Week Three

It feels like summer to my girls, and they are a bit fussy in the heat so my visit was necessarily brief.

As with the past couple of visits, the spring and summer boxes are right on schedule. I consider them my “normal” boxes, they are definitely progressing by the book. For some reason, the spring box, which is usually very docile, was not in the mood for me today, but that could have had more to do with the combs full of honey that I had to remove from the top of the frames. The winter box is my favorite, very gentle and relaxing to deal with.

And then there are the summer and fall boxes. As with every week there has been significant change, and they have sort of become an experiment in progress for me. Last week I switched their locations so that the weak fall box would be in the position of the exceedingly strong summer box, which should have resulted in all of the workers out foraging for their summer box returning home to the fall box, packing away the goods and taking care of the queen, who was running amok at the bottom of the frames the last time I saw her.

What I found was very interesting. The fall box, with its barely drawn frames, had all of the workers under the covers working overtime to catch up. The colony size is still nearly double what it should be, and I couldn’t really see much of the frames just from looking above. I chose not to pull any out to examine them in the hopes that by not disturbing the ladies, they would be more stable for next week’s visit. Honestly, I’m pretty thrilled that my ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ box is filling back up with gold.

As for the summer box, which was so unjustly relocated to the inferior position of the fall box, things are looking a little bit destitute. I think maybe there is something wrong with that particular spot, so I actually pulled the hive a few feet froward, which may result in more confusion. There are still workers present in the box, not very many, but I couldn’t seem to find the queen. However, it was a perfect chance for me to pull up full frames of nectar, capped honey and just a bit of brood without worrying about thousands of bees being unhappy. I was surprised to find a couple of supersedure cells hanging out at the top of a frame, no doubt built by the super colony before I confused them (again) and switched boxes. Supersedure cells are a sure thing in gauging the mood of the hive, and they basically let you know that the hive is in the process of replacing their queen, which happens if she is weak or sick or not laying enough eggs or even dead. I guess the easy assumption for me to make was that with such strong numbers, the supercolony was loving their queen, while the opposite seems to be true. She couldn’t keep up with their demands, or its possible I accidentally killed her during a clumsy inspection. Regardless, I am at another crossroads and must make a decision. Some people say to never let the hive replace the queen, for she may not be ideal in breeding, etc., while other people say nature knows best, and the girls will be better able to breed a suitable queen for the conditions around the hive.

This is my first year as a beekeeper, but probably my third or fourth year as a bee enthusiast with ambitions to have my own hives. In that time, I have only grown more amazed by these wonderful, complex creatures, and that is why I am going to just let them do their thing. As a beginner, I cannot expect to know more than they could about what they’re doing, and I will look at this as yet another learning opportunity for me. Thus far, my girls have been fairly gentle in their education, and I am more grateful than ever that I chose to take on four hives my first year. I am learning so fast and so much about everything by seeing all of these different scenarios play out, it is a real thrill every week to see what they have been up to.

Also, I was prepared for the bit of comb that I scraped off of the spring frames with a clean container, so I got to taste some real honey by chewing on the wax comb like delicious bubblegum, it was incredible and yet another reminder why I have taken on this intimidating insect.

Summer and Fall - May 16th, week two

I am the kind of person that has a healthy appreciation for the mystical and weirdness in general, which is why I must be a fool for putting a poem like Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost, on the side of my fall box. I can’t keep the bees in this box. They have defied my first attempt, which was to pull four of the eight full frames from the double colony in the summer box and set them in the fall box, with the trapped queen right in the middle of them. While it seemed like a decent idea at the time, the bees were not interested in my matchmaking and promptly rejoined to form the super colony over at the summer box. While it is certainly thrilling to see what such a healthy population looks like, I am a bit unprepared for such numbers in one hive, and so I called Don Lam. Don Lam is the bee supplier from Holland, MI that I ordered my bees through. I explained my problem, and he gave me a solution so simple that it has to work. He told me to simply switch the two hives, the strong summer hive and the empty fall hive, so that when the worker bees from the strong summer hive return to the location of their home after foraging, they will enter the fall box instead, with their bounty ready for unload. He also told me to let the queen out of her cage since the bees had failed to do so, and to place her at the bottom of the fall box. When I left there was a small frenzy at the entrance of the fall box in its new location, and the worker bees fussed a bit but eventually found their way in the box. If this doesn’t work, its probably going to be time to order some more bees. On the bright side, in a moment of despair it was nice to have a solid piece of advice from a human instead of a book. 

Also, if I were the writer of this story (my story, the one unfolding in present time,) it would be an interesting bit of foreshadowing to have the summer box thrive and be exceedingly healthy and productive and abundant, while the fall box is barren and empty and unsettling in its abandoned state.

The truly wonderful part of my day today was that there was a bit of honey in the abandoned fall box that was very fresh and shiny (it was one of the healthy frames I had moved from the summer box last week,) and I couldn’t resist such an early opportunity to try a sample. It was wonderful, and probably just my imagination, but it tasted like raspberries :)

Winter and Spring - May 16th, week two

The winter and spring boxes are moving along at the pace that I expected. They haven’t had any problems, and are busy gathering pollen and increasing population. I’m excited to see them in a few weeks, when the population grows.

The location where I have my beehives is actually home to American Roots, grower of native plants and wildflowers of Michigan. (http://www.americanrootswildflowers.com) While waiting for my boxes to warm up and their workers to venture out, I spend some time working in the green house and nursery and learning from Trish, who is an inexhaustible source of knowledge of all things native and invasive. I must say how fortunate and grateful I am to have such a wonderful host location for my girls, it really couldn’t get any better.

Mother’s Day

One week has gone by since I installed my ladies and they are making some significant progress. Not only did I see tons of worker bees returning with their pollen bags full, the field of native raspberries is starting to bloom in front of the hives. I did have one hive, the Autumn box, with Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost on it (oh, the irony!) that I was startled to find empty, and with the queen still trapped in her box. Upon checking the next hive, I realized that it had twice the workers in it that it should have so I pulled a few full frames of bees from the extra full hive and put them next to the queen in the empty one. Fingers crossed that they choose to remain there this time..

Her majesty, The Queen.

Picking up the bees from Don Lam, bee supplier extraordinaire.

The day I went to Holland, MI there was a huge rain cloud over the entire state. By the time I made it there to pick up my bees, a fog had settled over everything, including this cemetery. I drove past it and had to turn around, it was so eerie and beautiful with its different groves of trees in the fog.  At the back of it I found some of the tulips that this city is known for, I think maybe the patch is used to refurbish the beds in the city for their tulip festival. I also went to a tulip farm looking for fields of flowers, but it was closed and they had their tulips tucked securely behind fences where non-payers could only catch a glimpse.