#16. What the bees are eating

Turnip flowers, over-wintered leeks, azaleas, Daphne's butt (right background)

It is hard to believe, even harder to convey, the thrill of watching bees from my backyard hives visiting flowers in my own backyard.  And I thought I might be alone with my obsessive bee-watching, but then I saw a post on our bee class message board the other day from one of my classmates.  She was voicing her frustration about not seeing bees on the flowers in her own yard.  Where were they going, she wondered?  They were not on her dandelions, cherry blossoms, or blueberries.  They were flying, and coming back to the hive with pollen, but she never saw them foraging.  

Until a couple of days ago, I had the same experience.  I finally did track some bees to my neighbor's giant, native cherry tree.  And I counted 3 bees on my espaliered pear and that was very exciting.  But still, that was 3 bees.  Then the bees found my flowering turnips.  I had planted turnips last spring.  I quite like turnips, especially baby turnips.  But these turnips were just gross.  Gnarly, thick-skinned, cracked, fibrous and tough.  I didn't get rid of them because I liked the turnip greens they provided.  I left them in the ground over the winter - partly out of laziness, and partly out of my 'vegetable over-wintering experiment' (more about that in a future post).  And, indeed, the turnips started producing greens very early this spring.  And then they quickly bolted to seed.  The acid yellow flowers are very much like the oilseed rape that covers vast swaths of the English countryside where I lived many years ago.  The bees are having such a good time with the turnips that I will plant a patch behind the hives this year so that they can have a good supply next spring.      

Bee foraging in a turnip flower.  Look closely and you can see a yellow ball of pollen on her thigh.  
(Who knew it would be so hard to photograph a foraging b?  They move a lot, & my cellphone camera kind of sucks. )

Then there are the tree peonies.  I have always love my tree peonies.  So much so, in fact, that I have dragged the poor things with me every time I've moved house.  They started their life in Palo Alto, CA in 1998.  When I sold that house in 2000 the peonies were just settling in, but I couldn't bear to leave them behind.  So they went with me to my next home in Menlo Park, CA, and then to Atherton, CA.  Eventually, when the time was right for me to make Montauk my permanent home, they made their way across the country with me in the back of a pick-up.  That spring, the peonies started blooming during the road trip, and every evening I'd climb in the back of the truck, cut a flower and bring it into whatever roadside hostelry I'd selected for the night.  Their heady perfume and huge crepe-paper petals - the flowers measure 11 inches across! - added an absurdly festive air to the dingy motel rooms I became so accustomed to.

But never have I loved this plant so much as I do today.  Multiple flowers unfurled late this morning, their sweet scent inviting the bees into the yellow mop of pollen-covered stamens.  The bees cannot contain themselves; they're rolling around, and diving in, and seemingly enjoying some sort of drunken euphoria.  They've probably never encountered so much pollen in one place before.  

I'm so happy that I didn't leave this magical plant behind.  It was meant to settle here, at The End, making the bees and me deliriously happy.  

Bees frolicking wildly in the abundant pollen

I had bee class last night in Riverhead.  Even though it was drizzly, we still met in the bee yard an hour before class and Ray worked about 4 of the hives.  Despite the bad weather, the bees were pretty cooperative.

I had not been feeling too good about my bees.  Even though they appear active and happy, they just don't seem as if they are growing their numbers quickly enough to cope with the nectar flow and honey production that begins next month.  When I checked my hives before heading to class, I was disappointed that not much progress had been made in expanding their nest area into the frames I'd provided.  In each hive, the activity is largely confined to the frames that arrived with the original nukes.  Of course there is a lot of free comb being built in the empty space underneath those frames, so maybe they have doubled the comb in the month they've been here.  It is hard for me to know if they should be drawing and filling comb faster than they are.  The queens, of course, are the real unknown quantity.  Have they been properly mated?  Are they laying enough?  I will have to go in and pull all the individual frames and try to assess the brood patterns.  Up until quite recently, I didn't know if I was looking at capped brood or capped honey.  As I said in one of my early posts, the learning curve is steep.  After last night's class, though, I think I have a better idea of what I should be looking for and I also have a plan for manipulating the frames to encourage more comb-drawing, and maybe even more egg-laying from her highnesses.  We'll see if I can pull it off...  

  

#15. There's bee stings...and then there's BEE STINGS!

