Beltane Bees

A couple of days after getting the bees in the hive the weather turned kind of cold and rainy. I was seeing some activity, but not a lot. Looking in through the hive window I still just saw a big cluster of bees. It looked like they had eaten some of the hive candy, but not all of it. The folks at Beeweaver said I really should be feeding them syrup, so I made some plain sugar syrup and put it in a baggie feeder in the hive. A baggie feeder is just a zip-lock baggie full of syrup with some slits cut in it so the bees can get to it.

Just as I opened the hive up to put the baggie in a storm came out of nowhere with high winds, lightning and rain. So I just dropped the bag in and put everything back together as quickly as possible. Turns out that I kind of squashed the bag with the divider board and syrup went everywhere. Some was dripping out of the hive, and a lot ended up running all over the bottom of the hive. A few bees drowned in the mess, but mostly they seemed to go for it and I could see them busily feeding on the stuff.

After a few days warmer weather returned and a replaced the no empty baggie with a new one, this time doing a better of placing it and it didn’t run all over the place. While the hive was active, I still couldn’t see if they were building comb. I assumed they were under the mass of bees, but I could not yet see any.

So after a week I decided it was time to see what was going on. I threw together a quick stand to hold the bars as I pulled them out of the hive and opened the hive to see what I had.

Turns out things were progressing well. Under the thick mass of bees were 5 bars worth of comb. The waxed dowels had worked perfectly and the comb was all on the bars as I had hoped. I wasn’t able to locate the queen, and I did not want to disturb them for long, so I put all the bars back and gave them a couple of extra to work with as well.

Putting the bars back was an experience because the bees were crawling everywhere and I had a heck of a time getting the bars back in without squishing them. As it was I still crushed a few, but not many.

I waited another 4 or 5 days and decided to open it up again to check for the queen and add some more food. The bees were really active and coming back laden with pollen. I opened it up and quickly found the queen. When I ordered the package I requested a marked queen to make it easier for me to locate her. She is of course the largest bee, but that doesn’t always make her easier to find in a mass of others. The big yellow dot on her back stands out quite nicely though. I did see some eggs and capped cells this time, though not as many as I had hoped. I went ahead and added some more feed, this time a very thick syrup laced with pollen and pollen substitute sitting in silicon baking cups. I also added a couple of more bars for them. I will probably leave them alone for a couple of weeks now. I don’t think there is a need to feed them much more, but I will keep an eye on how much they eat. I’m a little afraid that continued disturbances may cause them to abscond, so I want to leave them to their work for a bit.

Once I had the hive all closed up again I backed off and gave them a little time to adjust to their surroundings. When I went back to check on things a couple of hours later I found it a flurry of activity. Bees were flying around the hive like crazy. Many were still carrying dead bees from the hive, while many others were visiting the nearby flowers. I had planted a couple of blooming heathers near the hive and the bees seem to have taken to them quite well. I also found a bumblebee foraging on the heather, first one I’ve seen this year.

The timing for the arrival of the bees was perfect because I have a number of cherry plum bushes near the hive that just flowered that morning. They were covered with cherry blossom like flowers that put off a wonderful aroma, and the bees seemed to be very attracted to them.

Later that night after everything had settled down I opened up the observation window to see how they were doing. They had formed a cluster around the queen cage. I’m not sure if they had started to build any comb yet, all I could see was the ball of bees, but they looked content to stay in the hive.

With the hive finished all that was left was to wait for the bees to arrive.  There are many options for ordering bees.  You can get a Nuc, which is basically a small hive with a queen and her brood of worker bees, complete with frames of comb.  In many ways this is the best option because you get a cohesive hive that is used to working together and already have comb built.  The problem is, Nucs are designed to go into standard Langstroth hives, which are the more common type of hive used in commercial beekeeping.  To move the nuc into a top bar hive you have to cut the comb out of the frames it comes in, cut it to the right shape and size to fit in the top bar hive, and somehow attack it to the top bars.  And you have to do it all while bees are swarming over it.

The other option is to order what is called a “Package” of bees.  A package of bees is just that, a box with a bunch of bees and a queen in it.  It is a wooden box about the size of a shoebox with screened sides.  There is a can of syrup for feed, and cage to keep the queen separate.  A typical package contains around 10,000 bees.  The problem with this is that the bees are not necessarily from the same hive, and the queen is not the queen of the hive.  There is also no comb so the bees have to build everything from scratch.  Fortunately, bees are pretty adaptable, and their instinct is to make sure they have a queen.  So during the time the package ships, the bees bond with the queen and form a hive.

