The Harry Potter Hive

I'm out of town, so Ruth had to pick up the latest swarm and take pictures for me.  This particular swarm was in a bait hive on her brother's land.  She got it well after dark on Sunday night, so nearly all of the foragers had made it in.

Her brother and his daughter, Keira, went out to the bait hive to help, her brother by shining the headlights from his car  while she worked, and then by going to get a blade to separate the hive from the cleat from which it was hanging (paint on paint, they kinda got stuck).  Keira watched in fascination while Ruth screwed the screen cap over the opening, then carefully lifted the hive down from its cleat.  Ruth replaced it with another hive box, so we may capture more swarms still.


Ruth covered the hive with a plastic bag, lest any bees escape, and drove home with the covered hive in the front seat of her car.  She placed the hive out in the apiary, removed the plastic cover, and called it a night.

I should explain at this point that earlier in the winter, Emma, who is Ruth's granddaughter, and Keira, who is Ruth's niece, painted a set of hive bodies for us. These bodies, which will form a single, complete hive, will go in Emma's yard eventually.  While they were at it, Keira painted another hive box to look like Harry Potter.  We had been keeping this box for an appropriate occasion, and this seemed like the one.

Early the next morning Ruth transferred the bees from the bait hive to the Harry Potter hive.  Here, we see the swarm box when she first opened it.

If you look closely, you can see all the bees down between the frames, as well as the ones crawling around on the top.  This was a large swarm, probably four or five pounds worth of bees, and they filled the box.  This is the kind of swarm we really like to catch.  With these numbers, they will fill a hive quickly, and are strong enough to defend their hive well.

This picture shows the hive as Ruth puts the frames from the bait hive into it.  Again, you can see the frames covered with bees.  In the frame at  the top you can see some freshly drawn comb, another sign that we've got a good swarm getting down to business.

Once she had all the frames from the bait hive transferred to the permanent hive, she pushed them all together in the middle and added empty frames to the outside until the box was full.  These empty frames give the hive room to make more comb, to be filled with brood (eggs) and honey.  A swarm this big should make short work of this box and need another one added on top before very long.

This is what it looked like at the end.  The hive has been filled, covered, and strapped shut to keep the lid from coming off.  The cover and box from the bait hive are left nearby so the bees which didn't yet make it into the permanent hive can still find it easily and join all their sisters.  By nightfall, all the bees should be reunited, back at work building and growing the colony.

The really neat thing?  Keira knows that "her" bees from her land are now in the hive she painted.

Pretty cool, huh?

This Makes Me Happy

Nothing extraordinary, just a shot of our apiary.  The hive on the left is from last season and has had some issues, but seems to be doing all right now.  The two on the right are also from last season, and, as you can see, they are booming.

The remaining three, in the middle, are swarms we brought in a couple of weeks ago.  Ruth just did an inspection and reports that they are coming along nicely.  We also have another hive with its own story.  I'll pass that along when I have a picture to go with it.

In the meantime, these hives bring us closer to one of our goals in beekeeping - having enough beeswax harvested from our own hives to use in all of our beeswax-based products.  It's a fun journey.

Swarms

Honey bees make new colonies by swarming.  About half of the worker bees and the old queen fly out of the hive to find a new place to live, leaving the remaining workers to raise a new queen.  The departing bees are a swarm, and they land somewhere, typically a tree branch or some other resting place, and form a clump or ball, where they will will stay for as little as fifteen minutes, or as long as three days.  While they are in this clump, scout bees go out looking for a new place to live, some suitable hollow or cavity where the swarm can take up residence and build a new colony.  Before they leave the old colony, the bees put the old queen on a diet to slim her down so she can fly, while the worker bees gorge themselves on honey to be ready in their new home.

Once they have found a new home, the workers set to work immediately, using the honey they have stored in themselves to produce wax and make new comb.  Once they have sections of comb built, the queen can begin laying eggs and the colony's numbers can grow.

Beekeepers love swarms (at least, the ones from hives not their own) as they represent a way to get new bees in their apiary.  We acquire these swarms in two ways.  When the swarm has just left the parent hive and is still out in the open in a clump, the beekeeper can capture this swarm by shaking or brushing it into a prepared hive.  The bees will, we hope, look around at this enclosure and decide that it is the home they've been looking for.  We can then close up the hive and bring them home.

The other way is with a bait hive, also called a swarm trap.  This is a box designed to appeal to a house-hunting swarm.  The ones I use are forty liters in capacity, just the size that swarms like.  I've rubbed the insides with beeswax and propolis, a sort of all purpose glue and binder which the bees make.  I've also used slum-gum, the residue left over from refining beeswax, a black tarry goo full of bee scent and pheromones.  And to top it off, I add a  couple of drops of lemongrass oil which mimic the queen's pheromones.  All these things make the bait hive smell like "home," and should entice the swarm to move in.  Once they do, I wait until dark, close up the box, and bring the bees home to join the others in our apiary.

Neither method is better than the other.  The swarm trap requires planning, building, labor to put the boxes up and down, and luck in placing them where the bees want to be.  Once they have moved in, you can deal with them on your own timetable.  On the other hand, open swarms usually just need a hive to catch them in, but you are subject to their whim, as you never know when or where a swarm will appear, so you have to be ready to grab your equipment and go as soon as you get a call.  But catching these swarms is a lot of fun, and can be addictive.

Swarms can come from some other beekeepers hives, or they can come from feral hives.  We like feral colonies, as they have not been managed and treated, yet still have survived out in the wild, and so have demonstrated good genetics.  There's no good way of knowing which is which when you spot a swarm, so we just take them all in and let them grow.  This raises the question of when does a swarm in the wild which originated from a managed hive become a feral colony, but that is a question for another day.

Reds, Whites, & Blues Festival

We're off the Blue Sky Vineyards this weekend for their Reds, Whites, & Blues Festival. Three different groups will be playing, and we will be there with new soaps and wine racks. Whether you are celebrating graduation, the end of the semester, or just the end of the week, come on out for a good time in the sun.

Red, White, & Blues Festival

Saturday, May 12, 10:00am - 8:00pm