Cool Bees

I debated whether the title should be Cool Bees or Spoiled Bees.  You could say they're both.  Today we went to the nursery and picked up a couple plants to make a natural barrier between the apiary and the garden / shed area.  Most of the plants we got were very popular with honey bees at the nursery.

cool bees

new palm

Even though it was 94 degrees, we both spent a few hours planting and watering.  Also brought a large bunch of Hawaiian plumeria plant cuttings that were crowding the walkway at home.   After planting, everything was watered and looking good.   We even picked up some milkweed for the butterflies.

The bee hives were nice and shaded under their new structure and fortunately there were no guard bees with an attitude buzzing us while we gardened.

Settling in

Woke up early and drove out to the Bee Farm to check on the new arrivals.  It was nice to see them all settled down and adapting to their new home.   Worth the effort.  The honeybee garden was loaded with buzzing bees.  A beautiful Florida morning.

New arrivals (right)

Into the Belly of the Beast

I understood that the duct tape and mesh screens were just a temporary measure and bees would eventually break down my security measures.  But what I didn't know was how quickly they would undermine my plans.  They are smarter than I gave them credit.  Within FOUR hours of introducing them to their beautiful new bee hive a couple of crackerjack bees broke back into the Gargoyle !!  And it only took a few minutes before the rest of the gang were back in their cozy Gargoyle.  Word spreads fast among honey bees.

Gargoyle being prepped before surgery

Around this time I figured that the hose going from the Gargoyle into the hive just wasn't going to cut it.  The bees had no intention of leaving their comfortable Gargoyle home.  I used more duct tape and this time some aluminum screening.  That should hold them until morning when I'll figure out a new plan.   There were still several hundred bees out and about and they bearded up on the gargoyle's chin.  Very cute and I only wish I took a picture of that.  By this time I was worn out and decided to wait until morning to come up with another plan.

The next morning ALL the bees were back inside their Gargoyle.  They broke back into it again !!!  In all fairness, it rained last night so the rain probably loosened up the duct tape and made it easy for them to breach my security once again.  At least I had an excuse so I'll stick to that story.  It was obvious that drastic action was needed to get these bees out of that Gargoyle.  And that's when I realized the best course of action was to bravely enter the Belly of the Beast.

But first, I thought I'd try one last time to coax them out using almond extract which the bees hate.  After sprinkling a few drops into the mouth of the gargoyle, the bees dove into the deep recesses of the Gargoyle to escape the almond smell instead of exiting the Gargoyle.  By this time the sun was rising and it was heating up.  I was drenched in sweat under my veil and bee jacket.  The main concern however was this job needed to be finished before the sun came over the house and started heating up our work area on this side of the house.  Because once the sun shines in this area it could cook the bees.

Gargoyle belly button

Full of brood comb !!!

The first thing I did was to drill a hole in the stomach of the Gargoyle to see what the steel was like and to try and view what was waiting inside.  After several minutes a bee emerged from the Gargoyles new belly button and I could see there was brood in the belly.  Oh and during this entire process I had the bee vac running to keep coaxing bees from the mouth.

Gargoyle with a stout gag so he doesn't bite anyone (just in case)

The next step was to cut a hole in the stomach big enough to pull some brood comb.  That turned out to be difficult but eventually I got the hole cut all the while fending off defending bees and keeping them smoked.  Plus alternating between the grinder and the vacuum.  I was dripping sweat and it was a strenuous job.  Now that it looked like there would be brood comb my wife went to the store to buy extra rubber bands to attach the brood to frames.  The next two hours alternated between gently vacuuming bees, cutting brood out and keeping the guard bees distracted (telling them jokes).  Cool thing about this bee vac is you can hold the hose still and when bees come to challenge it, they get sucked in and join their friends in temporary bee jail.

Work area for brood

Finally the sun started poking around to this side of the house so I attached all the brood comb to the frames.  Any honey was probably in the Gargoyle's head and not readily accessible which was fine with me as time was running out.  Several times I lifted and dropped the gargoyle from about 6" and piles of bees fell into a clump that was quickly added to bee jail which was moved to be out of the sun.  The remaining bees in the air were quite testy and so it was time to load up the truck and chauffeur the girls out to the Bee Farm.

ready to go into the hive

On the way to the Bee farm I formulated an exact plan of how to transfer the hive as quickly as possible.  Since I had 5-6 frames of brood I would have to remove several frames from the brood box in the bee vac and then for sure chaos would ensue.  Little did I know that would be an understatement.  Since I figured I could do all of this in under 5 minutes I decided (unwisely) to not fire up the smoker.  That will not happen again is all I'll say.

