Quotations about Bees

This has been an item on my sidebar but I will be revamping my sidebar and didn't want to lose the work I put into finding quotes about bees - so it will live here instead of on the sidebar:

"Veiled in this fragile filigree of wax is the essence of sunshine, golden and limpid, tasting of grassy meadows, mountain wildflowers, lavishly blooming orange trees, or scrubby desert weeds. Honey, even more than wine, is a reflection of place. If the process of grape to glass is alchemy, then the trail from blossom to bottle is one of reflection. The nectar collected by the bee is the spirit and sap of the plant, its sweetest juice. Honey is the flower transmuted, its scent and beauty transformed into aroma and taste.” Stephanie Rosenbaum


"The careful insect 'midst his works I view, Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew, With golden treasures load his little thighs, And steer his distant journey through the skies." John Gay


"The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy." Emily Dickinson


"How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower." Isaac Watts


"To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few." Emily Dickinson


"The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it." Jacques Yves Cousteau

Other items from Today's Inspection

I have crossed my fingers throughout the honey season that Bermuda, my weak hive that barely made it through the winter, would survive until next winter. I have not had any expectations of getting honey from that hive. The hive is thriving now and bustling with bees. It is the hive from which I got the frames of brood and eggs for my nuc and Proteus Bee.

Today I was pleased to find honey being capped in the hive. The third box on Bermuda is a box of 7/11 comb. As you can see from the picture the bees are making gorgeous white wax cappings and are in fact making honey. The honey in these frames looked darker than what I have harvested so far.

I love how the bees circle damage in a comb and quickly go to work to save their hard work from spilling out on the ground. Look at the circle of bees surrounding the lower right of the comb where a bridge was broken between this frame and the next.

I also did powdered sugar shakes over the brood boxes in Proteus A, Bermuda, and Mellona.

Last week when I opened Mellona, I noticed that it was honey bound in the same way that Proteus A had been. I removed frames 3, 5, and 7 from the second box and replaced them with starter strip frames. I moved those honey frames to the box above (Box 4) in positions 3, 5, and 7. I didn't know what I would find when I opened the box today.

You can see the bees festooning as they draw wax in the starter strip frame. Frame 3 was being drawn with large cells as if for more honey storage. However, the cells in frame 5 measured 5.2 so I think the queen may lay there and expand the brood nest into the next box, where I've tried to make her welcome.

A Bee Emerges in Front of my Eyes!

I opened the small swarm nuc to make sure all was going well and to determine if I needed to move them into their own hive box before I leave for 10 days. They are busy and working the frames they have, but aren't yet crowded, but I may go ahead and move them to make sure they have enough room while I am gone.

I pulled out a frame to examine it and there right in front of me was a bee emerging from her cell for the first time. I was caught in a dilemma. She is supposed to emerge into the dark and here I was confusing her reality because I had the frame out in the light on a frame rack.

I couldn't stand it and had to take a few pictures before I put her back into the safety of the dark nuc. You can see in the first picture that she has barely chewed the cell open. The opening is much larger in the third picture. By the fourth picture she has raised her body almost out of the cell.

I put her frame back in the nuc so her emergence might be more "normal," or as normal as life can bee when a beekeeper keeps intruding on your world.

The Ongoing Saga of Proteus A and Proteus Bee

On June 6, I posted that Proteus had a solid box of honey between two boxes of brood. On Beemaster forum, the suggestion was that I put a queen excluder between Box 2 and Box 3 to determine if there were a queen in both boxes. I did that and on June 13 reported that there was new brood in both boxes, indicating that there were two queens.

On that same visit to the hive, I opened up the brood box in Proteus A by taking out the center 6 frames of honey and putting in starter strip and SC filled foundation to encourage the queen to expand rather than leave via swarm. Then I put the queen excluder between Box 2 and Box 3.

After asking around about splitting the hive vs. combining the hive, I decided to split the two hives and give each queen her own place. I did the split on June 16 and posted here that only after I had moved Proteus Bee into her own 8 frame medium hive, I thought about brood and that I had not noticed any new brood in Proteus Bee.

I think that action of opening up the brood nest was a mistake if I wanted to keep both queens alive. My guess is that the bees, with the hive now open top to bottom killed the queen in Proteus Bee before I did the split. I should have left the honey barrier until after doing the split. When I considered that I had not seen any new brood, I decided to add two frames of brood and eggs to Proteus Bee in case they were queenless and needed to make a queen.

Indeed, today when I opened up Proteus Bee, it is full of bees, no new brood, and they have made two supercedure cells, although in this case they did this not to supercede a queen but rather simply to HAVE a queen. Those locations were where the newest and best eggs were in the frame I gave them.

We're about through with the honey flow here. We're in the middle of a drought and I will be thrilled to have another hive. So like the small swarm nuc, I have another hive - this time a split - on its way to being queenright. Let's hope it works.

