Bees Are Bustin’ Out All Over

In the middle of a jam-packed weekend George got the kind of call that makes him drop everything and jump into the car: there’s a swarm of bees in a tree near where you live, do you want to get it? 99% of the time the answer is Hell yeah! So equipped with beekeeper suit and nuc box, a’ gathering we went, George singing: “June June June, and bees are bustin’ out all over!” Oh, a nuc box is a half-sized beehive with 5 frames instead of the regular 10, set up to catch and transport bees.

Zowie! The largest swarm I’ve ever seen was settled in a fig tree in the back garden of a house the next town over from us.

George’s Plan: set the nuc box on top of the fence, and the leftover honey and wax on the frames in the box will lure the bees to move into their yummy new home.

And in they went.

At dusk, when all of the girls had found their way into the nuc box, George sealed it up and brought them to their new home in a friend’s large sunny garden. We checked on the hive yesterday and were overjoyed to see that these hard-working girls have in a week already built comb on 4 of the 5 frames!

Take a look at the magnificent queen!

George uploaded a short video he took of the bees marching into the nuc box.

This is my post about a swarm George caught earlier this year, using a bee vacuum.

And click here to read my post about the process George and our friend Joan went through to catch a swarm in her garden.

Gathering O’ The Swarm

It’s spring-time warm here, and local bees with so much pollen and nectar to gather are thriving, which leads to … swarms! A friend directed a neighbor less than a mile away to beekeeper George to gather a swarm that settled on their house.

The relatively flat roof was ideal for George to clamber onto by ladder, and it was a good situation to try out the new bee vacuum that Joan, our good friend and partner-in-bees, recently got.

We onlookers down below couldn’t see the large portion of the swarm in the roof’s gutter. George vac’ed them up first.

Moving on to the bees overhanging the roof, we watched as some of the swarm flew about, but most were drawn into the gentle pull of the vacuum.

It was much quicker than what George would have had to do otherwise – scrape the bees from the side of the roof down into a box.

Since the bees will have their new home in Joan’s hive, we went to get one of her hive boxes with some frames that her old bees had built on.

The bees will be attracted to the leftover honey and wax on the frames, and migrate onto them from the vacuum. With the box on the roof, the bees that didn’t get vac’ed will sense the pheromones and re-join their queen and swarm. It’s a whole-day affair, mostly waiting around to make sure that as many bees as possible are gathered up. Any stragglers will likely go back to their old hive.

Click here to read my post about the process Joan and George went through to catch a swarm in her garden last year, I think that slow and laborious process was the impetus behind her ordering the bee vacuum!

Have Beehive, Will Travel

In April George and I gathered a small swarm of bees near the BART tracks which we’ve kept in the nuc box that we used to gather the swarm. While trying to figure out what to do with them, George was struck with a great idea to solve some problems we’ve run into with our Top Bar and Langstroth hives. What problems, you ask? Well, the Langstroth is basically a stack of heavy boxes, so checking on the bees involves lots of lifting and upsets the bees, not to mention being hard on George’s knees and back! And the Top Bar, while much easier to manage, uses foundationless frames, so to extract the honey we have to crush the wax.

George’s hybrid hive is one level (though more can be added), and long to fit more frames than the usual hive. He built it to accommodate normal frames, so we can use our extractor, saving the wax for the bees to re-use.

We wanted a location with more sun than we get in our oft fogged-over microclimate. Our friend’s very large, unused yard in a nearby town was the perfect place. Best time to move a hive is in the evening, when the bees are tucked in, back from foraging. Tape up the opening and you’re set to go! They serenaded us with a gentle buzzing on our ride over. George lifted the nuc box into the new hive and removed the tape. Bees don’t fly very well at night, so only a few curious bees ventured out. We said good night to our ladies and left.

George visits often and always finds them calm and happily coming back to the hive with pollen. The design of the hive makes it very easy for George to check on the girls. Here’s the Queen!

 

To Catch a Swarm

The tale of our friend Joan’s bees began almost exactly two years ago. Much has happened since. Here I told you about the epic-sized swarm her first hive spun off.  After that the hive continued to produce more swarms, and these are the bees that Joan got to replace her swarmed-out hive. Joan’s glorious garden is surely one reason her bees thrive.

Two days ago, one of her hives swarmed again. Rather than staging their journey from the olive tree, where most of Joan’s swarms head first, this one congregated on the stone border around the tree. It was a relief to have a ladder-less swarm capture for once.

Joan tried to entice them into a box with some tasty honey and comb, but although they eagerly ate the honey they weren’t ready to move into the box. George and I brought over more temptations: bee lure and an extra-fancy beekeeper’s box. Okay, that’s just a cardboard banker’s box all duct-taped-up with one side handle left open for the bees to enter.

The bees were interested, but moving slowly because the weather was cooling. We beekeepers were patient, but only up to a point. Joan and George decided to suit up to help the swarm along.

Those lingering in the rocks started marching up to join their sisters.

More waiting.

Until finally the whole swarm was tucked into the box.

And on to their new home. But that’s a story for another day!

Honey Bees Al Fresco

George and I got the buzz through the beekeeper’s grapevine that there were some honey bee swarms under the BART elevated tracks. A portion of the structure beneath the tracks is hollow, and we’ve heard that there are beehives throughout much of the outdoor BART system.  Although we figured the swarms probably had found new homes, we ventured over yesterday afternoon to see. Yowza!

This is NOT a swarm –  it’s a colony of honey bees that built their comb down from a hole in the structure. You don’t often see “fresh-air” beehives. I’m not even sure whether you can call them hives, since they’re not inside a structure. Regardless of the proper name, it’s a natural sculpture of staggering beauty. There are seven frames, and it’s about 2.5 feet down and 3 feet across.

