New Reasons for Why I Love Keeping Bees

Having walked around for two days last week with a right hand that looked like a surgical glove that you blow up and give to your kids as a five-fingered balloon, I was reminded in some of my bee-related reading why it is so quintessentially "cool" to keep bees. This is a quote from Professor Tom D. Seeley, author of the books "The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honey Bee Colonies" and "Honeybee Democracy":


The study of the honey bee colony, especially its food collection, has yielded what is probably the best-understood example of cooperative group functioning outside the realm of human society.

Wow! This means that we understand how honey bees cooperate better than any other social organism beside ourselves! Pretty nifty. The social intelligence of these small creatures is just fascinating to learn about, and then to be able to see parts of it in your own backyard, is truly like living your own episode off of Discovery channel. Did you know that if there are several floral sources available, that honey bees will forage on the floral source that has the greatest quantity of nectar and the highest sugar concentration in the nectar available? Here's an awesome quote from the book ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture:

It has been said that humans differ from other animals because we can communicate with one another. However, we observe that the honey bee dance can convey information about direction, distance, quality, and the type of food to be found even a mile or more from the hive. Without the use of a compass and a machine to measure distance, we might find it difficult to convey such information to another human ourselves. Obviously the honey bee dance language has certain deficiencies, such as the inability to convey information about color, shape, and upward or downward direction. Still, it is probably correct to state that only human language is superior to that of a honey bee.


Double wow! After reading that I feel like sitting back, folding my arms contentedly and nodding my head, "Yeah, I keep 20,000 to 60,000  of the life-forms whose language skills are only inferior to that of humans in my backyard. Yeah, they pollinate my garden, and yes, they also make me honey." Now you may say, "But what about gorillas and chimps that can learn sign language. True, but they've been taught by humans. I haven't heard of or seen chimps or gorillas use sign language in nature.

And finally, another reason, it's incredibly fulfilling to be able to explain the coolness of bees to those who haven't yet had this revealed to them. In fact, this last inspection, I had a friend come over who wanted to help out with the inspection and see the bees more up close. We saw several drones (they are much larger and fairly easy to spot). We saw swarm cells (queen cells on the bottom of the frames). This is bad news. I don't have any empty drawn comb in order to make more room in the brood area. I did, however, add a honey super. Although, the bees will have to draw out the wax. My hope is that perhaps this will make more room for brood by having more room for nectar. We also saw the queen, eggs, uncapped larvae, capped brood cells, capped honey, and pollen/bee bread. When it was over, my friend thanked me for giving him the opportunity to participate in opening up and seeing the innards of a honey bee colony. I mentioned that he could now identify a drone from a worker (which he did during the inspection, without my help-- after seeing a drone). He said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I bet most people have never even seen a drone before, let alone know how to tell the difference between a worker and a drone." So, if you are a reader who happens to know me and happens to be in the Cleveland area, feel free to come out and take part in an inspection. You'll definitely leave it with a greater fascination and appreciation for honey bees. Funny, just had a hymn in my head, "In Our Lovely Deseret"... roughly translated means "In Our Lovely Honey Bees." Yeah, that's where I like to bee once a week. Enjoy the pics of being in the lovely deseret!

My friend's son. Clearly no fear of bees. My daughter is this same way. The goal here is to keep them with just enough fear that they don't get stung and then develop a real "fear" of bees. However, I generally try to keep the kids a bit further away, esp. when we're opening the hive (unless of course they have a veil, then-- no problem).

A picture of the queen. Looks like her head is down in a cell or covered by bees, but the marking on her thorax as well as her pretty orange abdomen can be seen clearly here.

Another queen picture.

My friend holding his first frame of bees. Looks like a beautiful frame of capped brood, but can't tell from this distance.

Decently crowded, populated hive in this picture, at least in the central area of the hive. Hopefully, they won't swarm. A swarm would essentially halve the population in the hive and make it more difficult to build up the honey stores necessary to survive the winter.

I love this picture. You can see the nectar droplects on the pollen baskets on the hind legs of the bee. Look how hairy the bees are as well, that is also to allow them to collect pollen.

My beautiful kids and I near Dad's Hive, perfect picture for father's day!

