Adventures in Chandlery

May 23rd:

I decided, in a multi-day, multi-hour project, to make something of the ruined comb from last year's hive.  There was a lot.  First, though, I had to cut it all off the frames and put it in a big bucket:

That took way too long, and left honey and wax all over the garage floor.  It's impossible to clean up.

Then I took all this comb in and rinsed it off in a calendar in the sink.  It was full of junk, including dead bees--so sad.  I rinsed several times, then put it all in a big pot on the stove, topped off with water to about 2 inches above the level of the wax:

I heated this slowly, and used a kitchen strainer to skim off the gross dark matter (and more dead bees) that rose to the surface.  This stuff is called "slumgum", and according to the all-wise internet, is good as a firestarter.  I'll hold onto it for a year, and then I'll get sick of it and probably throw it out.

Eventually all the slumgum was skimmed off, and I turned off the heat and let the beeswax harden on the top as the whole mess cooled down over the course of about a day.

That top layer of wax became a sort of big puck:

That got melted and strained through cheesecloth about 8 times, each time producing a bundle of cheesecloth saturated with gunky bee stuff.  I set that aside with the slumgum to serve as firestarter maybe someday.

Eventually it was clean enough for a final meltdown, and then I poured it carefully into a candle mold.  There's a tricky step that involves waiting 45 minutes after the first pour, then going back to fill in a fissure that develops around the wick.  But that went smoothly, and later after a very brief stint in the refrigerator, I was able to decant my candle!

The final result is undeniably quite lovely, and it smells wonderfully (at least to a beekeeper's nose) of honey and bees and wax.  I hate to think how much money this one candle cost, in terms of time and supplies and bee-time, but it is nice, and I feel good that last year's bees' hard work went to some use.

(A note:  I'm indebted to the author of a blog called "Green Road Farm" for pointers on how to do all this.  The blog post I used is here.)

May 17: One Week Check-in

On May 17, I looked into the hives for the first time since getting them out of their nucs and into their new homes.  Everything looks GOOD.  I saw the NEB queen (brightly marked), but not the MVA queen--but there was evidence that both queens were laying well.

The MVA hive, which was the stronger of the two nucs, is already crowded.  I squinched a couple of swarm cells and added a second hive body to that hive.  I'll wait another week to put one on the NEB hive.

No sign of mites.  Lots of pollen coming in the front door.

There's the NEB queen!

Wonderful video

May 20, 2015:

National Geographic asked the photographer Anand Varma to take photographs of bees.  The result was this TED talk, and the wonderful moving video below.

The TED talk, in which Varma explains the move toward mite-resistant queens:

And the (very beautiful) video of a bee's first 21 days of life:

Swarms

May 19:

Many Facebook friends are sending me stories about swarming bees.  I've never seen one!  I'd love the opportunity to try to catch one, and I've been looking at swarm traps online now and again.

This is happening a lot in urban areas, and London in particular is having trouble.  Lots of urban beekeepers have sprung up, keeping rooftop hives, and they're inexperienced and don't know how to prevent swarming.  Sadly, most people don't know that a swarm of bees is usually very gentle--they're much more interested in finding a new home than they are in stinging anyone.

Thistledown

From a fable by Louisa May Alcott.

A NEW DAY: Beginning Again

May 5th: Painting the New Hive!

French Country Blue will be this year's color, and Abby is painting flowers and vines on the first hive bodies.

May 8:  This is a good place to bring the bees home to.

May 9:  NEW BEE DAY!!

Today's the day!  Ken and I drove out to Billerica and Tyngsboro to get the new nucleus colonies!

The experience at the two different apiaries couldn't have been more different.  New England Beekeeping is run by a sweet guy out of his house at the end of a residential street.  There are nucs and hives everywhere.  He spent 1/2 hour or so just chatting with us, and he marked my queen for me (barehanded, just reaching in and trapping her, and then dotting her with a special marking pen).  He had two big golden retrievers that gamboled about.  So sweet.

Merrimack Valley Apiaries, in contrast, is a huge business, with a giant factory building and many acres covered in hives.  We got there at 8, and there were at least a dozen other people waiting around for their bees--some waiting for 50-75 nucs, to cart away in industrial trucks.  We had to wait for over an hour, as the sun set and the mosquitoes (which were fierce) made clouds around us.  The main beekeeper wanted to wait for the field bees to come home before sealing the nucs.

In the end, I think that wait was a good idea.  The nuc from MVA appears much stronger--or at least, it just has lots more bees.  I think it may have the jump on the NEB colony.  We'll see!

Abby came out with us to do the installation, and she took most of these pictures and a sweet video:

And another:

May 10th: Happy Mother's Day!

The Big and Final Update--April

April 2:

I experience false hope.

I wrote:

There were 5-6 bees buzzing around, though mainly they were going in and out of the back of the hive, which is weird (the back is just a narrow slot where a mite-check tray lives--it's not connected to the main body of the hive). But still...I *think* they're my bees, which means I think that the queen must be alive. If I get an hour of warmth and no rain this weekend, I'll open up the hive and investigate.


April 6:

The President tells some kids "Bees are good!"  And everything gets crazy and kind of hilarious.

April 8:

"How the Fox-Terrier was transformed into a bull dog"

April 11:

EVERYONE sent me links to the "Honey Flow" kickstarter, to support a couple of Australian guys who have invented a beehive which allows you to harvest honey without opening the hive.  At present the hives are ridiculously expensive, and I have so many questions and concerns.  Seems to me that it would be good, yes, to not have to disturb the bees.  But on the other hand, the only way we know that the bees are happy and healthy and doing their thing, and that their homes haven't been invaded by mites or moths or disease, is by getting in there and looking.  I'm skeptical.  I'll wait for seasoned beekeepers to have a say in all this.


