Thought for the Day

Last week was a good and productive time in the bee yard. I made a lot of headway preparing for the two new packages of bees due to arrive sometime in the next several weeks.

The really great news is both of our existing hives are apparently well. Amazingly, Hive Orange, one of the two original hives we started off with in April 2007, has survived yet again and is going strong, with plenty of honey and, it appears from my views through the observation window, plenty of bees. This is with very little intervention and no chemical treatments, ever.

I can't take credit for any of this as the beekeeper, especially since last year, due to some difficult personal circumstances, I did almost no colony "management" in the spring, summer, or fall. Aside from reducing the hive entrances in winter and adding a layer of insulation to the top of each hive and the area behind the false backs, I did little to support or interfere with the bees' natural processes. This has been my general approach overall, but it certainly reached new peaks (or lows) of nonintervention last year. And yet the bees survived. Perhaps there's a message in that.

Recent Things

Cloud formations.

Almond sprouting in compost pile.

The spider that lives by Hive Orange.

Comb cut from the dead hives to be melted down to wax.

Asparagus seedling.

Spring Wanderings

Spring has definitely arrived in Upstate NY USDA Zone 4. There aren't enough exclamation points in all of human history to adequately punctuate my pleasure with this, my favorite time of year.

This weekend, I saw my first heron of the season, the first pair of goldfinches, and what appears to be a nesting pair of Canada geese down by the pond. The peewees and phoebes have arrived, as have the vireos. To our great joy, a handsome bluebird male appears to have selected one of our many bluebird houses to set up shop. The other 10 or 12 "bluebird houses" we've put up have already been taken up with swallows, who are a delight in their own right.

Over the weekend we saw bumblebees, cabbage white butterflies, and a butterfly we suspect was a comma (yes, there's a butterfly called "comma," along with one called the "question mark").

The honeybees were seen working the willow and gathering pollen from a blue hyacinth. Last fall we planted 100 or so Siberian squill, and they too have bloomed, though I haven't see any honeybee action there as yet. The dandelions have just begun to blossom, and I imagine much of the bees' focus is on that vitally important foraging plant.Speaking of dandelions, Wren and I enjoyed one of our annual spring rituals this weekend—foraging for tender dandelion leaves in the field, which we cooked up with olive oil, anchovy paste, onions, and pine nuts and tossed over pasta. Serious seasonal/local yum!

On my morning walk with the dog yesterday morning, I communed at woodland's edge with the aptly named spring beauties, one of my favorite spring ephemerals.
An additional sign that beekeeping season is officially upon us: I managed to acquire my first sting of '08 on Sunday afternoon while observing Hive Orange from what I thought was an appropriate distance. They weren't having it, though, and clocked me upside my head. It didn't hurt much. Must be the time of year.

Checking on the Hives—Good News and Bad News

This weekend I checked on the hives using the observation windows—still too cold and wet to open them up. Hive Orange appears to be trucking along, but it seems clear that both the Rebel Rebel and Green Hive colonies have died. We had a lot of adventures together, and I'll miss them.

On our next trip up in two weeks, I plan to do a careful assessment/investigation of both of the lost hives and try to figure out what did them in. From what I can see through the observation windows, both colonies have unused, capped honeycomb. Rebel Rebel showed visual evidence of dysentery and some of the combs in the rear of the hive body looked a bit moldy—a sign of ventilation problems, perhaps.

I'll report in a couple of weeks on everything I find in doing the "autopsies" on both hives. If any experienced beekeepers are reading this and wish to comment or share observations, I welcome them.

Here are a couple of shots of what's going on inside Hive Orange. The cluster of bees begins eight bars/combs back from the hive entrance, and extends over a total of 4 combs.The bees were moving around vigorously within the cluster area. There appear to be several capped honeycombs in the middle and rear of the hive.

I want to get in there soon and assess this colony's feeding needs. I can probably transfer some honeycombs from the dead hives to help Hive Orange through until bloom-time. But I don't want to transmit disease from hive to hive, so I need to do a little homework before deciding how best to proceed.

This year, a friend has built larger top bar hive bodies for us to try out; I hope this will allow the bees to save larger stores of honey for wintertime.

In entering Year 2 of my excursion into the manifold wonders of beekeeping, I am awed by how much there is to learn and am eager to "start again" (in the words of Leonard Cohen), letting the bees (and books, and cyber-mentors) teach me what I need to know.

That's what spring is all about, isn't it? Beginning anew and listening closely to Mother Nature's illuminating communiques.

