Bee pictures from my old home town!!!!

www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=836

Saw the name of my old home town pop up on a beekeepers forum and had to check it out - especially when macro photography was involved!!! Check out the amazing pictures! See Mom - you need to get a hive in your back yard - it would scare off Geoff next door and this guy could come take some pictures for you!!!

Rain

This morning I headed down to the hives to see what was happening. It was raining quite heavily so I knew the bees wouldn't be flying. All was quiet down there. The bees in 'Flora' were busy housekeeping while there was bad weather and were cleaning out bits of wax and a dead bee. Hive 2 (still to be named...hmmmm what to name it????) was just quiet....I didn't lift the lid or anything as I didn't want to chill it. I just left them be. Maybe I'll give them some more syrup tonight if the rain keeps up. 'Flora' isn't taking much syrup now that there is pollen around but if it rains for several days they won't be able to get out anyway....but then maybe they will focus on comb building and getting the Queen laying...

I finished reading the novel 'The Secret Life of Bees' today. Wonderful novel! One part puzzled me though - and that was near the end, when August ordered a new Queen from a Queen supplier. The thing is, August is a beekeeper with HUNDREDS of hives and in her position, would have easily been able to requeen one single hive from one of the other hives sooooo easily! There would have been no need to buy a Queen from a supplier! Or the hive itself would have requeened itself....it puzzled me.

I caught a robber!

Val - I caught that Huge black and white bugger that was flying around my hives yesterday! Remember that massive waspy hornetty thing??? I was sat down by my hives for a while this evening watching them all come back for the night and that nasty thing was trying to rob syrup (not that they have any left) but I got it with my slipper! Ha!!!! I felt so good :) I saved my girls from that robber :)

The bees aren't going to get much flying in the next couple of days if its going to rain as much as they say it will....but we really need the rain and the benefits to the pollen and plants around here will be worth it so thats good.

I really love sitting down by the hives and watching them in the evenings - they are so calm and quiet at night......you just hear them flying passed you as they come home - like aeroplanes landing and then they just walk on in....

Lloyd told me tonight that he loves havng the bees here and that he's so glad we got them - that he thinks it was a really good idea of mine :)

See - I do have good ideas some times ;)

Why is not more being done?

www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=219092

Interesting discussion on why not more isn't being done about the decline in honey bees.

What are YOUR thoughts?

A message to Vals Dad

Last night I got to introduce my bees to some friends to the first time. Val and her family came over for a while and we showed them the hives. I have a few witnesses to prove that Val practically agreed there and than that she will come over and dress up in all the gear - veil, hat, gloves etc etc and join in with me while I do a hive inspection.

Yesterday I lifted up the lid and showed them inside the hive and Val hopefully was able to see that the bees are actually quite gentle and aren't swarming around all over the place. In fact I don't think we were bothered once by a bee the whole time Val was here last night. So hopefully Val likes bees a little bit more than she did before.

So Val is coming to do an inspection with me and I will take pictures or video it and blog it and so Vals Dad can see it on the blog :) Hello Vals Dad - I have no idea of your name so you are 'Vals Dad' :)

Val - you can't let your Dad down now - so you HAVE to do it :) If Friday night is postponed we could do it then and a little alcohol could be provided beforehand hahahahaha :)

Hive inspections :)

Sam and Abby doing their hive inspection this afternoon :)

A gift for the bees......

This afternoon we went out for a walk and the children picked some dandelions. They know the bees love them, so they decided to go and give some of them to the bees. We were heading down to the bees to check on them anyway, so they put a couple of dandelions on the landing platforms for the bees. I'm not sure this is actually a good idea lol but I'm not going to stop the children being actively involved with the bees and I can brush them off later when I go down there and just tell them that the bees did it (if the bees themselves don't do it anyway lol) or the wind!

The children were so happy to be giving them to the bees that I didn't want to spoil their fun!

We sat and watched the bees come and go for a while and it was only a couple of seconds before the guard bees came out to investigate the dandelions. There were two dead bees on the 'porch' already and some bits of wax so the bees had been doing some housekeeping this morning anyway. And now there were these flowers in their way lol! But it wasn't long before some bees were on the flowers enjoying the pollen before them :)

Queen cups

I noticed a few odd shaped cells on some of my frames so I asked on my forum about them and posted a picture. I was told that they are Queen cups. You can see one in the picture above...the larger white cell - almost bubble shaped with another slightly to the right and lower but not quite as well formed.

