Swarming Wall Street
There are thousands of beehives on the rooftops of Manhattan. I’d hoped to visit some when I was there last month, but ran out of time. Looks like some of those hives are pretty crowded. This is a good sized swarm.
Archive | Bees
Queenbees arrive!
In the last five years or so, it’s been one thing after another in our bee yard. We’ve experienced everything from Africanized honeybees, pesticides, Varroa infestation, treatment resistant nosema, and Colony Collapse disorder.
Last fall, we made the choice to enter winter without the use of antibiotics, nerve toxin, and the rest of the chemicals usually used to treat honeybee hives. We took a risk, and lost four hives.
And one large, glorious hive survived.
This spring, I split off a few frames from this hive in order to start an new hive. Over the next few months, I took one or two more frames.
Yesterday, we received two new survivor honeybee queens from ZiaQueenbee. I made an additional split from our survivor hive, so that I could put both queens in.
Here’s the queens in their box.
Here they are in the hive.
Please wish them well. With any luck, we can help the bees find a way out of this crisis.
Thursday Thirteen : Odd, and interesting facts about honeybees
In honor of earth and arbor day, I decided to share some odd bee facts on Twitter. My friends on Plurk asked if I would share them on Plurk.
How could I not share them with you?!? I tried to pick facts that I haven’t shared before. I’ve expanded the facts for the blog.
Thursday Thirteen : Odd, and interesting facts about honeybees
1. In the US, native tribes called honeybees ‘the white man’s fly’ as bees would arrive 5-10 miles ahead of a wagon train.
Beehives were considered as essential as water or food. Not only did they predict the weather (bees won’t fly if it’s due to rain), the honey and propilis provide effect antibacterial properties. Pollen collected by bees is an excellent protein source and honey is a sticky sweet carbohydrate. Wagon train folks weren’t stupid!
2. A honeybee must visit at least 2 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey (the standard unit for honey).
Honey is generated from nectar taken from flowers. The worker honeybee ingests the nectar. Once at the hive entrance, the bee passes the nectar to another bee. This bee then passes the nectar at least one more time. It’s the enzymes in a bees stomach that turn nectar into honey.
3. In the last 100 years, there have been 4 recorded bee plagues: 1916, 1960s, 1970s, and now.
In 1916, 90% of Europe’s honeybees were destroyed by a traceal mite. (The mite wasn’t discovered in the US until 1984. It exists now only in moist regions.) European bees were saved by a noble Capuchin monk called Brother Adam at Buckfast Abby. He traveled over 100,000 miles collecting the survivor hives then breed them until he created the Buckfast bee. (He’s a hero of mine.) The 1970s saw the rise of the varroa mite. This is a particularly nasty mite that destroys hives over winter. Further, an infected hive becomes sensitive to viruses and disease.
4. The first thing a hive does every morning is flying back and forth in the direction of the sun. This is called a beeline.
Imagine, if you will. You wake up in the morning, cup of coffee in hand, and wander out to the bee yard. What you will see is seemingly frantic bees fly up toward the sun and back to the hive. Over and over again they fly. Once they have it, off they go. Because bees navigate using the sun, they must know where their hive is in relation to the sun.
5. Beekeeping was well established in Egypt by 2400 BC as depicted on 5th dynasty temple reliefs.
The Egyptians used honey in embalming bodies because they believed that bees were the ‘zootype of the Soul.’ Thus bees were the messengers of the dead and speaking with them akin to speaking with the spirits of the dead. This the English tradition of telling a hive when someone has died in the house stems. (Ancient Egyptians – the Light of the World by Gerald Massey) Recently, a 3000 year old man made Honeybee hive was discovered in northern Israel at an archaeological dig in the huge earthen mound called Tel Rehov.
6. Honeybees recognize individual’s faces.
For a beekeeper, this can be an awesome thing or a horrible thing. I’ve pissed off a few bees who definitely recognized me later. That said, my bees tend to be calm, happy and hardworking. They let me sit right by their entrance and never investigate. I’ve taken hives to other locations where other people attended them. Those bees became anxious and hostile, like the people who attended them. Once home? They calmed right down. Go figure.
