Boxing Day

Boxes: 

The hives both look ready for another box, they have almost finished packing the boxes they have. 

Malka has two brood boxes and a honey super above a Queen Excluder and, new today, a transparent hive mat so we can look in and see how things are going without making a draught. Things are going gangbusters! They've nearly finished building the all the comb to put honey into already! Iris is very proud of them, especially as some of it is foundationless (see Sean with frame below). 

Hippolyta has two brood boxes, one of which has beautiful windows. We only inspected quarter of her frames before Amazons started sizing me up, but in that time it was obvious the reason they're feeling fraught might be cabin fever: they need more space. I was interested to discover that all the honey I found in the Flow hive was quite liquid, but the pohutukawa has only been in blossom for a couple of weeks so maybe they haven't finished concentrating the nectar down yet. 

Although I didn't look at every frame, there was burr comb with drone brood in it. 

So I inspected that instead (photo cred Sebastian), and didn't find any varroa (Hurrah!) even though we were really busy selling our old house so we missed doing an inspection last fortnight, drones are the tastiest, and brood is white so rust coloured mites show up really easily. 

The coloured ovals are their eyes. 

Next we need to sort out a new box for each hive. Malka needs frames assembled. Hippolyta needs us to choose whether to try Flow frames here or not, and then to do whatever it is we decide. I wish I could ask their opinion. 

Renovations

Before 

After

Still happy. 

 

I have another thing to add, which is what we did, but I wrote it in Iris's Bee Book and I hope she's asleep. 

Windows on Themyscira.

I decided that I want Hippolyta to have two brood boxes, both with ordinary wood frames inside, but I kept wisting about putting the Flow Super on next instead. I want my bees to have a peaceful life and for me to wear ice packs as little as possible, but I want to look in the beehive more often than anyone thinks is polite. So I have added a 1mm PET window behind the back door and in front of the spacer bars° of the Flow Super box and 6mm of padding made from the comb guides I am not using (yet*) on the top ledge behind the Flow key access hatch so the ordinary frames will hang straight. 

* I'm going with foundation in my brood frames at least until I'm confident about handling comb. 

Eventually, if I want to put Flow Frames in this box, I can transfer the brood frames to the windowless brood box, and this box will already smell like Themyscira. Though I might add windows first if it turns out they prevent me from rudely opening the hive to the elements too much. 

° "Spacer bars" I kid you not: 

Don't worry, it is not these things upon which you will be judged.

I made a mistake with the bees yesterday. 

After helping Iris pack the tent down because it was breaking itself against the wind, I was passing the bees in my flapping nightie and I got very excited about the beard outside the Flow Hive entrance, wondering whether they needed the next brood box straight away, so I opened the edge just a tad to look in. Seems that such stupidity deserves a short sharp shock and without even head-butting me in warning a couple of amazons whizzed out and stung me on the ankles. The one on the right foot got my slipper and died, the one on the left hit skin. 

I felt very chastened. 

I left them alone, hive lid askew and bees staring out. Iris helped me work out how to get my bee suit, lit the smoker and supervised what I did back in the bee coop. 

As with the sting on the 23rd, after the first pain it really didn't do anything much all day. However, both stings' reactions came up at night (say 10 hours later), the first then spent the next day or two looking slowly worse, and the day or two after that getting slowly better. My finger was almost back to normal when today's reaction from yesterday's sting set it off a little again. This ankle one is still in the building up stage and it is painless but ugly. 

I quizzed Aunty Google regarding reactions to bee stings who suggested that this is a Large Local Reaction (which 10% of stung people have) and that having them is a tad inconvenient but not dangerous unless something important (eg a tube you breathe through) swells. I was feeling pretty confident but decided to ask Sean to take me to the after hours clinic when my ankle got puffy enough that I was limping and all the elevation, ice packs, antihistamine lotions and pills that I thought might calm it down didn't seem to be doing so.

When I got there the triage nurse decided I might be working toward a severe allergic reaction and told me she thought it would get worse and worse and I should give up bees. I did not cry, argue or tell her off. I just told her that I really love my bees and held to my mind's heart all the stuff I'd been reading about the difference between local and systemic reactions. I internally reminded myself of my lack of rashes, pain, shortness of breath, and dryness of mouth to regain calm while she took my blood pressure, but didn't really mind jumping ahead in the triage queue or her dots to check the flushed area wasn't growing. 