Makes me wonder why my father doesn't seem to have as many bee issues with his hive. Perhaps because he doesn't know enough yet to notice when he has them? Or perhaps because he stays so busy that he isn't able to inspect his bees as often? Or perhaps, the bees just knew that with the amount of reading about bees that I've been doing, that they've got to make it "interesting" for me? What do you think?

The Proper Way to Remove a Bee Sting

I must say that I already knew the proper way to remove a bee sting. If you are ever stung by a bee and the stinger is still left in your skin, the proper way to remove it is just to scratch it off as soon as you possibly can. Why? because generally when the stinger is left in your skin, the venom sac is still attached to the stinger and the sting apparatus will continue to pulse venom into your skin (hence the ASAP removal of the sting is very much to your benefit). Also, if you try to grab the stinger and pull it out, you essentially squeeze a whole bunch of venom into the sting area as you squeeze to lift out the stinger. Well, all of this information did absolutely nothing in preventing me from removing my most recent sting the incorrect way. Maybe bee venom dampers some of our brain processing power? Probably not, most likely, the sudden pain of the sting, the view of the stinger protruding like a sliver, and, viola! the brain went to the most familiar movement program: that of removing a small, sharp, protruding object from skin via the pinch-remove method. Hopefully, this current sting helps me to implement the correct sting removal method into my motor program repertoire -- scratch as quickly and crazily as possible till stinger is removed-- then stop scratching.

I also need to admit that as a kid, when I was stung by a bee I felt a sick satisfaction that at least the perpetrator suffered the ultimate punishment: death. A classic comic of this is from the buttersafe comic strip shown below. Buttersafe Comics: Serving the Queen.


However, now, when I'm stung I feel a small pinge of sadness that one of my bees just died by stinging me: what a waste!

So, just to hammer home the lesson that is being throbbingly repeated in my right hand: the proper way to remove a bee sting is scratchedy-scratch!

Carpenter Bugs: Blame it on the Bees, not the Ants

So, after going to last nights Greater Cleveland Beekeepers Association meeting, I learned that my hole-y hive isn't likely from carpenter ants. The hole is apparently too large and perfectly round. It's the work of a carpenter bee. You can see how perfectly the hole in my hive matches this image I got from http://www.pestcontrolrx.com/david_somlcom/2011/04/carpenter-bees-how-to-stop-their-hole-drilling.html

You can see that they look a lot like bumble bees. Actually saw one of these around my hive recently, but thought that it was a bumble bee. Apparently, you get rid of them by blocking the hole, which I did with that spray foam insulation stuff. I guess I just hope now that the bee gets frustrated and decides that drilling holes in my hive isn't worth its time. Apparently up to 20 carpenter bees can live in the nest hole. It sounds like they drill in and then go along the grain of the wood eating to create a larger cavern with more room. Kind of like making a bat cave, but for bees. Apparently they are the most active in the spring (now) as they look to mate and lay eggs.

Also, this weekend I'm going to start my bee insurance policy, also known as a nuc. I'm going to take a frame of bees and a frame of honey/pollen and put it in my nuc box. The bees will make their own queen. They'll then start drawing out the frames in the nuc box (only 5 frames). I'll use this nuc to either add more brood to my hive, or replace a queen if my hive's queen dies or something. I'll probably try to winter over the nuc, but sometimes they are just so small that they don't make it, we'll see.

"Hole-y" Hive

So I haven't been plagued with small hive beetle. Good news. And I don't have wax moth larvae eating my hive. But this time, when I went to inspect the hive I found a perfectly round hole through the side of my top deep. I could also hear chewing sounds coming from it. Not good. Something was eating the wood of my hive and had eaten it's way clear through the thickness of the top deep. First, I inspected the hive. I found that the bees still hadn't drawn out the rest of my frames to the degree that I had wanted. So I moved a couple of the frames that were mostly honey and pollen with just a bit of brood and put in an undrawn frame between them. Usually you shouldn't break up the brood nest, but there was so little brood on this frame that I made an exception. I also didn't see the queen, and it shouldn't bother me, but I have gotten so used to seeing the queen every time that it worried me somewhat. However, I did see eggs. So, the queen has been there within the last 3 days at least. Unfortunately, I also found some queen cells on one side of the drone frame. This may be because they drew out a portion of the frame before the others and so there frame isn't one contiguous drawn out frame. The portions of the frame that were drawn out first have what look like empty queen cells that hang from the bottom of that portion. Because this is on the side of the frame, these queen cells would not be swarm cells (they'd be supercedure cells). Supercedure is where the hive decides that the queen isn't cutting it and so they start working to replace her. I don't think anything has been laid in these cells yet. Let's hope that the queen is still there and that these aren't actual supercedure cells. I think the queen has been doing a decent job. I have noticed that she has laid some eggs in areas that are mostly honey and pollen stores, and maybe this isn't super normal. Maybe this could explain why these cells are present. Or maybe they are just-in-case.

