Good-bye to the Bees

Adam started beekeeping on a May day in 2010, nearly 8 years ago. An elderly friend offered us his dilapidated beehive at his lake home, if we were willing to go get it. We did.

Bee-keeping was a learning curve. We lost those bees. We bought more and lost them over the winter too. But the third time we bought bees, they survived for years. We got them from the "Fat Bee Man" in rural north Georgia.

We moved a few times, carting those bees along with us, finally lighting here in coastal North Carolina - a rural county with lots of farmland and water. Perfect for bees, right? When we moved to our house on Midyette Street in Oriental, we had lost a hive and had only 2 hives left.

They look lonesome, don't they? It may seem odd, but a small town like Oriental, with lots of flowers, yards, ditches, weeds, and a large variety of vegetation, is perfect for bees. The hives thrived. When we moved away from Midyette Street less than 2 years later, we had 8 hives! We did not buy new bees. Adam split the hives and collected our swarms. We were so happy!

If you click over to the link above this photo, it will explain all the numbers.

We moved to the farm in August of 2015. You'd think a lovely farm in a rural North Carolina county would be great for bees, right?

Wrong.

It's hard to look at.

The beekeeper is the same. Adam's good beekeeping practices didn't change. It's the same good small-cell Italian bee genetics. They were healthy when we moved to the farm ... so what happened?

Our neighbors happened.

We don't spray chemicals on our farm at all. The soil was used only for a small horse farm for years before we moved here, so the soil is good -- manure, no chemicals. But around us? We're surrounded by mono-culture, big farms. They spray pesticides on their thousands of acres of corn. The crop dusters fly overhead and the tank trucks and big sprayers ride over the acres.

You may ask, why does that make a difference? It doesn't kill off all the mosquitoes or all the flies. Why does it kill off hives of bees? Because bees gather their food (pollen, nectar) and bring it into their hives, which other insects don't do. Beehives are usually a richly condensed environment of extreme health, which is why products of beehives are used in medicine and cosmetics, and why beeswax is a natural preservative and honey lasts for thousands of years.

But the close, condensed nature of a beehive also works against it, when toxins are concentrated there. When bees gather toxic chemicals over and over (and over and over ... thousands of times each day), and all those bits of toxicity are gathered in a hive, it becomes a killing place. And the bees weaken and die.

We didn't realize it at first. We blamed it on lots of rain. We wondered by hive after hive died off over the two years we've lived here. Big hives slowly died in the course of the summertime, when beehives should be healthy and growing.

It's very sad. We have a lovely farm, contaminated by neighbor farms, and now we can't have bees. Not only have our many hives all died, but Adam will never be able to own bees again, as long as we live here. He wanted to be a beekeeper in retirement. Now that's not possible.

And the farm in question cannot be held responsible. But of course ... they are. There are nations where bees are safe, where the food supply is therefore safe, but not in the U.S. Here, big agri-business rules, and small farmers and beekeepers do not.

So, we have said good-bye to our bees. The last hive is full of wax moths and is being raided out as I type this. I think Adam will burn the boxes on the next burn pile day, and he will mow over the spot by the pine copse. It's a sad day.

A New Bee Experience:

We've known for a few weeks that Adam needed either to split a couple of his hives or to give them empty boxes underneath. They were getting too full of bees, and were likely to swarm if not given more room.

The hive on the far right has lots of boxes and plenty of room. They tend to "beard" extra bees on the outside because that hive remains in sun longer, and is warm, so the bees come outside and fan the entrance with their wings.

However, two hives down from that one is a solid red hive, really a nuc box, that is quite full. In the photo above, you can see how the hive on the end (a Warre hive) is bearding, and so is the hive two doors down.
The difficulty in splitting these hives is (unfortunately) the frames we've been using. Adam switched to simple "top-bar" frames in his hives a few years back. They are so easy to make -- just one piece of wood that lays across the top of the box. The bees make the comb, drawing it down from that top bar. They don't need frames with wood on all four sides, and they really hate the fake plastic comb foundation that some beekeepers put inside the frame.

