Honey and Mite Check Challenge

The University of Minnesota has a Bee Squad, and yes, it is as cool as it sounds. They are building an entire building devoted to pollinators, specifically, bees. As part of their ongoing efforts to keep bees safe and healthy, they put forth a Mite Check Challenge for two weeks in October. The goal is to get as many beekeepers as possible to do mite checks on their hives, and report back so they can compile all the information.

Well, since we are "newbees", and we are going to try and overwinter the hive, I thought it might be a good idea to do a mite count. From what I have learned, there are a few key ingredients to overwintering a hive besides a little insulation an prep work on the hive itself. To increase the chances of success for overwintering, a colony should be relatively strong and healthy, that is, have sufficient numbers to overwinter. They should have as low a mite count as possible. And they should have sufficient honey stored up in the brood boxes to eat over the winter.

We also learned that we were supposed to take off the second honey super as well, lest the winter cluster move up into it and damage or kill the queen. So today was also a day to collect the last honey out of the super.

I started out by taking the top cover off of the hive, and finding the inner cover littered with bees!

Inner cover after about ten minutes sitting beside the hive.

This is always a good sign, as it speaks to healthy population.
I removed the frames from the remaining super, brushed the bees off of them near the lower hive opening, and put them in a Rubbermaid tub to bring inside.

Then I took off the super box to look into the hive itself.

iPhone likes to focus on things other than what I want it to...grr...

I was greeted by a large number of bees on the top of the frames. Again, a good sign! I checked a few frames on the top box. LOTS of honey stored in there, it was nice and heavy.

Then I set that box over on the table I had set up, and dug into the middle box. Lots of honey stored in there as well. Then it was time to do my first mite check.

Now, apparently, Varroa mites don't like to cling to bees when the bees are covered in powdered sugar. So awhile back, the U of Nebraska invented a method of checking for mites that went like this...

Get a half cup of bees.

This is much harder than this short sentence makes it out to be. I pulled a frame out of the middle of the box, checked to see if I could see the queen on there, then shook those bees into a shoebox. (I saw all of this on youtube videos, and they made it look a lot easier than it actually is, too.

Then, you are supposedly able to pour those bees into a half cup measure and then into a jar with a mesh top. I'm not sure how it worked so well in the videos, but when I tried to "simply" pour the bees into the measuring cup, the great majority of them took flight and headed back to the hive, or around my head. That first try netted me about a dozen bees. Not enough to do a mite count, since a half cup of bees is 300-400 bees.

So, I gave it another shot with another frame, this one covered top to bottom with bees. I shook the bees into the box and poured a clump of them into the measuring cup, and quickly from there into the jar. By this time, there were roughly five THOUSAND bees buzzing around, wondering what the heck was going on. My heart was racing. Even though I was in my bee suit, this was more bees flying around than usual.

I dumped the powdered sugar in and gently covered all of the bees.

They didn't sound happy, but I figured the sugar was a pretty good peace offering. I also made a mess of the table. But the bees will clean that up, I suspect.

After a few minutes, I shook the jar like a salt shaker (maybe a bit more gently) and shook the mite infested sugar onto a tray. After it was all out, I added some water, and just like in the videos, the mites appeared.

stupid autofocus

Unlike the videos, there were surprisingly few mites in the water. In the videos, they were counting into the tens and twenties. I got five. (The smallest little dots.) There was a bigger black speck of dirt, and a pollen glob (upper left) but that was it! I sent a message to the Bee Squad letting them know my findings, and they responded that our mite count of 1-2 per 100 bees was pretty good! So, they've got a good population of healthy looking bees, lots of honey stored up in the brood boxes. Fingers crossed that they will overwinter well!

Meanwhile, I took the tub of frames inside and started scraping the full frames into the bucket. We don't have a fancy extractor, so we use the old scrape it off and let gravity do its thing method. There was not as many full frames this time, as the bees have been moving honey down into the brood boxes for the winter. But we'll probably get another gallon or so.

 Honeycomb on the frame

 Scraped frames.

 half scraped

 scraped into the bucket, well... into the mesh bag in the bucket

 Hung over the bucket to drain overnight

After just a few minutes. We'll see how tomorrow goes!

Not Just Honey

Our gravity draining system seemed to work exceedingly well!

We ended up with 2 and a half gallons of honey.

