This top bar is upside down so you can see the bee-covered comb
Here is my post about why I’ve decided to use foundationless and top bar hives for my treatment-free style of beehive management.
An audience of 200 people watched me catch the bees
Tuesday evening was fun.
Joel had his soccer practice right after dinner, and the other kids came along with me to enjoy a pleasant evening in the park. I was kicking the ball with Samuel when Kathy called my phone to relay a “swarm call”. She said “You need to get this one, and you need to go NOW!”
A swarm of bees had flown through the Cub Scout’s day camp near Lake Sammamish in Issaquah, and was perched on a maple tree branch over their archery range. The camp director was very happy to see me when I arrived, and immediately asked if I could wait about 20 minutes so the boys could watch. That’s a question a homeschool parent will never turn down!
After the Scout’s closing ceremony, everyone was moved over to the archery range, and sat down on the grass about 40 feet from the bees. I gave a 5 minute talk about the bees, explained what was happening and how I was going to take them home with me. I answered a handful of questions, then zipped on my veil and climbed up the step ladder under the tree.
Everyone was silent as I trimmed the twigs, and raised the box up to the cluster of honey bees. A quick shake of the branch made them all fall neatly in. It couldn’t have been a better performance! I left the box on the ladder for any flying bees to enter, and returned to the applauding croud. The camp director later told me she had never had so many boys silent for that long.
The boys got a memorable lesson about bees, I got another hive going, and it felt like I accomplished something significant for the day.
I think it must be time to make a change and get away from my cubicle job, so I can make every day’s work be meaningful like this.
This swarm is on crossed branches 20 ft. above a busy sidewalk in Issaquah, WA.
Yesterday was beautiful, and my cubicle job gave me a rare chance to spend the afternoon outside visiting a cell site.
I got the swarm call just as I was finishing up for the day. There was a swarm of bees hanging in a tree over Front St. in downtown Issaquah. I suspected it might be a little tricky when Monica, who works at the art gallery next to the tree told me: “Oh yeah, you’ll need a ladder.”
After stopping at home for some supplies and dinner (It’s good Kathy feeds me when I’m thinking about other things–smart woman!), I left for Issaquah with my two girls (age 3 & 9) to see what the swarm was like.
The bees had chosen a branch on a tall black locust tree 20 feet above a busy sidewalk in downtown Issaquah. Hmmmm….. I spoke with one of the shops for the building owner’s phone number, and I left a message asking permission for me to go up on the roof. Somehow, in spite of Monica’s warning, I had left the ladder at home. The missing ladder sealed it–I decided it would be too difficult and returned home; but still wondered if I could reach the swarm the nearby roof.
The owner did give me the okay to go on the roof, and I returned later in the evening as the sun was going down with a large insect net on the end of a long pole. I’m glad I set up a bunch of orange warning cones on the sidewalk below, because only a portion of the bees went into the net. The rest went *splat* on the sidewalk, and I spent the next hour coaxing the remaining bees into my swarm catching box while talking with the bartender from across the street who came out to see my project.
I’m counting this collection in the success column, although I’ll have second thoughts about proceeding next time the swarm is in a busy public location. I’m glad it wasn’t rush hour!
I removed almost all the shingles from above this window to reach the swarm
On Wednesday afternoon last week, I received a call from a landlord in Maple Valley who had a swarm of honey bees in the wall of his rental house. I told him that yes, this is something I’m interested in, and no, I don’t charge to remove honey bees.
After a quick stop at home for some tools & a bit of dinner, I pulled into the cul-de-sac of beautifully manicured lawns at about 6:30 PM. The owner, Mark, was outside to meet me, as were the tenants, Preston, Betsy and their teenage son. Although the swarm was on the opposite side of the house, they quickly invited me inside to avoid the bees.
Betsy & her son had seen the swarm hanging from a backyard cedar tree branch around noon, and had watched from the house as the bees left the tree and entered the little roof above the window nook. This was when they called Mark for help.
I looked at the place where the bees had swarmed into, to see if there was a way to do a trap-out or otherwise remove them without tearing into the house. They have entered this little covered space through spaces between the wood shingles and the wall. The roof was tight against rain, but the bees could still find gaps large enough to crawl into. Setting a trap to exclude the bees was not going to work in this case because there were just too many holes. There were probably 20 places they could get through, and most of them well hidden.
A cardboard box works great to hold the bees.
The house was about 20 years old, and Mark said it would be okay for me to pull off the brittle shingles from small roof over the window. You know, I’m pretty good at destructive projects, even when wearing a bee-suit. After about 30 minutes of work, the cluster of bees was exposed enough for me to slide in a cardboard box to catch it. Two swipes of my goose feather bee brush separated the ball of bees from the wooden eaves, and the bees dropped neatly into the box. I closed up the box, but left the two hand-holds open so the flying bees would be able to join their sisters, which they started doing almost immediately. I left the bees for a couple hours, and brought them home after dark. There was not one left behind.
Mark commented this was a win-win situation. I made a huge mess in the owner’s yard, didn’t have to clean up a thing, and he was glad for me to do it.
Here’s a job I like!
