walking in forgiveness

working with bees is about so much more than just working with bees. it's about self-governance, attentiveness, patience, and faith. sometimes it is even about learning to walk in forgiveness.

and nowadays it even involves an epipen...

well, another interesting experience. i tried - against advice and against my better judgement - to load my observation hive after dark last sunday night. the boys and i were scheduled to give a demonstration to some school age children early monday morning, which meant leaving before the bees were up. andy was also scheduled to leave town for a couple of days early that morning. i needed his help, so we also had to work around his schedule.

it just wasn't a perfect situation, so i had to choose between a rock and a hard place. i could either: 1. stress the bees by loading them the afternoon before in the rain and adding more stress by keeping them penned up for too long, or 2. stress the bees by opening the hive at night, but keeping their confinement to a minimum.

i went with curtain number 2.

i passed the point of no return the moment i popped the super off the top. those bees just started boiling out! (this is where self-governance comes in. a little voice in the back of my head just kept urging me to "RUN"!)i feel certain that if i'd had a little more light i would have seen scowls on their grumpy little faces.

it was quite a humbling experience. of course i had suited up, but unfortunately, i zipped my hood AFTER i put my gloves on so i didn't realize that i hadn't sealed the velcro around the zipper securely. (aha, "attentiveness"!) bees like to crawl at night. they CAN fly, but they seem to prefer crawling as their mode of transportation after the sun goes down. well, 4 or 5 of those angry girls crawled right through that gap and let me have it. those bees were completely different creatures from the girls that i meet every couple of weeks out in the sunshine...kind of like that movie a few years ago with the cute little animals you weren't supposed to feed after dark... "gremlins" i think.

reader's digest version is: i spent the next 48 hours dealing with the symptoms of an allergic reaction in varying degrees. this was quite new to me, obviously unexpected, and VERY painful. ("patience" required. i knew it would pass, but it just wasn't passing quickly enough.)

by the time monday night rolled around and i was in the throes of a delayed reaction and it seemed that i had no one to turn to. (that's where forgiveness comes in.) but God has given me such wonderful friends. molly and jack came to the rescue! they drove 45 minutes or so to pick us up in the middle of the night - me, and two dogs, and two sleepy boys- and drove us back across town to spend the night with them. they gave me peace of mind and help in time of need. the comfort that gave me can never be overstated...

we didn't make it to the demonstration that day, which was a disappointment for all of us. but, God blessed me once again through Laney. i had to get the bees OUT of the observation hive and back into the brood box with the rest of the colony, but i certainly wasn't up for another encounter yet. Laney drove all the way down here just to let them out and put the brood frame back where it belonged. andrew was right there with him, watching and helping when he could. he's a brave little guy, and loves learning about the bees. he very gallantly informed me that if indeed i am allergic to bees, not to worry because HE would take care of them!

so much to be thankful for.

and now i am required to walk in faith. i will wait a few weeks for my antibodies to build up again, then go for allergy testing. i will not borrow trouble and worry about the results. i just have to trust that God is in this.

as always...

(notes from dec 31)

"as always", when i finally got into the hives i was surprised.

polyxena christina and agnes both had more honey than they let on to - both about 50% full. a little of it looked newly capped, so that might be the sugar water i have been feeding them. (hogs) i'm not giving them any more free lunches.

and again, "as always", i worked polyxena christina first. they were a little agitated. agnes was very calm. i checked each honey frame in each super, and in both hives i pulled out 2 empty frames from the outside, moved some half full frames to those spots and added 2 full honey frames that i had robbed and saved to the middle, over where i thought the brood frames were. ( i had an idea of where they might be because i had peeked in the entrance with a flashlight a few nights ago and saw that the bees were hanging on about 3 frames near the feeder. that showd me where the brood would be.) agnes had 2 supers on her. the bottom one was empty so i removed it. i set the partially empty frames on the ground beside the hives so the bees could rob them out. when they are dry i will cover and store with moth crystals.

both p.c. & a. had lots of activity in the honey super, and LOTS of bees covering about 4 frames in the brood box. however, i did not find any larvae or brood at all in p.c. and only saw 1 capped cell in agnes' hive. (which was hatching out at the moment i saw it btw!)

got into esther last. she has 2 supers on. the bottom one is 50% full, top about 75%. she had lots of bees. they seemed to be getting agitated too, so i briefly checked the brood box. found 2 full frames of brood, then put everything back together and left them alone.

did not see any queens, but i was trying not to linger any longer than necessary.

of course hindsight is 20/20, right? so now i'm thinking that i should have stayed in esther a little while longer, checked for more brood and moved some to p.c. and a.

sometimes i wonder if my little grey cells go on vacation without notifying me first.

rain, rain, go away!

