Honey bee crisis could lead to higher food prices

Oh my.  Did you see THIS?   Eek. 

Click this icon for more information... (Thanks again, Mary, for making this graphic!)

Of Chicks, Bees & Pigs

Today was the last day of school!  Yay!  I have to work the month of June.  But STILL!  It'll be nice and quiet at school.

Life is so busy right now. Sunday, of course is Father's Day, Monday is my daughter's birthday, and Tuesday is my husband's surgery.  I'm already exhausted.  *Deep Breath*

I have no energy for a long post.  So instead?  Some pictures...

Look how big the chicks are! 

After just 10 days after we got them!  Remember?

And now, some sad news.  One of the hives is not doing well.  Look:

See all those things on the gravel?  Those are dead bodies.  Thousands of 'em.  Each one of those dark dots in the picture below is a bee body.  :( 

It's because of the cold snap we had.  This is one of new hives.  They didn't have any honey stored up yet.  And they were unprepared for the unseasonably cold weather.  We'll see if this hive can recover...The other two hives seem fine.

And finally?  I leave you with this funny picture of the pigs.  Awwww...the life of a chubby pig! Don't they look comfy?  And messy. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

WHY do the bees LIKE the hive boxes?

And what makes them stay?

We've been asked these questions a lot.  In fact Lynn asked them after reading my last post when I described us capturing the wild honey bee swarm.  Lynn says, "I always wonder what makes the bees "like" the hive box? What makes them WANT to stay there and call that box 'home'? What would be their preference to live in and build the comb and have babies and honey in - if they didn't get shown the box?"

Great questions!  I will try to answer as best as I can...

The hive boxes are made up of individual frames.  Each frame looks like this:

Beekeepers construct those wooden frames, and then buy that comb that's in the inside of each frame.  Here's a close-up of the combs that make up a frame:

See?  The comb is already 'started' for the bees when they're introduced. 

The bees feel right at "home" with these combs because the dimensions of each cell is exactly the dimensions that they would make their hives in the 'wild.'  Someone named Robert Kerr figured this out, and invented these hive boxes.  They're called Stewarton Hives (named after the town in Scotland where they were first used.)  Also, bees find the sweet smell of the comb foundation irresistible because it's made from beeswax!  After introducing the bees to the hive boxes, they quickly feel 'at home' and begin to draw out each frame sheet into 7000 beautiful uniform cells where they store food, raise brood and deposit honey!

So that's why bees like hive boxes, and why they stay.  It's exactly what they need and want in a home.  A lot of their work is already done and I suppose they find no reason to leave!

So, what would the swarmed bees do if they weren't shown the hive box?  They'd find a hollow tree or other suitable 'natural' spot to move into and get to work building comb.  Or, more likely, they'd die.  :( 

So there ya go!  Hope that answered  your question, Lynn!  

Swarm Captured!

What an exciting afternoon we had yesterday!

Across the street from the school where I work, there's a neighbor that periodically gets swarms of bees in his trees. (FYI: Bees swarm when they get too crowded in their hive. They sense the crowded conditions, and make another queen. This new queen takes half the hive, and swarm - usually on a branch of a tree - until another home can be found.)

Anyway, so when my husband learned that this neighbor gets swarms in his trees sometimes, he asked this guy to call him, so we could come over and rescue the swarm. That's what happened yesterday! This guy called Derek, and we rushed right over with our hive box. This is what we saw: (excuse my photo quality. All I had with me was my phone to take pictures.)

Isn't that cool?!

So the first step? Of course, Derek got in his bee suit.

And put the hive box under the swarm:

Then, he carefully snipped the branch the bees were hanging on:

And lowered it down into the hive:

Success!!

Is that amazing or what?! Then we just put the lid on, and took the box home!

The part that stunned me was how calm the bees were. When they are in that swarmed state, they are very docile. Their only job is to protect the queen (who is in the middle of the swarm.) They don't have any young or honey to protect so they are not aggressive AT ALL. It was incredible.

The other amazing part was how the swarm moved in a fluid state. It was like the whole swarm was one body. It was remarkable!

We won't really know if this was a successful transfer until we open the hive (in a day or two when they're settled in) and see the queen. If there's no queen? The colony will die out. Keep your fingers crossed. I'll keep you posted!

*UPDATE* We have a queen!!!

Colony Collapse Disorder?

Well, there's bad news on the bee front...  You may remember that we have three bee hives. Two brand new ones, and one established one that we inherited from Derek's Grandpa.  When we checked on the established hive this week, there was...nothing.  No bees at ALL.  It was like a ghost town.  This is very strange considering that the hive was flourishing just last week. 

The colony just up and left.  For no apparent reason!  It was healthy and thriving one week, and COMPLETELY GONE the next.  We were shocked!!

My husband called his 'bee buddies' - friends of his that have been in the beekeeping business for a long time.  They talked to him and took a look, and they've decided that these bees are a victim of Colony Collapse Disorder.  "Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is a poorly understood phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honey bee colony abruptly disappear."  The Burt's Bee's website sites, "The bee disappearance is so widespread that it is blamed for losses of up to 70% of the managed bee colonies in U.S. beekeeping operations."  "While the causes for Colony Collapse Disorder are unknown, we do know that forces like habitat destruction, misuse of pesticides, invasive species and global warming create risks to honeybees."