It’s opposite an apartment complex, and one young woman yelled over to us, “You’re not taking our bees, are you?” It turns out she and her housemate love bees, and they’ve been watching over the colony for a year and a half, so it has survived through a month-long cold snap and the hard rains we’ve had recently. We told them no, we were definitely not going to disturb the fresh-air colony, but we were trying to gather up a small swarm that had separated from it, which was hanging down from another nearby hole.

When we first saw the swarm I was looking up to photograph it, when George noticed just in time that there was a pile of bees on the ground right where I was going to step!

We were sure they had fallen from the swarm because they were directly beneath. Hoping that the queen might be in the swarm on the ground, we had zoomed home to get our beekeeper suits and a nuc box (a small wooden box with frames to keep bees in temporarily). George smeared some honey comb onto frames – yum – and placed it next to the bees on the ground, and they immediately started marching onto the frames.

They filled it up really quickly!

George put the frames in the nuc box. The bees on the ground marched inside, and some flying around landed and joined them.

A bunch of them began “fanning” on the front landing strip, which George hoped meant that the queen was inside. When a worker bee fans she stands with her backside facing out, fans her wings and releases pheromones to direct the rest of the swarm to the colony.

At one point clumps of bees began dropping from the swarm! One clump hit the ground, but most of them separated and swirled around.

As it started to get dark we were bent over the front of the box to make sure they all got in. Another clump of bees fell, some of them onto our heads! George had his suit on but I didn’t. Swarming bees are usually very calm and sweet, their sole aim is to protect the queen, so unless you do something to really upset them they won’t sting. I was around them for hours that day without a suit and I didn’t get stung once, not even by the ones that fell on my head. After the ones that fell marched in, we sealed the nuc box and brought the BART bees to their new home.

Today was wonderfully warm, and the new bees were busy coming and going, checking out the ‘hood.

Time will tell whether we got her Majesty, the queen.

Two swarms are better than one

Our friend Joan has a hive of bees that originated from a swarm we gave her a year ago. Joan’s bees are going gangbusters. Last week a huge swarm the size of a large child separated from her hive.  Joan said, in her wonderful Southern accent, “George, you could put your arms around it and give it a hug.” I couldn’t go along to help George and Joan gather that swarm, but when the phone rang early yesterday afternoon and Joan said, “Guess what!? It happened again,” I had my beekeeper’s suit and camera loaded into the car before she hung up.
They were in Joan’s olive tree (the last swarm traveled to her neighbor’s yard, causing a bit of consternation).
This swarm was tiny in comparison to last week’s, a bit over a foot long and maybe half a foot wide. I could get close with no worries – honeybees generally don’t sting if you leave them alone while they’re swarming. They are intent on protecting their new queen (she’s in the center of the swarm), with a few peeling off to to scout for their new home. Here’s more of a close-up. They were lined up in neat rows, and holding tightly to one another. George thought it would be least disruptive if he could get them to fly voluntarily into the box that he had brought to transport them, called a nuc or nuc box. It’s basically a smaller version of a normal Langstroth hive, ideal for transporting a swarm (unless it’s as big as a small child). The term nuc comes from the fact that the swarm is gathered around the queen — the nucleus of the honeybee colony. To make the box appealing to the swarm, George took a few of the frames that fit into the nuc box and coated them with honey that Joan harvested from the hive last year.  He also added some drops of “bee lure,” which is a mixture of scents used to attract bees. Joan supervised.We waited about an hour, but although some of the scouts did enter the nuc, there was no mass movement into it. As dusk approached, we decided to suit up and move the bees into the box. George and Joan clipped some of the twigs that were in the way, then carefully cut the main branch and placed the swarm into their new temporary home. George will go back this evening to make sure that all of the stragglers are in the box, then he’ll seal it up and bring it to a friend who needs a hive because hers died over the winter.

Bee Mine!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! This is the card I made for my Valentine, my wonderful husband George.

It’s a photograph I took of a swarm of bees that was forming on a wall along the BART tracks. I was driving by, saw them, and called George. He rushed down and we watched them for an hour. It was a long time before we ever got our own bees, but I think that the seed was planted that day …

Hoping that your day is filled with sweetness and honey!

Brian’s Bees

Is there anything more special than friends who share a passionate interest? George’s friend Brian is a twofer – they first met and bonded over their common love of orchids, spiced with a shared cynical smart sense of humor. More lately, Brian discovered that he wanted to keep bees. He had a beautiful hive all ready and waiting for some honeybees to move in, so when George and our friend Alan rescued a swarm, there was no question that they were meant to be Brian’s bees. The swarm settled on a tree limb just above a garden shed.

George and Alan clambered onto the shed. I held the ladder and worried that they’d fall through the roof (they didn’t). When bees are swarming they’re very calm, so George easily brushed most of them into a box. The critical thing is to try to get the queen. If you do, the rest will follow her, because their main imperative is to protect her.

As you’d expect from an orchid and nature lover, Brian has an amazing garden. Here’s George delivering the bees to their new home.

The bees quickly realized they had arrived at nectar heaven. The workers happily began to forage, build comb and make honey, and the queen zealously performed her queenly duties and began laying brood. We went back to do a hive inspection, and this is what we found:

That’s her majesty, surrounded and protected by workers. She’s much larger than the other bees, and is a gorgeous deep golden color. Here’s more of a closeup photograph.

Much of the white you can see filling the comb is larvae or brood. As George finished the inspection, I walked around the garden to see what the workers were up to. They favored a magnificent Spanish Lavender plant.

The intoxicatingly fragrant orange tree was another favorite.

We even got a bit of honey from some extra comb the bees had built on the lid of the hive, so Brian could taste his bees’ honey. Your own bees’ honey is always the sweetest. And here’s to honey and friendship, ever sweetly intertwined.