Adam is now making new frames with side bars.

Except ...  A top-bar frame is just fine if you want to pull the frames out of the hive to extract honey.You're going to cut the entire honeycomb out of the frame anyway. But he doesn't want honey. He wants to grow bees. And to do that, he needs to be able to move his frames -- to take a frame from this hive, and a frame from that hive, and make a new hive in new boxes, without doing any damage to those frames. Top-bar frames are terrible for this.
Bees attach their comb to the top-bar, but they also like to attach their comb to the side. And since these top-bar frames don't have sides, the bees attached their comb to the sides of the boxes! Argh! That's a headache. Adam realized he'd made a mistake in using top-bars. He had lovely frames of bees that he couldn't move anywhere!! So he's begun adapting his old top-bars, adding sides to them.

But some hives were getting crowded. We didn't want them to swarm. We can't split them. What to do? He decided to add an empty box underneath, on each of the crowded hives.

He did that to the bearded red hive I mentioned above. He also did it to the hive in the photo above, the brown 2-box hive with the red strap. He did this one first, and he asked me if I would help him -- when he lifted the two full boxes up, would I please place the empty box on the bottom board for him. Then he'd put the full boxes on top of it. So I did. And that's when my bee life changed forever.

I was stung on the forehead by a bee. I've been stung by bees quite a few times. I usually get a little swelling, itch, and by the next day it's gone. I did have a more severe reaction about 6 months ago to a bee sting. Remember? It was on my left hand, quite swollen, but not too alarming.
This bee sting on the forehead was another matter. I thought nothing of it at first. A little swelling. I put some salve plantain on it, and then some baking soda paste. Still ... it swelled. By evening, my face looked like this:

You can see the swelling in the forehead, and how it is moving to the bridge of my nose and my eye lids and upper cheeks.
Later that evening, my eyes were just slits:

Now I know what my face would look like if I gained 200 pounds, I suppose!
I didn't want to go to the doctor. I hate going for medical help.My general approach to medical help is this: 1) Usually you know if it's a true medical emergency: gaping wound, broken bone, blood everywhere, or unconsciousness. (But a bee sting? Really?) 2) If it's not an obvious emergency, I try ignore all tendencies to panic, treat the condition, observe closely, and assume the body will heal itself. So I wait. I told Adam, if it wasn't better in the morning, we would go in to a clinic nearby. The next morning:

Yeah. The swelling was moving into my throat, and knowing that a blocked airway is one of the serious dangers in allergic reactions, I agreed to go. It's a good thing I did. At the clinic, the doctor prescribed prednisone, zantac, an antibiotic, lots of benadryl, and the greatly-dreaded item: an epi pen.
Yep. Now I get to carry an epi pen with me in my purse everywhere I go. What a pain! (And yes, I do know they are life-savers, and I'm very thankful to have one.) I'm used to being a healthy girl, with no chronic, dangerous health conditions. I guess those days are over. And by the way -- all those other meds left me with a copay of about $20 together. The epi pen? $270. Sigh.
My face is quite improved, although nowhere near normal. I can see again. When I arrived at the clinic, I had a slit of vision in only one eye. Last night I went to my friend's house for an evening of Mexican Train Dominoes ... because if your best buddies can't love you when your face is scary, who will?

Here are my four friends. I took this picture because it includes the sixth member of our group, Muffin. See her, sitting in that chair over there with her red collar on? We want to teach her how to play the game :)

Keeping Track of the Hives

Here are our bee hives yesterday.

I've numbered them for my own records. This blog serves various purposes, one of which is to help keep a record of family events and information.

#1, the large Lanstroth, is the biggest hive we brought with us when we moved here. It survived the 2012/13 winter. It used to be the strong hive from which Adam would split new hives.