And the Burt's Bee's website goes on to say, "Did you know that every third bite of food we eat depends on bees for pollination? You might not have given much thought to the role honeybees play in our ecosystem. But fact is, 30% of the fruit- and vegetable-producing plants we rely on to feed our families need honeybee pollination to thrive. That’s why the mysterious disappearance of honeybees known as Colony Collapse Disorder is a critical environmental issue that must be understood and reversed for The Greater Good."

Wow.  This is a big deal.  We need to save our bees!  Because by saving bees, we're doing a lot more than JUST saving bees.

So what can we do?

1. Educate yourself!  Visit these sites for more information:
   Burt's Bees
   American Beekeeping Federation
   North American Pollinator Protection Campaign
2. Plant bee-friendly plants in your yard!  This will help attract native bee populations.  Get free seeds here.
3. Donate to help find a solution to Colony Collapse Disorder.  Penn State is conducting research in this field, as well as UC Davis.
4. Support local beekeepers!  No one is more affected by this crisis than local beekeepers.  Buy local honey and hive products.
5. Support local farmers.  "Because organic farms grow fruits and vegetables without pesticides, they are naturally bee-friendly places that actually need bees to grow their crops."  Learn more here.

I'll keep you posted about this sad turn of events.  My husband is actually at a class about Colony Collapse Disorder tonight.  I just hope we can hang onto our other two hives...

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." ~ Albert Einstein.

Ick!

Ok, I love bees. But... THIS! This gave me the CREEPS.

Checkin' on the Girls

Ok, so you remember a couple of weeks ago when the bees arrived? And we introduced them to their new home, our two new hives? Well, this past weekend, it was warm enough to open the hives and pay a visit to see how the girls were doing.

So of course, the first step is to don our bee suits. Here I am in mine!

We have three hives. One established one, and two new ones. We opened up the new ones first. Wow! They looked good. (Or at least from everything we've read, and from talking to longtime beekeepers, we think they looked good!)

See those frames of comb that my husband is looking at? Each frame contains about 7000 cells. The bees use these cells for storing food, making honey, and raising brood. Every time we inspect our colony, it's important that we note what's going on in these cells, because it helps us judge the performance and health of our bees. So we look for ample pollen and nectar, lots of eggs and brood, and if the wax cappings look normal.

Since this was the first time in the NEW hives, we took out the queen cage and made sure the queen had been released. Remember what that is? When the bees arrived, the queen was plugged (with a candy plug) in her cage. We found the cage, and as you can see, the plug is GONE, and the queen had been released. GOOD NEWS! In fact, everything about the two new hives looked great! We found signs that the queen has been busy. There were several eggs and lots of new larvae in the 'brooding chamber.' Yay! That means the hive has accepted the queen, and she is busy doing her job.

Do you see the queen in there? Ha ha. Yeah, she's impossible to see. Here's a closeup. See how's she's much longer than the others? And her markings are a little different.

Anyway, so everything looked wonderful. We're getting off to a great start!

As I'm sure you've figured out, my husband and I both LOVE beekeeping. We really love our bees! I know that sounds weird, but we truly do. We look forward to when we get to visit their hives again! They're such remarkable insects, with amazing endearing qualities. They're really very gentle creatures. Even though we have 3 hives, with bees flying all over our property, no one (visitors nor the 5 of us!) has ever been stung.

I think anyone that loves nature in its purest form would love bees and beekeeping like we do. It's a wonderful hobby!

Weekend in Review

Well, first of all, it SNOWED ALL WEEKEND. Yes, SNOW. Ugh. It didn't stick, but still. SNOW. In APRIL.

It was way too cold to get into hives to see how the bees were doing since we introduced them to their new hive. Hopefully this week, we can check on them.

BUT, look at THIS!

This is called an observation hive. My husband got it for me! It will go inside the house. See that tube? That will lead out the window so the bees can go outside through the tube, pollinate and do their thing, but come home through the tube to their hive INSIDE. It's glass so we can see what they're doing inside! And of course the whole thing is sealed so there's no danger of bees getting out inside the house. Cool, huh? (Maybe kinda creepy, but mostly cool!) Of course I won't have it there smack in the middle of my kitchen table. I'll put in near a window. But, I can't wait until we get it set up and operational. All we need is a queen, and a frame of honey bees. Stay tuned for that!

But anyway, back to the weekend. It was a very slow one around our place. Because of the snow, and also because poor Gage was SICK SICK SICK. He had a high fever all weekend. I always feel a little bit of a happy guilty thing when Gage is sick. Why? Because he's always so cuddly when he's sick. Gage is 11. So I know I'm on borrowed time with the cuddle factor. So whenever he wants to cuddle, I enjoy it so much, even thought I feel badly that he's sick. Ha. Gage says he'll want to cuddle with his mom even when he's a teenager. I hope he's right! You can be sure that I will remind him of that then.

