First Bee Sting And "Fern" Update (Cute Video Alert!)

Its ironic.  Two days ago I worked in a cloud of bees as I transferred nucs to their new hives.  Not one single bee sting.  This morning, I'm pulling weeds in the high tunnel and I can hear the bee coming towards me.  I can tell by the high pitched, angry whine of it's flight that it is on a suicide mission.  The bee laps me once and starts zinging around closely to pick it's stinging spot.  Silly me, I start to run!  I know I can't outrun a bee.  But I had hope.  The bee chose my head to sting and I could hear it in my hair and I could feel it burrowing down to my scalp so I started hitting at my own head in attempt to kill it before it get to me.  No luck.  The bee made it to my scalp and stung me in the back of the head before I could hit it.  I'm writing with a burning goose egg on the back of my head and welts from hives  (I'm mildly allergic) here and there on my body.

The husband moved hives to our Odin location today and a few bees must have been left behind and they are up-set.  I think I'll work inside and around the front of the house until later on today!    

Fern, the single piglet is doing well.  Here is a video of the little cutey.  I dare you not to say "awww" as you watch it.   

Aren't the wattles on her neck interesting?  They come from the kune kune part of her heritage.  She'll grow into them like her mother. 

We Split The Bees

We split one of our beehives yesterday.  This means we took some of the frames that had eggs and larvae  - and covered with nurse bees -from one hive and put them into another hive body in hopes that they would start a new colony.  We didn't buy a new queen... we're hoping they'll make a queen out of the eggs that were in the hive.  We're experimenting.  The hive we took from is crazy strong after the mild winter we've had.  Now we're crossing my fingers that the new hives "take."  

Good news!  One sting and no allergic reaction.  Maybe the reaction I had last fall was due to a super venom-ized bee?    

An Important Part of My Beekeeping Toolkit

I went to the doctor the other day and got an important part of my beekeeping toolkit.  

An EpiPen for severe allergic reactions.  

I've been stung a lot of times, but the last time I was stung I broke out in hives all over and since then I've been fearful while working the bees.  I hope I'll never have such a bad reaction that I need to use this, but it sure does give me peace of mind to know I have it.  

The Bees Are Poohing

We have had some nice warm weather the last couple of days and the bees from our beehives have been taking advantage of it.  They were flying around the hive and poohing all over the place.   It looks like little smears of mustard all over.  Did you know that bees do not pooh in their hive?  They "hold it" all winter long until the weather is warm enough to go out and relieve themselves.  

We're happy to see so many bees out flying around!  

This is not my picture, but this is what bee pooh looks like in the snow. 

Bees Can Be Pretty Dumb!

A couple of weeks ago, we had a swarm come out of our hive over at Jennigans Auto Body.  I went and got it, boxed it up, and brought it home.  

While I was getting these bees moved and situated in their new home I got stung (right through my suit!) and had a pretty bad reaction - hives (yes, I get the irony!) from head to toe.  This has never happened before, so I'm going to have to be more careful working with the bees - no more working on my own!   

I put these bees in a beautiful hive with a nice drawn out comb of honey to entice them to get to work.  Later I came out and where where they?  Hanging in a clump from the top of our second high tunnel! 

Yup, bees can be pretty dumb.

I"ll admit, I was afraid to mess with them on my own and had to wait for Fitz to come home in a few days.  Sadly, by then, they had moved on.

All the honey a bee gathers during its lifetime doesn't sweeten its sting”

~ Italian Proverb 

Be sure to see my previous post for the challenge I've put out!

Why There Are Three

No, the bears didn't get the fourth hive up behind Jennigans Auto Body!  

We moved it to our house for pollination of our own gardens.  The gentleman who was going to sell us the Russian bees that we planned to set up for our gardens lost his hives due to contaminated pollen patties and we weren't able to find any others suppliers that we liked as well.

Mystery Creature

My neighbor and I were talking yesterday when all of the sudden my miniature schnauzer, Candy Cane, started going crazy after something under the porch.  We have a big roll of snow fence stored under there and whatever it was had climbed into the open section in the middle of the roll.  Candy Cane pulled out the center part with her teeth forming a sort of cone shape and, I think, squeezing down on and trapping the creature inside the tube.  We could hear it making "chuck chucking" noises every time we got close, but my neighbor and I couldn't imagine what it could be.  My biggest worry was that it would be a skunk or a small porcupine and the dogs would get sprayed or stuck!

I waited most of the day for the animal to leave, but I think it was crushed in there like in a Chinese finger trap.  I feared that if I left it, and it died I would have a nasty smell coming from under the porch.  So the kids and I unrolled the entire roll of snow fence - about 300 feet! - and as we reached the end a very relieved (and dizzy) squirrel shot off into the woods.

