The bees at the end of March

Isn't rhubarb gnarly looking when it first pokes up out of the warming spring soil?
I think of aliens, and brains, or maybe alien brains? What I don't think of is pollen.
There isn't any.

 But take a close look at the bees...

You might just about be able to see that some of these little gals are so heavily laden with pollen that they can barely fly.  Look at that little group of three to the right of the sugar feeder.  The two flying above are looking at her stash of the good yellow stuff. 

They aren't finding any pollen in the currant bushes.  The first leaves are very tightly furled up, with no bud or blossom in sight.

If you look on the board behind her, you'll see another gal with some pollen, and another buzzing around in the air just above her.

The aspen trees have little catkins dangling down, but no yellow pollen could be coaxed out by me.  Maybe my little bees know a secret?

The lilacs are definitely bare, but they would be.  Even the tulips around here have a few weeks before they'll bloom.

Cherry?  Same thing!

I know of only one place in this whole town where you can find pollen.  It's about a half mile away, but that's definitely within a healthy bee's territory.  Tomorrow I need to go to the greenhouses in the Bi-Mart parking lot and see if any of my gals are hanging out in there.  I wouldn't blame them, what with the primroses and pansies and poppies in bloom, and the warm plastic sheeting over top to hold in the sun's warmth...

So yeah, I have a good scientific reason to go down there--I'm just scoping out the range of my bees, that's all.  It certainly isn't to imprudently purchase impatiens to plant in the snow forecast for tonight.

Bees. Yup.  That's my story, and I'm sticking with it!



Getting better

Things around here are getting better.  Let's say....about a three out of ten.

This is a far cry from the -4 we were at before, but shows we still have a lot of work to do.

And, my friends, it's been a lot of work.

Luckily, we were able to bring in the professionals, and that's made all the difference in the world.

The only other thing I have to say is that I'm so glad that 13 is an age you reach once, and only once, in your life. 

Like, totally.

In other news, the bees are starting to make brief forays out into the world.  I'm a bit disturbed by the fact that many of the little ladies in front of the door have wax on their legs, as if they were ready to go play house somewhere else.  But, they keep flying back into the hive, so maybe these are pretend run-aways?  I'm really ot sure what to make of it.  We're still getting snow off and on, and no flowers are in bloom ANYWHERE around here, so I've been giving them bit of sugar water here and there.

This past week, on the advice of previously mentioned professionals, we took the family out of the valley and went to the big city far away.  We hit a bookstore, and I splurged.  I've been seeing reference to Ashely's books on a few of my favorite blogs, and when I lay my very own little eyes on them in the store, I couldn't help myself.  Out popped my wallet (rather, out popped Mr. Boom's wallet) and in the flick of the eye I owned Home Dairy and Keeping Bees.  I'd like to blame this on the fact that Chirp-chirp refused to get out of the car, and we were hurrying, so I didn't have time to talk myself out of the purchase.  Let's just go with that, shall we?

Anyway, the hook that got me in the Keeping Bees book was a recipe for fondant for feeding bees when pollen and nectar are scarce (or as the case is here, non-existent). I tried the recipe soon after we came home, but it was a flop.  Does this:

Look like this?

I think not!  I'm not *sure* where it went wrong, but in looking at other fondant for bees recipes I found that the hot sugar mixture is allowed to cool somewhat, then beaten, then allowed to cool down the rest of the way.  The recipe in this book has you pour the molten hot sugar onto a dish, allow it to cool a bit, then pour it into a loaf pan or other similar mold.  Maybe we were supposed to beat it in between the two receptacles? Otherwise, why use two dishes?  It says the final product can be sliced.  Mine is scoopable--not sliceable.  That could be a temperature issue, though, so I'll try it again and cook it hotter.  Anything for my furry little girls and their promise of honey later on!

Bee update

Strange things are happening around here.

On Saturday the temperature rose and rose and rose some more, until we were well above freezing.  Sitting in the living room, Chirp-chirp gasped! 

"Mom!  A bee flew by!"

There are so many things wrong with that statement, but she has a good eye, so I began to wonder...

Last I checked the hive, wasps had settled in and the dear little honeybees were making no effort to chase them off.  Usually, this is a sure sign that the queen is dead and the hive will soon die out, or at least move on.  So, since Halloween, I've just written the bee project off.

