Rabun County Foxfire/Mountaineer Festival

On Saturday I ran a booth at the Foxfire/Mountaineer Festival in Rabun County. I taught a class for children called "Meet the Bee" twice during the day and actually talked about bees to everyone and anyone who came up to my table all day long. When I taught the class, I used the board in the center of the table to show how a bee grows from egg to bee and how a brood comb looks.

There are "pollen" cells on the lower left and right and "honey" cells in the upper left and right with "brood comb" in the center. People were fascinated to learn about the bees.



The festival included a scarecrow auction. Here's a collection of the scarecrows. My friend Robin won best in show for his gourd-headed scarecrow holding a little gourd dog in his arm. He's in the center of the photo collage.



All day long I let the kids who stopped by the booth put on my bee veil to see what it might feel like to be a beekeeper. They were enthusiastic and had fun. Here a some of the kids who stopped by in their veils.

I had a great time and I hope some of the attendees learned a little about the bees. As in any mountain festival, they had a greased pig contest (which I couldn't bear to watch)  and people were there demonstrating how to carve wood with a chain saw. Smokey the Bear was there as well as great mountain music all day long.

In addition, a man named Steve showed me where a trapout had been attempted to get bees out of the old school building near the field where the festival was held.  The guy said he trapped out NINE pounds of bees but there is still a quite-active hive in the walls of the building.  This picture is of the entry to the hive.  There is one blurry bee flying out if you look hard.

Feeding Frenzy for the Blue Heron Bees

At the recent Blue Heron inspection, it was clear that both remaining hives are way too light to make it through the winter.  We have committed to feeding them heavily through the month of October and maybe into the first two weeks of November (after which we generally have our first freeze here in Georgia).

I put a baggie feeder and a pint jar in a Boardman inside a medium box for a surround on Thursday.  That's really only 1 1/2 quarts so I plan to check it on Sunday or on Monday morning and probably add some more food.

 I really want these bees to live through the winter, despite the fact that they stung gloveless me THREE times while I was simply removing the old empty baggie and adding a new one!  

Two of the stings weren't bad - my left hand little and third fingers - but the third sting was on top of a bad burn I got on my left hand knuckle while making baked oven fries (500 degree oven).  My hand swelled up around the burn and was generally uncomfortable until today.



Julia bought at the Bee Club Auction in September this hive top feeder from Mann Lake.  This is the first time she is using it.  It holds four gallons of syrup so she won't have to return to refill it as often as I will.  However, we found a post on Beemaster indicating that bees feeding with enthusiasm can drown easily in this feeder.
 


The hardware cloth is not secured at the bottom and the bees in their enthusiasm can end up in the holding tub rather than behind the hardware cloth by pushing through the bottom.  Julia had intended to bring duct tape to manage this problem as in the post mentioned above, but forgot it, so she only filled the side that seemed tight enough not to allow the bees to drown.



This is how we left it.  I guess the bees crawl up in the center, cling to the hardware cloth and stick their little bee tongues into the sugar syrup and suck it up.



We'll see how this works when we check it next weekend.

So How's Topsy, the Top Bar, Doing?

I've been feeding Topsy a quart - two quarts a week for the last two weeks. On Tuesday I took two quarts of syrup over there and was pleased to find bees tumbling over each other at the entrance, loaded down with pollen.



I had only taken one quart over on Thursday the week before and it was totally used up. I did see about 10 small hive beetles on the Boardman - which upset me, but I'll take a small hive beetle trap over there - the Sonny-Mel will sit fine on the screened bottom - the next time I go.



The hive is only occupying bars 1 - 10 but there are plenty of bees. This is bar 10. I pulled it out and I think it's just bees clinging to each other like they would do on a slatted rack. I was in a hurry and didn't stick my finger in to find out if there were comb under the masses, but if you'll look close up, there doesn't appear to be.



Bar 9 is a brood comb and had capped brood on it, also covered with bees.



I'm going to continue to feed this hive through October and I'll put an SHB trap in it. I will probably move the follower board close to bar 10 as the cold weather approaches to close their space and make it easier for the cluster.

How DOES the queen do it?

When the queen lays an egg, the egg is like a tiny grain of rice that stands straight up in the cell. She does this a thousand times a day in the height of bee season and her eggs manage to balance on end almost all the time. You can see many examples of her skill at work in the slide below....many eggs, all standing properly on end.



