Sweet Insulation

IMG_2676  Originally uploaded by dmb90260

I have not been into the hives since the July 3 check and honey collection with John and Arjuna. Last week I had lifted the top cover on the Playa Hive and found a wax worm on top edge of the super. I flicked it off and then noticed some moths on the outside of the hive. These were very dark but I do not know what wax moths look like.  I was curious to see if there was moth damage inside that hive.

Later I was filling the water in the turkey tray moats on the bottom of the hives. Apparently I had set the nozzle at an odd angle and it was making too much noise and annoying the Twitchy Bees. There were a lot of bees flitting around the hive entrance and these were not orientation flights.  They did not seem happy,  I shut the water off and left.
An hour or two later I went to move some clothes in the laundry room, next to the hives. I looked around the corner and the bees still seemed to be agitated after all that time.  I turned to leave and a guard bee took issue and kept buzzing me as I walked to the house. It made the mistake of getting tangled in my hair. Top of the head stings do not bother me but he never got that close to my scalp before he was smushed. I wanted to check that hive to see if there were other problems.

Summer has finally arrived locally and it has been a little too hot most days to bother the bees.  It was in the low 70's when I went out this AM at 11.   Well it said that on all my electronics but It seemed very hot while I was out there.  When I was finished all the fancy gauges said it was 85!!!

I had added a super on each of the hives in July and I have two more ready to add when I set out for the inspection.  With the milder summer I had no idea how fast the bees were filling the last super.

The top super had no new wax yet.   When we added it I had pulled two of the of the lower frames up.   The bees were working on these and both looked like this with dark wax but fill ig with honey..   The good news was an absence of wax moths or worm evidence.

   There was more activity on the second super.

On the outside frames the bees were adding pollen to the empty frames I had swapped in July.

The other frames looked like this with capped honey n the top and some brood in the middle.  I did not see the queen but that is impossible for a solo person to do and also take pictures.  I had evidence she was active and the hive seems to be thriving after it swarmed in June.  Still no evidence of wax worm or moths anywhere.   I closed the hive.

With the Twitchy Bees living up to their name when I filled the water moats, they were well smoked before I checked things today.  The top lid was sealed very tight. it took a bit of work to get it loose without it making some noise.

The added top frames were empty but for this pyramid of wax moving upward

The empty frames I had added in place of the honey we had extracted were still empty but there was still a lot of good looking honey there.   The bees get to keep it for now.

I guess I did not handle the full honey frame in July.   When I lifted this one I was very impressed with how much it weighed.  I checked a few more frame smiled at the largess and left it for the bees.  There was no evidence of wax moth in any of these frames

The Twitchy Bees went back to work.

And so did the Playa bees.  If wax moth had shown up, the bees had dealt with them.  The Playa hive seems to be recovering from the swarming.   The Twitchy Bees proved they could be nice if I asked them with a little smoke.. I did not add either of the new supers but there is honey coming.   It was a good day in The Dale.

Faux Bee

Originally uploaded by dmb90260

As seems to be the case often, a planned single post is just not enough.  Another subject pops up unexpectedly.  That happened early today. This morning I was out spraying non-fat milk on my tomatoes when I spotted this little guy.

Wait!  What was that?  Milk? On tomatoes?  That is about right.  Last year my tomatoes were ravaged by mildew that killed the leaves and then the plants.  I had lovely fruit for the initial round but nothing after that.   Last year I tried combating it with neen (or neam) oil but the bottle did say "do not use around bees."  My bees were yards away so I went ahead and use it but some time later I had the bad bee adventure.. absconding bees. 

This year I planted more heirloom tomatoes and kept an eye out for mildew and removed any leaves with spots.  I was barely holding my own against the evil fungus when I left town for a couple of weeks.  My friend Jean came over to water the tomatoes and gather some fruit and saw the mildew.  She checked with a friend who belongs to a community garden and nothing bad is allowed at all.  They are very aggressive about dealing with problems and their solution with mildew was to spray it with non-fat milk.  She applied some and it looked better when I got home so I continue the practice.   In fact last week I was talking about mildew on plants to a gardening friend  and he recalled someone using the same practice with mildew on zucchini plants.   It seems to be working now and I keep lots of milk handy so I will know if it is effective in a few weeks.

That brings us back to this morning and our little visitor.  I have no idea what his real name or call name is but he looks like a moth pretending to be a bee, maybe a bumble bee.   I have never seen any bumble bees around here but no one told him that.

I don't know what he is but he is kind of cool looking with those big eyes and wide stripes.   He never moved at all while I was taking pictures.   When I went back much later he was long gone.
I hope he/she has not left any eggs or such on the next crop of tomatoes.   I have lost two plants but 3-4 are managing to survive.    FYI, the one that seems to have the least issue with mildew is the Brandywine Pink tomato.    This particular variety has leaves called potato leaves, very similar to potato plants.

