When will the rain end?

Hi! It's been a while. There really hasn't been all that much to report though. It's been raining for EVER, it feels like...

We've got a second brood chamber on! That pretty much means the stack of boxes that are my beehive just increased by one. But beekeepers aren't supposed to call them BOXES :). They are "deeps" (because brood chambers are the deepest you can buy) for the bottom two, and "supers" (because...um....they are for collecting honey and that's SUPER?) after that. Supers can be deeps too, or they can be shorter than the deeps. Mine are "mediums" because in class we learned that a deep full of honey can weigh 80-100 pounds. Can you see me lifting that off the top on a regular basis? Yeah right. You can get even smaller than mediums too, but I sort of went middle of the road. Besides, with all this rain, I wonder if we'll get honey anyway this year.

I've managed to take some cool pictures and have some adventures this past month, but we've had some modem issues, so I haven't been able to post so frequently. I've caught you up to date this evening, I believe. I'm itching to visit those girls again already. They were out in full force this afternoon when the sun briefly peeked out. So were we! It was quite funny...I was out checking on the girls and cleaning stuff off with the hose in the back yard, our next door neighbor's crew (he owns a landscaping service) had just returned, and the kids were out at the preschool in the back. Whenever that sun popped out, all you heard in our three yards was cheering!! Anyway, they were doing their cleansing flights and pulling in some bright, bright yellow pollen today. I don't know what it was, but I think they were awfully happy. The ones I got close to not only had their pollen baskets full, they had it all over their "faces" and bodies!! One landed on my arm. I fought the urge to scream and flick her off, and she just proceeded to clean off her yellow powder and then flew off. I think they need windshield wipers!

IT'S A GIRLGIRLGIRLGIRLGIRLGIRLGIRL!!!

I've been looking forward to today all week. Last weekend I inspected my hives and discovered a FULL FRAME OF CAPPED BROOD! Uh...what's that you ask? OK, let me back up and give you some "bee math."

Bees start out as eggs, little mini rice grain type eggs stuck to the bottom of the cells.

This lasts 3 days.

Then the egg hatches and becomes a larva. It gets fatter and fatter for the next 5-7 days (depending on what kind of bee it is...queen, drone, worker) as the nurse bees feed it.

The worker bees "cap the brood" or put a skin over the cell on day 8-10 (usually day 9 for workers). During this time, although you cannot see it, the larva spins a cocoon around itself and turns brown and "beelike".

On day 16-24 (20 for workers), the brand new baby bee emerges!!!

So, I discovered capped brood and a lot of it last Wednesday. My bee math led me to believe that if I did an inspection this week I would see new baby bees.

And I was right!!

Last time I went in the hive, there were two little rows of eyes staring at me.

Today, there were FIVE!!!



I found TWO full capped frames of brood today (which means I will have twice the bees in two weeks), two full frames of honey/pollen, and two partially drawn out frames (they are working on building the honeycomb but nothing is in it yet). And that capped brood from last week? It's got new eggs in it! WOW!



I was particularly excited to ACTUALLY SEE THE BROOD HATCHING. Their little heads and eyes were poking out holes in the cell and the workers were trying to help them get out.



There are now fuzzy, smaller, yellow bees in with my Italians. Carnolians are supposed to be dark-colored, but unless these bees darken up, they're actually rather pretty, although they have less striking bands. If I'm right about it, there's one in the lower left corner.


All in all, what a GREAT bee day! Brad was here to see it. I wish Sandy had been here as well, she would have been so excited!! She's going to get QUITE a surprise when she opens her hive next, I think!

Camping and Hive opening

Yes, we did actually go camping. It wasn't fabulous weather (it was cold and windy and a bit wet), and my older daughter accidentally ran over her younger sister with a very large toy truck racing down the hill, but we had a blast. My friend Karen's youngest daughter turned 2 and we had a party for her (there were three families). I think that campground birthdays are the best! We had one for my daughter last summer in NH. People you don't know hear the singing and join in, and the kids get to run around with their color coded glowsticks at night among the fireflies (OK, so it was too cold this time for fireflies, but you get the idea. It's very bohemian. I love it). Our next trip isn't scheduled until July, and already I can't wait.

