Daily Adventures

Had a really truly full day today, and I absolutely decided that I had to fit an inspection in today.

The next week was supposed to be 60+, but given that tomorrow's Easter and our day was full, and the following week the out-of-state Biloxi rebuilders are coming HERE to do flood relief, I knew that I was going to be totally busy and physically exhausted for most of the coming week. And doing it today would allow the bees to take full advantage of the coming days of heat and spring flowers. Inevitably here in Colorado there is going to be at least one more snowfall before the frosts end in late May.

( Cut for pictures and the very very long day... *laughs* )

And the bees are going in and out with a bunch of pollen. They seem to be doing quite well, and even though the weather people promised snow today, there wasn't any, and the girls were happily working away.

There were a lot of orienting flights every single warm day after two or three cold ones, so they're really building up quickly.

I really need to go in sometime and look at the frames that are there and replace the really misformed ones with clean bases again. There were a few frames where they'd hung two sheets of wax, and I was advised that they'd eat all the honey out of them over the winter, so that I could clean them out in the spring. I'm tempted to do it soon so that they'll also have more space in the hive and feel like they have to stay and keep building instead of swarming.

It was pretty funny today, though, as I just sat outside the entrance watching them come in with their pollen pellets. I saw some black flies at the front entrance. They were just there, and the bees were ignoring them, and finally the flies annoyed me enough that I started swatting them. The bee-girls didn't seem to take any more notice of me swatting the flies right on the entrance board than they had been taking notice of me without the violence I was doing to the flies. It's nice to know that my girls are quite tame.

It was warm today, nearly 60, and the side yard was sunny and bright. When I went out at 2pm I heard the hum that Jet calls 'the vacuum sound'. It's the usual sound of new bees orienting themselves!

After the other article about the fact that the bees are still rearing young in the winter, it wasn't as unexpected as it would have been before. But I was still pleasantly surprised to see the cloud of bees hovering in front of the hive. It made me put on my suit and veil and have John light up my smoker, because I was going to approach a living, active hive instead of the one that was very quiet and didn't have that many bees in December.

( Cut for pictures... )

I want to start by wishing everyone a very very Happy New Year, and to thank you for your support, friendship, and time. I am very grateful.

I'm not a fan of the New Year's Resolution, as I think if I'm going to resolve something or promise something, it really doesn't matter what day of the year it is. *laughs* But I am hoping that this new year will be good for everyone, and there are a few things that seem to be coming together for me in the coming year, and I shall do my best to make them work out.

( Read more... )

We've been having streaks of 60+ degree days, and with the Colorado Front Range mostly devoid of flowers at this time, I've been feeding the girls pounds and pounds of sugar syrup. They've been sucking it down like crazy, too, much faster than they did in the early spring, last year. Their stores are still good, but I've just been putting quarts and quarts and quarts of 1:1 sugar:water syrup into the internal feeder. No reason to encourage, even more, the robbers that keep trying to get into the hive.

I've been seeing wasps, flies, wild bees, and all kinds of creatures trying to get into the front entrance. I've been seeing the girls throwing out the intruders, too, literally grabbing them and taking them away or balling them up, heating them to kill them and then dumping all the bodies out the front door. There's a huge spider living under the hive, that gathers up all the bodies and eats them, leaving all only the wings. The spider's been a kind of amazing clean up crew.

I've smashed a few wasps just because they're so easy to spot and they move slowly in 50+ or even low 60 degree weather.

Tonight it's supposed to rain down freezing sleet, so I've finally reduced the entrance to the smallest setting, and took the feeder out, simply to give the girls less space they have to heat. I'm also putting the feeder in a place away from the hive so it'll lure the robbers there instead of to the hive, and the girls can still pick up sweets when they are energetic enough to be out flying. The last two brood boxes are heavy still with stores (or even the syrup, I imagine), and when I opened them to take out the feeder, there were still a lot of bees.

So I'm pretty hopeful about them lasting the winter. We'll see. I'll probably still put patties on around Christmas, in case they want them, but I've now zipped their boxes closed for the winter.

Ever since I worked the Boulder County Fair at the beginning of August, I'd realized I was going to have to harvest all the supers at the end of August or the beginning of September. It was pretty clear that if the supers were taken, then the bees would start filling the brood box with honey instead of the extra space I was giving them.

I'd been thinking of just leaving the honey for the bees, and not dealing with extraction and all the extra equipment that implied, since I hadn't really been going into it for the honey so much as for the simple fact that the bees were alive and pollinating. But the display kind of convinced me, and I talked with a man who sells honey at our local farmer's market. He said that now was the time to take the supers off, so that the bees would have the time to fill the brood chambers while it was still warm. My mentor from the 911 center said that he found that the winter bee cluster rarely ever made it as far up as the supers, so they would never reach the honey if we left if for them. So he always takes away all the supers around now so that they have about a month to fill in the brood chambers.

On Monday it had been in the 80's and low 90's lately, and the weatherman said that it was going to stay in that range for the next week, but then the temperatures were likely to drop for a while. John was leaving on Tuesday to pick up the van, and I needed him along in case something happened. So it seemed the right thing to do. Besides, I wasn't going to say no to a little honey.

What I didn't really know was how MUCH I'd get.

( Cut for the usual high-bandwidth stuff... )

And now for something completely different. A quick break from the Way Back Machine, and onto the things I've been dealing with here in the summer time of Colorado. The fires have been fierce, and we were seeing the smoke from the two fires that were right after we got back. The weather has gotten even hotter and dryer, and on the 22nd of June I saw a bunch of the girls hanging out on the front entrance board instead of inside the hive.

I hadn't seen that behavior before, and I kind of panicked as there was something about the bees hanging out like that because they were thinking of swarming, but usually it's a huge beard of bees, not just a few wandering aimlessly outside...

( Read more... )

Yesterday, while I was stringing up the sugar snap peas (which had tripled their length in just three days of sunshine and plenty of water), I suddenly saw a cloud of bees in front of the entrance.

I asked my boss at the 911 dispatch center (I just volunteer as a transcript person there once a week), Ken Nichols, keeps bees and is very experienced his opinion on when to inspect bees, and he dragged out the lovely old adage of "if you want a dozen opinions, ask ten beekeepers." But he gave a very reasoned argument against going in every week, and for doing a bit more management at the end of the winter, and into the fall.

I told him about seeing larvae forming the last time I went in, and he smiled and said that I'd probably be seeing orienting flights soon, huge clouds of bees right in front of the entrance. They are newborns that are figuring out how to fly and how to find the hive and how and where it is, and every once in a while, after they start to get born, they'll just come out and hover. Knowing what it was made me run inside to tell the boys and grab the camera.

( Cut for pictures and more text... )

Three days after I installed the bees, I had to release the queen. She was still in her cage, being seen to by her attendents, and with her caught in the hive, the other bees wouldn't leave her and would do their best to stick with her. But after two or three days, she had to be let out so that she could lay eggs for new workers so that they could get on with the business of being a hive.

( Lots more pictures and explanations of what has to happen... )

I've earned a new habit this winter. Walking in the cold.

It started during the time before Christmas, when the days were short, the nights long, and the neighborhood had all the pretty lights out. The temperatures would get down into the single digits, and I'd be out there anyway, usually when there was no wind to add to the chill factor, and loved seeing the lights and walking out where no one was.

I had my thick wool cowl, my down jacket, my handspun mittens, and a wool hat that I'd bought on one of our innertube sledding trips out into the mountains. Thick wool with a brim to keep the sun out. Though I didn't have to worry about the sun today. It was overcast and cold.

( And it was beautiful... )