Well, I knew it had to happen sooner or later...

Last week I did my second hive inspection, and I started with the red hive.  As Ray Lackey had predicted, swapping the locations of the stronger (red) hive with the weaker (yellow) had resulted in red hive field bees relocating to the yellow hive.  And the yellow hive has really been buzzing since then.  So much so, that it is now even more active than the red hive used to be.

I wanted to start my inspection with the red hive to make sure that their forces weren't too weakened to recover their strength.  And besides, I had never seen the Red Queen, and I thought it would be a good idea to try to track her down.  When I opened up the hive I was a little disappointed, but not really surprised, that the bees hadn't started drawing comb in the top brood box I'd added the week before; they really need to fill this box with brood and food before they will begin to produce excess honey.  Of course, I added that box and then promptly tricked half the Team Red field bees into moving over to the yellow hive, so I guess they didn't have the manpower to develop the penthouse apartment.

So I pulled the whole top box off and concentrated on where the action was.  And there was A LOT of action.  The foraging activity may have dropped off, but the house bees' brood-rearing action was going strong.  They still hadn't done anything much with the frames I'd added, but the original deep frames that came with the nuke were teeming.

The 3 frames on the left are the ones I added to the original nuc frames.  The next 4 frames are packed.

When I started pulling frames, I saw where all the energy was being directed.  The bees were building 'free comb' in the space created between the bottom of the deep frames and the bottom of the hive.  Eventually, theses frames will be replaced with frames that fill the area more efficiently, but until then, hive examinations create a real mess, because you break off pieces of comb when you lift out the frames.  It was very distressing - to me and the bees - to see a huge chunk of wax comb, now with brood exposed and vulnerable, fall to the bottom of the hive as I lifted one of the center frames.

Broken comb attached to the bottom of one of the 'deep' frames

I was so intent on finding the Red Queen that I didn't notice just how angry the bees were becoming.  Who could blame them?  I was breaking up their brood area and appeared to be a serious threat to their queen.  And I guess I was kind of cavalier since I was fully suited up.  What I didn't count on, though, was that bees can sting through standard gardening gloves.  This I hadn't anticipated.  So two of them got me on the top of my index finger.  I quickly put everything back together and moved out of the area before I removed my glove and scratched out the stingers.  Lesson learned - next time I go back to leather gloves.  Still, the stings didn't hurt very much, and I was thrilled that I had been able to locate the Red Queen.

  I've drawn a red square around the queen, upper half of the photo.  

Unfortunately, you can really only see her abdomen.

I let the bees calm down for awhile and then went to the yellow hive.  I decided not to pull frames, because I didn't want to break brood cells and destroy comb as I had in the red hive.  What I did do was pull off the cover and feeder and add another brood box.  I could see that the bees hadn't yet moved into the frames I'd added when I did the nuke transfer, but there was a lot of action, and the center frames looked packed.  Even though they didn't look like they need it yet, I'm glad I added the extra box because yesterday Ray emailed a warning to the class that we must stay one step ahead of the bees - one of his students' new hives has already swarmed; that is, most of the bees left with a queen to establish a new colony elsewhere because they felt overcrowded.

I really felt as though I'd dodged a bullet with my bee stings.  Until the next day, that is.  It took a full 24 hours, but my hand blew up like a balloon and took a good 4 days to get back to normal.  But, hey, I think I remember reading that bee stings are good for arthritis.  

Turns out I really did dodge a bullet.  The day after my bee sting incident, I was down the block visiting my friend Mikey, a retired NYC firefighter.  His friend John, another ex-firefighter was at the house too, and he was curious about my beekeeping exploits.  He told me he has a friend, Rob, in East Hampton who keeps bees, that he had lost his colony over the winter and had just replaced them.  The story sounded familiar, and I realized that I already had Rob's contact information - another mutual friend had told me what a great guy he is and that I should contact him.  I told this to John, and said that I hadn't yet connected with Rob.  So John says, 'Yeah, well I guess you heard about Rob's bee sting incident, right?'  I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, but when he told me the story, I ran right home and emailed Rob, and he confirmed the details.

