The Wax Menagerie

I'm moving to a new blog address. Find Levi's Bees at "The Wax Menagerie" - www.thewaxmenagerie.blogspot.com

First inspection . . . EVER!!

I'm so happy to see significant activity at the hive entrance.  The bees are bringing back loads of pollen.  It's really interesting to see how some of it is really orange and some of the pollen is a much more pale yellow. 

I stand and watch the hive from about 5 feet away at the edge of our lilacs, and it feels like you're in the airspace of a busy airport as the bees lumber right past your ears.

I was finally able to get my veils and my smoker came, so I've been anxiously awaiting a warm dry day that I'd be able to do my first hive inspection.  I smoked the entrance and the feeder, then cracked open the hive and gave it a few puffs before closing it again.  They reacted angrily, but I think it was really more to the disturbance of air, than they actually recognized me as a threat.

I was thrilled with what I found in the hive.  None of the frames were completely filled out, but the girls had made a good start on 6 of the 10.  I'd say they probably have 4 completely full if you could consolidate them all.  Pretty impressive considering these are all still package bees.  They won't have reinforcements for at least another week and a half.

It's really important that you can confirm that the queen is laying eggs and the colony is off to a good start.  In this picture (click it for a larger view) you can actually see larvae growing (lower left half)!  This was a huge relief for me just to know things are going well so far.

The bees were super tolerant and even though my smoker died, I was able to pull out each frame and inspect it without any guard bees getting angry.  And I took the time to take pictures.

In this picture you can see orange pollen in the comb (in the middle).  Below the pollen you can see the shine of new uncapped honey.  They bees will wait for it to dehydrate before capping it off to preserve it.  If you look closely above the pollen, you can see eggs in comb!  This is another great indicator that the queen is doing well.  In fact, that might be her at the top left three bees down.  Carniolan queens are notoriously hard to spot because they have slightly darker bodies and are nearly the same size as the worker bees.  When I first saw her in her package my first thought was "Really?! I'll never be able to find her again."

I'm sure as I'm able to spend more time with them, she'll reveal herself either in photos or in the behavior of the bees.  I try to work quickly to keep from stressing them, but I do check them every day, mostly because I'm excited about them.

Springtime in the Rockies

I feel bad for the girls.  They are getting a proper introduction to springtime in the Rocky Mountains as we've gotten nearly another foot of snow (the bee package came from CA).  It's melting fast, and there are ice crystals in their feeder.  I've seen noticeable dead loss at the entrance. I think the bees are pushing out their frozen sisters. 

I peeked under the feeder and they were still moving, but definitely looked cold and miserable.  I think the snow will be gone in the next 24 hours, so hopefully it will warm up quickly.

We got flowers at home depot and got them all potted and a few outside to help feed the bees, but they are all in the airlock now, to keep them from freezing as well.  Rocket doesn't mind, she likes playing in the snow.

But I'm sure Jennissa would much prefer it to be back in the 80's so we can enjoy another meal in the freshly painted and assembled adirondack chairs.  At least I got the garden tilled again before it got wet.

Installing the bees

I managed to get the bees installed today.  I didn't feel overly confident.  My car had quit on me earlier in the day (water in the fuel line) and I was in the middle of getting it taken care of when I stopped to install the bees.

Because the weather has been a bit wilder than normal this spring, the bees have been in the garage for two days waiting.  Today was the first day with decent temperatures, and there was just a slight breeze, so I really wanted to get the bees in.

I tried to level a spot in between the lilacs, put down some paver stones and placed my bottom board on them.  Then I put on a hive body with ten frames.  I placed a second empty hive body on top of this as I was planning on doing a gentle release (simply opening the box inside the empty hive body and letting the bees make their way out.)

I got my feeder and cover ready.  I made sure I had my gloves, safety glasses (my veils haven't come yet).  And the bee brush.  And the marshmallow.

Then I went in and made sugar water for them and filled up a spray bottle.

And . . . what else was I forgetting.

It was definitely exciting . . . but a little scary knowing that I didn't really know what I was doing.  I'm grateful to know as much as I already do, but actually having seen this done would have been super helpful.

I brought the bees out in their box and sprayed them down with sugar water.  I tried hard not to get them too wet, as I'd been cautioned about this.  I had to knock the box pretty hard to get them (mostly) off the queen cage and feeder.  They didn't like that much.  I keep spraying, feeling bad, but not really having any other option.  I struggled to get the queen cage slide out, but found her to be very active.  I forgot to take a picture, but she's actually not significantly larger than the other bees, but she was very dark!  I took out her cork, and crammed in the marshmallow.  The bees will eat through the marshmallow in a matter of hours and free her.

I placed the queen cage in between two frames, in the lower hive body.  All that was left to do was to put in the rest of the bees.

This is where I made a novice and impatient mistake.  I should have just kept to my original plan of doing an gentle release, but there wasn't much clearance between the bee box and the feeder.  Being impatient, and wanting to help the bees get down into the hive a quickly as possible, I tried to dump them out.  About 2/3s of them feel into the hive, but there were still several thousand still in the box!  I couldn't just put the box down without crushing a lot of bees.  They were already agitated, so this really upset them.  Within a few seconds there were 30-40 buzzing around me.  I tried to work quickly, but couldn't get them all out of the way.  Ahhhhh!  I didn't panic, but I'm afraid I did kill quite a few.  I didn't realize I could have left the box right outside the hive, so I put it in and put on the queen excluder and feeder.  I poured in the sugar water as quickly as possible and put on the hive cover.

I quickly picked up my tools and left, hoping the bees were okay and would calm down.

Within just a few minutes they had and were busy licking up the sugar that was spilled on the outside of the hive.  I also noticed them at work on the few Delphinium we had in the flowerbed.

I'm interested to see how they do.  I'll have to try in a day or two to get the box out of the hive, and perhaps take off the extra hive body.