Hard At Work & More Housing

This is supposed to be the dearth for bees around here but it is Southern California so there always seems to be something out there for bees. When I checked the hive two weeks ago I left a large baggie with four cups of sugar water to help the bees along. In the mean time the bees have seemed very active and the weather has been good so I left them alone. The weather is still great so I decided to check them today, nothing extensive, just see how they are doing and add another baggie. They seem to be doing very well.


Remember this frame from the Oct 17 inspection.? #9 second frame from the end of the hive box
This is how it looked two weeks ago.

This is how it looked today.


The "empty" last frame now looks like this. These were the only two frames I removed. I did peek at the #1 frame and it looks like #10 with the little bubble of wax. That was enough for me.


I returned the two frames and everyone seemed very happy. This time I used the Kirk method and smoked the bees first, leaving them for five minutes. I repeated that and then put a little smoke in the top before finally opening the hive. The twitchy bees were well behaved today.



The first time I put the baggie of sugar water into the hive there were issues. I could not cut slits into the baggie with gloves on and the bees advised me to leave after I removed one glove to make the cuts. Now I use a surgical clamp to grip the baggie before I get near the hive making it easy to lift the baggie off the liquid and cut the slits just before placing the baggie in the hive.


With eight of the frames well filled and the bees starting on #1 and #10, I decided to add another hive box. I might have moved one of the full frames up be decided the bees can make those kind of decisions. I placed the baggie on the new box which should lure the bees up higher in time. The old baggie had a little of the sugar water left in it after being there for two weeks so the baggie does not seem to be their main source of food.
Since I was in the area I did add a little more Tanglefoot around the concret block base. It works well but the ants keep finding paths around it. A small bit of wind blown debris can provide a path for them. One advantage to having the hive on a concrete pad is the ant paths are easy to spot. I am organic with the bees but not the ants. I follow the path to the source an apply stuff but not so much that spray will reach the bees. In time I may add a water trap under the blocks. No one method seems work all the time and I cannot afford an Echidna or aardvark. ,
The old baggie had a lot of propolis so I scrapped most of it off.


This will come in handy when I get to making wax starter strips. According to Kirk adding the propolis to the wax will make it more pliable and easier to use when making the all-wax starter strips. Some people eat propolis for health reasons. I have enough problem with spinach in my teeth without adding something else very sticky. The starter strips are a long way off, I need to triple the size of the hive before even thinking about removing honey and gathering wax
But that is what keeps us going.....

Improved Bee Cookies

Another batch waiting for the oven.






A little practice and they are starting to look better than the first batch. It may be the different recipe along with better techniques for cutting the images out of the dough.
I have a half pint beer glass that is perfect for the round honey bee. The straight edges are harder to pull off, notice the rippled edges on some of them.. Now I am doing them one at a time, roll the dough, sprinkle flour on the mold, press to imprint, cut it out and put on the cooking tray. It is labor intensive but they do look good.

One more recipe to try before shutting down for the season.

Bees and Christmas Cookies

Tis The Season.

Years ago my Mother used to Springerle cookies a couple month before Christmas. These are anise flavored (most of the time), imprinted with graphics and can be made hard or soft. Mom's were the hard variety. She would hide them away somewhere and by Christmas they rock hard. They would last for months but were wonderful when dunked in coffee.

Last year I was reminded of them and contacted my sister trying to find the Springerle rolling pin Mom used. No luck, it had disappeared over time. I bought a rolling pin and surprised my brothers with a package from Mom for Christmas. (Mom is 95 and lives in a Senior residence).
These were good with a nice flavor but on the soft side. I needed to do better this year.
I could not find the recipe I used last year so I started to look for more on the web.
I have selected three to try and during my search I found The Springerle Baker full of good information including a link to International Trading Co. where I found some Springerle molds.
I selected a few.

A maiden sitting next to a skep.

A fine looking bee on comb

Mushrooms and pine combs visited by a nice little bee.

Two gentleman enjoying a pint. Got nothing to do with bees but maybe that is mead they are drinking.

Springerles take a while, it is a very stiff dough to work. Some recipes need to be chilled before they are rolled out and imprinted. After imprinting all need to sit at least 12 hours so the crust on the top can set up. Cooking is a snap, done in 12 minutes and then they should be stored away for at least a month.

