Bees: A Little of This, A Little of That

Yesterday I inspected all the hives at home.  Finding lots of little tidbits of interest, I decided to post a hodge-podge of them, so here goes:

I saw a perfectly lovely queen in SOS2.  She was gliding slowly, unfazed by my arrival in the hive, over her creations and paused so that I could take her photo.  Isn't she pretty - I love the golden queens that my bees often raise.



It has (finally) begun to rain in Atlanta - we've now had several days of it.  My garden is green, and the nectar flow may get a last hurrah with the extra push of moisture from the universe.  Below you can see my water source.  It's a plant saucer sitting on an upturned pot.  Inside that plant saucer is another one filled with rocks so that the bees have somewhere to light while taking in the water.



I fall in love with the bees all over again every time I pull a foundationless frame and find that they are creating comb.



Remember the frames that have stood around untouched until the nectar flow began to diminish?  There have been bees all over them for the past few days and now every cell has been ripped open and all the honey robbed out.



The shards of wax cappings on the ground attest to the robbery.  That is a way that you can tell if your hive has been robbed.  In a working hive, the bees are quite conservative with the wax - they reuse the caps of the brood cells, they move wax from one place to the next.  But in a robbery, the bees are not invested and tear the cappings off, dropping them wherever they may fall.



Early in my beekeeping, when I was still using sheets of wax foundation, I put a box of wax foundation frames as a new super on the hive .  Later that day, I stood by the hive and could hear a definite crunching sound.  I even posted on Beemaster about it because it was such a strange sound.  I came to discover that the bees were chewing the wax out of the new frames and taking it to a place in the hive where it was needed!

Imagine hearing crunching coming from your hive!

My bees in these hives have really been collecting nectar.  They've built some pretty fat honey comb as you can see in the photo below.



I'm off to Young Harris tomorrow night and will be teaching "Low Tech Beekeeping" there on Friday afternoon at 1 and at 2 in room 106.  If you are there, be sure to speak to me and introduce yourself as someone who reads this blog.

First Date with the Solar Wax Melter

Yesterday was my first date this year with the solar wax melter. I set it out before I left of work and when I returned at the end of the day, the wax had all melted and filtered through the paper towel. I couldn't find one of my industrial strength rubber bands and the flimsy rubber band I used had popped during the process (see below)



But this wax from Lenox Pointe is light and beautiful. The advantage of foundationless frames is that all new wax from honey combs (not just capping wax) melts to look like this. Brood wax is always darker and not as pretty - but wax from comb holding honey is gorgeous.


Here the disk is popped out and sitting on a paper towel.



Happy with my first date, I balled up the cleaned wax from the Stonehurst four frame harvest and set the wax melter up to work again today.



Sometimes the melting wax wicks down through the paper towel and accumulates on the foil below the container.   I found a new container with more surface area - I'm hoping this will be an even better result with less wicking.

Topsy Turmoil

The last two times I've checked the top bar hive, one top bar has come off from the top bar as I've tried to lift it. The comb attached (or not) is all full of honey.  The comb appears to be attached to the bottom of the hive.  I haven't really had any idea what to do.

The last time I was in the top bar hive, the brood bars were full all the way up to this honey.  I didn't want the honey to make the queen feel honey bound and influence the hive to swarm.  The only choice was to undo the stuck comb.

I have not enjoyed the top bar hive.  It is so much more difficult to work with than the hive box.  I can't see what is going on and I tend to create destruction as I did today.

With a regular frame, you can shake the bees off of it.  This comb could not possibly be shaken, nor can any top bar comb.  I wonder how in the world you harvest honey without making the mess we did today?

I put all of the mess on a slide show.  We killed at least 500 bees in the process and may have destroyed the queen as well, although wet with honey bees all look like queens because their bodies are so shiny.

First Jeff and I slid our hive tools down the side of the hive to loosen the comb from the hive.  Then we reached in and gently pulled the honey comb up from the bottom of the hive (and at least 500 bees).  Bees died from being squashed.  Some died from being coated in honey.

We put the comb in a large roasting pan and tried to brush the bees off....OMG what a mess!  Suddenly Jeff said, "Oh, no, there's the queen!"  He's really a good queen spotter but I'd prefer to think that I'm not sure it was the queen.  We took the questionable bee, covered with honey, and gently put her back into the hive.

We put some of the cut honey back into the hive in front of the follower board on some aluminum foil.  I took the rest home and was heartsick as I cleaned tons of dead bees off of the remaining comb into my kitchen sink.

At least we did see brood and eggs so they have the resources to make a queen if we have destroyed her.  I am so sad about this.  Makes me not want to open the top bar ever again.  I certainly won't build another one.  Here are the problems I've had:

1.  Hard to keep bees in the hive - lost one swarm, lost and recovered one package
2.  The only way to keep the bees in the hive was to put old comb on the bottom and close off the screened bottom board.  The comb on the bottom was the source of the problem today
3.  If comb is crooked or breaks off, there's no easy way to tie it into the hive - you can use string on the top bar, but it doesn't really do the trick and bees get tangled in the fiber of the string.  Rubber bands can't be used.  Below this list is a picture of how bees get caught (and die) in the string
4.  Any problem on the bottom of the hive is invisible until you tear things up to get to it......grrrr.
5.  I can't imagine harvesting - how do you get the bees off of the comb without using smoke and without shaking the comb?

Picture below of bees entangled in the fibers of the kitchen twine (dead).

Anyway, here's a slide show of the mess: