Honeybees on the Move

I read that having bees in the proximity to your crops can increase the yield by up to 30%.  I don't know how they figure that out, but I know we like having bees around to do their pollinating.  Take for instance the cucumbers below:

The honeybees are really buzzing around in the garden, doing their thing!

I usually like to let the cilantro plants bloom and go to seed.  Once seeded, they're called coriander.  Whatever you call them, they make a whole bunch of tiny white flowers that the bees find irresistible.

The bees are so active in the cilantro patch, you can't hardly walk around there without running into a bee or two.  I've noticed different pollinators on the cilantro as well, like wasps, bumblebees, etc.

Speaking of bees moving around, I forgot to mention that something strange was going on with the colony of bees that live in the hollow fiberglass column by the side door of our house.  For three days, not a bee came out or went into the hive.  We surmised they they swarmed.  Except when they swarm, the old queen leaves with half of the colony.  There are bees left behind.  Something just didn't make sense.

Fast forward a few days and no bees moving turned into thousands and thousands of bees moving!  The air was thick with the flight of the honeybee and the buzzing was so loud.  They were trying to get into the column opening, but there were so many of them, they couldn't get in there.

The bees finally bearded on each side of the column.  Of course, we can't get the honey out of the column, unfortunately.  We assume the entire column is filled with comb.

We think that this is a new swarm that is moving into the column to make it their new home.  I would rather have them in a box full of frames so that we could enjoy the honey that they make.  That's why you can see that I've positioned a swarm trap I made on the concrete bench facing the column where the bees are.  The next time the colony runs out of room or swarms, my hope is to catch them in my box.

Bees are on the move everywhere.  We are a little over a month and a week away from pulling honey.  Judging from the tassels on the Chinese Tallow Trees, I think the flow is about to start!

A Better Moth Trap

Yes, you read that right.  A Moth Trap.  Last year we lost a hive of bees to wax moths.  I'd like to avoid that this year, if at all possible.  There are chemical treatments you can do, but we don't want to use chemicals.  I began to search for natural methods.  The reason this search was intensified was due to what I saw in the first hive on the left.

The two hives on the left that only have 1 deep box are two swarms that we caught in the yard.  While I was watching all the activity, I watched a MOTH crawl out of the box on the left!  Oh no.  The best way to ward off wax moths is to have a strong colony.  A healthy hive of bees will get rid of the wax moths and larvae because there are enough numbers to protect the hive.  We have a problem here.  The swarm is small.  The queen just started laying, so the numbers are low.  In about a week or so the colony should be growing exponentially, but will the hive be destroyed before the cavalry arrives?

I read about some traps that you can build to attract moths and kill them before they damage your hives.  The idea is to lure them away from your bees.  The trap is made with some plastic bottles that you cut a quarter-sized hole in the neck.  You make a concoction of 1 cup vinegar, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup warm water and a banana peel.  You put that concoction in the plastic bottle and hang it near your bee hives.  That's what I did.

I actually made two.  Now, we wait.  The moths will smell the decaying banana peel and sugar, vinegar and water fermenting.  They go into the bottle and never come out.  Or so I'm told.  Let's see what happens...

The same afternoon I went out to check the traps.  There was already a moth in one of them!

A day later, I checked them and there are drowned moths in both bottles.

These moth traps work.  Moths are drawn to them like... well, like a moth to a flame.  Hopefully, we can catch enough of them to put a dent in the wax moth population.

I Built a Little Something For the Bees

There is a lot of trouble to be found out there on the internet.  You don't have to look very far to see things, read things that you wish that you had never seen or read.  Some of it is wickedness.  Some of it is more innocuous, like a song you hear that, like a brain worm, gets stuck in your head and is on a non-stop loop!  Argghh...

But there are other things, specifically on You Tube, that are marvelous.  I recently looked up how to build a nuc.  A "nuc" is a nucleus colony.  It is a small colony used by beekeepers to raise new hives.  The former president of our bee club told us he loves to make splits into nucs.  It is his opinion that bee colonies grow faster in nucs.  He feels that they like to fill small spaces quickly.

After not many clicks, I found plans and was busy with my cut list.  The best part was it was free.  Everything needed to make it I already had on hand from the screws to the 1 x 12 that I had up in the rafters in the barn leftover from a project ten years ago.  I am not a carpenter.  My cuts aren't square.  The finished product is never pretty.  But I've found over the years that the animals don't care, and I don't think the honeybees will care either.  It didn't take long and the nuc was finished.

This is a five frame nuc.

There's the nuc in all her glory, ready for action.

I'm going to pull out two of the frames and use the nuc as a swarm trap.  This is peak swarm season.  I'll show you how I baited it in a couple of minutes.

I set the nuc in the crook of a big live oak tree, facing south and in the shade.

