Trapy Trappin

I think that honey bees and canale + parapets were invented together. I mean seriously, there is no better house for a bee then in the dark, warm, dry empty space in the wall above a canale in flat roofed houses- aka the parapet in every house in Albuquerque. Also, there is no better entrance to the bee's perfect parapet house then when the roofing material starts pulling away from the side of the canales. It creates a bee-fabulous, 1/2 inch by 4 inch slit that bees LOVE as a perfect house entrance!

So, we are starting a trap out on the top of a 2 story apartment building in the student ghetto. Other beekeepers love to cut out the bees, but I personally enjoy THE TRAP. This means that we create a funnel with wire mesh where the bees can exit, but can't figure out with their tiny bee brains how to get back into the frayed mesh exit. I give them a beehive with brand new larvae and some sacrificial nurse bees to move into. The trapped out bees make a new queen with the larvae, the old queen forever stays in the wall with her dwindling honey supplies. It's quite sad, but works so beautifully well. Then, wax moths move in and eat out all the honey.

It takes awhile, sometimes 6 weeks or longer and you have to plug up the entrance tightly because other bees in the future will LOVE to move in to the perfect bee house... the canale and parapet.

James and some fancy fireman moves

did we forget anything?

The trap, the sacrificial nurse bees and larvae

The troops found the trap exit

Vertigo, 2 stories up. We had to screen the entrance on the outside of the canale

Covered all the vents with mesh

Queen Grafts

A good friend and I were in the beeyards today doing the first queen grafts of the season. The reason I'm grafting is because I have 2 horribly nasty hives... Canada and Switzerland that need to be requeened ASAP. Go figure, the hives I named after the most peaceful countries are my jerk hives. I hope to pass the fantastic genetics of my dream hive, Mexico on to other hives. My big plan this year is to have an heir and a spare at all times, just in case one of my queens dies on me.

1. So here is the process for the down and dirty beeyard grafts I used today. First, we rolled up the windows to the pickup truck, wet a towel and let the truck's cab heat up and get moist.

2. Next, we opened up the dream hive Mexico and found a comb of brood with very young larvae swimming in small pools of royal jelly. Did you know that all bees get fed royal jelly in the beginning? We brushed off the bees and rushed the comb to our hot and moist Toyota Cab. You don't want those tiny nuggets of larvae getting dried out or chilled.

3. Then we took a cool tool with a plunger on one end and started moving the larvae directly into the queen cups. They actually make these things for grafting. You can also use a blade of grass or pull a twig off a tree and use the green pith for this. When transferring larvae, you have to make sure to pick up the lavae and place it in the same way, otherwise the larvae might drown in the royal jelly if it's body is flipped.

4. We then rushed the queen cups to a very strong queenless hive with plenty of pollen and honey stores, placed the queens in the middle of the brood, closed up the hive and said a prayer. I'll check next week to see if any of the grafts "took" (if they are actually making queens with them). I will make sure to move the queens to their new homes before they emerge and sting each other to death.

Empty Queen cups. Yes that is duck tape. 

Picking up a larvae

Eye Check. The future Queen

This truck is hot!

Erda Gardens Swarm Catch

This one one well behaved big mama of a swarm and a textbook perfect swarm catch! One of the hives at Erda Gardens swarmed. I was already planning on going to the farm to help with splitting some hives so the timing couldn't be better. We positioned the hive body as close to the swarm as possible on a stack of tables and saw horses, had a few beats of peace and gave the plum branch a good hard shake! Into the hive the bees fell. We closed it up and thees started fanning to their sisters to come home! What a great rush... Enjoy your Erda Garden's Home and make loads of honey to share with the CSA members.

My 2 Favorite Top Bar Tricks

Here are my 2 fav's for this year. 

1. For a hive stand, I borrowed this idea from Kate Whealen in Santa Fe. You stack a hay bail on top of a wood pallet and then put the hive on top. The pallet keeps flooding away from the hay. The hay can be reused in the garden when it degrades and the hives are the perfect height for working the bees. Sturdy and cheap!

2. For feeders when starting out packages and swarms, I don't know if other people are doing this, but this idea came to me a couple days ago. I cut out a board in the dimension of 4 top bars, cut 2 holes in the top the same dimensions as mason jar lids. I then poke holes in the top of of the quart size mason jars with push pins, fill the jars with sugar water and put the feeders at the back of the hive. The cool thing about this trick is that I can see when the jars need to be filled and the whole thing fits under my corrugated metal lids. I also don't have to open up the hive to refill their sugar water. I haven't noticed a problem with temperature fluctuations emptying the feeders into the hive. 

My First Swarm Catch of the Season!

Swarm!

I just caught my first swarm of bees yesterday! I am embarrassed to say that the bees were from my own hive (oops) and that it was a wild circus act. The hive was the last of my hives I needed to split and I got a call from Farmer Jesse who just happened to be working the fields when he saw the mass of bees.

I threw my girls in the truck and hauled over to the farm. The bees were hanging 12 feet off the ground in a Chinese Elm tree so I set up the ladder. I taped my box to the top of the ladder so that I didn't have to hold the box and try and yank down on the branch at the same time, while dangling 10 feet in the air.

I told the farmers to WATCH OUT, gave the branch a swift jerk and all the bees landed in my box. I then realized that I forgot my sugar water and honey comb lure back at the house, so I left the box taped to the ladder, hauled home, grabbed the goodies, hauled butt back to the farm.... only to find that my box had come untaped and had fallen over a 8 foot chain link fence into the neighbors property. Oi!

box down!

I retrieved the box and the bees had stayed put so I shook them into a new beehive with all the new lures. Did I mention that Farmer Jesse had just flood irrigated and that this was all happening in 4 inches of water? Did I mention that my girls were busy honking the car horn the entire time? Did I mention that I had an audience of farmers watching my circus act?

Anyway, next time I'm not forgetting my lures. I might forget the box to catch the bees in but never again will I forget that darned sugar water and honey comb!

Home Sweet Home

Hippie Stain

I'm trying out a new stain on my hives that I got from John Gagne in Santa Fe. This "Eco Wood Treatment" is from Canada and is totally eco friendly (the label says so). I know people who dip their entire hives in this stuff and the bees don't have any reaction to the stain inside the hive. Also, the stain supposedly never has to be maintained. Pretty amazing claims. I'll let you know 15 years down the road if it did the trick.

The only funny thing about the stain is that it makes wood look really weathered. I felt like I was spending the day in a Rugged Old West Movie Town! The stain comes in a powdered form and you have to remember to use imperial measurements. 1 imperial gallon= 4.54 liters. Oi, math.

Eco Wood Treatment

Brand new wood with the stain= wild west chique

Splitsville 2012

 I've just finished checking all my hives for the first time this year. I was beating myself up for being a bad beekeeper because there are reports of swarms all over town and I hadn't checked my own bees- they could have been the ones swarming.

Turns out my instincts to wait were right on because I only had 2 hives that had swarm cells. These 2 hives I split into 4 hives total to try and keep half the bees from leaving with the old queen to find a new home (swarm).

The technique I have found to be the easiest for me is to put the old queen, 2 bars of honey and 2 bars of capped brood into a new hive and then move it away from the original hive that still has the swarm cells. I also like to close up the entrance to the new hive with the old queen to just a couple of bee widths to prevent robbing.

I plan to check on the hives with queen cells in 2 weeks to see if the new queen has emerged. At this point she will have a body like a cross between a drone and a worker bee and she is also SUPER fast! Only after the virgin queen goes out to mate, does she get the body associated with queen bees.

Blossoms

Drone Brood

Queen Cells with Larvae

peek a boo