Home sweet home (finally)

Sure enough a massive amount of agitated bees were released as I worked quickly to set up their new home.  The quantity of bees was amazing.  This was a very large hive.  They immediately covered the sides of their new home and thousands were flying around and getting acquainted with their new surroundings.  The other hive out there didn't seem to mind and just kept going about it's business as usual.

After finishing up (under 5 minutes) I hightailed it out of there to let them settle down.  I don't know if we got the queen but it's a good possibility.  At least we got brood so we'll probably have a queen regardless.   Another intense but fun day.

Bees are driving me crazy !!!

After much agonizing, I decided that the hive in front of our house needs to move to the backyard.  Even though I had a wild hive there for years, the liability of keeping a bee hive in the front yard is too high.   Despite the fact that a wall of jungle separates the front of the house and the sidewalk/street.  And I love watching the bees from my easy chair.

Yesterday I built a new hive stand in the back yard and moved the bee hive in the front onto a wagon to be ready to move in the darkness of morning.  The new hive stand was completed and ready to go.

This morning while it was still dark I pulled the wagon to the back of the yard and installed the hive on the new hive stand.  Just in time because the heavy rains started shortly thereafter.  During the rainstorm I saw about 50-100 bees gathered and flying around where the hive used to stand.  One of my fears.  So to do what I could to ease the situation, I went out and placed a hive trap in that location so the wayward bees would have a place to duck in and get out of the rain.  Many of them took advantage of this refuge too.

Once the sun came out in the afternoon, I noticed the box out front had many bees buzzing around it and were going in and out of the box.  Not good.  So I suited up and dragged the box out to where the hive now sits and I opened up the box so the bees would be in their new digs.  Unfortunately an hour later, there is a ton of bees where their old hive was.  Clinging to the wall and clustering.   And I do not have a good feeling about this.

I'm guessing tonight will see a large swarm hanging out front by the wall.  Geez .... one lesson after another bam bam bam.  This can make a person crazy.

 

Into the hives and guess what?

Today was inspection day for the bee farm hives.  All four hives were opened up and examined.  In particular I was anxious to look at the smallest colony that was from the swarm that split.  Not as many bees as all the others so I had to determine if there was a queen.  Sure enough when the hive was opened, the numbers were not great but ok.  Two to three strong frames being worked on.  And as hard as I looked, there was no queen to be found.  The good news was I found active brood and what appeared to be queen cells midway up one of the frames.  We have many dragonflies in this area and dragonflies love to eat bees.  Maybe the queen went out to find a boyfriend and got eaten by a dragonfly. 

The two original hives (from the Nuc's I purchased) were going strong and the honey supers on top were already half filled.  What this means is I better get to work building more supers and frames.  Because these will soon be filled and need more supers stacked on top.  The last swarm colony looked quite healthy.  Only hive Beatles were found in one of the original hives from the Nucs.  I placed beetle traps in them.

After examining 60 frames it was time for a rest.  I still struggled with keeping the smoker lit but will get it right eventually.   All in all it was a good inspection and took a good portion of the morning.   The colony in our front yard won't be opened for a couple more weeks.

Last night frames and bases were built.  This seems to be a never ending fun project.  Deeps, mediums, more frames and inner and outer covers need to be constructed this week.  I can't imagine doing this and having to buy everything instead of building it yourself. 

Here's the guess what from the title ... I was on the side of our house and noticed a lot of bees around where the swarm traps were stacked on top of each other (with no bait scent).  A lot of activity was around the one in the middle so I removed the cover and couldn't believe how many bees were inside.  A bunch flew out at me buzzing around.  Quite amusing so I put a couple frames in the box for them to start building comb.  Why not?  What's so funny is they're only a few feet away from the noisy air conditioner.  Is this swarm 6?  Not sure yet.  I'll check back in a couple days. 

The Honeybee Garden

For the last couple weeks work has been progressing on the honeybee garden which sits approximately 30 feet behind the hives.   Last weekend we planted the milkweed flowers and various other plants we had been accumulating.   Also there were many seedlings that were ready to plant so those were added to the garden.  Most of the seedlings were various varieties of sunflower but there were also Moringa (edible) and papaya seedlings.  I'm finally getting the hang of starting plants from seeds which is much more gratifying than store bought plants.