The doctor agreed with Google, which was such sweet relief that I had to refrain from crying then too. She said she was glad I love my bees, that I should spend a day or two with my foot up and cool, take antihistamines and use hydrocortisone cream. 

Sean and I fed the bees this morning and Iris and he went down just now, they fed them some more since they'd taken all the syrup already and about 20 amazons were just hanging out on the verandah. 

I think we'll give them that next storey on Saturday. If it's not windy, rainy, or cold, with our suits on and some smoke nearby, like sensible folk who are way too busy to spend a day or two with their feet up. The question is, can I organise my brood box an observation window before then? Windows would be a lot more relaxing for everyone and is why I wanted a Flow hive in the first place. 

https://youtu.be/X_JxJeUmGv0 

Peeking humans.

Sean got out the macro lens but I haven't seen the photos yet. 

We inspected the Flow Hive first, here is some capped honey (left), some capped brood (right), Hippolyta (wearing this year's fashionable green dot) and her attendants (all taken by Sean with his phone). 

We didn't give them the extra box we'd prepared because they haven't quite finished building the comb on the frames they have. My guess is that the peeking bees are courtiers and Hippolyta was near the entrance. 

I don't know how accurate my notes are as I'm not yet very good at spotting the differences between shiny egg cells and shiny nectar (or syrup) cells, or different coloured nectar vs pollen. I plan to go back through and look at the photos again. 

We inspected Malka's (3/4) hive second. 

See all those tiny white dots in the cells? Those are her youngest babies. 

Here is my youngest baby: 

And what I think we saw. 

And lastly, I got my first bee-sting since 1986 and was very relieved to discover I haven't become allergic in the intervening years. While I was tidying up after today's inspection I picked up the tape a bee was resting on and squashed her against myself. It hurt quite a bit, I flicked the sting out with a hive tool, moved my wedding ring onto my right hand in case of swelling, and when I got inside, I took this photo and put an icepack on the wee spot. About an hour later I could only feel it if I pressed hard and now not at all. She died, of course. 

Peeking bees.

The Flow bees are peeking out their entrance, it's ten pm and dark, but it's very mild: Iris and her friends are camping on the lawn. Maybe the queen is right there, or maybe there're so many bees in there they're flowing out! Fed them some syrup, will check them tomorrow and maybe I'll have a wee working bee to get my next box ready. 

Visiting the aliens

Sean and I got into our space suits and inspected the 3/4 hive this afternoon. They continue to be pleasingly successful beeople. They have drawn out more frames, and they've put brood, pollen and honey in the wax they've made. 

This is the frame 3rd in from the South side. 

Below is the queen, she's got to rush round and lay in all these empty nests because the bees have been madly hatching out and cleaning up. 

This brood is very new but I can already see the concentric shapes of capped larval cells in the middle, then uncapped larvae and eggs, then the colours of pollen in a ring and at the outside edges, honey. 

Look at them go! 

Inspection!

The Flow hive bees are all right. Hazel and I did its first inspection at the same time as it was running its orientation flight school and they were super chill anyway. Hazel took the photos, spotted the queen and remembered the details, we both lifted frames and shook bees off to look at them. I did most of the excited grinning. 

The feeder was combed to the next layer down (like it was when I took the hive mat (ceiling) off), I think they do this so it's easier to climb up. 

Here's what we saw North to South:

Frame furthest North they haven't rly started on

Next in they're busy building and going well

Next is v full of honey

Next full of brood (pic above with drone bobbles)

Next also brood (I think this is the one below with the queen on it)

Ditto

Next lots of honey

Then they're building the last one 

We also saw: mould spots under the roof with fewer under the sandbag so I'm off to find a bit of insulation, a bee hatching, the queen laying, lots of wee coils of larvae of various sizes, I'm pretty sure I identified eggs but they're very small, one bee was busy feeding a larva despite her deformed wing virus (in the beautiful sunshine, full of relief that they are going fine, I saw her as a productive member of her society, but I suppose I need to research the infection vector*). All the frames on all the sides had at least some bees on them, and all the built parts were seething with bees. 

