Swarm Chasers

This May, we've had very good luck catching swarms. So far, we've caught and hived four, and we're always looking for more. Whitney joked today maybe we could get a show on cable TV: "Swarm Chasers"!


A beautiful May honey bee swarm in an apple tree

With all this talk about swarms lately, people have been asking us a couple of questions again and again:

1) Why are your bees swarming?

2) How do you catch a swarm anyway?

 

Nice honey bee swarm on pine branch.

1) Swarms are simply honey bee reproduction. Healthy vigorous honey bee colonies with plenty to eat swarm, just like birds hatch eggs, horses foal and elk calve. The difference is of course you don't consider each bee's reproduction, but the reproduction of the colony. In the wild, healthy honey bees would swarm every spring in order to spread their kind. This is why many of the older generations remember finding "honey trees" in the woods. These were swarms from some beekeeper that had gone wild (feral). Today, unfortunately with colony collapse disorder and all the other threats to honey bees, wild honey bees are pretty uncommon.

Swarming is a sign you have robust colonies that wintered with good numbers and plenty of honey to eat.

Catching a swarm

2) catching a swarm is not actually as hard as it may seem - usually. Assuming the swarm is in a nice location (like the picture above) it's pretty simple to hold a hive box under the clump of bees and give the branch a firm knock. The bees will fall into the box and if you got the queen, you can then just leave the box near by and all the bees will file in.  You can then go back in the evening and take the box where ever you want the hive.

God Save the Queen!

Unless you saw the queen, you may not know if you got her. If you did get the queen, all the workers will point towards her and fan. This is how they spread the message of where the queen is, and is a very good sign.

I like to picture them all saying "God save the Queen"!

A more difficult swarm on a W. larch tree

Some swarms are more difficult to catch, like the swarm above. In this case the swarm was on the stem of a larch tree, with lots of branches to contend with. Whitney caught this one while I was out of town. With more than a little patience she was able to hive it by gently lifting the swarm in her hands and setting it in the box.

In the most difficult settings, a customized vacuum can be used to suck the bees out of a tight space and get them into a box. We did this a few years ago  when we found a swarm in our ceiling. Check out: Blog Post: A bee adventure

That's all for now, thanks for stopping by.

KJ

 

one weekend, two swarms

This weekend, two of our hives swarmed. I walked out of the house on saturday morning and instantly heard them. Walking over by the hives there were bees everywere. Hives swarm for several reasons, but it usually comes down to either the bees are healthy and reproducing, or they are leaving to find a new location. The good news for us is that these swarms belong to the first group. I know that because while the swarms were forming, the parent hive continued on with business.  In the picture below, you can see the two swarms: one in front of me and one on the far left (below the farthest hive). Beekeepers try to reduce swarming because it means a loss of population and a reduction in potential pollination and honey. But on the other hand, if your hives are healthy enough to swarm, then you are doing something right and the bees are doing what they naturally want to do: Reproduce! So I take it as a good sign. In the book Natual Beekeeping, the author Ross Conrad refers to swarming as "the miracle of life" since it really is bee reproduction.  

 So, now what to do about this rampant reproduction. My first idea was to simply place hive boxes near the swarms and allow them to hive themselves. This is a technique that some swear by, so I thought I'd give it a try. But after leaving them there for several hours, the bees had yet to move into the boxes so I decided to catch them manually.

Here is a good look at one of the swarms. The bees leave the colony and ball around the queen. While they are in the ball, scouts are out searching for a new home. The scouts could return at any time and communicate to the swarm it was time to leave, so I decided to hive them before they had a chance to leave. I have read that bees will remain balled for as little as fifteen minutes, and these had already been here for several hours.

When you are hiving a swarm, you physically take the swarm and place them into the hive. The sensation of picking up the bees is pretty amazing, they feel like a warm spongy mass of about a couple of pounds. The most important thing is to make sure you get the queen. Here (above) on my finger tips you can see the queen of one of the swarms. Once the queen is secure in the new hive, all the workers follow her right in, guided by her pheromones.

Here is a swarm placed into the new hive. This is the deep box that I had prepared in case I got a chance to catch a swarm this summer. The other swarm got placed into a super ( or medium box) because I don't have any other deep boxes on hand. This will work just fine, but will require more equipment because I'll have to give them two supers to equal one deep box.

So here we are this evening. I successfully captured both swarms, upping our count to five colonies! I'm glad that I didn't lose any of my bees, but I need to get better at anticipating and preventing swarming. In the mean time I need to get to work building frames so that all these bees have somewhere to store their honey! More on that later.

KJ 

Bringing Home the Bees

After losing our smaller hive in February, we decided to go ahead and order some bees. They were sold out, but I got on the waiting list and we got a call last week saying there would be bees available.  Saturday I drove over to Washington and picked up our new girls.  The nucs come in cardboard boxes with a brand new queen, five frames of brood, and many, many worker bees.

