Stonehurst Swarm Bees Made it Through the Winter

At Stonehurst we went into winter with two hives.  One died over the winter.  They had stores but the bees were on the frames just below all the stored honey in a smallish cluster where I'm sure they had not been able to stay warm enough.  The other hive (which is a swarm that voluntarily moved into an empty hive which had died early in the summer) is doing quite well.

I had stopped by a couple of weeks ago to take away the dead hive.  I'm going to harvest the honey from the hive that died.  Then when we get a new nuc for Stonehurst in April, I'll feed that honey to the new bees to help them get started.

Today I went through the swarm hive to see if I could make sure they had a queen and add a box.  They went into winter in one deep and one medium.  I fed these bees bee tea (about a total of one gallon) as winter approached (at the very end of October).

These bees were not bustling like my hive at home nor like the bees at Tom's but were doing well.  There was brood on almost every frame.  I know bees are supposed to move up over the winter, but the queen had laid solidly in the bottom box and had brood, eggs, and larvae in the second box.

I had planned to add a third box and checkerboard frames up (every other frame empty in box 2 and box 3 in alternate patterns, but when I found so much brood in every frame, I decided just to add the new box with the center frame drawn comb to give them a ladder.

The queen was laying drones in these large cells in the upper box.  Swarm season is coming.

The bees had lots of nectar and pollen as well as eggs and brood.  I'm feeling good about how this hive survived the winter, especially since they are located behind a house and next to a fence so they have limited daylight.

Big Bee Day - Part One Rabun County

I drove up to Rabun County in the pouring rain yesterday, planning to visit the bees and inspect the hive. Last time I was there on August 8, they were angry and had a field day with me (no smoker, only a jacket).

Although it poured all day yesterday, today the sun broke out and I broke out my Golden Bee suit - no stings for me (it's almost impossible to get stung in the Golden Bee suit). Fully prepared with smoker, Golden Bee suit, and curiosity, I opened the hive at the community garden this morning.

The hive is full of bees. Box one is mostly brood. Box two is mostly honey. Box three is comb and little else. There were no hive beetles, the bees looked healthy (no DWV, no sign of varroa mites), and there are still a few drones in the hive.



At EAS Billy Davis really advocated using hive drapes, so I brought flour sack towels that I buy from Walmart to cover the boxes. These towels are all cotton, light, and lint free. Using them I'm not likely to leave any reminder of the towel behind in the hive and the bees won't get caught in the material as they might in terry cloth. This accomplishes two things: it disturbs the bees less because the box is not suddenly exposed to the bright light of the sun and it keeps the hive from advertising its honey stores to any potential marauding bees from other hives.



I am dying to see what their honey tastes like since I've only gotten honey from my backyard bees in Atlanta. These bees can get nectar from sourwood and from kudzu neither of which is available to my Atlanta bees. So I took two frames of honey from box two and replaced them with drawn wax from a box in Atlanta.

This hive had great stores of pollen as you can see in the picture below.



Also the queen has been hard at work as you can see in the brood below. I think the picture below is upside down, but the brood is still visible to your in the cells either way! The larvae look healthy as do the bees in this hive where I have never seen the queen.



The two frames I took were frames of drawn wax from last year that I had put in the hive. I brought it home to crush and strain. This is the first time I have tried crushing wax that isn't brand new. It wasn't easy. Actually there were two problems. I couldn't find my pestles and remembered that someone had suggested on this blog that I use a potato masher.

The two problems were that the comb was old and the potato masher really didn't work well. The comb got all smashed into the holes in the potato masher and it was completely gunky in minutes. I ended up smashing the comb with the insert for my Cuisinart! It was the shape of the pestle and solid on the bottom which was the problem with the potato masher (it wasn't).

One of the frames I brought back had popsicle sticks as starter strips rather than wax.  The cut popsicle stick showed up in the crushed wax and at first I had no idea why wood was in the honey.  Then I realized what it was!

I let the crushed honey drain all afternoon and the wax at the end of the day looked like this:

Because it was old wax, the crushed wax looks dark and stiff, unlike new wax that I usually see.

Then I tasted the honey - WOW - it tastes a little like grape which means that there is definitely some kudzu in the honey.  It's only a small bit - maybe six pounds if I'm lucky - but I am thrilled to get it.

Bringing In the Pollen and Bringing out the Dead

It's warm and the bees are flying from both hives. They are both bringing in bright yellow pollen (see first picture) and bringing out the dead.
In looking at the dead in both the second and third picture, it's clear from the deformed wings that I have a Varroa problem. I don't how early I can begin powdered sugar shakes. I'll post on the bee forum pages and let you know what they say.
I also wondered about the white dots in front of both hives. I assume it's bird feces from a bird eating the hundreds of dead bee bodies, but I don't know if I should worry about something else instead.

The Difference in a Palynlogist and a Pollenologist

is my spelling error! Horrors!

I have been appalled that "ginormous" is now a word that is accepted and is in the dictionary. I certainly don't want to supply any more terrible contributions to the English language, so I want to do my part to rectify an error.

Dr. Paul Arnold is a "Palynologist" not whatever I labeled him earlier (not writing it again to avoid continuing the trend in the ginormous direction.)

