The More I Learn, the Less I Know

Wow, how time files! It's mid-July already and my girls are chugging right along.

The week before last was the annual conference of the Heartland Apicultural Society, which is the end-all, bee-all for Midwestern beekeepers. All of the bee gods were there. In fact, I've never seen more Ph. D.s in a square mile before. Turns out my bee teacher is among the revered. Her talks were packed to the gills, standing room only. How lucky I am that I get to learn from her!

The sessions ranged from super-basic info for pre-beginners, through the presentation of a multi-year research project to measure the antibiotic effects of propolis inside a hive. There was one Ph. D, Dennis VanEnglesdorp, who presented his findings on varroa mites which was a real eye opener. Varroa are to bee disease as mosquitoes are to malaria and fleas are to the plague, and varroa are EVERYWHERE.  Those who don't treat for them are spreading them to beeks who do treat, and it's becoming a big mess. As much as some folks want to remain chemical-free in their hives, and I can completely understand that, it's just not practical to let a colony become infested with horrible viruses. If your kid or dog had an infection, you'd treat it, right? You wouldn't just let them suffer. Same goes for bees. They're livestock in our care, and we wouldn't just let a cow become infested with parasites, would we?

Ok, enough soap box.  

The "thing we can do", however, is test for mites, and report our findings. Dr. VanEnglesdorp, in conjunction with my bee teacher, Meghan Milbrath, and another person from University of Minnesota whose name escapes me, have put together mite testing kits for backyard beekeepers. Everything you need is in the kit, and you just have to report your mite numbers to their website, where they're gathering tons of data about mites, which will help us in the fight against them. 

For the beeks who are reading, here is where you can order a kit: Citizen Science Project Mite Test Kit 

Meanwhile, I was able to pick up a five frame medium nuc kit from the vendor room. A nuc is short for "Nucleus Colony", which is just a smaller hive kept in order to support the larger hive, or a way to start a larger hive. You take frames of brood, pollen and nectar from a large, strong hive, and put it in the smaller box. You also move a bunch of bees there too, to take care of the brood, and don't forget a queen! If you take the queen out of your main hive, the bees will build themselves a new one. It's actually a good idea to break the brood cycle in your main hive while they're building a new queen, as it helps curtail the spread of varroa.  By the time the new queen is hatched, mated and laying eggs an entire generation of workers will have come and gone and with them went the fodder for mites. 

Anyhoo... I was thinking about making a nuc off of Maud to have another set of bees to go into winter with.  I really want my girls to survive, but they odds aren't in their favor. Meghan, our teacher, says that overwintering nucs is a good way to have bees in the spring. (They're smaller, easier to manage, and don't require as much food.) Once I got my nuc boxes built, I'd either look for a new queen from a reputable breeder, (read: Meghan) or have Maud's girls build a new one.  The best time for this is right about now.

A fancy Nuc. The beer's not too shabby, either.

The rest of the conference was filled with lots of different activities.  There was a night hike through a nature center which was pretty darned cool.  We called owls and they answered! There was a barred owl following us around. We also saw the coolest bio-luminescent fungus.  Did I mention we didn't use flashlights?  Yep, it was super dark, but our eyes adjusted and we were able to see just fine. I highly recommend it, especially for the all the wildlife sounds you'll be able to hear. Also, if you crunch wintergreen lifesavers with your mouth open, in the dark, you can see sparks. Quite cool.

We also had an ice cream social one night, and the next night there was a barbeque, folk band and a delicious mead tasting.  There were about 9 or 10 different mead makers there with several types of mead available to taste.  I had no idea there was so much variety! Most of it was pretty sweet, but I found a couple I really liked, including one that was made with hops. Note: Mead is high in alcohol content.  

The band, "Behind the Times"

Say hello to my little friend.

...and then there was a queen auction!  A smooth move on the part of the Apicultural Society; get us tipsy then auction off some really amazing queens. They even had some of the "ankle biters" from Purdue's breeding program.  For those not in the know, these queens are the superstars of the genetics world. Northern survivors, with some amazing hygienic behavior. They attack any mite they see and bite its legs off. End of mite.  There were also some of Meghan's queens, as well as some other 'famous' stock from Vermont.

Ladies and Drones... I give you Jenny! She's one of the fine gals from Vermont. 

Jenny, short for Genebeeve. She has the blue dot.

Yep. I won a queen in the auction. I guess I'm going to make that split a little earlier than I thought, but at least I have Myrtle's old equipment handy, and I have plenty of time to build her and her girls up before winter. 

The main thing I learned from the 2.5 day conference is that there is so much to learn, and 2.5 days isn't enough to cram terabytes of information into my gigabyte head. 

Here's to a lifetime of discovery!

Box on, box off...

The girls are chugging right along.