The nuc in the crook of the tree is approximately 30 feet from the colony that is currently living in the hollow fiberglass column you see below.  Every year, the bees fill up the column with comb and then they swarm.  The old queen, with half the hive leave.  This year when it happens, I want to catch them.  That's our goal.

The first thing you want to have in your swarm trap is frames with old drawn comb.  Bees smell it and they feel comfortable where bees used to be.

The second thing you want to use in your swarm trap is an attractant.  We use lemongrass oil.  Bees love it as it resembles the pheromone that the queen puts out.  We put a couple of dashes of lemongrass oil on a cotton ball, put it in a zip loc bag, leaving a crack in the bag.  We put it in the back of the box.  It acts as a slow release attractant.  We also put a couple drops of lemongrass oil at the entrance.

In this photo, you can see the nuc swarm trap in the crook of the tree along with the swarm trap we've baited in the deep box.  We've since moved this swarm trap to the back yard by the four bee boxes.  We watched a swarm leave one of the boxes and they are balled up forty feet up in the branches of the tree.  We put the swarm trap right beneath it.  In no time we had many scout bees checking out both of the swarm traps.

We are hoping to be successful in catching swarms coming off of our hives or catch some wild swarms to bring some new genetics into our hives.  We'll keep you posted if we have some swarms moving in.

Caught Another Swarm!

After we had no success with the swarm trap attracting the scout bees that eventually brought over a swarm that located into our column on the side porch, I moved the swarm trap back to where we had caught a swarm last year.  It seems to be the 'sweet spot' (pardon the pun) for catching swarms.  It's between the navel orange tree and the garden.  It's right near the water trough and garden.  

It's not really an official swarm trap.  It's merely a normal deep box with five frames of foundation in it, one of which has old drawn out comb.  To the back of the box, I dropped a cotton ball that I had dropped two drops of lemongrass essential oil on.  Lemongrass oil mimics the pheromone that the queen bee gives off and attracts the bees.  The very next day, we had scout bees checking the place out!

Can you see them flying in?

They kept coming and coming.  It wasn't a huge swarm, but it qualified as a box of bees in my book.  I took the top off and peered inside.  I was pretty confident the queen was in there, although I couldn't find her.

They are fun creatures to watch.  You immediately understand how the term "as busy as a bee" came about.  These bees are doing some housecleaning.   They are primarily on the old frame and are cleaning the comb.  Once they get it clean, the bees will start building out more comb.

In a day or two, the queen will be all ready to begin laying eggs.  The aptly named worker bees are getting the work done.

I waited until night time and shined a light in the box.  It was full of bees, so I moved the box off of the ladder and sat it on top of some cinder blocks near our other two boxes of bees.  I got a queen excluder and put it on the bottom, right above the bottom board.  The queen excluder keeps the queen from flying off.  It will allow the other bees to come and go, but is a little too small to allow the queen to fit though.

You can see all the bees lining the entrances of the (now) three hives.  Here's the plan.  I'll check the new box for eggs in two days and see if I can locate any eggs.  Once there are eggs, the queen will, in all likelihood not leave, so once I see eggs, I'll remove the queen excluder.

On Saturday I opened the new box and spotted eggs.  We have a laying queen!  Guess what we did?  We set the swarm trap out again!

They're Back!

Over the years we've posted about a colony of honeybees that build a hive in the hollow fiberglass column that supports the roof above the side entrance to our home.  Each year they come and inhabit the column.  In the hot months of summer, the honey runs down the column and oozes out of the bottom onto the cement.  If you put your ear to the column, you can hear the buzzing vibrations of hundreds or thousands of bees.  Each year during the summer, the bees swarm, sending off new queens to start new colonies elsewhere.  Then, at some point, the bees leave.

I'm happy to have the bees here.  They pollinate the garden and fruit trees.  We've never been stung.  Tricia, however, is not as keen as I to have bees populating the area around the main entrance to our home.  "It's not very hospitable to our guests." she says.  After the bees leave, I'll take a 4x4 and a floor jack and will jack up the roof and remove the column.  I spray out all remnants of the honeycomb and hive with a pressure washer.  Then I coat the inside of the column with bleach, thinking that maybe they smell an attractant to lead them back.  Surely they won't find their way back next year.

Well...  I got a text at work the other day.  It had the photo below attached.  Her words on the text said, "Look closely...  What do you see?"

I immediately replied, "They're back!"  The swarming bees had found their way home.  I have no idea how they do this, but each year, they find their way back.  Swarming bees can be scary for some.  Look in the photo below, there is a green rain frog on the column.  He doesn't seem very concerned about the bees at all.

Once the bees get situated, they'll begin buzzing around and pollinating the garden and trees in the area.  Welcome Home, Bees!