On to the bees....I'm opening the hive today. I opened up the outer cover on Sunday to discover that for Mother's Day, the girls had built me...erm...a Close Encounters Sculpture? A Bridge to Nowhere? A pantry? I don't know what they think it is, but we humans call it "burr comb" and we remove it because it can cause problems. They built upwards off the foundations and ended it right smack in front of the syrup jar. Actually it was ATTACHED to the jar, but the attachment broke when I had to refill the syrup. It's as though they don't want to move more than a few inches from syrup to comb. So these are my goals:

1. Light the smoker successfully (seriously, I am a failure at pyromania; the only time I have successfully lit it for a good long burn was before I got the bees)
2. Clean up the sculpture thingie (I should listen to see if they're buzzing A-B-G-G-D)
3. Check for larva, pupa, or eggs (collectively this is called "brood"), which means both that the queen is alive and well and working like a...well, a queen bee (dogs have nothing on her, she can produce up to 1500 eggs a day for several years, yikes!).
4. Do a count of what we've got in the frames (pollen, honey, brood) and determine if we need to put on the second hive bottom (which would be cool, because once you fill the two bottoms you start to get to keep the honey from anything you put on top!).
5. Document with the camera

I'll try to post later (or soon) with pictures!

Bad mother woes

I'm a bad bee mother. I hang my head in shame. I'm getting burr comb and dead bees on Sunday, I can feel it. I went out to check on my girls (and Joel's) today now that the rain has subsided. When I say "check," I mean just pretty much look at the front of the hive (to see if they are active; Joel's were, mine not so much) and tip the top cover to see if they need more syrup (Joel's can still has some in it, mine was bone dry). So...it was cold, it was rainy, the bees were stuck inside, and I didn't even give them any nutrition to tide them over. I feel terrible. I topped off the jar and replaced it, I'll go out in a little as it warms and suns up to see if they get moving again.

Prepping for Camping Season

Lest you think that all I ever talk about are my bees, let's leave the bees alone for today and talk about something else.

Today is "RV Prep Day" at our house. It takes a surprising amount of work to dewinterize the RV and get her ready for camping. Our first trip is next weekend, yay!

Our RV's name is Betty. I know people tend to conjure up images of glamourous vehicles that put their houses to shame with the word "RV," but let me assure you...although she was glamourous in her day, the best word to describe her at this point is "functional." And "loveable" because we love her. She's given us a lot of great memories.
She's a 24 foot 1985 Chevy cutaway. When we first bought her, she had gold shag carpet and rust-and-gold velour cushions. Eek.


We called her "That 70's Mobile" until we ripped out the carpet and replaced it with vinyl (seriously...camping with rugs is a BAD idea unless you can shake them out constantly) and replaced (most of) the cushions. The bed cushions are very customized so they stayed, but we cover them with bedding. The captain's chair will need a cover or something, that is still rust, but we cope. We named her "Betty" because she just feels comfortable and happy, like Betty Crocker. The fridge died two years after we bought her, and when I called to see if an RV guy could come fix it, he warned me that there was an old recall on the fridge and it was very dangerous to try to turn it back on. Lovely. We replaced that too with a fridge half the size and twice the cost of our house fridge, but it works out because we can plug Betty in to stash extra stuff in when we have cookouts or just food overflow. And our fridge probably won't blow up.

So now I'm bleaching and wiping everything down, taking out everything that's not nailed in and washing it, cleaning and replacing the bedding, and packing everything except clothes, perishable food (or food we still have to buy) and toys. Busy busy busy!!! I better get back to work.

