest flew off to a new home.

Anyway, I brought them home and set the box (which felt really light although I could hear an interior buzz) on an empty hive box until tomorrow when I will install it.  If there is a full hive of bees in it,  I'll let you know. 

I should have just set up the nuc box last night - could have saved myself a lot of stings!

Bees in the Mountains of Rabun County

My friends Robin and Mary have a farm in Rabun County near my house in the mountains.  Years ago Robin had bees in the Appalachian mountains of East Tennessee where he was a physician.  He tells the story about the day his queen bee arrived and he went to the Post Office to pick her up.  A whole row of men were sitting on the rockers on the front porch of the Post Office, waiting to see his queen!

I am no longer keeping bees at the community garden in Rabun County, and Robin and Mary offered for me to place hives in their large farm garden.  I was thrilled.  It means I get to see them more and that I will have a place for the bees where they can be watched better than at my house in Rabun when I'm only there about once a month.

A couple of weeks ago I installed a hive from Jarrett's Apiaries in Robin's garden.  Then a week ago I picked up a nuc from Mountain Sweet Honey and installed it right beside the other hive in the garden.

First we made room for the frames in the hive box.  This is a medium nuc so we are putting it into a medium box.

Then we opened the top of the cardboard nuc to begin moving the frames.

 We used hive drapes to minimize the disturbance to the bees and placed the drapes on both the nuc and the hive box (once it had some bees in it).

The first frame is moved and then placed in the exact position in the hive box that it occupied in the nuc.

  It's usually easy to find a queen in the nuc box because there are so few bees compared to a full hive in full swing.  So we looked for her as we worked.

And there she was!

Because these are medium frames in a deep nuc, the bees who were ready for more space, had started building comb on the bottom of the frames.  I removed all of that and gave them a new box.

We closed up the hive.  A nectar flow is going so we didn't feed the bees.  

I'll go back up this Thursday to check on both hives.  To stave off the bears, Mary and Robin are going to strap the hives (a method encouraged by Ross Conrad in an article in Bee Culture a couple of years ago.

New Bees at the Stonehurst Place Inn

So a couple of weeks ago, I picked up bees from Ray Civitts.  One hive was to be delivered to Stonehurst Inn where they are now happily installed.  The other was going to Robin's.  So now at Robin and Mary's farm I have two hives of bees.  One is from Slade Jarrett and the other from Ray Civitts of Mountain Sweet Honey.

When I arrived, his garage was crammed with nucs; bee equipment, neatly stacked; hive parts he sells.  He had been working hard all morning already (and I arrived early!)  He said someone had come at 4:30 AM that morning to pick up bees - can you imagine?



















I drove this nuc back to Atlanta and installed it at Stonehurst where they are doing well.

I love the cardboard nucs - easy to manage, to carry and best of all, you don't have to return them to the seller!

   

When I finished installing it, I left the cardboard box facing the entry so errant bees could get home.  

I stopped by on Thursday to see how they were doing (ten days past installation).  The bees looked great.  

There were lots of bees in the one deep box - many on the top of the inner cover. 

They were drawing and filling comb like crazy:

So I gave them a new box with one drawn comb frame in it to provide them with a ladder.  While I was at Ray's I noticed he had entrance reducers so I asked if I could buy one.  He insisted on giving it to me, so I insisted that he autograph it for me!

Bees from Jarrett Apiaries

Slade Jarrett offered me a nuc so that I could try out his bees!  Who would say no to that?  Not only was it a generous offer, but I had a great experience, both picking up the bees and installing them.  Now if they'll just do well.....

His son took this photo of us all as I picked up the nuc:

I loaded it into the car and headed for Rabun County.  These bees grew up in Baldwin, Georgia which is in the northeast part of the state about an hour from my house in the mountains.  I can't have bees easily at that house because I'm not there all the time and there are bears on the mountain.

My friends, Robin and Mary, have a house just over the mountain from me where they live full time with their chickens and an adorable dog named Little Bear.  I installed the bees in their garden where I will both get to see my friends and enjoy having bees in such a lovely spot.

The hive to the right hasn't been installed yet.  Hopefully the Jarrett bees will get off to a good start this week.

The nuc was pretty with a good brood pattern established by the queen.  Let's hope she can build up well before the sourwood blooms in the mountains.

This is my first chance for sourwood honey - cross your fingers!