Feeding the bees...to family and friends

   I had an unusual call yesterday from an author, David George Gordon.  He was working to have one of his earlier books updated and republished, a book about eating insects. The book provides information about various cultures that eat insects as well as some recipes. He needed some help preparing for a photo shoot. He wanted to include some photos of recipes in the  updated book. The help he sought was to purchase some live bees, pupae and larvae that he could use to prepare a particular recipe, "Three Bee Salad". I arranged to sell him one frame of brood and honey from my modified Warre hive.  I told him that I would like to read his book and write a review for my blog and website. He offered to send me an advance copy. The new improved book is due out in July, 2013. He has a website at www.davidgeorgegordon.com for those who are interested.

     As it turns out, I had actually read one of Gordon's books before.  I just didn't recollect his name.  The particular book was titled "The Field Guide to the Slug". Obviously, the author's name was less memorable to me than the book title.  It was an interesting book that provided a great deal of useful information about my primary gardening nemesis, the slug. Yet, it was written in a light-hearted, whimsical style that made it an enjoyable read.

    The subject of eating bees and bee larvae has come up several times in the past year.  When a bear attacks a bee hive his primary goal is to eat the larvae, not the honey. I have one customer who was inspired to try eating the larvae after watching a BBC documentary on honeybees. He described the larvae as tasting better than the sweetest creamed corn he ever had. While I was impressed with his enthusiasm for his new-found delicacy, I've been reluctant to try them myself.  It isn't that I couldn't eat an insect as much as it just feels wrong to eat my bees.

Warre Hive Update

     My modified Warre hive has done okay this year. I didn't end up with an unmated queen from a large secondary swarm that ended up being a drone layer (my previous Warre hive experience).  I say my Warre hive is modified in that it has moveable frames like a conventional beehive.  What I wanted to experiment with were the smaller dimensions of the Warre hive (12x 12 inner dimensions of the brood nest) and the "quilt" as a moisture abatement mechanism. I want to see if those factors have a positive impact on the bees making it through the winter.  I am unwilling to give up moveable frames and the management they allow the beekeeper. Also I am unwilling to sacrifice my bees on the altar of 100 percent natural beekeeping.  Therefore I want to be able to use the more benign and natural miticides like Hopguard or Apilife and I want to be able to feed my bees if they need it and be able to give them medication for Nosema Cerana.

     I realize that one hive doesn't make a very good experiment, but I haven't had the time or energy to make more than the one Warre hive.  I need to have at least ten conventional Langstroth hives in order to maintain the queen banks at the bee store. That is about all of the beehives I currently have time to manage.  I want to see if the Warre hive beats the average of the ten Langstroth hives when it comes to overwintering during the next five years.

    We had a relatively good blackberry nectar flow this year.  The Warre hive drew out comb in three and a half deep boxes (eight frames each with a comb length of 12 inches).  I'm not aware that the Warre hive swarmed, but I didn't install a marked queen so I can't absolutely swear that they didn't.  I harvested three deep frames that consisted of close to 100 percent capped honey. That allowed me to reduce them back down to three deep boxes, the equivalent of a two deep eight frame Langstroth hive. I am treating them for mites with Apilife VAR, which I consider to almost be an herbal treatment as the the active ingredients are thymol, eucalyptus, and menthol. I plan to feed them several gallons of 2:1 sugar syrup with fumagillin for Nosema.

    I intend to use the three frames of honey to do cut comb rather than extract them.  However, the SAF extractors I sell at the Beez Neez will accomodate the shorter frames from my Warre hive. It just isn't worth my trouble to extract three frames. Besides, I can always use more cut comb honey.

Bait Hives

    I arrived home on Saturday afternoon after being gone for a week. I was visiting one of my daughters, who lives in Forest Grove, Oregon.  The reason for the trip was to participate in a 5 day Mormon pioneer handcart trek.  The purpose of the handcart trek is to help the youth have a greater appreciation of sacrifices made by their ancestors.  Any experience that helps a teenager develop gratitude is pretty valuable in my opinion.  I had hoped to attend the Northwest District Beekeepers Association picnic when I got home, but I arrived later than I expected. Also I had visiting grand children, I discussed the matter briefly with Linda and it was readily apparent that I needed to stick around. I hope the picnic was a big success, especially the bee beard contest.

