Honey Tree

Our bee hive began to be very active in very early spring, even on fairly cool days.  As a result, B supered (added a box to the top full of pure comb just to be filled with honey) the hive a month ago.  The week before Memorial Day was warm and the hive was increasingly active, and B had spotted some queen cells inside so we were concerned that they were preparing to swarm, but as we were headed out of town we left it to nature.  The hive is still full of bees, but Monday, B felt pretty confident that there had been swarm, and we figured c'est la vie since we had been gone.

Yesterday as the kids were spending some time outside, they came running in, did you know there are tons of bees in the tree with the mushroom in it?  Sure enough it appears that our swarm has found a new home inside of this tree.  I am happy they decided to stick around and pollinate our garden.  We may not be able to get any honey from this group, but it is pretty cool that we'll have a honey tree.....where's Pooh?

The Politics of Bees

We are learning to become less distressed when one of our hives swarms.  We have had two swarms in the last week, one from each hive, and B has caught both and set up new colonies.  Sunday as we were grafting trees, I looked over at the garden and said "Oh no honey, there's a swarm!"  It looked like a tornado of bees.  They were all flying in crazy eight fashion and if you can see the small dark ball in the left side of the photo above, they were all catching the scent of and making their way to the queen that they chose to stay with.

You see, swarms are rarely total and many times as a result of there being a strong competing queen that has hatched.  The hive simply does not have the ability to handle these two strong women, so one vacates, and a portion of the population follows.  Just a little hive politics.

This was our giant Perone colony, and we know there to have been at least one large queen cell in development...it is still intact by the way, so there may be another swarm in the near future.  We were lucky this time, because the branch was not as high up as the previous swarm and she chose a rather flimsy one that B could cut easily, and place directly into a retrofitted bankers box.

As when leaving the hive, where the queen goes, the others follow and they all ended up nicely in the box within about half an hour.

Ironically, B had just installed two bate hives up in trees in our yard to either catch our own swarms or others looking for a home.  This group had not gotten so far as a permanent residence though and we used our last hive boxes to give them new digs.

We have set up housing for our most recent two hives on a different area of the property from the original two, and we hope this little colony takes on the attributes of the master across the yard and grows quickly.

So the positive way to look at your hives swarming, is that in many instances you have given home to robust colonies that are expanding in the ecosystem.  With both the importance of and danger to our honeybees, even if we do not catch a swarm, we have let something good off into our environment.

What a Ride

There is such a delicate balance to nature.  Even with the most conscientious of care, it can be hard to predict which things will thrive, fail, or endure the slimmest of odds.  It can be all at once disheartening and uplifting, and we find that as we nurture different things, we become very connected to them.

Most days we walk the homestead three times, early morning, mid day and evening.  We peruse the garden, check the bees, plan for future crops or animals, let the chickens out into the yard, harvest, water, pet the bunnies, weed pull, dream, and simply enjoy.

There are ups and downs to this process, because we will notice even slight changes that lead us to investigate and sometimes worry.  Both of our bee hives have been vigorous all spring, so much so that we had to add an additional box to each of them.  This week we had slowly warming weather, then a sudden very warm day.  I noticed that one of our hives had a large number of bees congregating outside, and some beginning to beard there.  This sent me into a little bit of a panic.  Are they going to swarm?  Are they unhappy in their home?  Are they just too warm from this crazy weather and getting some air?  We watched them carefully over the last couple of days and they are hanging in there.  This morning B noticed that the other hive seems to have many fewer bees, and we wonder whether this hive swarmed.  This second hive though robust,  has not been nearly as active as the other.  Maybe it lost its queen, and they are in the process of making a new queen.   It could be the other just had a huge brood hatch and by comparison it looks much more populous.  It looks like we will be examining the boxes in more depth to see if we can see a problem, or detect a new queen cell. So many possibilities, one of which is hives sometimes just swarm, period.  We will be setting out our bait hives this weekend, hopefully looking to catch a wild swarm, and not one of our own!

There is something about relying on mother nature that is very rewarding and humbling.  Hard work can be rewarded or punished by such simple things when you are relying on the elements and ecosystem around you.  But wow, what a ride!

 **Update.  After I posted this B spoke with our bee keeper friend who is very seasoned and been doing this for many years.  It seems we anticipated everything right, and it would be unusual for one warm day to cause a sudden swarm, especially since this hive was not the one with the excess of bees.  He thinks it sounds more like a mass die off due to some contamination/poison.  It happens these days.  We will inspect the hive this weekend to see if there is still a queen, and if the numbers continue to die off.  It leaves me sad, this was not necessarily mother nature, it was man made.  Big Ag may have created crops and insecticides to increase yields, and make for cheap hybrids (where the nutrition has all but been removed; ie. today's grains).  But I wonder what the true cost will be?  We already see effects in the health of the natural ecology.   The long term health effects to humans is yet to be seen, though I think he tip of the iceberg is emerging.