Getting ready for winter

Our bees have wound down and are holed up for the winter. During the winter our bees huddle in the middle of their respective hives and buzz against each other, creating friction that produces life-preserving heat. In the same way that penguins huddle together and work their way outward from the warm center to the cold edge of the mass, honeybees cycle in and out of the mass taking turns alternately warming themselves and then other honeybees. This is but one amazing example of the social instinct that supports the cooperative social order of each honeybee hive, allowing them to live and thrive. We are told bees that hatch just before and during early winter will typically live up to 6 months. This is great for honeybees since the hives energies must be focused on producing heat and not on producing brood if the colony is to survive the winter. This compares with a typical 6 WEEK lifespan among honeybees born during the spring and summer when most foraging takes place (they work so hard in the summer).

Oh No!!

Holy Cats! When I checked on our bees recently I noticed there were some dead soldiers on the front porch of both hives. I had not seen this before. I was mildly shocked and feared something awful must be happening to the hives. Was it some sort of brood disease, invaders like ants or mice or varroa mites or a viral infection? I wanted to do something but there was nothing to be done. It was way to cold to open the hives and it was lightly raining. Dead honeybees were still there the next day and the same weather conditions prevailed. After several days the cold and wet weather broke and when I checked on the girls (honeybees are virtually all females), both hives looked fine. The dead soldiers were gone and there was substantial traffic in and out the front door. What was that all about? We don’t know yet but I’m sure our experienced fellow-beekeepers can and will offer theories the next opportunity we have to speak with them.

Honey arrives !!

Our bees have been buzzing around all summer. Bunny and I added hive capacity early in the summer so the bees would have space to make and store honey from the summer nectar flows. They managed to make a good bit of honey for the winter but not very much extra (for us!) We did manage to harvest about a quart of honey though. And it is tasty! It has a very light color with a tiny hint of green in it. It's very sweet (like honey) with a little bit of heartiness.

During the last few weeks our bees became extremely active. Many were buzzing not only around the hive but around our deck and the area where we park our cars. Bunny and I were having a little trouble getting close to the hives and doing things in our back yard we needed to do. The bees started following us into the house (!) I actually got stung several times including once just below my eye (!!). One of our beekeeper friends, Jerry Wallace from MABA (our local beekeepers assoc) told us the cause of this behavior could be robbing. We've been feeding our bees sugar syrup since May and now that the summer nectar flows are over and the bees have no ready food source, they are willing to rob other hives, especially hives OUR hives...with a constant supply of sugar syrup. Bunny and I stopped feeding our bees and the aggressive behavior stopped immediately. Things in our backyard are back to their harmonious normal state.

Bee Pix

Our alert neighbor, John Becker, took these great pictures of our new arrivals.
Thanks John
click here

5500 year old honeybees!!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010 it was Bunny's and my pleasure to host the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association's (MABA) June speaker, Dr. Omed Afik from Israel. Dr. Afik (pronounced ah-FEEK) is an entomologist who has been working in the lab of Dr Keith Delaplane at the Univ of Georgia for the past two years and will return to Israel in the fall (2010). He spoke on "Beekeeping in the Land of Milk and Honey". Dr. Afik presented lots of technical information about Israeli beekeeping which distinguishes it from North American beekeeping. We also saw an interesting photo of an Israeli archaeological dig in which 5500 year old honeybee hives were discovered. Yes, honeybees have been kept by humans since 3500 BC. A quick wikipaedia search reveals that honeybees have been discovered in the fossil record as far in the past as 34 MILLION years ago!! By contrast, homo erectus has only been around for less than 2 million years.

Our honeybees arrive!!

