Grabbing the Ring

The rule is simple. It you get stung by a bee on your hand, immediately remove your rings.

Simple rule, but not well published.

Instead, what is published is a physiological description of what happens.  "Under muscular control, the two sliding lanclets move rapidly backwards and forwards, alternately, past each other, effectively sawing into your flesh." (The Beekeepers Bible, p.128.)

"The sting... is an ovipositor that has been remodeled a few ways for the injection of poison instead of eggs."  (The Hive and the Honey Bee, p. 107).

Thanks.  That is great information, but not helpful in preventing me from having my wedding ring cut off in the emergency room yesterday.

To be fair, it does make sense, in retrospect.  Get stung on the ring finger, remove the ring before it swells up.  Unfortunately, my books don't tell me that. They give me an anatomy lesson, figuring the real-life lesson with will teach itself. And it did.

Even the interwebs were only a little bit better:

Beekeeper's Apprentice, Part ii

My first time to work with Steven Coy, I learned a lot, and got a certain level of confidence in working with the bees.  Not necessarily competence.  But confidence.

Confident = not wearing a veil. 
Competent = knowing when it is OK to not wear a veil.

So for the second trip, I volunteered again, with the intention of picking up my bees at the end of the visit.  During the day, I would get to work with bees.  Always a plus.

On my previous visit to the Coy Bee Farm, we had spent most of our time making and populating splits, to increase the number of hives.  This time, we were preparing hives for honey production and catching queens.

We hopped in the net-covered truck and made a run down to the coast, to place hives in the areas where the Chinese tallow provides huge nectar flows starting about now. We carried 96 hives, filled with bees, and twice as many honey supers (boxes designed for the workers to fill with honey), so that we could set up the girls to do their work in a productive area.  The productive area is in Bay St Louis, a coastal community at the border between Louisiana and Mississippi.

Robert, removing the net from the boxes of transported bees

At the first location, we opened the gate and drove into a field that was in serious need of a bush-hogging (Chinese tallow growing everywhere - YAY!).  The forklift came off the truck, and hives were unloaded.  We opened them up, made sure there was brood in each one, and placed a mesh to keep the queen down in the bottom (called a queen excluder), while letting workers up to process honey in the upper boxes.  And then put boxes on top for honey production and storage.

The girls were not terribly happy about being moved around, but they seemed to accept the new situation with only a minor amount of grumpiness.  (Only one sting through the pants leg....)

Swarms

"We have a swarm of bees over here at the Harbor.  Can anyone come and help us?"

The message was sent by social media late in the afternoon, and I had guests in town, so I missed it.  I woke up the next morning and saw the message, and immediately called to find out.

"No, it appears that they have moved on.  But I will keep your information on hand if you would like, so that we can call you next time we have something."

Dang.  So close.

I went about my day, and my college roommates, my goddaughter and I ran the streets together, looking at Vicksburg and checking out all the sights.  After wandering through the Military Park, we went to lunch at Main Street Market Cafe, and were enjoying a lovely meal, when my phone rang.

Ceiling bees

"Crorey?"

"Yes."

"The bees are back."

"I'll be right there."

I paid the tab and ran out, my guests in tow, as I grabbed truck and gear and headed to the harbor.  I had my buckets and smoker and fuel and suits and boxes and even my bee-vac (a nice little contraption made from a shop vac and a bucket and extra vacuum cleaner hose).  I suited up and got in place to make the magic happen.

The bees were sad.

The swarm had broken into two smaller swarms, and they were cold and wet and miserable.  A bunch of them looked dead.  A storm had come through the previous evening and the temperature had dropped.

Ground bees

It was not clear whether the swarm had moved into the area between the roof and the ceiling, and so I pulled out the beevac, and vacuumed them up, and dropped them into the box, placed out in the sun so they could dry out.

A small handful of sad, wet bees also dropped onto the pavement next to the box.  After a few minutes, they showed a little bit of life, moving around as they dried out, and I spotted the queen.

As I tried to pick her up and drop her in the box, she took flight. The five of us searched all over, but never found her.  By the time the afternoon was over, the few bees that had originally stuck around were completely gone, following the Houdina queen.

It was a good wet run, trying out the equipment (the beevac makes a horrible noise, something I have to deal with before I use it again), but had not netted me any bees.  And it was a little disappointing.  But either way, I got to talk bees with Ben, Amanda, Owen and Allie.  It was a great way to spend a beautiful afternoon in Vicksburg.

Jujubees.  No relation.

It was a couple of weeks later before I got another nibble.

I was in our weekly staff meeting, reporting out on the status of projects and efforts and pieces of paper that are of intent interest to burrocrats.  And I received a text from Paul Ingram, a friend of mine.  "Facebook post of a swarm on Drummond."

About fifteen seconds later, a message from another friend, Jamie Triplett, echoing the same information.

