Bees in Trees – 80 feet up!

May 9, 2020 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

20200508_swarm down — After an hour or so, the bees were down on the ground.

Sometimes it seems that bees know just when I’m wearing a dress and heels or when we have ice-cream in the back of the car after a grocery run — they just know when to make swarming more of a challenge for us. Then I have to think back on the swarm that moved into an empty NUC while I was checking bees last fall to realize that maybe we just remember the inconvenient swarms better!

This swarm initially looked like 4 smaller swarms, but it turned into one of the biggest swarms we’ve had. We last inspected the hive on Sunday. They had barely started working the honey super and we made a split to give the queen open frames to lay fresh brood, but by Friday they had the honey super about 30% full, multiple frames had hatched, and they were still storing nectar in the brood boxes. Even with the bees in the trees, the hive was still rocking it! The nectar flow is good this year, and we need to recheck some other strong hives again as soon as the coffee kicks in this morning.

20200509_swarm — Some bees flew even higher up into the tree

The swarm was pretty high up in a pine tree, so it took some brainstorming, which included discarding crazy ideas while building upon them, to get the branch down. We even very briefly considered chopping the tree down! Hubby managed to drop the swarm right onto the tarp we’d laid down with multiple boxes on it. We’d baited all of them with Swarm Commander and I’d put a frame with nectar, brood, and bees from the original hive in the 10-frame. After they’d recovered from the fall, they started pagenting in to the 10-frame and one of the NUCs. Some of them returned the tree, just higher up than before. They spent the night out there, but they are still alive and kicking!

20200509_swarm capture — This morning, bees are checking out the swarm-capture hives

After a while, we shook the remaining bees from the tarp into the 10-frame and just crossed our fingers. Now that’s it’s warmed up, bees are migrating down from the tree to the two capture-hives. Of course, we won’t know for a few days whether they are just regrouping in preparation of another escape attempt or happy in their new home, but we consider this capture a success, an adventure, and a wonderful example of how well Hubby and I work together.

We both took one sting each (for swarming bees they were relatively well-mannered) and the anti-itch salve I made from a Beeswax Alchemy recipe worked wonders. It was the first time we’d been able to try it on a bee sting — I’ve wanted to know if it works for a long time, but not enough to intentionally get stung. I’m not so sure that the soap I tried last week is turning out as well, but it is the most complex soap recipe I’ve tried yet. More about soaps, lotions, and salves next blog….

Construction · Lazer Creek Apiary · Nature · Products and Vendors · Queen Bee · Supplemental Feeding

Swarms and Storms

February 25, 2019February 25, 2019 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

We have our first 2019 swarm capture! Swarm might be an overstatement, but while we were adding and removing supers yesterday, Hubby went to grab some frames from a hive I’d baited with Swarm Commander and found a fat, active queen with a handful of bees in the center of the brood box. We’d just split a hive, so we ended up doing a newspaper introduction to the queenless hive as the poor girl didn’t have enough attendants to get her through a 38 degree night. Hubby just took a peek in the hive, and all looks good. He didn’t remove any frames, but the bees are very calm and clearly bees have broken through from the very full bottom box to where their new sovereign is housed.

Hubby purchased two Rapid Bee Feeders to try, so we gave that hive and a weak hive one each. We like the Pro Feeders, but we’ve also experienced some robbing with those when we’ve used them in a weak hive during a dearth. It’s tough to keep the girls fed when temperatures fluctuate as much as they are currently doing. Our goal is to build strength first and foremost this year as we have to get the hive beetles under better control than last year. We’ll move hives out of the lower apiary and into a sunnier area just as soon as we can install more hive stands. As any beekeeper knows, there are more things on the to-do list than there are hours to get them to-done at this time of year!

As for storms: a couple of months ago, we had such a loud clap of thunder that the dog sat on my lap shaking like a leaf for almost an hour afterward. The weekend before last, Hubby and BIL wandered around in the woods and came across a red oak that has clearly been struck by lightening, probably that night. One piece of the tree is splintered, but still attached, while other “splinters” are in concentric circles around the tree. The largest of these is about 12 feet long and was flung 100 yards into the woods. That’s certainly a tree we need to keep an eye on and not one to take a walk close to on a windy day.