If you have an idea what this little guy is, please let me know so I can post the information.

Odds and Ants

After the small honey harvest last month I have not been messing with the bees much.  Shorty after the honey day I left town for a couple of weeks.  When I left things were in good order except the bees were ignoring my newly planted Russian Sage.

When I picked it up in the nursery all of the plants were covered in bees.  I have not see a single bee on it at my place.  After looking closely it is apparent it was all a matter of bad timing.  The blossoms are empty and drying up.  It may be the season or the result of transplanting but the bees will get their reward in the next bloom cycle.

This has not been a normal So Cal summer.  It has rarely gotten hot.  In my area, three miles from the coast there is always an ocean breeze and it rarely gets over 85 but for now we have rarely been over 74 and this is August, the start of our hot season.   With the cooler weather I had not seen much evidence of ants this year.  When I got back home lifted the cover of the Playa Vista hive and checked to see if they needed another super.

Oops, the ants were  back.  I put the lid back on and got suited up.  I used the bee brush and kept pushing them off of the frames and sides of the hive.  When there were fewer bees I started to add water to the turkey pans under the hives, something I should have done months ago.

Yes, those are bee bodies in the pile.  Not to worry.  Both hives seem to have used the pans as covenient ossuaries to collect all the dead bees from the hives.  They are not recent deaths but from over the entire winter.   I scraped the majority of them out so they would not provide a bridge for the ants to the hive.

The larger Twitchy Bee hive had only a few bees evident on the hive exterior and none on the top super frames.  I topped off the water in the pans on both hives.  I could have applied more Tanglefoot which would have corrected things but given my hive positions that would have meant lifting and moving both hives.   The water will work just fine for now and I will keep it topped off for the summer.  There is one problem I have to work out.  Most days I find several bees drowning in the water which may be unavoidable for now. 

Over the last couple of days I have lifted the lid on the Playa bees and brushed away more ants but their numbers are lessening.  I will go in next week and clean more out but Ii can see it is working, there seems to be much more bee activity in the top super than there was before.  I may be adding another super quicker than I planned but it is ready with frames and wax starter strips all set up. 

Honey Of a Fourth

 

Pure Honey

Originally uploaded by dmb90260

The Playa Vista bees had swarmed earlier in the month even after I had added a third super.  I had done it too late and neglected to move some of the frames with brood or honey up in to the new super. In the dog world we refer to this a "handler error."  Bees do what bees will do but sometimes we mess up and make it harder for them.  As noted in "Bees In Lavender" I had captured the swarm three weeks ago. They were still in that nuc sitting in the lavender bushes and needed a new home.   My neighbors are very close and I did not have enough space to justify keeping them.  I needed to check into the Playa Vista hive and fix some frames with messed up comb and I also wanted to inspect the Twitchy Bees.  I had not been deep into the hive for a long time.   I made a deal to handle all of this.

                             

On July 3,  John Lyons arrived with  his 11 year old son Arguna (with his own bee suit).   We would inspect the hives, make any honey decisions and he would leave with a nuc of nice gentle bees.  This was a win-win-win situation.  Arguna would learn more about beekeeping, so would I and I had time to take some pictures.

The #4 super on the twitchy bees had some activity and comb but not much so we left it alone and set it off to the side.

This is what we found on the end frame of #3 super.  Beautiful full capped honey.

A couple of frames in and it looked like this with brood surrounded by capped honey.

It was like this all across the super.  We did not go deep enough to look for the queen.

With another full capped frame on the other end, these bees had been busy.  I think the number of bees was down from before and they were no longer twitchy.   We had almost no aggessive behavior out either hive.   I think they may have swarmed and I did not know about it.  In the process the new queen may have mated with nicer bees.  I am guessing about that but I am very happy with the quality and amount of honey they are producing.

We harvested two combs.  When John cut the comb off he left a 1/4 inch of comb on each to use as a guide.  Those two frames were put into the #4 super to encourage the bees to move up and then we closed that hive.  Other than a quick peek we did not bother the brood nests on supers #1 & #2.

On to the Playa Vista hive where John and Arguna checked everything very closely with a head to head inspection.  (Is this a form of mind melding in the bee world?)

They were able to spot the queen swarm cell.

John also spotted the queen on this frame  but she kept moving back and forth on the bottom and I was never sure I got a shot of  her.

 One of the frames was missing on the bottom super due to odd honey comb.  We fixed that and then Arguna swapped a couple of full frames up to the top super to encourage the bees to move up more.  The hive was closed and that part was done.