7. The oldest honeybee specimen is over 100 million years old. 
For reference, human beings are believed to have evolved 3 million years ago. Crocodiles evolved 80 million years ago. Honeybees are believed to have evolved form carnivorous wasps.
8. Through pollination, honeybees are responsible for the creation of every flowering plant on earth.
Prior to honeybees, the earth was covered with coniferous trees.
9. Bees are mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur’an.
Bible:
- Deut.1 [44] And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even unto Hormah.
- Josh.21 [27] And unto the children of Gershon, of the families of the Levites, out of the other half tribe of Manasseh they gave Golan in Bashan with her suburbs, to be a city of refuge for the slayer; and Beesh-terah with her suburbs; two cities.
- Judg.14 [8] And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion.
- Pss.118 [12] They compassed me about like bees; they are quenched as the fire of thorns: for in the name of the LORD I will destroy them.
Qur’an:
- 16:68-69: ’And thy Lord taught the bee to build its cells in hills, on trees and in (men’s) habitations….. there issues from within their bodies a drink of varying colours, wherein is healing for mankind. Verily in this is a Sign for those who give thought’.
- ‘Honey is a remedy for every illness and the Qur’an is a remedy for all illness of the mind, therefore I recommend to you both remedies, the Qur’an and honey.’ (Mohammed)
10. The ‘Killer Bee’ (also called the ‘Africanized Honeybee’) was created by the USDA. Go team!
The idea was to create the ‘superbee’ by crossing the gentle Italian honeybee with the more aggressive, but hardworking African honeybee. The hope was to create a gentle and hardworking. They created a very aggressive, high swarming, low honey creating bee. Of course, a queen bee got loose in the Brazilians jungle and the rest is history. Africanized honeybees were seen in So. Utah this year. I’ve seen them in So. Colorado. These bees offer are a legitimate threat to the American (meaning entire continent) honeybee population. As they spread north, they breed with more winter tolerant bees. Once they can tolerate the cold, world domination will be next. Or something like that.
11. Honeybees will always stop what they are doing to take care of baby bees.
When we collect a swarm of bees, we often add a frame of baby bees. The swarming hive will alway stay to care for the baby bees. In fact, a honeybee will give another bee water and food even if it’s not from the same hive. Moreover, if a bee from another hive ends up inside a hive when night comes, they will stay to become part of that colony.
12. Honey is the only food source that does not spoil.
Honey changes form – from liquid to crystal – but it does not degrade. Honey found in Tutankamen’s tomb, or the site in Israel, is as good, and good for you, as honey taken from a modern hive.
13. Colony Collapse Disorder is a big freakin’ deal.
Originally described in 1896 as ‘Disappearing Disorder’. In the 1960s, disappearing disorder caused wholesale havic causing many beekeepers to go out of business. It’s back, and it’s worse. Why is this a big deal?
- This is a world wide problem. This round of the syndrome was first sited in the 1990s in Europe.
- Honeybees are not the only pollinators effected. In the United States, there has been a wholesale die off of all pollinating species including bats.
- 36% of US beehives and 15% of UK beehives have been lost.
- No one has any idea what’s going on. There’s a million theories. But there’s always been a million theories. No one knows why this is happening. If someone tells you they do? Just smile and walk away. No one knows. (Best guess? Some kind of bee stressor.)
Read more Thurday 13s by going here.
Read more of my fascinating Thursday Thirteens by clicking here.
Thursday 13 – Things you can do for honeybees today!
It’s that time of year again. Time to check the hives. From what I can tell, we started the fall with five hives and one survived. ?Sigh.
No matter what anyone says, Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD is still an international issues. CCD causes full scale collapse of a healthy colony. As little as a month prior to collapse, the hive looks full of healthy bees. The queen is still there. She’s still laying eggs. They have honey and pollen. And then…. ?
The bees are dead. It’s a horrifying site – truly horrifying. Now, remember this is happening to all polinators – every variety of native bee and even bats.
