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Operation Bee Rescue — Phase III

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This continues (finishes?) Operation Bee Rescue.

This morning I went in for the final comb->frame transfer and queen search.

About half an hour before I started, I moved what bees I could to other boxes and closed them up. I was trying to minimize the number of bees who would be getting excited. I stacked the temporary boxes on the adjoining hives’ lids for easy access.

I started at about 9 a.m., with a temperature of about 45 degrees. That’s cool enough that the bees weren’t active, but warm enough not to endanger them (especially with a nice day forecast).

I ran into minor issues almost immediately: the three frames closest to the edge were absolutely buried in bees, and were sort of stuck to the frame. In the process of loosening things up, I got my one and only sting of the adventure.

Fortunately I had a plastic card ready in my pocket, so I was able to scrape the stinger out immediately. At that point I caved in and put on nitrile gloves. I like bare-handed where possible, but pulling out wild comb covered in bees is about as invasive as it gets.

Gloved, I was able to coax the first chunk of comb free and lay it onto the framework I had prepped.

And lo! I got the biggest piece of luck in the whole operation, for there was the queen!Fortunately she was marked with an orange dot.

I coaxed her into the little queen cage that a  previous year’s queen shipped in, and plugged it with wax. I was anxious to keep her ladyship safe while I finished restructuring the hive.

With her out of the way, I was able to take a butter knife and trim the comb to fit the frame. I had to be careful of the girls, but sliding the knife through the middle of the comb worked pretty well.

I slid a second batch of skewers into the holes I had prepped, and tied the bottoms to the back-side skewers (which were stapled to the frame).

I was pretty pleased with the result. Far superior to the thread method!(Now I have to decide whether to go back and redo the thread frame).

I filled a second frame with scraps. Those weren’t mobbed with bees, so it was a lot easier.

With all the critical pieces of wild comb framed up, I was able to reassemble the hive properly. Then I was ready to release the queen.

She took her own sweet time leaving the cage. I could tell when she was about to emerge because workers started to mob the entrance.

And there she goes! Out of the cage and down into the frames.

I breathed a big sigh of relief, closed up the hive, and got back to my normal work schedule. I was happy to see a normal level of activity from the rescued hive this afternoon. 

All of this would still have an unhappy ending if we didn’t have some spare frames of honey from our other bees: the tree colony had very little honey stored up. Fortunately the hive that resulted from the natural split has been doing well, so their honey will now go back to the parent colony.

Thank you for following along for Operation Bee Rescue!

Bees

Operation Bee Rescue — Phase II

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This is a continuation of the bee rescue adventure.

Phase I ended with  wild comb leaned semi-upright in three layers of boxes, with frames interspersed to help keep them semi-vertical (although not oriented correctly). This arrangement allowed us to close up the hive, but was not a good long-term configuration.

The box had all sorts of awkward airspace, and there was no way of removing the upper boxes without wreaking havoc. The whole point of a normal modern beehive configuration is that  all of the frames are hanging, so you can freely pull the upper boxes to reach the lower boxes.

One thing I couldn’t find any good information on was whether honeycomb orientation was critical for brood. Normally honeycomb has a slight downward slant (which makes sense for curing honey). I could imagine it being important for eggs and larva to stay put.

Crazy comb and problematic hive management aside, it seemed very risky to go into winter with comb leaned sideways and upside-down.

The only way to fix the situation was to take the wild/natural comb and insert it into frames. This would allow it to hang in the box with good comb spacing, permitting free bee movement and rendering the hive manageable.

The catch is that frames aren’t really designed to have comb inserted. For it to work, you basically need to cage the comb into the frames. Somehow.

My first “insert comb in frames” attempt used thread.

I was able to extract the honey chunks from three combs and insert them. I was working on this Sunday morning, so the bees had mostly clumped up in one corner, giving me easy access to the last three combs (the biggest combs in the colony, which turned out to just have honey… mostly uncapped).

It was a good start, but the remaining chunks are thick with bees (I’m sure they are surrounding the brood comb and — hopefully — the queen), and I need something a bit stouter and easier for the bees to escape.

I set up a framework using BBQ skewers, and I think it has a good chance at working…

But by the time I finished, the bees had gotten pretty frisky. It’s partly that it had warmed up, partly that I had been manipulating them, and partly that the yellow jackets had been mooching around the edges.

I’ll try the final critical comb mounting tomorrow morning, when everyone is chilly/slow. It’s a calculated risk, because they will also be all clustered together, but it’s pretty distracting getting dive-bombed — even in a bee suit! That’s how you know I’m not a pro!