John and Arguna wrapped up their nuc of bees for transport home.  

 But first the comb had to be crushed.

That brought out all sorts of four legged and two legged honey inspectors present,

 Arguna gave his taste of approval.   The honey was left to drain while I took the dogs out of town away from the noise of fireworks.

The honey is great and a small harvest is better than no harvest.  This honey is from the Twitchy Bees which I got from Kirk in September of last year, it has been a while but well worth it.

You have to good to your workers.  While I was gone with the dogs I found Some Russian Sage to reward the bees.    

This really was a honey of a Fourth.
(Special thanks to John and Arguna)

Bees In Lavender

Home Grown Swarm

Originally uploaded by dmb90260

If you read the last post you saw this opening sentence "The Bees are being busy making honey and I have nothing to show about them for a while."

Hah! The bees were up to much more than making honey. After posting that entry I was doing things around the house including laundry. The bee hives are located by the outside wall next to the laundry room. As I was loading the dryer I heard a very loud and persistent buzzing outside. I checked the Twitchy bees, their hive is four supers high and could use another one soon. They were no more active than normal but four feet away the Playa Vista bees were in berserk mode. There were bees on the ground, on the front of the hive and zooming all around above the hive, lots of bees, very active bees.

The little dog in the previous post got curious and was wandering near the bees. Mainly out of concern for her I got her away and inside the house quickly. My other dogs have gotten bees tangled in their coats before, never stung, and now  know to leave the bees alone. The youngster has more to learn.

I knew the Playa Vista bees needed more room but with a road trip in mid-May and some dog activities I was slow in addressing the issue. I had to get some new hive boxes, nail them together and make and install the wax starter strip in the frames. Six days ago I finally completed that work and added a third box. Normally I would have swapped a couple full frames from the second super with a couple empty ones from the new addition. The bees looked happy and I was preoccupied with other things so I did not do the swap.  I did note a number of larger dark bees around the front of the hive. I was curious but not concerned with this, there did not seem to be any conflict between the normal small bees and the larger ones. Now I wonder if they were drones, going on or returning from a mating flight.

When I left the bees by the laundry room I did take time to note there was no fighting, my first guess for the cause of the activity.  It was mid morning and orientation flights here usually occur around 2-3PM so that was not the cause. Once I got the dogs in the house and secured I went back out and could see bees flying next to a persimmon tree across the back fence in the neighbor's yard.   I now had an idea of what was going on.

I went into the garage and donned my bee suit. Not positive of what was happening. I took a little longer so I could get my boots out of the truck also. I wanted to be protected just in case I found a big problem. I also went back and got my camera.

The activity around the hive had subsided but there were still bees on the ground and they were not fighting.  There were small feral bees and some of the larger ones.

 

The bees had swarmed and had settled on to a branch of the persimmon across the fence.  I had  been too late adding the third super.  Not only was I late, I was very late.  According to our Bee Leader, Kirk, when bees swarm, they made the initial decision to do that a month earler.  They had to make a swam cell, let it develop and then have the new queen make a mating flight, all before the swarm would happen.  It is not an overnight thing.  The super should have been added while I was off at a vintage trailer rally in May.

 

There is a raised planter along the fence in this area and they were not up high.  I was able to stand there and reach up to the swarm.  These were all small feral bees sort of light colored

I pushed an empty nuc up under the swarm and attached it with a bungie cord.  I have the branch a big shake and whacked the bottom of the box then left the bees for a while.  I went back and did the whack thing two more times. I could not see the Queen and wanted to be sure she was inside.   The bungie technique is very easy if you are not pressed for time and the swarm is where it does not attract undue attention.  You will be leaving it in place for long periods and you do not want some curiosity seeker to come investigate that whit box in a tree or bush.

  After an hour or so the bees had moved inside the nuc. ( I added the second bungie to make it more secure)

 I lowered the nuc to the fence and propped the lid on the nuc for another half hour so any stragglers could find the queen.

Since these neighbors do not know about my hives I moved it down directly on to the lavender bush, out of sight out of mind.  Later I settled the lid onto the nuc and added a strip of cardboard over the screen I had cut into the lid.  I may swap the screen lid for a solid one later.  Right now I want the to just settle in.   The hive can stay there as long as it is just the nuc.  A normal wooden super will not be able to stay there but this is okay for now.
I have to decide on what to do with the bees.  I do not really want another hive in my limited space but these are tiny feral bees and very easy to work.   I do not want to give them up.  I could give up the Twitchy bees instead but they have a four (soon to be five) super hive and are my honey makers for now.  I do need some honey out of this deal.
I just checked and the bees are still there but this is no guarantee they will stay.   I have had them stay overnight and still leave during the day.