A Swarm's Whereabouts

Orange Hive swarmed, for the second time, on Labor Day weekend. In the morning, we saw the swarm high up in a tree near the hive, and by late afternoon it was gone to parts unknown.

Last weekend, Wren and I were taking a walk down the road and lo and behold, there were the bees in a hollow tree. Interestingly, the entrance was an eye level, which kind of surprised me. I would have expected them to choose a more elevated location, but what do I know?I'm not sure why so many of the bees were clustered outside the entrance, but there they were. The entrance hole is the little dark spot in the midst of the bees. Foragers could be seen going in carrying pollen, so I guess at least some comb has already been built.Unfortunately, this late-swarming group has a thin chance of surviving the winter—just not enough time to build enough comb, store enough food, and do the reproductive work needed to ensure a large enough cluster of bees to keep the tribe warm during the long, cold winter. On the other hand, the autumn weather has been kind thus far, with warm days continuing and no hard frost due for at least another week.

I've learned a lot this summer about being sure to have enough volume in the hive to accommodate the rather astonishing population of bees that can build up in a healthy colony in a relatively short time. Three swarms and a hell of a lot of bearding bees have taught me the hard way. I really like the design of the top bar hives I have been using, but suspect lack of space may have been a problem for me and the bees. A friend is building me even bigger top bar hives for use next spring and I am hopeful that this will alter some of the crowding dynamics I witnessed this year. Only time will tell.

For now, I hope you'll join me in wishing the best to the bees who set up housekeeping in the hollow tree down the road. I'll provide updates if and when there's something new to report.

Autumnal Musings

Autumn has definitely come to Hooterville, complete with an explosion of aster and the first hesitant dropping of maple, birch and chestnut leaves.
It puts one in a reflective state of mind. As pretty as it is this time of year, I'm always sorry to see summer end. Yes, it's 90 degrees today, but it's still autumn! I know it, and the bees surely know it.
They're working hard gathering nectar and pollen off the aster, jewelweed, and goldenrod. These plants are providing the remaining nectar flow of the year—the last flow the bees have available to them before winter restricts them to a long period of waiting in the hive. It's truly a race against time, against the hard frost that will nail the remaining flowers and end the flow entirely, forcing the bees to survive the winter on whatever they have stored up until that point.

This girl's pollen baskets are packed, and she's entering the hive to store what she's collected. Then she'll go right back out again and collect some more.
I did a "hive dive" (inspection) of Rebel Rebel the other day. Things were looking pretty crowded in there and I wanted to see what was up (especially because—did I forget to mention it?—Hive Orange swarmed last weekend, just in time for my mother's visit!). During the visit to the hive, a little honey dripped from my hive tool and these bees were quick to gather it up. I love how pretty they look when they do that! Like girls at a soda fountain in an Archie comic book.

One curious bee decided to check out my record-keeping notebook. There's always so much to see and do in the hive that I have to write everything down right then and there to keep track. The record-keeping helps me follow the many changes that occur in each hive from week to week, as well as my own actions and the results of those. There is so, so much to learn. I hope my brain is big and wrinkled and grey-mattered enough to handle it all.


The notebook comes from a great letterpress printing studio called Foxglove Press.

Break On Through (To The Other Side)

What exciting occurrence is pictured below?It's the emergence of worker bees—the next generation. In the shot above, you can see three different cells being chewed open by bees preparing to enter the world. Today, while working in Hive Orange, I had the privilege of witnessing this emergence for the first time. I'd seen drones make their exit before, but never the workers.

Below, you can see one girl almost finished chewing her way out. Beside her, another worker is just beginning to break on through (to the other side). Below these cells is a recently vacated cell; note the ragged, chewed-out edge. Also, see how fuzzy the fully emerged bees are? These are very likely newly emerged bees whose first assignment upon leaving the cell is to clean it so it can be re-purposed for storing new eggs, pollen, or nectar. Here's a closeup of a worker chewing her way out.
A worker's first few weeks of life are devoted to "house duties": cleaning cells, attending to the queen, feeding the larvae, producing wax and shaping it into comb, capping the nectar once it transmutes to honey, etc. Later, she'll move on to guard duty toward the front of the hive and ultimately, she'll become a field bee foraging for nectar.

What must it feel like to be a honeybee, newly emerging as a winged being, eying the world for the first time? Of course, most bees are born in darkness deep within the brood-nest of the hive. I guess you could say this girl was lucky, born into a nice view of mountain green and summer-blue sky. By the time she's ready for her first forays out of the hive a few weeks from now, the mountains will be stippled with the colors of autumn.