OK, so let's look at the word. Wikipedia says

"Palynology is the science that studies contemporary and fossil palynomorphs, including pollen, spores, dinoflagellate cysts, acritarchs, chitinozoans and scolecodonts, together with particulate organic matter (POM) and kerogen found in sedimentary rocks and sediments. Palynology does not include diatoms, foraminiferans or other organisms with silicaceous or calcareous exoskeletons."
I heard from Dr. Arnold today about the analysis of my pollen sample. Here is what he said:

"Sorry it has taken me so long to look at your specimen! You had what seemed to be quite a bit of tulip poplar, and some magnolia pollen. Also, quite a bit of rosaceous pollen was found in your specimen (possibly blackberry, strawberry, apple, etc.). Holly pollen was also present in pretty large amounts, as was another very large pollen grain which I have not seen before. I keyed it out through my pollen keys, and it seemed to lead me to either a type of lily or yucca plant. I’m not 100% sure about this last grain, since I have never made a reference slide of yucca, but I wouldn’t rule that possibility out. All in all, a pretty typical spring woodland honey (with the exception of that last grain)."

I wrote back that this super was filled by the bees in early July - actually late June/early July.

Here's his response (what a nice guy - he ran my specimen again.)

"This confuses me too. There are some pollens that can be confused with poplar, but most of these are spring pollens as well. One of these “poplar mimics” are various species of the buttercup family. It would tend to be unusual to find large amounts of this unless there are various ornamental buttercups in your area, or a meadow full of native buttercups (some do persist into July). The only other thing that I can think of is that the bees may have been collecting residual pollen from old blooms or other surfaces. If they were doing that then that means that they were not collecting nectar from these residual sources. One possible support of this idea is, because of the unusual year, I saw many poplar blooms in the piedmont area persisting into late June, quite a few weeks past when I usually see them. We actually had almost no poplar bloom up here due to a warm early spring followed by a late heavy frost. Another explanation is that possibly there may be other types of ornamentals in your neighborhood that are neither in my pollen key, image databases, or from reference slides that I have collected that mimic those golden-yellow poplar grains. So, as you can see, I’m just as puzzled as you. After I received your e-mail, I actually spinned down another aliquot of your sample to check its contents. Once again, the golden-yellow poplar grains seemed to be present, but I found an additional pollen that I don’t remember seeing in your previous sample . . . sumac. Do you have any smooth or winged sumac in your area? This would tend to darken your honey somewhat. Holly was certainly a very significant part of your sample (there is no confusing these grains with anything else), although I can’t narrow it down to species. This is actually also a little unusual for so late in the year, unless you have quite a few late blooming ornamental hollies in your area (most native hollies have bloomed out by mid June). It sure would be interesting to try again next year at the same time to see if you get the same type of honey."

and he straightened me out about the spelling of what he does: PALYNOLOGIST
For those of you who care about words like I do, here is Wikipedia's description of how the term originated:

"The term palynology was introduced by Hyde and Williams in 1944, following correspondence with the Swedish geologist Antevs, in the pages of the Pollen Analysis Circular (one of the first journals devoted to pollen analysis, produced by Paul Sears in North America). Hyde and Williams chose palynology on the basis of the Greek words paluno meaning 'to sprinkle' and pale meaning 'dust' (and thus similar to the Latin word pollen).[5"

So there you go - and down with English additions like ginormous.....

Eager BEEvers

Today we had cool temperatures and intermittent rain all day. In spite of this, the bees were out flying. Here is my thermometer on my deck - so you can see how cool it was. Below is Mellona where the bees were out and about.

We've had incredible amounts of pollen in Atlanta - one of my friends calls it Atlanta's spring snow - and you can see it on the deck, marked by raindrops!

Winnowing the Pollen

We winnowed the pollen by pouring it from the metal bowl into the pan below.

The fan is on and blows all the stuff that shouldn't be in the pollen onto the white butcher paper. We could see pieces of bees legs and dust and other lovely stuff on the white paper when we had finished.

The bowl of pollen was poured and re-poured four different times in front of the fan before we were finished. Each class member took home a sandwich bag of pollen.

Hmmmmm, now what will I do with that? Many people eat pollen as a health food.....

Folk School Pollen collection

I just got home from a weekend beekeeper workshop at the John C Campbell Folk School. These are pictures of our pollen collection.

Our teacher was Virginia Webb whose sourwood honey won best honey in the world at the world honey contest.

Virginia had pollen traps on two of the Folk School beehives. These pictures are of Virginia removing the pollen. We poured the pollen into a measuring cup. Then we winnowed the pollen.

The beekeeper as the Grim Reaper

Yesterday I opened both hives to check on the bees. There was lots of activity in both hives.

Destin had fully drawn the lower hive body with capped honey on the two side frames. However, I did see capped brood cells in the center frames

In the upper medium, there were lots of bees hard at work. The center five frames were being drawn out. There was uncapped honey and pollen in the cells. It was fun to see the deep orange pollen cells (looked like the yolk of a yard egg) and I had seen the bees coming in to the hive with bright orange pollen.

I didn't see any eggs but I am using white foundation and was somewhat uncomfortable to hold and examine the frames for too long. I did not see the queen.

Bermuda was less drawn out and less active but still tons of bees. I did not see the queen but did see capped brood. They were not happy about my presence. I guess the alarm goes out when you open the first hive and the second one is on alert.

When I put each hive back together I killed bees. It's so easy to squash them.

The bee forum contributors made a couple of suggestions that may help the next time - one to put the front edge of the super on the back edge of the hive body and slide it forward like a bulldozer so that the bees can get out of the way, rather than die. The other was to put the super on catty corner so that it is only in contact with the lower hive body at the four corners and then gradually sliding the hive circularly into place, sliding bees off as you go in the bulldozer fashion.

When I finished, one little bee was caught by the leg at the front of one of the hives because I hadn't seen her and didn't have the new method (see above). Two of her buddies were trying to help - or give her the last rites - I don't know which! I lifted the hive off of her and she fell to the base. When I went out about ten minutes later she was gone - either recovered and flew away or the housekeeping bees disposed of her body.

The Grim tasks of beekeeping.