Sunday afternoon, Lexi and I went to a birthday party for her friend. Here she is going down the big slide! Wheeee! Fun.

Okie dokie. Back to cuddling my big boy.

TGIF

First off - a shout out to my beautiful niece, Christina, who turns 20 today.   WOOT!  Happy birthday, Christina!  I remember when you were born.  I was away at college, just 19 (a year younger than you are now!)  Your dad called me and gave me the good news.  I was so excited!  I yelled to all my friends at my dorm.  "MY SISTER JUST HAD A BABY!  A BABY GIRL!!  HER NAME IS CHRISTINA AND SHE'S PERFECT!!"  Yeah, they weren't as excited as me, but that's ok.  I was excited enough for all of us.  So, happy birthday, Christina!  Hope it's a wonderful one!

Other than that, I really don't have anything earth-shattering to say.  I just was excited to try out Windows Live Writer.  Have you heard of it?  Lynn told me about it, and it's so cool!  (Thanks, Lynn!!)  "Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog." You can make your pictures look cool, like the one below.

I do have one sad thing to report.  We found out this week that our dog, Callie (shown here with Cole.  Callie thinks Cole is one of her littermates..) has epilepsy.  She's had a couple of seizures in about a 2 or 3 month period of time.  The vet confirmed it for us this week.  It's epilepsy, and she has to be on medicine.  The medicine will help, but will make her groggy.  I just hope the medication takes care of the seizures.  Callie is always so scared and disoriented after she has one.  It's scary for us, too.  Poor baby.

In other news, this story was not good news for us beekeepers:  "Keepers: Dying bees may sting state's crops"  Eeek.  Hope they figure THAT out soon.  What a bummer it would be to lose part or all of our bees.

Ok, that's all for now.  I'll close with this funny picture I took of the pigs.  They're not little and pink anymore, are they?!  Look how dirty they are and how dirt-caked those snouts are!

The Bees Have Landed

Springtime means BEES! Well, for us beekeepers, that is. And Friday afternoon, our honey bees arrived! This is a highly anticipated event, because in order to have bees guaranteed in the Spring, you have to have them ordered all the way back in November.

They're delivered in little wire mesh boxes:

(See Gage's face in the second picture? He was all, "Take a picture of me behind the box and everyone will think the bees are swarming me!")

Anyway, we received two boxes just like that full of bees. You can't really tell, but in the middle of that swarm, is the queen cage holding the queen bee. I have a picture of the cage below.

The tricky part of this whole thing? We have to get all those bees into their new home - our hive! We have two packages of bees, so we have two hives like this all set up and ready for their new inhabitants.

To get the bees ready for the transfer, the first thing we did is spray their wings with sugar water.

This makes their wings sticky and wet so the bees can't fly away. Then, we (you understand that when I say we, I really mean my husband, Derek) pried open the package, and found the queen cage.

You can't really see her because her workers are swarming her, but she's in there. See those nails? You use those to hang the cage in the hive. There's a 'candy' cork keeping her in the cage. But in a few days? The workers will have eaten that away, releasing her. She's the key to the success of the whole hive!

After we hung the queen cage in the hive, we (you know - Derek) basically poured the other bees in the hive, carefully replaced the frames, and let them do their thing.

Now it's real important to leave the hives alone for at least a week, because if the bees get disturbed, they could kill their queen. But after that week, we will open the hives again and make sure the queen has been released from the cage, and that she has begun laying eggs. That means the bees have accepted her as their leader and everything is hunky dory.

One day after transfer, the worker bees seemed settled in and were going in and out of the hive:

So far so good! We shall see...

Her Majesty, The Queen

This past weekend we decided it was time to take a peek into our hive. Did you know we're beekeepers? We are! We have one small hive, with two more BIGGER hives being built as we speak. (Because, we have so much fun with one hive, according to my husband's logic, three hives would be three times as fun.)

My favorite part of beekeeping? The honey, of course! Have you ever had fresh honey right from the hive? One word: yum! Nothing better. (Ok, three words.)

Anyhoo.

As I said, it was time to check on the "girls." It's been a long winter, and since this weekend we had relatively warm weather, it was safe to open the hive and check things over. This time, my 11-year-old son, Gage donned his bee suit and helped Daddy. It's important to make sure the queen has survived the winter and the hive, in general is healthy. And yes, apparently we indeed found that things are marvelous in the hive. We didn't actually see the queen (because her workers - the other females - cluster around her in the colder months to keep her warm, thus making her hard to see) but there were signs that the queen was still around and healthy and doing her thing. The brooding chamber had a few active broods so this is all good.

As my husband was closing up the hive, Gage noticed all kinds of little dead bee bodies on the ground.

"Dad, what are these?"
"Oh, those are the male bees - the drones. In the wintertime, the worker bees (the females) expel the drones from the hive. They're not needed anymore after the breeding season is over. So, the males are killed and just tossed out the door."

(Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Gage, on the other hand, did not agree. As was apparent from the look on his face.)

Gage: "Ooooh man. That seems wrong on so many levels."

Maybe so, Gage. But wait until NEXT weekend. When you learn firsthand what it means to castrate a pig.

Heh.