That's 31.6 lbs. of golden sweetness

Then we took the wax/honey mash leftover stuff and put it in an 8x11 glass pan and cooked it at 170F for a LONG time. But what we ended up with was about a pint and a half of now pasteurized honey, and a nice cake of beeswax.

Which I had to break up to get out of the pan

One of my sister in laws is going to take some and make some lip balm and stuff out of it. So I shredded her a pack.

Tastes nothing like mozzarella

Yet another little gem from the hive - we got a little bag of a substance called propolis after we processed the wax/honey mash.

Tastes nothing like beeswax

Propolis is made by bees when they collect sap from conifers and birch trees, mix it with some wax from their wax secreting glands, a little pollen, and- of course- a touch of honey. They use it like glue, to seal holes, connect things in the hive, even create tunnels and pathways. Propolis apparently has anti-EVERYTHING properties. Antibiotic, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory. It can be made into a mouthwash that can help toothaches and inflamed gums. It can be swallowed in a pill form to help with sore joints, GI problems, allergies, and other stuff. So, we're going to process it by freezing it and grinding it into powder, then mixing with various liquids (water is ok, but there are apparently not many water soluble parts to it) Some people soak it in vodka and use it as a tincture. Whatever we end up doing with it, it should be interesting!

I also whipped up a little honey butter... because...

HONEY BUTTER!

Who knew that bees produced so many good things just doing what they do!

Honey Harvest

It was a day of new experiences for our little clan today. Our first big honey harvest... well, big for us, anyway.

We had previously pulled a lone frame from one of the supers, just to get a little honey.  But since the stars finally aligned for us, we decided to go up on the hill and harvest what we could. There were so many unknown variables that we had a very general plan. But I think things worked out pretty well.

First off, some history. We haven't opened the hive since late July. Most beekeepers would frown upon this, as when you read up on beekeeping, it seems imperative to get in there every week or so and see how the bees are doing. That's how I did it from when I added the bees until early July, when I realized that I had most likely killed my Queen by my frequent intrusions into their world.

In discussing it with my lovely, wise wife, she reminded me that bees have been doing their thing in the wild for millions of years without being checked on by their human overlords every week. She suggested that after we re-queened with a local queen, that perhaps we should keep our hands out of it and just let them be bees. I, being the control freak that I can be with hobbies, hesitantly agreed, keeping to myself my belief that the colony would fail within days.

Of course, she was right, and our bees just kept on keeping on for the rest of the summer. I did peek in on them in mid-July to see how things were going, and was so amazed by their progress that the only thing I needed to do was to put on another super for them to fill with honey. (supers are the shorter boxes that sit on top of the hive. A queen excluder is placed between the hive boxes and the supers to keep the queen from laying eggs in the supers)

Most of our local beekeepers harvested their honey at the end of August/ beginning of September, but for a multitude of reasons, we just weren't able to get it done then. Colder weather set in, and we had resigned ourselves to just leaving the hive alone for the year.

But - this weekend we had a warm snap, temperatures up to 80 degrees! So we decided to try and get a little honey! Other things we suddenly had to think about were whether or not to try and overwinter the colony. We couldn't make that decision without knowing how the colony was doing though.

So we decided to go with the flow a bit. We have two deep hive boxes and a super-turned-hive box at the bottom of the hive. Then the queen excluder, then two 10 frame supers on top of that. If the hive was healthy, we would expect to see a large number of bees all over the place when we opened the top super. As we removed boxes, we would be able to tell how the colony was based on the number of bees in each level.

Another factor of hive health is the nemesis of the beekeeper - the Varroa Mite. Those little buggers will destroy a hive. Signs of infestation include bees with little red mites riding on them, and bees with malformed wings from baby mites growing alongside the larval bees. Hive populations plummet when infested.

I had been a little concerned about Varroa, because we didn't do any treatments on our hive to combat the mites. Our local keepers use various chemicals to fight the mite, and will gladly tell you that they treat their hives without even checking to see what mite levels are because everyone just assumes that a hive will be infested. Since we used nothing, and as the weather cooled down I saw fewer and fewer bees around the hive, I was a little worried.

We decided that if the colony was failing, we'd just take all the honey from both supers. A dying colony doesn't need the stores of honey for overwintering after all. But if the bees seemed to be doing well, we'd take the honey from one super, and leave the rest for the colony for their winter stores.