Most people are still able to replace their hives with new ‘packaged’ bees. (Packaged bees are a split of a hive that spent the winter in California.) However, packaged bees don’t survive the winters because the queens aren’t aclimated to the altitude and climate.?
This year, we’ve decided to attempt to create a survivor stock of bees. I’m hoping to start the fall with two healthy hives. ?Wish me luck.
In the meantime, there are things that you can do to help support the bees in your neighborhood.
What to stop doing:
1. Leave your dandelions alone. Dandelions are fabulous early spring food for starving bees. Full of pollen and nectar a few dandelions can make a huged difference to an overwinter starved hive. We plant crocus to give our bees an extra late winter boost.
2. Stop using chemicals on your lawn.?The average household dumps hundreds of pounds of fertilizer, pesticide and weed killer on their grass. They might buy organic vegetables, but think nothing of walking bare foot on their toxic lawns. These chemicals are believed to be the leading cause of bone cancer in dogs. Try organic fertilizer and only in the spring and fall.?
3. Don’t spray your trees for pests and don’t let anyone around you do it.?One particular pesticide is believed to play a role in CCD. It is often sprayed on trees to kill off pests. The bees can’t tell the difference between pollen and this pesticide. The bees bring the pesticide into the hive until it kills off the entire colony.
4.?Stop buying Sue Bee and other commercial honey.?Commercial honey is fraught with contaminents.?
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What to plant:
5.?When possible plant bee friend plants such as butterflybushes, black eyed susans, borage, penstimen, russian sage or any of these plants.
6. Let your crocus, daffedils, iris, and tulips bloom as long as possible.?Bees hybernate over winter. These early spring plants will help set off a breeding cycle that will out breed CCD. By planting these easy to maintain plants, you can give new life to a hive.
7. Plant late fall blooming plants such as ?Mums, Asters, and Lilys.?These late blooming flowers give bees the necessary boost to make it through the winter.
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A little bit goes a long way:
8. Plan a fountain or a little water.?As the world warms, clean water becomes harder for bees to find. Just a little clean water can make the difference between a healthy hive and a non healthy hive.
9. Buy only organic, chemical free honey. ?You can find it at your local farmer’s market. If you haven’t grown to love honey, it’s very good for you. Organic unpasterized honey maintains the enzymes that are crucial to human health. Try it on toast – you’ll never look back.
10. Support your local beekeeper.?Contrary to what they said in the Bee Movie, Beekeeping is very expensive. You support of local honey helps your beekeeper continue to replace his or her
bees to get through this crisis. Right n0w, the recommendation is to replace all hardware every year – that’s $300/hive alone and doesn’t include new bees.?
11.?Ask your state to support bee research.?A few dollars go a long way. Bee Geeks, like myself, will do almost anything for their hives. It takes money to make the research really happen.?
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Why do we care about bees?
12. Bees are prehistoric creatures. Evolved over 250 million years ago, they created every flowering plant. Every. Single. One.?
13. Bees are reponsible for most of our food production. Without bees, we will no longer have food to eat.
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This is a situation where you can make a difference. At this time of year, your simple choices can make the difference between live and death for the hives in your area.?
What will you choose?
123… it's prediction time!
I was tagged by Sue who was tagged by Darla. I was also tagged by Julia who was tagged by Darla as well.
The universe has spoken… 
It’s time to do the page 123 meme. The rules are pretty simple, and here goes:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.
Here goes:
The nearest book, besides the thesaurus, is: The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A.I. and E.R. Root (1917).
The fifth sentence on page 123 is:
“Such queens should not only be prolific but be the mothers of workers that are energetic and good workers – that is, bees that will store more honey than any others. It is important, also, they be of pure stock in order that they may the better transmit their qualities. While gentleness is desirable, we sometimes have to sacrifice the desirable quality in order to get bees for business.”
Since I was tagged twice, here is the fifth sentence from page 246 (for Julia):
“It may be well at times to look out for the enemies that prey on bees; but, as a general thing, we think they
are quite capable of fighting their own battles if we give them the proper care and suitable hives. It as Mr. L.L. Langstroth, just before he died, who showed how spiders may be of value to the beekeeper. If, he said, they have access freely to the combs stored in stacked-up hives in the apiary, there never need be any fear that moth-worm or mother-miller will be able to do any damage, for the spiders will shortly destroy them.”