I ordered a package of bees from Beeweaver out of Texas.  I chose them for a couple of reasons.  While you can actually have bees shipped via the mail or UPS , they offer the option of having them trucked to pickup locations around the country.  One of the pickup points was Spring Hill, KS which was only 30-40 miles away.  They also have been breeding them for mite resistance which hopefully means that I won’t have to treat them for infestation.

I got a call from the pickup point early in the morning and went to pickup the bees.   I strapped the package into the passenger seat of my car with the seatbelt and drove them home.  I have seen several videos of beekeepers working without any protective gear and had planned on doing the same.  However, in a rare moment of lucidity I decided that opening a box of 10,000 stinging insects probably wasn’t a good idea and went ahead and put on a hood and some gloves.  Turns out this was a good idea.

The process of “installing the package” in the hive is fairly simple.  You pry the feeder can out of the box.  Then you remove the staple which holds the strap that the queen cage hangs from.   You lift out the queen cage, which will be covered with bees trying to cluster around her.   Then you brush the bees off the cage.  The cage is small box with a screened side so the bees can still feed the queen.  One end of the cage has a plug made from hard sugar candy and a cork in it.  You remove the cork by screwing a wood screw into it and pulling it out.  Then you hang the cage from one of the top bars.  The bees will eat the hard candy in a couple of days and release the queen from the cage.  With the queen hanging in the hive you then take to box of bees, turn it over, and simply shake the bees into the box.

It isn’t particularly difficult to do any of this.  However, when you’ve never done it before, it can be pretty intimidating.  From the moment you pull the syrup can out of the box, bees begin buzzing all around you.  They also don’t want to be separated from the queen and resist efforts to dislodge them from the cage.  For a long time beekeepers have been using smoke to “calm” the bees.  The natural beekeepers that I’m basing my practices on though don’t like using smoke and instead spray the bees with sugar water.  I did spray them with the sugar water several times which had some effect.   Even so, bees were aggressively buzzing about me and bouncing off my hood during the whole process.  There were still quite a few bees in the package that simply didn’t seem to want to let go, so  I placed the package on the ground in front of the hive entrance and got the hive closed up.  Within a few minutes bees were going in and out of the hive.  Several would stand in the entrance and fan their wings which is to send the smell of the hive and the queen out to attract the bees.  The remaining bees in the package all went into the hive over the next hour or so.  I also noted them carrying dead bees out of the hive which I took to be a good sign.  Quite a number of bees die in transit, so when I dumped the bees in a bunch of dead bees  ended up in the bottom of the hive.  Bees regularly clean dead bees out of the hive, so hopefully this meant they were accepting the hive as their new home.

During the process one bee did manage to get inside my hood, but fortunately did not sting.  When I got back inside and removed the gear I did find several stingers embedded in my gloves and a few in my shirt.  So I’m glad I chose to wear the gear.   Hopefully once I get a little more experienced and comfortable with what I’m doing I won’t need it, but for the moment I hope to avoid unnecessary stings.

The first thing I needed to do was build a hive.  There were several hives available for purchase online, but they all seem to run from $300 – $450, which seemed pretty steep considering that one of the advantages of top bar hive beekeeping was suppose to be that it was considerably less expensive than more contemporary hives.  So, I downloaded some plans from Phil Chandler’sNatural Beekeeping Site, biobees.com

I’m not much of a carpenter and have only limited space and tools to work with, but the Kenyan top bar hive is fairly simple to make with only basic tools.  I decided to make it 48″ long allowing lots of room for a colony to expand, or to house 2 hives if necessary. I also decided to add an observation window to the side since I wanted the ability to monitor what was going on inside the hive without having to open it all the time.

I had hoped to use cedar for the hive, but ultimately went with pine to keep the cost down a bit.  I have a lot of old plywood around which I could have used, which would have cut the cost down to a fraction of what I spent, but for the cold winters here I wanted something a little heavier, and I didn’t feel that the plywood would last long in the weather.

I assembled the hive body easily enough.  As I’ve said, I’m not a great carpenter, but it seemed to come out ok.  I then made top bars out of some 1 1/2″ x 3/4″ board cut to 19″ lengths.  I nailed a piece of square dowel to these and coated the dowel beeswax to act as a comb guide.  Only time will tell if it worked.

There were no instructions for building the roof and I got a little carried away.  I made it with large overhangs on both ends and shingled it with roofing shingles.  It turned out to be way too big and heavy to handle, so I had to cut it down a bit to make it manageable.  I also made the legs too thin initially and had to replace them with 2x4s which were a bit more sturdy but I didn’t get them cut to fit the roof quite right.  Ultimately, I doubt the bees will care too much about my lack of carpentry skills.

Once the hive was completed I treated the outside with a mixture of boiled linseed oil and melted beeswax.  I also splashed some lemongrass essential oil around the inside because several people recommended doing so as bees supposedly like the aroma of lemongrass.