Motivation:
I moved a 5 frame conventional (Langstroth) nucleus hive into a top bar hive so they would have space to grow. The bottom corners of each frame are cut off to make the rectangular frame fit into the trapezoid shape of the top bar hive. Since I’m running only top bar hives now, it makes sense for me to have a consistent setup.
There are several approaches:
1. Use the top of the old frame as the new top bar;
2. Use cotton string to tie all the comb onto a new top bar; or
3. Use screws to attach the old frame to the bottom of a new top bar.
I chose to use the first approach because it is a faster process, and it keeps the maximum amount of comb intact.
All frames from the “old hive” should be in the same sequence in the new hive
Step 1: Find & capture the queen.
Step 2: Shake off the bees from the frame and remove the bottom 3 edges of the frame.
Cut w/loping shears then break off the frame edge
Step 3: Use follower as template to cut off excess comb.
The remaining comb is now the right shape to fit
Step 4: Place the frames into the new top bar hive.
Be careful to leave the correct bee-space
Step 5: Keep the queen caged until the bees move into their new home.
Step 6: The bees will search around for their new home & eventually move in.
Foragers are clustering on and trying to enter the (now closed) bathroom window
Step 7: Observe & adjust as needed
Other resources:
video demonstration at http://vimeo.com/5614348
The observation window on the hive helps me to monitor progress
Still below 75°F/24°C in Seattle (plot from Cliff Mass' weather blog)
Today is June 15th, and Seattle has yet to break past 75° F/24° C this year. This means it’s been a great spring for growing grass, but the rainy weather has taken a toll on my apiary.
March this year was warm & abundant, and my hive from last year emerged from winter and just boomed with a major flowering from the big leaf maple trees. The bee population was increasing so fast during March’s sunny weather that I was worried about them swarming. So I split them. Half went with the old queen in the old hive, and the rest were split equally into 3 “nucleus” hives, and made new queens. Things were easy, life was good, spring was warm, and the new queens emerged, mated and started laying. I transferred one nucleus hive into a 3 ft. Top Bar Hive and moved it over to a friend’s house in Bellevue.
…And rainy weather returned.
Spring farming season kicked in, and I stopped monitoring the hives as much as they needed. About 2 weeks ago, I saw drones being expelled from the original hive. This means that they were running out of food, so I put in about a pound of crystallized honey. The bees cleaned it up in a couple days, and a couple of warm days made me relax a bit. Last week I did another walk through of the hives, and found a layer of lethargic bees on the entrance of that same hive. I put in another pound of honey, but this time it was too late to do any good, and the hive did not recover.
To make matters worse, we let the cows graze the pasture where the bee hives were placed, and one of them bumped the cover of the nucleus hives some. This exposed two frames to the rain, and it also effectively removed the partition between the two hives under that single cover. The bees on the wet side wisely decided to move in with the bees on the dry side. Result: my two nucleus hives merged into a single but larger group of bees, and one of the two young queens died.
The silver lining here appeared on Friday, when I transferred the one remaining nucleus hive into it’s own top bar hive. It had a good population of bees–enough to keep it viable. I now have no more conventionally configured Langstroth hives–all 3 remaining hives are in top bar boxes. Although there is still the occasional rain shower, the days are not the continuous Seattle drizzle that killed my other hive. I’ll keep a close eye on them for the next week or so, and feed them if they need it. Summer will come soon, and hopefully they will increase enough in July & August to be strong enough to prepare for winter.
Mason bees prefer pencil-sized holes
In March, I was inspired to raise blue orchard mason bees (Osmia lignaria) after a presentation by Dave Hunter of http://huntersmasonbees.com.
The story Dave shared at my beekeepers’ club meeting about how he got started really caught my attention. He explained how he had bought a couple of tubes of mason bees and put them out as he ought to–in early spring, in a sunny part of his yard, along with some empty tubes for the emerging bees to nest in. In June, He was happy to see many of those tubes had been filled with mason bee larvae. For whatever reason though, the tubes he bought never hatched out! Since mason bees are a native insect here in the Pacific NW, you can “grow your own” just by providing suitable homes. It will take a couple years to build up your local population this way, but you don’t need to purchase your initial “start”.
The orchard mason bee is slightly smaller than a honey bee,shiny, and dark blue in color. Males are smaller than females, have longer antennae and have an additional tuft of light-colored hairs on the face. Females have hairs on the underside of the abdomen adapted for carrying pollen.
The bees prefer homes about the diameter of a pencil, about 6 inches deep, which are closed on one end. These can be made by rolling paper around a pencil and securing the edge with glue. Dave buys his tubes by the ten-thousand from a paper products company in Wisconsin. Of course that’s a bit more than I need. There are others out there who use bamboo, and nesting blocks of wood or plastic.
A lump of pollen, a tiny larva, and a mud separation
Our friend, Kathleen, was more than happy to have me haul away some of the bamboo trimmings she had thinned out from the around her house. I can tell you that I can trim bamboo sticks much faster than I can roll paper around a pencil–so that is the method I used. The hollow portion of this bamboo wasn’t quite as fat as a pencil, but I still went with it. I put a few dozen tubes out at different around the house where they would get some sun and stay dry. The places which worked were the ones which had the most sun. I had volunteer mason bees fill up 5 of the bamboo tubes.
