Busy As A Bee

It feels like spring outside and the honeybees are doing their thing - flying around, getting pollen and nectar where they can find it and... getting ready to swarm.  As a result, we'll be going into the hives probably tomorrow, inspecting the frames and (hopefully) making splits BEFORE they swarm.  We have four hives to go through tomorrow.  After dark, I tipped the hives over to see how heavy they were and there is a good population in each hive.  That means the queens are doing a good job.

Why do I say the bees are getting ready to swarm?  Well, the photo below shows the column by our side door.  A number of colonies of bees have made their home in that hollow fiberglass column over the years.  It has to be absolutely full of honeycomb.  Generally, in the summer, the bees leave.  I'm not sure if it gets too hot in there for them or they fill it up and run out of room.  Perhaps it's a combination of the two.

The column has been absent of bees for the past 8 months or so.  This morning, we began to see scout bees checking out the place.  They have been sent by the colony to house hunt.  They went into the open house and (I'm sure) had little tape measures and measured out the square footage and amenities that the column offers.  They'll bring that data back to the hive for a vote, and we'll see if we get a swarm of bees to move back in.  What's that strapped on top of the ladder, you might be asking?

It's a homemade 5 frame nuc swarm trap.  I have it baited with lemongrass oil.  My goal is to tempt some of the scout bees to also look at this as a home to consider moving into.

But I have bad news to report.  The bees are ignoring the nuc.  There is just too much old comb in the column that they can smell.  Bees are opportunistic.  For every comb that they must build from scratch, it equates to less honey.  Bees moving into the column don't really need to make honeycomb.  It's already there.  More and more bees are checking out the column.  I'm certain within a week we'll have a new swarm inhabiting the column.  I've move the nuc swarm trap out into the yard where hopefully we can catch another swarm.

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!

Update on the Honeybees

The warming temperatures and blooming flowers all about have really gotten the bees working, well, as busy as a bee.  I let our cilantro go to flower in the garden because the bees really love it.  They are all over the cilantro flowers in the garden.

I don't know where this girl had been prior to stopping over in the cilantro patch, but take a look at her "pollen sac" on her legs.  They are filled with a reddish-purple pollen.  I don't know where that came from, but she's taking that back to the hive, but not before she collects some nectar or pollen from the cilantro.

The colony of bees that have resided in the column on our side porch left last week.  We think they swarmed.  We were very fortunate to have caught TWO swarms in the yard last week.  More on that in a moment.  In a swarm, the old queen generally leaves with half the bees.  The weird thing about that is that there was NO activity in or out of the column for several days.  Then all of a sudden... BOOM!  Bees repopulated the column!

For the two swarms we caught, we went to check on them the other day.  Here's Tricia in her bee suit about to open one of the boxes for inspection.  

The swarm is not a huge one, but they fill two or three frames and were buzzing away, very busy.

In my swarm trap, which is merely a deep box with 5 frames of old comb and foundation, the bees were already drawing out comb - not where I wanted it.  Time to get the remaining 5 frames in the box.  When bees swarm, they carry honey, wax, pollen, everything they need and when they find a new home, they get right to work.

If you look to the right center of the photo below, you can see that the queen has been busy.  Can you see the bee larva?  It is the little white worm looking thing curled up like the letter "c" in the cells.

Here's a photo of some younger larva in some fresh comb.

If there's larva, there's got to be a laying queen, and THERE she is!  Can you see her?  She's in the center left of the photo below with the long yellow tail.

So we have eggs and larva in both of the swarms we caught last week.  We have capped brood in two of our remaining four boxes of bees.  We're still waiting for a queen in both of the boxes that we split.  When we opened one of them, we did see two queen cells.  We'll check back in on them on Sunday and see if the splits were successful.  

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.

Setting Out A Swarm Trap

It was a beautiful spring day today with sunshine and temperatures hitting 71 degrees.  It seemed like a perfect time for honeybees to start swarming, and I didn't want to miss it.  I figured that I would get a swarm trap out.  If one of our hives swarm, I want to catch them before they leave the property.  If I catch a wild swarm, all the better.