April 12:  The End.

Well, that's it. They're all dead.

What you see in the first photo is what was left of the cluster, all bundled around the queen. I'm pretty sure what happened is that it just got so cold that they wouldn't leave the cluster around the queen even by a few inches to get honey--so they starved to death, even though they were surrounded by frames and frames of capped honey. You can even see some there at the corners of the photo.

If it had been a stronger hive going into the winter--if there had been more bees, that is--then maybe even with some die-off, they would have been able to keep things warm enough, and they would have been able to venture out of the cluster. As is, they didn't have a chance. The mites hitting late in the summer doomed them. This year I'll be much more careful about a pest-control program.

There were a few bees hanging around the hive today, as there have been for a few days. But they're just neighborhood bees looting the house of the dead. I propped the frames out to make it easier for them. Someone should benefit from this.

This isn't honey I can use, since it was on the hive when I did the last chemical mite treatment of the year. But I took a huge fingerful for myself, anyway. Damn it.

So sad.

April 13:

My cousin Marcia sent this sweet consolation:

April 16:

Sometime in early May I will pick up a colony of bees in Billerica. And another in Tyngsboro.

The Billerica bees are from New England Beekeeping.  They're Aurora Italians.

The Tynsgboro bees are from Western Merrimack Valley apiaries.  They're an Italian/Carniolan hybrid. 

April 26:  BEGIN AGAIN

Today I started building a new hive, to accommodate the second of my new colonies.

April 27:

Matthes Honig - Matthes Fruit - 1900-25

The Big and Final Update--March

March 11, 2015:

Friend Bill sent me this beautiful/sad/beautiful poem

The Bee
--Henri Cole

For Jamaica Kincaid

There’s a Bee
dying slowly
outside my
window.
He/she

makes this awful
buzzing sound
which grows
longer as
the end nears,

I suppose.
The mysterious
process at work
within him/her
is disturbing,

like a warm
wet finger.
Usually,
when you hear
a Bee,

the sound dissipates
as the Bee
flies away,
but this is just constant,
so constant I think,

Maybe this Bee
is stupidly in love
with me.
Or the buzzing
is inside

my head
and will become,
over time,
a friend—
a new kind

that doesn’t go away,
even after lots of sex—
my ear canal
growing receptive,
like a hard bud

to light,
or a vulva
to the perfect
relation.
Would we know

each other,
I wonder,
if our eyes met across
a crowded room?
I did not expect

to meet this Bee.
What else
could love be
but lots of buzzing—
or hate?

March 22, 2015:  Fairly certain my bees are dead.  There is zero sign of life at the hive.  My mentor Julien waded out in the snow and confirmed--it really seems dead.  Feeling sad.

The Big and Final Update--February

February 1, 2015:

Sophie sent me a Facebook Post:

February 2, 2015:

I just went out to clear our walkway, and while I was out I went and scooped of the bees' front porch as well (that was decidedly less strenuous).

I didn't see any bees--it's much too cold for them to leave their cluster right now--but I did see bee poop in the snow. And as I told Abby and Ken, where there's poop, there's life.

(The above photo is taken from this website for kids, which explains things about bees & poop!)

February 12, 2015:

Diane sent me a FB post about Saint Gobnait, the patron saint of beekeepers!

Saint Gobnait is the patroness of bees and bee keepers, and today, February 11, is her feast day!  She’s also known by a few other names; Saint Gobnata, Gobnet, Gobeneta, Mo Gobnat, Abigail, Deborah.

February 14, 2015:

Just reading about an Anglo-Saxon metrical charm intended to keep bees from swarming. You know, like you do on any Saturday night.

Settle down, victory-women,
never be wild and fly to the woods.
Be as mindful of my welfare,
as is each man of border and of home.

February 20, 2015:

Over the course of several weeks pretty much everyone I know sent me a link to a kickstarter for a couple of guys in Australia who have designed a hive that doesn't disturb the bees when you harvest the honey.  It looks fascinating, and like maybe a very good idea--but it's early stages, and the hives are very expensive.

February 24, 2015:

I just ordered another beehive kit, so my second hive's worth of bees will have somewhere to live. And doing this is making me feel like Spring is a real possibility.

February 26, 2015:

The hive kit came SO FAST!

February 27, 2015:

The last jar of the 2014 season.

February 28, 2015:

Bad News.  Ken and I struggled out to the hive today to check on the bees. The snow is still well up over my knees, so it was a long slow slog out there. And there was no sign of life once we got there. No trails of bee scat, no hum in the hive, nothing. I cracked open the top and listened, but nothing.

sigh.

Who knows, perhaps they're fine, and the next *really* warm day they'll be in evidence. At the moment my only consolation is that I ordered another nucleus colony, which will arrive this spring.

The Big and Final Update--January

January 3, 2015:

I know of no better reading than the 2015 BetterBee Product Catalog.

Jonathan sent me a vintage photo:

Bill sent me "Day of the Death Drones!"

January 14, 2015:  I'm still reading Betterbee.  It was a VERY cold winter; it was good to dream of bees.

January 22, 2015:

Marcia sent me a post about a dog in Australia who can smell American Foulbrood Disease:

A beekeeper from Tintinara in South Australia created the incredible suit for Bazz, the black Labrador trained to detect by smell a killer bee disease called American foulbrood. But his master has been forced to design him his own beekeepers suit after the pooch kept getting stung.