Seeing Orienting Flights

Yesterday, while I was stringing up the sugar snap peas (which had tripled their length in just three days of sunshine and plenty of water), I suddenly saw a cloud of bees in front of the entrance.

I asked my boss at the 911 dispatch center (I just volunteer as a transcript person there once a week), Ken Nichols, keeps bees and is very experienced his opinion on when to inspect bees, and he dragged out the lovely old adage of "if you want a dozen opinions, ask ten beekeepers." But he gave a very reasoned argument against going in every week, and for doing a bit more management at the end of the winter, and into the fall.

I told him about seeing larvae forming the last time I went in, and he smiled and said that I'd probably be seeing orienting flights soon, huge clouds of bees right in front of the entrance. They are newborns that are figuring out how to fly and how to find the hive and how and where it is, and every once in a while, after they start to get born, they'll just come out and hover. Knowing what it was made me run inside to tell the boys and grab the camera.

They're all oriented toward the front of the hive, and they were all hovering just in a cloud all in front of the entrance. It was fascinating to watch.

The really fun part was that after the boys were gone and had taken their videos and done everything, I was just standing there, trying strings to a support and to my pea plants and watching all these shiny new baby bees learning how to fly. None of them bothered me, there was one old lady that buzzed me a couple of times, inquiringly, but she left me alone after not that long.

And it was amazingly peaceful to just watch them going out and in, out and in, and then, not that much longer later, they were all back in the hive and the usual traffic was going in and out.

Another thing Ken said was that you can tell a lot by just watching the traffic in and out of a hive. That if the workers are bringing in a lot of pollen, it means that they have plenty of brood to feed, because only the larva eat pollen. The bees only eat sugar water and honey.  I'm realizing now that butterflies only eat nectar when their caterpillar stages eat everything around them. And watching the girls there were lots of gold and yellow leg burdens on their back legs.

It was amazing fun to watch them. Mimi came by today just to see the girls, and she stood happily right in front of the entrance, with the bees whizzing about her on their flight path, and watched them going in and out and being quite happily busy with the summer-like day. I'll admit to just sitting outside the hive and watching them work. It's peaceful stuff. I seem to be in need for a little orientation myself, so it's been nice to get it from these working girls.

The 12-Day Inspection

In which I learned a great deal about the fact that planning really does help the inspection of a hive, and I actually FIND evidence that the queen is amazing and doing really really well. My husband was wonderful and helped keep me on track and focused for the whole thing, and did an amazing job as cameraman. 

I really love that you can see John's shadow in this picture, too.

But one of the main things I started with was deciding to use smoke for the first time. I had only used sugar water to spray the girls so that they would clean each other off before this. The feeding mechanism makes them full and the belly distension seems to make it impossible for them to sting.

The same mechanism is why smoke works, or so they say. *laughs* There is more lore about bees than I even really want to think about; but smoke makes the girls gorge on honey in case they have to fly away, and when they're full they can't sting. Usually the last thing bees have to worry about when the forest is on fire is a bear intent on eating them.

When I bought my bee suit, I got the smoker, too, and while the discussions on the Boulder beekeeper's list indicated that I might not have to use it, that sugar syrup was better, I decided to do it anyway. During the windy, cold day I was scared that I was going to draw too much heat out of the girls by spraying them with liquid, this way I didn't have to worry about them being wet. The nights are still going down into the 40's, so I thought I'd play it safe.

The smoke worked like a charm, too. When I got the feeder and empty box off the top, they were all well within the slats of the frames, and hovering over their stores. Also, since this time I did it in the middle of the day, on a sunny, calm day, a lot of the workers were out, and the hive itself wasn't quite so full. Still, as you'll see, there were plenty of the girls inside, still, to make it very interesting. You can also see here that the frames were pretty close together, and that there's a much bigger cap between the third and fourth frame from the left. Yes, that's where the doubled comb ended up.

The difference seems minuscule to my eye, too...

Two of the frames on the right were completely empty, and this time I took them out and just stood them upright to the side. That gave me enough room to move the other frames around before taking them out so that I could move slowly and get all the way into the box.

This is the next frame over, and you can see that they're building already. A small network of bees drawing comb, and they were drawing equal comb on the matching side of the frame next to it. So they were getting good and busy and building out a pretty good deal. It was interesting that it looked like they'd begun to build where the queen was first caged, and then started spreading from there, eventhough it was off of center by a frame. I guess she really is irresistible to them.

This is pretty typical, with the honey on the outside cells, and capped cells more to the middle with the brood and pollen and the like. You can see that they're all over the faces of this, and each tending to their own thing all at the same time.