A couple hundred bulbs were also planted in the garden including many varieties and colors of iris, gladiolas and a bunch whose names evade me now.  A bag of mixed flower seeds (honeybee mix) was also sprinkled over the entire area.   If everything grows as planned it should be very beautiful.

A couple of days after mowing the lawn with that riding lawnmower, several bees kept harassing me as I worked in the yard.   Even when I wasn't even close to the hives a few chose to be quite annoying.  Fortunately I was able to send them to bee heaven and it's been back to normal since ... kind of.  The one very large hive by the chair where I used to sit and watch the bees seems to have a million guard bees hanging out on the landing entrance area.  They don't seem to like me sitting there any longer and let me know it.   It's like a bunch of gang members hanging out on a street corner and then I come along.  A few of them want to show off in front of the other guard bees and have a good laugh as the lumbering human gets chased off.  It's so humiliating ....

The original 2 raised beds are doing well but the new one is just ok.  That one didn't get enough good compost and soil so it's going to need some extra TLC.  Most of the plants are doing very well and we've been getting plenty of fresh tomatoes which is our favorite.  And it looks like the mustard greens will be ready for picking soon.

Growing corn in Florida should be interesting

Slightly challenged raised bed

Brussel sprouts

The rain barrel system has been tweaked and a level indicator was installed.  It rained right after it was installed so watching the indicator rise showed how quickly the rain barrels fill up.  The plumbing with the new pump was also completed and works very well.  Only thing that still needs to be installed is a backup system which will allow me to hook up a hose to city water in case the rain barrels run dry and the irrigation system needs to run.  The (new) irrigation system will be installed later this week and should automate most of the watering.  Because it takes a lot of time to water all these plants and you can't ignore that task.

New House bees settling in and why it's good to have a fast riding lawnmower in the Bee Yard

The new bees that were moved from the tree to the stand in our front yard are settling in nicely.  Yesterday there was a lot of zipping around in bee confusion as they tried to figure out why their queen moved to this new box.  And many bees were zipping around in the area of the tree where their old home was.  Today is much calmer with a few bees still zipping around the tree but it's pretty much normal bee foraging going on with a much calmer atmosphere than yesterday.

Today was lawn mowing day at the Bee Farm.  A little breezy and the first time mowing since the hive count made it to 4 out there.  The breeze made for some dust being thrown up by the riding mower  ... a little too much dust for the bees apparently.  Because on my first pass behind the hives I felt something hit my head.  And then another and another ... bam bam bam bam.  Major warnings being thrown at me by the guard bees.    So I shift into high gear full speed to get away before things get too interesting.  And they followed me for quite a ways until I jumped off the tractor and took off running, losing my sunglasses in the process.  Finally they let me go and I sheepishly returned to find my sunglasses.  Good thing I have to mow on the other side of the property and let things cool off by the hives.  But eventually I have to face up to the fact that the bee area still needs mowing.  Time to develop a plan.

The accelerator is increased quite high and the race course is formulated in my brain.  I'll zip under (actually into) the loquat tree and buzz the back of the hives with the pedal to the medal as they say.  Then do a little on the other size of the property setting up for another screeching run at the hives.  All they see is a red blur of the mower shooting past them before they even know what's happened.  The plan works !!!

Unfortunately one bee remembered me and away from the hives by the shed she would not leave me alone.  Quite the bee bully.  So time for another plan.  I grab a spray bottle of Murphy's oil soap and hold it up against my forehead as I quickly pump the sprayer turning in circles.  It works too.  Finally (before I got too dizzy) I see her start to fly away and she gets nailed with some dead on squirts of Murphy oil soap.  And that solves that problem.  Murphy's oil soap was what I had and it worked pretty good.  Shooting bees with warm soapy water will kill them.  So Murphy's was a good alternative. 

A few more gardening lessons learned the hard way

The mini greenhouses we made seemed to be working so well and produced many healthy looking little cucumber plants.  The cukes were beautiful and I was just getting ready to permanently remove the tops from the mini greenhouses.  But I waited a day too late.  They ended up getting baked and wilting which was a big disappointment.  A few may survive but this was another one of those lessons the hard way.   But something was learned at least.