Play cells, also known as queen cups, are the little cells that look like acorn cups, that appear as though the bees started building a queen cell, then changed their mind and curved in the entrance to be, what appears to be, the diameter of a worker cell. These cups are always around and become part of the furniture so it is easy to forget to look inside them but you do so at your peril because they are the real thing.
"

I was a bit concerned about them to begin with but have been reassured that they can be quite common and that they aren't a sign that I need to requeen - in fact they can be a sign that, pm plastic frames, that th bees are a little unsure of themselves and are taking their time to get used to the frames. I'm going to give them another week alone in the hives and do another inspection next Saturday, weather permitting. Another week will allow them time to get some capped brood and give me time to see some imrovements and notce some eggs, larvae and brood in all its stages hopefully and then we will see that the Queens are there even if we can't see the Queens themselves.


Here are just some of the responses I got that were so helpful:

Queen cups are something the bees do all the time and it mostly does not go any further. Queen cells are something different. They are the peanut looking things that already have a larvae inside and are sealed up.

After only 6 days of having this package, it is too soon to see anything. There are probably eggs already in the cells, but you cannot see them yet until you are trained to find them.

Do not worry about anything now. I think you need to give them time.

and

Some beekeepers were taught (incorrectly, IMO) to solve every problem by getting a new queen. That's matracide not beekeeping. I see you are using plastic foundation--that tells me alot about how your bees will progress. Bees reared on wood can refuse to work plastic to the point of swarming rather than building comb. Queens often hesitate to lay in plastic. Plastic foundation creates some very unique experiences where comb building is concerned. Some bees just like to have a queen cup available at all times. They make them, tear them out, and rebuild in a different place on the same comb or a different frame entirely. Usually you don't see queen cups being drawn before the comb is fully drawn on a frame but the plastic foundation maybe throwing the bees off and they're blaming the queen.

At this point wait and see is the best option--if they cap it, then decide what to do.

and

Well I am still a new bee, but after I installed my packages, I did not disturb the hive for 10 days. When I opened things up I found the marked queens but "thought" I saw eggs. White mini eggs on a white backround was tricky. I just took some deep breaths and 2 weeks after installation, I checkd and there was capped brood...Now they are going full tilt boogie...

Just give them some alone time Wink

Intruder alert!

When an intruder or disturbance is detected, the guard bees point their stingers in the direction of the intruder and open the plates that overlap to cover the abdomen, all the time furiously fanning their wings. Under the last segment of the abdomen lies the scent gland which produces the alarm phermone, a chemical scent that communicates danger to the hive. As the alarm scent is spread throughout the hive, more bees release alarm scent and begin to fan until the characteristic "buzzing" sound of an upset hive become audible.

Pollen

Can you spot the bees with pollen on their legs? And in the pictures you can clearly see the pollen in the comb the bees have drawn in the last week. The different colours come from the different plants. I assume some is from the pollen patties too.

Close up of a frame....

Hive after lifting off the lid

This is what it looks like when you lift off the inner lid....the bees quietly going about their business around the central frames - they are working mainly on the inner four or five frames so far.

First hive inspection

Tonight we did our first hive inspection. We wiated until the winds finally died down - it has been so windy for days! Tonight it is finally calm and it was ideal as this evening was warm and sunny and lovely. The bees were calm and didn't seem to mind us at all!

The inspections went well. We didn't find the Queens at all - kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack! We know its quite common not to find the Queens the first time - so next week we will look for signs of the Queens presence which will be easier to look for the second week.

We also didn't find any burr comb. But the bees have been busy inside and have drawn lots of comb on the frame and have been busy collecting pollen and filling the comb with the pollen. As I checked the frames and looked for the Queens, Lloyd took pictures for me. It was fascinating looking through the hives and watching the bees at their work! We didn't see any signs of mites at all and the bees seemed happy and healthy - we saw several with plenty of pollen on their legs! Thats a great sign!!!

I'm so glad they ahve accepted the plastic frames :) painting the extra wax onto them and spraying the syrup obviously paid off! And the Queens were released with no problems :)

Bumblebee visitor...

This little guy was visiting was my flowerbed this afternoon. Bumblebees are quite different to honeybees. They make the hives under the ground in old holes left by mice or other creatures. They only stay together for one season.

The feeder...

Yummy this sugar syrup tastes GOOD!!!!!

This is the feeder that the bees empty every day!