Rob was doing a hive inspection.  He was wearing a veil, but it must not have been tied down properly, because a bee made her way inside the veil.  Before Rob could remove the veil to release her, the bee flew up into one of Rob's nostrils.  --  I'll just let that sit with you for a second or two  --  According to Rob himself, he panicked, and reflexively did the worst thing imaginable - - - he inhaled.  Through his nose.  He sucked her right into his sinus cavity before spitting her out his mouth.  The problem was that while she was in his sinus cavity, she stung him.  According to John, Rob's head blew up like a pumpkin.

But Rob still loves his bees.  This winter, when marauding deer careened through his bee yard, they took down the hive.  By the time Rob found it, on the ground and opened up, all the bees were gone.  So he's just got himself a new colony from a local Long Island breeder and is looking forward to another season of beekeeping.  I have to say, I'm not so sure I'd be so ready to get back in the saddle after something like that.

#14. HYGIENIC BEES deserve the Good Housekeeping seal of approval

All honey bees are good housekeepers.  But some are better than others.  Part of the job of the house bees is to maintain the brood area, cleaning out and repairing wax brood cells for reuse.  And bees remove their dead brothers and sisters from the nest.  But some bees go a lot further in ridding the colony of diseases and parasites.

I drove up island to Setauket last week to hear a talk, sponsored by the Long Island Beekeepers' Assn. (of which I am one of the newest members) by renowned entomologist Dr. Marla Spivak.  (Dr. Spivak is a recent recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship - the "genius grant" that bestows half a million $ on each of its honorees.)  Through a program of selective queen breeding, Dr. Spivak has developed a strain of 'Hygienic' honey bees that can effectively identify and destroy diseased brood within the colony.  They can actually sense when something isn't right - even within a completely sealed cell; that is, one that has already had a wax cap applied and is pupating.  When they locate an unhealthy pupa, the bees chew through the cap and remove the infected youngster from the nest.  This behavior can help to interrupt the life cycle of the disease pathogen, thereby limiting its effects on the colony.

So imagine my horror and fascination as I watched while two bees wrestled a fully-formed, but still bright white, bee pupa out of the yellow hive and unceremoniously dumped it over the side of the hive stand onto the ground.  To understand the level of my concern, readers of this post need to know something about the life cycle of the dreaded 'varroa mite', one of the most debilitating bee pests, and one of the likely ingredients of 'Colony Collapse Disorder' a term that even most non-beekeepers are now familiar with.

Varroa mites feed on bees, and probably also introduce viruses into the colony, and the baby varroa mites feed exclusively on bee larvae, because their mouth parts are not developed enough to pierce the armor of an adult bee in order to feed.  Larval bees' exoskeletons are still soft and, therefore, especially vulnerable to predation.  If a varroa mite can make it into a cell where there is a bee larva, once that cell is capped with wax, she can lay her eggs and raise her brood in the closed environment meant to protect the pupating larva.  Enter the Hygienic Bees.  They can actually smell - right through the wax - whatever outgassing is happening as a result of the feeding mites.  They will tear through the wax cap and destroy the bee pupa, and the baby mites along with it.

I watched the pupa incident on Tuesday, 4/26.  That was the day after I went up-island to hear Dr. Spivak and learn about Hygienic Bees.  Did I witness hygienic behavior, and was that, in fact, a good thing?  The following day, Wednesday, was a week after I got my bees, and it was time for their first hive inspection.

So I suited up and started with the yellow hive, pictured below.  The photo shows what you see when you remove the hive cover and the feeder to expose the frames.  The three frames on the left are the ones I added when I hived the bees the week before.  The bees still hadn't touched them, i.e. they hadn't started making wax and drawing comb.  I didn't like that.  The fourth frame, with yellow wax comb visible, looked much as it did when I first transferred it from the nuc box to the hive, i.e. no brood or food stores.  I didn't like that either.  All the action was on the 4 old, crummy-looking frames on the right of the photo.  During my inspection I found another discarded bee pupa.  And it would seem that this does, in fact, indicate the presence of varroa mites.  Ray, our bee mentor, says that we have to live with varroa mites; that they are pretty much ubiquitous.  Our aim is to properly manage colonies so that they are strong enough to withstand the stresses of mites and other pests.

There was a bright spot during my hive inspection, though.  The big thrill was that I saw my beautiful queen.  She's a big, blonde bombshell with a dazzling sky blue paint dot on her thorax, placed there by her breeder so that she would be easier to spot.  It was such a thrill to see her, and I couldn't help but to pray a silent little prayer that all would be well with her and her yellow hive family.  