A Morning Stroll

On the weekends once the chores are done, I like to take a walk around the garden and yard and make a mental note of things that need to be done.  Not only that, I just like to take it all in and enjoy the sights and sounds.  I don't get to do that on the weekdays since I'm rushing off to work.  I find that the morning light filtering through the tree line on the eastern side of the property casts the perfect light on plants growing and you get to see some neat sights that you might otherwise miss.

Take for instance the young cucumber plants just popping up.  This year I'm trying a fall crop of cucumbers.  I planted them within the prescribed fall planting times and we'll have to see if I can harvest some cukes before the first frost hits.  While we canned some pints of dill pickles, we didn't make any tzatziki, and I have a hankering for some of that.

These are Boston Pickling Cucumbers that I saved last year and they seem to be coming up nicely, pushing the clods of dirt up and out of the way as they stretch out reaching for the sun.

The morning dew not only covers your boots as you walk across the grass, but the dewdrops decorate the outer edges of the cucumber cotyledons.

Dewdrop Artistry

Just a few rows over, a lavender flower catches my eye.  It is an eggplant flower. These eggplants were planted from seed back in early January.  A full nine months later, and after numerous blooms, we've harvested exactly ZERO eggplants.  Very disappointing.  Tricia actually purchased an eggplant this weekend and made caponata, a delicious dish containing eggplant, black olives, tomatoes, among other things.  What a shame when we have 5 huge eggplant plants taking up space on row 5 in the garden.  I guess I'll be patient.  Perhaps we'll harvest some yet this year.

I read that blossom drop is caused by one of two things.  One is a lack of water and the other is a lack of pollination.  It has been dry, but I have watered the garden. Still no eggplants.

Pretty eggplant blossom

As far as pollination, as if on cue, while I was looking at the huge eggplant foliage, a honeybee, presumably from the colony of bees that live in the column by our side door, flew by and landed on the eggplant leaf.  

Please pollinate our eggplants

We have no shortage of bees in the garden, so I'm pretty sure pollination is not the problem, but I watched the bee as he seemed to enjoy the cool morning as much as I.  He posed while I snapped this shot on the tip of the eggplant leaf.

Honeybee on an Eggplant Leaf

On the very next row, the Asian Cabbage (Bok Choy) is growing nicely.  It appears that we achieved a near 100% germination rate and some of these are ready for harvest now as tender, baby greens.  I like to allow them to get bigger, though.  The mid-90 degree heat we're still experiencing takes its toll on them.  In the evenings when I get home, they look exhausted, leaves drooping to the ground.  In the early morning, they are refreshed and healthy looking though.

Young Bok Choy

I hear a loud noise in the distance and see Penelope the peahen flying down from her roost, landing on the top of the barn.  She flies to the top of an oak tree to sleep each night, safe from predators.

Penelope the Peahen

She is rested and refreshed and ready to start her day and so am I!

Orange Blossom Time!

I've often said that if Heaven has a fragrance, I think it will be that of Orange Blossoms.  Right now all of our orange trees are absolutely filled with the white blooms and they fill the air with the sweet aroma.  Especially at night, when you walk outdoors, the air is heavy with the sweet scent.

Navel Orange tree filled with blooms

Here is a close-up photo of one of the blooms accompanied by a lady bug.  Even bugs can't resist the aroma!

Ladybugs like orange blossoms

But there is another creature that loves the orange blossoms, too - The Honey Bee! The tree was buzzing with activity as bees went from one flower to the next doing their thing.    Look at the photo below and you can spot the bee in flight at about the 12 o'clock postion in the picture.  He is flying away, so you're looking at his rear end. He's high-tailing it to one of hundreds of flowers he'll visit today.

The Flight of the Bumblebee

In this one the bee has landed on the flower and is making his way to the flower to get the nectar.  The bee will drink all the nectar he can and will pick up pollen while he's at it and will carry it to pollinate other flowers.

Bee on the flower

And in this picture, the honeybee is guzzling orange blossom nectar as fast as he can drink it.

Honeybee drinking nectar

So where is the bee going when he's done?  Well, he's flying back to his colony, which just happens to be inside the hollow column at our side entrance.  The bees have been living there for about 3 years now.  I'm sure there is lots of honey in there, but it is a fiberglass column and I don't know how to rob the honey out of it.  Can you see them all buzzing around the top of the column?

Bees a buzzing outside our side door

Tricia keeps telling me we need to do something about it because it's not very hospitable to have swarming bees right outside the door into which most of our guests enter our home.  But we've had no problems with salespeople or solicitors since the bees have moved in!  Most of the time the bees really don't bother you - you just have to ignore them  Sometimes though, when they are swarming, you don't want to be nearby as the air will be thick with swarming bees.  Maybe one day, I'll get my bee keeping friend to help me jack up the roof, turn the column on is side and rob the honey.