    On Saturday evening, just as my son James and his wife were preparing to leave, I noticed a big cloud of bees in the immediate vicinity of my hives. I initially thought one of my hives were swarming and I went to investigate. As it turns out, it wasn't a swarm leaving, but a swarm arriving.  As I got closer I saw that the bees were gathering on the front of a stack of deeps I had sitting on a double hive stand in my apiary. Since the bees were clustering on boxes that I knew were previously empty I realized it was an arrival, not a departure.  I thought it was kind of strange to see a swarm leaving at 7:00 p.m. as swarms usually leave the hive in the early afternoon.  I gave the bees a few days to settle in, then did a little hive exam on Monday, July 16, 2012.  The bees were occupying all of the bottom deep and filled five frames in the second deep so it was a pretty good sized swarm.  The third or top deep had no frames. I was lucky the bees hadn't decided to move right up to the top box and start building comb attached to the lid. I added a few frames to fill out the second box and got rid of the empty third deep. It was the easiest swarm I ever captured.

     Normally I would feed a newly captured swarm, but we are in the middle of the blackberry nectar flow. The bees would probably turn up their noses (actually antennas) at any sugar syrup I offered them. Instead, I will just monitor how they are doing.  If they don't manage to gather enough honey over the next six weeks to get them through the winter I will either merge them with another hive or feed them like crazy in early September.

    I think its always a good idea to have an empty bait hive or a bait box in the vicinity of the apiary. Sometimes we get lucky and a swarm just shows up.  At other times one of our hives may swarm when we aren't there to recover them. The ultimate bait hive guru is Thomas Seeley, the author of "Honeybee Democracy". He has spent his entire adult life studying swarm behavior and specifically what the bees are looking for in a new residence. Apparently, the minimum size of a cavity that the bees will accept is 16 liters.  If you don't have enough extra boxes to set up a bait hive, a swarm trap can be cheaply assembled from a couple of large peat pots, a few drywall screws, and a couple of sticks. The drywall screws are used to attach the two peat pots together, while the sticks provide a means to attach the swarm trap at an appropriate height in a tree. Ready made swarm traps can also be found in many bee supply catalogs.

    While I was checking up on the newly arrived swarm, I also checked on my other hives. Most were in pretty good shape, but a few needed another honey super.  It looks like we are finally having a good blackberry nectar flow.

   

Observation Hive Update

Our Observation Hive is Back.

   I put a new colony of bees into our observation hive today.  It was an awkward day to do it as it was a rather cool day.  I had to wait until 2:00 p.m. for the temperature to get up to just 58 degrees.  I would have preferred a warmer day but I didn't want to leave the bees confined in their hive until the following day.   I love having the bees in the shop and they are a big hit with the customers.  I just have to exercise some self discipline and limit the time I spend watching the bees..

Note the newly installed connecting comb in the center of the photo

   The colony came from one of my earlier queen banks and consisted of a little more than 5 frames of bees.  I put four frames of bees in the observation portion of the hive and the rest of the bees went into the lower portion.  The bees seemed to acclimate to their new home quickly and found both the feeder and the exit to the outdoors.  I took some photos several hours later and found the bees had already made some connecting comb to attach one of the frames to the window of the observation hive.

Note the open brood visible between the bees.

   The observation hive currently has two frames of capped brood and two frames of empty drawn comb.  Two of the frames in the lower unit are drawn, but the other eight frames are just foundation.  The weather will change dramatically starting tomorrow.  The fourth of July is expected to be in the high sixties.  After that the temperature climbs into the high seventies and low eighties.  That should cause the blackberry nectar flow to take off.  It will be interesting to watch and see how fast the population of the observation hive will grow with the emergence of the capped brood and the start of a serious honey flow. I put a jar of sugar syrup in the feeder but I don't expect to have to feed them much after that jar of syrup is gone.

    I took these photos with my iPhone. I was surprised that they turned out that well. I am going to have to figure out how to disable the flash.

