Bee Majick

There is something magical that happens to me when I open the hive.

One day, it will become a chore.  Some day, at some point, the mystery of the work will become commonplace; it will be nothing more than background noise in my life.  But for now, I will revel in the magic of the moment.

Tuesday evening, I came home with the expressed intent (I had expressed it to Kathe, who manages most of the time to not roll her eyes) of working with my bees.  I had seen some hive beetles, and had gotten some information on how to keep them from being a problem.  I also wanted to make sure that they were not showing any signs of swarming.  I also wanted to make sure the queen looked OK.  I also wanted to see whether they were using the new frames, and adapting to the new home.  I wanted to see if the queen was still laying.

I wanted to make sure my ladies were happy.

Newbies like myself have a tendency to over-involve themselves in the process of hive building.  We suit up and open the hive, just to check.  And then suit up the next day, just to check.  Doing that just aggravates the bees, and sometimes makes them decide that the new home is not suitable.  And they will leave.  So in addition to all of the things that we are supposed to guard against (foulbrood, heavy varroa infestation, hive beetles, wax moths, swarm cells, etc) we also have to guard against being overeager.  Tiger mothers don't raise happy bees.

So I got all of my stuff ready and went out to open the hive, with my express purposes in mind.  I lit my smoker with pine straw and pecan chips, got a good smoke started, donned my veil and started. Small puff of smoke at the entrance to settle everyone down, and lifted the lid.

I pulled out the frames closest to the edge - new frames added to the original five - to see if they had filled the frames with wax, pollen, and honey (mind you, it had only been 11 days since they arrived.)  I inspected each frame, brushing off bees to expose any beetles (each of whom met their maker in rapid succession.)  Happily, there was not a huge quantity of beetles; the infestation was minor - not at all what I had worried it might be.

But there was also no new wax on the outermost of the frames.  No new brood, no new pollen stores, no new honey.  I started to get concerned.
Then three frames in, I saw newly drawn comb!  My ladies are busy and productive, and are building new working space, and making the new hive their home.

I was trying to get pictures, and kill beetles, and keep the smoke coming, and find the queen, and check for comb andlookformitesandseeifshewaslayingandmakesureIdidn'thurtbeesandandand.....

And then I put down the camera.  Took a deep breath (coughing from the smoke).

I started again.

The result was so very different.  Because I was calm, I got to enjoy the moment, and just focus on what I saw, without trying to document it.  And as I did so, everything slowed way down.  Much like the video I had taken a few moments earlier:

I found the queen, and she seemed healthy.  I did not notice any newly laid comb, but I had not noted where the brood was beforehand, so I didn't have notes to compare to.  I got to watch as bees were emerging from the broodcomb, watching as they broke loose of the capped sacs.

That's right.  I got to watch my baby bees be born.  The sense of wonder was amazing.  Magical.  Almost mystical.

I worked my way through the whole ten frames, checking, reviewing, inspecting, and just spending some time being amazed.  The ladies aren't ready for a honey super yet, but they are doing great.

For a little while, I was able to simply be in the moment, working for the benefit of the lovely girls, quieting my worries, and just being present.  And I left behind the concerns and worries, focusing instead on the task at hand.  I didn't have to think about what I was doing, I was able to simply do it.  And it didn't matter - they were all very resilient and responded well.  As long as I didn't smush the queen when I put it all back together again.

OK.  So maybe the worry isn't all gone.

But I walked away from the experience happy, exultant, maybe even joyful.  It was a simple task, but it grounded me in ways I did not expect.

It has now been a week since I opened my box, and I am itching to see what they have built, and what she has laid, and what else has emerged from the broodcomb (is the queen laying in the now-empty comb?is there more honey?)  I am supposed to check no more often than once every two weeks, so for now I am limited to just going out after work and sitting and watching them go and come.

And reveling in the joy that they are doing what they are supposed to do.  And so am I.

                                                                             Sting count: 0

Waggle Dance

When I worked in Yucatan, I got fascinated with the physical differences between our cultures in how people give directions.  To say that the path takes you a long away, point with your hand and swing forward in an arc that extends all the way to the top of your head.  Turn right is indicated by extending your right hand, palm out, and pat the air twice.