A Tour of the Hive

Two weeks ago, I paid a visit to the bee yard to confirm that the (previously) virgin queens had mated and were laying "the next generation" in Hive Orange and Green Hive, both of which swarmed on June 21, taking with them the old queens and leaving newly raised, virgin queens behind. I was pleased to find plenty of evidence that all was well, reproduction-wise, in both hives. Here's a quick tour of what I found. (Click the photos to view them in a larger format.)

In these two combs, you see just what a beekeeper hopes to find: plenty of capped worker brood—the cells covered by the tan-colored, porous-looking caps in the middle of the comb. Notice that these capped cells form a nice pattern filling in the majority of cells in the the comb. This is suggestive of a good queen who has laid each of her eggs in a efficient pattern along the comb. Bordering the top of the comb, the bees store nectar (note the pale or yellowish uncapped cells) and capped honey (whitish caps).

Below that are some dark, uncapped cells in which pollen is being stored. Both food sources—honey for carbs, pollen for protein—are conveniently located above the brood cells to make it easier for the nurse bees to mix "bee bread" (pollen + nectar/honey) to feed the larvae numerous times a day over a period of several days. During this time, the larvae grow at a rapid rate. Once they are ready to morph into the winged creature we know as the honeybee, the cell is capped and the magical rearrangement of the bee's molecular biology begins.

Here you see larvae being fed and attended to by nurse bees. You also see some capped cells inside of which are larvae undergoing metamorphosis.

Once the bees have built out enough combs for a nice, big broodnest, they start building honeycombs—combs with larger cells for storing honey and pollen that will be used during times of dearth and, of course, during wintertime when nothing's blooming and it's too cold for the bees to fly. The dark cells in this lovely bee-composition contain pollen. Along the top and upper-middle right is capped honey. There are also some as-yet empty cells and cells containing uncapped nectar.

After the bees bring nectar into the hive and deposit it in the cells, it takes some time (and effort on the bees' part—mainly through the fanning of their wings) to reduce the moisture level to the point where it becomes honey. Once it does, the bees cap the cell with wax, keeping the precious substance clean and protected for future use. As William Longgood observes in his great book The Queen Must Die, "To the bee, honey is the ultimate reality."

Here's a closeup of the pollen, capped honey, and open cells. By the way, the pollen colors vary enormously as different plants come into bloom and are visited by the bees. I can't be sure, but I suspect this pollen is from white clover.

When I look at a closeup like this—and every time I visit the hive and watch how hard the bees are working—I can't help but think about how many dozens of trips by dozens of bees it takes to fill a single cell with honey or pollen. Truly, every teaspoon of honey and every grain of pollen represents a herculean effort on the part of the honeybees.
And that's leaving aside the genius of the comb itself...

Murmuring Queens

Yesterday, I heard the queens in Hive Orange piping. It sounds a bit like singing whales, but eerier—an amazing, insistent cry audible even before I opened the hive. Very Diamanda Galas!

One of these queens will become the new mother of the colony, replacing the queen who departed with the Hive Orange swarm sometime last week.

Check out the sound of a piping queen or these other insect sounds.

We're Throwing a Swarm!

The verdict is in...Hive Orange is fixin' to swarm, as indicated by this swarm cell and several others.
I now have the following options:

(1) Let 'em swarm (send them out into the world or perhaps try to catch the swarm and house it in a new hive); or

(2) Divide the colony in half now (a.k.a. do a split) and house half the colony in a new hive.

(3) Hide my head under a pillow and pretend none of this is happening.

(4) Start getting psyched, because I'm going to see my first-ever honeybee swarm!!

Honestly, though, this is a lot more excitement than I was planning on this summer. My intentions were bucolic and exceedingly unambitious: a taste of honey; some low-key time spent "in the bees," as the beeks say; and pleasant hours whiled away idly watching the pretty bees collect pretty pollen from pretty flowers.

The landscape is shifting quickly here—and the bees are running the show. Which is OK by me....I think... My lofty principles about letting bees be bees are being challenged by the very bees I'm supposed to be letting be bees! So I'm meditating heavily on a passage I found the other evening:

"How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control. To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us."—from A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit

A very short time ago, we hived a couple of packages of bees who buzzed in a most demoralized fashion for weeks, until the snow and cold let up, the flowers bloomed, and the buzz turned focused and robust. I worried about them like crazy and prayed to every minor god I could think of that they'd thrive. Eight weeks later, we have two happy, healthy colonies with tons of bees. Words simply cannot convey how many bees! Just to help you envision this, here are some before and after images.

