Bee House Calls

My father was a doctor in Natchez, a small town in Mississippi.  When I was a little girl, he often went on house calls to take care of patients in their homes.  This generally happened at the end of the work day, and he often took us with him.  "Us" at that time consisted of my mother, my brother and me.

While Randy and I mostly bickered in the back seat, I actually remember it as fun.  Often to break up the evening in the car, Daddy would stop at the Dairy Queen, one of two "fast food" establishments in Natchez, the other being the Monmouth, an old-fashioned drive-in with trays that hooked to your car window.  We only went to the Dairy Queen (now the Malt Shop) for dipped cones - Yummmm - nothing better on a hot Natchez night.

Today I made house calls on my bees at other houses.  First I went to the Stonehurst Place Inn where I manage three hives.  In the first hive, there was plenty of honey and on the frame closest to the side of the box, I saw Her Majesty.  You can see her as well - isn't she gorgeous with such a long golden body!



I was both thrilled to see her and to see that the hive was not eating up all of their honey and seemed fine.



The second small (only two medium boxes) hive also had recently drawn comb in the top box.  They were happily storing nectar.  I didn't see the queen, but felt good about this colony.






The third hive was difficult.  It's a mean hive and I put on my gloves before opening it and smoked them both at the entry and at the hole in the inner cover.  I did not get stung today, but that's a first for me when visiting the Stonehurst Place hives.  I didn't go down far enough to see if the queen were laying.  The hive was calm and I wasn't worried about that.

They had plenty of honey - probably we can take another box off of this hive.  However, under the cover I saw plenty of hive beetles.

Between the Stonehurst Place and Sebastian's house (my second house call) in childhood style, I stopped by the King of Pops' stand on the corner of North and Boulevard and bought a blueberry lemongrass popsicle - nothing better (except all the other popsicles he makes which are equally scrumptious).  You should try the chocolate sea salt - WOW.... but I couldn't afford those calories today and blueberry lemongrass was so good that I'll get it again.

Sebastian and Christina have a lovely garden plot just to one side of the hives.  Their cucumbers are healthy and I'm sure the bees are enjoying the blooms!

These bees were in a different state than my bees in Va Highlands.  The hives both had stored honey and brood and eggs, but the yellow hive had no honey in the corners of the brood frames.  I only saw three full frames of honey in that hive.

The blue hive had a ten frame inner cover and hive top, so I replaced those with the appropriate 8 frame sized inner cover and telescoping top.

I told Sebastian we would harvest a frame of honey from one of these hives (probably the blue one since it is hived in a ten frame box and probably has more stores).  But we won't get a box of honey from either of these hives since they aren't gathering nectar like my Va High hives that are only a few miles away.



I left the blue hive with the appropriate top wear!

Atlanta Temperature Today Will be 106!

We have a dearth of nectar, supposedly, in Atlanta and it's hot as H____.  The high today is supposed to be 106 and I think it must be close right now.  My dog Hannah, whose preference on summer days is to be outside in pursuit of squirrels, is camped out by the air conditioner duct.  (I know it's the return duct but for some reason, it's a very cool spot on the floor)

I did worry about the bees, though, and checked my hives at home on Thursday.  After all, if the Top Bar absconded, could the others be far behind?  My goal was to see if they were eating up all their stored honey and if I might need to consider feeding them.

In every hive I found stored honey and uncapped nectar.  The bees have been working the porcelain berry really hard lately and maybe it is a nectar source.  I don't see them with pollen on those vines, but they are all over the flowers.  The bloom is almost over, though.



I found frames like the one above in every hive.  I also found boxes full of capped honey like the one below.



I even found some newly drawn wax....



By way of management, I removed one box from the hive below because it is a small hive and they were not using the space.  I am most worried about this hive.  They do have a queen who is laying, and they have some stored honey, but this is the weakest hive in my apiary.  This was a split off of Colony Square and has not done well - they've had two queens since the split that they made from frames of brood and eggs.  I should move some frames of brood and eggs into this hive to bring up the numbers, if nothing else.  This hive will never make it through the winter at this rate.



Other management tasks:  I put bottle caps under most of the top covers to help with ventilation in this heat.  Also if the bees were not using their newest box addition, I moved it to the top of the hive so its empty space could also help with ventilation.



The little kitten swarm is living still in nuc boxes (three of them).  I wondered how they were doing.  I looked and easily found the queen - she's in both photos below.  I was so relieved and she looks like the queen who ate the honey off of my fingertip, so I am going to believe that she is the actual queen of the hive.



If you don't see her right away, she's near the bottom of the frame just to the right of center.



So for now, I'm not worrying about the strength of my hives' stores - they all seem OK for the moment.
Although if the nectar is done for the year,  I'll probably feed going into September....it's funny because my general stance is that I want survivor bees and don't want to feed them if they can't manage on their own, but with this many hives, I feel a lot of responsibility not to lose my investment in addition to not wanting to lose the bees.

Temperature record set in Atlanta today at 106.8!

Busy, Busy Bees

Today I stopped at Stonehurst to check on the bees. I had added a new super to the hives last week. Once again, they had filled every frame and needed new boxes. Here's an example of the gorgeous honey they are putting up. I don't know what the source of this very light nectar is - could be clover or something that is blooming at the Botanical Garden just up the road from the Inn.



We only have one more box for these hives. If they fill up another super before the end of the nectar flow, I'll either need to harvest or we'll have to order new boxes!~



At home I found the same thing. The bees in both boxes had built out the comb in all the frames in the boxes on the hives.



I added a new box to each of my home hives as well. I lit the smoker as I usually do to knock at the door and announce my presence. As soon as I put the hive back together and moved the smoker which had been sitting by the entry, the bees tumbled over each other to get into the hive with their nectar loads.



Here's Colony Square, the tallest of the two hives. The honey in these hives is light just like that at Stonehurst. I'll need to do some reading to determine what might be the source of this light, lovely honey.