"Mom!  I'm not kidding! Another one!"

We have more than a foot of show on the ground, and there aren't any flowers blooming now, nor will there by for another couple of months, at least.  No bee in it's right mind would be flying around in the snow (not that I have any bees, sane or not, out there anymore, ahem!).

Except there you go!  Bees!  Everywhere! If you look closely at this fairly craptastic  cellphone photo, you can see them sunning their fuzzy little souls on the pallet and on the fence just behind the hive cover.

Many of the poor little creatures were coming out the door and landing in the snow, quickly perishing as their little bit of body heat was drained.  I put the board in front as a landing strip of sorts, then put a little sugar water in the blue lid for them to sip at.

We left for the day, and didn't return until the next afternoon.  By then, the weather had reverted to winter and the board was entirely buried in the snow. 

I don't know what to make of it.  I do know that a little more hope for a healthy hive come spring has entered my soul.  The weather is doing its best to quash it, though.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Today's been more tricksy than treatsy for me, but we all have those days, don't we?!

So far, the hive-cozy we built for the bee box fell completely apart and was rescued by the liberal application of duct tape.

My bee hive has wasps, and no evidence of a queen. There's little hope that the colony will survive the winter.

I can't take a decent shot of the last batch of soap I made, not even to save my life. Luckily, Mr. Boom stepped in so you can get a feel for the real-life gorgeous color of the hemp-oil soap. There are two batches on the drying board, one ivory one grass green. I hope this is visible on your monitor, since the difference is imperceptible on mine.


I think I might try building a light box to get some nice photos. But not today.

Definitely not today!

Honey

I did it.

I was really really scared, but I did it. While Mr. Boom and Chirp-chirp watched from the safety of the indoors, I went back out to the beebox (fully suited up this time), and grabbed myself a big old box full of honey and bees, and carried it back up to the porch. I smoked out the bees and I got me some honey.

I did it.

Sweet, sweet, sweet success!

This will make the appointment with the hand surgeon
on the 15th much easier to bear. I'll just lie back and think of honey...

What's in the box (by Kat)

With the help of Mr. Boom's aunt, who decided to make the beekeeping adventure a joint process, I finally opened up my hive last weekend.

As you can see, there really isn't any need to spend lots of money on bee keeping outfits. I'm wearing an old men's dress shirt and jeans, plus the hat I purchased for about $30. She's wearing a tyvek suit (ignore the radioactive markings, please) she bummed off her husband and a hat and veil she made herself from some old sheer curtains, a bit of elastic, and an old straw hat.

The shirt I was wearing is labeled Van Hesusen. Anyone else remember the commercial in which the lady was wearing her husband's shirt in their bedroom? He calls her from work and she says "I was just thinking about you?" Anyone? Anyone? I loved that commercial. Actually, I couldn't' stop thinking about the commercial as we were working the bees. This is why I don't have a TV!

So, us gals were suited up and had the smoker in hand. Mr. Boom sat with the camera about six feet away. He wasn't bothered one bit by the bees, and I think the two of us might have been a bit overdressed!

As you can see below, the smoker lived up to its name and really smoked.
It smoked us more than the bees. I'm not sure I'll use it next time.

Ever so gently, she pried up the lid...

The lid finally came off with a little bit of a struggle.

Bees!

See the bright white wax on the lid? This is pure, freshly built honeycomb.
It doesn't belong on the lid. As thrilling as it is to see, it means they're overcrowded and that I need to get a super on there as soon as possible.

In this close-up, you can see them building all over the place. Not good. All the comb should be on the frames, not on top like this. Normally, you'd pull the frames out one by one to inspect the hive health and look for the queen. This is so built up, though, that we decided just to put the lid back on and wait for the supers to come. Then we'll clean this all up and let them go back to work in their new quarters.

Do you see the golden liquid just above the inverted W? That's honey, my friends.

HONEY!!!

To Bee or not to Bee (by Kat)

Okay, people keep asking me why I started up the beekeeping escapade. The trouble is, they usually have this look on their face and a tone in their voice that would better accompany the query of why I decided to become an elephant whisperer or a tightrope walker. People seem to think I'm nuts, and not in the usual "oh she's just nuts but in a kinda cute way." No, the typical reaction I'm seeing is a quick eye dart to the left, then to the right, a glance over my shoulder, and then, escape route decided upon, they'll look back at me.