So the kids and I got the smoker going, geared up in our bee suits, grabbed some tools and headed up on the hill.

I was so very pleasantly surprised to see many, many bees buzzing around the supers as we opened the first one up.

Lotsa bees = Lotsa Honey = Happy Beekeepers!

 

We had our system all ready to go. I pulled a frame, handed it to the Boyo, who held it while I brushed the bees off. Then he walked it away from the hive a bit where Sweet Pea was waiting by a big Rubbermaid tub. She opened the lid, the frame went in, and she closed it up again. It didn't take long to pull ten frames. We took some from each super, as some of the frames were in the midst of being refilled by the bees. I was able to get a good look, and a good listen, into the hive boxes and realized that the bees both looked and sounded great! the hive frames were covered, and the buzz from inside the hive was really, really loud! We had the numbers, which was a good sign. But how were they with Varroa?

Well, I snapped a few pictures to check them up close later, and guess what I found... or didn't find...

 

Look at all of that capped honey! Look how pretty these girls look! Look at all of those bees under the excluder! Healthy, Happy Hive!

Look at their little backs. No red dots hanging on there! And look at those wings! Beautiful and well developed! So - I'm not sure if we have a Varroa free hive, but we certainly have healthy and happy bees!

We took our tub of frames into the house and got ready for processing. We don't have a spinning extractor, so we are going to use the scrape and press method. This means simply scraping everything on the frames right into the mesh bag and then suspending it above the five gallon bucket and letting the sweet, sweet liquid gold drizzle down.

 

Gravity. Much honey. Lotsa wax.

 



We'll leave that to drain overnight, then give it a good squeeze to get every last drop we can in the morning. So far, it's looking like we've got about two to two and a half gallons in the bucket!

We'll put the wax/honey leftovers in a pot and heat it up. Then dump it into a pan. As it cools, the wax will separate from the honey (hopefully) and we'll be left with some pasteurized honey and a block of beeswax!

That will be for another post though. For today though, we had a fun, educational, and sweet time working with our bees!    

The Birds and the Bees

Well. For Father's Day this year I had to have that all important talk about the birds and the bees with my kiddos.

Of course, in our house, nothing is normal - so we have been talking about birds and bees quite literally in the past few days.

Our latest bee hive checkup showed that our beloved Queen Beatrice had abdicated the throne. The Boyo now suits up with me to check on the Girls on the Hill, and as we looked through our hive, we noticed plenty of capped brood, but no babies in larval stage. Which means the Queen isn't laying eggs, which means she's either dead or out of the hive.

We did see some bees emerging from their comb, which was really cool to see for the first time ever in real life!

But no Queen and no babies. I went ahead and scraped off the burr comb - that is, comb that the bees have made off of the frames that are there for them to build on. As I scraped off one particularly thick patch that was connecting the upper brood box to the lower brood box, I scraped straight through a bunch of capped larvae, and noticed a thick, Elmer's glue looking goo. In reflecting on that later, I came to the realization that I had scraped right through the next queen. The glue goo was royal jelly surrounding her, and she was probably less than a week from emerging.We thought for sure that this spelled the end of beekeeping this year, as a queen-less hive is pretty much dead.

Fortunately, one of our local beekeeper contacts had a spare "nuc", which is basically a mini-colony that includes a laying queen, and bees from eggs to adults. We added this on Friday and I am already anxious for next weeks hive check to see how things are going! Fingers and toes are crossed.

Now, for the birds...

On Thursday we were picking up paint to paint one of our rooms. Little Sweet Pea is growing fast and we are moving her into the larger "office" room, and converting her smaller bedroom into our family command center.

I went for a quick walk through the garden to check the plants and make sure all was well. (It was) The Boyo was following me when he suddenly stopped and pointed at the ground. "Toad! I mean.. Chick! Chick!"
I turned around, a bit confused, and saw what he was pointing at. It was a baby bird. It looked as if it had been out of the shell for maybe a day. Two at the most. It had split skin on it's head and was looking quite dead.
"Yeah, buddy. I think that is dead." I told him.

Of course the bird chose that moment to weakly lift it's head and flop back into the dirt.

"Dad! We have to save him!"