For the next fifteen minutes I sat on my hands, shifting in my seat, soooo anxious to leave the meeting and get out there and see what was there.  The post described a swarm, and included a picture that was intended to lure us beekeepers out of the woodwork.  The post said,

Jill n Tony Bishop: Free to a good home!!! 🐝 I seriously need a bee keeper to come get some bees!!! Please refer me to a bee keeper!!!

Da-da-daaaa!

I finally removed myself from the beartrap meeting, and ran to my car, and drove down the road, trying to figure out which house had bees in the front yard.  I got vectored in by Paul, and eventually knocked on the door of the most likely house.

"Yes?"

I looked down at my appearance, and sighed a little inside.  I was wearing a white shirt with a tie, and had just knocked on a stranger's door.  Repressing the urge to ask if the guy knew the true name of YHWH, I explained who I was, and asked if the Bishops lived near, that they had mentioned a swarm.  The man's expression went from suspicious to delight.

"Yes!  They are right there, in the tree between our houses!  Let me show you!"

Mr. Moore called Jill Bishop, and then called his wife, Launo, to come out.  She then called Tony, and then called all of the neighbors on the block.  Within ten minutes, the entire neighborhood had gathered around to watch me shake bees into a bucket.

I answered questions as best I could, made sure that those who were nervous were more comfortable, and then climbed the ladder and shook the tree to get the bees to drop into the bucket.

Still wearing my tie from work....

After an hour of coaxing the remaining bees to the bucket, and making friends with everyone in a three-block radius, I wrapped the bucket in cloth and carried the bees to the house.  (On the way, I ran every stop sign and red light, hoping to get stopped by the police, just so I could offer to show the bees to the officer....)

...where I dropped the bees into the top bar hive, and went back to work.  At the end of the day, I went back to Drummond, captured the stragglers who had gone back to the branch, and went home.  At no time did I see the queen, so I was a little concerned, but not too much.  

For the next few days, Kathe and I watched the hive, making sure that the bees were doing ok; feeding them sugar water wherever we could, but mostly just trying to make sure that they felt comfortable in their new home.

Then on Saturday was the big reveal: we opened up the hive to see whether there was any sign that they had taken to their new condo.  I suited up, popped smoke, and opened the top....

And a thousand eyes looked up at me, like I had just opened an occupied stall at a public restroom.  I had expected to see a few bees, but their numbers startled me, and I apologized and dropped the frame back into place.  Not sure what I had expected, but they certainly seemed to be doing well.

I opened it back up a few moments later, and found that they had been renovating the interior of the condo, building comb like there is no tomorrow.

Five frames - so far - of newly drawn comb, waiting to be filled with eggs and larvae and nectar and pollen and honey.  

Bees are known for their waggle dance, a communication device where they explain to other bees where on the landscape resources are.  But the waggle dance I did at that moment was much more joyful - more like a Snoopy-style happy-feet dance.  Absolute ecstasy, delighted that my bees are happy, healthy, and liking their new home.

I expanded their space, gave them more bars to draw more comb on, and let them get back to work.  

And went back inside with a huge grin pasted on my face.

The Land of Milk and WHAT?!

I am about to try beekeeping again.

Last year about this time, I drove to Hattiesburg, MS to pick up a nuc.  It was a day of joy and trepidation.  The end result, though, was that my bees died.

Since then I have read, thought, asked, contemplated, and just generally worried the problem like a sore tooth.  I am not completely satisfied with my answers, but I am going to try again.  Some things I will do differently.  Some things will stay the same.

One of the things that is different this year  is that I am apprenticing myself out a little.  Which I did a couple of times this past month.  I will write up my experience from this weekend later, but this is what happened with my first trip.

The guy that I am buying the bees from is named Steven Coy, and his place is in Bond, MS, near to my mother-in-law's home in Wiggins.  A beautiful Friday morning in late March, I drove down to spend the weekend.  Early afternoon, I rolled up and hopped out of the car, bee jacket and veil in hand, ready to get to work.

After a few minutes of pleasantries, we headed out.  Mr. Coy and his employees had already put in a 6-hour day at this point, and there was still a lot to do.

We took two flat-bed trucks out to the back of a pasture, where there were about 40 hives stacked up.  Some were three-high, some just one.   Robert - the employee - explained quickly what was planned for the afternoon:

"Crorey, we are going to be splitting hives, which means we will force the queen into the bottom box, and divide up the brood and honey equally among the boxes on top."

At least, I think that is what Robert meant to say.  What he actually said was a lot more like "You get two frames of brood that sometimes you can spread across three frames and you make sure that there is one frame of honey, like this or sometimes two, and then you put two empties and two foundations, and then you move to the next one." (I looked at the frame and asked, "OK, so which one is the brood, again?")