Recipe #1 is from Aliens in This World blog. This was posted a couple years ago with a follow up this year. I used it for the first two batches. Needed a second one because with the first attempt I used the paddle instead of the wire whip for mixing the eggs which did not froth the eggs enough. Then I used jumbo eggs which required a lot more flour. So, #1-A, added 2.5 cups of flour and used bakers ammonia with 4 jumbo eggs.
#1-B, used two large eggs , two jumbo eggs and added a cup of flour with baking powder instead of bakers ammonia (hartshorn or ammonia carbonate).
#1-A is done and stowed.


More recipes to bake and pictures to take.
Here's hoping the imprints get better but we have bees.

Bees and Trees and Bee Dancing

Linda's Bee Blog has some items about trees and bees she has been dealing with. These have been interesting reading and then suddenly bees in trees seemed to be everywhere

Friends of mine run on the horse trails/bridal paths in the Palos Verdes area. Once my "bee skills" were revealed they told me about bees in a tree along one trail that were bothering horses, riders and joggers. My services were requested, such as they are

This stump is 4-5 feet tall and about 10 feet off the trail

I did not have my bee suit so I did not get too close to the stump. The bees did not seem interested in me and their flight path did not seem to be over the horse trail. That made me wonder if the problem is nervous people rather than nasty bees.
Then there was the "Private Property No Trespassing" sign close to the stump. There is also a sign saying "Danger Bees" near the trail. Without permission and log cutting tools, this hive will be staying right were it is. Some bees are meant to be free and wild.

The next bee tree had a different story which can be see on the Backwards Beekeepers Blog but that is not the full story. Yesterday was the monthly meeting of the Backwards Beekeepers at Farmlab. The is located near downtown LA in an old industrial area right next to the train tracks and the LA River. The outside area where we meet is mainly under a bridge but there are lots of plants in containers that were recovered from a community garden which had been shut down a few years ago. Farmlab has some experiments going with hydroponic gardening and capturing rain water.
Our meeting space is free and they give us coffee a treats just for showing up. To return the favor Kirk, our bee leader, has installed one of his captured swarms in a hive out among their plants.

Kirk decided they could use a hive of bees in a natural hive so he brought along the bee tree he had picked up the day before.

The bees were well screened but there were always 4-5 of them on the outside of the screen. No telling where they came from. it is hard to believe they have been hanging around the tree as Kirk drove around with the stump in his truck.

I did notice something kind of special. I used my camera for the video so it is not the best presentation. Watch the bees closely. Near the end of the short sequence and you will see the bees apparently doing the bee dance. This is how bees tell each other where the good flowers are. What are they telling each other this time? It does not look like random movement to me.

Kirk taking the bee tree to set up in a far corner.

This was a very cramped space to try and shoot. You can see Kirk's glasses as he is starting to cut the screen loose. At this point things happened fast. "Boy those bees are pissed off" was the first comment. The three or four of us who were close by fled quickly. We retreated thirty yards away back under the bridge but one or two of the annoyed bees came along too and let us know what they thought. The meeting was officially over at this point.
No one got stung and we hope the bees will stay with their home in the new site. Some time later Kirk will show up with a bee hat and smoker to remove the rest of the tape and screen.

The Twitchy Bees

The non-standard weather continues. We went through some very hot weather, next it was a cooler spell followed by rain and now it has been in the 90's the last two days. It is hard enough for me to decide if it is long pants or short pants each day. I have no clue how the bees are handling things.

I have been doing some feeding with sugar water but with cooler weather I try to keep out of the hive and they are on their own. I have been surprised how much pollen I see them bringing it. It is from other sources because it is whiter, the bright yellow has been missing.

Then there is the heavy activity I have seen lately. A couple times, too early for the orientation flights (usually late afternoon), there has been very heavy activity at the front of the hive. The first time I did not know what it was but robbing came to mind so I added the entrance restriction board and it is still in place. Even with it there yesterday morning the same activity was going on. I had put a baggie with 3 cups sugar 3 water in before the rains came which needed replacing. It was definitely time to look inside.

The hive looked normal and the sugar water was gone. At this point the bees are very calm but as soon as I remove the old baggie and make that noise the twitchy bees show up.

At this point they are buzzing all over the place but I had my smoker out and made good use of it.

The first frame was empty but the next one has nice comb, much of this is very recent.

The third frame in and the first of the original five starter frames.

All of the other original frames looked just like this, covered with bees and brood. I do not recall seeing any drone cells with is probably normal this time of the year.