I’m very much hoping that when I do the mounting of the brood section, I will see the queen. At this point her status is unknown. Although the bee casualties have been fairly minimal, it is always possible that she got squashed when one of the combs fell. Fingers crossed!

Bees, Nature

Operation Bee Rescue

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The Situation

A couple weeks ago we discovered that one of our two hives had split itself (probably in June), and the old queen/half the colony had settled on a Douglas Fir branch about 40 feet up.

 

When bees swarm, the beekeeper has a limited window to tempt the bees back into an empty box. Otherwise, the bees will find whatever digs are available: hollow trees and house walls are favorites.

 

Every once in a while, the bees don’t find any good sites, and they stay put in the open. Apparently that’s what happened here.

 

 

How could we have missed this? Well, although the colony was clearly visible from one vantage, it was masked by the end of the branch from the house. And apparently we don’t inspect our tree line very often. Yes, it’s a bit embarrassing. But would you spot it in this picture? See red circle.

 

 

At the time I thought it was neat but sad: neat, because it is amazing to see how the bees build their colony when left to their own devices; sad, because there is no way an exposed colony can survive the winter in our climate (cold + rain + wind = dead bees)… but it was too high to rescue. Or that was the initial conclusion.

 

Of course, having given them up for lost, our brains immediately started working on how they could be saved. Ladders? No… none of ours were remotely long enough. Climb the tree? Doug Fir branches are made for breaking. Cherry picker? Cherry picker!

 

We got some tips from friends and called around. A very nice electrician was inclined to help us… but once we got more accurate distance details, they realized their cherry picker wouldn’t reach. They told us that some tree services have big bucket trucks, and gave us a name to start.

 

That tree service was favorably disposed (the owner has a wild colony in a cedar stump, and they actually tipped it upright when it fell over in a storm… hooray for heavy equipment)… but they couldn’t come until late October.

 

So we got in touch with an arborist who had worked with us on another project. Conor thought he could do it, and was able to come Saturday morning.

 

Here was the plan: go up, cut the end of the limb with the colony, bring it down, hang it on an A-frame ladder for better access, and try to rig the whole colony so that it could be settled in a bee box for the winter.

 

Before we get into what happened, here are a couple pics of the colony that I got with my telephoto. The picture where all the comb is showing was taken first thing in the morning, so they’re huddled in for warmth. The picture where there is a big ball of bees on the bottom was taken in the middle of the day, so they’re working and protecting the nest.

 

Phase I

Conor showed up with his bucket truck (I missed the technical name, but it has a 2 part hydraulic pivot that can lift a small basket up to 50 feet). We spent a few minutes sorting out the plan, and by 9 a.m. he was suited up and ready to go!
   

 

Since he had to go up solo, the plan was for him to cut the branch, holding it as best he could, and then bring it down to me. Two people would have been ideal, since with one person there was no way to hold the branch stable.

 

Here is his final approach up to the colony and the cutting of the branch (click links for video).

 

 
The branch twisted down pretty sharply, which did not help comb integrity, but it all held together!… at least temporarily….

 

He brought it down and handed it down to me. Probably about 40 pounds, but most of that was branch. I was able to get it on the ladder, although a bit crooked initially.

 

 

The comb survived the whiplash of being cut, but was a little the worse for wear.

 

Note the bend in the comb, and the dangling comb on the left side. It was hanging on by a tiny little twig. It couldn’t last.

 

While I was bustling around getting a box and seeing Conor off, the dangler fell off. In this shot I have scooped it up and leaned it in the box.

 

 

Another comb was coming loose!

 

 

I carefully snipped this comb off before it could collapse (the only controlled comb removal in the whole thing, unfortunately). Here is the comb, all ready to go in the box (both sides).

 

 

Here it is in the box. Not a good long-term solution, but ok for starters….

 

And then another comb fell off! Note comb now leaned on exterior of the box. So much for lovingly boxing up the whole comb unmolested. I hadn’t realized how fragile wild comb would be, especially in cool weather.

 

Fortunately the bees were confused but not aggressive. I couldn’t wear gloves, because I needed to be able to gently lift the comb.

 

Here are the combs that fell off, all tucked in snugly.

Still, a few combs left! I got the colony level — more or less – and stuck with the plan of taking them intact.
Narrator: she should have abandoned the plan.

     

In order to get the rest of the honeycomb free, I either had to cut the branch or break the comb. In retrospect, I should have broken the comb… but instead I decided to cut the branch.

