Spring Honey Harvest

The scent of honey emanating from our two hives has been pretty overwhelming for the last several months. Almost every time we go outside the fragrance of a sweet, slightly salty aroma wafts our way. This enchanting tang is most prevalent in the afternoon when the pacific ocean breezes start to move northward through the canyon. Speaking of canyons, aren't these pictures of two fused combs amazing!

Generally early Spring is a good time to harvest honey because the nectar flow has started and the bees will be able to restock whatever we take easily. The challenge this year was that the top boxes weren't just honey but a mix of brood (baby bees) and honey. In "normal" situations the bees keep their brood nests down below and use the upper boxes for honey. Thus, instead of taking the entire top box off we only took a few frames so as not to disturb their slumbering babes too much. Here's a photo of some crazy comb that was built across two frames. The image I am showing you has empty cells with capped honey cells, but deep within and on the other side it is all capped. I photographed this side because it was much more interesting visually with all the undulating levels. The perfectly capped comb is pretty boring, thus no photos of those.

This seasons crop is dark with rich notes of caramel. I am not entirely clear what imparted that imprint since what has been blooming in our woodland for the last six months has a more camphorous character. The rich, molasses type note might be from our California native everlasting, Pseudognaphalium californicum, although it hasn't bloomed in the woodland since last Spring.

Each frame of completely capped cells contains about 1 gallon of honey. A honey bee gathers nectar from two million flowers for one pound of honey! Although I haven't actually measured the amount of wax from one of those frames will likely be in the ballpark of 5% of the yield. It's pretty amazing to think that such a small amount of beeswax is used to hold so much honey! We are told that the average worker bee makes 1/12th of a tspn of honey in her lifetime. Eight to ten pounds of honey will yield approximately one pound of wax.

Pretty staggering numbers, imagine if humans were that focused!

The Hive Report

The work on the garage roof and repair of the north retaining wall are done, thus we moved the two hives back. Moving hives is a messy matter and I don't advise it, unless there is no other choice. The bees take a huge hit, resulting in large losses of forage bees and massive hit to the hive as a whole. I'm super happy that they are back in place and can resume their bee-siness without further interruptions.

Just before moving them I did an inspection of the top two boxes on each hive. Both hives had sealed up all the spaces between the boxes, thus removing one box off the other was quite a challenge. During the work on the house our hive tool disappeared, thus I had to use a painting spatula instead, which didn't work so well.

The gals make a paste from tree resin which is called propolis. This paste acts as a sealant to prevent unwanted guests, reduce vibration and increase the stability of the hive body. I normally slide my  hive tool, or in this case the spatula, between the boxes on all four sides to "un-glue" them. Sometimes however, if we haven't done an inspection in a long time, the girls will adhere the interior frames to the hive top. Sigh, this is when things get messy. Such was the case and why I was particularly disappointed I didn't have the trusty hive tool. In either case, I scraped off quite a bit of propolis and have that now "alchemizing" in some organic grain alcohol for future use. The smell is a combination of resin, wood and honey with a strong spice note. The aroma has similar notes to the perfume To Bee.

The Warrior Girls, who arent' quite so fierce anymore, had empty frames in both top boxes. This was very odd and warrant a much bigger inspection in about a month once they have settled in. The other hive, with the Mische Girls, was a completely different scenario, although these gals were not as established as the Warrior Girls they have been jamming and have a top box of honey frames. Weeee! We saw no brood in that box what-so-ever and thus for the moment are suspecting that this box is their honey stores. Since we didn't do a full on inspection and thus do not know exactly how much honey they have stored up, we only stole one frame from them.

This is the derth part of the year for them, thus we mustn't take too much honey or they will not have enough to sustain the hive until January when Spring arrives here in LA. When the bees gather nectar from the plants they store it in the cells of the honey comb, when it is ready the seal the cell of honey with a layer of wax. Thus each cell in a honey comb serves as a jar with a cap.

After crushing and filtering that one frame we ended up with a 1 gallon of our very own chaparral woodland honey. This was a first for us and we are pretty thrilled.

Greg took the photos of me in the bee suit, these are of the hives back in their original location. Notice the California oaks to the right of me, those are the ones we saved which inspired the fragrance Q.

Photo of honey comb and honey jar ©Roxana Villa, ask before using, thank you.

The Hive Report

"There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true,
do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know.
The keeping of bees, for instance."
~ Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday afternoon, just after "flight school" time for the bees, we assembled all our gear and added one medium super to each of the hives. Before doing so we checked the level of each and made some subtle adjustments. The ideal is to have each hive tilting ever so slightly forward.


To the smoker we used a mix of burlap and dried plant including white sage leaves, which by the way smelled wonderful intermingling with eau de bee.

Pictured above in the background are the two new medium supers, in the foreground the Warrior Bee's hive.

The girls now each have a new top floor added to their abodes. The hive I call the Warrior Bees (although they are quite docile now) has six medium supers while the Mische Bees have one deep on the bottom and two mediums.