Two shots of Frame #8 which is progressing nicely

Frame #9, this will be fun to watch grow. #10 was empty.

All the frames back in place and new baggie with 3 cups each sugar & water. I put the cover back on and called it a day.. until later.

The ants have found a path up on the back side. There was some wind with the rain so some bit of debris is supplying them with a bridge. I am letting the bees settle down and then I will go out this afternoon and apply some Tanglefoot to solve that problem.

When I was inside I did look at the bottom board and it was clean. If there had been robbing there should have been some detritus on the floor from robber bees tearing open the cells. I guess it was not robbing. Just had a brain fart, maybe it was the girls chasing out the drones for the winter? I did not see the queen either but there are a lot of bees, she must be there. I can deal with the twitches for now but come Spring I may have to do the smush and see if we get a queen that makes calmer bees. But that will be another post and much later on.

In general the bees will make all the decisions but I am a little jealous of my niece who almost goes out and almost pets her bees with no problem. They came from a grower and mine are definitely feral. I prefer attitude in my terrier dogs, maybe I should develop that for the bees too.

Hive Inspection Sept 30, '09

After my bees had absconded, Kirk got me some more bees four weeks ago. At the time he mentioned they were "twitchy." That is one word for it. We are currently in a dearth in So. California. There is some nectar and pollen out there but not an abundance of it. I do not have any honey to feed them so the choice is syrup made from cane sugar and water 1:1 ratio. Brown sugar, organic sugar and beet sugar are not recommended, it must be cane sugar.

I had gone out and left them a quart bag of syrup a couple times. Once they got into the habit of eating the syrup, the bees emptied the qt baggie in a day or so. I was going out there and bothering them too often in my judgment. With the qt baggie I was in and out rather quickly but I wanted to move up to the gallon size so I would not bother them every two days. The bees had been okay with a little smoke and I got cocky. I took the gal baggie out with no protection, shorts and sandals. The bees on top of the frames did not seem bothered at all. I had not perfected my bag slicing technique and was there too long. As soon as the old bag removal made noise the guard bees came out of the front of the hive to do their job. I got a sting on the end of my pinkie finger, dropped the scissors and the bees were dive bombing me. I retreated, went into the bee (laundry) room suited up and went back out. This was to be a quick visit so no smoke. I tried to cut the baggie with some small scissors but could not get my leather bee glove fingers into the scissors so I took the gloves off. This was still to be a quick visit. Bare flesh on one hand, the bees know what to do. I got five more stings on the same hand and beat another retreat. I closed the hive and let the bees alone for a while. An hour later I found my rubber kitchen gloves and went back out. This time I got the baggie properly installed with slits but there were still bees flying around and talking to me. They were rather protective but no, not killer bees, just protective, or twitchy as Kirk calls it. The hand became quite swollen but no pain after the first hour. It was awkward bending my fingers but there was no arthritis pain in my knuckles.

I was out of town last weekend and the weather was very hot so I went in for an inspection today. These bees have been in place for four weeks and this would be the first full hive check.
I may be a novice but I learn. This time I got fully suited and then smoked the hive before opening it up. I left them alone for while and put my tools out on the table by the hive. It is much easier that way then digging into your pockets or looking around the ground and trying to not step on tools.

This hive had 5 frames of brood from the nuc and five empty frames when I added the bees. After a bit more smoke this is what I found inside.

The first frame was empty but they had made comb on #2 and there was some honey.

The next five frames , all from the original nuc, were swarming with bees hard at work.

Plenty of brood but I need better eyes to see the eggs.

I looked on all sides and did not see the queen. She has been hard at work and there were plenty of larvae so I am confident she is there.

This is one of the "empty" frames from the other side of the hive. They have been busy making comb and adding stores on this side of the hive too. . There were two more empty frames past this point, so five frames of brood and honey being added to the outside of in two of them. There were some drone cells but not many. As I understand it that is normal for this time of the year. Our local dearth should end in Nov-Dec but we have an El Nino year predicted. That can mean lots of rain. I will be adding more syrup for a while yet ( with gloves and a smoker,).

The hive looks healthy and is growing with no obvious problems. One of the times I next add the syrup I will scrap off the propolis they add under the baggie. I had an another super with waxed starter strips ready to add but with three empty frames it is too soon for that. It would make too much empty space for them to protect along with the lower hive box. A couple days ago I went out and found a lot of activity around the porch area. There were a lot of bees flying around and this was hours before their normal orientation flights. I have added an entrance reducer in case this was robbing going on..