So my dear friends, what does all of this mean?? Here’s the tea leaves – what’s your prediction?
Yes, yes, I’m going to suffer, but I’m going to be happy about it. Anything else?
Happy July! As your July present, I’m not tagging anyone.
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Sue tagged: Sandy, Lynn, CyberCelt, and , Michelle.
When it rains, it… swarms?
Or How Claudia spent her weekend.
Love the swarms… love the swarms… love the swarms…. the phone rings and off we go.
Swarm catchers.
This swarm was in a woman’s peach tree. She lived in Central Denver and insists that this is from a feral hive. Of course, we were all over that. (Feral would mean that these bees survived the mites, the diseases, and every other thing to sit in this tree.)
This massive swarm was on our fence. (These are Italian Bees – from someone’s hive.)
The snow followed by 80 degree days cause the bees to swarm. I always say that the bees don’t like bees. But that’s a weird vague joke about Navajos that almost no one gets.
I did learn a few things about catching swarms that I would like to share with you. Michael C, at the Wonderful World of Nothing Worthwhile, shares his weekly lessons, so I thought I might share my lesson’s here.
- Poking a swarm with a stick, or in my case a tube, is not a good thing.
- Make sure the Bee Vac is actually vacuuming before you try to retrieve the swarm. Why? See #1.
- When the bees line up on the bee vac? You have the queen.
- Make sure the tube is attached to the vacuum. It works better that way.
- Your neighbors? They are not as excited about the bee swarm as you are. When you brightly say, “I’m catching a swarm” while standing in their backyard? It doesn’t make them happy.
- You simply cannot get all the bees. Get over it.
- If it’s just been really really cold and now is really really hot? You should put the divider in because it’s only a matter of time before someone calls for a swarm pick up.
- When you’re standing in some strange woman’s backyard vacuuming a tree? The neighbors will come and ask “What the hell are you doing?” They even say things like, “I’m calling the cops.” Fun fun fun.
- No one cares how sexy you look in your usual bee outfit. Not. One. Person.
I hope you learned as much as I did. I’ll keep you posted on how these swarms do. I don’t have any brood to encourage them to stay so it’s 50/50. Last weeks swarm is already working on making a home. Yea!
Swarm!
Between rain storms, a swarm flew into our yard.? Wanna see what happened?
It started with a high buzzing sound.? When I went to check our bees, they were out on their porches defending their homes.? A cloud of bees came into the bee yard then were pushed out by our bees.? They landed in our apple tree. The swirling cloud of bees settled down to this:
This is a very large swarm, possibly an entire hive (which is called an abscond.)
So I put on my massive (XXL) bee suit*, set up the ladder,…
…and climbed up with my Bee Vac**.
Then began the painstaking work of vacuuming up the bee swarm.
For the next hour, I slowly vacuum up the bee swarm.
Then, taa daa! Twenty or more pounds of bees! Ok, you can’t really see them here.
But notice the nice new rose bed! 
Inside the bee vac….? I set the bee vac down and took the top off.
This allows the bees that didn’t get vacuumed up to find the hive.? This swarm was very calm.
Even though I can dump the hive into a hive box and be done with it, the bees like to feel like they chose their new home.? So I dumped half of the hive in a hive deep and half on an old sheet.? The bees then climb into the box.
And I also cheated.? I took a frame of babies from another hive and put them in this hive.
One of the awesome things about bees is that they will never ever ever leave a baby – even if it’s not their own.? They will stay to care for any baby bee.? Period.
For the sake of clarity, these bees have flown from who knows where.? They are carrying at least three days worth of honey, pollen and water. And the very first thing they do?? They tend the babies they found in this hive.
They stick their butts in the air to fan the hive smell into the air. This calls any remaining bees to the colony.
Just before the next rain/snow storm, the hive is settled for the night.? (They would not have survived the night on their own.)? I’ll check it tomorrow (Saturday) to see how they are doing – if they need food, that kind of thing.
