Well, there are certainty still bees out there despite all my unintentional attempts to sabotage their existence. These bees are truly a testament to the resilience of life. Go bees! But what on Earth are they doing out there? I didn't expect there to be quite so much activity OUTSIDE the hive. Every time I get a chance (3 napping children is no small feat) I pull on my boots and take a walk down to my apiary! Yesterday the clouds parted just long enough (literally and metaphorically) for me to visit my bees... from a distance.




The other hive has ideas of their own.


This is the bottom of my 48 inch hive where Eleanor of Apiculture was hived. These gals have decided it is far easier to fly in and out through the holes in the farmers cloth under the hive. A few days ago I had Smoochy go out an rip off the outer layer of screen so more bees wouldn't get trapped while I puzzle out a long term solution to a bottom board. I thought all the dead bees would just fall out when he took the screen off, but most of them stayed right where they were. YUCK. I have seen some alive bees fly around and land on the bottoms of their dead comrades, as though they are almost trying to pull them off the hive. I wonder if they are trying to clean up the carnage?


And what's up with the bees congregating ON the hive?

                  

When I was 36 hours into Normy's labor and asking to be taken to the hospital for my epidural Smoochy told me, "Just because this is harder than you think it is doesn't mean you can't do it." Those words changed my life, and have become a mantra I repeat to myself when things gets sticky. When I went on to push my son triumphantly into the world 8 hours later I knew what Smoochy had told me was true. Now I believe I can accomplish ANYTHING with enough stamina and hard work... But, I have been repeating the mantra a lot this week.


I wanted Part II of my beekeeping adventure tale to be a cheerful retelling of the day I hived the bees along with a status update of their life in the hive that featured sunshine, rainbows, and of course the promise of honey. Instead the news from Becca's Sunshine Apiary is slightly more realistic, a whole lot more humble, and a little bit grim. The girls aren't doing so well. And really, most of it is my fault.


I have to go back to the moment just before I vigorously shook my first three pounds of bees in to their new home. Well, that was what was SUPPOSED to happen anyway. The reality was more like I just shook them around in the box. When they finally got their bearings they flew out and started sticking their stingers into the jackass who had just treated them like a can of new paint in a mixing machine. Actually, I wasn't the only one.  Smoochy took a hit in the dead center of the back of his neck, but he got some great pictures.  I wasn't expecting to get stung. I had seen all these YouTube videos of these beekeepers with neither gloves nor veil deftly introducing bees to their hive with the calm of a Zen Master sitting on a mountain. Let's just say I had unrealistic expectations. I'm sure I let loose a high-pitched Oooooooh-Nooo! the first few stingers to pierce through my skin-tight jeans and billowy white blouse. But, I held it together and as quickly as humanly possible set up shop. I was suddenly a lot more grateful that Smoochy caught that my fly was down BEFORE I attempted to hive the girls. The trouble was there was still one more package to do.






The bees circled my head madly, and followed me over the few feet to stand in front of the second hive that still needed to be dealt with. I don't know if any of you have ever experienced having your nipples pierced, but I'm here to tell you that the second one is a lot worse than the first because you know what's coming. Plus, you also know there is no way to get out of it without looking really really silly...

Here I am getting the crap stung out of me.

So, I muddled through. I was so shaken from the first incident that I attached my queen cage horribly to the bar. This forced me to leave out the second bar that should have snuggly fit next to the one the cage was suspended from. This also left a huge gap to the outside world and the cold rainy April elements were able to blast right in on my poor bees. But, I wanted to get out of there so badly that I didn't take time to think about what I could have done to fix it. As it was, I had to walk around our property forever to finally get the angry mob of bees to quit chasing me... or die on me with their stingers ripped from their butts.


It wasn't until after I had slurped down a rum and coke and had a moment to reflect that I realized I had made another bone-head move. Instead of putting the queen in the center of the hive body with plenty of room for the bees to cluster around her cage and keep her warm, I had suspended her from the bar closest to the entrance. Frick. Not good.

This was the properly attached queen cage. The second was a little wonky! Smoochy took this shot right before I banged, shook, and dumped the first package. I remember feeling confident and exhilarated. Hope to get that feeling back soon...

Then, to add to the problem, it was cold and rainy, and cold and rainy, and cold and rainy for days on end. Not good weather for bees.


Three days later I finally went out to check on the girls and made yet another horrible discovery. The bottom of the hive was constructed with two different sheets of farmers cloth layered over each other. The inside sheet (the first we installed) had bigger holes. Turns out those holes are too big to keep out pests (like small hive beetles and wax moths). Instead of ripping that sheet off and starting again, we just layered the cloth with smaller holes over it from the bottom. I never could have imagined that the bees would try to crawl through the bigger holes in the first layer of cloth and get trapped by the second. But they did. My heart sank and my stomach hurt when I saw the layer of dead bees sandwiched between the two sheets. 