It was surprising and really cool to hold these frames up and look at them in sunlight and not really bother the bees at all! I was surprised at how easy it was and how little notice they took when all I was doing was looking at them. They just kept working at all the things they were doing. Another cool thing was seeing how they all varied so much. Some were really dark and others really bright yellow, and I loved seeing the contrast across them all. It made it much harder to actually spot the queen, though! And I found out from Ken that when the Northern Colorado Beekeepers did their buy, they decided to not ask the breeders to mark the queens. It's something that stresses them, so I'm okay with having to be a better beekeeper to find her! *laughs*

I really loved being able to study each and every frame and with John's urgings actually take my time doing it. There were so many bees, and they were festooning all over the frames, building comb as fast as they could.

It turns out that they need a lot of sugar to be able to build wax, and these girls seemed really well supplied as they were building like mad. There were three completely full frames, and three partial ones like the first one that I looked more closely at. And the bees stuck to them all like they were glued in place. Nearly none of the girls took off or fell off, which was a relief for me as I always hated the idea of the queen just falling and getting crushed or something.

I added more smoke in the middle of the inspection because John said that the note of the hive was going up a little, but also because the next frame was the Big One that I'd felt like I'd failed at really looking at the time before. 

So I added some more smoke, let the girls settle, and then got my courage together. I moved the frame over a few centimeters, grabbed both sides and removed it from the box, slowly and gently and didn't shake anyone off. One of two of the girls just took of into the air, now and again, but none of them were really bumping into me, or buzzing at that hum that really alerted ALL the "get ready to dodge or duck" instincts. They were pretty content, and doing all right. I also wasn't breaking any comb the way I had last time...

This is the infamous doubled up comb. It is pretty organic, and the weight of it is actually stretching the wax at the top of the comb, which was intriguing to me.

The bright orange cells are filled with pollen! Which is what they need to feed brood, which meant that they were raising brood, so that was my Really Good Sign.

I still couldn't see under the wax to see if the queen was there or laying, and I was mildly frustrated by that, until I got to take a very close look at the lower corner of the other side of this frame...

If you go to this picture and look into the uncapped cells around and under the bees, you'll see little white rings of larvae!!!

I was so happy to see them. I was just so relieved to actually see them, big, fat, glossy and happy. And the texture of the caps next to them meant that there were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of workers all laid, growing, and sealed off to cocoon and develop into bees! But it was amazing to see that the laying pattern was such that the queen was probably hitting every single cell, and putting eggs into all of them. The swarms of workers here were feeding, capping, cleaning, and otherwise caring for the babies.  I also love that you can see one of the nearly transparent all-yellow workers in this shot too, a little above the center.

Putting the frame back in was a lot easier with the extra space.

No pushed around bees. No angry bee, nothing that seemed to make any of them any unhappier than they were.

I was even able to give the broken off piece of comb to a kid that was fascinated by them, and he loved seeing how it fit together and how it broke. *grins*

The amazing thing to me was seeing it all go back together without any problems at all. And it gave me the courage to just go through the rest of the box!

So this is the last of the built frames, and it's about two-thirds full, which I was really happy to see. The workers on this one are "festooning"... where they're all kind of linked together, and connected up in order to build comb in a synchronized fashion. For some reason it seems to make it easier for them to build the stuff when they're all doing it at once.

And, of course, they were completely ignoring me and John, who had the camera and no protective clothing but a veil. We got the veils from a couple of friends of ours who had bought them for a Halloween costume party. They had no use for them, so when they heard that I was going to actually keep bees, they sent me the veils!

Buttoning up was pretty easy, though I was kind of squimish about closing the gap between the Fat Frame and the others, but the bees are really used to very very tight quarters. The bee space is practically exactly the amount of space a bee needs to get through, so they just build to the point where they have to just squeeze through. It makes for good insulation.

But I basically scootched (that's a technical term!) the frames over until they were as close as they could get with the workers still between them, and finally fit all the frames into the box.  Since they'd built out six of the eight frames to some extent, I decided to add another box of frames on top. It would just give them more room. I also set up more sugar syrup and a watering station for them, with a tray filled with sand and rocks that could get water from our automated drip irrigation! So they'll have water and everything else, too!

So this second inspection was much, much, much more successful than the first, and I was so relieved about being able to see real evidence of the queen being just fine that I just collapsed for a while. Adrenalin and relief are a potent dose. *laughs* It's been twelve days since the queen was released, so I guess this is as good a time as any to see that she's been doing well.

Fail on Trying to Check on the Queen

I had a pretty thorough failure today, and with some thought and research, I am realizing why I failed to really find any evidence that the queen was in residence or laying, and there are multiple reasons.