I also wrote the year on the tops of the frames in my top deep. This will help me know how old the drawn out wax on these frames is. I forgot to do the same to the bottom deeps this time. I also removed the entrance reducer. It's been plenty warm and there are floral sources available. I don't think that robbing is much of a risk now, and I think it may be beneficial to make it easier for the bees to come and go as well as ventilate the hive. I put up a wax moth trap hanging from a tree right behind my hives. It probably wasn't necessary but it certainly won't hurt. I put in a banana peel, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, 1/2 cup vinegar in a milk jug. I then cut a small 1 inch hole just below the part of the jug that narrows toward the pour spout. The wax moths and even hornets may fly in and then have a hard time finding the way out and drown, die.

After inspection, I grabbed some spray foam insulation (may not be bee safe, but I used only a small bit to patch the hole that the carpenter ants or made). I then poured soapy water around the hive where I've seen ants and where a small ant mound was. I then went to the store and bought 4 ant traps. I placed two underneath the hive around the ant areas. Hopefully this strikes a death blow at the ants without hurting my bees. It angers me that they'd blatantly try to eat holes in my hive. If my hive wasn't in my backyard, I'd have thought that someone came and drilled a hole in the side of my hive!

Lazy Bees? Lazy Me!

So the small chunks of wood on the front of my hive feeder may apparently not be from small hive beetles. From what I've heard from other beekeepers, is that it probably isn't warm enough yet for small hive beetles in ohio, and that they haven't noticed small hive beetles chewing wood. They remarked that it could be wax moth, though I haven't noticed any white cocoons anywhere. They also said that it could actually be from, and get this . . . lazy bees. Yeah, apparently some bees will chew in to the woodenware if they smell pulp or propolis in the wood. I'd never heard that before. This particular beekeeper said he fixed it by aging his woodenware and coating it in wax. Most my woodenware, except for my hive top feeder has been dipped in paraffin by Queen Right Colonies. So who knows, maybe I've got a couple lazy bees that were in to the taste of wood, or maybe a few rogue moths, or maybe ants, or maybe small hive beetles. I'm not sure I like the idea of lazy bees, though. . . .

I, on the other hand, was quite lazy in my last inspection. I did put on some white karate pants (you know, to better be able to fight back the bees!) No, just kidding, bees like lighter clothing. I wasn't brave enough to inspect in shorts. However, in retrospect, shorts may have saved me from getting stung. I was too lazy to put rubber bands around my ankles to keep bees from crawling up my legs. You see, when you inspect, sometimes bees fall to the ground, and they get curious and start crawling around. Sometimes they end up crawling up your leg. One did exactly this. I could feel it once it got past my sock. I tried to ignore it hoping that it would decide to turn around. Well, once it got up to my thigh/quad, I decided that any further up and a sting might make me quit beekeeping! The bee had reached the point of no return, and evidently the buffness of my quad had made it so that the bee had less room between the pant leg and my leg. And, so I was stung. Of course, it's hard to make sure you got the stinger out in your thigh with pants on, so there was just a quick flurry of itching/scratching and leg shaking. Needless to say, my left quad looks much buffer now and it turned nice and red. The swelling has gone down now, but the redness is still present, about the size of a cantaloupe. Probably didn't help that that morning I had just started running nearly 3 miles after not having excercised for forever. The next day my legs were so sore I could hardly walk. The sting probably exacerbated the situation. In my opinion the sting isn't a big deal. This one hasn't been as bad as the one I got on my finger. The worst part is the itchiness that comes days later. I think that the sting on the finger was more itchy because there was less muscle and more skin. Just like some mosquito bites on your elbow or knee itch more than ones on your calf or back of your arm.

Anyway, next time I'm either wearing my bee suit (this will satisfy my wife, who feels like I wasted the money to buy it if I'm not going to use it much) or I will put rubber bands around the ankles of my karate pants.