I'll show you how we do it.  We've caught three of our four hives in this same location.  It's a "honey hole," one might say.  The first thing you need is some old frames with some drawn out comb on it.  These are some frames from the hive that we lost to wax moths.  I had cleaned them up and now they are ready to use again.

I set a bottom board atop a ladder and stack a deep box on top of it.  That's it.  You can build a special swarm trap, but I've had success just using a regular box with a few frames of drawn comb inside.  The ease comes about when you catch a swarm.  At that point all you have to do is set the box on top of some cinder blocks and you're done.

The next thing you need is an attractant.  You can use a product called Swarm Commander, but we simply us some Lemongrass Oil.  It mimics the pheremone that the queen puts out.

I'll put a couple of drops of lemongrass oil on a cotton ball.

And I'll drop it in the very back of the bee box with the frames in it.

Then I put the cover on and use a ratchet strap to secure the swarm trap to the ladder.  I don't want any winds to knock it down.

And now, we wait.  Hopefully, scout bees will search and find the box and, like an open house at a realtor's showing, the bees will tour around and decide that this would be a good "fixer upper" and move in.  We're hoping that's the case, and that they'll hang a "Home Sweet Home" sign out front.  We'll keep you posted with our progress in catching a swarm.

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!

The Bees Are Back in Town

It was back in 1975, I think, when a rock group named Thin Lizzy released a song called "The Boys are Back in town."  It had a really catchy baseline, I remember as a kid.  The reason I was thinking about that old song is an event that began happening outside our side door just the other day.  For years we've had a colony of honeybees that live in a hollow column that holds up our side porch.  It is the perfect place for bees, like a hollow tree.  The trouble with it is that there is no way to get the honey.  But that was before we had bee boxes and we liked having them even if we couldn't get the honey because they pollinated the garden and fruit trees.  Over and over, the bees fill the column up with comb and then probably run out of room and move out.

The column has been vacant for, I don't know, around a year, maybe?  That began to change last week.  We noticed scout bees looking around.  If you look closely you can see them hovering around the entrance at the top of the column.

With quickness, I quickly got our swarm trap, ratchet-strapped it to a ladder and put a cotton ball with 2 drops of lemon grass oil on it and set it up by the column.  The lemon grass oil attracts the bees.  In the swarm trap are some frames of drawn out comb.  Here's the strategy:  The scout bees are checking out possible sites for a queen and her swarm to move in.  If we could coax them into our box versus the column, well, that would be a real coup.

Bees aren't lazy, but they are efficient.  If they find a location that was previously occupied with bees and the old hive had plenty of drawn out comb, that's perfect.  They move in, clean the place up, and the colony grows.  It's like moving into a house that is fully furnished.  You don't need to buy furniture.  The bees, instead of working to build comb, can instead focus on making honey.  It's an effective allocation and usage of energy.  Bees never cease to amaze me.

Now we're at a disadvantage, I know.  I couple of frames of comb in a bee box that we use as a swarm trap doesn't compare to a column-full of comb, but I had to at least try!  We'll wait and see...  You can see some that are checking out the swarm trap, like an Open House in a subdivision.  See the bee?  That looks promising!

At one point we had as many bees around the swarm trap as we had in front of the column!

Until one day last week when there was A LOT of activity around the entrance to the column.  The queen and her entourage had arrived and decided to move into the furnished home.  We thought our swarm trap had curb appeal and we were offering owner financing with low mortgage interest rates.

I was very tempted to get up there and scoop them into the swarm trap, but there was a good chance the queen was already in the column, so I chose not to.  I'll move the swarm trap back out into the yard.  There will be more swarms coming, no doubt.  We'll catch one, I'm confident.

For now, the BEES are back in town.  We can't sing the BOYS are back in town, because the colony is mostly females.  