I asked for directions A LOT when I was in Yucatan, and managed to get pretty good at reading what people were telling me through their body language (even when that message was "I have no idea, but I don't want to appear rude by saying so). And I loved learning the unspoken communication.

So it has been equally fascinating for me to read the literature about honeybee communications.  In 1967, Karl von Frisch translated the waggle dance for the first time*.  The waggle dance, he explained, describes direction and distance.  Scout bees looking for a new home to swarm to, come back and do a waggle dance, telling everyone about the place they have found.  Same for bees looking for a source of pollen and nectar.

My rendering of the waggle dance.

The dance is a three-step solo dance, with repeats.  The worker bee comes in after having found a lovely field of flowering plants, and she begins her version of the Dance of the Seven Veils.

Wiggle wiggle wiggle.  Then loop around to the right.  Wiggle wiggle wiggle.  Then loop to the left. Wiggle wiggle wiggle.

The fact that von Frisch figured it out is really cool.  The angle of the dance (wiggle wiggle wiggle) corresponds to the angle from the sun of the flowers she recommends.  If she does her dance on a perfect vertical, it means the flowers are directly in line with the sun.  If her dance is done at a 35 degree angle, it is 35 degrees away from the sun.

And the longer she dances - the more loops she makes - the further away it is.

As soon as she finishes, other bees will make a beeline for the flowers, and her directions will take them right to the location. (Much more effectively than the hand-waving that the Yucatecans did for me).  I have been reading about both decisionmaking and communications among the bees, and I am excited to see it in action.

Tonight, I will be working with the bees, making sure they have enough space, and that the beetles are not taking over the hive.  I am so psyched to be able to watch them as they do their own work; how much honey and pollen they have accumulated; how many more eggs the queen has laid, how much more comb has been drawn.

And I'll be doing my own waggle dance while I do.  Wiggle wiggle wiggle.


                                                                                          Sting Count: 0

* Frisch, Karl von. (1967) The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Should I worry?

I thrill to see my bees in my backyard, but they are a source of worry.  And even having bees for less than a week, I have rediscovered one of life's great truths.   There is NEVER a best-case scenario that shows up when you go to Google with your problem.  Whether you are looking up a suspicious mole on WebMD or trying to find out whether the debris pile in your living room means termites, internet searches seldom provide good news.  It is easy to lose perspective.

So when I discovered a problem with my bees, I fretted, and flashed back to my first days on the job as project manager at the Corps of Engineers.

I had no idea what I was doing. It was terrifying. In addition to managing my projects, I was asked daily, it seemed, to provide some information in response to a request from somebody, somewhere up the chain of command.  Much of the time, there was little by way of instructions to go on, and other times there would be a thousand pages of guidance for one page of data requested.

Nowhere in any of the guidance did it say how important the requested information was. Does Western Civilization's continued existence depend on the accuracy of these data?  (Certainly not.) Will my project get canceled if I don't submit the right information? (Maybe....) I had a hard time separating out the URGENT from the IMPORTANT.  My friends  Vic Landry and Bobby Duplantier both helped mentor me through these rough patches.  Sometimes it was just a matter of calming me down, other times it was explaining what was required, and sometimes the instructions they gave were simple: "Crorey, make it up."

A decade later, I can determine for myself now whether something at work is important or urgent, and I take it much more in stride. I had almost forgotten that helpless feeling.

The bees reminded me.  When I accidentally dropped the box in the bed of my truck, I was panicked.  How much did I just damage the hive?  Can the frames/honey/brood/comb/queen take that kind of shock?  What should I do?  (Since panicking doesn't seem to be helping, how about calming down?)

Image of the Madrid Codex Bee
Almanac stolen from the FAMSI website

And each successive victory comes with a huge sigh of relief - and a little bit of joy.  The moment when I opened the top and everyone seemed to be OK, a huge grin creases my face.  The moment when the sun warms the bees up and they start flying around the hive, I almost giggle.  The moment when the returning workers are loaded down with pollen, my spirit soars.