I am part of a Foxfire-Mountaineer festival in Rabun County on Saturday - it's at the Old School Community Garden behind the Civic Center in Clayton for anyone who is in the area and wants to stop by. I'm giving a talk for children at 11 and 2:30. To talk about the bees, I thought I'd make a model of what a frame looks like in the hive. I'm copying something my friend Jay made to use in demonstrations.

Well, I thought I'd make eggs and larvae out of Skulpy clay (baked in the oven) to show what they look like. Truly this project takes me back to the days of my children's science projects for school - they were always involved with foam core board, clay, dyeing fabric with walnut shells, etc.

To create the egg, first I tried using rice. I put grains of rice, with a dollop of glue on the tip end into the nut cups I'm using for cells and for the life of me, they wouldn't stick and wouldn't stand on their ends. How DOES the queen do it?

Here we see a fallen-over grain of rice.



In this blurry picture I am trying to hold the rice upright with a toothpick while the glue dries to no avail.



Finally I settled on baked clay eggs but even they, larger than the rice, wouldn't glue and stand up on end, so I had to concede that the queen has a special talent that I don't and made a round clay bed to hold the eggs upright.



Thankfully this morning all are still standing.  I am going to redo the board so that it isn't square but is rather shaped more like the rectangle that a frame of brood comb is.

For now, this is what it looks like:

As per Jay's example, I have capped brood, capped honey, pollen and larvae.  I'm going to put polyurethane over the larvae to be the liquid in which they lie and in the empty cells at the top to be nectar.

Don't you love the bee?  I found it at Michael's just sitting on a shelf waiting for me to choose it!

Hive Inspection at Blue Heron on September 25

Noah and I took about a dozen people on the inspection of the Blue Heron hives on Saturday at 11.  It was a little cooler (thank goodness) and we looked through the two remaining hives.  You'll see the slideshow below.

On the inspection we did a powdered sugar shake and fed the bees with baggie feeders.  The participants asked good questions and seemed to have a good time learning about the bees at Blue Heron.

Blue Heron article in the Atlanta paper

I didn't see the paper yesterday, but I found it today online.  There's an article about my beekeeping buddy Julia in the Atlanta paper yesterday.  It's all about the flood at Blue Heron last year and the recovery.  Here's the link, if you'd like to read it.

Today is the anniversary of the Atlanta flood

Today is the anniversary of the Atlanta flood (and thus the Blue Heron flood).  Last year on this day seven hives floated down Nancy Creek in the swollen flood waters and 300,000 to 450,000 bees were killed in seven wet hive topples.

(photo taken on Sept 22, 2009)


We lost bees and equipment which floated down the creek.

Today the Atlanta Journal published pictures of what various area locations looked like on September 21 last year and what the same location looks like today.

To follow their lead, above you can see the catastrophe of one of the toppled hives.  Below you can see the present day at Blue Heron.  We now have a new high-on-a-hill location for our Blue Heron hives and have kept on keeping on as beekeepers in the apiary there.

(photo taken March 30, 2010 as we installed the nucs)

Ah, we are persistent beekeepers, Julia, Kevin, Peter, and I (the owners of the four hives there).

A Visit to My Top Bar Hive

Valerie is in Italy on her honeymoon (she and Jeff got married in April 2009 but didn't take a honeymoon at that time) so I stopped by her house to bring in mail and check on the bees. I haven't looked at the hive in a couple of weeks and given my current bee experience, I'm scared to visit any hive for fear of what I'll find.

Topsy was busy as bees can bee. Bees were bumping into each other at the entrance. The kudzu above and behind the hive is past its bloom but it's aster season and there are asters everywhere in bloom.



I had two Boardman feeders inside the hive and both were empty. Unfortunately I only brought one quart of sugar syrup with me, but will bring two the next time I come. This is a view of the inside of the feeding area and a giant beetle caught by accident on the screen in the hive. I also saw a few small hive beetles on the Boardman feeders and will bring my Sonny-Mel trap the next time - it can easily sit on the screen at the bottom of this hive.



Some of the old comb I had tied in as a lure has melted through the string and fallen to the bottom of the hive. I'm not going to move it just now because it serves an insulation purpose for the moment. Maybe in the spring cleaning I'm clear it out of the hive.



Bees came out to see what was I doing when I removed the roof. I was very cautious to explore this hive much and didn't remove a single comb. I've got to get over the overly cautious part - I'm so afraid that I'll do something to cause the demise of the hive after my current losses. I must inspect this hive for real when I come back on Thursday afternoon.