The Charm of a Swarm at the Farm

My Dad called me the other afternoon.  I had just finished work and was about to go feed the chickens and gather eggs.  I could sense a tone of excitement in his voice.  He told me that he was going to change the oil in the John Deere irrigation well engine at the farm.  As he was about to start, he noticed something flying around his head.  He looked around and there was a swarm of honeybees on the air breather.

He asked me if I wanted it.  I told him "Yes!"  I told him we would gather all of our bee equipment and make the 30 mile drive north in the pickup truck and see if we could be successful in collecting this swarm.  We are relative novices to beekeeping and this was the first swarm that we would "solo."  We quickly got Tricia's bee suit and my veil, the bottom board, bee box with frames (one with drawn out comb), bee brush, and the top.  For good measure, we brought an epi-pen in the event things went badly.  Best to be prepared, right?

When we arrived, this is what we saw:  Can you see the swarm?  This well engine has an interesting story behind it.  About 24 years ago, I was at the farm headquarters on top of the rice storage bins, about to climb in and take some samples to test moisture.  Roger, our crop duster pilot, flew his plane right over the bin and shook his wings at me.  I thought he was waving, so I waved.  He flew back over real close and he motioned to me to follow him, pointing his finger north and west.

I jumped in my truck, got in touch with Dad, and we followed him to this well engine.  Some how or another, the coolant and water had leaked out and the engine was smoking and running hot.  We quickly shut it down, fixed the leak, refilled and cranked it again.  The well engine was not damaged, but would have been, had not the pilot notified us.  Twenty four years later, the engine is still running!  Today perhaps, the engine would give us some bees.

Here is an up-close shot of the swarm.  There were many bees flying around, joining up with the swarm on the air breather.

We decided that we should get started.  We suited up.  Here's my lovely wife in her bee suit:

We made a plan.  What we'd do is this.  Tricia would hold the box directly under the swarm.  I would scoop a handful of bees and gently drop them in the box, hoping they would walk on down the frames.  I would continue that until they were mostly in the box.  Then, we would put the top on the box, set it down on the ground and wait.  Bees don't fly after dark.  They would smell the queen pheromone, if we were successful in getting her in the box, and all of the remaining bees still flying would eventually follow her into the box.  Once they stopped flying at dark, we would duct tape up the entrance, put the box of bees in the truck and drive 30 miles south, set the bee box by our existing box, pull off the tape, and, in the morning, the bees would be able to venture out and explore their new home.

We decided it was time to set the plan into action.

I stuck my gloved hands into the midst of the swarm.  I could feel a vibrating sensation in my hands.  It was almost electrical.  I moved slowly with the bunch of bees and poured them into the box.  A bunch of them stuck to my hand.  A bunch flew in a thick fog around our heads.  But as I moved more and more into the box, we were feeling pretty good about it.  There were so many bees, we didn't have a chance to spot the queen.  However, we knew that if we had her in the box, the swarm would stay with her.  If not, they'd fly off.

Before we knew it, there were only a few bees left on the air breather.  Previously, it was COVERED with bees.  We gently grabbed the remaining bees and put them in the box.

Once that was done, we put the telescoping lid on the box.  Remaining bees flying around and not already in the box, would smell the queen and fly in the entrance to the hive at the bottom.  Then we waited.  As the sun slowly sunk toward the horizon, the bees flying around diminished.  Finally, all of the bees were in the box.

We taped up the entrance and carefully put the box of bees in the back of the truck and drove them home.  We set them right by our other hive.  The brick on top of what we call Hive 1 (the first swarm we caught) signifies that there is a laying queen.  Once we saw eggs, we positioned the brick.

The next day the bees were flying around Hive 2, checking out their new surroundings.  We will get inside it in a few days to see if they are drawing out comb and if the queen has started to lay any eggs.  This swarm was a bigger swarm than the first one we caught.  Hopefully, we'll be successful in keeping Hive 2.  We will keep you posted!