I think it holds something like 1.4 litres!!! As you can see, they LOVE it and are constantly drinking at it :)

All tucked in

Lloyd and I walk down to say goodnight to the bees each night. It's interesting because they are all in by about 8:30pm. Only a couple of bees are flying around outside. Almost all are inside the hive with maybe one or two on the porch and one or two on the feeders. Hive two (as usual) is the first to 'go to bed'.

We always creep around the back and lift up the back of the top lid to sneak a peak inside. Inside the top cover you can see the pollen patties and the hole in the centre of the inner cover that leads down into the hive and the frames. there is usually a few bees eating the patties and a few bees crawling around the hole...sometimes a LOT of bees crawling around the hole. Amazing to see inside the hive - makes me excited to get in there and have a real look inside at what they have been working on in there - to see what they have done to the frames - see if they have drawn comb on the pierco plastic frames despite what I have heard. I hope my hard work at painting on the plastic and spraying them all has helped the bees accept them.

I wonder if I will get burr comb and I wonder how the Queens are doing and if they will have laid anything....(burr comb is comb that the bees create anywhere they shouldn't - ie anywhere except on the frames - so it can be between frames or on lids or between frames and hive box etc etc....you have to remove it so the bees learn to draw only on the frames and stay within the frames, but the burr comb is useful because you can bring it home and study it and look at it for eggs etc to see if your Queen is laying so it isn't useless. I'm kind of hoping to get some - I can photograph it :)

I wonder.

The bees are so clean and tidy. Last night there was a dead bee on the inner cover. Tonight it is gone. The bees have cleaned it away.

We have refilled the feeders and I wonder how long this syrup will last. As we were refilling the feeders, there were several bees sat on the side of the feeder and we stood and watched them for a while - their little red tongues sliding across the rim of the feeder drinking the syrup up - it was so amazing - I wished I had my camera and macro lens to catch that!

I look forward to saying goodnight to the bees - they seem much calmer at night to me - almost gentler and nicer to be around.

In the mornings they always seem so busy lol - but in the evenings they seem more laid back lol. Ok maybe I'm going nuts lol. I think its time for me to go to bed now - goodnight!

Good article :)

www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2008/04/28/buzz_grows_over_beekeeping/

Wednesday

Today onwards, I could open up the hive and check that the Queens have been released from their boxes. This is done by the worker bees eating through the little bits of marshmallow that we placed in the hole where the cork was. (you can see the cork in some of the pictures posted earlier in the blog)

However, today although its lovely and sunny and warm, its REALLY breezy, and far too windy to open up the hives. Bees don't like the wind and don't fly much in it. I've just been down to the hives to check on the bees. 'Flor' has several bees out on the porch and around the feeder and a few flying about, but hive two is quieter with just a few around the feeder.

I wonder if hive two will always be quieter.

I was telling Val about how hive 2 had me worried on Monday. On Monday morning I was getting very concerned as hive two was so very quiet. I was starting to wonder if there was a reason it was so different to hive 1. Right from the beginning it was different. The bees were quieter and easier to install. Hive one were flying about and hive two just went straight in and were quiet. Just getting on with settling in.

Hive 1 has been active - lots of flying about, lots of being out on the porch and out on the feeder, and lots of flying about. Hive two has only ever had a few bees out at one time....just a little housekeeping here and there. Yet the sugar syrup has been going down at the same rate, so I knew the bees were ok inside and they were drinking and getting their fumagillin that they needed.

Anyway, by Monday I decided to ask other beekeepers about it. The first beek mentioned that it could be a problem with the Queen in hive 2 - perhaps she had died and I need to reQueen as soon as possible for the hive to survive! This of course worried me!!! I decided that as soon as I got back from taking Abigail to drama class, I would open up the hive (two days earlier than planned) and check the Queen.

Other beekeepers though said that they had had two hives that had acted in a similar way - one very active and one very quiet. They found that when they opened the hives up, the quiet hive was just doing more inside the hive and the active hive was doing less inside the hive. Both Queens were fine...just hives acting differently and this is why its so important to have a minimum of two hives as a beginner so that you can compare the two and it's less worrying when something like this happens!

Anyway, we took Abigail to drama and got home around 2pm to find BOTH hives VERY active!!!! Worry over!!! Hive 2 was just as active as Flora!!! Bees flying about all over the place being busy buzzy bees :) So I decided not to disturb the bees and left them alone.

I will open the hive and do my first inspection probably on Friday. Depending on the weather....