                                           



I hope the bear that attacked my beehives has learned its lesson.  The hive was intact yesterday.  I was concerned that he would come back again during the night.  We've been having a lot of rain, so I hope that if he did come to get the hive, his wet paws acted as a good conductor and he got a nice big zap off the electric fence.  Hopefully, that will deter him!

P.S.  Be sure to check out the new Language Translator in my sidebar!

Dandelion Season! And Beehive Maintenance - With Some Bear Trouble.

What is there to not like about dandelion season?  We just get past the cold, dismal, tones of grey, white, and black winter and suddenly, with the greening of the grass we have all these fuzzy, golden, lollipop-sized faces popping up out of the grass to help us greet the sun!  How can one not help but smile?

Sadly, in a week or so, these beautiful little faces turn into not so pretty grey puffs which are the enemy!  (Kids love them though.  How many kids can pass up a perfectly formed dandelion puff?)  Many folks do all we can to get them out of our lawns.  I've accepted them as a wonderful early season food for my honeybees and just don't worry about them anymore.  Just last spring, one of my maple sap collecting friends pointed out how entirely ironic it is how we absolutely love dandelions when we first see the cheery color in the spring, and as the summer wears on we do all we can do to get rid of them.  Funny, isn't it? 

“If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn.”

                                     

                                           ~Andrew V. Mason

I had some beehive maintenance today.  As I drove home from substitute teaching at the high school I looked up the hill and saw that one of my hives was tilting at a  dangerous angle.  I rushed home, put on my outside work clothes and went back.  I didn't bring the smoker or any equipment (other than my bee suit) because I thought it would be a quick job of tilting up the hive and putting a few boards underneath it.  I thought one of the blocks the hives set on had settled.  I was very wrong.  The hive had slid on it's bottom board and as I attempted to move it into place the bees came boiling up out of it (thankfully I had suited up!) and they had only one goal in life.  To sting the crap out of me!  So I worked around and got a temporary fix with some boards tucked under the blocks and hive until tomorrow when I'll go back to do a full hive inspection and fix it right.  One of the little buggers stung me on the bicep - right through my suit!   

                                                                   

As I walked back to my van, Rocky, the property owner, came out and told me that the hive had NOT fallen over on its own, but that a bear had climbed the fence and pulled the hive over.  We knew this, because there was a great big hunk of black bear fur stuck in the barbed wire that tops the outer fence!  I don't know what stopped the bear, but it didn't destroy the hive.  We hadn't hooked up the electric fence that we have set up around the hives yet because we were having trouble finding a clamp for the ground wire.  Rocky gave me a hose clamp and with a lot of messing around and rigging up (all with about 50 bees doing their best to sting me in the face through my veil) I managed to get the fence going.  I touched it and it gave me a nice jolt - a three mile solar fencer on about 50 feet of wire has quite a bit of juice!  Now, I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that bear doesn't come back tonight - or if it does, that it gets such a shock that it decides to stay away forever!  

Good News About the Bees

Last week, I was able to check the bees and they are thriving beautifully.  I found queens in all of the hives and I found lots of eggs and forming brood.  I even have some capped brood!

The rain we've been having has made everything so muddy that I wasn't able to take photos while I worked.  I feared I couldn't lift up frames without sliding and falling or dropping them in the mud.  So, this picture is from last year's hive, which sadly didn't make it through the winter.  We had terribly cold weather this winter and the poor bees got so cold they couldn't move to their uneaten honey supplies.  They literally starve to death.

If you look into the middle of this frame, you'll see little gold things that look like Kix cereal all laid together.  That's capped brood and under each one of those caps is a forming baby bee.  The young bees will chew their way out when they are fully formed.   There is not much that is quite SO freaky as to see these little alien-like creatures coming up from their cells.

On a sad note, we heard from the beekeeper from whom we were purchasing our Russian bees.  He was almost in tears as he told me he had put feed patties on his hives and something in them was causing the brood to not emerge.  He would lose many of his hives and had to call all the people who had planned to purchase from him to tell them the bad news.  We're looking around and hoping to purchase some bees from for our back gardens.    

While honey lies in every flower, it takes a bee to get the honey out.


Don't Forget to Go to the Homestead Barn Hop today!

Digging Ditches

Yesterday evening, I said to a friend, "I feel like I've been digging ditches, oh wait, I have!"  And while I haven't exactly digging ditches, I've been preparing the high tunnel, finally, for planting.

While I've been waiting for the temperature to stabilize enough for my delicate tomatoes, peppers, melons, and eggplants; the weeds have been growing lush and tall.  There's been so much moisture (ie. rain!) that the ground under the high tunnel must be wet enough for great weed growth.  So I'm pulling  and digging up all the weeds I can and putting down four feet wide lengths of black plastic as part of my back saving weed control plan.  In a few years,  as I get the weeds eradicated from the high tunnels (ha ha), I plan to use more natural mulches, such as chopped leaves.