 
 

Thimble Berries and Salmon Berries

    Both thimble berries and salmon berries are in the Rubus family and are thus cousins of the raspberries.  We have a lot of salmon berries in western Washington and a lesser amount of thimble berries. While there are a lot of salmon berries in my neighborhood,  I've never seen my bees pay much attention to them. Neither have I noticed large quantities of nectar coming into the hives when the salmon berries are in bloom. This is something I certainly would notice as the salmon berries bloom at a time when I am always feeding my bees lots of sugar syrup.

Thimble berry blossoms

     I wasn't aware of any significant patches of thimble berries in my neighborhood until recently.  This past week I noticed a patch of big white blossoms a little more than a quarter mile from my house.  The thimbleberries really stood out because the surrounding blackberries weren't blooming yet.  Then the following day I found another thimble berry patch about a quarter mile to the north,  The first time I only noticed bumble bees working the blossoms but the temperature was only 52 degrees.  Today I looked at the thimble berries when it was 72 degrees and again I only saw bumble bees working the blossoms.  That may be the reason thimble berries didn't make it into the plant section in Honey Plants of North America.  I would expect my bees to find any plant within a half mile that was a good nectar source.

     Thimble berries actually have a pretty good flavor, but an unfortunate mealy texture.  I've often thought they would make a wonderful jelly, but its hard to find a sufficient quantity in one place to make it worth the trouble to gather them. If anyone ever gives me a gift of thimble berry jelly I will know they put an awful lot of work into the gift.

Feeding the Bees

   Over the course of a week at the Beez Neez Apiary Supply Quentin and I spend a fair amount of time on the phone answering the questions of beginning beekeepers.  This past week (the first week of June) the most common question pertained to why their bees seemed sluggish and were clustered at the entrance of the hive.  This is actually a pretty easy problem to diagnosis. Our response was usually something along the line of, "When did you stop feeding your bees?"  In western Washington most rural beekeepers experience a serious nectar dearth following the bloom of the Big Leaf Maple trees in late April and early May.  This dearth or lack of nectar sources usually continues until the Himalaya Blackberries start to bloom.  This can vary from mid June until early July, depending on the weather of a given year and the exact location of the bees.  The Puget Sound area has lots of different micro climates.  This is further complicated by the fact that some urban beekeepers benefit from some good nectar sources among their neighborhood landscape plants. However, this time of year can be pretty slim pickings for most rural beehives.

   My advice is to never assume that you can stop feeding your bees based on some arbitrary date on the calendar.  There is no substitute for looking in the hive and thus ensuring that your bees have an adequate food supply stored in their combs.  You cannot rely on someone else's experience with their hives as they  are usually not in your same location.  Their hives may indeed have adequate stores sufficient to last them through to the start of the blackberry nectar flow.  Their hives may well have benefited from nectar sources your hives did not have.   The safe thing to do is to just plan on continuing to feed the bees until you notice that they have either stopped taking the syrup or you can see that they have accumulated significant stores of nectar.  Even if you are able to stop feeding for a time, the food supplies of your colonies will still need to be closely monitored until the blackberries start to bloom.  Assessing a colony's food stores is one of those things you are supposed to be doing whenever you open up a beehive and look at the frames.

    If you find yourself in the awkward position of having a colony on the verge of starvation, you may need to sprinkle a little sugar syrup directly on the bees. If they are sluggish due to starvation, they may be too far gone to access the feeder. Oftentimes a light misting with sugar syrup will help them regain their vigor more quickly.

    I think many beekeepers have had the unfortunate experience of having a hive or two starve out in the late spring. I know that I have.  As a consequence I suffered a fair amount of guilt and barely managed to get through the experience without going to counseling.  Ever since then I have been much more careful in monitoring the food supplies of my colonies in the spring.

Humble Bumbles

   I was looking at my blueberries early this morning to see if we had good fruit set when I noticed several  bumble bees, each just hanging onto a blossom.  Apparently they had been working late, were stranded by the rain or cold, and had spent the night clinging to a blossom.  I suppose it is also possible they had been stranded by an early morning rain storm.  When I took this photo there were other bumblebees busily working the blueberry blossoms.  I really have to admire the grit of the bumble bees.  They start really early in the morning and they work until its almost black dark. I wish we had honeybees that were so well adapted to our cool maritime climate.  The beehive in the background of the photo is my modified Warre hive.  I took a photo of the entrance of the Warre hive just after taking this photo and there was no activity at all.