Oh and the bees drink sooo much of the sugar syrup! The feeders we have are huge and yet we filled them up yesterday morning almost full and they were mety by last night! Abigail couldn't believe it! Considering the size of a bee it's amazing how much they get through! I know they are in sunlight but surely evaporation can't explain much!! And no they aren't leaking because the angle of the hive would show proof of leaking....so the bees are drinking it!!! Incredible!!!! But now the medicine is no longer in the feeders, we don't have to have the boxes on the front any more.

What with the 5 hummingbird feeders and the 2 bee feeders, we are getting through a LOT of sugar each week in this house!!!!

I think she'd live down there if she could!

Housekeeping!

These pictures show the bees in Flora (hive 1) doing their housekeeping. They have been sweeping their all the bits onto their 'porch' from inside the hive - including dead bees and dying bees....that they then slowly push off the porch onto the grass the in front of the hive.

It's fascinating (and kind of gross and funny at the same time) to watch!

Abby and the bees :)

Abigail LOVES the bees :) This morning she spent some times down by the hives with me watching them doing their housekeeping :) She is desperate to feed them syrup from her hands so we may try that later today :) She is quite happy to sit right up up close touching the hive. If you click to make the top picture bigger you can see a bee flying in front of her :) Abby thinks it's hilarious that the bees carry the sick and dying bees out of the hive even before they are actually quite dead!!

Putting the bees in the hive :)

Ok everyone I've had enough jokes about 'the man in the yellow hat' from Curious George...and 'Jane in the jungle' etc etc....I know I look dorky in the hat and stupid outfit hahahaha - the hat is the beehat that goes under a veil and I am not a hat wearing kinda gal but the bees were getting stuck in my hair so I tied my hair back and stuck the hat on. And I'm wearing light colours because bees don't mind them and are less likely to sting you...and I am not bothering to buy a beesuit so when I am going into the hive I will wear these light jeans and the light jacket (I don't wear these light colours normally because I don't like wearing light colours lol as you can see they don't do much for me lol hahahahaha) All I can say is I look better in this stupid outfit than I would in a beesuit and hat and veil and gloves all kitted out!

Oh and yep I sound dorky and the commentary is crappy and and I hate the way I sound on camera and I could go on and on about how I hate seeing me on camera lol but I do want you to see the movie so here you go!

Thank you to my movie maker Son Chris who filmed the whole thing yesterday and then spent last night editing all the little clips into one movie for me and adding it to youtube for me this morning :)

Need practice!

It isn't easy to get lids back onto the hive without hurting the bees!!! They move so fast and they are everywhere!!! Hopefully in future they won't be quite so active as they were tonight! But I don't want to hurt them and I was moving slowly and gently but I still managed to hurt a few (as you can see in this picture!) the problem (apart from killing and maiming my poor little bees) with hurting them is that it sets off the pheromones that makes the rest of the colony angry and makes them more likely to attack and sting you.

The gooey stuff is actually a pollen patty and is used to feed the bees until pollen plants are available in the area naturally to the bees. Once the inner hive cover was in place I moved the pollen patty over towards the hole in the centre of the hive cover so the bees could find it and feed on it.

Still, in the picture if you click on it you can enjoy the delights of seeing me surrounded by my wonderful bees as I worked on hive number one.

Getting the Queen out of the tube.....

.....and keeping the rest of the bees IN the tube ;)


(don't forget to click on the pics to see them BIGGER!!!)

One of my Queens in her cage.

This is my Queen from my 'Flora' hive. We installed this hive first tonight. Both Queens were alive and doing well and we uncorked them and popped a marshmallow in to allow them time to get to know the worker bees before they are released into the hive. I will check they are released in a few days.

Installing the packages went really well :)

I videoed it and Chris is sorting out the editing and I

will upload that as soon as I can - I didn't want to just do a minute long video so we are uploading to youtube and then will add that to my blog :)

The bees kept getting in my hair so I had to wear a hat lol! But I am so proud of myself because I didn't wear gloves or veil or anything - just a hat to keep my hair from catching the poor little bees!

First set of bees are in!

Oh my Gawd!!! That was SERIOUSLY COOL!!!!!

Me and my girls :)

Here I am with ALL my girls :)

The human kind AND the bee kind :)

And yes, as you can probably tell, I WAS able to get an extra package. We got half way home from Spruce Grove and got the phone call to say that they had had a cancellation and they had a spare package for us. Needless to say, we quickly turned the car around and raced back to Spruce Grove to pick up our second set of bees :)

So here we I am with my bees in their tubes! Now they are in the cool of the garage waiting until this evening to be housed into the new homes in the hives which are ready for them down by the pond. Everything is ready. I go in every now and then to give them a spray down with sugar water. The weather is perfect. Their syrup is in the feeders ready and I've added some fumagillin to treat them for nosema. I've painted on some extra melted beeswax to the pierco foundation. I've also sprayed sugar water onto the foundation too. I hope they take to it. I hope the queens are ok.