#2, the tall Warre hive, is the other hive we brought with us from the mountains. It survived the 2012/13 winter.

After the 2013/14 winter, we had only those two hives remaining. In spring of 2014 we brought those two hives to our yard in Oriental.

#3 is a swarm hive we captured in summer of 2014. Adam is transitioning it into Langstroth boxes.

#4 is a split from #1, and it barely survived the 2014/15 winter. However, this hive has come back with a vigor. It is now our hive from which Adam does new splits.

#5 is the first split done in the spring of 2015. It was a split from the large Langstroth and was originally put into the small nuc box (#8). On 4/13/2015 Adam transferred these bees into this larger Langstroth 8-frame hive.

#6 is a swarm we captured on April 1, 2015. The swarm came from #4. Adam "won" the earliest swarm on one of his beekeeping online forums in 2015 :)

#7 is a split from #4, also done on April 1, 2015. #4 was so packed full of bees, Adam was able to pull both a swarm and a split from it, the same day.
(Update: In the afternoon, Adam looked inside this hive and found only about 100 bees in the bottom of the box, dead. The brood had been abandoned. All we can figure is that there were not enough bees in this split to keep the box warm enough for the brood to survive on some of the cooler nights of early April. He'll start this split again now that the weather is warmer.)

#8 is a new split from #4, done on April 13, 2015, after the nuc box was emptied into the new #5 boxes.

Adam had to start a new bee table for #8. We ought to move #6 over there soon too, so we don't stack our hives. That first bee table is carrying a lot of weight. Adam briefly considered moving #4 to the new table in the middle of the day, and putting a much smaller, weaker hive in its location, so that when its worker bees returned during the day they would build up the numbers of the weaker hive. However, because #4 is such a gang-buster strong hive, and the queen apparently is a brood-laying machine, he decided to keep it where it is. It is very useful as a hive from which to make splits, as we've seen already this spring.

We've never had so many hives before! It's very exciting. Unlike other livestock (if you can call bees "livestock") bees can be left alone at home for days on end, even weeks, without tending. They don't have to be fed or milked. They go in and out on their own, feed themselves, clean themselves, dispose of their own dead, and defend themselves. You can have thousands of dollars worth of bees in your yard, go away for a week, and nobody will touch them - haha! What else can you say that about?

You may wonder why #4 is such a big producer right now, but #1 and #2 are not. They are also full of bees, but they have lots of room.  Because they have so many boxes, and so much space, they are not tempted to swarm, and their boxes are not packed full of bees like #4. The compact nature of #4 makes it perfect for splitting. Because it's crowded, #4 is always preparing to swarm. Thus, the queen lays lots of babies to populate swarms, and there are always new queen cells in the making to go with those swarms. Adam plans to utilize this swarm-tendency for splitting new hives this summer. We've doubled our bee hives in just a month! That's exciting!

By the way -- if Adam wanted to produce and sell honey, he would have lots of big hives like #1 and #2. But he doesn't. Honey production is labor intensive for the cash return. Instead, Adam wants to sell bees and queens. For that (as I've shown), smaller, compact hives are useful. So we'll have lots of smaller hives. Splitting them and making new hives is as easy as transferring a few frames of brood, honey, and bees into a new box. As long as we buy lumber, and he builds (and I paint) boxes, he can produce more bees. That's what he wants to sell.

Did you notice the new paint up there? The darker red boxes are ones I painted this past weekend. We made five of those. Eventually they'll all be red Langstroths of various widths -- 4-frame nuc boxes, and 5-, 6-, or 8-frame boxes for regular hives. Adam plans to use his old Warre boxes as breeding boxes for his queens and drones. He has plans to create a whole breeding stock with specific characteristics. That man! He always has plans.

Bees Are Boss

Adam planned to paint the boat today. But the bees had other plans.

Pollen-loaded bee

The hull had been white (on top) and blue (on bottom).

