Help Us Name Our New Hive

Rebel Rebel is (as reported earlier) no more. Last weekend, I painted over the scribbled sign that adorned the hive. A larger top bar hive will now sit in the spot Rebel Rebel occupied, and in a couple of weeks, we'll install a new package of bees into this hive body. Aside from the bees themselves, the only thing we're missing is a name for this soon-to-be colony.

Rebel Rebel hive was so named because it was occupied by a spirited swarm that issued from either Green Hive (now deceased) or Hive Orange (which rocks on). I'd like to name the new beehive along similar lines—invoking a song or lyric by David Bowie, one of my cultural heroes.
What would you recommend we name the new hive? Besides Suffragette City, of course. Post your comment below.

Inspecting Dead Colonies

This weekend, Wren and I had the sad, unpleasant, and yes, fascinating task of trying to ascertain what caused the death of two of our three colonies.

I'll be posting a detailed description, plus many photos, of what we found, but the two key findings were mold (in Green Hive) and mites (in Rebel Rebel hive).

I strongly suspect ventilation problems killed Green Hive. The situation in Rebel Rebel seems a bit more confusing for reasons I'll get into later.

Here's one picture from Rebel Rebel hive. The comb is upside down; I turned the comb over so I could rest the top bar on the hive in order to take the shot. Even in the sad context of "autopsying" a failed colony, it was impossible not to admire the beauty of the bees' cosmopolis.More details on all this coming soon.

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.

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.

Rebel Rebel's Queen

Last week, during a "check in" on Rebel Rebel, I was fortunate enough to see (and hear!) the queen. Below, you can see some of the workers gathered around her, kind of encircling her. She's the larger "redder" bee below them. This stance, whereby the bees face inward toward their queen, is one of the easiest ways to spot a queen. Maeterlinck describes this encircling as looking like a grandmother's brooch, while a more recent book describes it as a daisy, with the workers as the petals and the queen at the flower's core.
Here's a better shot of the queen as she makes an all-too-brief appearance, only to be subsumed again moments later by her attentive and protective compatriots.

Afterswarm(s)!

Rebel Rebel had been settled in for a week and the memory of the swarm-dramas of latter day June had begun to fade. Some guests came by for lunch and I proudly gave them a tour of the bee yard. We were standing by Hive Orange while I held forth about my recent swarm-catching (mis)adventures. Suddenly, one of the guests fixed his gaze on a sumac a couple of yards behind me and murmured, What's that?!

We all turned our gaze to where he motioned.Yes, it was a swarm in the tree! Actually, an afterswarm. Whereby a colony, having already "thrown a swarm" in which some bees depart with the old queen while others stay in the hive with new queen cells decide, once those queens hatch, to create smaller swarms with the new queens leading the excursions. (Confused yet? Don't even try to keep up with the bees; they are much more complicated than we can possibly fathom.)

My guests felt they'd gotten more than they'd bargained for (in a good way). I was baffled. I was intrigued. I was also, to paraphrase Vladmir in Waiting for Godot, growing weary of this motif. It was hard not to take this afterswarm personally; were the bees so disgruntled with my beekeeping skills that they were going to afterswarm themselves until the hives were empty?

I also found, to my surprise, that swarm catching is a rather addictive pursuit. Once again, the bees were temptingly located on a low branch—why not take them? But no, I fought the urge; I'd had enough drama for one summer. I decided to let the free-spirited bees go their way in the world—may fortune smile upon them.

I did enjoy watching the swarm cluster alter its shape over the next day or two, in response to warmth, cooler weather, and mild rains.

Two days later, a second afterswarm appeared in another sumac at the edge of the bee yard. This time, I was fortunate enough to see the bees swarming in the air—a deeply energizing sight—and form a small cluster on a very low branch.By now, swarming was becoming a way of life around here. Each day, I wandered to the bee yard a few times to check on both swarms. The second, smaller afterswarm disappeared after two days; the first afterswarm continued to hang around, tempting me with its presence.

Slowly, inexorably, the idea of capturing this afterswarm gained traction. Several factors contributed to my succombing to the siren call:

(1) I was becoming hopelessly addicted to swarm catching. Is there a 12 Step Program for this sort of thing? (We admitted we were powerless over the swarm....We came to believe the bees could restore us to sanity...etc., etc.)

(2) We were due for very severe weather in the form of Biblical hailstones the next day.

(3) The swarm had stayed put for more than four days, leading me to wonder if there was a shortage of affordable honeybee real estate nearby or if the group simply lacked the necessary get up and go to make it on their own.

