Water, Water Everywhere

I got a call from one of my staff about a swarm of bees in the Gaffield Children's Garden at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. (Reminder - Matthaei Botanical Gardens is where I and a number of other beekeepers have our hives.) Staff have seen this "swarm" every day in the garden, and were wondering whether I would want to gather them, or if it was okay to go ahead and exterminate them. Here is a picture of what they are seeing:

All you beekeepers are probably thinking the same thing: this set-up looks pretty much exactly like a bee water dispenser. Honey bees need pebbles or other little islands to rest on while they drink.  Those bees in the picture are part of a stream (pun alert!) of steady customers who've found a water source a bit closer than Fleming Creek.

About a hundred bees typically hang out in this spot at any given time. The reason I put "swarm" in quotation marks is that 100 bees is not a swarm. A swarm should have thousands - even tens of thousand - of bees. With a literal million honey bees living in the dozen or more hives at the botanical gardens site, exterminating the hundred that are drinking in the children's garden might piss the bees off, but it won't solve the problem. We'd do better just to make this location a little less ideal for honey bee to drink. Removing the pebbles and having a deeper pool of water would do the trick. We'll just take care to do it early in the morning, before the bees head out to do their work.

Or we could just put up a sign to help kids and their parents understand what's happening here, and to warn them to tread with caution.

Moving the Brood Box

I had a strange set-up with the Botanical Gardens hive because the deep was on top of the medium. That was because of combining the nuc I created from Ben's deep with the nuc Meghan created in my medium. I checked the girls a few days ago and found that they had virtually moved out of the medium and up into the deep. Knowing that they prefer a deep brood box at the bottom, I went ahead and switched them. It seemed like the right thing to do, since there was really only one frame of brood left in the medium. I felt proud of my more advanced management while at the same time hoping I wasn't making a newbie error. Especially when the medium box fell off the stand, knocking the frames out and causing a great deal of angry buzzing. I think I did the right thing: when I went to feed them yesterday, they were much more active, and I saw many of the foragers bringing in big knobs of bright yellow pollen, a sure indicator of eggs and larvae.

The girls had hardly a drop of capped honey, so I switched my feeding regime from a 1:1 sugar:water ratio (which stimulates wax production) to a 2:1 sugar:water ratio (which stimulates honey production). So I felt proud also for knowing what to do about that.

Here's hoping the goldenrod and aster bloom will allow them to make enough honey to carry them through the winter. Early indications are that the goldenrod bloom will be as excessive and exuberant as all the blooms have been this beautiful season.

Feed the Bees

I discovered a very easy way to make bee food. This method works much better than the Ziploc bag approach, which can result in a trunk full of fermented bee syrup, stinking up your car and causing you to wrong your teenager.

Clean and Easy Bee Syrup

(1) Add water and sugar in equal parts to a quart-sized water bottle.

(2) Shake until dissolved.

(3) Decant into bee feeder. (My feeder involves mason jars with holes in the lid.)

What to Do, What to Do?

It's a thing among beekeepers to talk about how everybody does things differently. Every experienced beekeeper will tell you that if you ask five beekeepers a question, you'll get six answers. Here is a typical exchange:

"Mr. Beekeeper, when should I smoke my bees?"

"Well, Joe thinks you oughtn't smoke them at all. Jane thinks you only ought to smoke them when you're taking off honey. I smoke 'em every time. It's up to you." And this conversation repeats itself, whether it's about pest management, equipment, feeding, winterizing, or anything else.

Research would be good. There is almost certainly a right answer to most of these questions, or at least a technique that would predict a better outcome for the hive. The problem is, there are so many variables in nature that nobody can actually figure out cause and effect. Instead of controlled experimentation, we have passions born of anecdotal evidence (aka "years of experience"). We need a few scientists and a funding source.

We had a guest beekeeper at class who said that recent research indicated that bees recover 25% more quickly when they've been smoked than when they haven't. I didn't even ask him where he read it, or who funded this research, or how robust was the finding. I just knelt at his feet and lit up.

Good Advice

Our teacher sent 42 (yes, 42) tips for managing your hive. Some of the tips were actually multiple tips grouped together. Here are my six favorites, in reverse order:

(A)void rolling bees.

If bees come up, gently smoke them.

(My husband asks: how can you smoke them if you haven't rolled them?)

Remember that heat rises.

Do not burn yourself or anyone else.

Do not eat bananas before working your hive.