Typical level of activity at the entrances in mid-May...
Typical level of activity at entrances (plus bearding along the upper face of the hive body) in mid-June.
In May, as the bees were getting started and at the very first phases of building up their population, a typical comb was relatively small and barely covered by worker bees.
Now, we have many combs drawn across the length of the top bars, stuffed full of pollen, brood, honey and yes, swarm cells!

With summer just getting started and the queen laying a couple thousand eggs a day, there's no end in sight. A full, crowded hive is a good sign—just what I'd wished for. Thank you, minor gods!

So though the word "swarm" is a scary word, I'm going to try to face this with beek-like equanimity. It helps that just moments ago, one of my online mentors wrote to say, "You will love [the sight of the bees swarming], it's a beautiful thing to see."

A Drone (And Mystery) is Born

Today we inspected Hive Orange from top to bottom, since I'd noticed some oddly shaped cells through the observation window and was concerned that we might be heading for a swarm. It was our first time using the new top bar holder I'd assembled in the tradition of Dada on Friday. This contraption is super-handy and made today's inspection (and photo shoot) very easy.


Our visit to the hive brought a few interesting surprises. We saw several drones entering the world by chewing their way out of their capped cells. We saw a bees carry a dead bee out of the hive (just picked her up and flew off with her—an image evocative of the flying monkey whisking Toto away.) And we saw the bees attack a hapless fly that wandered into the hive.

We also found seven of these unusually shaped cells, a possible sign that the colony intends to swarm.
Swarming is a natural thing for the bees—that's how they divide their colonies and reproduce in the wild. It's also how they cope when the population outgrows the space inside the hive. Basically, they raise several new queens in these special cells. Whichever queen emerges first goes around and kills off the other queens while they're still in their cells. Meanwhile, once the new queen emerges, the old queen takes off with a portion of the colony to find a new home, leaving the new queen with the remainder of the colony.

I don't mind in the least if our bees swarm once the colony is strong and established (i.e., next spring). But I'm a little concerned that since this colony was hived 8 weeks ago and is just getting underway, having half the population jump ship might leave the rest under-staffed in terms of gathering enough food and building to appropriate population size going into winter.

We found a total of seven of these cells. The thing is, they may be swarm cells...or something called "queen cups," which apparently don't present any risk of swarming at all.

To my untrained eyes, the difference is unclear. Therefore, the implications of all this excitement are as yet unknown. I've posted a query to my Top Bar Hive discussion group and am hoping they can solve the mystery. Stay tuned....

Spring Honey: an edible time machine owned, operated (and yes, patented) by a honeybee colony near you

Pop quiz: Which of these objects provides a shortcut through the time-space continuum?

The other day, while moving some of the top bars around to improve the ventilation in Hive Orange, I inadvertently dislodged a bite-sized piece of honeycomb and couldn’t resist the temptation. I carried the sweet dollop a few feet away on the tip of my hive tool, unzipped my head veil, and unceremoniously popped it in my mouth.

Still warm from the hive, the honeycomb’s flavor imploded on my palate, a chewy, exuberantly sweet detonation of spring. Reveling in the thrill of my first hot-off-the-press honeycomb, I had the following epiphany: Honey is a time machine.

This strange substance—a product of the honeybee’s physiology, labor, and skill—is a form of liquefied time, a distillation and preservation of this particular spring in this particular place, never to be repeated.

Spring honey is a unique composition based on the botanical realities within a three-mile radius of the hive, what the weather was up to, and where the bees’ own propensities guided them during nectar collection. For while the bees have well established seasonal foraging patterns—including visits to the springtime blossoms of dandelions, berry bushes, and fruit trees—it’s also clear that choices are made and preferences expressed.

For example, I’ve heard that honeybees “love” strawberry blossoms, but all week I’ve watched these bees choose the miniscule asparagus flowers over the incisive white blossoms in a good-sized strawberry patch. The only honeybee I’ve seen in the strawberry patch was there to gather water droplets from a strawberry leaf. It looks to me like the solitary bees and flies have been pollinating the strawberries with little or no support from their honeybee brethren.