*Saturday a few days later: I have read in a couple of places that varroa rather than bees are the vector for Deformed Wing Virus, so it's fine to let affected workers work with the babies. 

Sunshine makes bees.

In order to grow up, the bees' brood has to be kept as safe and warm as a human baby. Last night at 6:30pm there was a cold snap, Sean was in the supermarket and suddenly heard hail driving onto the roof, my ultimate frisbee team was listening to the captain go through our game plan when fast fat icy rain stared to throw itself at us. The big sister bees huddled around their baby sisters and shimmied, using their mighty muscles to share their calories and keep the little ones warm. 

I am concerned about the Flow hive, it has not been building up wax or bees as fast as the possibly precocious 3/4. Do the babies have enough big sisters to keep them warm? Also, yesterday, when the weather was good, I found mould (and three evil mites) on the bottom board and so I rotated the ventilation strip from cosy to airy. 

So last night after we won our windy rainy game, after I ate kumara with sesame broccoli, before my cosy bath, I raced down to the hive in my airy towel and rotated it back again. Maybe I'll air their bed out again in today's fresh sunshine. 

Bottom board links:

https://capitalregionbeekeepers.ca/whats-on-your-bottom-board/ 

https://www.honeybeesuite.com/once-upon-a-bottom-board/ 

Bees make sunshine.

This afternoon: 

The beeople are very busy right now. Hundreds of teen bees are coming out and hovering around setting their GPSes and learning their way home. It's bee weather: warm enough to sit outside delighting in the old bees bringing in saddlebags stuffed with various colours of pollen, and the fuzzy teen bees from the 3/4 hive are cuddled together watching along with me. 

The Flow hive teen bees are mostly heading inside to study for their exams (they don't call it swotting). There's a bee standing on the Flow landing board with her abdomen up and last segment smiling, wafting her pheromone haere mai. The bees rush in, one seems to have only pocketed a wee dab of pollen it was so responsive to the call. 

A big blunt-bottomed drone came out to orient himself too, poor haploid bludger crashed into a few things as he did so but made it home again. Some say they're a waste of space, others say their presence calms the hive; maybe they're the class clowns. I wonder where the local drones congregate to hang out, bumping each other and laughing, hoping to spurt and die their little deaths. Drones are fairly endearing sperm delivery mechanisms, and I suppose they do about the normal amount of housework as such things go. I wonder if the Queen names them and laughs about their daft urges. 

If I'm sitting watching the bees come and go, like I did this afternoon, it's always pleasant weather. So far, these are not pets which demand work in bad weather; we have scurried down to pour syrup in for them during drizzle and at night, but that's soon over. 

After the rain stopped and the bees started flying on the weekend, to test whether it was warm enough to look at the colonies inside our hives I went down to the bee coop in a fairly light top and rolled up my sleeves. When that proved comfortable, I lifted my shirt and considered whether it was comfortable to hang my gut out. It was, so Sean, Iris and I put on our beekeeping suits and Iris started the smoker. 

We discovered the 3/4 hive was pretty much full and so we sorted ourselves out to add a box the next day. The Flow hive is only growing about as fast as the descriptions of "normal nucs" I have found, so it's not ready yet. We wonder vaguely about this. Perhaps the 3/4 has more Carnica genes, perhaps there is Drift with Flow bees cruising into the 3/4 hive by accident, maybe it has something to do with the vast quantities of syrup the 3/4 hive has been sucking up. 

Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

There were two bees struggling on a line of spiderweb near the currant bush so I carefully and slowly collected one and put her on the 3/4 hive's roof, there I tried to hang on to the evil snare while freeing her, and not getting near her stinger. I got most of it off and turned to the other. Once I had them both on the hive roof and able to limp they went opposite directions, the first bee slowly crawling Northwest straight toward the Flow hive, the other creeping East. The first got to the edge and launched herself off but fell to the ground whereupon she kept walking towards the Flow hive. I picked her up on a shell and deposited her on the landing platform, where she walked straight on in and disappeared from view. 

I turned back to the second who had limped her way to the front of the roof and was creeping down the wall very slowly. I collected her with a shell and gave her a lift to the door she seemed to be heading for, she walked in and was greeted by the sentry. The 3/4 hive's sentries are very much in evidence, coming outside and touching every bee as they arrive like ushers at a wedding. The Flow hive's sentries as less evident, I wonder whether they have a reception desk inside like a rather nice hotel. 