Let's go through exactly what I did, first, and then what it was that really went wrong and where I lost heart and what I want to do about it the next time I go into the hive.

First off, I didn't get any pictures because I did it on my own while John was at some meeting that evening. So I didn't have my usual backup; however, I'd also gotten the mistaken impression that I should go in five days after the queen was released. I don't know where I got that number, and one Gabriel Petrut commented much later on one of my latter posts that one should wait until plenty of comb has been built, at least a week, if not more to give the queen time to go.  I also read, later, that one shouldn't disturb the hive too much in the first ten days (after installation? After queen release? I'm not sure) or else the workers might ball the queen.  Gah!

So I went in today. I put on all my equipment, went out to the box fairly late in the day, as my son was busy inside. The weather was windy, cloudy, and just a bit rainy, sprinkling even on an on again and off again basis.  And the girls seemed crankier with the weather. I did use sugar syrup in a spray to calm them down now and again, but it was rougher going than the installation or the queen release.

I wasn't sure, at the time, if it was just because I was more nervous without my husband along, or if it was just me... and not the bees...

But I only had the one box. I had an empty box above, to keep a zip-loc bag of sugar syrup with holes in it. The feeder box had been leaking, so we'd taken it off, cleaned it out, dried it, and resealed it. but it was still drying, and I thought I needed to see what was going on.

I didn't really think things through, and just lifted one of the middle frames first.  Something gave and then broke, and I was holding a frame with a lot of bees on it. I looked at both sides, and definitely saw honey and deep gold pockets all through the comb, a lot of the center was capped, but the edges were open, and when I looked closely, I couldn't see anything in the cups that I could recognize.

Then I was horrified to find that the next frame over was doubled up on comb! They'd actually attached a whole extra sheet of comb to one side of the frame, so I had absolutely no means of looking under it to see the bees that were hidden in the pocket between!  I was so flummoxed by this that I had to stop and breathe for a bit. I broke off one of the pieces experimentally, and the bees got pretty angry with that, no duh, because I was breaking their home.

So I put it back, very slowly, as the bigger mass of comb meant that the frame was too big to fit into its usual slot, and a whole cascade of workers was pushed onto the top of the next frame! I was upset about that, too, and just decided to stop there and close things ups. I hadn't found specifics of her being there or not being there, and it really made me kind of obsessed for the next week, as I didn't want to bother them again. We did feed them, did fix the feeder and get plenty of straight syrup to them, but I didn't dare go in for another week plus...

Afterwards I did this research:

• Studied a number of YouTube videos showing brood cells and their difference from honey cells.
• Realized that most inspections are done on sunny, calm days, in the middle of the day.
• Figured out that I should pull out one of the completely empty side frames, first.
• Realized that I really needed to try out the smoker instead of just the sugar syrup spray.
• Realized it would be easier with my husband as moral support, because emotional support really helped with the adrenaline rush and the tunnel vision effects while I'm still very new to this.
• Looked up the development stages of the larvae and realized that I REALLY had to give the queen more time before I looked for capped brood, as it would be at least eight days until they'd be developed enough to cap. 
• Counted the days from the release to figure out what to look for when.
• Had another beginner beekeeper open a 'messed up hive' with comb being built so that it connected two frames! Eek. But learned from him that none of the experienced keeps had any specific advise to offer him, other than to make sure that the frames of any supers were spaced correctly, 3/8ths of an inch between frames.
• Sat back and realized that the doubled comb was not THAT big a deal. It was all right if I couldn't find the queen if I could find viable brood.

Release the Queen!

Three days after I installed the bees, I had to release the queen. She was still in her cage, being seen to by her attendents, and with her caught in the hive, the other bees wouldn't leave her and would do their best to stick with her. But after two or three days, she had to be let out so that she could lay eggs for new workers so that they could get on with the business of being a hive.

I decided to do it in the evening, when it had started to cool on that side of the building, and there was a little wind so that the bees wouldn't be too active, and since I had to make sure that the queen stayed in her cage until I got her to the hive, I gloved up. Thin gloves, which might not have actually stopped a sting, but gloves nonetheless.

The feeder was also leaking, so we wanted to check it to see how much syrup was in it and time what we were going to do to it. It really had to come out sometime, be cleaned, dry out, and then be resealed and the sealing had to be allowed to set. So it was going to be a matter of a few days.

John did a little research and figured out that a simple Ziploc bag could be used to hold the syrup. Small slits would be cut into it and the bees could reach the syrup through the slits if they were at the top surface of the bag. There were dozens of bees in the feeder, and plenty of syrup still, so we decided to wait until night time to do that particular transfer since that Sunday night it wasn't supposed to get below the high 40's. It was in the high 70's during the day and felt wonderful. So the first hurdle was one we didn't have to take.

