Hive Talk June July August Sept 2021

Hive Talk - September 2021

July turned out to be very interesting! To say the least!......

July 23rd, at approximately 10:30 am I received a call from the Town office saying that a resident reported a cloud of flying insects circling their property. They asked if Dave and I could go over to ‘take a look’ to see if the insects were friend, or foe. We donned our protective gear and set off to see what was going on. As soon as I got out of the truck one of the instigators buzzed by and the first thing that came to my mind was, “That’s one of our girls!” We experienced our first ‘Swarm’. My definition: A honeybee colony’s population outgrows its current home. The old queen leaves the hive with half of the colony. The existing hive will create their own queen and carry on. Before the old queen leaves, the colony will send out scouts to check out possible real estate locations. While the scouts are looking, the old queen is put on a diet so that she slims down enough so she will be able to fly. Once she is ready the scouts will come back with directions to a new home and half of the hive, with their queen fly off to their new location. In this case it was a small hole (about the size needed to run a TV cable through) in the side of a house. It was a perfect location, beside a food source, and protected from the elements.
When we arrived at the ‘swarm’ location I was able to gently brush the bees still outside the house, into a box I had saved when I first got my honey bees. I set the box on top of a ladder with the lid cracked and the bees in the box started to fan their wings to send the queen’s pheromones up towards the hole in the side of the house. Yes, I was lucky to have brushed the Queen into the box. (Thank goodness!) She had not yet crawled into the house. If she had crawled through the hole into the house I would have needed more pages to my story explaining all of the other actions I may have had to take to get my ‘girls’ out of the house. Ok, back to the bees fanning their pheromones towards the hole in the wall of the house encouraging their sisters to leave and join them in the box…

During the time I was called about the ‘swarm’ and upon arriving at that location I received a call from Cypress Hills Honey offering help with my predicament. (The office administrator took the liberty in contacting another beekeeper to help me as this was my first swarm experience.) Through the magic of Facetime, Ray was very helpful in suggesting a method to retrieve my bees. We set up a cone-shaped tube over the hole so that the bees could come out of the wall of the house and not be able to return. The bees in the box lured the rest of the bees out of the house until all the bees were in the box, protecting their queen. This process took about 6 hours. I went back to check on the homeowner and the bees every couple of hours to make sure the girls were still ‘bee-having’. Just before dusk I went over and retrieved the bees. I lifted them off of the ladder and was very surprised at how heavy the box was. I estimated that there were at least 30K honeybees snuggled around their queen! I settled them into a new brood box, waited around an hour until they settled, and then Dave and I drove them out to a nearby farm. We had to locate them more than 4 miles from the resident’s house so that they wouldn’t return to their new found ‘hole-in-the-wall’. Mind you we closed the lid on the truck box so that they wouldn’t see where we were driving them. Once they reached their new location they settled down nicely and carried on developing their new home. Back at the swarm location in town, Dave closed up the hole in the wall, as there were no longer any bees… (actually there were around 30 bees left so I carefully put them into a box and drove them out to their family at the farm) I didn’t want them to go back to their original hive to tell the rest of the gang to join them, in town. (I don’t know if they would or not)

Hmmm what did I learn from all of this? I can’t begin to explain it. You can read all you want about honeybees. You can talk to fellow beekeepers about questions you have. But nothing compares to the experience one has when you are responsible for your honeybee welfare. This one experience was wonder-ful, and I look forward to many more.

A special ‘THANK YOU’ goes out to the ‘girls’ special friend in town for being so understanding and patient, and to Jerry and Sharon for hosting the ‘girls’ for the remaining months until we have to move them back to the apiary to snuggle up with the other hives this winter. And to Rita and Larry for allowing us to have the bees just outside of town. The ‘girls’, Dave and I are also happy to hear reports of a good harvest despite the dry weather conditions we have had this summer.

To date all the hives have made their new queens, and are busy preparing their hives for the cold weather coming. They are at least 3 weeks ahead of schedule and I have started to feed them, as there is very little food available to sustain a healthy hive. (2:1, sugar to water, with a bit of enzymes.)

More to talk about next month……

P.S. I have honey available for sale, if anyone is interested. The girls did produce honey, but due to our hot summer it was a little less than last year. They capped the honey at 14% moisture instead of the normal 18%. How do they know when to cap the honey…...another amazing thing about bees!