I've always liked spiders, seen them as the kind of friend that is the predator of my predators (sandflies and mosquitos), but the predator of my pet is not my friend. I destroyed the web and threw the spider over the fence. 

I decided to collect the dead bees on the ground and do a little pathology with Aunty Google's help. The two hives are fairly close together so I could be wrong about whose corpses are whose, but I had a go at keeping them separate. I took the dead bees inside, and being a scientists' child, sorted and counted them. 

I read that dead bees with protruding tongues may have been killed by a pesticide. 

I've learnt that the Flow hive colony probably has some deformed wing virus, and that means keeping on killing the varroa mites is really important. I've been looking at all the corpses with a lens and haven't seen any varroa mites on any yet. 

I've also learnt that with about 100,000 pets, 99,998 of which have a 6 week lifespan at this time of year, there are probably 2000 flying their last flap each day. I only found 55 of them. 

While collecting dead bees I found two live ones struggling across the ground. I gave one a lift on a shell to the 3/4 hive entrance, before the usher even asked "Bride or groom?" she turned to face away from the entrance and started to walk toward my hand. I took her to the Flow hive entrance and she walked straight in. I gave the other a lift to the same spot on the 3/4 hive and she walked in as slowly and as warmly welcomed as a beloved and elderly aunt. I am very glad to find they feel so strongly that these hives are their homes. 

The Hive is the Hardware, the Colony is the BeeWare.

The bees have been exploring their new locale and the garden is abuzz with their activity but I haven't yet seen any drinking from the fountain we have set up for them. Teddy and passing birds love drinking from it though. 

I ate my breakfast watching bees come and go ("come and go, talking of Michaelangelo"). The bee coop is as pretty Chicago O'Hare from a distance. Later, I visited them. Up close there are corpses on the ground, each a separate mystery: foolhardy robber, errant prince, ancient crone, cursed child or maybe someone delicate who succumbed to something I should have prevented? 

The 3/4 hive had already finished their syrup, the Flow hive had not quite. Impressed, we made more 1:1 syrup: 

1.6 kilograms of sugar in a big jug, 

Pour on about 1.6 litres of recently boiled water, 

stir together and set to cool for a bit. 

Refined white sugar is the healthiest thing to feed bees. You and I are not like them. 

https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/532260/Feeding-sugar-to-honey-bees.pdf

Later still, after watching proudly and clapping my hands pink as my offspring and my coachees were awarded prizes, in the dark of the night, Sean, Iris and I went down to the bee coop and replenished the feeders. I think we gave the 3/4 hive about a litre and the Flow hive about half a litre. Then I tried to clean up the places where I had poured an unintentional libation of about 100 mls on the kitchen bench and floor. 

Beekeeping Day 1.

I feel the wind of her wings on my cheek as she lands. She walks determinedly, her footsteps and the knowledge of her weapon focusing my attention to my ear. There she stops and buzzes, a special sound, intently rhythmic high-pitched pulses. 

I can not understand her. 

When I was a child there was an observation hive on a window at school. I loved watching them taxi down the runway tube, exchanging quick greetings as they passed each other, the sudden launch and gentle hover, and the exciting moment of change when they engaged their warp drives. 

Today I am watching our two new hives out the study window and that eight year-old inner-trekkie is alight with delight. 

(Hazel, me and Iris yesterday, just before we became noobee beekeepers). 

We have been reading and training and yet we will never be ready. She did her best but I can not know what she thinks. Without a common language, I have brought her whole whānau and their neighbours to live with me. 

With our best intentions, we have made houses for them. 

Without negotiation, I brought the hives to the only home she had known and watched the expert moving-in of her family and all their possessions. 

We installed the hives in an old chicken coop so no-one (including no dog) can bump a hive while just going about their lives. 

With some 1:1 sugar syrup, hope and faith, we opened their doors to let them fly free. Adult sisters poured out of the hives and launched themselves up, clambered through the net and circled above the bee coop, looking down and familiarising themselves with the new place. After a while they were coming and going in a more usual way and all looked well. So I checked the strawberry plants in the bed next-door, which is when she came with the buzz for me.