Rob was working, but Mom and Dad were visiting for the day, so Mom held the branch stable while I made the cut.

Shortly before the cut, the other two big combs sloughed off, and I added them to my growing box of traumatized bees.

Phase I closed out with the pieces of comb tucked into three layers of hive, with commercial frames as spacers.

The good news was that the colony could then be closed up, safe from yellow jackets and weather. The bad news was that there was way too much air space, the hive would be completely unmanageable with the chunks of wild comb propped up here and there, and most of the comb was either upside-down or sideways.

Since the original plan of keeping the colony intact didn’t work out, we needed to wait until things quieted down, and then try to insert the comb into frames. See Phase II!

 
 
 
 

Life

Bees!

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Rob and I picked up our package of honeybees last Saturday.

It was a very exciting day. I have had bees once before, but this was my first time installing a package.

The bees ship in a little crate with a canister of sugar water, the queen safe in a little tiny cage suspended next to the sugar water.

bees

On the way home, Rob drove, and I carried the bees in my lap, acting as an extra shock absorber. One stray bee came along for the ride – not in the crate! – and caused mild consternation when she started flying around the car. Fortunately she quickly settled on the rear window, and we were able to complete the trip home without mishap.

We already had the sugar water ready, so when we got home we spritzed the bees with the sugar water through the screen that sided the crate. That settled them down while we gathered our supplies and (rather minimal) protection.

We got everything set up by the hive, took the lid off, and pulled a few of the frames – which later will hold comb and honey – to make room for all the bees.

The trickiest part was pulling the canister of sugar syrup from the crate. It was in a can, and the slightest lip stuck up above the crate’s edge. It took quick work with the pliers to pull the crate – and that opened a hole in the crate!

We were able to get the canister extracted and cover the hole with some cloth before many bees escaped. The escapees provided a cloud of confusion over the subsequent proceedings.

Then we had to make a secondary foray into the crate to extract the queen’s tiny cage. A number of bees were clinging to it – the queen! the queen! – but I decided not to worry about it, and just set the whole lot aside.

The most dramatic bit was actually getting three pounds of bees into the hive.

You might imagine that it is a careful and graceful process – or maybe a natural process, setting the whole crate into the hive?

You give the crate a good hard rap, to knock all the bees into the bottom of the crate.

Then you upend the crate over the hive and dump the bees in. It takes a fair bit of shaking and shifting back and forth to get most of the heap into the hive.

I still find it amazing that that’s what you do, but it is quite effective!

The result was most of the bees in a heap in the hive, and a couple/few dozen buzzing around us and the hive.

It would be pretty scary to someone unfamiliar with bees, but I knew that they weren’t in aggressive mode. You just ignore them . . . or try to.

The main hitch was with the queen. The YouTube instructions I had watched all talked about a “candy plug” in the queen’s cage.

The candy plug prevents the workers from getting to the queen right away. The 3 lbs of bees are just a random bunch of bees, they aren’t workers for this queen, initially. The workers would sting the queen to death if they could get at her.

Oddly, although their first instinct is to sting her, their second instinct is to feed her, and so thwarted in their murderous impulses, they keep her alive.

After a few days, the scents and pheromones all do their thing – I’m fuzzy on that bit – and they become that queen’s bees, and all is right with the world.

The candy plug in the queen’s cage allows the necessary time to pass, since the workers can’t remove it right away.

The one problem was, the cage only had one tiny cork. No candy plug.

We called the supplier, and they told us that we should just plug the hole with a marshmallow.

A marshmallow? Sigh . . . .

We had to close the hive up – more or less – and run to the store for a bag of mini marshmallows before we could get the queen properly installed.

Aside from that little hitch, it went pretty seamlessly. No stings, no visible casualties, and the girls were out foraging within the hour.

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They are all settled nicely now. The local ants are causing a little trouble, but when we opened the hive up a couple days ago to feed the bees, everything looked in good order. The girls were all clustered together, building comb, and the queen was gone from the cage. Fingers crossed that all is in good shape!

 

I had bees once before, when I was living in Seattle.

A swarm happened to settle in the boxwood at the edge of my lot. Rather than ignoring them or calling someone like a sensible person, I rushed out and bought a hive.

It was all pretty exciting . . . but my precious bees didn’t make it through the winter. I still don’t know whether I did something wrong, or whether it was just the rotten bee-odds at work. A couple winters ago, one in three hives throughout the US died.

 

In any case, hopefully this hive will thrive. We’re already scheming about getting a second one next year!