Another Philadephia Moment

When I was in Philadelphia, a place I'd love to return for more exploring, we went to get lunch at the Reading Market.  The market is in the site of the Reading Rail Terminal.  I immediately thought of Monopoly where you can buy the Reading Railroad.  We always pronounced it the REEEEding railroad but in Philly, it's pronounced properly the Reddding Railroad.

Photo above from Wikipedia.

We went in to buy sandwiches for lunch at a place of great reknown called DiNic's.  But as we entered the market, there we saw this:

We stood in a long line at DiNic's and tried to find a seat at the lunch counter but every emptied stool was immediately occupied by the person in the line standing behind that stool....so we ended up sitting in the food court.

The roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and brocolli rabe was a gourmet treat!

Philadelphia: home of Lorenzo Langstroth

I'm in Philadelphia for a conference for my other (real) job as a psychologist.  Walking down S Front Street to get lunch yesterday, right in front of me on the sidewalk, I nearly ran into this historical marker:

Amazing!  According to Wikipedia, he was punished as a child for wearing his pants out, kneeling on the ground to study ants.  Since I'm in Philly with my psychology hat on instead of my bee veil, it is also fitting to note that Langstroth took up beekeeping to deal with his bouts of depression.

He recognized bee space and designed the Langstroth hive with respect for bee space. He was never able to patent his design and made no money from his efforts.

He also wrote the hive and the honey bee, now in its umpteenth edition.

There's no birth place to tour although I would if I could.  The space is now a high rise apartment. So I visited independence hall and the liberty bell instead.

New Hive Bees Doing Well

The bees that Jeff and I installed at Tom's house are doing well.  We have been feeding them bee tea (wish I had honey but I don't) and have now given each hive 2 gallons of syrup.  Bob Binnie says if you feed bees going into winter, you should try to get them to take 5 gallons of syrup.  So we'll keep on feeding them.

In essence these are five frames of bees in a ten frame hive.  The five frames are nuc-like because they are full of bees, well-built out, stores of honey, lots of brood.  The other five frames are undrawn foundation.  I think both of these hives will be like taking a nuc through the winter.  I think even with our feeding them 5 gallons of syrup, they'll still just fill the deep box, if that, before winter comes.

In one of the hives - the back one - the five frames were put in the center of the box with the empty frames on either side.

In the front hive the five frames of bees were put in on the side of the box with the empty frames on the other side:

The bees in this box may do fine the way they are and may do better if we move them more to the center and put the empty frames on either side.

Both hives are putting up our syrup and it looks like they already were storing some honey.

Jeff is really excited about these bees for several reasons - they are about a long block from his office so they feel personal to him.  He has been their main caretaker so far, and he REALLY wants these hives to succeed after our year of ongoing bee loss....(I've been scared to list all the losses because I don't want to see them all lined up.)

Today we saw the queen in both hives.

Here's the first one:

And here's the second one:

Both were on the side edge of the frame so Jeff was very careful returning the frame to the box because we know if we kill the queen, this hive is done for.  There are no more drones and no way to make a new queen until spring.

Both rapid feeders were completely empty.  We had to pour v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y because the bees were so eager and we had to give them time to move out of the cone.

Although we brought a new box with drawn frames in it, it looks so unlikely that these bees will need another box before the cold weather sets in.  I'm going to email Bill Owens and ask him about advice for over-wintering in just one deep box.

Growing a Greener World on Public Television - just not in Atlanta

Joe Lamp'l, host of Growing a Greener World on Public Television, lives in the northern parts of Atlanta.  However, his wonderful show about organic gardening is not available to the Atlanta market.  He films here and all over the country on issues of gardening and visited me to talk about the bees a couple of months ago.

I fed him and his camera guy biscuits and honey when we were all done.  Nothing better than Southern biscuits with honey soaking into them!

Here's the episode he filmed in part in my backyard with my equipment and my bees. (Even if we can't watch it in Atlanta, we CAN watch it on the Internet.)  Check out some of Joe's other wonderful episodes while you are visiting his page.

Joe is signed up to take the MABA short course that Julia and I are putting together for the bee club.  I am hoping I will get to help him get started in beekeeping in that way as well.

Jennifer Berry's Views on Natural Beekeeping

In August, Jennifer Berry spoke to our bee club on the topic of Natural Beekeeping.  I had a hard time with her talk and didn't post about it, but I wanted to now before I get distracted with other things.

Jennifer Berry is Keith Delaplane's right hand person and a very good beekeeper with tons of scientific knowledge.  I think Jennifer Berry is so entertaining - she could be a stand-up comic quite successfully and so she's really fun to listen to, but this talk had me ready to jump out of my chair.

I should also say that when I was in college centuries ago one of my favorite courses (I was a philosophy major) was logic.  I loved logical reasoning and fallacies and really found it interesting to solve logic problems - my logic textbook was the only college text that I kept after college.  

So when Jennifer started with a fallacy of logic, I had a difficult time.  The fallacy is called the straw man fallacy.