However, while he was at the bee hives this morning, a cloud of bees from the small Langstroth hive decided to swarm. They headed for this little bush, attached themselves to a few of its branches, and clung there.

After  a few more minutes, they'd settled down and formed a nice, sagging bee swarm, just above the grass.

Adam had planned to split that Langstroth today anyway; he could tell it was packed with bees and they were going to swarm soon. But April 2 is a bit early, bees! He had a box ready for them.

He held onto the top of the branches where the swarm hung, and I took the loppers and gingerly cut those branches at the base, until the branches with the swarm were free of the bush. Then Adam gently carried the swarm+branches to the new box and shook them into it.
He'd already lifted a nice full frame of honey/brood/bees from the older Langstroth hive, and put it into the new box as well. This will encourage the swarm to stay in that box. They don't like to abandon their young.

Adam steals a frame from the old Langstroth to give to the new swarm hive.

Then he put a top on the new hive.

We didn't move them. We could tell by how aggressively the bees on the landing board were fanning (with their wings) that the hive was too hot in the sunshine. We put my market tent over the hive for the day to help them manage their hive temperature. The hive quickly settled down and the bees flew inside. Adam then stapled mesh screen over the entrance and landing board to keep them inside.

Phew! That was a morning's work! But when bees say it's time to jump, the beekeeper leaps into the air and asks, "Is this high enough?"
After lunch, we addressed the boat painting. All of Adam's prep work (days, weeks, so many hours!) of sanding and scraping and removing ... well, that makes the actual painting rather quick.

Only the top of the hull is being painted first. This gorgeous deep blue paint was gifted to us by a boating friend who had it left over after he painted his Cape Dory Typhoon. Keepin' it in the Typhoon family :)

The bottom of the hull will be red. A white stripe will grace the lower part of the dark blue.

After the painting was done, Adam and I sat in our shady chairs by the beehives, studying that middle hive. It doesn't look like much -- two little boxes. But that's the one that's so active, so full. By limiting the number of boxes in the hive, Adam prevents the bees from amassing huge amounts of honey. But as the queen lays, and the babies are born, the hive must swarm or be over-populated.

From looking in the hive, Adam could tell it was still rather full and would likely swarm in the next week again. So he took pre-emptive measures. See the new red hive boxes in the grass? He put that together today. He got his bee smoker going:

And he did yet another split, moving two heavy frames of honey/brood/bees from that short 2-box hive (in the middle, with the strap around it), into the new red boxes.

He examined the frames carefully first to get young brood and full frames.

Thankfully the temperatures today were warm enough to open the hives this way without harming the bees. In they go!

Then, the last bee business ~ Adam moved this morning's swarm hive onto the bee table too. He stacked it on top of the middle Langstroth hive. See it there, under the window, on top? (If you look carefully you can see the mesh enclosing its gate.) We've never had to stack hives like that before, but he's now run out of room on his bee table. He'll be building another one.

Seven hives! Can you believe it? Amazing. Now we leave them alone and see if both the new swarm and the new spit will take. Sometimes bees reject a change like that. He'll wait three days before removing the mesh barrier from the swarm hive gate. That gives them adequate time to become friendly and form a hive identity, so they don't take off again and run away to some tree.

This was a grand bee day! Isn't it amazing simply to allow God's creatures to do what they do best -- be fruitful and multiply! -- and we all reap the benefits?

Progress

Adam's working on the boat again since the weather has improved. He finished sanding this side of the hull, and it's so smooth it makes my fingers tingle unpleasantly when I touch it.

He put a stripe of tape on the water line, but will redo that with a thinner tape. Painting of the hull will commence very soon.
Today he filled old holes with epoxy resin.

Lots and lots of holes. Anywhere on the boat where anything was attached -- mast, lines, cleats, winches, all the hardware. Holes galore. All must be filled and later re-drilled when the hardware is re-attached.

Then he started on the anti-skid. These are portions of the deck surface where you want good solid footing. No sliding on deck in a gale! He taped off the areas.