I have to say, at this point I was a little shaken. I got on the phone with the main organizer and chairman of the Omaha Bee Club, bee doctor, and bee-friendly pest management guru, Tony Sandoval, AKA Big Bear. This guys rocks. I think he could sense the fear and distress in my voice when he talked with me about what I was going to need to do to start fixing the situation out at my hives. I had never even lit my smoker before, and after my fist run-in with angry bees I was a little too on the scared-shittless side to go out there and start messing around. Tony offered to come over right then and help me open things up and take a look around. My hero. He told me, "That's what the Bee Club is all about. Bee people helping bee people." 


Having someone that experienced come over and walk me through opening up the hives was just what I needed. When we got out there all was not lost. There were lots of dead bees, sure. But, lots of alive ones too, all clustered together to keep warm. Tony helped me move the queen cage of the first hive over where it needed to be. On the second hive (the one with the wonkily attached cage) we discovered that the queen had been released, so we could close that one back up tighter than I had left it initially and things were good. It was a huge sigh of relief to be out there and not get stung, and to see Tony work without any protective gear at all and not get stung either. But, the best part of the experience was observing the slow, gentle, and steady way he manipulated the bars and the bees. It was masterful and I learned so much. 


Since then I have been out to visit a friend's bees once and my own just last Sunday. I have a residual phobia of getting stung that I really need to work through. I'm seriously considering buying a full bee suit, because a calm confident beekeeper will always be more successful than a spastic freaked-out one.  But, the adventure has begun. I'm not sure how this first chapter will end. Frankly, I don't think my hives are very healthy right now, but I'll save that story for next time. The thing is: I'm in it to win it, so to speak. I am not giving up. Even if these hives crash and burn (poor tortured bees!) I will start again and take everything I've learned from this experience and do better next time. 


The good new is, there are defiantly bees in both my boxes. I was just out there watching the field bees come and go which was a promising sight.  I'm not sure that they have queens, or are building comb... but they are out there and working the yard. On Easter while we were out egg hunting I saw quite a few girls I'm sure were mine. ;-) We have been seeing honey bees in the creeping charlie on our property and the last time I opened the hives up I saw bees with lovely bright yellow clumps suck to their hind legs... in their pollen baskets! Life goes on. 

Every time I look out my window at the hives on the hill, I know my husband loves me.

I started writing this last night, and though I haven't completed the tale, I feel as though I should at least get started with it. So...


Well, Becca's Hard Knocks School of Beekeeping is now in session. After hours of research and reading, reams of plans, and a bit of day dreaming it has begun. I wish I could express to you just HOW MUCH of our lives the last few weeks have revolved around the arrival of the bees. My husband has taken time off from work to build hives. In fact, he's spent ALL of his free time on the project for weeks. The kids have missed him. I too have spent every second of free-time I could (or couldn't) scrounge to make this whole show go off today (Yesterday). Smoochy and I have been bouncing ideas off one another on how to make each little detail work... and there have been a surprising number of details to tweak. Hive ventilation, top bar guides, hive covers, screen bottom boards, bee feeding apparatus... It's enough to make your head swim.




Then there was the day of the bees' arrival. A grey cold day. Steady constant rain. North west winds averaging 35 miles per hour and a chilly 33 degree low... NOT the best day to introduce the girls to their new home. Here's the thing with bees. Packages of bees are typically raised in nice warm places like California or South Carolina where winter is something friends from the North mention, but really remains abstract. Once the bees are caged and trucked to their final destination they have been confined for several days...3... 4... more? And it is time to get them into their new home as quickly as possible. Every extra day they stay in their box is another day of stress and diminishing food supply. I don't know exactly how long my bees were caged up, but I know the can of sugar syrup they had to snack on was almost empty... and they were pissed off about it.


The day they lived in my basement waiting for the rain to stop was a day of anticipation and joy for me. Strike that. It was not joyful... I was totally stressed that I couldn't hive the bees immediately. I kept hoping against all hope that the clouds would magically part. Why it had never occurred to me that there could be bad weather in the beginning of April that might complicate our beekeeping plans surprises me now. Regardless, the kids and I would go down into the basement and listen to the buzz the bees made in the dark compared to the super-sonic buzz they made when we flipped on the lights. The change in tone would have shocked you. Each time we visited them (every four hours) we sprayed them down with sugar syrup to give them a little snack.  There were actually a couple of bees that clung on to the OUTSIDE of the packages. These poor girls wanted so bad to be inside with their sisters and the can of sugar syrup. At least one made it to the hives with the rest but the other found the plant starts under my grow-lights and died a sad lonely death.






