Ice Cream for Bees

Haagen-Dazs recognizes the importance of bees to the creation of their ice cream. To that end they have created a wonderful bee-friendly site for you to enjoy.

Bees are so important in our agricultural production in the US. Ice cream is a particularly delicious product that relies on the honeybee.

This morning I heard a feature on NPR about how Haagen-Dazs is working to help the bees. I couldn't wait to get to a computer to see what their website had done. It's fun to see the container for their upcoming flavor: Vanilla Honey Bee

The flavor was created to support their efforts to make the plight of the honeybee more obvious to all of us ice cream eaters!

Determining Equipment Needs for 2008 BeeSeason

Tonight while watching the eclipse, I took some pictures of the boxes I have stored in my carport to determine what I need to order. I have three nucs coming in late March, early April. I have the equipment to set up two more hives with medium 8-frame boxes. I have screened bottom boards, slatted racks, inner covers and telescoping covers for those as well as about six 8 frame boxes.

I have lots of shallows like these and a number unbuilt in my basement. My next trip downstairs should be one to determine what built and unbuilt equipment I have down there. I know I have a deep, a couple of solid bottom boards, and some unbuilt shallows, but there are other things there as well. Oh, yes, and I have the deep cypress unbuilt hive box from Rossman's that I won at the Georgia Beekeepers meeting a few weeks ago!

Here are the 8 frame items - slatted racks, etc.

So it looks to me as if I have the possibility of setting up three hives easily - two in 8 frame equipment and one in 10 frame equipment. I will try to have the 10 frame hive in medium boxes.

I don't plan to use foundation except for starter strips - and I have enough thin surplus and other wax foundation to give the bees a start.

I think if I order more equipment, it will all be 8 frame mediums. I might order another SBB and slatted rack as well as an inner and telescoping cover in hopes of a split or a swarm.

Next week I will bait the empty deep 10 frame box on my deck and give it a squirt of lemongrass oil weekly to see if a swarm will find it attractive.

A Beekeeper's Valentine: EB White's Song of the Queen Bee

Song of the Queen Bee

by E.B White

New Yorker Magazine 1945
“The breeding of the bee," says a United States Department of Agriculture bulletin on artificial insemination, has always been handicapped by the fact that the queen mates in the air with whatever drone she encounters.”

When the air is wine and the wind is free
and the morning sits on the lovely lea
and sunlight ripples on every tree
Then love-in-air is the thing for me
I’m a bee,
I’m a ravishing, rollicking, young queen bee,
That's me.
I wish to state that I think it’s great,
Oh, it’s simply rare in the upper air,
It’s the place to pair
With a bee.

Let old geneticists plot and plan,
They’re stuffy people, to a man;
Let gossips whisper behind their fan.
(Oh, she does?
Buzz, buzz, buzz!)
My nuptial flight is sheer delight;
I’m a giddy girl who likes to swirl,
To fly and soar
And fly some more,
I’m a bee.
And I wish to state that I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

There’s a kind of a wild and glad elation
In the natural way of insemination;
Who thinks that love is a handicap
Is a fuddydud and a common sap,
For I am a queen and I am a bee,
I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,
The test tube doesn't appeal to me,
Not me,
I’m a bee.
And I’m here to state that I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Mares and cows, by calculating,
Improve themselves with loveless mating,
Let groundlings breed in the modern fashion,
I’ll stick to the air and the grand old passion;
I may be small and I’m just a bee
But I won’t have science improving me,
Not me,
I’m a bee.
On a day that’s fair with a wind that’s free,
Any old drone is a lad for me.

I’ve no flair for love moderne,
It’s far too studied, far too stern,
I’m just a bee—I’m wild, I’m free,
That’s me.
I can’t afford to be too choosy;
In every queen there’s a touch of floozy,
And it’s simply rare
In the upper air
And I wish to state
That I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Man is a fool for the latest movement,
He broods and broods on race improvement;
What boots it to improve a bee
If it means the end of ecstasy?
(He ought to be there
On a day that’s fair,
Oh, it’s simply rare.
For a bee.)

Man’s so wise he is growing foolish,
Some of his schemes are downright ghoulish;
He owns a bomb that’ll end creation
And he wants to change the sex relation,
He thinks that love is a handicap,
He’s a fuddydud, he’s a simple sap;
Man is a meddler, man’s a boob,
He looks for love in the depths of a tube,
His restless mind is forever ranging,
He thinks he’s advancing as long as he’s changing,
He cracks the atom, he racks his skull,
Man is meddlesome, man is dull,
Man is busy instead of idle,
Man is alarmingly suicidal,
Me, I am a bee.

I am a bee and I simply love it,
I am a bee and I’m darn glad of it,
I am a bee, I know about love:
You go upstairs, you go above,
You do not pause to dine or sup,
The sky won’t wait—it’s a long trip up;
You rise, you soar, you take the blue,
It’s you and me, kid, me and you,
It’s everything, it’s the nearest drone,
It’s never a thing that you find alone.
I’m a bee,
I’m free.