The drive went well, aside from the dozen or so girls that got loose and buzzed around inside the car while I drove home.

Our first introduction to the new girls, pretty exciting, and loud!

And here is one of our new queens! This little beauty is bred to lay 2000+ eggs a day and has been chosen for her superior traits and quality. She determines the genetics of the whole hive, so it's important that she is  the best queen she can be. The new queens come housed in a cage, with a bit of tape over the candy plug. When the bees are installed, the tape is pulled off exposing the candy and allowing the workers to release the queen. By that time the workers will have accepted the queen and will be ready to go to work.

This is what makes the nuc so special. There are five frames of brood like this ready to hatch and go to work right away. With a swarm or package of bees you have to wait for the queen to lay eggs, and for the brood to mature before you get any new bees. That time lag sets the nuc ahead by a month.

And here is an installed nuc! The five frames are full, and the queen is secure in her cage in between the frames. All that's left is to feed them a gallon of syrup each and then leave them alone for a week to release the queen and get to work. In a few weeks they will have filled the rest of these frames and will be ready for a second box to be added.

So here's our "bee yard" today. The original hive on the left, with the two new ones on the right. By the way, the original hive, the one that was vacuumed out of the eaves last summer, is still going strong and appears to be happy and healthy. The yard has a audible hum now and the bee activity is very noticeable. Just in time too, since today I noticed the dandelions are blooming! Ordinarily this may not have been that exciting but now I just imagine how happy the flowers will make my bees.

Our other big news: we were very lucky and have recently been given unwanted bee boxes and equipment from two different people. So the next adventure is cleaning and prepping hand-me-down boxes and frames so that we are ready for the nectar flow. Bring it on! 

Until next time. KJ

Thinking about Bees

I recently watched a movie that's had me thinking about bees all day.
The movie is Queen of the Sun and I recommend anybody interested in eating healthy or the health of the natural world watch it.
I've heard it said both in the movie and elsewhere that 40% of the food we eat depends directly on the honey bee for pollination. That sounds impresive but it's a little hard to picture until you consider the foods on your plate. Take for instance my breakfast today: 3 eggs scrambled, 2 pieces of Wheat Montana toast with plum jam, and 2 California mandarins. Now consider what would be missing without the honey bee. The mandarins are gone, as are the plums for the jam. So, now we're down to toast and eggs, but wait a minute. The eggs came from our hens which are fed a mix of layer crumble and cracked corn. The first two ingredients of the crumble are corn and soybeans both of which require pollination. Better cancel the eggs. So what am I left with? Dry toast. Since grains do not require pollination from insects, they are one of the only foods that would be available without honey bees. Pretty sad looking breakfast, not to mention diet.
But wait. What makes the Honey Bee so special? I've read there are 4000+ varieties of native bees on this continent. Here's the deal. Agriculture today is done on a huge scale. In order to feed the millions, farmers must get the most from the land in the most efficient manner possible. So to accomplish this, they plant one crop at a time, in fields that may be hundreds or thousands of acres. That way when it's time to harvest, it's all ready at the same time, streamlining the process to save time and money. Now consider this: in order to develop fruit, each and every bloom on that crop plant must be visited by a pollinator. But can't the local bugs take care of it? Not when you have hundreds or thousands of acres of one crop that all mature at the same time. There is no way for the native pollinators to survive when that one plant is not in bloom. So we bring in the honey bees to get the job done. The greatest example of this in the entire world is occurring right now in central California. Every year in mid-February an estimated 750,000 acres of almonds bloom for three weeks. An estimated 1.5 million honey bee colonies from this country (roughly 3/4 of the bees in the US) and bees from other places are trucked in to pollinate the almond crop. This is bee keeping on a mass scale. These migratory beekeepers log over 100,000 miles a year pollinating crops, following the blooming season. From California to Washington, from Florida to Maine and all places in between migratory beekeepers make modern agriculture possible.
So is there a problem with all this mass pollination? The problem is this: bees are social critters that interact with each other for survival. When bees from across the country and places beyond, all come together in one place like the Central Valley of California to pollinate the almond crop, they bring with them every little virus and parasite that occurs in their local environment. The problem gets worse when there are not enough bees in the US, so beekeepers import bee hives from other countries. Now you've got bees from Australia mingling with bees from North Dakota. Can you say Colony Collapse Disorder? (CCD). US honey bees today are hounded by a rash of diseases and parasites that were unheard of just 10 - 15 years ago because of this shift towards mass pollination. It is this mix of threats that make up what is known as CCD.
I read once that beekeeping is simply the act of keeping bees. And that may have been true years ago, but today that's not enough. Today beekeeping is much more about keeping bees healthy and and alive. But the amazing part is, it is actually the bees that are keeping us alive.
Thanks for reading. KJ