The other big disappointment was these low pressure soaker hoses that I spent so much time installing.  Once mulch goes on top of them, they stop working and clog up with the dust from the mulch.  A complete waste of time and money.  Fortunately these (Mr. Drip / Mr. Soaker Hose) were bought from Amazon and I'll be able to get a refund.  It will just be a real pain to pull them out of the dirt and put them in a box to return. 

It's virtually impossible to find others using them.  One person said hers stopped working which made me suspicious and had me monitoring the hoses closely until I determined they were complete junk.  Now it's back to the drawing board to come up with a hands free irrigation system to keep our plants watered.

All's well in the hives and bearded swarm

This morning was inspection morning for the honey bees.  Both hives were inspected and I'm happy to report that it went very well and was a lot less chaotic than the first inspections.  The smoker worked great (after I made some repairs) and stayed lit the entire inspection.  Kept the bees a lot calmer than last time when I had trouble with the smoker.

The highlight was I was able to find both queens and identified brood and larvae (baby bees).  Only one hive beetle was discovered between both hives although there could have been more.  Bees all looked very healthy and strong so it was a good inspection.   And an absolutely beautiful morning to be doing the inspection. The frames are filling up with nectar and pollen.  I'll probably need add another deep brood box to each hive next inspection.

But the big news for today was the massive swarm that showed up as I was looking out the window this afternoon.  I couldn't believe it.  It wasn't the couple hundred bees that I saw yesterday.  It was more like 10,000 to 20,000 bees.  A giant swarm.  After coming in and flying around in a cloud for awhile they formed up into a beard at the entrance to the swarm trap.  They've been there for about 3 hours and hopefully they'll get all settled inside before dark.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

It was a wonderful experience standing in the middle of the swarm as they flew in.  This is fun.

If at first you don't succeed ...

Looks like the tweaks to the home swarm trap work !  Next morning I was pleasantly surprised to see all the interested visitors.  Hopefully this won't be another one night stand.

Planting seeds, monarch butterfly plants and a new plan for catching bees

I'm kind of skipping over a lot of projects lately so there's a few things missing in the blog.   It's been quite busy.

2nd attempt at a successful swarm trap

First thing is I'm reading a fascinating book called "Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley.  It is based on research by some of the top bee scientists / animal behaviorists that describe how the honey bees make collective decisions and how they communicate.  It completely leaves you in awe.  One chapter talked about all the experiments that were done to determine how bees choose their homes when they swarm.  After reading this chapter I made several modifications to the swarm trap in front of our home and moved it up into a tree as well as changed the direction it was facing and made it more desirable to honey bees.  Now we'll see how this works out.  Only down side is if I catch a swarm I'll have to retrieve it with a ladder which will be a bit tricky.

Today we planted seeds in our miniature greenhouses we made from items bought at the dollar store.  My earlier attempts at planting seeds were not thought out and researched as carefully as I should have.  This time the seedlings will have a better chance.  However it looks like we're running a takeout restaurant with these containers lined up on top of the rain barrels.  The seeds will be more protected and controlled in that humidity and water delivery will be accurate.  Not quite sure if I want to put them in direct sun as it may cook the seeds.  Still working out a few details.

milkweed

milkweed (on the right)

Not long ago I was at a friends home who had raised beds with flowers that attracted monarch butterflies.  There were butterflies everywhere so I inquired what type of plants they were.  They were milkweed and the more I researched milkweed the more intrigued I became with this plant which is not easily obtained.  But thanks to the internet, a dozen plants were located not far from where we live.  Milkweed is also loved by honey bees and supposedly makes top grade honey which will be another benefit.

The raised beds are as healthy as can be and the plants are growing like mad.  I cooked up a 55 gallon barrel of delicious compost tea for the plants and spent the other day going all around the yard feeding plants.  A giant tea bag was made from a paint strainer bag and it was loaded up with compost and some rock dust.  After dipping and hanging in the barrel, an aerator was added to keep the tea oxygenated.  I used an electric pump to fill the barrel with rainwater from the rain barrel setup.  The resulting bacteria in the compost tea needs a couple ounces of molasses a day for food.  In the near future the plan is to hook the compost barrel up to a garden hose with a pump so it can be easily applied anywhere using a garden hose.

Tomorrow it's time to inspect the hives and see what's going on in there.  Should be an interesting (and beautiful) day.