Critical Times

Since I don't update the blog often, sometimes, when I sit to write, I wonder where to start. 

After the last two years of beekeeping, we found ourselves in a place of learning mostly from the mistakes we made. Honey yield is not our main goal of this pursuit, but it is a goal, and we just didn't have the harvests we'd like to see. We haven't been as successful at getting our bees through winter as we want to be. This beekeeping year, we regrouped and have been working hard on keeping up with spring feeding, doing inspections more often and with more intention, learning MUCH more about pre-swarm behavior and inside-the-hive space management, etc. Each week, I kept thinking of updating my notes here, but I knew that several days later, we'd have more we had been thinking or doing...and so here we are in July, 2020.

Oh, 2020.  I won't address the upheaval this year has brought with it except that, in the particular theme of things here, it brings to my mind quite freshly how much a gift beekeeping has been for our family.  When we first started, it was a dream we had for our older years.  The, "When we retire..." kind of dream.  With the help of Mr T. and his beautiful land, it immediately turned into our way of getting our apartment-living selves and our small children outside and in the woods. Years later, it is still a blessing to get a little out of town and to bring our kids with us into the journey that is each year.

I was just telling Mr. Bee last week about how the drive to the bees has been a great comfort to me over the years.  I seem to get pretty absorbed into the groove of home tasks and work and kids' schedules, and the view of country fields changing over the seasons, over and over again, has always helped me recalibrate.  The way nature keeps going has been a comfort. The bees get to work, reproduce their colonies, and make honey. The sun comes up every day and flowers just bloom.  

Between the desire to do better as beekeepers and the urgency of the times, everything seems a little more critical than usual. Having intention seems as important as ever. Let's get to the hive updates.

Above, you see our two main hives and a split.  We have had two amazing hives with two amazing queens this year.  The bees are healthy and growing fast, and we are being as proactive as we can as to not lose any to a swarm (the bees' natural way of reproducing new hives - a new queen leaves with half of the bees).  The hives have been growing fast, so we now have one split and may have another soon.  We hope that we can help raise the splits into full colonies as well, which means we could have up to four hives. In the end, though, our first goal is to keep those two main hives healthy, happy and honey-producing. In the next months, the goals will shift to getting the bees through winter.

Instead of sharing detailed notes on each hive, what we have been doing and what we have planned for the next weeks, I will try to make a summary here:

We have our first great hive.  This colony has been a fast growing one with lots of queen cups and, lately, some swarm cells.  Hence, this is the hive we split.  We have been practicing hard at finding the queen and new eggs on inspections, and it has really come in handy.

Here is a great photo with the queen. She has a long body, short wings, and her back is not fuzzy like the worker bees. Colors can vary for queens, and this one is very dark.  She has a nice temperament and we want to keep her around.

From this hive, I (finally) snapped a photo where you can see honey bee eggs. They look like tiny translucent grains of rice, and if a queen is laying well, there is exactly one in each cell of the comb.  This is a piece of burr comb, which was in the way of our inspecting, so we removed it. Don't worry.  A queen can lay up to 2000 eggs each day. Yes, each day.  

We have another great hive, which I refer to as "my hive." It is more of a slow and steady grower and has the most wonderful temperament. Check out this queen's brood pattern here:

For this and, really, both of our hives, we have been adding space more proactively and rearranging frames in the nest area to prevent swarms. 

This leaves us with our split.  

The split actually contains that queen pictured previously, plus eggs and larvae, food, plenty of bees, and plenty of space. It needed to be away from the other hives for a bit, so we opted to have it on our back porch. It really helps to have it here so we can keep a closer eye on it.  It's also fun having hives nearby enough that we can take time to just sit and watch them for a while.

The hive that we split this from was left at Mr. T's and was already well on their way to making a new queen, evidenced by special cells that queens grow in. There is one here at the top center of the photo. It has a peanut shape and faces down instead of outward like the standard comb. There are also queen cups present in this photo, which is how a queen cell can sometimes start.

Mr. Bee does most of the heavy lifting (figuratively and literally) for this operation. He has been, as always, a superstar in building and re-building boxes, loading up the van, lifting hive boxes, etc. We are coming up on our 13th wedding anniversary and I am really very proud of him. He is diligent in staying in touch with a couple experienced beekeepers whose advice has been very helpful and appreciated.

The little bees have also been helping a lot. Miss R is a calm helper and Mr. E has suited up all on his own a couple of times this year to be right at our sides for inspections.

 

Below is a view from the start of our 2020 honey.  Just beautiful. Next I'll share some full frame views.

What did you ask? Have I had a bee stuck in my suit during an inspection this year?  Yes, I have. We had about three minutes left of an inspection when I had a suspicion that a bee had made it all the way up from my pant hem to rest on my back. Surprisingly, we both made it out unscathed. Here is proof that it was *inside* the suit.

Until next time, hang in there, and be safe, smart and well. We are in this together!