Sunday, June 19, 2011

Queen Clarification (for Cathy)

Happy Father's Day to all the current and future Fathers of the world (especially those who read this blog)!  I would wish a Happy Father's Day to all of the bee-daddies, but they die shortly after they mate with a queen...not quite a royal wedding. 

Honeybees only come in three varieties: queens, workers, and drones.  The males (drones) remain highly regulated by the colony because they serve only one purpose...mating.  Also, little known fact, drones do not have stingers!  Otherwise, the majority of a hive composition is females: queen and her workers.  Queens and workers start their lives in the same way but things change three days into their life.  The food of choice for both in the beginning is royal jelly.  Royal jelly is produced within the hive as a food for these youngsters.  After day three, the workers are weened off of the royal jelly and begin a different diet with more proteins and carbs.  The virgin queen continues to feed on only royal jelly which allows her to grow larger and enables her to develop reproductive organs.  A queen cell will be much bigger than the rest (will get a picture when they start making them).  Queens only get one shot at mating, so they make it count by reproducing with several drones in special swarm of queens and drones!  Not to get too involved with the details, a much more technical explanation will be found in any of the books I have recommended on my profile.  Unfortunately, due to the influx of Africanized honey bees (A. m. scutellata) in the state of Florida, the common practice is to replace your queen annually with one mated at a reputable apiary.  This prevents one of your own virgin queens from going and mixing it up with a swarm of Africanized drones and end up producing the species from within your own hives!

Now for the real purpose of this posting:  I received feedback a reader...who will NOT remain anonymous...my mother-in-law...who said that she could not find the queen in the picture provided.  So here is clarification:

The queen is circled in green...if you are still wondering.
In summary, it is a good but short life for the males of the colony...it just goes to show that behind every "he-bee" is a strong queen bee ready to rip off his reproductive organs and allow him to pass on from this life.

Happy Father's Day!

Friday, June 17, 2011

The Colony Grows

Colony #1 and Colony #2 continue their growth at an amazing rate!  South Florida FINALLY received some well needed rain and the plants began to bloom again.  Today's hive inspection came as the worst type: surprise.  Contrary to popular belief, there never were many (if any) surprise inspections at the Coast Guard Academy...except that one time I got busted with having DVDs in my room as a freshman (pure contraband as a freshman...the movies? Master and Commander and The Nightmare Before Christmas).  Alas, I digress.

Purpose must be present during every hive inspection.  Today's inspection looked for continued growth...new brood development (that is where the bees make more bees...like a little bee nursery).  The comb is getting drawn out in the new frames and there is new nectar/honey/royal jelly stores in the hives!  Oh, and did I mention...I SAW A QUEEN TODAY!!!!!!!!
 Yeah, no big deal.  Just kidding!  I was so excited I almost dropped the frame she was on!  She is much bigger than the other bees...it was AMAZING!
Colony #2: The honeybees are drawing out comb!  You can also see bits of food they have stored.

Colony #1: Worker brood.  This is good stuff since these bees are the future survival of this colony!

Colony #2: Straight on shot of new comb!

Colony #1: Another shot of worker brood.

Colony #2:  Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to introduce you to the queen!  Not gonna lie, she is HUGE!  I am so proud.  The shot is blurry as she tried to escape back to shade.

Colony #1

The smoker...ready to rock (see, I did learn a lesson).

Colony #2

As always, I appreciate the comments, jokes, and questions both verbally and through email.  It appears the next box on Colony #2 will be a honey super!  I think we still have a bit of expansion to do with Colony #1.   Of course, I cannot make this call...it is all up to the royal highness...the QUEEN!!!!!!

We have officially created a business to cover the bees and their products when we start producing. Introducing... Bueno Bees, LLC.  With that, please feel free to email me at: buenobees@gmail.com

Also, I am sad to report that a bee lost its life today in my pants.  Yes, she climbed up, I smacked her to prevent any higher exploration, and my thigh rightfully received a nice sting.  It wasn't too bad since I inherited thunder thighs (from dad) and barely felt it. 
 Have a wonderful weekend, and keep an eye out for your favorite little pollinators! 

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Bee Productive

Long live the queen!  At least...well...I can only assume the queens still reside in their hives happy and healthy since the rest of the colony continues to build in their new home.  I have not seen the queens yet.  The blame lies in my novice nature with the bees.  I can find workers, drones, larvae, and bees in all the stages of their life...just not the queen.  I am sure she will pop up soon enough and when she does, I hope to capture a picture for all of you to see!

