Quick update

We had gorgeous weather this weekend and no one was happier than our two hives full of workers. There was activity from about 8am until 7pm and a constant humming could be heard from both groups. On Sunday, Jack and I suited up and went in to check on the need for more syrup and also to see how our new queen was adapting. I am very happy to say that she is laying eggs in a beautifully compacted pattern which our instructors said is an indication of a healthy monarch. This hive is about two or three weeks behind the other one because of the queen fiasco but they seem to be getting right down to business. A standard hive body contains 10 frames and the bees have been working at building comb on at least 8 frames. I'll check back with them in another week or 10 days and see if they're ready for an additional box. Their sugar water feeder was nearly empty so we filled it up and went to our second hive.
Our second hive is the more aggressive of the two so I always leave that for last. However, on Sunday, the girls were in a lovely mood and though a few tried to fly into our veils, they were basically pretty disinterested in us. They aren't drinking as much sugar syrup as the first hive-probably bringing in enough nectar for their needs but I refreshed it anyway. I added a second hive body about a week ago-we saw a few hundred bees in the top one-but I expect that most of their attention is still being paid to the lower one. Bees build comb and then fill it with honey (unless the queen lays eggs in the comb first).  I expect once they've topped off their supply in the lower box that they'll head up to their second story.

Long live the queen!

When  I left this blog two weeks ago, I was pretty sure that my first hive was queen-less. That could occur because the hive rejected her, she was "defective" (although I hate to label anyone) or she died/escaped during the hive installation. At any rate, I sent some photos to my mentor and he confirmed my suspicions. Luckily, one of the apiaries that our class dealt with was getting in a shipment of queens within 24 hours and I was able to secure one. (This has been a very bad year for acquiring bees/queen bees for those of us in the Northeast as we get them primarily from Georgia, and as we all know, they had terrible spring weather).
My instructor was going to the apiary to pick up some other bee equipment so he graciously picked up my new queen and brought her to us.
Now, as you may remember from my stinging incident, bees hate being messed with when the weather is cold or rainy and all of May pretty much fit that bill. When the new queen arrived it was misting and right around 50 degrees but my instructor said to install her anyway since rain was predicted for the next several days and this was about as good as it was going to get.
When the first packages/queens were installed, the queen came in one of these cages that had been suspended into the box of bees.

By the time we installed them into our hives, all the bees had traveled with one another for several days so were familiar with each other and the queen and accepted her as their monarch. Since this was not the case now, the queen had to be installed differently and more slowly otherwise the colony would see her as an intruder and kill her, which would be bad for me but far worse for her!
She arrived in a different kind of cage accompanied by attendant bees who would groom and feed her until she was freed-there were two plugs of fondant candy in the cage that provided their nourishment.

(Not to worry, that's not blood on the cage, not really sure what it was but.....). So the process was, insert this cage into the hive in the middle of the largest mass of bees and leave it securely capped for two or three days so that they could get used to her and accept her as the boss. Then I was to go in and remove the pink cap on the left which would now leave only a plug of candy between her and the colony. If all was to go well, the attendants would eat their way out as the colony was eating their way in to free her-imagine the building of the trans-continental railroad and you'll get the idea.
I installed her on Monday evening, took the cap off on Thursday and as the colony was very upset when I touched the cap, I felt it to be a very good sign. They voice their displeasure very clearly by nearly doubling their humming when they feel attacked or protective and the noise was definitely louder when I was messing with the queen cage. It was all good on Sunday when I went in again-the queen cage was empty and the bees were feverishly working on all of the frames.


Meanwhile, the other hive is also going to town. Those bees were filling the frames with comb fast enough that I put a second hive body on Thursday when I was checking the queen situation. The theory is that in order to survive the winter, both hives need to have two hive bodies filled with honey-the total weight of each hive should be around 80 pounds. That doesn't guarantee their survival but gives them the best possible scenario.
Both hives were slowing down on the amount of sugar syrup that they were consuming, again a positive sign that they were bringing in pollen and nectar to serve at meal time.
That was nearly a week ago and since the weather has FINALLY improved, the "girls" have been out the hive every day which should bode well for me checking things this weekend.

Checking for activity

The weather has been so variable that I haven't been able to get into the hives to really check things out until today. One hive has always had less activity than the other so I thought it would be safer to start with that quieter crowd.  Since I was a bit nervous (ok, a LOT) nervous after my stinging session last time, I put on so  many layers that I looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man from "Ghostbusters". I may have looked silly but it did keep the girls at bay. They've been going through sugar syrup pretty rapidly which I was hoping was a good sign but unfortunately, I didn't see any eggs laid at all in the first hive.  Now, I'm not 100% sure of what I'm looking for but all I could see was a moderate amount of bees and pure white comb which leads me to think that the queen is either weak or gone.  I don't know, maybe she decided she really wasn't a stay at home Mom and left with the idea that the corporate world was for her but.....I believe we have an issue here.