There is still a couple weeks left in the season for mason bees, but I brought in mine on the early side to avoid losing them to another predator–the parasitic wasps start flying in mid-June. They lay eggs in the end of the mason bee nest and their larvae will eat all the mason bees developing in the length of the tube. They are another beneficial insect, but I’d rather keep my mason bee collection safe.
Pollen mites are another menace. These are not parasitic mites, but they can eat the lump of food meant for the baby mason bee. In springtime, these mites will cling on the emerging bees to the point where it is too heavy to fly. There are two solutions to avoid pollen mites. One is to use new tubes every year. Another is to send the mason bee tubes to Bakersfield, CA where there are no pollen mites (too hot & dry). Since I don’t know anyone in Bakersfield, I’m going to put my 5 precious tubes in the attic for the duration of the summer. (That’s another one of Dave’s hints)
In September these larva will be fully developed bees, just waiting for springtime. That’s when I’ll transfer them to the refrigerator, or maybe to a safe place outside until it’s time for them to come out in March or April.
Cottonwood Seeds (www.rwnaturenotes.net)
Snow from the cottonwoods is blowing now. It reminds me of my first trip to Bellevue in 1998 for the job interview that eventually landed Kathy and I in this part of the country. It also tells me we are “between blooms”. The dandelion, maple, apple & other early spring flowers are all gone, while the summer buds haven’t opened yet.
Last year I learned the hard way that there aren’t many flowers for bees to gather nectar from in late May. I had stopped feeding my new hive at the end of April. At the beekeepers meeting in May 2009, I asked if anyone knew why my worker bees had expelled the drones to die outside–it was because they lacked food. For established hives with spare honey, this gap in flowers is not a big deal. For the hive I started in April, it means I’m feeding them again.
The new hive was bringing in a lot of nectar during the height of the spring blossom season. The bees needed wax to make new comb from, so they ate this nectar to create the beeswax for the new construction. This new hive has nothing to spare right now.
The blackberry flowers will open up in a couple more weeks, and bring the summer flow of honey back to the hive.
Small sticks keep the bees from getting stuck in the raw honey
I have a strong opinion the best food for bees is the honey and pollen they have collected themselves–I’m reluctant to feed my bees sugar.
The standard approach for feeding bees is to use sugar syrup, or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and although these will keep the bees alive it’s a destructive practice. I think there are better options.
The best solution is to put in a spare frame of honey from another hive, but this is my only top bar hive and I don’t have any surplus frames of honey.
Several beekeepers talk about making honey syrup by adding water, but it quickly ferments and spoils. There is also some discussion about feeding liquid honey, but there are problems with bees getting stuck and drowning in the sticky liquid.
Fortunately there is still some empty space in front of the hive, and I could fit in a pint of honey covered with sticks. The twigs give the bees a place to stand without getting stuck, and I used the thickest, most crystalized honey I had to prevent the ”drowning” factor.
It will take a few days before the bees move all the honey into the comb themselves–the observation window is a very useful to monitor their progress. When its empty, I’ll refill the tub and repeat the process. This way they will store the honey in the comb, and I’ll be able to remove the feeder dish before it’s in the way.
Starving bees
The last 2 weeks have been cold & rainy, and I’ve been worried about the new package I installed on April 10th. When I last checked them 2 weeks ago, the weather was good, and they were bringing in lots of nectar and pollen. I was so confident that I stopped feeding them, and that was a mistake.
The weather on Wednesday, May 5th was horrible, and I think this was the day that was the worst on my hive. Most of the day had rain mixed with sleet, and the temperature was hovering around 35 F. Thursday was much better and bees from my other hives were out flying again, but I didn’t get home until late evening. Friday I was home and I checked on my top bar hive as soon as the sun was on it, and I immediately put in a jar of syrup–the bees were starving. At least half of the bees had died in the cold. The stores they had brought in were enough to bridge a length of bad weather, but 12 days was too long for them. I did find the queen and she is still alive, but was lethargic like the rest of the hive. By the afternoon, they were scurrying around on the comb, but not flying yet.
The main alpha hive is doing fine–I left them with enough honey frames to make it through the bad weather. I knocked on the front door of the bravo and charlie nucleus hives, and lots of guard bees came out to greet me. I didn’t open that box because the queens will be mating this week, and I did not want to disturb them.
The observation hive also is doing well, except for the top frame behind the glass. That frame gets easily chilled, and does not get the same service from returning foragers as the bottom 5 frames. That top frame also had about a hundred drones emerge last week, and they were stuck behind the queen excluder. Because I need drones this week, I removed the top, and shook them down into the main box so they could get outside. I was not able to find the virgin queen that I had watched emerge, but they often are able to squeeze through an excluder (so I’ve heard).
My disappointment has been tempered some by the success of the nucleus hives–they are going better than I expected. Unfortunately the major hit my top bar hive has taken is due to my own mistake of removing the feed too soon from them.