Now, I've rescued a LOT of birds in my years. I know for a fact that birds this young will die pretty quick without their families. So I suggested we just return it to the nest it came from. We do have several birdhouses in the yard after all, and it was likely that it was from one of those.

So I checked the locals. One was empty. One had eggs. The last one had babies decidedly older than this little fleshy thing. I looked around for wild bird nests. I looked for circling predators wondering if it had been carried here by a crow or a jay or something. I found no certain signs for a place to return it to.

I took it into the shop and sat with it for a bit.

It was so small. So new. I know from experience that it is a long shot that it will survive even if we take it in. The wound on it's head is threatening it's left eye, and if that doesn't heal, the bird would not be releasable into the wild anyway. I considered quickly snapping it's neck to spare it from suffering.

"Dad! We have to save him!"

Oh crap. The guilt I would have... The guilt I would be subjected to from my children if I didn't try...

"OK little bird." I told it. "I'll give it a shot. But you'd better do your thing one way or another pretty fast. If you are going to die, do it tonight. Otherwise you better fight to live."

So I built a makeshift incubator to keep it warm and decided that if it survived the night, we'd look into feeding it.

The children were at once fascinated, and appalled by the featherless, bulging mass of skin and limbs. They both wanted to sleep in the room with it, but we convinced them that it needed quiet and rest. I explained to them flat out that the chances of this bird surviving the night were slim to none, and that they should be ready for it to be dead when we awoke. They tearily said they understood and headed to bed.  After they went to sleep, I pulled out all my old wildlife rehab books and read up on rearing hatchlings. I got a quick picture of it, said a prayer, and went to bed.

To my happy surprise, the little thing was still breathing when I checked on it early Friday morning. It was hungry, so the kids and I headed out to collect feeding supplies. We got some mealworms from a pet shop, and started soaking some dog food.

Now, my kids are about as big on bugs as I am (really - only like dragonflies, don't wanna touch any others) but they pitched right in chopping up mealworms to feed their new ward.

After trying a syringe to feed it, we settled on tweezers. It is too small for a little syringe, as the food would have to be very liquid to fit through the hole in it.  Tweezers allowed us to feed it the moistened dog food, which was all the fluid it needs, and lots of good proteins and nutrients as well.

After spending Friday feeding every 20 minutes until sundown, we once again said a little prayer that it would survive the night, and went to bed.

Saturday morning came early, and once again the little bird had survived the night.
Another day of feeding every 20-30 minutes commenced. I was able to teach both of the kiddos proper feeding techniques for newly hatched birds. The Boyo can do it on his own now, and my little Sweet Pea is rapidly improving! We got into a good routine where the Boyo would chop mealworms, I would feed it the worm bits and mushy dog food, and the Sweet Pea changed the Kleenex in the "nest" to keep things tidy.

During the day, I changed my prognosis of the bird from poor to guarded. I could see how much the kids had already fallen in love with the little thing, and I didn't want to get my hopes up too much. The Wife and the kiddos decided a name would probably be in order, and after tossing around many, many ideas, we finally decided to call it Flap.

We went to bed exhausted again from the care of little Flap, and I said another prayer that it would live.

This morning, Flap was still going strong. It has developed quite a bit in the past few days. Itty bitty feathers are starting to erupt from it's wings, and a little bump on it's butt is starting to develop into a tail, complete with little pin feathers of it's own.

I was initially thinking that we would have to take it up to the Wildlife Rehab center, as it is illegal under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to have wild birds. But I'm pretty sure this is a baby House Sparrow, which - although extremely common - is actually a non-native bird in our country, and like the Starling, is not protected under that law. If I had had no training in wildlife rehab, I would have already delivered it.  But since I was trained, and I know what I'm doing, I think we are going to try and raise little Flap. If it's eye doesn't heal, it may not be releasable. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

For now, we'll keep feeding it every 20 minutes or so, and see how things progress in the next few days and weeks.

Ah, the birds and the bees...Shaffer style.

Do Bee Do Bee Do

Just completed the second hive check on our little swarm on the hill. The good news is, I think everything is going well! The bad news is, I am still new enough that I doubt I'd be able to see a problem before it got really big.

The good news there is that we have a thriving beekeeper community around here, and there are many people to go to with questions and concerns. One of the local honey makers - The Bee Shed - is having a workshop this Sunday on what to look for during a hive inspection, so that will be very helpful!

