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~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 363, Oct. 4, 2020~

I did this recently with a hive that had been queen-less for a while, but not so long for it to turn into a laying worker hive. The swarm I wanted to re-queen it with was comparable in population to the population of the queen-less hive. Day #1: We put a sheet of newspaper on top of the queen-less hive. Box with 2 frame swarm on top of paper. We put a cover on top of the upper box. We put several slits in paper.

Day #2: The bees had chewed a couple of holes in the paper. The queen was still laying eggs in the frame in the upper box.

Day #3: The queen was not in the upper box. There were eggs in a frame in the lower box. Then we saw a clump of agitated bees. The queen was at the bottom of the clump, and they were being mean to her. NEAR DISASTER. We put her into a queen cage (the wood kind with screen on one side) and suspended the cage between frames in the lower box. The bees were agitated.

Day #4: There were agitated bees still on the screen of the queen cage. Some beekeeping colleagues concur that when you can easily move the bees off the screen, things are OK.

Day #5: The bees on the screen didn't appear agitated. They were relatively easy to move on. The queen was still alive and active.

Day #6: Same bee behavior from day 6. So, we let the queen out of the cage. She disappeared down between frames without attracting any attention. We probably could have let her out on day 5. If the swarm had been much larger than the queen-less colony, the swarm bees would probably protect her. If you just pinched the queen in the problem hive and add a swarm in order to re-queen, the bees should adapt to the new queen pretty readily. The queen cage probably won't be needed. If I hadn't gone in to inspect on the third day, the bees may have let her be rather than ganging up on her. My inspection, disruption to the colony, may have triggered the bees into attacking the queen. She gets blamed for stuff sometimes. We might have been ahead in the game if we'd have caged her on the second day and checked on the acceptance of the queen-less bees. Queen-less colonies given frames of brood are calmed by pheromones from the brood. It often pushes them into making an emergency queen. It may take a week or two or three. Do have a queen cage handy if you need it when re-queening with a swarm. Do be brave rescuing a queen if you need to. Keep your eyes open and be careful the queen doesn't fly off. Combining a swarm with a queen-less hive is much more difficult to do with a full-on laying worker hive. Our beekeeper colleague says a laying worker hive can be saved by placing a healthy five frame nuc in the middle of the bottom box and populating the rest of the hive with the laying worker hive. The bees in the nuc protect the queen until the rest of the bees in the hive adapt. All that being said, the most cautious approach is to cage the queen for a day or two or three when combining a swarm with a queen-less hive.

Release her when it's obvious the bees like her. A commercial beekeeper might not take the extra time, but then they have more resources at hand, if something goes wrong. (We wouldn't recheck for a week either) Backyard beekeepers can be extra cautious; we have the time and lack the extra resources.

POTUS & FLOTUS WITH COVID?

I am surprised it took this long! Speculation about how the campaign will suffer? Um...Will the whole family go into quarantine?

Your thoughts....?

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 362 October 5, 2018~

Bee of the Month – Agapostemon texanus

Also known as "sweat bees," these bright, medium-sized bees are usually metallic in color and slender bodied. Females are usually completely metallic green, at times with a brown or black abdomen. Males usually are smaller and more slender, and have green heads and thoraces, but yellow and dark striped abdomens. Males also have bicolored antennae swollen hind femurs. These bees are not to be mistaken with Osmia! There are 45 species in North and South America, with 5 species in California. Two species have been found at our garden site, but only A. texanus, also known as the "Ultra Green Sweat Bee," has been found at all of our sites. A. melliventrishas only been found in two garden sites in southern California. Females are generalists and can be found on the sunflower family, Asteraceae. Females most often will nest in the soil in bare, flat ground. Some of the most commonly visited plants include Cosmos, Erigeron, Perovskia, Rosmarinus, and Rudbeckia.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 361 October 5, 2018~

HOLLYWOOD BUZZHollywood is full of rumors, gossip, and incorrect information, and the famous Paramount film Bee Movie is nonetheless a perpetrator of misleading depictions of bees. Take this quick quiz to see if you can identify what Bee Movie got right! (Answers on the bottom of the page)

TRUE OR FALSE?

In the film, Barry B. Benson has a large stinger. This is because male bees are the the only bees with stingers.

In the bee world, the worker bees are homogeneously female, although in Bee Movie they were all male.

Pollen can be used from any flower to pollinate other plant species.

Bees are the only insect pollinators that exist.

A queen can mate with multiple male drones and will have offspring from all of the mates.

Answers to Hollywood Buzz

1. False! Only female bees have stingers. 2. True! Worker bees are solely female and perform the majority of the work for their hive. 3. False! Flowers can only be pollinated by pollen from the same species. 4.False! Flies, wasps, and bees are some of the many kinds of pollinators. However, bees are an incredibly important pollinator. 5. True! All of the female offspring will have a different father, but the male offspring will be full brothers with other males since male drones are the result of unfertilized eggs.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 360 October 5, 2018~