"Explanation

A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted. This, of course, is a fallacy, because the position that has been claimed to be refuted is different to that which has actually been refuted; the real target of the argument is untouched by it."

What Jennifer said was that we don't keep bees naturally, do we?  After all, bees live in trees, not in boxes; bees get to choose where they live, but we choose where our bees live;  bees in nature requeen when they need to, but we decide when to requeen and give them a queen that is not their own;  wax foundation is not natural, bees are not native to the United States so even having them here is not natural, etc.  

All of this was to prove that we don't keep bees naturally so practicing natural beekeeping is not possible.  This is the straw man fallacy because while all of those things may be true, none of them have anything to do with whether you use treatment or not in your beehives.  They are not related. 

Proving that we don't start out with a natural situation does not mean that you therefore can't succeed at keeping bees without treatment.

She followed this by encouraging people first: not to believe everything you read on the Internet - probably a good piece of advice - and second:  to know what you are wanting when you purchase a queen.  Are you looking for a queen with hygienic behavior?  Are you wanting a queen who produces good winter bees?  What are you looking for in a queen?  Ask the breeder what he/she looks for in a queen that he/she produces.

Those two pieces of information were valuable and helpful to all beekeepers.

She went on to talk about the use of IPM, including screened bottom boards, freezing drone brood, all the usual suspects, ending with using chemicals, but she had lost me by then because I was so upset by her message to our many new beekeepers in the club that they can't keep bees naturally because, well, it just isn't possible since we don't start out in a natural way.

Registration is Open for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' Short Course!

This year my friend and fellow beekeeper, Julia Mahood, and I are the co-chairs for the MABA short course.  The course is a one day event from 8:30 - 4:30 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden on January 18, 2014.

If you are in the Atlanta area or know someone who would love to start keeping bees, please sign up!
It's a great day of learning and finding out lots of tips and tricks about being a beekeeper.  We have a good line up of experienced and Master Beekeepers to provide tons and tons of information.  A good lunch is provided with vegetarian and gluten-free options and we are going to have a great day.

Historically the course sells out long before the day of the course so you have to sign up ahead of time.
Here's the SIGN UP PAGE!


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Come one, come all!

Bees From Bill

I know it's not the right time of year to start bees, because there's no flow and the bees are hunkering down for the winter.  But this year at our annual bee auction for my home bee club, Bill Owens offered ten hives of feral bees that he had removed as auction items.

Bill Owens is the best beekeeper in the state of Georgia with a certificate to prove it.  He is Georgia's ONLY certified Master Craftsman Beekeeper.  I enjoy Bill - he's a great teacher, has an always pleasant approach to things, and started me on the certification road myself.

He gave me the practical test at Young Harris for the Certified Beekeeper level, the first qualification level in Georgia.  (I almost failed it, not because I couldn't light the smoker - which is the first thing that one has to do - but because I couldn't light his cigarette lighter TO light the smoker.)

Bill has appeared a number of times in this blog - for example, here, here, and here.  He has a business (one of his many jobs - he teaches, he's a firefighter, he's a beekeeper, he owns a farm, he's an author) doing bee removals.  In addition, he doesn't treat his bees and approaches them with the idea that if they can survive, then they are strong enough to tolerate the varroa mite.

So of course, I decided to bid on two of Bill's feral hives in our silent auction.  Others were also bidding on these hives, but I was determined to get them so I was one of those lurkers who hung around the bidding table, waiting to pounce if someone stepped in to overbid me at the last minute!

I won the two hives, so Jeff and I went to Bill's house in Monroe, Georgia, to pick them up on Thursday night.  I use eight frame boxes, but he had requested 10 frame boxes into which to transfer the bees.  I unearthed a couple of ten frame deeps (the only two I still own) and Jeff and I headed for Monroe.

We got there just at dark at 7:30 and Bill donned his veil, lit his smoker and transferred the bees into my boxes.  First he shook the bees off of the cover into the box.

You can see our strap under the box in preparation for the move.

He then added the frames, one at a time, until the box was full.  These bees had no stores to speak of and Bill advising feeding them "heavily."  He did say he could smell some goldenrod honey in the hives, but didn't see anything.

Jeff manned the staple gun (which I am terrified of using - I do use it, but if someone else is around to do it, I happily hand it over to them) and we closed up the hives with screened wire.

It was quite dark and Jeff shone a flashlight onto the hive so in this photo it looks as if the bees are in some weird circle pattern, but that's the light of the flashlight - made my camera think it didn't need to employ the flash.

I am now convinced that my yard can't handle more than four hives.  My friend Tom has wanted hives in his backyard so ahead of the auction, I asked him if he still wanted hives in his yard and he said yes.  Jeff's office is just down the street so he can oversee the "heavy feeding" of these hives as we go into winter.






So around 9:15 on Thursday night we delivered my Owens' hives to Tom's house where Jeff and I will keep them.

Leveling the hive was a challenge but my smart phone has a level on it and we managed to get both hives pretty level.

