The Queen is Dead; Long Live the Queen!

Well, it's heartbreaking to have to share this with you, but, one of my hives is dead. Not just a little dead, but dead as a door-nail; dead as a zombie before resurrection; dead as Elvis without the sightings. Just dead. There are several factors that played into the demise of the bees. I think the biggest factor was the double layers of screen at the bottom of the hives that trapped countless girls right at the start severely crippling their build up. Then there was the cross comb issue. Did I write about that before? In brief, the situation was that the bees didn't seem to like the guides we built along the bars for them to follow and were building their combs perpendicular to the bars. This made it completely impossible to inspect the hive or manipulate the bars without breaking the comb from the bars. And here's were rubber meets the road: Am I beekeeper for the bees or the honey?


The solution, from the perspective of a beekeeper with hopes of someday harvesting honey or just being able to manage the hive at all, was to cut the comb out of the hive and rig it to the bars. However, my poor bees were already so depleted in numbers, and this procedure would likely result in the lives lost of both some bees and their brood. (Eggs and larva could be damaged by handling the combs or not putting them back in the right order. The bees use body heat to keep the brood at the exact right temperature and it has been an often chilly and rainy month). Part of me thought if these bees were to have a chance of survival at all it might be best just to give the hives to the universe, and give up any aspiration of managing them. 

Hair clips and pipe cleaners to reattach the comb to the bars

But, the part of me who liked the idea of just walking away was the part of me who had been stung repeatedly and was chicken-shit. The bigger part of me felt that I owed it to myself to get back on the horse and go out there and deal with my hives, gosh darn it. I had invested too much time, not to mention money just to be like, "Oh well, maybe next year." So, what did I do? 


I had courage delivered to me in a box:


A Badass Bee Suit. (Pictures of me geared up to follow) ;-) 


After the suit arrived, the next thing I did was enlist the help of my husband. Actually, he offered. I had been tormented and obsessed with the plight of my bees for several weeks, and I think he was eager to help me move on. Beekeeping is probably the first real challenge I've undertaken since natural childbirth, and I was really struggling when things didn't simply fall in to place. 


So, on Mother's Day, he dressed in a sweatshirt, kitchen gloves, and my old veil; armed himself with several different choices of knives and told me:


 "I'm going out there with you. But, I am going to do this so I can't get mad at you if I get the crap stung out of me. You're going to assist." Then we capitalized on nap time and went out to the hives to tackle the cross comb. I won' lie, even with my superwamidine bee suit, I was still incredibly nervous, and relieved that I could ride shotgun on this one. Once we got out there, my fears melted away pretty quickly. I don't know if it was the smoke or what, but the bees were as gentle as kittens. It was a fairly quick operation, and though there were a few glitches we both made it back to the house without a sting. The combs were all cut and rehung, and we didn't feel like there were too many squashed bees in the process. We both walked away from my bee-yard on a high. I felt like if we could break into the hives, cut apart all their hard work, and exit the situation without making the bees irritated, than I could do ANYTHING with these hives that needed to be done. I got my confidence back, and that was the best Mother's Day present possible. 


Well, we may have FELT like there weren't too many squashed bees, but there was at least one bee lost that day. Her majesty Queen Eleanor of Apiculture didn't survive the ordeal. I wen't out to the hives a little over a week later to check out the sugar syrup and made a very sad discovery... my 42 inch hive only had about twenty very sad bees in it clustered around a queen cell. This means a couple of things. First, that there HAD been a queen and that they had noticed her death very quickly. There must have been some very new eggs (three days old or less) laid in the hive when they realized they were queenless, and the bees built special queen cells for these eggs in the hopes of raising an new queen to replace the one we killed. Poor bees. Can you spot the queen cell? It's on the right with a worker on it. It kinda looks like some kind of jet puffed cereal. 

It was hard to pack up that hive and know that a mere month ago they came into my care 10,000 strong and in no time at all my choices had wiped this colony out of existence. I know it sounds a little melodramatic... But Mother Nature really gave me something to think about here. And yet... Perhaps unfortunately for honey bees everywhere this experience has not derailed my ambitions as a beekeeper. In fact, I have learned so much over the course of this month that I am more fired-up than ever to figure this out an succeed at beekeeping. 

Apparently the universe isn't against me continuing on as a beekeeper because I had the answer to my sad empty hive appear out of the clear blue sky, literally. This is what a fellow mom spotted at the park yesterday:

I was chilling with my babes on a blanket with a good friend (Kate, a fellow beekeeper) and her kids when my friend overheard a lady talking about a nearby bee swarm and jumped into the conversation. The woman  approached and warned us that there was a swarm of bees in a nearby tree, and we might want to keep our kids away. The two of us however, were so excited that we sprang up with our gaggle of kids in-tow to get a better look. 


We had been told that "The City" had been called and someone would be out to "take care" of the bees shortly. My first thought was really that I didn't want them exterminated. My second thought was that it would definitely be cool to have those bees take up residence in my empty hive. Luckily I knew just who to call. I've written about Tony before. He's pretty much my honey bee hero. I tried to play it cool waiting the the 20 or 30 minutes it took him to finish up what he was doing and head out to the park. I am so grateful to the friends I was with, because they totally watched my backward slide-climbing children while I hovered under the swarm with Lola making sure no one came to steal or kill them. I was so excited I was practically jumping out of my skin. 


