Mark Winston's Manifesto

I was lucky enough to hear Mark Winston in the spring of 2014.  He is the author of the Biology of the Honey Bee that I and many others studied for Master Beekeeper.  He writes essays on his blog and his essay today just blew my mind.

Please go and read every single word of it.

I hope to have the opportunity to hear him in person again soon.  He has some good YouTube videos:

Now THIS is a Beard

This hive started from a package that I got from Jarrett Apiaries at the beginning of bee season.

I got home in the 90 degree June (??? - feels like August) Atlanta evening and found this hive looking like:

And when I went around to the back, there were even more bees consigned to the outside of the hive!

This is a HUGE hive and I have not opened up the screened bottom board.  I haven't done that for the last two summers.  But for this hive, I may have to.

I wanted to give them room to spread out inside the hive but it was 8 PM when I got home.  So I went out and put on two empty boxes - undrawn frames - just to give them some hangout room inside the hive.  (This hive has a slatted rack at the bottom.)

I carefully moved the top to avoid upsetting the bee beard at the back and gently put those girls on the inner cover.  Still it was hard to find a handhold.  I only got stung once in this whole maneuver, though, on the ball of my thumb.  I put the two empty boxes on and closed the hive up.

One bee seemed interested in the salty sweat on my hand:

However, as night fell, the beard was hardly disturbed and no bees appeared to go inside. I expect the space needs to be distributed throughout the hive for them to take advantage of the extra boxes I gave them. 

After a hot night, the beard was only slightly smaller this morning, but there were no bees bearding at the back of the hive.  I'll put some beer caps on the inner cover to lift it up a little and that might help as well.

The nectar flow is over and it's time to harvest and make splits. I'm not certain about this hive because at Jarrett Apiaries, they use oxalic acid, so this hive may not be able to deal with varroa mite on its own.  Still, it's such a strong hive that I will make some overwintering nucs from it for the winter.  

I'll have my work cut out for me for the next couple of weekends!

Deep Dilemma

My hive in Rabun county died. Robin Line with whom I play Words with Friends wrote me a note on our ongoing game to tell me that there had been a pesticide kill and all the bees were dead.  He told me he had removed a large pile of bees from in front of the hive and that there had been no activity. They had sprayed Roundup on part of their garden to get rid of weeds and the next day the bees were dead.

He was sick about it and got a late spring nuc to replace the bees so I went up to the farm and installed them. I took apart the dead hive and felt just ill to see the thousands of dead bees inside the hive on the screened bottom board:

So I dumped the bees out and started over.  As I drove from Atlanta (leaving all my equipment behind except for two medium boxes), I started to remember that the new hive would be housed in a deep nuc.

Oh, no.  I didn't bring a deep with me and I couldn't remember what had happened to the deep I had up in the mountains for one of the two hives I had last year.  Perhaps I had taken it back to Atlanta.  If I were lucky, maybe it would be in the basement in my house in Rabun county, but I didn't remember exactly storing it there.  Although as I thought about it, I began to convince myself that of course it would be in the mountain house basement.

Then I decided that it wasn't there and that I had taken it home to Atlanta.  Worried about this and unable to listen to my book on tape for the thoughts in my head, I called Julia to confer about what I might do.  Suppose I didn't have a deep?  There were two hives up at the farm last year and I had left a two box medium hive and a three box medium hive which was the one that survived the winter (then killed by Roundup).

We talked about maybe I could put two medium boxes (empty) one on top of the other and put the deep frames in the top of the two boxes.  The bees would build comb extending from the bottom of the deep frames into the remaining about 3 inches but that would be OK.  So that was what I decided to do...make a make-shift Warre hive.

I stopped at the mountain house and sure enough, no deep hive in the basement.  I arrived at Robin's farm about noon.  I stopped by the barn where I had left a box and lo and behold, it was the deep from last year.

Problem solved.

I installed the hive into the deep and put two medium boxes on top of that with some drawn comb in each one.

This hive will collect honey to make it through the winter but we will not harvest from it.  The sourwood hasn't started blooming yet in N Georgia (although it may have begun about now) and they can gather nectar from it for the winter.

Cross your fingers that this hive survives and thrives!

Video of a Queen Moving Around the Hive

This talented photographer/beekeeper, Anand Varma, has made this video of the queen moving around the hive. He attached a fluorescent marker to the queen's back and shot this in black light in the hive. On my computer, at first it looked like the video wasn't actually posted, so be patient if it takes a moment or two to load. Since Mr. Varma is allowing people to embed his video in their websites, I wanted all of you to see it:

I wanted to show how a queen bee moves around her hive so I attached a fluorescent marker to her back and made a time lapse of her walking around under black lights.

Posted by Anand Varma - Photographer on Friday, May 15, 2015