Then he applied epoxy resin to those areas and put lots of clean sand on it while the resin was wet.

Later he will brush off the residual sand, and we'll see how it looks.

How are the bees progressing, you ask?

Just fine, thanks! The hive on the far left will be compressed to encourage the bees toward swarming so they will form new queens. Then Adam will split the hive before it can swarm. He hopes to get a couple of new hives from that hive this summer. The 2nd hive from the left -- his goal with it is to transfer it to larger Langstroth boxes. The hive in the middle is doing so well! We thought it might die at the end of the winter, but it's very active (see below). Adam will check it this week; he hopes to get a split out of it also. The little nuc box (4th from left) is coming along. Each day more bees go in and out, which indicates the brood has hatched. Adam will check it this week also to see if any new brood has been laid, which would indicate they now have a queen. The hive on the right also needs to move down and transfer into Langstroth boxes. So each hive has a goal for this year.

We love to watch the bees. In relaxation levels, watching bees is right up there with watercolor painting.
Spring is progressing too. The forsythia bush is half-green now.

My little business continues to grow. It's dandelion season, so I'm picking lots of dandelions and infusing them into safflower oil. It's nearly time to make my summertime insect-repellent lotion bars.
On bright, sunny days I put the bottles outside so the oil warms and the dandelions turn it a golden yellow. Dandelion is good for your skin. Actually, most parts of the dandelion plant are healthy for you.

This week Christians are progressing toward Good Friday, and then Easter. We simultaneously mourn and celebrate both the most painful and the most happy aspects of our faith.

My mother gave me this adorable ceramic egg. When I was a girl, each year she put peanut M&Ms in it at Easter. I try to remember to carry on the tradition.

We've moved so often that some years the egg is in a box of dishes, and I forget. Not this year!

I told Adam yesterday, "Only three each day! Then they will last till Sunday." Ha! Like that worked for either of us! But I will add, since this is a post on progress, that Adam still makes great strides in his health and weight-loss plan. He now rides his bike on a stationary trainer many days, so he can ride in the rain or the cold. He is really becoming fit and losing so much of the fat he used to carry around. I'm very proud of him, plus ... he's looking mighty handsome!

Bee Box Conversion

I came home from the farmer's market around noon to find Adam deep into serious bee work.
After years of having two shapes of bee boxes, he's decided to convert all his Warre hives (the skinny ones with the little roofs) into Langstroth hives (the others).

He also decided to paint the hives boxes, for which effort he enlisted the help of the resident artist. Julia wasn't very enthusiastic, but she did help. They chose red. Adam built these new Langstroth boxes this morning.

This will be his new standard size bee box -- not a square, like the Warre, and not 10 frames wide like the big Langstroth. These have 8 frames across.

He also made another Nuc box. It's always useful to have Nuc boxes in case you need/want to start a new hive.

Adam's goal is not to sell honey. Lots of people do that. He wants to sell bees and queens, so he must become good at splitting hives, manipulating frames of bees, spotting queen cells, forcing queen cells, etc. There's an increasing demand for bees, and the genetics of his bees is very good.
Anywho ...
Below you see the Warre hive on the right. The new Langstroth hive is red. If you look closely you can see a flat red board on top of it with the center cut out in a square. After this photo was taken, Adam lifted the 3 Warre boxes and put them atop the red Langstroth box. For this, the angry bees made him pay with four stings.

Over the winter the bees move up in the hive (for warmth; heat rises). So the bees are in the two top Warre boxes. In summer the bees move down in the hive. They will move down into the red box since it's on the bottom. In a couple of weeks, after the hive has drawn comb in the red box, he'll remove the top Warre box, full of honey. He'll feed that back to the hive, but remove the box to squeeze them downward. Eventually he'll transition the whole hive into Langstroth boxes.
Phew! That's a lot of info!
Meanwhile, on the back porch, the radishes are coming along.