The second hive has always looked much busier from the outside and that was certainly true on the inside as well. There seemed to be substantially more activity, there were bees building comb on 8 or 9 of the frames and there was some patterns on three or four of those; I think it's capped brood or eggs.

Since I'm not really sure what to do next-especially about the first hive-it's time to call on someone with experience.  As I mentioned, our bee school assigned us all mentors for just such occasions so I have a call in to ours to see what he thinks of the things happening and not happening here. If we need to replace the queen in the first hive, there is an apiary not too far away that should have some available queens.

Installing the bees-it really was as easy as it looked

We were lucky that it was only early afternoon by the time we got home and as it was a beautiful day, we chose to install the bees in their new homes immediately. The 10 weeks of class paid off when I had all the tools I needed at hand, the sugar syrup had been mixed and was ready and we both were carefully gowned and veiled. While Jack (my husband) manned the video camera, I opened the first package, removed the cage containing the healthy queen bee, placed her in the hive, poured the rest of the package over her, and put all the parts of the hive back together.  By the time I finished with the second hive-Jack claimed that since I was now experienced I should continue-I was getting a bit rattled by all the noise and activity.  I don’t think anything can adequately prepare you for the sensation of being surrounded by a cloud of bees that had been confined for a week.  Imagine spending several days in a closed up house with 10,000 women that you don’t really know and you’ll get an idea of their level of agitation. As I said, I got the bees installed, put the feeder trays on the hives, closed them up and got out of Dodge. 

Four days later, I headed back with the intention of checking to see if the queens had come out of their cages and were starting to lay eggs.  I wasn’t as careful with my gowning this time and forgot one of the cardinal rules of beekeeping-bees don’t like to be messed with the day after they’ve been hive bound by rain.  I had the first hive opened and was about to pull out the queen cage when “the girls” attacked.  They found where my shirt wasn’t tucked in and in seconds I’d been stung 5 times on the stomach and the rest of the hive was in hot pursuit.  I backed away swinging at the attackers (violating another cardinal rule) and did all I could not to turn tail and run. 

(another sister-Kathy-posted this to my Facebook account-very timely I think!

After we’d all calmed down for a few minutes, I came back to the hive, now wearing more secured clothing to finish the job. The bees were still pretty angry but I was able to check that both queens were out and that comb was being built.  I decided not to press my luck by looking for laying patterns and will wait for a few consecutive sunny days to do that.

As of this morning's weather report-that could be sometime next week but hopefully that will change.  In the meantime, I'll just replenish their sugar syrup every three or four days and pray for some nice days.

Starting out

This is my first experience not only with beekeeping but also with blogging and hopefully I’ll become much more proficient at each as time goes on.  The bees were my idea, the blogging my sister Laurie's suggestion so let’s get started.


The idea of keeping bees has been in the back of my mind for several years and I was finally ready last spring only to find that I was too late to enroll in my local (Norfolk County) bee association training.  While I waited for the next session, I spoke with one of my co-workers who kept bees and the more I learned the more interested I became. The 2011 NCBA enrollment became available and my husband and I signed up.  Our instructors and mentors were fantastic-we had a class of 100 students from all over the Greater Boston area, from Jamaica Plains, Attleboro and Quincy to Wrentham, Franklin and Hopkinton.  A couple of the students had a little bit of experience-they’d either had a beekeeper in the family or had kept bees in the distant past but most of us were “newbees” (sorry!)The course ran for 10 weeks and culminated with all of us receiving a diploma and being assigned a mentor (usually a resident of our town). Our bees were on order-we decided to start with two hives-and were scheduled to arrive on April 9th. In the meantime we ordered and received the equipment needed to assemble the two hives as well as gloves, hive tools, bee brushes and all of the other paraphernalia we’d need to take care of “the 20,000 women working for us” as my husband called the bees. Assembling the hives went well until I realized that I’d diligently painted all of the recommended equipment but had also painted the inside of the hives which was a huge mistake as the bees should never come in contact with paint.  I sent off a panicked email to one of the instructors and pounced on my husband when he came home thinking that I was going to have to replace a few hundred dollars worth of hive parts. Both instructor and husband talked me in off the ledge and my husband spent a few hours with an electric sander and face mask ridding the hives of the paint, restoring them to their pristine condition.  At the next class the instructor announced to the class that he’d gotten an email from a student who had inadvertently painted the insides of their frames and if others did it not to worry as sanding them down was an easy (?) solution. I was pleased that he hadn’t revealed my identity and foolishness to the class until my husband turned to me and in what he thought was sotto voce (but not so much) asked, “Was that you?” Needless to say, my table mates gave me that “Boy, I wouldn’t do anything that stupid” sympathetic look!The spring weather in the south worked against us this year in receiving our bees. The original date was moved to the 16th, then the 23rd and finally to April 30th. We were scheduled to be in New York City on the 30th but the people at the aviary graciously agreed to hold our “girls” until the following afternoon and once our train got into Providence we jumped in the car and sped to Holliston.