Of Duct Tape and Rapid Feeders

Every time I turn around, I find another use for duct tape.  When I was a Girl Scout leader, my co-leader and I kept count for the more than 100 uses we found for the bandana.  I have now found a new use for the center cone of the Rapid Feeder!

My grandchildren came over to dye Easter eggs on Saturday and we didn't have enough cups for the egg dye.  I went to the nearby CVS, but they didn't carry any plastic drinking cups like we sometimes have used.  So we put to work the center cup of the Rapid Feeder as a dye holder:

The kids had fun and thanks to the help of the Rapid Feeder, we dyed beautiful eggs.

Afterwards I ran the Rapid Feeder cups through the dishwasher in case any dye residue affected the honey for the bees in the feeder later on.

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!

I'm about to leave for a week of vacation and I'm worried about the bees with no honey.  The bees at Jeff and Valerie's all have plentiful supplies.  My bees are OK at my house, but the bees at Sebastian's and at Chastain are without stores.

Today I ran by Sebastian's and fed those bees by refilling the rapid feeder with honey.  Jennifer Berry says she's never seen a feeder in which bees didn't die.  So far I've never found a dead bee in these rapid feeders, but there's always a first time.

I had given the bees old honey from last year that had crystallized.  Today I had more of the same.  When I opened the top of the hive, the feeder was pretty much down to the crystals.  I poured in more crystallized honey from two jars:

Because it was crystallized, I left the jars for a while upside down to drain.  Also because it was sort of crystallized, the honey didn't climb up on the inside of the cone to the level where it was on the outside of the cone.

I took my spoon and scraped around a little at the base of the cone to move any blocking crystals.













The bees were thrilled and eagerly began transporting their new supplies.

One great advantage of the rapid feeder is that because it is closed and the only entry is from within the hive through the hole in the inner cover, the smell of open honey is not permeating the area inviting robbers.  I hope these bees live well and prosper.

I'll let you know when I'm back home from vacation!

Why We Feed Package Bees

When my daughter Valerie was about 12, we had a reverse surprise party for her birthday.  Early on a Saturday morning, we drove a van to each of her friends' houses, woke the friends up and took them to our house for a surprise breakfast and birthday party.  The friends (their mothers were all forewarned) were totally caught off guard and came in their pajamas without any preparation.  It was a great party and they were glad to be together, but nobody was prepared because that is what defines a surprise.

Package bees are totally unprepared to be dumped into the packages.  They don't know it's coming - just one day their beekeeper takes them and puts them in a 2 or 3 pound package with a bunch of other bees who are equally surprised.  Shut up with strangers plus an unknown queen, they are taken on a journey with no preparation.  They probably don't have any fun unlike Valerie's friends did at her party.

Bees who swarm are ready for the journey.  Ahead of going, they run the queen back and forth through the hive to exercise her and to get her a little thinner for her swarm flight.  The bees who are leaving gorge themselves on honey and hold it in their honey stomachs so they are ready to make wax the minute they find a new place to live.  Like good scouts, they practice the "be prepared" motto to a "t."

So when you install a package of bees, you have to feed them.  Ordinarily I don't feed bees frequently but I do feed packages when I install them.  In essence a package of bees is a totally unprepared artificial swarm.

The packages I installed on Sunday had completely emptied their 2 quart Rapid Feeders when I looked into the hives on Thursday.  I refilled the feeders and probably that will be the end of it.  I only want them to have enough syrup to draw the wax they need to fill the brood box.

After that, the nectar flow is going strong in Atlanta and they will manage well without my help.

Report on January State of the Rabun Bee Hives

There's good news and there's bad news. Both of these hives were small and not too great going into the winter. The dark green hive had been covered by kudzu at the end of the summer - the gardeners who maintain the area around the garden didn't realize I had two hives and let the kudzu win. I would take garden shears with me every time I went and cut back the area around the entrance but the kudzu definitely won.