Honeybees build firewalls

No piece of equipment is more frequently used by a beekeeper than a bellows attached to a tin burner, better known as a smoker. When a beekeeper inspects his hive he uses thick puffs of smoke to deter the bees from defending their nest. It is said that smoke calms honeybees. Is this so? What is behind this statement? The localities most often chosen by honeybees in which to construct their nests are hollows in trees. In such forested areas, fires are commonplace and are an integral part of forest ecology. Where there is fire, there is smoke. In response to smoke, bees imbibe honey and retreat into the furthest recess of their nest cavity. The most widely touted reason for this behaviour is that the bees imbibe honey in preparation to abscond or flee should the fire become too much of a threat. But is this true? There are many reasons to consider this with skepticism. Firstly, the gravid queen is unable to fly; without the queen and the brood, most bee colonies would be unable to survive. The presence of smoke disrupts all chemical communication necessary to coordinate swarming and the warning period is too short. There is not a single recorded observation of entire colonies absconding in the face of a fire. But there are countless tales of entire apiaries regularly lost as a result of runaway fires. One could speculate that the consumption of honey by bees increases the volume of their bodies which has the physical-thermal advantage of slowing down the absorption of heat, or that the bee is able to release heat through expending hot honey. This is pure speculation, but both assumptions could be tested experimentally. With certainty and under specific circumstances, bees build firewalls of propolis behind which they can survive fire. Recently this was shown (Tribe et al. 2017) for the South African honeybee race, Apis mellifera capensis. The Cape bee is endemic to the winter rainfall region of South Africa where the fynbos (heathland) vegetation is adapted to fire which is essential for its maintenance and which occurs naturally at intervals of 15 to 25 years. Most vegetation is knee-height and devoid of indigenous trees so most of the honeybee nests are located under rock outcrops, within clefts in rocks or in cliff faces, or directly within the ground. Wild fires in fynbos are fast and hot reaching temperatures of 550°C and lasting barely a few minutes. Unprotected colonies could not survive such intensities. The circumstances of these bees require a remarkable solution to protect them from probable death in the face of runaway fires. They build protective walls of propolis, with an average diameter of 20cm and a thickness of up to several centimetres. These firewalls entirely enclose the nest openings, with entrances to their comb restricted to several small openings within the propolis wall. Behind such walls most of the colonies are able to survive wild fires, another example of the incredible genius which exists in nature.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 359 May 6, 2018~

Here are some stills of the swarm taking over the Dino Hive. We are very excited still about the spectacle we observed. We haven't ever see a swarm arrive! This is a very amazing world we live it. The world of Beekeeping is never boring. There is always something new to see and learn!

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 358 May 6, 2018~

There was also a crack in the foot where the bees could smell the colony that used to live there. They tried to get in that way, too.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 357 May 6, 2018~

Here is the huge swarm finding its way into the crack at the mouth of the dinosaur. It took them a while, and then they were all inside.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 356 May 6, 2018~

The last video shows the cuts Jerry made when were going to open the dino up to make it an inspectable hive. We decided to just keep it as a control colony. We wanted to see how they made it with us not going into the hive. We could compare it to our hives we did open and fiddle with.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 355 May 6, 2018~

This is the monster swarm moving into the dino hive. There was a colony in it for about 4 years. They died out. Now it smells good to new tenants. We didn't get chance to collect a security deposit! Dang!

They took over the old dino hive! They wouldn't have fit into our swarm trap at all! We think that they were scout this for about a week before and they knew right where to come!

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 354 May 6, 2018~

Things keep happening...We must have good bee karma. We came home Wednesday, this week and another swarm of bees zoomed over the house and hung out there like a tornado. They were headed to our beeyard...

They were headed down to the dinosaur statue in our backyard.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 353 May 2, 2018~

Here is the beginning of a new story for the Dino Hive. The original colony lived in there for as long as the Dino had been in our yard. They died out, and now these bees appear to be robbing out the hive. However, my opinion is different from Jerry’s in this video. From what followed soon after he made this video, I believe that they were scouts for another colony looking for a new home. You will see...

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 352 April 21, 2018~

We’ve never had a swarm from bees outside of our own bee yard. The swarms we had came out of the Dinosaur Hive. It threw off two swarms. It stayed very healthy the entire 5 years those bees lived inside. While we were away from home a neighbor called Jerry to tell him that there was a swarm on our street. At first, it was across the street from our house. When we got home, it had moved across the street to a house two doors up from us. It was pretty big and hanging from the branches of a willow tree. Jerry invited the neighbor who called to take the pictures, while he got the swarm. He, our neighbor and the person who lives in that house watched and were dazzled at the way the whole thing worked.

Jerry gave them both a jar of honey when he got the bees in a bee box.

Mischief Managed.

Now these girls live in our backyard!

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 351 April 20, 2018~

This is the feeder that Jerry set up for the Buddhist Bees. They were very eager for food. He set it up for them in an empty box. It was covered to keep robbers from massing in to take all of their food. Only the Buddhist Bees had access to the feeder.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 350 April 20, 2018~

Here are the Buddhist Bees settling into their new home hive. They are filing down into the frames where they find some open space and drawn comb already there. They are primed for drawing comb when they swarm. These girls will also get feeder with syrup to help them get the energy for drawing comb and settling in to their home. It takes a lot of energy to make wax and do the work in the hive. The field bees will have to get out and learn their new home area and find forage and food for the hive.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 349 April 20, 2018~

These are the Buddhist Bees marching into the cardboard box when Jerry put it down next to where they were mounded on the sidewalk.

~Continuing the Life of an Urban Beekeeper Entry 348 April 20, 2018~

April 20, 2018 Jerry got a call from our Alameda County Swarm Hotline from the Berkeley Buddhist Temple...He was just around the corner from there...So he got his hands on small cardboard box and went to the rescue. The bees were on the ground under a sidewalk tree. The branch the swarm gathered on couldn't support the swarm's weight. Jerry put the box on the side walk close to them and the girls all marched into the box. Then he came to pick me up at the YMCA and we drove over to pick up the box. We found a larger cardboard box outside some stores on Durant Avenue and grabbed one. He put the bees, that were now in the box, into the other box we just got, closed it and put my towel from the pool over it, thinking that would keep them in the box until we got home. We got on the freeway to Oakland in about ten minutes, and about 20 bees were in the back window of the car buzzing, "Are we there yet?"

We brought them into the bee yard and fed the box of the Buddhist Bees into a hive with frames of drawn comb. They set to work moving into hive box and down into the frames to settle it.

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