And I have a new hive.
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*I have this massive bee suit because we used to have some Africanized bees.? They were “smoke sensitive” which means that I had to enter then cold. They would chase me around the yard.? ARG!? A friend from England smuggled a German bee treatment which I used.? Once they weren’t smoked, they were all right.? I requeened them eventually.? I wear the big suit to get swarms because I do not know the temperament of the hive.? Generally, swarms are docile, but you never know.
**A Bee Vac is a Shop Vac engine stuck on that box.? The Shop Vac is too harsh for the bees, so you have to slow it way down to not kill or injure all the bees you are vacuuming.? Like any Shop Vac, it has a variety of attachments. We’ve found this set up to work the best at retrieving, but not injuring the bees.
Bee update.
After waiting and pacing around for most of the morning, I watched the mailman’s back as he moved off our porch and on with his route on Saturday.
No queenbee in sight.
Two hours later, a breathless postman pounded on the door. Tucked under his jacket was a box from ZiaQueen. He said his boss drove the package out to him. Together, we opened the package to find a beautiful queen and five attendants.
She was shipped in a priority mail box. Yellow queen cage was set next to the blue sponge so that they could get some water. This is brilliant packing. She and her attendants were happy, unstressed and ready to go.
Here’s a photo of her shadow. It’s hard to see her through the yellow cage. You can see that she’s longer than the other bees. Because she’s not very old, she is also not very fat. She will fatten up as soon as she gets in the hive and starts laying.
In the second picture you can see her red dot. Queens are marked by their born year – this year is red.
What did I do with her?
Last week, I put a queen excluder between two hive “deeps” this force the nurse bees to rise to care for brood while keeping the queen on the bottom of the hive. I took the top box – with only nurse bees, brood and food – and created a new hive. Once they were situated in a new location, the worker bees will fly back to the original location leaving the nurse bees and baby bees.
Lost yet?
Basically, I took the top half of a hive and moved it to a new location. This creates a new hive.
Then I put this queen in the hive. There is a candy plug on the end of the bee cage. The nurse bees will eat their way though the candy plug (my fingers are holding it in the first picture) to release the queen. When I left her, the nurse bees were already feeding the queen.
(Bees are like that. If they see another hungry bee, they will feed and care for it – as long as it’s not a threat to their physical location.)
The queen cage keeps the queen safe until the nurse bees get used to her smell. They will readily accept her in about 3 days – the length of time it takes to eat through the sugar plug. I’ll check on her on Wednesday to see if she’s been adopted.
Today, I fed the original hive with sugar water (5 pounds of sugar to 1 gallon of water) to replace the food I took. I put the syrup into a gallon ziplock bag then lay the bag in the hive. I made a light slit so the bees can get the syrup. I have a bunch of fancy equipment that does this but ziplock works the best. (Go figure.)
I also go stung. What stupid thing was I doing?? I wore my yoga pants instead of my jeans. The first bee sting of the year always has a little fanfare.? Later on, it’s like “whatever”.
I should get another queen later this week. She’ll go in the “little” hive, which has managed to hang in there.
Thanks for your interest and support. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.
Bee update.
Photo by Harlekwin – Bee in Pear Groves
Spent quite a bit of time in my hives on Sunday and wanted to give you an update.
My big hive? It’s big. There’s a lot of bees and no food. The bees are hungry and aggitated after 2 days stuck inside due to snow. Wouldn’t you be? I gave them a couple of honey filled frames (saved from last fall). I also took some of the bees and added them to the “small” hive.
The small hive? This hive has lots of food and almost no bees. So I added bees using what’s called the “newspaper method”. (You put newspaper between the different bees and they eat their way between.) There is a queen but she has been inactive. Hopefully, the addition of bees will get her moving again.
Now we wait and hope for the best. I will check them again on Tuesday to see how everything is going. My queen supplier hopes to have queens on or around the 23rd so… we just hold our breath and fiddle around until then.
All the rules and all the bets are off. I’m making it up as I go now.
Thank you for your kind thoughts, prayers and wishes.