Tony got there in no time, and totally made swarm catching look like a day at the park. Oh wait, it WAS a day at the park. He basically used a five gallon bucket at the end of a long pole and scooped the bees out of the tree and into the bucket with one swift and forceful swoosh. When he did, more than half the swarm was successfully caught. Many filled the air, and a more stayed clustered on the branch... He assumed the queen was still in the tree by the way the bees reclustered. One of the coolest things was to see some of the bees in the bucket crawl up to the lip and start fanning their wings to send their sent out onto the wind so that the other bees could find them. After a few minutes most of the bees in the air flew back to the branch and settled down. Tony used a step ladder and a pair of borrowed snips (Kate, just happened to have her gardening tools in her van after a trip to the community garden!!!) and snipped off the branch and added the remaining bees along with the branch to the bucket- It. Was. SO. Cool. 

Crappy pictures taken with my phone.

By then, my kids had been at the park WAY longer than we anticipated. All three of them had pink cheeks and were over-due for a nap. It was time to get them home. Tony stayed at the park for about for a while, giving the straggling bees time to find their sisters and make their way to the bucket. It was great though because, by the time Tony delivered the bees to my hours the kids had been fed and washed up and were on their way to naps. I could focus on the bees!

While at the park I had been excitedly trying to get a hold of my hard-working husband. I called several times and finally sent him and email that read, "CALL ME!!!!! (everyone is fine)." You see, though I had new bees, the hives hadn't yet been rehabed and I neeeeeeded him to come home and put a new bottom on my hive. You see, as soon as we had dead bees caught between the screen bottoms we ripped the outer layer of screen off. We assumed that the bead bees that were trapped between would simply fall to the bottom. But, they did not. When the outer layer of screen was removed their decaying and sticky little bodies remained trapped right where they were. I tried to poke them off with a stick from the outside with limited success, and their shear number made this impractical. So, in the end we simply ripped that screen off as well, leaving the bottom of the hives totally open. Before I could introduce my swarm to their new top bar hive, we had to get a bottom on there to keep them home!

You want to know how much my husband loves me. He came home from work. To put bottoms on both my hives. I pretty much think he is the coolest man alive. (And I'm glad he has such a flexible work schedule.)  It didn't take him long to measure and cut some proper sized boards to fit the bottom of the hive, and soon he and I were ready to attach them. Obviously, it was easy to attach the board without bees in it. (Except that the board, taken from our old balcony, was warped and there were a few touch-and-go moments when we thought it wouldn't go on.) Next we had to screw on the board to the hive with the bees still in it.... It was OK.

We tried to keep as many of them in the hive as we could by closing up their entrance, but because of the way the bottom board fit with the hive body there was still a pretty big gap that the bees could come and go through, right where I was crouching. About twenty or thirty (maybe it was ten) irritated guard bees came out to see what the heck all the commotion was. I was wearing jeans and a tank top, and I felt the breeze from their wings on my neck, some landed on my shoulders, and one crawled around my hand. I. Did. Not. Move. I breathed away from them. A millennia of fending off mice, raccoons, and bears has made bees defensive upon contact with a hot steamy stream of CO2. And you know what? That old adage is true: If you leave the bees alone, they will leave you alone! Even though we were drilling into their hive... no stings! My confidence grows.

Now came the moment of truth: Getting this bucket of bees into their new home. I suited up and walked the bees out to the hive practicing diaphragmatic breathing. Over and over I mentally replayed the instructions Tony had talked me through: Bonk the bucket on the ground to knock the bees down to the bottom. Undo the bungee cord and remove screen, grab the branch and tap firmly on the side of the hive so ALL the bees fall from the branch into the hive. Then double check that the branch is bee-free (the queen was likely there). Next, dump the remaining bees from the bucket into the hive; quickly replace all bars and cover. The end. And that is exactly what I did. I took a deep breath and just did it. I knocked that bucket with such authority that all the bees fell to the bottom stunned and hardly any took to the air as I whacked the few still on the branch in to the hive. They poured out of the bucket like water and fell in a heap at the bottom of the hive staring up at me like, "WTF, man?" A couple buzzed around as I replaced the bars, but the hardest part was putting my heavy and unwieldy 48" gabled cover back on the hive! I did it and let out a whoop that they could probably hear in Kansas!

I did it! I did it! I did it!

I wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon out there sitting and watching the bees... but of course my motherly duty called me away. Today however, as soon as Lola was napping the big kids and I went out to see how everyone was settling in. Jacob stayed down by the tire swing, but my excited little Georgia wanted to visit the bees so up we went. Everything looked great!

One of the things I like about beekeeping is how it is a little bit like playing detective. You don't actually have to take the hive all apart to tell some of what's going on in there. Take for example this next picture.

What you are looking at is the entrance to the hive where the swarm is now living. (Can anyone think of a renegade queen to name the new matriarch after? Bloody Bee Mary?) Tony suggested that I wanted to close up all entrances of the hive to at least a quarter inch, so the workers could come and go but the queen had to stay home. He gave me this little bit from a queen excluder and Smoochy stapled it over their only entrance. You can see two workers coming and going. That is AWESOME because it means the queen is in there and they are getting to work. If their were no bees coming or going, it would be a pretty clear indication that I did not get the queen in the hive because the swarm would have vacated, found her and moved on. Cool, huh? This big fat guy you see hanging on the outside is an unlucky drone who wants in fro some free lunch but is too big to fit through the gate. Lucky for him, any hive will take his lazy ass in; hopefully he find his way over to Regina Apis' place before he starves.

A few other pictures to show you the bottoms we put on the hive. They make me very happy.

The swarm house

Notice the little strip tacked on to cover the gap? SOme day I'll be able to take that off and the bees can use it as an entrance. It will also allow me to easily slide in a sticky board to catch an monitor for mites! I'm so happy about it!!!

Regina Apis' House

Notice the gap? The bees love it for an entrance.

 It's official: I feel like a real beekeeper.