Today, since I've got bees on the brain, I thought I'd give a short primer on bees, just so people can get to know these fascinating little wonder creatures.

First off, nearly everyone knows that bees are major pollinators. That is, they help farmers grow the crops that feed us. Two-thirds of our fruits and vegetables are pollinated by bees, so they are pretty important to us humans.

Second, honeybees that help us are having some major problems these days thanks to chemicals used on crops to try and keep pests away. Neonicotinoids in particular are having a devastating effect on bee populations.

But let's delve a little into the life cycle of bees, just for fun. Because I'm betting there are lots of things that may surprise you about honey bees. I know I have learned a ton about these girls since adopting a family of them. And the more I learn, the more and more I respect and admire the honey bee!

For instance, the average worker bee is always female, and only lives around six weeks during the busy warm season. It takes 21 days for an egg to grow into a newly hatched worker bee, and then the new bee spends the next three weeks in the hive doing various jobs like nursing the growing brood, cleaning and maintaining comb, taking dead bees out of the hive, fanning the nectar to make honey, taking care of the queen, even a stint as a guard bee.

The last three weeks of life for a warm weather bee is spent flying free, looking for nectar and picking up pollen, and bringing it back to the hive, where it passes the goodies off to younger bees to store. bees at this stage will quite literally work themselves to death. Single minded in their mission to provide for the future of the colony.

When the weather gets cold, the bees stop flying and form a clump around the queen to keep her warm. Queens like it hot - around 90 degrees fahrenheit, so the winter bees have to shiver a lot to produce heat. The winter workers can live for a few months, so that helps get them through the cold season. It also takes a LOT of stored honey for the winter bees to eat to keep up the energy expended in heating the queen. We are aiming for at least 100 pounds of honey for our hive before winter hits. More if they will make it. We may not even harvest any honey this first year, just to help our new colony along as much as possible.

So, in a nutshell, the "Summer Bees" spend their lives making honey for the "Winter Bees" to get through the cold. And the Winter Bees survive the cold so that the Summer Bees can pollinate and make honey! Pretty cool, huh.

We have had our hive for about a month now, so in another few weeks, all of the bees in it except the queen will have been born in our back yard.

As for the Queen, she can live for 3 or 4 years, and after her mating flight (where she mates with many male - or drone - bees) she spends the rest of her life fertile and laying up to a couple thousand eggs EVERY DAY. That's a high turnover rate once the cycle is in full swing. Our hive, if it stays happy and healthy, should have around 50 - 75,000 bees buzzing around, doing their thing. The numbers will drop in the winter as they ball up to keep the queen warm.

During both of my hive inspections thus far I have seen baby bees in every stage of development, from tiny egg, to plump larva it goes through what are called instars. basically stages of development where you can kind of tell how old it is based on size ...

This picture has everything from egg (little tiny dots) to little larvae and medium sized larvae, right up to full grown larvae (maggot looking things) and even some capped brood - when the baby is called a pupa and does her final developing before emergence.

Now, for the record, I was a bit terrified of doing the first hive check. After all, 15,000 little bees means 15,000 little stingers, and I have a healthy aversion to pain. But spending the time around them that I have, I have found our bees to be remarkably gentle in their behavior towards me. They seem content to go about their business as I pull frames and look them over, and don't seem to mind being moved around as long as I am gentle. I will admit that it has sometimes taken every bit of effort and control not to swing wildly at the ones flying too near me and run off screaming... but I am getting better with each encounter. I am certain I will be stung at some point, but so far - not once!

Next time I go inspect, I'll take more pictures and get a little more in depth into their behaviors and other interesting things about them.

More Later

BEE - utiful!

Yesterday, the Boyo and I drove up to Hackensack, Minnesota to pick up our package of bees. It was a four hour drive to get there, filled with great conversation and lots of anticipation. We arrived at the Mann Lake LTD store/factory at 1:00 and were greeted by a swarm of people.

Employees made up about half of the crowd, and people picking up their bees the other half. We were given a receipt and sent to a different part of the property to pick up our package.

There were tables stacked with packages of bees, but surprisingly absent was the loud buzzing I was expecting to hear. Mostly it was the rustle of wings that sounded like softly crinkling cellophane. We were given our package and got on the road. The whole thing took about twenty minutes.

