Spring is in full swing here in Texas. The lawn is starting to green up. The Chinese wisteria in the front lawn is in decadent display. And blooms of this and that are emerging from every corner of our yard, relics of the previous owner who was an avid gardener.
I have been an optimistic beekeeper this year. I have been hoping that the expansion I undertook two years ago will finally pay off in honey weight this year. Last year those hive splits did not have the production I expected.
My major monetary investment last year was a powered Maxant extractor. This year I ordered 10 medium supers and 100 frames, along with wax foundation and miscellaneous equipment. I guess beekeeping is like regular farming—it’s hard to get ahead. Greater production only comes after increased overhead investment. A month later, and I’m wishing I had made a much larger order.
I started 2013 with give hives. Four were strong hives expected to be in full production. The fifth hive is the last of my father’s bees, that used to be in a full top-bar configuration in supers. Since the end of last summer it has been in a hybrid state—the bottom super has top-bars, and the top super has frames. The goal has been to rehabilitate this hive into a full Langstroth configuration. I had planned to split my strongest hive to increase the total number of hives to six.
This split was accomplished three weeks ago. I have video of the entire process, but have not yet had the opportunity to edit it. I used a hands-free GoPro setup, but I was largely silent as I worked, thinking that I would dub in commentary later. I haven’t had the chance to do that. But I will.
The split was what I guess they call a walk-away split. You divide the hive into two, make sure that each hive has the requisite resources to survive, and don’t bother to locate the queen. The key part in this process is to make sure, at the very least, that each hive has comb with eggs. If you ensure this, then you can be fairly certain that the hive that ends up without the queen can raise a new queen from one of the eggs. Queens secrete a pheromone which inform all the other bees that she is alive, strong, and present. This inhibits the workers from creating queens (for the most part). When a hive becomes queenless, the pheromone is absent and the bees go about raising a new queen from one of the eggs. This particular larva is fed royal jelly and has a special larger cell to pupate in. When she emerges in her adult form, she is virginal, and must fly away to mate with a drone in the sky. She then returns as a fertile queen. As I understand it, each queen has a different scent, i.e. her own pheromone. That is why a foreign queen introduced to a hive will likely not be recognized as the queen of the hive, and will be killed by the worker bees.
The splits are doing well from what I have observed. Bees are coming and going. I have not inspected the hives, as I want to wait until I am fairly certain that both hives have adult queens. Then I will try and determine which hive has the old queen and which has a new queen. I will be able to tell this by the age of the brood in the hives. The hive with the old queen will have capped brood (i.e. older), and the other hive will not.
So that split took me to six hives. This weekend I unexpectedly ended up with a seventh hive. Friday morning I was ill and decided to stay home. Later that morning my wife told me that she could hear, from inside the garage, that the bees were buzzing quite loudly. I took a look out back and saw a large cloud of bees circling the tree on the side of the hives. It was literally like a tornado of bees. They were rotating around the tree. On closer examination we could see that a cluster of bees was forming near the trunk of the tree. Aha, a swarm was forming. No doubt from one of my own hives. This was my first time to witness the formation of a swarm. Swarms are often witnessed as solely a cluster of bees in one place. It’s very boring. But this rotating cloud of bees was something else altogether.
I immediately decided that I would capture this swarm. Illness aside, this was a bee emergency. But I wasn’t entirely sure of the timing. Should I venture into that tornado and capture the swarm, or should I wait? And perhaps the bees would all settle into the cluster. I got ready. And soon observed that the bees were indeed all settling down into the cluster. I read that a swarm could stay in one place for days, but it could be as short as a few minutes before they left. I had to act fast.
I had one medium super ready to go with 7 frames with foundation, and 3 frames of capped comb. I had intended to save this comb for consumption, but plans were changing on the fly. I set up a new hive in the back with this super. I got a cardboard box from the garage and put in a few drops of lemon oil essence (because I read this would attract the bees). The bees were high enough that a ladder was required. After set up, I climbed the ladder with my box, hoping that I would be able to shake the branch and the bees would drop into my box. I ascended and the swarm was now inches away from my face. This was one of those moments. I had never done this before. I felt excitement, anxiety, pleasure, and a small amount of fear. But mostly “this is cool.” I’ll never be face-to-face with a swarm again for the first time, and I knew that in the moment.
It took a couple of shakes. I was surprised at how heavy the cluster was as it fell into my box. If you can imagine a four pound weight falling into a cardboard box that you are holding with one hand. It would not have been unimaginable to have dropped the box. As you can imagine, all hell kind of broke loose. There were bees all over my shoulder and flying everywhere. I set the box on the ground. I had no idea if the queen was in my box or not. There was still a decent cluster clinging to the trunk of the tree. So I waited. If the queen were still in the tree, the bees would move to her. If the queen was in my box, then the cluster in the tree would not increase. Several minutes later, I observed that the cluster in the tree was actually smaller. So I proceeded with transferring the bees in the box into the hive.
The transfer was not as clean as I would have liked to hope. Part of the problem was that the cardboard box was as large if not larger than my super. So part of the bees feel onto the frames in the super. But part of them spilled outside the hive as well. And I had no idea where the queen was. A number of hives remained in the cardboard box, and their numbers seemed to be increasing. I then noted that there were a large number of bees still behind one of the box flaps. I dumped them into the hive. By that time, I had added a second empty super on top to act as a funnel. I then put on the inner cover and the telescoping cover and crossed my fingers. The bees went into the hive and all seemed well.
But a problem remained. I had left that second empty super on the hive. Speaking to my father that night, he said it was likely that the bees were building comb on the inside of my inner cover, and not on the frames. I had kind of thought that might be the case, but had not really thought it through. I guess I thought maybe the bees needed the extra space in the moment. But it would not do to have bees building comb under my inner cover. So that night I made another ten frames with wax foundation. My father said that the bees would build comb quite quickly. Fast enough that the queen could be laying in newly formed comb the same day.
This morning I opened the hive with 10 new frames on hand. As I started the lift the inner cover I noticed that it was very heavy. A huge cluster of bees was on it. So I had to bang the cover to cause the bees to fall off. They had indeed already started building comb. It was about two inches wide and two-and-a-half inches long. This was scraped off. The new frames were carefully added to the empty super. And then the hive was closed again. Fingers crossed. Ideally I should not have had to mess with the hive on a second day. I fear doing so makes it more likely that the bees would leave. But on the other hand, I needed to fix the empty super problem.
This afternoon all was well. Bees were clustered around the opening. Orientation flights were observed. A kind of circular flight pattern around the opening of the hive. Like in the arc of a vertical hoola-hoop.
Imagine what it is like to be in a bee colony. You are about to head out to the great unknown for a new life, and then suddenly you are falling into a box. It’s chaos. And then you are falling into a wooden box. Some great adventure. You calling this home? I felt a little like Brigham Young. “This is the place!” I told my bees. Those settlers in Utah adopted bees as the symbol of their state and enterprise. “Deseret” they called them. After the word used for bees in the Book of Mormon. Hard work and a make-do spirit wherever you land. I hope my swarm feels the same way.