Except for my dentist. She thinks it's cool, and she'll get the first jar of honey I harvest to give away. I like her.

So, bees. And why?

I definitely wasn't raised to do this. My mom actually asked me a few years ago "did we raise you to be this way or did you get this way yourself?" She was quite serious. She was upset that I was handling something (I don't recall what) in a manner decidedly different than she thought the situation (whatever it was) called for. So, we'll just let her and my dad off the hook right now. No, I was not raised in any type of manner that would seemingly lead to me keeping bees.

Uhm, I don't know anyone who keeps bees, either.

Uh, Little House in the Suburbs did it, so I can too?

No? Okay, ummmmm, I like bees?

Actually, we have about one buhzillion types of bees in our yard. Long ones short ones, fat ones skinny ones...

But with the population of honey bees at such risk worldwide, I wanted to do something to bee a part of the solution. I'm a put up or shut up kind of person, and don't feel you have a right to complain about a problem unless you're actively working to rectify it. So, I see all the bees and think that maybe they'd like a home, and I could give them that, and maybe that would entirely solve the world bee decline. Or at least help out a bit here.

So, a top bar hive, I figured, would house one local colony, and I'd get some honey in return, maybe.

Also, I never had an ant farm growing up. Somehow I convinced myself that a hive would be just the ticket to make up for that neglect....

But here's the thing. I ended up buying a hive of bees from another community and brought them here. This doesn't help out the little guys who were already here. The Lansgstroth hives are harder to get into, and not at all like an ant farm. So what am I doing, and why?

I. Don't. Know.

But I like it......

PS Hope my folks never find out I have a blog.... I most definitely wasn't raised to do this sort of thing.
PPS I know really need to stop making the bad bee puns, but I just can't help myself.

BEE(n) Shopping! (by Kat)

So, in order to support my new hobby, I've been shopping.

(There were two opportunities to make bad puns in that last sentence...I refrained in both instances. Aren't you happy?)

While I've read and researched everything I could find on top bar hives, I hadn't done much homework on Langstroth hives before the day I went to pick up my hive. So, when the 4th of July weekend found me over in Pugetopolis, I hit my favorite new/used bookstore, Third Place Books. I wasn't lucky enough to find any used bee books, but I picked up the "Beekeeping for Dummies" book and read it straight through on Friday so I'd be ready for my trip to the apiary supply store on Saturday.


I wasn't sure what to expect at the store, and my expectations were fairly low. Good thing. The owner was very set in his ways, and only carried the supplies/styles he preferred. When I told him I'd built my own top bar hive he looked at me as though I had a horn growing out my skull. In his words "if you've got access to a table saw, you don't have any reason to use a top bar." I told him that I'd used my table saw quite a bit to build my top bar hive, and he looked at me as if I now had a tail curling out my hind end. He reiterated his point that "there's no reason to build one of those if you live in the modern world."

I tried to move on, but he had to berate the entire world of top bars and their users for a while longer before he'd let the subject change. As he stood there, blabbing away like a southern baptist minister, and as my mind wandered away just as if he actually were a southern baptist minister, I realized that he had very little money to make off people who used top bars. It all clicked!

Anyway, I did buy quite a few pieces of equipment that day. My total, including the book from Third Place, was just about $150.00. Not cheap, probably not all necessary, but comforting for me to have at this point.

Here's an Italian style hive tool. It's less burly than the kind I wanted, and in fact I'd label it a doo-hickey as opposed to a tool, but what do I know? After all, I'm enamored with top bar hives! This end is for scraping burr comb and propolis off the places you don't want it. It is also supposed to be useful for prying the lid off the hive. I'm not sure this is burly enough for use as a prybar, but we'll see.

Here's the other end of the hive tool. The notch helps lift up frames. I could snap this tool in half with ease, even though it's metal. I'm just not in love with it at this point. But, you know, I haven't even sued it yet so I could be very wrong (who, me?)!