What actually happened today

So....there's nothing as malleable as a plan, right? I talked to my friend and fellow bee keeper today and she suggested that I not go in my hive since I just went in Thursday to verify the queen got released. The only thing, however, that I did to Joel's hive on Wednesday was to take out the queen cage, which was empty (well, of the queen anyway) and on the top of the frames, so there was minimal disturbance. He hadn't been in yet, either, so he opened his up to check on it.

First a little smoke around the hive to calm them down...
This is what they looked like when the inner cover came off:

He pulled apart the busiest frames to check for burr comb (improperly placed comb):



It was a good thing he went back in, as it turns out, because there was a curious growth on one of the busiest frames. It didn't really look like my burr comb, because it had a sort of pocket on top but it seemed to be attached all around, and it had a small bulbish growth on the bottom. Concerning!
We decided to table this issue and ask some people who know more than we do about this.

Later, I drove to Sandy's house, our fellow Bee School attendee. She also has two hives in her yard and has been in once, but had some issues. Like me, her queen cage fell to the bottom in one. And in the other one there seemed to be a big amount of burr comb.

Her friend who has kept bees for several years came over, and she was AWESOME. She walked Sandy through the first hive (queen was out of the cage that had fallen, and we located her on the frame, plus she cleared out some burr comb)



and had her work her own second hive (we spotted the queen in this one too, and she cleaned up an ENORMOUS burr comb shaped just like a heart...aw...the bees love her!!).

We both expressed that we felt so bad that the bees had invested so much energy in making comb that we just scooped off!

I peppered the expert with questions, and showed her the picture of Joel's hive. She thinks it's just burr comb, but in a different configuration than the others we've seen so far. At any rate it would be impossible to have supercedure (new queen cell) this early, because there was no brood (babies) to begin with. She suggested to either clean it up if it's easy to, or just leave it and be resigned to the fact that he'll have a funky looking comb on that frame. We probably should have completely lifted the frame out of the hive to inspect it, but there's just something about mucking with a big box of bees that makes you want to be as minimally invasive as possible. Next time.

One thing I did notice is that Sandy's comb seems to be a lot more white than mine. But I also noticed that mine have started bringing in lots of white and pale yellow pollen rather than only the dark orange stuff I saw the other day. That could be why I noticed that our newly blossomed Hoper Crab is positively buzzing today!! Seriously, you can hear it standing under it. It's a gorgeous tree. I'll have to post it for you.


Finally, here is the burr comb I pulled off the other day.



You can see how they structure the honeycomb on the second photo...you can just about see the back layer and how the middle of the cell is placed on the "Y" of the front layer for maximum strength. It's amazing, isn't it?

Joel's first hive inspection

Big day today! The plan is for Joel and I to open up the hives again today and check on them. I found a picture with his bee brush in it today, which I never bought, so maybe I can stop using the unused paint brush as a bee brush. A bee brush is used to brush the bees off the frames (so you can see what you're looking at underneath, plus to move them back so hopefully you don't squish them). I don't know why people say "pig pile" when they could say "bee pile" because the bees really do pile up on each other!!

Hopefully I'll get to peek at my friend Sandy's hives too. She was in our class with us and is pretty local. I should probably also call the neighbor down the street (Brad) who has hives and let him know we're going in. Gosh, we could start our own bee club!! I really do think that the more hives you get to look into, and the more people you network with, the more knowledgeable you'll be. It's a whole different world outside of the textbook.

LOTS of pollen baskets coming in yesterday, even in the cold and the showers. The picture in my older post was of orange pollen, but I'm starting to see pale yellow and white pollen now. Our Hoper Crabapple bloomed Wednesday so I'm wondering if maybe that's the new color. My theory is that the very yellow/orange pollen was coming from the forsythia which was in full bloom when they arrived.

So I'm crossing my fingers that I will see eggs, that I will NOT squish the queen (or any of the other girls), and that all goes well for all of us.

More later, hopefully with pictures. Which is another good reason to have a bee buddy. It's hard to take pictures when you are alone in there.