I anticipated that these hives would not make it through the winter. I've already ordered packages of bees to replace them, assuming they would die.

Today on my visit to the garden, I found out that the dark green hive at the Community garden in Rabun County is bee-less. I'm sad, but not surprised that they are gone. At first without investigating, I put some food on the hive, assuming there might be bees, but when a hive is dead there is an eerie silent feel and I realized that there was no life there.



But then I went to the second hive and lo and behold there were bees flying in and out. They were really there and I was astounded. The hive felt alive when I opened it, even though I didn't see bees anywhere except at the front entrance. What a relief!



I saw as many as six bees at the same time, but couldn't snap a picture fast enough - aren't digital cameras irritating that way?

Anyway, I took the feeder off of the green hive and poured the contents into the feeder for the living, breathing hive - HOORAY! Hope for the future at the Community Garden.

Interestingly there were spiders nesting in the corners of the top cover of both hives. I like them better than roaches!

Live Bees at Blue Heron and at Jeff's

The bees in the nuc at Blue Heron are ALIVE! I really can't believe it. These are the vandalized bees that are now housed in a nuc and locked with a bicycle lock against further intrusion. I did not believe they would still be OK and we are not out of the winter death possibilities until March. At least for now they are flying.

I couldn't believe it so I took four pictures to prove to myself that they actually are coming and going. You can watch a hive and tell if the bees entering and leaving it live there or are robbers from another hive. The residents enter confidently and in one fell swoop into the entry. Robber bees are unsure and tend to hover around the entrance before going into the hive.

These bees own this hive.

At my old house where Jeff and Valerie now live we have two hives we are concerned about - now three. Colony Square is doing great with bees all at the entrance. Lenox Pointe has bees but also evidence of nosema, possibly, in that there are streaks of bee poop on the hive box at the entry way.

The hive we call "Five" is still alive. It was tiny going into winter and we had talked about putting it into a nuc, but never did. It is housed in two medium boxes. Jeff hasn't seen any bees flying in or out, so we opened the top to take a peek. The rapid feeder was still on the hive and there were bees walking up and down the sides of the cone. We both whooped out loud to see actual bees alive in the hive.

Our fourth hive over there is the swarm we caught in June. Although small, it too is alive and had bees in the feeder cone of the rapid feeder.

Don't be disturbed by the mold in the rapid feeder or the "weeds." The weeds are actually sprigs of thyme and we'll clean out the mold on our next opportunity to open the hive.

Today it was still quite cold and we didn't want to remove the rapid feeder to clean it because it covers the hole in the inner cover and the bees are likely to have propolized any air space to maintain warmth. I'll take warmth over cleanliness if they can make it through the winter.

Jeff and I are following Jennifer Berry and Keith Delaplane's system for powdered sugar treatment for varroa mites.  We are dusting the bees with the Dustructor - which means dusting without opening the hive - four times this month (three days apart) and then will repeat this in March.

Today was my third treatment and I dusted the bees at my house and at the Stonehurst Place Inn.  Jeff will do the bees at my old house tomorrow.  It's out of schedule but I dusted the bees at Blue Heron when I stopped there - they are actually part of Jeff's schedule, due to be dusted tomorrow.

Bee-wary of Late Winter

In Atlanta we had a sudden drop in temperature from the highs 60s to the 20s where the temperature has remained for several days.  When it's cold like this, we only have highs in the 30s at best.  When this goes on for several days, the bees are in real danger.

The warmish weather fools the bees into acting like it is spring and they go out, forge for pollen, raise brood, etc.  Then suddenly we have this kind of cold snap.  

The whole hive can die, if the cluster isn't located where there is stored honey.

So I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

I have one dead hive in my back yard.  I looked through it the other day when I did my first powdered sugar shake.  There is honey in the hive and dead bees scattered through the frames.  I didn't take the bottom box off (too big a hurry to get back to the office), but I'll let you know what I find when I do.