This is the frame grip. I wanted the French style, as was recommended by the guy from whom I bought the bees. The minister at the bee shop said he didn't like the "frenchy" kind, so he didn't carry them. So, I have this style instead. The French style has points where this style has flat grips. I can't see how this will give the positive grip the French style has, but the minister swore by it, so I'm giving it a shot.


Finally, I have goatskin gloves that reach up to my elbows and a bee veil to protect my head, face, and neck. The draw strings tighten around the collar of your shirt, making it very difficult, though not impossible, for any bees to enter the veil.

I didn't buy a beekeeper suit, as they are about $100 at the minimum. Jeans are fine, as is a white long-sleeve heavy shirt. I'll be hitting up the local thrift store here pretty soon to find the shirt. Honey bees are so docile that unless you are really bugging them a lot, or working around them day after day, you don't need special protective gear other than a veil and gloves.

In fact, the book I bought suggests that you don't even use gloves. I'm not that brave, though.

Although, after taking the photos to show you the equipment, I walked over to the hive to see how all my new little friends were doing.

Bare-handed...

And bare-footed!

Plan Bee (by Kat)

Plan A was to build a top bar bee hive, collect a wild swarm, and live happily ever after. Plan A was easy, was natural, was researched to within an inch of its poor life. Plan A was the golden child. Plan A was doable. Plan A and I were best friends. But there was a problem. Plan A was started too late in the season--past the time the bees are swarming, past the time that a new hive can build itself up to a sustainable level before winter sets in.

Simply put, Plan A didn't stand a chance.

Welcome to Plan B(ee)


Oh, I'm so sorry for that terrible pun, but you know I had to do it!

Plan B is a Langstroth hive full of bees. Plan B is in my backyard. Plan B has scared the living daylights out of me. Plan B and I are staring at each other from across the path. Plan B says "Hi, I'm here, I'm in your face."


Plan B knows what it's doing, but I don't.


But, like so many times in life, Plan B is the route before me and the signpost has my name on it. So, Plan Bee and me, we're gonna be best friends.

I hope...

(is it just me, or are they all sticking their butts out at me?)

BEEEEES! (by Kat)

First I read all about it.

Then I thought all about it...


Then I built it and baited it...


But they didn't come!


So tomorrow I'm going to go get them!


BEEES!
(wait, there aren't any bees in that picture...what gives?)

This is a top-bar beehive. It's a less stressful environment for the bees than the typical box o' bees beehives you usually see along roadsides pollinating orchards. I don't have a picture of it with the lid on the top, so please just imagine a lid over top of the bars.

The kerfs in each bar are filled with a starter bead of wax to encourage the residents to build their combs along each top bar instead of across multiple top bars. The photo shows the kerfs wax-side up, but these were all turned over as soona s the wax had set.

I baited the box my rubbing a lemongrass-olive oil mixture into the wood. I gave it a week, then became impatient. Someone on Craig's List has some bees to sell, so tomorrow I go for a look-see.

Do I take the car or do I take the truck to pick them up?
They could get really hot in the back of the truck, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to drive an hour with them sitting in the back seat of the car....

Summer solstice (by Kat)

Gloriously busy around here! Zing-zang happy-skipping around here.

Here's evidence of a blooming elderberry.
Chirp chirp was in misery because the little blooms were stuck fiercely in her hair.
She smelled (to me) like heaven in springtime and (to her) like a scary old lady.


Summer solstice swung by, by summer herself is strangely absent. In fact, we had snow to the north of town last Wednesday. The poor local farmers are scratching their heads and pulling their beards in frustration. We've gone from a drought year (declared late March) to a nearly 100% water year (as of a few weeks ago).

This has been great for the garden, though!

Peas:


Onions:


More onions, four rows of beets, recalcitrant broccoli:


An alium transplanted from Mr. Boom's grandmother's home before it was torn down to make room for a housing development:


This volunteer broccoli plant, growing up through the bricks of our garden path, is so much further along than the broccoli I actually planted. Make of that what you will....



(I really do!)


And finally, Chirp Chirp made her first loaf of bread. See the difference in surfaces of the two loaves of french bread? One was stretched tight as it was rolled into shape, the other wasn't. Proof that a simple little technique can really make a huge difference in your final product.

And finally, a sneak peak...


Any guesses?

It's the reason I've been so busy this past week...