The recent floods have also moved sandbanks around in the creek and washed soil away from tree roots, so there are a couple of large trees down in the creek that also look precarious. Even so, it was such a joy to walk the property boundary and watch the dog play in the creek yesterday. Sometimes we have to just put work aside and enjoy our home.

Talking of work, in anticipation of the new raised beds this spring, I’ve filled the greenhouse with seed trays! I have a few types of heirloom tomatoes and some heirloom carrots. The carrots are in a grow bag as I anticipate them being ready to eat before the raised beds are ready. The strawberry plants are in bloom, the blueberry bushes have been relocated to a better spot, and boysenberries have been added to that bed. We have a new pear tree to replace the one that died, although we don’t know which one survived as its tag disappeared. We had two varieties so that they could cross-pollinate — now we either have two different trees or two Kiefer pears. We’ll figure that out sooner or later.

Other than that, we’ve been busy with teacher stuff! Oh – we’re also making progress on the workshop. Did I already blog about that? Looking back, I guess not! I’ll snap some more pictures and blog about that next time we have a sunny weekend.

It’s amazing what a difference both of us living here makes. We’re able to accomplish so much more and I’m already envisioning jars of fresh honey and baskets of tomatoes in May. Of course, we’re also both happier living in the same city. Eighteen years and one day since we met and we still love spending time together –life really is good!

Bees · Lazer Creek Apiary · Pests - Bees · Products and Vendors

Gains and losses

March 5, 2018 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

While I was checking hives on Saturday, I suddenly noticed bearding on the back of one of our weak hives. I was in the middle of inspecting a strong hive, so all I could do was keep an eye on them. The beard grew and then the dancing started — clearly a swarm in progress. I puffed smoke in their direction in the slim hope that they’d go back where they came from, but of course they didn’t. However, they only moved about 20 feet away and then they settled on a pine branch about a foot off the ground. (What a time for my phone to be up in the camper charging!)

I grabbed a NUC, dropped it off by the swarm and and ran to the shipping container as fast as my tired legs and boots would allow to get the spray bottle and bee brush. I splashed some more Pro Health into the sugar water because bees like the smell even more than I do and hurried back to the swarm. I had plenty of frames with drawn comb because I’d already reduced some of the hives down to one brood box, so I set up the NUC, sprayed some sugar water with Pro Health on the frames, gently brushed the bees from the branch and watched the workers crawl down into the frames. The queen soon followed and then the bulk of the remaining bees followed her. I slid the inner cover across and then went to get my phone, giving them time to settle in. When I returned, there were still some bees flying around, so I just put a cover on and left them there until the end of the day. Hubby suggested that I put a frame of brood in the NUC, and the next hive I inspected had plenty to spare, so that worked out too.

The hive next to the one on which they’d bearded turned out to be empty, so I think that’s where they came from. There were only 3 frames of bees in there last check, but I couldn’t collapse them down to one brood box because it was too cold to remove frames that trip — that’s a disadvantage of stapling the bottom brood box to the bottom board. There were quite a few small hive beetles in the frames, so that may be the reason they decided to go elsewhere. There were no dead bees in the bottom of the hive or around the hive, so swarming seems to be a more likely than a dead out.

With temps in the low seventies, I was able to collapse all the other weak hives down to one brood box and make a couple of splits from the strongest hives. I was soon surprised to see the sun disappearing below the tree line. I had two hives to go, but with daylight fading and temperatures dropping I resorted to simply putting another brood box on the mean hive (yes, I’d left them to last) and trusting that the other hive still had plenty of space. All in all, it was a productive work day and I just hope the splits survive the cooler temperatures this week.

The English hive is also no longer leaning — the bottom board had actually slipped off the stand, so I did have to tear it all the way down. One of the video bloggers we follow puts a queen excluder above the first brood box with the rationale that the brood will hatch in time to free up cells for the queen to lay more eggs. That wouldn’t work with my hive as the queen had most of the two deeps and two mediums full of brood! That’s our top producing and gentlest hive. If I’d had more time, I could have made two splits out of it instead of just one, but I only had one NUC with me up at the garden.

We hope we can make it back to the farm next weekend as the swarm risk remains for at least two hives. Hubby has been sidelined with a muscle sprain, so we’ll have to see how he’s doing by Friday. I may have to make another trip on my own. It was a beautiful drive back, and the dog no longer gets car sick, so all in all it was a great weekend.