Photos ©Roxana Villa

Adventures in BeeVille

On Saturday afternoon, March 12th two members of my bee club came by the house to assist me in doing a hive inspection on the new warrior girls, the Red Barn Bees. The two gracious bee'ks were Roberta and Ceebs.

I had been at a High School tea prior to the meet up and arrived home a few minuted late to find both of Roberta and Ceebs standing next to the hive filming the girls. To my surprise neither of them were suited up or being attacked. Cool, I thought, perhaps these warrior bees aren't quite the fierce as I thought. Of all the video footage that was shot this one below is my favorite. Witness my girls flying backwards, as in Backwards Beekeeper, trying to pull out string from their hive.



I quickly suited up and got all the equipment together for Roberta and I started the inspection while Ceebs looked on. We began by gently smoking the hive entrance. Currently this hive is three boxes tall. We removed the top, added a little smoke and observed lots of bees but no new drawn comb as of yet. That box, called a "super", was placed on the ground next to us while we looked into the second box. Again, lots and lots of very busy bees. Roberta started lifting the second super when we noticed the bees begin to get agitated. I noticed that this had been brought on by string pulling up a frame in the first box. Angry buzzing arose, I got stung on the ankle by bees walking on the ground while Roberta was stung through her gloves.

We choose to stop the inspection since the bees had assumed warrior mode. Comically, after swiftly putting everything back in place, the bees decided to chase us. Since we had our suits on it was more just an annoyance than anything else, although upwards of an hour later the girls continued to harass and head butt us. Kidding!

A few lessons were learned here:

1. Make sure to tape the bottom of your pants off or use spats that inhibit the bees access to your legs.
2. Always remove the stinger from the sting site as soon as possible. Normally I do this and my stings result with minimal discomfort. This time I did not and my ankle swelled up so much I couldn't wear normal shoes for about five days.
3. These warrior bees don't like people messing in anyway with their home. Thus, these bees will either be completely left alone or we might split the hive with the intention of breeding a slightly gentler race. I would rather not split them, as I am rather found of their ferocious nature and assume they will fight off local robber bees quite easily.
   

Meanwhile, Eve and I have been going through a huge box of her drawings from when she was a child. Sifting through what to keep and what to discard. It's been quite a fun journey. Childrens imagery is so very special. As we burrowed through the pile, Eve unearthed a piece exclaiming, "Mom, look at this, just for you!" Ah, how sweet, it was a honey bee. Although she hadn't drawn this one, I still love it very much, especially her signature with extra horizontal lines for the E in her name.

Image: Honey Bee by Eve Neuhart

Red Barn Bee Rescue

On Thursday, February 24th, Sherri in Woodland Hills called the Backwards Beekeepers hotline about a hive she had in her garage roof. Since this was in my neck of the woods I called Sherri and went over to inspect the situation.


The bees were located in the corner of an old wooden garage/barn, which was approximately 14 feet in the air. We assumed the bees had made their hive under the boards. The job looked a bit out of my range so I asked, Maurice, one of the master mentors in the bee club to help out. Once Maurice had gotten the A-OK from the property owners we were ready to get the job done.

The Backwards Beekeeping team consisted of Kristi, Meghan, myself and our leader Maurice. Our mission: to cut out the combs, place them into a hive box and transport them to my home.

We were set to meet at the location on Monday at 10am. Meghan and I arrived on the scene first. As we walked around the garage Meghan pointed out that it appeared that there were two different hives. One at the corner as we had thought, with a second about five feet away. Shortly Maurice arrived on the scene and confirmed that he also suspected it was two hives.

The first task was to staple and tie string on each of the frames to hold the comb as it was cut out and get the site ready. As Meghan and Kristi diligently worked the frames, I cleared brush and Maurice set up the ladders and all his gear.

Kristi and Meghan preparing the frames with lightweight string to hold the cut comb.

The masters tools.

The master with his tools.

The "Bee Vac" set up.

Once everything was in place, all our suits were buttoned, velcro'd and taped, Maurice smoked
the bees. After waiting five minutes he began sawing and removing the boards revealing undulating rows of comb in different shades. Next, Maurice very gently began vacuuming up the large amounts of bees while we looked on in awe as massive amounts of bees bombarded the air space creating a very palatable frenzied energetic.

Maurice gently vacuuming up the bees

The next phase was the task of cutting the comb out, studying it and determining where it would go. The brood comb was handed to me which I them handed to Kristi who would cut and place it into the frames. Honey comb went into a bucket which Maurice had conveniently placed just under him. Comb with drone cells were tossed while other pieces were placed off to the side with use to be determined later.

That's me in the foreground left corner with me new Bee suit.

Maurice inspecting the comb before either tossing or handing it down.

Kristi attaching cut comb to the frames. As you can see "duck tape" is a beekeepers best friend.

All this was taking place as bees attacked us from all angles and their agitated buzzing penetrating the core of our nervous systems. I've never been so happy to have my new bee suit. Later Maurice said that these were the meanest bees he'd ever encountered. Regrettably since our gloved hands covered with honey we were not able to take photos of the last segment of the process.