Anyway, the day I was actually able to hive the bees dawned grey and WINDY. I was scared those poor girls would starve to death in my basement. So, just like a woman in early labor fiddling with her bags packed for the hospital I started dinking around with my bee-gear. Oh the bee gear! There has been no shortage of things for me to over-think with this project. It might have been different if I had decided to go with a standard Langstroth hive, but I opted for top bar hives, which still leave a lot of room experiment and personalization.


I have belabored each and every point of construction, much to the chagrin of my accommodating husband who has changed mid-stream with me as I have flip-flopped with each new beekeeping source I've read.


Like top bars: Which guide to use? OK, bees will build their lovely comb without any real help from us people. But, to keep them going in nice straight lines (which makes it easier for the beekeeper to remove the comb) it helps to give them a guide to work with. I thought at first I would have Smoochy cut bars with grooves to be filled with beeswax to serve that purpose. So he did. Then we decided that it would be better if they had a wood guide to work from, so he cut those same bars again. All would have been fine except the wood piece had a groove left over form the first cutting, and I found myself obsessing over this at 6:30 this morning, and filling that groove with beeswax despite myself. This was totally at the expense of all other activities, like making breakfast of diapering the baby. Hmmm.


Then there was how to feed the bees. (When you first get them started in the hives you need to help them along to make up for the fact that there aren't enough nectar and pollen producing plants blooming just yet.) I decided on inverted mason jars placed inside the hive as feeders, which is great. But, which way to punch the holes? If I do it from outside-in the bees (supposedly) are in danger of having their proboscises (tongues) ripped off. If the holes are made form the inside-out then they have something to grip on to but their heads could get wounded on the sharp metal.... Oh my god!

In the end I made some holes going in each direction. Now I just have to count whether I see more bees with scratched heads or missing tongues.

I've heard it said, "The only right  way is what works for you and your bees." Great. That's helpful. I've also heard if you ask 100 beekeepers how to do something you'll get 100 different answers.


Like which flavor of mini-marshmellow should I stop the hole in the queen cage with??? OK, I didn't really agonize over that one. Everyone knows the bees like the lemon ones best. (The queens come separately in their own cage with a little cork baring her escape. When you introduce her to the hive you replace the cork with with a mini-marshmallow to hold her in, so that by the time the bees have eaten her out they have had enough time to smell the pheromones she gives off and accept her as their rightful ruler.)


Well, as I spent the morning fiddling with molten wax and top bars, Smoochy was finishing up the hives.  After spending hours building lovely gabled roofs for the hives, I decided they needed an inner cover to protect against heat seeping between the bars and up into the roof. So, at the last minute he was back out in the garage measuring, sawing, and swearing. He really does love me. Two o' clock in the afternoon rolled around, the sun was shining even if the wind was a little too breezy, and the hives still weren't 100% ready to go. My poor husband still needed to lug them over an acer away from the garage and up a 45 degree hill to their final resting place on the far side of the pond.








Yikes! Luckily fate smiled on us and we found ourselves with three sleeping children. I was able to help him lug cinderblocks, clear brush, and even chop down one last tree just for good measure. Each minute that ticked by I became more and more excited and nervous. How was the whole thing going to go? Would the wind pick-up before we could get the hives set up? Was I going to get stung? (Yes.) Was I prepared enough? (Um... No.)




Well, I hate to leave you hanging, but I'll have to get back to that later. This will have to be a two part series. I've already spent two days working on this and now it is bath time. See ya' soon! 

Spring is a wild ride. The thrill of feeling sun on your skin. The delight in wandering out doors without a protective bindle. I have been enthralled by watching the earth spring to life with all manner of plants. Every time I look out my window and see an army of purple flowers I’m a little sad that the bees aren’t here yet. They should be cashing in on this early bounty. Every drop of nectar and pollen they save now is bit of insurance that they will be able to make it through our next long Nebraska winter. I have no expectation of surplus honey for me this year. I am using top bar hives, which are (supposedly) better for bee health, but notably less productive in terms of honey.

Speaking of bees, I need to be outside painting my hives in anticipation of the bee’s arrival on FRIDAY! At last!!! The girls are coming. I am anxious and excited all at once. I wish I was a little more prepared, but then I think beekeeping is a little like parenting in that you can read all the books in the world but never know what you’re in for until you actually start doing it.

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I just can’t seem to find time to write these last few weeks. The above two paragraphs was all I could manage, and there were several days between the first and second! Every moment that I have had with sleeping children has been spent outside painting beehives, reading about bees, or playing domestic catch-up. You can bet cookin’ and cleanin’ have sunk pretty low on my list of to-do’s with the bees’ arrival so close. I will have time to fill you in on our happenings here as soon as all 20,000 or so of my new pets are safely in their fabulous new homes… Today I have to put a guide on all the bars for the bees to build their comb along and make some sugar syrup to feed them. In the mean time here are some pictures of our recent days… wish me luck with the bees!

On a bee hunt: We found two bumble bees in the creeping charlie!!!