If any old farmer can keep and hive me,
Then any old drone may catch and wife me;
I’m sorry for creatures who cannot pair
On a gorgeous day in the upper air,
I’m sorry for cows that have to boast
Of affairs they’ve had by parcel post,
I’m sorry for a man with his plots and guile,
His test-tube manner, his test-tube smile;
I’ll multiply and I’ll increase
As I always have—by mere caprice;
For I am a queen and I am a bee,
I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,
Love-in-air is the thing for me,
Oh, it’s simply rare
In the beautiful air,
And I wish to state
That I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Hive Inspection - First Real One of the Year

I did my first real hive inspection of 2008 on Sunday afternoon. Both hives looked healthy and had lots of bees. The bees in Mellona in the first picture were all through two boxes. The brood was all in the bottom box and had not moved up, to my surprise. The second box was still heavy with honey.
Last year at this inspection, Bermuda was a small handful of bees, with Varroa everywhere. But the queen was alive and with many powdered sugar shakes, the hive rebuilt itself. This is the hive where the original queen was cast out on January 6 this year. They obviously have a queen and are really building up. I scraped off the burr comb that you can see on top of a couple of frames.
I did a powdered sugar shake on both hives today and with the DWV (Deformed Wing Virus) that I saw earlier in the month on the dead bees on the deck, I will be shaking sugar every inspection this spring. Look out, Costco, here I come!
The sad news was that I had left a Ziploc bag feeder inside the Bermuda hive. There were so many bees in that hive a few weeks ago that I was afraid they would go through their stores. I knew when I put it in the hive that it had sort of folded over on itself, but I didn't do anything about it. The many dead bees I found inside it today let me (and preventively all of you) know that a ziploc feeder must be sitting flat on the frames in order to keep bees from drowning as they get the sugar syrup.

Innisfree or When Will Spring Be Here?

My sister led me to this poem by William Butler Yeats:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by William Butler Yeats

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

My wish is for spring to be here. I love the "bee-loud glade" that happens on my deck in the spring.

I did open the hives today to do a powdered sugar shake on each hive. It was rather quiet, not at all "bee-loud," as the bees were not expecting me. The temperature was in the 60s as it will be all week, so it was a good moment to begin sugar shakes to help slow the Varroa mite.

The number of bees in the hives has doubled since last weekend. This will hopefully be a different spring. I'm hoping that at last I'll have two vigorous hives make it through the winter to begin the spring well.

Lots of Bright Yellow Pollen Coming In

It was bright and sunny today. In the warmth the bees were out in force. many delivered loads of bright yellow pollen to the hives. The red maple is blooming now and the pollen probably is coming from that. According to this page, which is organized by blooming time of the species, the pollen of the red maple is grey, but the pollen of the maple tree is generally yellow. So the bees are probably delivering pollen from a maple tree - not specifically the red maple.

There's a bee in the house tonight

There's a bee in the house tonight and I feel both sad and hopeful.

I'm sad because she will die. She has been throwing herself up against a ceiling light and she will wear herself out and die. Even if I were to try to rescue her, she's probably a lost cause.

I have no idea how she got in. The glass doors are closed between the sunporch and the house so coming in through some secret opening in the sunporch windows isn't how she got here. Probably she came in on the back of one of the dogs.

I'm hopeful because her presence to me means that spring is really just around the corner. In bee season, I have a bee or two in the house almost every night. With my hives just feet from the door to my house, it is hard to prevent the arrival of a bee in the house. The inside bees don't sting - they are much too frantically trying to kill themselves on the lights.

Note: The bee book I am reading for February is Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop. My sweet daughter gave it to me for my birthday and I am enjoying reading this "biography of honey."

Garden Club Talk about Bees

On Monday night I gave a talk to a garden club in Stone Mountain, GA on being a beekeeper. I took an empty 8 frame medium hive box, screened bottom board, super and some frames. I took a frame of pollen, a frame of partially drawn comb, and a fully capped frame of honey to show them.

The meeting was a group of men and women who were quite interested in the bees and asked all kinds of questions. I let them taste honey from my bees and gave them all lip balm in tin watch cases (see picture). I passed around a beeswax candle and let them try the lotion that I had just finished the night before. I also handed out a sheet of bee facts that I had gotten from various places.

I was a little scared since the only other talk I had given to non-beekeepers was at the Atlanta History Center in October. This garden club talk went really well and they asked good questions. As it turned out, the hardest part was finding the house where the garden club met, although now that I have a phone with a GPS system as part of it, I never get completely lost!

My next scheduled talk is on Feb 25 when I will be talking to the Henderson Mill 5th grade school garden club at their after school meeting - that should be fun.