I went to visit them on Monday to add a new box to the hive so they'd have plenty of room to grow. I'm paranoid that they'll get too crowded and swarm when I'm not there to catch them. While I was there, I decided to do another semi-full inspection. I saw lots of eggs up in the top box, but only on about 3 of the 10 frames. Down in the middle box, it was the same deal... very few frames of eggs and brood relative to the number of frames, and there were many, many frames that were completely empty. No comb, no bees, no nothing. I wonder when they'll finally fill out those outer frames? They really need to do it because they're going to need to fill them with pollen and honey.  As it is, all the "nectar" they have is from the sugar water I was giving them. Yeah, ok, girls, no more sugar water for you. You're big enough now to go get real nectar from nature like you're supposed to.

I wasn't wearing any veil or gloves, so I was working pretty slowly to avoid agitating everybody. However, by the time I got down into the bottom box, they were pretty much done with me poking around in their house and they started to come after me. I got head butted a couple times and had to step away for a second. Heaven forbid I put on gloves... I was trying to get the frames back in the right spot, and they didn't like that either and one of them got me on the tip of the thumb. I scraped the stinger out with the hive tool and then blew some smoke over it to mask the "KILL THE INTRUDER, NOW!" pheromone they were giving off.   It didn't work. The initial sting isn't so bad, but then it's like eating a hot pepper...it builds up, and for about 20 seconds it pretty burn-y. Then another Kamikaze Ophelia raced out and got me in the knee. Was that really necessary? Little bit--... oh, wait, these are my sweet little bees I'm talking about.

The next night, at bee club, I explained my "skinny" brood and empty comb situation to a couple seasoned beeks. (one of which was my neighbor, to whom I haven't talked since the big drama night of their arrival.) They told me that as long as I keep adding boxes, they'll keep building up, and that I have to take that extra box off and make them fill out the rest of that foundation. They assured me they won't swarm any time soon, and that I really don't want to have a hive 10 boxes high with no honey in it. Ok, fine, I'll take off the box.

Wednesday evening, after my hair appointment, I ran down there to take care of it. Of course it was pouring rain the whole way, so much so that my AWD car was hydroplaning. Yeesh. The girls sure aren't going to like this.  Fortunately, it stopped by the time I got there, and everybody was in a good mood. I (suited up this time) took off the extra story, put the roof back on and sat back for a little Bee TV.

The workers were all coming back from the field, each one approaching at the same angle.  There was a bee on the front porch sounding the "we live here"  buzz so all the returnees could make instrument landings.

Now I REALLY have to let them bee for awhile.  If they were in my own backyard, I'd be sitting out there all the time, certainly to the detriment of my social life and laundry chores. It's hard to stay away from them for so long, so when I do see them, I want to open everything up and see what's going on. The bee teacher says this is normal for beginners. By next year we'll have enough faith in our girls to leave them alone.

Here's a little sample of the Real Housewives of Maud County...

A Week Away!

I can't believe the day is almost here. A week from tomorrow I'll jump out of bed before the alarm, throw on my Saturday yoga pants and run out the door to pick up my Uncle Steven on the way to pick up my bees.

Uncle Steven was beekeeper back in the '60s when he was a teenager. He kept them on the garage roof. He also had a pet alligator, but we're not here to talk about alligators, we're here to talk about bees. He earned a Boy Scout merit badge for beekeeping.  The Scouts have since discontinued it, but I have to wonder if they shouldn't bring it back. Grandma and Granddad had to sell his bees when he got shipped off to Vietnam, but he kept all of his books, which he recently gave to me. They're absolute treasures!

Treasures from the 1950s

A couple weeks ago, I went to an equipment build at the farm of one of the bee club members. Newbs like me brought their pieces and parts to get help from the old timers. One thing I learned...I need a frame jig! There were power staplers and plenty of bottles of glue, and a frame wiring thingy that I didn't use.  I used bobby pins instead, since all my frames are mediums.  The larger frames need the reinforcement of a horizontal wire to help support the beeswax foundation, but my smaller ones would hold up just fine with $.99 bobby pins. The old timers showed us how to put things together, then helped us out when we inevitably overshot the staple.

Bobby pins hold the foundation in place.

Frame jigs are a must have.

It was a nice way to spend a morning, and I even managed to get my pretty spring coat all covered in glue.  I didn't mind though, it makes me feel that much more of a beekeeper. I didn't manage to get a picture of the farmer's dog, Phoebe, but I did snap one of our other helper...

Nice day for a rooster!

This Sunday is bee school again, and for the first time, we're actually going to get to play with some bees! I'm super excited and have a dozen questions about how to set up my boxes next weekend, and whether I should spray my girls with sugar water or dust them with powdered sugar. I know not to do both, lest I end up with candied bees. It's supposed to be warm next weekend, but there's also a chance of thunderstorms. I just hope I get a good window to hive them. They'll have been in tiny screened boxes for days, the sooner they can move into their new houses, the better. 

Seven more days!

Oh, geeze, I almost forgot! (Which would be shameful, since I'm sitting right next to them on my deck) I finished painting the hives!

Nice and girly, waiting for the girls.