It's time to Name the Hives

When I got home from the Young Harris Beekeeping Institute, I inspected the beehives. My main concern was to determine if the swarm hive and the apparently queenless hive yet had queens. When I checked both hives had tiny larvae and I saw eggs in the apparently queenless hive.

So all the hives are growing appropriately and now it's time to give them names.

From left to right on the deck we have Bermuda, Mellona, Aristaeus2, and Hyron.

• Bermuda is my oldest hive, starting the third year of survival. The original hive boxes for Bermuda were painted a pale pink, so the name referred to the sands of Bermuda. This is my only hive with such a simple reason for her name.
• Mellona is next. Mellona is the Roman goddess of bees. Mellona is in her second year. She tends to make wonderful honey, but is slower in production than Bermuda
• Aristaeus2 is named for the Greek god Aristaeus who lost all of his bees to disease. Proteus advised him to sacrifice a number of animals, go away for a time. When he returned, he found swarms of bees in the sacrificed carcasses. His bees were never sick again. This was a small swarm and has managed to get started well, although they have a tendency to build burr comb.
• Hyron, according to Wikipedia, is the Cretan word for swarm of bees. Since this was my first swarm that I collected this year, I decided it deserved the name.
  
  

This hive below is the nuc that arrived queenless (or apparently so). The supplier gave me a new queen who was released but disappeared and there still was no laying activity in the hive five days later.
I believe this hive had a virgin queen from the beginning and she is now laying well.

• So I have named this hive Persephone since Persephone disappeared into the underworld for half the year but represented fertility when she was in the world during spring and summer.
  
  This little hive I have named Melissa, who in Greek mythology, saved Zeus' life by feeding him milk and honey. I hope this enthusiastic hive will make lots of honey to feed me and themselves.
  
  Finally, I have named this last hive Devorah, the Jewish poet and prophet, whose name in Hebrew means "bee." I did have this spelled Deborah, but a good friend of mine said the correct alliteration is Devorah.

"Hebrew scholars offer other possible Semitic origins of devorah,the modern Hebrew word for bee. They consider ancient cognates like the Aramaic for bee, debarta, and its Syriac cousin, deboritha, as well as the Hebrew word for honey, debash. There is another shoresh (three-letter word root) brought forth for consideration: the Mandaic Aramaic dibra 'back, tail, hence 'bee's stinger' (?) to be compared with the Arabic dubr 'backside, tail.'" I found this quote here.

I think since this hive is closest to my neighbor's yard and in full view and since this hive is directly beside the path the yard guys have to walk on to work in my yard, Devorah seems like a gentle name for a hive which at the moment appears to have a gentle feel. But with the sting of the bee implied in the origin of the name, we can also expect Devorah to keep the hive safe.

My Apiary 2008

This year I am starting the season with seven hives. Here are four of the deck hives - left to right:

• Bermuda - starting her third season with a queen they replaced in the fall

• Mellona - starting her second season - I haven't seen the queen yet this year

• Small Swarm collected on 4/8 in Chamblee - may or may not have a viable queen in two medium hive bodies and isn't named yet
  

• Swarm collected on 4/1 from an office parking lot shrub in Sandy Springs in my former swarm lure hive - also without a name
  

In front of Bermuda is my first as yet unnamed nuc hive, hived on 4/11

In my yard in a flower bed is nuc hive #2 also unnamed as yet, hived on 4/11

Also in my yard under another tree is nuc hive #3 unnamed, hived on 4/11

So I need five hive names - Greek/Roman mythology, here I come!

My yard guys are going to quit. I've let them ignore the deck because they are uncomfortable with the bees. I've been thinking I'd hang a veil for them to use on the fence so that my backyard gets cut this summer. We'll see.

A couple of years ago, I went to an Appalachian festival in Frostburg, MD where my daughter, Becky, lives. A woman there had goats that she named alphabetically according to year. The year we met her goats, they all had names that began with M: Muriel, Mabel, Maryanne.

I love this yellow paint that my friend Tracy gave me. I think for the year 2008, every box I paint will be yellow and every top, SBB or bottom board will be painted blue.

"What's in a name? That which we call a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

This quote is from Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

I've been thinking about this all morning since I opened the hives today to see how the honey supers were looking. What's in a name? Well, maybe a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've been struck all day by how like their names my hives are behaving.

Last year I was into the beehives as leisure activity (what was I thinking???) and named my hives for vacation destinations. The hive that barely survived through the winter was Bermuda.

Bermuda, the country, is only 22 miles in length and 2 miles in width - quite a small piece of land. If I were to drive (I usually take MARTA) to the Atlanta airport from my house inside the perimeter around Atlanta, I drive 26 miles - farther than the entire length of Bermuda, the small country.

So my hive Bermuda, lives up to her name and is quite small. I'd like to give her an extra frame of brood but since I haven't yet switched to all medium boxes, the brood I have available from other hives is all on deep frames.

So Bermuda is growing very slowly. This bad picture is of a frame in the second box that the bees have finally drawn out and the queen (see middle of picture wearing a white dot) is laying well. But the hive is so small that today I put an entrance reducer on it to help them maintain their forces.
























The hive that drew the crazy comb is named Proteus. I named the hive Proteus because the Greek god Proteus saved the lives of bees, but he had another characteristic - he was a shape-changer.

So in this hive the bees refuse to build straight comb. The comb is never the shape it is supposed to be.

Michael Bush said that sometimes you can't get bees to draw straight comb. I think he must be right because the bees in Proteus take after their namesake and are continuing to draw crazy comb. I got them to stop it in one box which is now filled with beautiful capped honey, but in this their new box, they are still making bridging comb between frames (see the pieces in the frame below). Wikipedia gives all kinds of shape-changing references for Proteus. Perhaps I should have researched further before naming this hive in a way that suggests the bees will be shape-changing with the comb!

And finally there's Mellona, named for the Roman goddess of bees and beekeeping. Blessed by Mellona as this hive is with her name, the bees are quietly and methodically making wax and honey, busy as bees.

They are currently building up their fourth box. The boxes all have been drawn from starter strips. Mellona has a beautiful brood pattern and gorgeous capped honey (see below) in two boxes and the bees are busily drawing out comb and storing honey in the fourth box.

So what's in a name?

I think a lot - or in psychology we might say that this represents magical thinking on the part of the beekeeper to think that the name of the hive has influenced me to make assumptions about the bees in it. And they are fitting right into my assumptions....which is why magical thinking seems so effective!