On another note, I am appreciating the feedback for names on the hives.  So far I have had names like "Beeopolis" and "Bernsting"...and "Michigan"...keep them coming!  Also, being a novice blogger, I finally enabled comments...so post them in order to ensure all the good (and bad) names make it for consideration!

This week marked a momentous (yet premature) event in the big hive's history.  I collected about a pint of honeycomb from the roof of the hive.  The bees were already building on the roof and that is wasted effort since I want them to build in the hive.  They are making progress in drawing out the frames in the hives, but they were spending way too much energy on their ceiling honey stores...so like a good beekeeper, I stole it!  I hope this encourages growth within the frames which will equate to easier collection in the future.  You will know as soon as I get my first crop of honey!

This is an old picture from the day I first opened the hives.  All of the comb you see was at least twice the size...which means WAY too much attention was being given to this sweet temptation.

Raw honeycomb at its finest.  When you can see the honeycomb shapes so clearly that means they were never fully capped and therefore full of honey.  Yes, we had some nectar mix in with the honey.

CLOSE-UP!

Some cappings were compromised on the extraction from the hive and thus began a natural honey flow.

The final product.
Next I must melt and filter this wax for further use.  I am thinking maybe candles or soap.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures from this adventure.  There were no stings...but there was a nice (maybe crazy) lady who basically sat and watched me work the bees this week.  We spoke like old friends...I estimate her to be about a 70 year old black woman.  She was sweet as can be and asked me questions about the bees as she sat by the canal and enjoyed her afternoon snack of mixed nuts and San Pellegrino water on the outside of the fenced-in garden.  At the end of the conversation I asked her for her name and introduced myself.  She said, "I know who you are!  I've known you since you were a baby!  You probably don't remember me, but your mama and daddy and wife have bet a lot of money on my name!  I'm Gladys."  It was weird, yes, but refreshing because she was really enjoying her day.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

A Lesson in Smokers (why it is good to have one nearby at ALL times)

I am definitely no artist.
A picture is better than a thousand words...that's my post!

Just kidding!  I will get to the sketch later, but first an update on this week with the new bees. 

Tuesday almost brought heartache as I attended to the hives.  The bees never vacated the NUC (pronounced NOOK...it is a nucleus hive)!  There were some in the new hive, but the NUC was teeming with bees.  Once again, I did not see the queen, but I learned something new.  When moving bees from a NUC to a hive, you must remove the NUC from the picture all together and the new hive must be in the same place as the NUC was previously.  Why?  Bees are creatures of habit.  They create flight paths and will follow them exactly to and from the hive.  So what was the solution?  Remove the cover of the new hive...pick up the NUC...turn it over the new hive...and shake!  A majority of the bees fell right into the new hive and I quickly covered it.  Then I moved the NUC well out of the picture.  Two days later, the bees were hard at work in their new home and the NUC was completely empty.  No stings were awarded!

A quick note about this endeavor: I did not use my smoker since it was so quick and the bees were pretty docile.  This hive has not started producing honey, so there is not a whole lot to protect.  Now for Friday...

Friday was a beautiful day!  The sun shone bright and hot in the sky.  A moderate breeze kept the temperature reasonable.  The goal of this trip was to photograph the bee's progress for you, the reader.  Instead, here is what happened:  I arrived at the hives ready to go.  I approached the big hive...which I shall name later (please give me ideas...I need to name the hives so you will know exactly which one I am talking about...).  Anyways, the bee activity out front was normal.  Foragers were coming and going and everything seemed right with the picture. 

Unfortunately for me, I had not lit off my smoker and was a little cocky about the whole situation.  I gently lifted the cover and flipped it over to find thousands of bees clinging to it!  There is a bit of comb built on the lid and it is full of honey!  Before I could react, three bees came directly onto my head and ear...within microseconds it had happened.  The stings were immediate and I decided that was enough for the day.  I carefully replaced the cover trying to not smash any bees and get out of there.  I calmly walked away back towards my car (believe what you want, but I was not about to go running away and get chased by a bunch of ticked off bees!).  I got back into my car and removed the stingers.  Needless to say, my ego was mostly sore.  My head and ear were fine, just a little tender. 

Now for the take away: I will keep my smoker lit and nearby anytime I am working the bees (even if I don't plan to do a whole lot with them).  A calm hive makes for a calm beekeeper.  I plan to go back out on Wednesday afternoon to scrape off the extraneous comb and keep the bees contained to the frames! 

Until then, remember to bee kind to your neighborhood pollinators!