This is our package at home, ready to head up to their hive on the hill. I was quite shocked to learn from the nice people at Mann Lake that our single package contained anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 bees! Never have I had so many pets, although to be fair I will probably not cuddle them too much.

When we got them home we gave them a spray of sugar water (in the blue topped bottle there in the photo) and got our bee suits on to get them into their hive.

Now. In the grand scheme of things, I don't fear bees. At least not in the ones or twos I usually see them in. And I know full well that they probably, more than likely, almost certainly will not sting me while they are out and about foraging for pollen and nectar and such. But I have never been in the presence of 15,000 of them all huddle together before, and as the Wife and I were on the hill getting ready to introduce them to the hive, my heart was thumping madly!

We uncapped the swarm and pulled out the little queen box. Inside was our Queen, Her Royal Majesty Queen Beatrice Blue. She has a blue dot on her back, making her much more recognizable to new-bees like me. She went into my pocket to keep her warm. Then came the rest of the girls.

My heart was flip flopping as my lovely wife gently poured the mass of buzzing into the hive box. I was skeptical at first when I heard that there were upwards of 15K of these little things in that box, but they poured out like clowns from a car. A seemingly never-ending stream of bustling, buzzing nightmare fuel. Yeah... I had some nerves hitting me at that moment. Even though we had sprayed them down with sugar water to both give them a snack and wet their wings (wet bees don't fly), a small cloud still rose from the box surrounding us as we worked. I believed there were fifteen thousand at that moment, because the bottom of the hive box was awash in little bees, and thousands seemed to be buzzing around us.

My amazing Wife was remarkably calm through the whole thing. She has no fear whatsoever of them. I was truly impressed. So we efficiently closed up the hive and I tried to think what else we needed to do before we left them alone.

Then it struck me... Queen Beatrice was still in her box in my pocket. So we opened the hive again and I carefully hung the queen cage from one of the frames. I had replaced the cork in the end with a marshmallow, giving the workers something to eat while they freed their monarch. We closed it up again and walked away, leaving a great many (to my mind) buzzing around outside.

We put a little grass plug in the "entry reducer" as instructed, to give the queen time to feel at home without leaving. I felt a little nervous about the bees left outside for the night, but when I checked on them this morning they were still bunched up where they are in the picture and seemed pretty happy.

Today it was time to remove the grass plug, check to see if the Queen was free of her cage, and check on their sugar water and pollen patty. I went out by myself this time and as soon as I opened the hive my heart went into overdrive.

Bees. Everywhere. The cloud around me made last nights group look pitiful and weak. The bees seemed to be buzzing quite loudly, and I was certain that they were signaling each other to attack.

As I removed the pollen patty (plenty left, by the way) I watched in dismay as the queen cage sank slowly into the mass of bees between two frames.

I was barehanded, as I had been the evening before, because I can't seem to grasp things well with the gloves on. But I did have the smoker fired up. So I squeezed a few puffs of smoke into the hive, as I've seen others do on TV and YouTube videos I had watched. The bees buzzed louder, but didn't seem to do much of anything else.

I took a deep breath and figured if they were going to sting me anyway, I might as well get the work done. So I carefully removed two frames, checking each one for Beatrice, and set them aside. Then I looked down into the small space and spotted the queen box lying on the bottom of the hive. Between it and me was 9 and 5/8 inches of bee covered frame, just wide enough to stick my hand down into and grab the box. My bare, bare hand. Which looked unnaturally pale and pasty. Which shook ever so slightly with a mixture of adrenaline and fear.

I held my hand over the gap and peered in again. The bees were making chains with their bodies across the gap. Other bees crawled busily across these bee bridges from one side to the next. The gap would be filled with bee bridges in minutes, I thought to myself. So I took a deep breath and held it, prepared for the stinging of my poor hand, and gently pushed my fingers into the breech.

I don't know how many people have felt the sensation of bees on the front and back of their hands. Covering every centimeter. Wiggling and jiggling. Little feet and wings setting off every nerve ending in my outstretched appendage. But let me tell you, it was all I could do not to run screaming. But I did it. I got that little queen box trapped between my two middle fingers and slid it gently out of the hive.

It was empty! Queen Beatrice was loose in the hive somewhere! I peeked in again and by sheer luck of the bee-ginner, I spotted our little queen bustling about on the frame, surrounded by her court who were following her every move. She looked content. The bees around her looked content. I was feeling relieved to have seen her.