If you visit the Backwards Beekeepers one of the last photos is Kirk showing a young lady how to make wax strips for new frames. He does it by painting wax on a clean board of the proper size. When he adds propolis to the melting wax, it become bendable instead of hard and fragile. That makes it much easier to install the strips of wax and paint stir sticks are no longer needed.
Collect the propolis, it can come in handy.

The Cutout

At the Backwards Beekeeper meeting last week, Steve Rosales who lives in the same general area invited me to tag along to a cutout in Hermosa Beach with him and his brother-in-law, Carlo. Today was the day.

Carlo (left) & Steve (right) evaluate the situation, the bee's hive entrance is the little slot in the concrete base of the fence. All the properties in this area are on a hill and the neighbor's yard is 4 feet above this base. Some of the fence would have to be removed but we had no idea how far up or how wide it would go. The renter had not paid much attention to the fence until recently, the bees could have been there a very long time.

Carlo smoked them well before we started but this turned out to be a very calm hive. There were no aggressive signs the entire time of the cut out. We were there about 3 and half hours, working most of the time. (They were, I was documenting and learning).

The bottom portion of the fence had short pieces which worked out for us. Steve started to remove the boards to gain access to the hive. The main hive's upward growth was blocked by a 2x4 about a foot from the bottom. We knew how tall it was but the next question was how wide?

Carlo is about to remove the last section of board. I would estimate the hive to be about three feet across. The comb was layered with the thickest section to the right. That had four separate layers of comb. As the comb moved across it dropped from 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 at the far left.

This is the last section of comb. The bees would move to the open space when they were smoked but they quickly came back.

When they came back they would beard right down the comb with the top row all looking upwards.

Our hostess holding a piece of board with honey and drone cells. At first she was going to watch from an upstairs window but when I pulled out an extra veil she found some rubber gloves and go up close with us. At one point she was right in there using the vacuum.

Vacuum? Vacuum for bees?

The heavy equipment put together by Steve from plans he found on the Internet. The shop vac is attached to an upper section with a screened bottom and hole for the hose plus another hole to adjust the suction. In the middle is a medium hive body with 10 waxed frames. The bottom section has a solid bottom with a hole in one end of the base for the vac hose. By adjusting the little panel on the top left of the upper piece you can keep the bees flowing in but not slamming them into the hive box. An initial test using an older vac did not have enough suction and the hard piece on the end of the hose was too narrow. We would be using the Improved Bee Vac.

Steve making the first run with the vac. Everyone got a shot at it including the lady of the house and myself. The suction is set to get them in slowly, not in massive quantities.

Drone brood and honey ( it tasted very good too.)

Capped honey, the comb with the drone larvae had been attached to the light colored bit in the upper left.

Carlo gathering bees, this was very early in the process, it was not fast. We kept looking for the Queen. If we could spot her,Carlo would put her into a plastic box with holes in the lid, That would be placed into top section of the vacuum hive box to encourage the bees to stay there. I was able to put my bare finger right into the bees on the comb and they never reacted. This was a wonderfully calm hive.

The first layer of bees is in the vac box and Carlo begins the comb removal process. From this point on he was taking care of the comb and cutting it all down to fit into the frames on a second medium hive body.

The clear comb above was full on bees on the other side so Steve gathers them up.



Carlo fitting the comb into the frames and securing them with rubber bands.

This is much later with all of the comb removed. Steve kept patiently removing bees from cracks. He had not seen the queen was not sure she had been collected. Once Steve removed the two short pieces board just below his hands he spotted her. She had been going deeper and deeper into the hive as we got closer. Shortly after this I was able to make my main contribution to the cause. When Steve next saw the Queen she was moving away again and going behind the boards. Using a surge of energy I was able to reach over and flick on the vacuum just in time so Steve could extract the Queen unharmed using the Improved Bee Vac.

Carlo gathered seven frames full of comb with honey, pollen and larvae.

The medium hive with the comb is placed top of the hive with the bees. All are cinched together securely and later duct tape is wrapped around all the places where the boxes join.

A great day and Carlo ended up with a hive of very nice gentle bees. Steve practiced doing another fence cut out and I learned a lot. Any time you can go along for something like this, jump on it. It was a great way to spend the morning at the beach.