I gave the bees two days to get used to the new location before placing the frames in the new box. In the meantime, Kathe had helped decorate the hive box, using a figure from the Madrid Codex - one of the four pre-contact Maya documents that have survived.

When I moved the bees into their permanent home, it went perfectly.  I found the queen (YAY!).  The workers had already started to modify the cardboard box into their own space (which means that they are healthy and busy) by building burr comb, already attached to the sides and top of the pasteboard box.  The ladies were coming back from the woods with lots of pollen attached to their legs, and are communicating with all the others where to get more.  They seem to like the new space in my backyard, and are adapting to it.

Deep hive, with Kathe's design.

Kathe got some cool video of the transfer (yes, she actually got pretty close!), and there were no real incidents.  I struggled a little to get the remainder of the girls out of the old box and into the new one, but even that went off pretty smoothly.  And I am, of course, fretting about the placement.  Did I put the frames in a different order?  Does it matter?  Should I have put the uncapped honey next to the brood....

And then I notice the beetles.  Lots of little beetles in the box.  Maybe a dozen or so of them, all scurrying for cover.

Here is where I really don't know what to do.  There are serious things that can infest bee hives. Foulbrood can only be addressed by burning the hive.  Varroa mites can kill off your hive (and infest adjacent ones, too) if they get out of control, but they are present in every hive out there.  Wax moths are detrimental to the health of your hive.  Tracheal mites, too.

And small hive beetles.

For some reason, I did not listen as well in the workshop when they were talking about hive beetles.  And I can't remember why.  Was it because they are not as deadly?

I went to the internet for my answer.

Now Best Beloved, if you have a concern, going to the internet is the worst idea possible.  The hive mind of the internet (see what I did there?) is pure Eeyore.  No matter how many good things are going on, Eeyore will see the potential down side, and see how everything is about to go wrong.

So.... after reading one site after another that explains to me how my hive is doomed, and exactly what the beetles and their demonspawn offspring would do to my hive, I panicked.  (The larvae eat the honeybee brood.  The larvae eat the honey and defile it in the process.  The larvae can overtake the hive.  American honeybees cannot resist, and die under the onslaught.  Save yourselves!)

Yep, I panicked.  Again.  And this time, Bobby and Vic could do nothing to help me.

After putting as many beetles as I could find in a jar of vinegar, I gave the guy who sold me the beetles, um, I mean, bees, a call.  He reassured me that the best way to keep the beetles under control was to encourage a strong colony.  That they weren't really the problem I was imagining them to be.

Then again, that is what you would expect him to say.  He sold me that pig; of course any problems with the pig are of no consequence.  Some pig, huh?

Eventually, I got in touch with another beekeeper in the area that I had met at the workshop. 

"Naw, man, hive beetles are everywhere - everybody's got them.  You only got to worry about them if you have a bunch."

Um, well, what is a lot?  I just don't know whether three is a lot or five thousand....

Over the next half hour, we discussed both treatment options and diagnosing, and by the end of the conversation, I was reassured as to the nature and severity of the problem.  As well as the solution (involving brushing off the bees from each frame and then shaking the beetles off and KILLING them.)  Just talking it through with someone who knew made all the difference.

Yes.  I have a problem.  The consequences of having the problem are low.  So I mostly just need to do what is best for the hive.

In the final analysis, it might be better to worry than to be apathetic.  I certainly learned something because I worried enough to research a solution.  But it certainly is more stressful.

Now I just have to figure out how to cage Eeyore more effectively....


                                                                                                Sting count: 0

Long Live the Queen!

You know that feeling?  The one when you are bringing your first puppy home for the first time?  The anticipation is over, and it is pure joy; pure glee, pure love.

And, of course, just a tinge of worry.  Will there be enough flowers near the house to feed them?  Will the mosquito spraying in the neighborhood kill them?  Will I be able to control the mites?  Are they in too much sun?  Too much shade?  Will raccoons mess with them?  Should I have bought different equipment?