(notes from december 28, 2009)

well, first a little update...

a week or so after finding 2 hives with no brood, laney came over and lo and behold - we were in the baby bee business! both hives had larvae and agnes even had capped brood. she must have had some larvae in there that i missed last time.

the rain had prevented me from getting in the hives for a couple of weeks, so on dec 16 i checked them all just by lifting the backs of the boxes and felt the 2 to be alarmingly light. esther was heavier, but she also has one more super than the others. she was considerably heavier though, so i think some of the weight was due to honey. i ended up feeding polyxena christina and agnes starting dec 17 (i think), then the 23, then again today, the 28th.

of course i worried when i felt how light the hives were - big character flaw. keeping bees is part of the cure. i am constantly being humbled, both by the miracle of God's design and by my own ineptness. when i was a little girl, i believed that life was a storybook and every day was a different page. recently, i heard it said that God has this wonderful drama, a great story, going on. at all times, it is either a comedy or a tragedy. the question is, how will i act in either situation? adds a new dimension to that old saying about hindsight and perfect vision.

ok, back to the bees...it was too rainy to get into the hives, so i went out after dark when i knew all the bees would be in the box, and peered in the bottom with a flashlight. saw girls in both hives, hanging from the bottoms of what was probably 3 frames, maybe 4. relief! i was afraid i had let them starve.

now, i have about 8 frames of honey that i robbed (and saved) back in the fall when i was preparing to treat for mites. i'm wondering if i should divide those evenly between the supers on both hives, and if so, should the placement be directly above the brood frames that are active, even if the placement of the brood frames seems to be kind of lopsided? or if the super is indeed empty, should i remove the super and hang the shallow honey frames down in the brood box on either side of the active brood frames? if i do add shallow frames to the brood box, what are the chances of the bees building comb in the empty space at this time of year?

also, i've been reading about splits, and have had lots of interesting potential "technique" questions for laney. i THINK i will add another hive this year. if i do, i will space the hives evenly on two benches. that means that agnes' hive will have to move about 8 feet. is that a big enough move to disorient the workers? and if so, should i then move the hive far away for a while before repositioning? i've heard and read that if you move the hive farther away than right next to where it started, you have to first move it miles away for a month or so, then move it back to the new position at your apiary. something to do with reprogramming their little gps systems.

guessing game

(notes from november 8, 2009)

one thing that this year has shown me is that no matter how interesting it seems, i am in no way ready to start rearing queens. luckily, all my girls so far have been pretty forgiving of my wacky unpredictable schedule. tried to get in them a couple of times last week, and SOMETHING always got in the way - including a trip to the er to get wil tyler's thumb x-rayed after an encounter with a hungry donkey.

well, polyxena christina faked me out again. once again, i was worried about her b/c there seemed to be SO little activity going in and out of the hive. (i don't know if i mentioned this before, but i found wax moths in her beetle trap last time i visited, which was another cause for concern.)

so this is what i found today...

1. POLYXENA CHRISTINA:

-a light super. i actually realized afterwards that i didn't inspect it, but there was definitely honey in it, though not much.

-lots of very busy bees in the brood box.

-no capped brood or larvae, and heaven knows i can't see the eggs, so who knows if there were eggs in there.

-lots of pollen and uncapped nectar.

-several emergency cells and one queen cell that i feel certain actually hatched. i'm guessing the others were cannibalized after polyxena christina the 4th or 5th hatched.

i did not see the queen. if a new one hatched, it had to have hatched recently based on the absence of larvae. they also had to be queenless for a while. last tuesday the 3rd was my 2 week mark to re-treat with apiguard. so, 17 days ago she had capped brood but i'm almost she had no larvae since i didn't make note of any.

now they've got me playing a guessing game. isn't this unusual? (the bee behavior, not mine - i'm always guessing it seems!)am i supposed to have brood at this time of year? i know the colony dwindles, but shouldn't they keep a few brood coming on to replace they dying ones?? so what in the world is going on? why would they hatch a new queen this time of year? it's not like she was an OLD girl!

2.AGNES:

-lots of very busy bees as well.

-no capped brood or larvae.

-a couple of emergency cells.

-uncapped nectar and lots of pollen. - bright orange and white. haven't seen white before.

-nectar and capped honey in super.

-i did not see the queen.

3.ESTHER:

esther had a bit of a surprise for me. remember that i put spacers above each brood box to allow for the mite treatment. when i removed the supers i found that they had built new comb diagonally across the frames, and there was capped brood in it! i didn't get into the brood box b/c i didn't want to disturb that new brood. what in the world is she doing? she apparently didn't get the memo that comb building only happens in the spring flow.

what to do? according to Laney, if i don't have a laying queen right now, my colony only has about a 50% chance of surviving the winter. i did see evidence of a new queen in polyxena christina's hive, so i feel confident that she'll get things underway soon. not sure about agnes. obviously esther is doing fine! in fact, i could wait until the brood in the new comb above the frames hatches, and then transfer a frame or two of brood from esther to the other girls - IF esther has enough to spare.

i did find out later that i probably should have treated for mites a few weeks earlier. there have been reports that, among other things, it stops queens from laying. also found out that this automatic re-queening -by the colony, not the keeper- seems to be the trend these days.