The chickens are happily (I imagine) laying lots of eggs.  I brought in 19 eggs yesterday. Free range eggs are very different from store-bought eggs.  The egg yolks are a richer yellow, the white stands up nicely, and the shells are much thicker.

Speaking of eggs, I hope to check the bees today and look for bee eggs.  If the queen is doing her job I should see what looks like a tiny grain of rice stuck into the bottom of each cell.  

Note:  I won't be checking bees today.  The forecast is 45-degrees and rainy.  Tomorrow's forecast is 65-degrees and sunny.  I don't want to chill the brood (forming bees).  I'll wait until tomorrow to check them.    

Back to gardening, I don't know who said this, but I love this quote:

How do you tell if a plant is a weed or a valuable plant?  

If it pulls easily out of the ground it's a valuable plant.

Bee Success(ful)!

Today the weather warmed up enough that I could check on my bees and see if the queens got out of their little boxes.  I didn't get pictures because although the weather was "warm" - meaning slightly above 60-degrees, it was windy and threatening rain.  I wanted to get in and out of the hives as quickly as possible.

Success!

Six out of six hives have released their queens.  They are building tons of comb.  They all got to get outside and poop.  You can see the streaks on the sides of the hive.  Did you know that bees will not pooh in the hive?  They'll hold it for months during the winter while they wait for a day above 40 degrees so that they can go out.

I sat right up next to where the bees were buzzing in and out (we have their usual hive entrance reduced to about an inch wide) and watched them work for a few minutes to see if they were finding anything to eat.  They were bringing in loads and loads of pollen on their back leg pollen baskets!

Thank you to everyone who has planted flowers in town.  I hope you get to see lots of the bee ladies visiting your gardens and pollinating your vegetables!

In Maple News:  The holes on our maple trees have closed up and we have stopped getting sap.  This next week I'll be pulling all the taps out of the trees and flushing the lines.  This will help cut down on the amount of gunk in the lines next season.  I'm already looking forward to next year when we'll be boiling our own sap!

Bees' Happy Home

After spending a toasty evening in my dining room (see my previous post), we anxiously waited for the temperatures to warm up above 40-degrees and at about 9: 30 a.m. we loaded up the bees in the car's trunk and took them to their new home above Jennigan's Auto Repair.  

 We had placed the boxes the previous weekend and so we carried up the bees and supplies.  (Be sure to enlarge the picture and see how pretty the hives are decorated!)  The decoration not only makes the hives pretty, they help the bees tell which hive is their own after a hard day of visiting flowers.

Fitz gets the smoker loaded up and ready to go, because smoked bees are more docile, happier bees!  

We open the boxes.  The queen is in her own little box with a few attendants to feed and care for her.  The white stuff on the left side of the box is a candy plug that the hive's bees will chew through to get out their queen.  This way she is slowly introduced to the hive and her pheromones have filled the hive before she comes out.  The hive better accepts her with this process.  We hang the queen box in the top of the bee hive...    

... then dump the thousands of bees out on top of her.  The silver can you see at the corner of the hive is the sugar water that had been in the box to nourish them throughout their long trip up from Georgia. 

 After we dump out all the bees, we squirt some smoke over them to make them go down into the hive.  Then we put a feeder with some sugar water and Honey-B-Healthy essential oils on top of the hive and close it all up.

Now we wait while they get accustomed to their new home!

“Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about.”

                   ~From The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

48,000 Italian Honeybees

This is what 48,000 Italian honeybees look like.

The six two-pound packages spent the night in my dining room after a long trip up from Maryland yesterday and all the way from Georgia the day before!  We had low temperatures last night and they couldn't stay outside.  So they came into the warm house and had a little misting of water on the outside of the box for a cool drink.  

When the bees came, most of them are inside the boxes and can't get out.  However about 20 honeybees were hanging off the outside of the boxes and came into the house with the rest.  Now, with the sun coming up, the little buggers are getting active and I can hear them buzzing around the room as I type.  They're pretty much heading for the windows and looking for a way out so I'm not too concerned about getting stung.  Italian honeybees tend to be pretty docile and usually won't sting you unless they're provoked.  

Later today, when the temperatures get above 40-degrees, we are installing 4 boxes of the bees on the hill above downtown Coudersport.  Take a look up on the hill the next time you're driving past Jennigans Auto Body and you'll see four of our hives.  Rocky, the owner, has a lovely little fenced-in orchard up there.  We've added a secondary solar power electric fence around the hives to help keep the bears away.  The other two boxes of honeybees will go to the blueberry patch along Route 44.  We will be putting experimental Russian bees in our own backyard.  The Russians are more temperamental and we don't want them around lots of people.  