In other words, honeybees aren’t automatons going for a set type of blossom at a set moment in time. Like the rest of us, they’re making choices based on a complex and mysterious amalgam of influences unbeknownst to us, such as scent, color, shape, curiosity, a lust for something new and different, aesthetics, mood, happenstance.

Why would the honeybees select the asparagus blossoms over the perfectly lovely strawberry flowers just a few yards away? The reason might be pedestrian, its mystery squelch-able by science (e.g., the asparagus nectar is flowing more, or more alluringly—or this particular strawberry cultivar is not to the bees’ liking).
But maybe there’s more to it than that: perhaps the bees prefer the shadier, sexier environment of the asparagus bed, whose branches crisscross in jungle-like effect of wild abandon. Or maybe the girls take pleasure in dangling from the tiny bell-shaped asparagus flowers—I know I would. Perhaps a wizened scout bee whose opinion they trust recommended the asparagus bed over the strawberry bed, and it’s a simple case of follow the leader. Or maybe I just heard wrong about the bees and the strawberries. To paraphrase that old-timely radio broadcast, Only the Shadow knows!

Whatever the bees' reasons may be, their creation—honey—offers us a chance to physically commune with a lost moment in time: warm, sunny days whose place-character and botanical psychodramas the bees have taken in and transformed. This is something human beings are incapable of creating. In spite of our technological prowess, honey—that simple, ubiquitous substance produced by honeybees alone—is, to us, as unfathomable and potent as a magical elixir.

When we eat spring honey, we’re tasting time.

Hot, Extroverted Honeybees!

The Hive Orange bees have been hanging out in increasing numbers outside the hive entrance--in a behavior known as bearding. Two days ago, there were a couple dozen bearding bees. But today...


The helpful folks on my organic beekeeping listserv have put my mind at ease. They don't see a major problem with just a few bees hanging out like this, given the humid weather we've been having. (In beekland, apparently, a couple hundred qualifies as "just a few.") Still, they recommend improving the ventilation inside this hive, so tomorrow I'll remove the piece of duct tape that covers an additional ventilation/entrance hole. I may also do some minor manipulations inside the hive to create a bit more breathing space in there.

I think at some point, someone on the organic beek list likened this behavior to sitting out on the front porch to cool off on a hot summer night--an image that gives this picture a more comforting, down-home feel.

By the way, the organic beekeepers listserv has been a life-saver throughout this entire adventure. If you're thinking about raising bees, check it out. It's an extremely informative discussion group that (thankfully) goes against the grain of most "modern" beekeeping approaches, which douse bees in antibiotics and other treatments that don't exactly support the genetic development of strong, healthy, disease-resistant bees.

If these wings could talk...

Like everything in nature, a honeybee colony has its moods. Here’s a sad one: a weathered worker bee in her final hours. See those tattered wings? She flew to the breaking point to scout out forage locations and gather pollen and nectar to support her colony’s survival. She probably arrived with the original package of bees trucked up to the Catskills from Georgia back in mid-April. She survived that harrowing trip, the rough hiving courtesy of this totally inexperienced beekeeper, and a week of cold weather and heavy snow. She was one of the originals—clustering to keep the all-important, egg-laying queen warm; building the comb on which the queen would deposit her eggs; then taking wing to venture into a totally unfamiliar new habitat to find the sustenance that would carry the colony toward summer and beyond. So much achieved in a lifespan of a just few short weeks. On the one hand, a life to be proud of. On the other hand, my heart goes out to her.

Nectar drop

During our inspection of Hive Orange today, a bit of nectar was spilled from one of the combs as we lifted it out of the hive. Right away, one of the girls came by to work on clean-up--you can see her red proboscis sipping the nectar. Also, a bit of pollen somehow ended up on here as well. This lipstick-red pollen may be coming from our horse chestnut tree, which is now in bloom, and covered with honeybees.



Here is a close-up of the horse chestnut's blossoms and pollen. Irresistible, no?


Here's the tree, which has a pretty magnificent form. The family who owned this house from the 1950s through the early 1990s planted this tree. (The story goes that they transplanted the sapling from a public park in Newburgh, NY--which, coincidentally, is where my grandmother worked in a hat factory during her youth. Perhaps she strolled beneath the shade-inducing branches of this tree's ancestors....).

To the right of the chestnut, you'll see a tiny plum tree with an old wooden box around the base of its trunk. The previous owners put the box there to protect the plum from the lawnmower. On close examination, I realized it was part of an old Langstroth beehive. The previous owner briefly experimented with beekeeping, probably in the 1980s.