When all the comb had been cutout and placed into frames Maurice brought over the box with all the bees. Through the screened wire we sprayed the them with sugar water and then poured them into one of the hive boxes. To our amazement there were tens of thousands of honey bees, way too many for one box. Thus some were scooped out and placed into the second box. Eventually the second box was secured on the first, the top board put in place with two black straps wrapping around each side of the boxes.

The base board had already been secured to the first hive box with screen covering the opening. Meanwhile the large white bucket of honey was divided amongst us. It took quite a long time to clean everything and depart. Maurice, as the incredible mentor that he is, followed me to my home just five minutes away to give pointers on where to put the hive.

Although I have assisted with three cutouts nothing compares to the magnitude of this one. These bees are mean, highly productive feral bees, which indicates they will have no problem with the local robber bees and likely survive anything that comes there way. It's taken us one year and eight different hives to finally get to this point. The lesson, persevere!

"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
~ Japanese Proverb

The following day Maurice returned with Kristi to cutout the second hive. Kristi will give you a full account of that in Red Barn Bee Rescue, Part 2, stay tuned.

I am really grateful for the existence and help supplied by the members of the Backwards Beekeepers. Maurice is passionate about the bees, professional, calm and contains a bounty of wisdom. He is an awesome mentor, I recommend everyone to help him out with a cutout and learn from one of the masters.

Photos by Kristi Daggett, Meghan Wall Murphy and Roxana Villa.

The Hive Report

After returning from the San Diego Comic Con we decided to conduct a hive inspection. Our hope was that the bees would have multiplied considerably and we would be adding a third box to the existing two boxes.


To our dismay the hive seemed to have shrunk considerably, no new comb and very little brood. Thus, with a sigh, we removed the empty frames from the lower box and gently placed the full frames in the top box back to the original lower box. After doing so we pondered what the problem might be...could it be the queen? If so, what do we do? The idea of having to kill our queen and replace her with a new queen seemed a little harsh. So we decided that we would add a queenless hive to the existing hive to see if that might get the "Birdhouse Bees" into a more productive framework.

In the meantime our Birdhouse Bees we attacked several times by large, dark "Robber" bees. Robber bees are honey bees from another hive looking to steal honey. We had noticed this happening to our hive on a regular basis since we set the girls up. What we didn't realize was that our hive had gotten so weak that they were on the verge of ruin.

Sure enough, Thursday another attack ensued. We put small cedar wood blocks in front of the entrance leaving only a small hole so that our girls could defend themselves easier. We also placed a damp clothe on the hanging from the top of the hive and down the front. I don't know why we were told this would help, we did it anyway. Greg even stood out there with a hose giving the big ugly robber bees a good wetting. Alas, nothing seemed to help. Through the afternoon, evening and next morning huge amounts of bees descended on our hive. By Friday afternoon all was quiet. Thus we did another hive inspection. To our dismay, our entire colony had been killed, raped and all honey stores were emptied. The photo below was taken one week before the attack, the honey stores are in the upper quadrant, capped with a white layer of wax. When the robber bees finally got in they opened up all the honey stores and emptied them, not even one little drop left.


This has all been a bit traumatic for us, we were told that the ants were the big problem, not other bees! In hindsight we should have replaced our queen, the colony is only as strong as its queen. Thus, we are cleaning everything up and getting the frames and boxes ready for another set...probably two new hives. With two, the loss of one isn't quite as depressing...at least according to other bee keepers.


Photo above is how we found our hive after the attackers had left, the corpse of our girls were strewn about with golden beeswax from the opened honey stores lettered everywhere. Anyway, today is National Honey Bee Day! I'm intending you will vow to avoid pesticides today and forever, support the Organic food movement and your local beekeeper. Remember, as my bee mentor says, BACKWARDs is the new FORWARDs!

Just found this on my the backwards Beekeepers site, seems I am not the only one plagued with Robber bees....

The Hive Report

Yesterday we did our weekly hive check, eventually these will become less frequent. At the moment we are still in massive learning mode so we are eager to expand our vision, see what's happening and garner new insights. Off course there is that "not knowing what you don't know factor", which is always a drag.


We saw her highness the Queen, pictured below with her assistance and a couple drones. The drones are the large bees you see, they have large eyes specifically geared for locating the Queen during mating runs. At this point they serve no purpose, unless something happens to the current Queen.

On Facebook there was some discussion that the Queen should have a name. Some of the names mentioned were Beatrice and Beelinda, I personally like Elizabeth. What do you think we should call her?


A Queen bee can lay upwards of two thousand eggs per day! Our Queenie appeared very productive when we saw her yesterday, Greg managed to get photos of her laying eggs. Look closely and you will see the little white egg emerging from behind her.


This photo above shows comb with capped honey above and brood cells in varying degrees. There is white larvae in some of them while others have already been capped. My daughter Eve is rather disgusted by the bee larvae while Greg and I see them as the future of a big healthy hive.

The image below shows some of the bee cells, we are concerned that the large peanut shaped one down toward the bottom might be a Queen cell. If it is, the second Queen is born than the two Queens would fight or one of them would leave the hive with half the colony
.