I watched Proteus Bee this week and found it disconcerting that I rarely saw a bee actually enter the hive. The two hives are side by side and bees would approach the entry to Proteus Bee and fly up and down in confusion. Sometimes they would even land on the bottom board and walk on the landing but then go into Proteus A.

Yesterday I saw a lot of bees orienting to Proteus Bee - must be new foragers - and the population entering Proteus Bee went up considerably. When I opened Proteus Bee today, there were plenty of bees. I had thought I might trade places of Proteus A and Bee to increase the numbers in Proteus Bee. I may yet do that but for now, let's see if the queen emerges.

Using wax impregnated paper towel to light the smoker

I use smoker fuel from Dadant in my smoker. It burns light and cool and lasts a long time. Often when I am through for the day, there is plenty of fuel left for the next time. Today I used one of the paper towels impregnated with wax from the solar wax melter to start the fire that starts the fuel burning.

The paper towel lit vigorously and immediately. Before I knew it I had a flaming smoker and the fuel cylinder was lit and I was good to go. Thanks, solar wax melter!

Bee-ing Stung

Last year I only was stung 3 times the entire year...and once was by a bee in the house.

This year I've stopped counting. I think it's a natural feature of being a beekeeper - comes with the territory, as it were. I also think the number of stings relates to how engaged I've gotten with the bees. Last year I was simply hoping that the hives would live through the season and through the winter.

This year I'm trying to get the bees to use natural cell size. I've given a small swarm a home in a nuc and have stolen frames of eggs and brood from other hives to help them get a good queen. I've had a two-queen hive and I've split it effectively into two hives. I've had a hive that barely made it through the winter that I've tried to nurture both to survive and to live in natural cell size. There's a lot going on in my bee yard.

So I shouldn't be surprised that I have been stung more. I've had stings on my knees twice this year. My forearm doubled in size one week from a sting when I didn't get the stinger out in time. Each of my thumbs got stung and each swelled up so much that about ten days later, the skin peeled off as if I had been sunburned. I've stepped on a bee in the house barefoot and been stung again this year. And on and on. I don't notice it as much any more, although the stings still hurt when they happen, still swell, and if I don't get the stinger out fast enough, still itch for about 10 days.

Tonight I was working in my garden in front of my house. Tomorrow is a watering day (we have designated days in Atlanta because we are in extreme drought) so I wanted to get the last of my plants planted and mulched before I start the sprinkler in the morning. It was 8:45 PM and getting dusky. A bee flew up my t-shirt as I was mulching and I guess she didn't like finding herself there. She began to buzz angrily and I headed for the house, stripping as I hit the kitchen door. Before I got my shirt off, she stung me on the upper arm. Then as I pulled the shirt off, I got stung again on the neck. I guess that means there were two bees under my shirt, although I only heard one.

And this sting set didn't even come from working in the bee yard......GRRRRR.

Lessons being learned from Experience with the Solar Wax Melter

Today was my fourth experience with the solar wax melter, so I wanted to share what I have learned from my experience so far.

As the first picture illustrates, as the wax is filtering through the paper towel, it also wicks throughout the paper towel. At the end of the day, the paper towel is impregnated with wax.

I'll use that paper towel to start my smoker, but it also makes it stiff and a little hard to remove. I tear out the center brown cooked waste and put the edges in my baggie full of smoker starter stuff.

Also as the wax wicks into the paper towel, some of it drips outside of the Tupperware onto the floor of the solar wax melter. I line the floor of the styrofoam box with aluminum foil. You can see the wax that ends up on the floor on the aluminum foil in the picture. When it has cooled it is easy to pull it up.

Last lesson: The two days when the wax came out the prettiest, I left the solar wax melter on the sidewalk until after sunset. Today I carried it into the house and set it on the counter while everything was still quite hot. As a result, some of the wax swished up onto the sides of the plastic container. I'll leave that wax in the container and tomorrow it can melt into the block that floats on the water.

After three wax collections, I have 15.4 ounces of gorgeous yellow wax. I'll add the proceeds of today's melting when it has cooled. I still have enough cappings to do another round tomorrow (not to mention the two gallon bags of wax cappings in the freezer from last year).

The Solar Wax Melter Succeeds Again!

Today I left wax all day long in the solar wax melter and brought it in after sunset. The wax had drained all the way through the paper towel, leaving this burned non-wax residue. Isn't it amazing that the residue burns dark brown/black in the heat of the SWM? The paper towel is stiff with wax, making me wonder if it wouldn't be a marvelous starter for my smoker. I'm going to save it and try it.

Here's the gorgeous block of wax, the shape of the rectangular container, that was floating on the water under the paper towel. Have you ever seen such beautiful wax?

I love this solar wax melter. It's a "green" way of melting wax. My kitchen isn't messy and my double boiler isn't ruined. Now that's a good deal all the way around.