There is still no blossom out over here and no pollen anywhere so as well as the sugar syrup I am feeding them, I bought two pollen patties to feed them. I bought the extra hive too but had plenty of supers and frames so only bought a few extras.

Susannahs friend dropped her home from a sleepover today and it turned out that her dad worked in a honey farm fixing equipment for a few years and picked up quite a bit of information there so it was really interesting talking with him this morning and he was quite interested to see the pierco plastic frames and see the packaging tubes my bees came in.....quite different to what he experienced!

Well, my bees are here :) Safe and well :) it's exciting to watch them feed through the tube when I spray them. I can't wait to hive them tonight and watch them take their orientation flights. then I have to be patient and leave them be for a few days until I check on the Queen on Tuesday or Wednesday. Can I bee that patient?

I will blog later when I put them in the hive!

In position!

Bees need to be close to water - they need water to make their honey, and if you don't provide them with water they will often find it in your neighbours pool or bird bath - and your neighbours often aren't happy about that ;) - bees often seem to prefer smelly water (chlorine counts but pond water does also) so they should be happy beside our pond. They also like shelter from the wind - so they should be very happy where I have place the hive as down there they will be sheltered from all the strong winds that come through here.

The sun is down there all day long too so they should be busy bees out flying all day long!

The hive is only one box high right now because thats the brood box. Six to 8 weeks after the bees arrive, I will add a second box (called a super). Then it will start to look more like the beehives most people recognise!

Don't forget to click on the pictures to see them bigger!

My Hive!

Click on the pictures to see them bigger!
I have been painting my hives and getting them ready for next week. I am only decorating the brood box which is basically the bottom box - although the bottom two will both basically be brood boxes that the Queen will roam around in laying brood in.....but I am only decorating the bottom ones this much and the rest will only be decorated white with just the bees on - so it will look like flower gardens with lots of bees flying around. But this is hive 1 and hive two will have a different flower garden :)

There is no point decorating the top supers (boxes) because they will be interchanged so much that the design would get messed up but the bottom brood boxes will pretty much stay the same.

It is complete except that I have to varnish on top of the stickers in the morning :)

I'm pleased with how they turned out :)

Once they are varnished and dry I will take them down to their proper place by the pond and that is where they will sit ready for my bees to arrive next week :) OMG this time next week they will be here - woohoo!

I wrote to Ed today!!!

I wrote to Premier today!!! I wrote via his website and I have no idea who reads his emails or who bothers to reply or if they even do.......it's not a very well put together letter - not very well thought out lol as I'm tired and wasn't even thinking about writing one - just that the thought hit me and I went for it hahahahaha but here is what I wrote:




The Provincial Government is constantly being criticised for environmental issues in the news.

There is a simple step that the government could take that could make a big difference to the environment.

The honeybees are dying out globally. This is going to have devastating effects on our foods and crops - on Alberta agriculture - on world agriculture. On food prices. On life.

Alberta has more beekeepers than any other province - we make more honey than any other province.

http://www.albertabeekeepers.org/

One simple way the provincial government could help in a simple yet HUGE scale is to let the road sides and highway central medians return to a more natural habitat - let the grass grow longer - let the dandelions and clover grow longer - stop using insecticides. Encourage Albertans to let their lawns be less than perfect, grow more wild flowers, appreciate dandelions, let bees thrive, encourage urban beekeeping, encourage schools to have hives,

Letting our road sides become more natural would allow them to be more beautiful, would lower costs AND would encourage the bees - AND would show that the government DOES care about something as SMALL as the honey bee but something as BIG as the fact that these tiny creatures could die out as soon as in the next decade and that if that happens ALL our lives are going to be effected on a GRAND scale.

This amazing province of ours is based on Agriculture and farming - even our cattle need to eat the crops - without the bees to pollinate the Alfalfa and hay what will happen to the cattle? Without the bees to pollinate the pumpkins, Halloween just won't be the same without those Jack'o'lanterns. Without those fruits ice cream just won't taste the same now will it?

They say every third bite of food we taste is pollinated by bees.

Perhaps this simple, small change could be the next BIG thing that Alberta could take a stand against.

Thank you for listening.

Here is one of MANY videos you might take time to listen to over at Youtube on this very subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIUo3STj6tw