I had set up all my tools, and everything I thought I'd need on a chair by the hive, including one of the windshield brushes that one uses to brush snow off a windshield. It was going to be my bee brush, after almost crushing a few girls last time I remembered I had a brush and could use it.

I removed an empty frame, moved it to the side, and then slid the other frames a little off kilter so that I could get to the queen cage, which was still rubber-banded to one of the central frames. I very carefully got the metal tab that was sticking out and picked up the cage, which was completely covered with attendant bees.

The brush was really great for getting those girls off the cage so that I could take a pair of needle nose pliers and take the cork out of the cage. It came out really easily, and I stuck my thumb over the hole, until I could bend over and put the cage, hole side down, into the hive.

In one of the YouTube videos, the queen just comes right out. When I had her up and could see her, she looked active, healthy, and ready to rumble. She was pacing back and forth inside the tiny area. But when I put the cage into the hive, worker bees crowded into her Majesty's chamber. They just charged right in and I couldn't figure out if she'd left or not! I stood there, just holding the cage in the milling crowd of bees as they got gradually louder and louder and...

That's when I remembered that I had my sugar syrup spray bottle. I got it out and spritzed everyone a few times and all the ladies calmed right down. A little sweetness goes a long way with these girls.

So I just crouched there for a while longer, hoping that she had already come out. All the workers in the hive were really active, and I got a good look inside. There were already huge layers of beeswax built on the base in the frames. I was really amazed at seeing that, as they'd only had three days, and after seeing the leaf of comb that was in the shipping box, I'd expected them to have only been able to build that much. It seems that with the bases already there and only having to draw out comb, these girls could build a whole lot more quickly.

I knew that snow was coming Tuesday night and for all of Wednesday, so it was good that they were getting their insulation in. Plus, the Queen, when she decided to go, would now have cells to lay eggs into. Eventually, I just laid the queen cage on the top of a few of the frames, so that the entrance/exit was open and she could come out when she damned well pleased, if she hadn't already. Or the workers could get out as well. I just left it there, and started to put the hive back together again.

Shuffling all the frames back into place was pretty easy. I just did it slowly and gradually, and all the bees got out of the way. The fuller ones amazed me with their weight and size and mass. And there were a few frames that were at the wrong distance, not quite the right bee distance apart, so I shifted them either closer or further depending on what they needed before I put the frame I'd taken out back into the box.

I was amazed at seeing the amount of activity that was going on, and it was just fun to work through things when I had all my protective gear on and I didn't have to worry about consequences. I buttoned things up after that, getting the feeder back on and with the brush it was easy to get the lid and telescoping lid back on, without crushing anyone.

On Monday night, we went in, took the feeder, got the sugar syrup sack in and then closed it up again. They were just humming along quietly to themselves, and we did it all without any equipment at all. They weren't at all upset, and it was beautifully warm all day.

 On Tuesday morning I finally got the queen cage out, as she'd left it and there were just four worker bees hanging out in it. I brushed them off and shook them out and finally got it out of there. I'd also seen some bees landing and trying to fight with my girls. I know there's another hive in the neighborhood, so expected a little robbing and exploration between the hives.

Also, since I knew that on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the weather was going to be in the low 20's and cold, that it would probably be a good idea to restrict the entrance a little, instead of leaving it wide open. The more open the bottom entrance is, the more air flow there is through the hive. It's a wonderful thing in the height of the summer, but bad for cold weather. Also a more restricted entrance gives the bees in the hive less space they have to defend in order to keep intruders out. The bottom board came with an entrance restriction bar, so I asked John to put it in that night, and he did. I late read, on the beekeepers' association mailing lists, that that is all you really do need to do for cold weather.

And it was a good thing, too.... It snowed nearly a foot here in Longmont, and today it's been melting. In the midst of all that one of my crowns came off of the stump of a tooth it was protecting while I was flossing at night. I freaked out a little, until John could get it back into my mouth in the right direction. And I had to fit the dentist's chair, to get it glued back in, amid two other appointments.

Luckily the last of those was a massage with Bonnie, and that really helped even out a rough day. Then, this morning, I went in for training as a volunteer administrative assistant for the local 911 dispatchers. It was pretty overwhelming at first, trying to learn everything pertaining to my job at once, but I think I have a general handle on what's going on. What's best, though, is that my boss in the department was the same man who answered my question about how often to spray sugar syrup on my caged bees!! *laughs* He's a keeper! And has eight viable hives scattered around the city. Wow. It's like it was meant to bee. XD