Note the bumble bee in the center of the photo

Modified Warre Hive with no activity at the entrance 

    We have a huge rhododendron tree in our front yard.  I say tree because it is larger than some semi-dwarf fruit trees.  In late May and early June its covered with lavender pink blossoms and it is alive with bumble bees. With all of the bumble bees working the blossoms the plant is much louder than my little apiary of 10 honeybee hives. That buzz is already going strong when I go outside at 6:00 a.m. and continues past dusk. Bumble bees certainly can't be accused of working banker's hours. I've often watched the bumble bees working the blossoms, but I have only noticed a honeybee on the rhododendron once.  I'm assuming the structure of the flower or the nectaries is probably such that the honeybees have difficulty working the blossoms.

     It looks like our himalaya blackberries are getting close to blooming.  That is probably a consequence of our relatively warm weather in May.  I think we had close to ten seventy degree days scattered throughout the month.  I've lived in Snohomish since 1993 and I can't recall ever having seen that much warm weather in May.  I pay very close attention to the 70 degree mark as that is the magic point at which it is warm enough for queens to take mating flights. Now that we're into June the weather patterns seem to be more normal. Normal spring weather for us consists of highs in the mid to low sixties with a fair amount of rain showers, chance of showers, and chance of rain.  Now I'm concerned that the blackberries will bloom several weeks before the weather will be warm enough for a good nectar flow. Himalaya blackberries seem to be very temperature sensitive where nectar production is concerned.  At seventy and sunny they produce nectar profusely, At lower temperatures they seem to be a non-event for the bees.

Himalaya Blackberries on the verge of the bloom

Evergreen Blackberry with its deeply cut leaves.
Note the Himalaya blackberry leaves in the center of the photo.

Wild Cucumber

   As a beekeeper it is hard to avoid becoming an amateur botanist. I can't help but take an interest in any new plant that the girls find interesting.  I learned a new one the other day as my friend Quentin and I saw honeybees working small white blossoms on an unknown climbing vine.  Friendly bystanders identified the plant as a wild cucumber.  I had not noticed this plant near my house, but there appeared to be a lot of it growing in Quentin's neighborhood.

Note the cucumber-like fruit forming in the upper center of the photo

I believe this to be wild cucumber

    When I got home I quickly consulted my copy of Honey Plants of North America by John H. Lovell.  I found two short paragraphs on page 234 and a black and white photograph on page 235.   I learned its scientific name is Echinocystis lobata and that it grows wild along rivers from New England to Texas.  The black and white photo was sufficient for me to be confident that I had the right plant. This in spite of the fact that the book failed to mention wild cucumber's presence in the Pacific Northwest.  Wild cucumber is reported to yield a light amber honey of good quality in the bottom lands of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.  This would explain wild cucumber's presence in Quentin's neighborhood as he lives near a river while I do not.

   This book is an excellent resource for the serious beekeeper,  who just has to identify any plants his bees are working.  The only serious shortcomings in the book's usefulness are the fact that it was published in 1926 and the lack of good quality color photographs.  The book has since been republished, but not updated. The book is divided into two sections.  In the first section, honey plants are listed alphabetically. The second section of the book has an overview for each of the lower 48 states.  Actually, at the time the book was originally published, Alaska and Hawaii were still territories.  At the present time the Himalaya Blackberry is the most significant honey plant in Western Washington.  This is a non-native invasive species which escaped into the wild from Luther Burbank's plant breeding program.  In Lovell's book there is no mention of the Himalaya Blackberry in the plant section and no mention of any blackberries as a significant nectar source in Western Washington.  That is because in 1926 there were no Himalaya Blackberries in Western Washington.  There is also no mention of Japanese Knotweed, but I assume in 1926 it had either not yet been imported or not yet escaped to the wild. The book does mention Fireweed, the native Oregon Maple (Big Leaf Maple) and Vine Maple as significant honey plants in Western Washington.