Once these Italian honeybees get working, they'll be pollinating all of downtown.  So if you see a honey bee, don't hurt it!  It might be one of mine.

The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others.
                                                                                                                 ~Saint John Chrysotom

Save the Bees!

I usually keep my blog pretty nice and touchy-feely.  But, as a beekeeper myself - and dealing with all the issues that bees are facing - I felt that that this was an important issue to put out. We're starting ten hives this spring - you'll get lots of pictures and information - and I sure would like to increase their numbers! ~I apologize that this post didn't fit within the post's borders.  I cut and pasted it and don't want to spend a couple of hours making it fit   :  )

Dear Sharon, As a lifelong beekeeper, I'm worried. Nearly a third of all honeybee colonies in North America are dying every year.'Colony Collapse Disorder’ is a major contributor to these deaths, and while there is still no scientific consensus as to the cause, keeping pollinators healthy is crucial not just for our Co-op but also for the health of our environment and the future of our food. Honeybees pollinate many of the foods we eat - from apples to chestnuts to raspberries and squash. That's why I'm asking you today to join Slow Food USA's campaign to save the bees, and our food chain: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833 A growing body of scientific evidence points to a certain class of agricultural pesticides (neonicotinoids) as one of the key culprits of CCD. Even the Environmental Protection Agency’s own scientists have spoken out against it. But the EPA isn’t doing enough to prevent more devastating honeybee die-offs in the years to come. Would you join me in asking the EPA to act quickly to save the bees? http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833 Let’s keep the pressure on ourselves and on those whose job it is to keep our food and fields healthy, until the origins of this environmental catastrophe are understood and eliminated. Please join me in signing Slow Food USA's petition to the EPA, before it's too late to save the bees. You can see their original email below. I manage a self-sufficient beekeeping cooperative in the city of Chicago that produces more than just honey. Our Co-op also provides healthy food and job training experiences for our neighbors in the community where we are located. Our hives are on an abandoned industrial property in a neighborhood that has seen better days. We also take care of bees on rooftops in downtown Chicago. For the past several years, we have been losing nearly 50% of our hives each winter. This is an alarming trend I haven’t experienced in a lifetime of keeping bees. The worst thing is, we can’t even identify the cause. That's why we need the EPA to work quickly to identify the cause of CCD. Will you join me in signing the petition to save the bees? http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833 Thanks for taking action, Michael S. Thompson Chicago Honey Co-Op www.chicagohoneycoop.com -------- Original email from Slow Food USA ------------- Dear Sharon, Spring's going to be a lot quieter this year. Something is killing off almost 40% of North American honeybees each year, and it's threatening our entire food chain. Mounting scientific evidence suggestsagricultural pesticides are one a primary culprit. The Environmental Protection Agency has the power to investigate and ban the pesticides thought to be responsible but, despite their own scientists' advice and under pressure from pesticides companies,they're dragging their feet. Much of the plant-life we depend on for food exists thanks to honeybees. Now the bees are depending on us to return the favor. Click here to sign our petition calling on the EPA to solve the mystery that's killing our buzz: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833 Bees don't just make honey: from apples to lemons, much of the food we eat may disappear with the bees. Even milk and beef production could be threatened: guess what makes the plants that feed the cows? Our friend the honeybee. What's more, bees add $15 billion to the annual US economy, and their loss will have a devastating impact on food production and food prices. But the EPA is under pressure to do nothing about it from pesticide companies and the pesticide 'scientists' those companies bankroll. The EPA has already acknowledged it should look into the causes of "Colony Collapse Disorder". We need to counter the pesticide lobby's pressure and hold the EPA to that commitment, by sending them a message they can't ignore: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833 Everyone stands to lose with the threat to our food chain known as CCD. That's why everyone needs to stand together to counter the pressure the EPA is under not to do its job: protect the things we rely on to survive. Many Slow Food chapters are also hosting screenings of a new CCD documentary, Vanishing of the Bees. It's a great way to get together in your community and learn more about what you can do to help solve this problem. Time and again Slow Food members get together to celebrate the importance of food. It's now the time to take action to protect that which binds us together, and stand up for the bees that make it all possible. Thanks for spreading the buzz, The Slow Food USA team PS - Can you help spread the buzz? For every 100 signatures we collect on our petition to protect the bees we depend on for our food, we'll send a bee-shaped postcard to the Director of the EPA’s Pesticide Programs. Imagine those on the wall the next time the pesticide lobby pops in!

Slow Food USA and the Slow Food USA Logo are registered trademarks of Slow Food USA. 20 Jay Street, Suite M04 Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel: 718 260-8000 or 877 SlowFoo(d) Fax: 718 260-8068info@slowfoodusa.org