Yes.  I now have a hive of bees. (Apparently in the beekeeping community, this makes me a bee-haver. Bee-keeping requires a lot of work.)  And all day long, I just could not stop grinning.  The process that started in 2002 has resulted in there being a box of bees in my backyard.

Earlier this week, Kathe and I had convoyed down to Wiggins for her to spend the week with her mom, and I unexpectedly slapped on the brakes in the middle of the highway, upsetting the doxies in the backseat and drivers on both sides of Highway 49 in the process.  In front of an unassuming blue shed were a half dozen bee boxes, and a sign, proclaiming that the business was open... to sell bee equipment.

The Bee Gold Honey folks talked me through the process, and gave me good information on what to do to set up my boxes.  An hour later, Larry and Sara Williams loaded my truck up with all of the equipment I needed to get started.

My bee box.  (Nobody has nucs for the top bar hive I already had,
so I will use it to hold any swarms I manage to capture....) 

I spent the rest of the week painting boxes and putting boxes together, and getting the house ready.  Following the lead of Scott Johnson, I used my limited artistic skills to draw a Maya image on my box, just for fun.  (If you haven't ready anything by Scott, check out his Low Tech Institute, or buy his book on Maya hieroglyphs here.

Ty Freeman, owner of Mississippi Bee Haven, had already set aside a nuc for me, so when I went back to convoy with Kathe on the return trip, we made a stop in Richton, eventually landing in the home of Ty's lovely aunt (thanks, Google Maps.  Close, but no cigar.)

When we got there (Kathe observing from a safe distance, in the car), Ty and I went out and started opening his boxes and checking for a healthy nuc for me to take.

Ty Freeman dropping the first frame into the box.  My box.

He robed up, and worked the bees without smoke.  My suit is safely locked in the back of my truck, and I have come up empty looking for a key, so I buttoned up the shirt, tucked the pant cuffs into the socks, put on my sunglasses and got to work.

"I just opened this box yesterday, so the girls may be a little more aggressive than usual," Ty explained.  He pointed out the honey stores, the capped brood, and finally, the queen, while several worker bees tried to chase me away by burrowing into my hair and buzzing furiously..

A few minutes later, Ty has the five frames transferred into the pasteboard box, covered over the entrance hole with duct tape and widened the air holes just a little.  To make sure that nothing happens, he also secures the top of the box with two pieces of duct tape.  I pay him, shake hands, and am on my way.

The next two and a half hours were agonizing, driving back through light traffic, worrying about my 10,000 'puppies' in the box in the back of the truck.  Are they too hot?  Is there enough air?  Did I take that turn too fast?

Worrying.

I arrive home, with the full 20 pounds of girls and honey and brood and pollen safely locked away in their temporary cardboard home.  I get the rest of the stuff put away from the trip, and take my time, letting them get used to not bumping.

All I have to do is to move the box over to the new home, and remove the duct tape from the hole.  And leave the girls alone for a couple of days to get used to the spot.

I lit a cigarette, give them a little puff of smoke to relax them a little, and picked up the box from the bed of the truck....

...forgetting for a moment that the lid of the box is secured only with two pieces of duct tape.  Both pieces of duct tape immediately fail to hold, and I am now facing some 43 billion angry and confused bees.  (I know, I know.  It is supposedly 10k to 20k bees, but when you drop the box, the count very rapidly morphs.)

I might have set a world record for how fast one person smokes two cigarettes.  From the unexpected gasp at the moment of impact, to a series of furious plumes to try and placate the angry mob, I was huffing and puffing in a desperate attempt to get everyone calmed.

About ten minutes later, all the pretty ladies were settled down enough to put the top back on the box, to pick it up (from the base...) and carry it back to the prepared location.  A few small clusters of bees remained behind, but everyone else seems to get back to work fixing up the house.

It is now ten hours later, and I am still worried. Did I harm the queen?  Did I do something irreparable to the frames?  Will they thrive?

The girls seem to be settling into their new home.  I will transfer them later today (maybe tomorrow) into the permanent home, and start worrying about other stuff.  But for the moment, my girls are busy, and seem content.

And I am, too.

                                                                                            Sting Count: 0