(4) Most importantly of all, Rebel Rebel was looking a little undernourished, bee-wise, and I was beginning to suspect that I'd failed to get the queen in during the multi-part hiving process or that part of the colony had left with many bees, or both. With no queen, Rebel Rebel was doomed. With a shortage of workers, the colony was endangered. I knew there was a queen in the afterswarm cluster and the idea of adding this queen along with a pool of workers began to seem like a bright idea that just grew brighter—until it became a blinding force.Compare this paltry action at the threshold of Rebel Rebel to the pictures of the boisterous colony in its first few days, as shown in the preceding posts.

For the second time in as many weeks, a hapless weekend guest was enlisted to help with the hiving. My partner, Lauren—who'd missed out on the original swarming and swarm catching, much to her dismay—was also here, and the three of us were up at 5 the next morning to catch the swarm and combine it with Rebel Rebel.

The hiving was the polar opposite of my previous experience. It was calm, quiet and utterly peaceful. The entire afterswarm was transferred (by our guest—perhaps this is why it went so smoothly) on its branch directly into Rebel Rebel. Not a single bee was dropped, lost, harassed, or traumatized. We closed up the hive and left the two groups in Rebel Rebel to get to know one another. By late that afternoon, the groups had joined forces, the branch was empty of bees, and the hive appeared to be humming.

Who says country life is boring? Never have I been this overstimulated by my life in the city.

A Calm Interlude

With the swarm busily establishing itself in the new Rebel Rebel hive—no longer a swarm, really, but "kept" bees—my attention once again turned to the more relaxing beekeeping-related pleasures I'd envisioned when first taking up this pursuit: photographing the bees on flowers, learning the names of forage plants I wasn't already familiar with (who knew there were so many kinds of clover?!), watching the bees come and go in the bee yard, trying to spot "my" bees on my daily walks through the fields, working my way through Maurice Maeterlinck's captivating book, The Life of the Bee, and consorting with the locals.
During this relative lull, I also built a delightfully low tech solar wax melter to convert bits of culled comb into gobs of that wonderful, aromatic substance known as beeswax. Using materials at hand and applying my Amateur Hour Carpentry can-do spirit, I had my melter built in twenty minutes.

Take one tin can and add some water (for the melted wax to suspend in). Create a sieve using a paper towel.

Place comb on sieve. (The comb I'm getting now is small; I'll use a bigger container once I begin harvesting larger pieces of comb. This year, I am leaving the bees everything I can so they're well provisioned while getting established. Next year, there may be honeycomb to spare. If so, we will eat the honey and melt the comb.)

Place can with comb in an insulated container—in this case, an old styrofoam box I got at the Park Slope Food Coop.

Cover with glass (or, in this case, an old plastic cutting board).

Let the sun shine in!

After a day in the hot sun, my solar wax melter had yielded a sweet-scented nugget of gold reminiscent of a lunar crescent. The moon, we now find, is made not of green cheese, but of beeswax.

One of the neat things about beeswax is its color variation. Here's a comparison of the results of my first two "meltdowns." (If only all my meltdowns were this productive!)

In time, as pieces of off-center comb are culled and honeycomb is harvested, there should be a good supply of comb to melt down. Then we can start making lip balm, hand lotion, candles, and maybe even crayons. Who doesn't like a good, homemade crayon?

By the way, beeswax is secreted from the honeybee worker's abdomen during the comb-building process, yet another in the bees' seemingly unending store of fabulous talents bordering on the surreal.

Swarm Saga, Pt. 4 (Home at Last)

The next day, there was good news and bad news.

The good news was that the U.S. postal service (for once) came through, with a surprisingly quick delivery of the hive.

The bad news was that getting the bees into the new hive was going to be a challenge, since the bees hadn't taken at all well to the temporary hive I'd fashioned out of an Office Max (OM) carton. By that morning, honeybees were merrily camped out on the front of the box in mass quantities, and had established several mini-civilizations in the gaps between the tarp and the box, and under the box, and along the concrete blocks on which the box was positioned. Lord only knows where the queen was in all that mess, or how I was going to get these disparate subpopulations into a single hive body.
Avoiding the inevitable moment of truth, I busied myself with preparing the new hive. I started by drilling three upper entrance holes in the front. (These entrances, along with the long narrow front entrance along the bottom of the hive, provide ventilation—an underrated issue in beekeeping—and give the bees a way to exit the hive for brief cleansing flights on warm winter days if snow has blocked the main entrance.)