My current theory is that the hive went queenless before winter and I didn't recognize that this had happened so I could combine it with another hive.  I may find something else when I look further and then we'll know more, but for now, I'd speculate that the hive died naturally because there was no queen.

In the photo above you can see the few dead bee bodies on top of the frames.  I'll look at these for signs of varroa or deformed wing when I get back into the hive.



For now, I put it back together until I have time in the next few days really to study it.

There was a rapid feeder on top of the hive still half filled with bee tea with a number of dead ants floating in the tea.  I strained it into a jar and may put that on another hive if I don't find evidence of foul brood when I study the cells in the dead hive.

Silence in Rabun County

It was gorgeous in Rabun County this weekend, but very cold.  The leaves were past their peak but still really lovely and a great depiction of fall.

'

Lark (my granddaughter) , my two dogs and I went to visit the bees and feed them.  They were still and silent - not a bee to be seen.

We put food in the empty rapid feeders on both hives and left them.  The temperature all weekend never went above 53.  I checked again on Saturday afternoon and not a drop had been touched.

I hope they are cold and OK instead of dead inside the hive.   This was the first time Lark has been into bee hives with me.  I took a veil for her but she wouldn't put it on.  It was a good first visit because there were no bees present!

Using the Rapid Feeder

The cone in the rapid feeder sits over the center of the angel food cake pan type container. The bees come up from the hole in the inner cover and can walk down the ridged surface of the cone to the height of the sugar syrup.

When Jeff and I fed the bees last week, the feeders on the hives were empty. In the photo below, Jeff begins to pour the bee tea into the rapid feeder.



In this picture you can see the bees through the cone cover going down to the height of the bee tea. We had to pour slowly to avoid drowning bees and to allow the bees time to crawl up to dry ground.

The leaves floating in the bee tea are thyme, by the way.



The level rises and the bees crowd the top area of the cone.



As the bee tea gets higher, the bees are forced to move up even higher.



When the container is full, the bees can't go down the sides to get syrup, although as the amount of syrup is brought into the hive, the levels will diminish and the bees will be seen more on the outside of the cone.

Just thought you might enjoy these up close and personal pictures of the bees endeavoring to take in the bee tea.

Are the Rabun County Bees Ready for Winter

This weekend I was at Rabun County to check on the bees at the School house Garden.  To my delight and surprise, one of the gardeners had cut back all the kudzu that was smothering the back hive there.  I was THRILLED.  I always carry pruning shears in my bee bag, but it was such a relief not to need them!

The bees looked like small hives but both were going fine and had some stores.  I saw young brood, small c-shaped larvae and eggs in each hive.  Neither hive even began to have enough to make it through the winter but at least they had some honey *(which is more than I could say for some Atlanta hives).  There's aster blooming right by the hives and the bees were all over it.

I removed the top box (empty) from each hive and replaced the box as a surround for a rapid feeder which I filled with two quarts of bee tea.

The entire time I was working on the hives, a blue heron stood on the bank on the opposite side of the creek, watching me.  His/her picture is at the end of the slide show.

Pictures speak louder, so here they are:
 

Pushing toward winter

At my own house where I live, the bees also need help in getting ready for dinner. I put Rapid Feeders on these hives also. This morning I lifted the top of one hive to see if they were taking the sugar syrup. You can see the bees inside the inner cone, enjoying the bee tea.



I also put entrance reducers on each hive to discourage robbing each other. One of the hives already had a reducer but the hives that didn't have reducers tripped all over each other as they figured it out.



Remember when I thought robbing had happened because of all the dead bodies on my basketball court? Well, I no longer think any hive was getting robbed. I've only been at this house for three months. There's a basketball goal with concrete underneath it with room enough to play Horse. The bee hives are at the edge of the concrete.

I've now noticed that there are bee bodies all over the court every day. What I've realized is that the mortician bees want to carry dead or dying bees out of the hive, but carrying a body the same size as themselves, they aren't anxious to carry the bees too far. So all these dead bees on my concrete are simply the dead of the hive being carried out only so far.