Royalty Arrives

The post office called during morning chores: my two hives of bees were ready for pickup. One book claims that each of those three pounds of bees has 18,000 to 20,000 individuals. I don't know if I believe it, but it was certainly a humming package!

We put the bees on the table during breakfast, and talked about the three different types of bees. The sole queen lays the eggs. The male drones have no stinger, and, apparently, do little around the hive but eat. When a virgin queen from one hive flies out on her matrimonial flight, drones in another hive fly to catch her. The strongest and fastest mate with her, then fall to the earth, dead. (One wag said, "What a way to go!") As far as I know, that's the only mating the queen ever has: that one flight.

Some beekeepers, looking for maximum honey production, kill the drones and artiificially inseminate the queen. I think that's being penny-wise, pound-foolish. It seems that the natural way allows only the three or four best drones to reproduce, but no one can predict which those are. By killing off "extra" drones, the keeper may be weakening the future hive's genetics. So we won't kill off our drones.

Third type of bee is the worker, the stinging, honey and wax making "bees" you usually see. Most of my hives were worker bees. As you probably know, they don't want to sting, as stinging kills them, but they will sting if provoked. And, once stung, the smell of the venom attracts other bees: they want to eliminate the perceived threat.

I had sort of hoped to wait to hive the bees until after tomorrow's first beekeeping class. But the bees need to be indoors if not hived, and I couldn't imagine how stressful it would be in our little home, with five children yelling at times, and the CD player singing about the states in the Union. After about an hour, I think their hum became more aggressive.

On rereading the beekeeping book, I realized I hadn't purchased the needed white sugar to make a syrup (1 to 1 ratio of water to sugar). This disgusts me, as I do not feed my children white sugar. But honey can carry residual diseases and medications; unless the honey came from their own bodies, I musn't feed it to them. (One website did say that I could boil honey for 20 minutes, but it seems to me that anything possibly good in the honey would be well gone after 20 minutes!)

So I drove back down our road for the second time today, surprised that it was still before 10am. If felt much later. Our local convenience store had one 2-pound box of real cane sugar, and I figured that should be enough to last the next day or two.

Back home, Abigail, Isaiah, and Abraham joined me in the hiving experience. After posing (see above), I had to somehow get the two colonies apart. Using the multipurpose hive tool, I finally managed to pry the wood for shipping off, leaving each hive separate.

Cardboard covered the top of each.

Under the cardboard was the top of a can (holding sugar syrup, for the bees to eat during transit. They ship USPS ground, and left Texas on Monday). And a little metal tab, which leads to the queen. Using the hive tool, I pried out the can, and quickly removed the box holding the queen, then replaced the can so the workers couldn't get out.

The first time, the queen's box was covered with bees. This makes me think she has stronger phermones (the smell that bees use to tell which queen is theirs). I named her Queen Esther.

Here you can see Queen Esther, with a worker bee on the outside for comparison. The queen is bigger, but not MUCH bigger.

The second time, the queen's box wasn't nearly so thickly coated.

I named her the Queen of Sheba. You might be able to see the blue dots on the backs of the queens, which go on queens in years ending in 0 or 5. Years ending in 1 or 6 have a different color, and so on.

I had to brush the bees off the box into the beehive. The bottom of the queen's compartment was sealed with a cork.

Using a nail, I scraped that out.

Underneath was a sugar "candy" that the workers will eat through to release the queen. Then she can start laying her "brood," or eggs. First, though, the bees need to make some wax cells. I'm not using the standard pre-pressed wax sheets. (The theory behind that is that, ideally, the bees make their own cells; larger drones need larger cells. And the wax foundation can contain harmful chemicals. With all the Colony Collapse Disorder, I want to give these bees every chance possible to live well.)

Anyway, after making a dent in the candy with my nail, I taped the queen's box so it hangs down into the hive.

Then I sprinkled (organic) powdered sugar over the bees to calm them and make them interested in licking each other off. (This, apparently, is nicer than using smoke. Smoke makes the bees think their home is on fire, so they take a big swallow of food as they prepare to flee for their lives. That's pretty mean, I think. And tricky, apparently, to deal with the smoker.)

Then there was nothing else to do but remove the can and shake the colony into its new home.

It's pretty intense. Here's another photo.

I did it the first time without a veil. The second time, though, was a bit more disconcerting, because the bees from the first hive were meeting the bees from the second hive. Now there were bees on both the inside and outside of the shipping crate.

I was concerned that the bees from the first hive might get in my hair, so I did put on the bee veil for the second shaking.

Once most of the bees were in the hive, I replaced the top bars and then the roof. The bees still in the crate gradually found their way out.

They hummed a lot, but none acted the least bit aggressive toward us. We watched as the bees remaining in their shipping containers gradually exited into their new homes. (Isaiah took this beautiful photo.)

We were horrified to see that some of our bees appeared to be drowning in sugar water, so we put some forbs (er, weeds) into the water. Problem solved.

We also managed to find a few drones mixed in with the workers. Isaiah here is pointing to one.


By the midafternoon, the bees had gone through the entire two pounds of sugar, as their syrup was basically gone. I refilled their water containers with syrup from the cans of sugar syrup they shipped with, then drove down my road for the THIRD time today, to get sugar at the grocery store. (And since driving one way down my road takes 10 minutes, this was a day in the car.)

In other news, I realized today that six of the peach trees didn't make it out of the nursery. (I probably should have paid more attention while unloading, but life feels a bit hectic at times.) I wasn't sure how to arrange the further planting, though, so I decided to defer until Phil gets home. That leaves me with 42 trees to get in the ground, but I do need to order more. An orchard with 395 trees doesn't sound nearly so impressive as 401.

I went to make dinner and realized that the propane must have run out. On the same trip to town, I picked up more propane, but that didn't make a difference. The stove worked at lunchtime, when we had honey popcorn to celebrate the coming of the bees. (Recipe: 1 1/4 cups of butter and 1 1/4 cups of butter with a pinch of salt. Heat until boiling, then boil one minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, add 2 teaspoons vanilla and pour over 20 cups popcorn. Then bake about 25 minutes at about 325, stirring every 5 minutes, but I can't bake it because I don't have a large enough oven right now. So we ate it unbaked, with twice the amount of popcorn. This is a really nice recipe.)

What is wrong with the propane stove? Phil will have to figure it out. He's on his way home from a veterinary conference with some of the best vets in the country. He's been out of cell range since Tuesday night, but as he drove to the airport tonight, he called and talked for a solid hour about how amazing these people were. The best part? When he got there, everyone was choosing seats, and he thought, "Amy would sit in the front row. I probably should, too." So he did, and then Dr. Paul Detloff, the main speaker, sat next to him! And those were the seats for the rest of the conference (which included meals!). So, so great!

Really good day here. And good day for Gracie Lou, who remained stable most of the day.