Beekeeper’s Blog
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11 Great Ways to Help the Honeybees!
Last modified on 2009-08-07 03:20:22 GMT 1 comment | Top
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Would you like to help the honeybees? Here are a few things you can do to help out!
- Plant flowers the honeybees will like.
- Do not use pesticides.
- Buy LOCAL honey.
- Support LOCAL beekeepers.
- Be kind to honeybees.
- Teach your loved ones why honeybees are so important to our environment.
- Learn about honeybees.
- Support local farmers.
- If you find a swarm of honeybees or a honeybee colony, do not kill them. Call a local beekeeper.
- Learn how to keep honeybees.
- Learn the differences between wasps and honeybees.
Trial By Fire
Last modified on 2009-08-07 03:19:01 GMT 0 comments | Top
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First Year Beekeepers Deal with Unexpected Swarm
What a day that was! As first year beekeepers with one hive, we’ve read anything and everything we could find about bees and beekeeping. We joined the local beekeeper’s association and talked to several hobbyists and were also being mentored by our guru, a commercial beekeeper. Best of all, we observed our package bees daily and watched them grow as a colony. They exhibited all the normal behaviors one would expect.
On the morning of May 27, I checked the hive and no one was flying in or out. Looking inside the hive on the bottom board, I saw a mass of bees. Since bees don’t take a day off, I was somewhat concerned about what was going on and took pictures (one included here) and went inside to consult books, the internet and bee gurus.
Not five minutes later Laura, my wife, called me outside where I heard a deafening buzz and saw a massive golden cloud of bees flying about the whole yard. SWARM! What an impressive sight! After 15 seconds of panic, I then thought “Wait, this is normal behavior. How did we miss the signs?” and quickly reviewed in a trusty book what to do. We walked into the cloud of bees so we could get a good sense of which direction they might go. Luckily, they settled in a tree in our yard about 30 feet from the hive. There was a main group about the size of a cantaloupe, plus four smaller groups each the size of a softball. They were barely accessible. Laura and I discussed how to get the swarm. They were ours and we weren’t going to let them get away.
I soon found myself in my bee jacket and veil with my left foot on the edge of the deck and right foot on the top of a rickety step ladder. My right hand was holding on to a 1-1/2 inch tree branch and in my left hand a cardboard box held under the largest group of bees. (Warning: don’t try this at home.) With a sharp downward jerk of the right hand, the main group dropped right into the box and several of the bees in the other group set off flying. I set the box on the deck and we watched as a mass of bees converged and entered the box through a previously-cut opening.
Now what? We had a swarm in a box but didn’t have any equipment to establish a second hive, so we called our bee guru and also the beekeeper on the association’s Swarm List for consultation. An emergency plan was hatched.
Less than a week prior to the swarming, we had put a second deep on the hive. Since it was relatively new, we would now remove it and use it as the second hive. After hastily building a bottom board and makeshift top cover, we hived the bees. Presto! Instant second hive! The empty box was placed on the deck and remaining bees who were wondering where everyone went, entered the box apparently attracted to traces of the queen’s pheromones. We dumped these ladies in front of the new hive and watched as they happily found their new home. The next day, we bought more supplies, notably a couple second deeps with frames. The picture shows the new hive in the foreground.
The biggest lesson that we learned (and would like to impart to others) is that we had a huge base of knowledge from reading and talking with others. A great part of it was knowing bees will almost never hurt you and so we were able to proceed with little fear. With quick and cool thinking and confident action, we now have the second hive we knew we wanted. Our biggest regret was that in our adrenaline rush and haste, we didn’t take pictures of the swarm.
Honey in History
Last modified on 2009-10-29 02:17:18 GMT 0 comments | Top
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There have been honey devotees since the beginning of human existence. Cave drawings, temple walls, as well as tomes and journals have been found in various places around the world depicting honeybees, honey and hives and the collecting thereof. There is a name for honey in the ancient Hindu scriptures of the Rig-Veda, which date back to 1500 B.C.
Ancient Greece is thick with bee and honey mythology and devotion, believing that Zeus had fallen in love with a beautiful girl named Melissa, then he turned her into a bee so that she could act as consort and offer service to the Gods for eternity. The name Melissa carries this treasured history still.
Hieroglyphs of bees in ancient Egypt were found to signify omniscience, deity and power. A popular belief was that their supreme God Ra would weep “… the water which flows from his eyes upon the ground becomes a bee. They work in flowers and trees of every kind and wax and honey come into being from Ra’s tears.” It was assumed that the bees were collecting already created honey sent down from the Gods as a blessing to mankind. Bees were then believed to be the messengers of Gods as well as incarnations of them and were revered as such.
Ancient Egyptian obsession with bees led to Egypt becoming the first known land to become successful apiarists. Anthropologists have discovered small pots of sealed honey in a number of tombs. Burying the dead with their precious nectar was a respected and honorable act.
I find it enthralling when I bite deeply into fresh honeycomb to know that for thousands of years humans have been experiencing the delectable creations of sacred bees and relishing the sweetness in pure joy and wonder. What a sweet way to reconnect with our ancestors!
*Historical facts gathered from: “Robbing the Bees, A Biography of Honey” by Holley Bishop.
That was an awesome story! One of these days I hope to become a beekeeper. I am starting to get into amateur brewing and I am a huge fan of mead and I figure that would be a good way to support my habit ;-) I have always been fascinated by bees (and even wasps and their kin). I remember as a kid we had a huge hive form on the back of our garage, back when the suburb of Chicago I lived in still had a lot of wild areas around it. Unfortunately, I don;t see too many honeybees anymore…only their less friendly cousins in the wasp and hornet family :-\ I am a big proponent of growing local wildflower gardens and promoting natural vegetation as much as possible. If I ever get the luxury of owning my own home, it will be seeded with natural grasses and lots of native prairie plants. How have you guys been effected by the mysterious hive syndrome that has been killing bees at alarming rates? I have been following that…it’s pretty scary. Many species can be flags for things coming on the horizon.
Hi Eric,
I’m the one that wrote the story about the swarming. By next December, we’ll be tasting mead from honey made by our very own bees. As you probably know, mead has to age in the bottle for about a year. We can hardly wait.
As far as becoming a beekeeper, try to read as much about bees as you can. Join a beekeeper’s club. Then you can find out first hand that for every ten beekeepers, there will be twenty opinions on everything. About the only thing beekeepers generally agree on is that two (or more) hives is always better than one.
Isaac (Mr. SweetAsCanBee) has been great in helping us. He has tremendous amounts of energy, but unfortunately, there’s only 24 hours in a day and his time is scarce. In the springtime, you might consider trying to find a friend or family member that would let you keep bees in their back yard. It is best, though, if you actually have your own yard and garden. The bees make it so special because any garden is so much more alive and vibrant.
About the mysterious hive syndrome, it’s officially called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Almost all the media attention is with regards to the commercial beekeepers. Hives collapse for many known different reasons, but the cause of CCD is unknown. My opinion is that the commercial keepers are hit harder by CCD than the hobbyists for several reasons. Even as I write this, one of my colonies is in the process of collapsing probably from a mite infestation.
Anyway, please do get into beekeeping. It’s great fun.