I rebuilt the hive and closed it up. Then I went a few feet away, to the stairs leading from the hill, when something amazing happened. (Amazing to me, at least)

Not a single bee followed me, and I had not been stung or attacked the entire time I was on the hill. I pulled off my hood and sat down on the stairs to watch the bees.

The hive was covered. Bees everywhere. There were bees flying in great circles above the hive. Bees crawling at every angle on the hive. Some even buzzed around me. But none attacked.

I have read a LOT on bees since this project started becoming a reality. I read time and time again about how gentle honey bees were, and watched videos of people working bees in short sleeved shirts and hoods. Now I am finding out for myself that the bees are pretty gentle. It is one thing to read about it, another thing entirely to experience it. I am in awe of those little machines. My respect for them, I imagine, will only grow as time goes on and I gain more experience with them.

For now, my job as a beekeeper is to wait a week and let them settle in, then check to see that they are making comb and that Beatrice is laying eggs. The first of many thousands, we hope, that will lead to a strong, healthy colony.

Welcome to our yard little bees! We are glad to have you share the land with us! PS, the garden will be going in soon, so if y'all want to hang around there and pollinate all the veggies, I'd be completely OK with that!

Bees Knees

So,

It seems to be the Shaffer Way to get into new things and projects and such. This time, in an uncharacteristic twist, I was not fully responsible for heading in another new direction!

The Wife has had an interest in beekeeping since high school. So imagine my surprise when during a conversation at a Fleet Farm last summer while we were looking at beekeeping supplies on a shelf, she asked me what I thought about maybe starting a hive.

Now, to be fair, I had mentioned my interest in bees a few times, although it was more putting out feelers rather than seriously considering the idea. After all, when it comes to having ideas that turn the household upside down for a bit, I am the champ. Tearing up half the front yard for a garden, check. Starting my own business, check. Paddling the Mississippi River, RC airplanes, birdhouses...check, check and check.

Yet here was my beautiful wife, finally joining me in the "crazy" idea department!

Start a beehive!?! Even before the shock had dissipated, I agreed whole heartedly. We bought a book on beekeeping for newbies, and the research began in earnest.

We started with the basics. Learning what the parts were called, hive bodies, supers, frames, etc. Then there was learning about the bees. Did you know that there are different races of European honey bees? Italian, Carniolan, Russian, Caucasian... All with different attributes and different behaviors. Which ones will do best in Minnesota? Which are gentle? Which are good producers of the sweet stuff?  So many questions and so much research!

As summer turned to winter and winter to spring, we had decisions to make. Believe it or not, just deciding which hive to start out with can be a challenge. Which company to order from? Assembled or unassembled? Beginner kit or order separate stuff? After all, every beginner kit is different from company to company, and some companies even have multiple beginner kits to choose from! All of them had their pros and cons.

Finally, after being befuddled and overwhelmed by so many choices for so long, we rolled the dice and paid our money. Best price for the most necessaries, etc. etc. And within a few short days, the first part of our equipment arrived on our doorstep.

Our first hive!

We also are now the proud owners of a bee jacket with a mesh hood and some special gloves to keep the little bees from getting to us as we tend to their home. We are still waiting on some other essential gear. A smoker, a queen extruder, another protective suit some tools. Hopefully those will be here soon as well.

We won't be using all of this at once, of course. Once the bees arrive we'll be using the bottom taller boxes, called hive bodies. This is where the our Carnolian Queen will hopefully be laying many eggs and raising new little bees for the future. Then, as our little colony grows, we will add the top, shallower boxes, called honey supers, where the worker bees will pack away that sweet, golden honey for the future.

This first season we will more than likely let the bees keep the great majority of their labors, just to ensure they can winter over well. If they do well and are strong next spring, we will start harvesting the liquid gold! That seems like a long way down the road, but time will probably pass quickly.

So - a new adventure starting at our house! Though I am not looking forward to the inevitable stings we will have to endure, I am looking forward to home grown honey!

We will be bringing a package of bees home on May 2nd and introducing them to their new home. Three pounds of honeybees and their new little queen. (Three pounds is several thousand bees, so that should be exciting!)  I'll post again when they arrive, I'm sure.