I worried even more about Team Yellow once I opened up the red hive.  The activity and number of bees in that hive was overwhelming compared to the yellow hive.  This colony had begun to use one of the frames I'd placed in their hive, drawing beautiful, new wax comb.  And on the other side of the hive, I saw what was obviously lots of newly capped honey.  The buttery yellow swath of honeycomb was a stark contrast to the largely dark, vacant cells of the yellow hive.  But all was not peachy at the red hive either.  Besides opening up the hives and checking through the frames,  I also slid out the white plastic trays that are set under the 'varroa screen' bases of both hives.  I couldn't see any mites (which are supposed to fall off some bees, through the screens, and onto the trays where they are visible to the naked eye) but that probably doesn't mean anything.  What I did see, on the tray from the red hive, was a beige wormy thing about 1/2 an inch long.  I didn't know what it was, but I knew it couldn't be good.

Yellow Hive - workers have built a 'queen cup' in the center of this frame, a possible sign of stress

I posted my concerns, along with photos, on our bee class message board.  Jorg, my classmate, immediately came back with an ID for the grub - the dreaded 'wax moth'.  Wax moths are opportunistic creatures that destroy weakened colonies by devouring wax, honey, even baby bees.  Uggh.  Worry, thy name is beekeeping.  And the next morning, shortly after dawn - because now I almost want to pitch a tent next to the hives and slay all comers - I found 2 adult wax moths skulking around on the outside of the hives.  Naturally I squooshed them, and was quite satisfied when I checked back a few hours later and found one of the dead moths being gobbled up, head first, by a large black and orange spider with beady eyes and iridescent beetle-black mandibles.

I mean honestly!  My first week as a beekeeper and I already have two different creepy crawlies to deal with? Wax moths and varroa mites?  No honeymoon (sorry) for me!  It seems as though I'm fated to dive in at the deep end and confront problems right from the git-go.  And it doesn't seem fair.  I mean, these problems cannot have arisen within one week, can they?  Did my poor nukes come to me with this attendant pestilence?  I am not happy.

Of course Ray had a BRILLIANT idea - which is why he is the Master Beekeeper and the rest of us are just dolts.  He suggested that I pull a switcheroo on the bees; that is, move the red hive to the position of the yellow hive, and vice versa.  This I did on Thursday and it didn't seem to trouble the bees at all.  The theory is fantastic:  bees, as we are all by now aware, have amazing homing skills; they know exactly how to get back to their hive once they leave it.  So if you put a different house where theirs was yesterday, all the foragers who are out flying around will go back to their home location - but now they will be entering a different house.  Frankly, I would have thought that the guard bees from the yellow hive would kill the red hive intruders, since bees take on the specific, unique scent of their hive and queen.  Didn't this seem like a foreign invasion to Team Yellow?  Apparently not.  I watched all afternoon as hoards of foragers from Team Red returned home - to the yellow hive!  Of course the idea behind this is that if you have a weak colony, and there is strength in numbers, then you may save that colony by adding more worker bees.

Of course, at the same time as I may be strengthening the yellow hive, I have also weakened the red hive.  Has it been weakened to a dangerous degree?  Will this all even out in time and result in two balanced and healthy hives, or did I just compromise Team Red in a potentially fruitless attempt to save my yellow hive?  I can say that now, three days later, the yellow hive is behaving more like the red hive used to - many more foragers, and more activity at the feeder.  It may just take a week or so for the red hive to catch up, once brood starts to hatch and the Team Red population explodes anew.

I will say that Ray Lackey, my teacher, is being very supportive.  He has said that if one of my hives doesn't look like it's going to make it, he will give me a locally bred and mated Hygienic queen this summer so that we can inject some new lifeblood into the colony.

Fingers crossed.  I'm going to open up the hives in another few days and we'll see what I find.

On a more upbeat note, and since the description of this blog indicates food production other than honey (as if I'm ever actually going to produce honey!), I picked my first Purple Passion asparagus this week.  I planted a few rows last year and they're coming up beautifully.  The taste is very sweet and they're crisp and tender.  The purple color - as with so many purple veggies, turns to green when cooked.  So it's more of a novelty - but for those who like raw asparagus (and I am one of those) - the color is spectacular!

   PURPLE PASSION ASPARAGUS