Well, it's been forever and a day since I blogged an update about my ladies, so to my two blog followers, I apologize. I am avoiding finishing cleaning and organizing my closet so what better way to procrastinate than to write about my bees. I haven't actually been in the hive for a full inspection since late July. Mostly due to lack of equipment and my gerri-rigging of the hive.
You see, I only have one deep box and two shallow ones. The colony had grown so populated that they needed more space. So I stacked the two shallow boxes together and put deep frames in them and put them above the brood box (bottom deep box). Now the ladies don't like the wax filmed plastic frames that they are supposed to build their comb on, and since the two shallow boxes are taller than the frames, there is extra space between them and the bottom frames. So what did the ladies do? Instead of drawing comb on the provided frames they free formed comb in the extra space. It looked very cool, but not conducive for an organized hive to harvest honey from. I had to remove all that beautiful comb which was filled with nectar. It was a damn mess and there were many casualties. I didn't want the ladies to lose the nectar they worked so hard to forage so I put the free form comb in a box in front of the hive entrance and let them "rob" the comb of the nectar. Which worked ok, much of the nectar seeped out the bottom of the box and on to the ground. But that didn't discourage the ladies much, they just sucked it up anyway. This is what it looked like:
Now I wanted to encourage them to draw comb on the provided frames, so I took some of the brood frames from the bottom box and put them in the gerri-rigged upper box. Now bees like to keep their brood down low and put their surplus of honey up high. So I figured they would draw comb on the empty frames I put in in the bottom box for the new brood. Not sure how well this worked as I haven't done a full hive inspection since. But, one day last month, my darling friend Ann was over and we decided to take a look. The ladies did indeed build comb down for brood, but they just extended it from the top frames into the extra space. Silly ladies. I don't have any extra boxes to hang the frames in for an inspection and I will need two extra boxes stacked upon one another in order to accommodate the extra comb they've drawn. So we just pulled one frame out so I could show Ann the baby bees, eggs, larva and drones. In doing so, somehow the queen dropped to the ground. Luckily Ann noticed her because there were many other bees crawling all around her. They were pretty much freaking out. She asked why they were doing that and pointed them out to me. "Oh, that's because that's the queen." Thank goodness Ann was there because that could have been disastrous if I lost my queen. I picked her up and gently put her back in the hive. Returned the frame I had removed and closed up the hive. I haven't been in since and I'm just dying to know what's going on in there, and if they have enough honey stored for the winter. If not I will need to supplement them until spring.
In the meantime, my hours were cut severely at work so then I couldn't afford to by the necessary equipment to properly inspect the hive, but thankfully, I have found new work that ought to be stable income. As soon as I feel secure, I am going to purchase new equipment and check them out. Hopefully this will happen before it grows too cold. Brood cannot be exposed to the cold, it needs to remain incubated to about 93 degrees Fahrenheit.
So until I have approved funding for the new equipment I have been researching plants to plant in my yard and on my hill that will provide nectar and pollen for the ladies during the fall/winter since spring in my neighborhood is abundant with foraging plants. Yet another reason to get more boxes and frames, I expect to have an abundant honey flow next spring and they are going to need a box to for the surplus. So in my travels through my neighborhood, I have discovered that rosemary blooms at this point in the fall, as well as blooming in the spring. I plan on planting some along my retaining wall in my front yard so it will droop over it. I can't wait, it will be so beautiful. And smell so good and flavor the tasty roasted chicken I make.
I discovered a wonderfully amusing plant named Wild Dagga that looks like it is straight out of a Dr. Seuss illustration. In fact, that's how I identified it. I googled: plant that looks like a Dr. Seuss plant. I am anxious to get this plant in my yard for many reasons. Of course because it blooms from fall to winter providing my ladies with nectar when nectar is scarce, it is drought and frost tolerant, it attracts butterflies as well, it has a wonderful fragrance and has medicinal qualities. In addition the dried blooms, when smoked, have a similar effect to cannibus, not as strong and more volume is needed to acquire the effect....but it's not illegal. LOL. This is a picture of the bloom. It's much more impressive in person.
I discovered a shrub that had tiny white blossom buds on it that the bees were all over. They were foraging nectar from the blossoms before they were even in full bloom. I have yet to identify this plant but the leaves have an amazing fragrance to them. I would like to plant this on my hill along my property line.
I discovered some trees that are attracting my ladies right now as well but I am not in the market for any more trees, so they will have to settle for flying to those. They aren't that far,only a few streets away and when you consider a honey bee is capable of flying three to four miles away to forage, a few streets away is virtually in their back yard.
I also intend to plant Melissa Officialis, (more commonly named Lemon Balm) in the spring on my hill. The bees love it, it's great in salads and can be used as a substitute for lemon peel in cooking. It also has many medicinal qualities. And as a bonus, you can attract swarms by rubbing a new hive down with the leaves.
As long as work stays steady, I will be adding another hive to my yard next spring. Hopefully catch another swarm. I am also eager for that to happen. I can't wait for my first harvest.
A favorite part of my day is sitting outside the hive entrance watching the traffic in and out of the hive. It's amazing to see how the little bees can stuff their leg pockets so full of pollen. Occasionally I witness orientation flights of the emerging foragers, I sometimes see drones come and go. Their size is so impressive, almost impressive as the buzz they make when flying. They sound like a low flying aircraft. I have observed "house keeper" bees drag out deformed pupae as well, which I am told should not alarm me. Recently, since October is the month of robbing (bees from other hives will rob weaker hives of their honey stores) I put the entrance reducer in. It reduces the entrance/exit to the hive to about one inch. It was so amusing to watch their reaction to this. The ladies prefer to enter the hive at the very side of the front entrance. But the entrance reducer forces them to enter about three inches towards the middle. I could just sense the returning foragers' panic as they ran back and forth trying to find the entrance. I could here them exclaiming...."What happened to the fucking door?!?!?!?" (The ladies mandibles that of a sailor). I could here them protest once they finally found the entrance "Dude, who the hell shrunk the door???" and "You know, someone really should put out memo before they make a radical change in the hive like this", "who the hell decided on this without taking a vote??" and "This would've been nice to have like two months ago when we were being robbed!" It didn't take much more than a day for them to reorient to the new entrance though.
One day I observed an abundance of drones (male bees) coming and going. I don't see them often so this was unusual. So something was happening. Consensus was that I may have a virgin queen that was about to take a nookie flight. This is so exciting. I can't wait to get in there and see if I have a new queen. Another possibility is it was the big pre-winter drone eviction in progress. Once winter approaches the ladies kick the boys out, leaving them homeless and without food, and inevitably they die. If they try to fly back into the hive the ladies drag them out and drop them on the ground. Drones don't do any work in the hive so the ladies don't plan on wasting their valuable limited supply of stored honey they need for the winter on some bum that only uses the colony's resources and contributes nothing to the household. Come spring the queen will lay some drone eggs and they'll have enough boys for the nookie season again. Yep, that's all they're there for, sound familiar? In fact, if they are lucky enough to mate with a virgin queen, they promptly die after ejaculation. Mother nature is brilliant. Do you sense that I have a bit of bitterness and hostility towards the male species? That's because I do. But that's a subject for another blog.
Well, I hope I haven't bored you to tears, in fact, I hope you navigated your way away from this page before that happened.
Peace, love and happiness....