It’s been a while since the last post and a lot has happened. Our 2 nucs arrived Sunday, May 2, 2010. A “nuc” is short for “nucleus” as in “the nucleus of a new hive”. A nuc contains about 10,000-20,000 bees I’m guessing, thus representing a really good start to a hive which hopefully will contain 50,000+ honeybees when fully populated. We had to drive 30 miles each way to pick up our two nucs. Bringing tens of thousands of bees home in our Honda was a little scary at first, but things went smoothly. Not a single stray bee appeared in the car as we drove home. It rained like crazy that night so we couldn’t transfer our bees from their little bee hotels (the nuc boxes) to their new permanent hive home for 2 days. On Tuesday afternoon we donned our gear (veil and gloves) and opened the nuc boxes, revealing the little honeybees in all their proliferative splendor, hard at work tending the hive. Most of the frames in our nucs were abundantly filled with brood (bee larvae which will hatch into bees) and supporting honey and bee pollen. There are, I think, about 5 frames in each of our two nucs and we transferred them one by one to the hive boxes Bunny and I had spent so much time and attention building and preparing for this day. We constructed each hive box and each frame from a kit of precut wood. We nailed, glued, stapled, tacked, primed, painted and urethaned 8 or so hive boxes of various sizes, spending maybe 100 man hours. That investment of time and money (maybe $700 so far) made this day all the more meaningful. Our friends Sandra and John were on hand Tuesday to support us and to photograph our activities. We had to inspect each frame one by one. One of the things we're looking for on each frame is the single queen each hive has. We're not too good at finding her yet, she looks ALMOST exactly the same as the other 10,000 bees!!!! After less than an hour we were done. We never did find those two queens but we are going on faith that each hive has its queen intact. (In Bunny's and my world of beekeeping, faith now plays an important role ;-) The bees are now in their new hive homes. Bunny and I are providing the 2 new colonys all the support they need to create lots and lots of new bees. Now we wait and see how they adapt to their new surroundings. In a week or two, we'll take a peek inside our 2 hives to see how our bees are progressing on their colony-building mission. If you're wondering, we experienced not a single sting. Our bees are so happy and docile Bunny didn't even wear gloves on Tuesday as we handled them !

The great equipment purchase of 2010...

Bunny and I recently purchased our initial beekeeping supplies. This is divided into several subcategories. There is the "woodenware" (the boxes and internal frameware which comprises the physical hive), protective gear (which most experienced beekeepers seem to employ sparingly but which I intend to LOAD UP on), various specialized tools and devices used in beekeeping and finally, of course the bees themselves. We intended to order from one of many an internet bee supply companies but found the options and terminology a little confusing. A fellow beekeeper we met at the MABA (Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association) beekeeping course in January recommended a local supplier, PN Williams, who turned out to be a great source of knowledge and advice. Plus we are supporting a local beekeeper. We are now constructing and painting our hive boxes and interior hive frames. We chose to assemble and paint ourselves to save some substantial money. We ordered bees from a local supplier and expect them around late April.

Honey is sweet but...

If you are raising bees for the honey, don't bother. This is what we were told by local master beekeepers and it makes a lot of sense. Bunny and I hope to be a small part of helping replenish these tiny, amazing creatures whose population is declining in the USA. Even though our contribution will be small, it is gratifying to be a part of the larger efforts being made by beekeepers of all skill levels, researchers and scientists all over the USA. After all, just like a bee colony, individuals only achieve an advanced living standard through productive cooperation. Social organization is one of the hallmarks of an advanced culture. Every time I look outside at my honeybee hives I will be reminded of the astounding social organization contained therein. Once you understand the social aspects of honeybees, you can not help but admire the perfection nature has created.

Our course of change...

Saturday (2010-01-23) Bunny and I participated in an all day beekeeping course given by Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association (MABA) here in Atlanta. There were well over 100 people in the class. And everyone was energized about learning about honeybees. My sense is that most were neophytes like ourselves. The speakers/presenters were drawn mostly from academia but also included local master beekeepers. Copious amounts of information were presented on diverse subjects such as bee anatomy and biology, beekeeping equipment, the yearly cycle of bee behavior, hive management and pest control, bee-attracting botanicals, honey production and more. But there was something else we noticed about the presenters. It was clear each one greatly enjoyed being connected to honeybees. Keeping honeybees is not about "robbing" honey from them (the term used in the class), but something deeper and richer. I don't know what it is exactly, but there appears to be something wonderful about interacting with honeybees and Bunny and I hope to find it for ourselves.

Yikes...honeybees are disappearing !!!

Sometime around 2007, Bunny and I heard from our friend Sandra Hughes at The Bee Project (see Bee Links) that honeybees were disappearing. This provided us with the impetus to learn a little more about a phenomenon called "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD). We read a little and realized that the consequences of loosing our honeybees would be dire! We thought somebody should do something about this and promptly decided to leave this problem in someone elses capable hands. A year or two later, with the honeybee population still in trouble, we attended a meeting of the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association (MABA) and heard a distinguished University of Georgia (UGA) entomologist, Dr. Kieth Delaplane speak on CCD. We learned that CCD has been observed in North America, Russia and Europe. Although bee populations worldwide are actually increasing (good news for the rest of the world) the cause of CCD is still a mystery. That evening Bunny and I took the opportunity to talk to some local Atlanta beekeepers and we were "stung" (ok, not much buzz there - ooooh, I "hive" to stop - ahhhhh...) by their love of bees and the art of beekeeping. Everyone we spoke to encouraged us to consider becoming beekeepers. After some subsequent discussion and realizing the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association (MABA) would be a great resource for us, we decided to become urban beekeepers ourselves.

A Neophytes Bee Keeping Blog

We are Tom and Bunny, neophyte urban beekeepers. This blog describes our journey.