Next, I began the pleasant task of applying dabs of melted beeswax to the guide bar on each top bar to provide an invitingly scented bee environment, and to encourage the bees to build their comb nice and straight along the top bar. (It's important to be able to remove each top bar to inspect the hives and carry out certain manipulations that promote the colony's well being over the course of the year. If the bees build their comb out of alignment with these bars, it becomes impossible to move the bars without destroying the comb and undoing lots of bee-labor, thus setting them back in their quest for overwintering capability and longterm survival.)Each of these top bars will go face down along the top of the hive, with the guides facing downward.

Last but not least, I added a drop or two of lemongrass oil to the interior of the hive body. Apparently, this scent has been found to encourage honeybees to accept a new hive body, reducing the incidence of absconding. (Which, by the way, is quite different from Colony Collapse Disorder.)

I set the newly prepped hive outside in the sun, scrawled the name Rebel Rebel on the top cover, and waited until dusk. I'd been told that hiving at this time might further increase the chances the bees would accept the hive. I guess the thinking is, once they spend the night there, some level of attachment is created, especially if the home is a suitable one. And it probably goes without saying that a delicate procedure like hiving a swarm is best accomplished in fading light with minimal visibility. Not.

As dusk approached, I transferred one honeycomb and one comb of brood from Hive Orange into the new hive body to help the bees get started in there and provide some sustenance during their initial adjustment.

My able partner-in-swarmcatching-crime, Karen, had returned to the city, so I was on my own for this final phase in the swarm hiving process. I carried the new hive body to the bee yard and positioned it on the ground by the OM box and the legions of AWOL bees, who reminded me of nothing so much as a mob of deadheads trying to find their way through the parking lot after a particularly long-winded Grateful Dead concert.

I then brushed, shook, cajoled, directed, herded, ushered, scooped, hand-delivered, and, yes, dumped as many bees as possible into the new hive from their myriad locations under the tarp, between the holes in the concrete blocks, and within and without the OM box itself. I removed the OM box from its spot on the concrete blocks and lifted the new hive into position on the concrete blocks (Honeybees' GPS is finely tuned; the new hive had to be located just where the old hive was in order for the bees to orient to it properly.) I then closed the top, and went home for a much needed glass of beer.

As you can see, in spite of all their lollygagging here, there, and everywhere around the OM box, it seems the bees had (to some degree) accepted their temporary home by beginning to build comb on the lid—a sight I found inexplicably poignant.On the other hand, they'd begun doing the same thing under the tarp, so who knows what would have happened if they'd been left to their own devices there?

The next morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find the bees still in and around the hive. Many were clustered on the exterior, but by now I was getting used to that sort of behavior.Like the wonderfully enigmatically wild animals they are, the bees are going to do not what the books say they will do, nor what you expect them to do, but whatever they are moved to do. In this respect, they remind me very much of house cats.

For the time being, it seemed all was well with Rebel Rebel.
But the time being is, by definition, a painfully fleeting thing. The very next day, following a brief, respectful and clearly premature inspection of the hive, bees started pouring out the front entrance in waves and flying tumultuously skyward in a behavior disturbingly reminiscent of swarming. I couldn't blame them. They were understandably antsy and anxious and seeing my face yet again must surely have upset them. Learning Curve Lesson #799: Leave the bees alone, will ya???

I never did see whether the swarm-like throngs returned to Rebel Rebel, but after that incident, it seemed to me, there were fewer bees in the hive. Did some actually leave and, if so, had all-important queen departed with them? Did they all return once I was out of earshot and simply create the appearance of fewer bees because they were now getting organized with comb-building and nectar-gathering? As a new beekeeper, I am still in the earliest phases of learning to interpret my observations; I look forward to the day when I can better the connect the bee-dots.

Even with its (seemingly) smaller work force, the Rebel Rebel bees have been working hard at building comb, gathering nectar, and trying to build things up in there. But the ranks looked small and I wondered whether they'd be able to pull together the critical mass needed to build up their population and honey stores to a level where they could survive a long, cold Northern winter. To us, the season of snow and subzero temperatures seems far away, but for the bees, in a sense, it is just around the corner, with an unthinkable amount of work to be accomplished between now and then.

And then there were three...

Last evening at dusk I was able to place the swarm in its new home. I've affectionately named this third hive Rebel Rebel, but a more apt name might be Patience of a Saint. They really did go through a lot with me (Learning Curve Alert!) and I hope things work out for them now.