I returned the next day to check on the bees and to give them their first round of "bee tea." 

We'll continue feeding them this as winter approaches.  I wish I had honey to feed them but due to the rain, I do not.

We are using rapid feeders for these hive - they hold about 1/2 gallon of bee tea.

So here are the hives, hopefully adjusting to the new location.  The branches on the front of the hive are to help the bees realize that they are in a new place and need to reorient.

We'll see how this works - starting a new hive in the fall.  Bill loved that he had given the hives for auction and was talking about doing it again next year - if these work, I'll probably bid, lurk, and maybe win again!

To Bee, Continued....

Sorry I left everyone hanging.  I'm in one of those periods of my life where I have volunteered for way too many things and all of them are growing in unexpected ways and all of their due dates seem to be coinciding.....in the last two weeks.

I watched the hive with the queen includer for several days after my last post.  Bees were going in and out as if normally they would.  Then over the weekend, about Sunday, I realized that the bees had absconded, despite my efforts to contain the queen.  Oh, well, I thought, they will die somewhere.  And what a shame since this was a powerful swarm hive at the beginning of the season.

Someone commented on my previous post that maybe it was a small hive beetle problem .  Mostly bees that are strong hives keep the small hive beetle contained in the top of the hive.  This hive had done that as well, and I had seen a normal (for Atlanta) amount of SHB in this hive, smashed them with my hive tool, etc.

However, if you have a small hive beetle problem of any level and open the hive unnecessarily, then every time you open it you break whatever propolis trapping the bees have devised to keep the SHB on the inner cover.  I opened this hive and allowed it to be filmed when the Weather Channel came two weeks before the crisis and then the following weekend, opened the same hive to be filmed for PBS for their show, Growing a Greener World with Joe Lamp'l.  So if the SHB were contained before, in the two previous weeks, they had the opportunity to run amuck.

Realizing that for whatever reason the hive had indeed absconded, and I assumed the queen had gotten thin enough to slip through the queen includer, I then noticed robbing beginning.  There was at least one super of honey on the hive and since it was five boxes tall, plenty of other storage places for honey that they might not have taken with them.

On Monday night I was meeting friends for dinner.  I stopped at home to let out the dogs and robbing was happening in a crazy way at the absconded hive.  I was so angry.  My hives haven't produced honey this year with all the rain and all I could think was YOU CAN'T HAVE MY HONEY.  I walked out to the backyard in my business clothes, threw a veil over my head, opened the hive and took off the third box down (the one heavy with honey).  I carried it into my house, bees and all.

It's still not dark until around 8 or so in Atlanta, so I put the box in my basement and at least 500 bees (looked like even more than that) began flying up to the ceiling lights.  I turned out all the lights in the basement, opened the back door, bolted the inside basement door leading into my house and left for dinner.  I crossed my fingers that the bees would indeed go outside toward the light.  (And that no human robber would find it appealing to cross the robbing bees to rob my house!)

When I returned from dinner, there were only 2 bees still in my basement and the honey super was apparently intact.

I left everything alone.  Like I said in the first paragraph, over the last month, everything I am doing has come to a pinnacle point all at once and I've felt rather overwhelmed.

Five days later, it's the weekend and I thought I should take the hive apart to save the wax from the wax moths.  I started casually throwing the boxes around.  I got to the bottom box and as I lifted it up to put it rather brusquely aside, there was the QUEEN.  She had been included and hadn't left with her children.  She had no attendants and had been alone for at least five days and probably more.

I caught her in a queen clip and took her inside and fed her honey from my fingertip.  What to do, what to do?

I went to another strong hive and made a four frame split - two frames of brood and eggs, one of honey and one of pollen.  I found some drawn comb that was white as snow and made a push-in cage of #8 hardware cloth, and pushed it into the comb, with her majesty in the push-in.  I realized later that I should have pushed her into the frame of honey or pollen, so she'd have some food at least, but I was thinking to give her an opportunity to lay.

I put these five frames into a nuc box.  I set it up with a Boardman feeder of honey and one of water, surrounded by an empty nuc box above the inner cover:

I then closed up the hive entrance with screened wire, stapled it firmly and left the nuc for three days.  This was an effort to get them used to the new queen and to let that loyalty keep them from returning to mama just in the hive next door.   Three days later I removed the screened wire.

I looked inside and she had been freed from the push-in cage.  The bees had eaten the comb beneath the push-in to release her and there were eggs everywhere.  They had taken none of the honey and only a little water, but I felt good about having supplied their need should it arise.

I put an entrance reducer in and crossed my fingers.

I'm going to give it my all to get her and her children through the winter.  Michael Bush overwinters two frame nucs.  Now they are in duplex nuc boxes.  But I am going to write him for helpful hints about how to get such a small force through the winter.

I'm so sad for the bees who left and who will inevitably die without a queen, but if this had to happen, I sure got the best of it with my queen "includer."  After all this was a swarm capture queen this year and should be strong enough in stock to make it through the winter if I'm lucky.