Catch-up of Doom 5: Real Life 2: The bees

[oloriel]

On a happier note, even though it was a long winter, bad spring and weird summer, my bees appear to be thriving. I have two colonies again, one fully-fledged one (grown from the swarm I got last year) and one fledgling one.
They won't give me much honey, due to the long winter, bad spring and the fact that everything flowered at once (= too much for the bees to handle), but they're doing well otherwise. The fully-fledged colony is still in more brood than it should be at this time of year. That makes sense to me, as the seasons are all tardy this year. They have hardly any pollen left so I expect them stop breeding soon, anyway. At any rate, there appear to be very few varroa mites in that colony. There are more (that is, numbers that are unfortunately "normal") in the fledgling, but that's probably my fault because I didn't change the drone frame as regularly as I should have. >_>

And the irrational fear of bees that befell me after Felix' birth appears to be abating at last.


Today I spent over an hour "in the bees" - I had originally meant to do the usual late summer works: Remove excess honey, clean up old frames, treat hive with formic acid against varroa mites. The honey isn't quite ripe yet (that is, it's still containing too much water; you could already use it for mead or baking, but it wouldn't keep as smear-on-your-toast kind of honey), so after going through the whole hive, I decided to leave it for another week. That's a bit of a gamble, I suppose - these bees are doing funny things that aren't in the textbook all the time, so I half expect them to store the honey elsewhere as soon as they stop breeding - but harvesting all the honey just in order to have it ferment wildly would be a waste of time, too.
It is, as I said, not much honey anyway (my estimate, but I am very bad at estimating, would be around 5 kg, which is ridiculous: Even in Bergia you should get about 15 kg in a normal year), barely worth the effort of harvesting, cleaning the centrifuge, putting it to work, then cleaning it again. But it's my first honey in two years, so I'll probably go for it anyway. Maybe I'll do it like the ancients and just cut it out by the comb, I dunno yet.

At any rate, I spent over an hour "in the bees" (direct translation of the German phrase), and I literally was surrounded by bees everywhere - the hive in front of me, the spare box next to me, and of course the bees from the fledgling hive got curious as soon as they caught a whiff of free honey. I worked with smoke, but at some point, the trick stops working: At some point they've all filled their bladders and want to start evacuating. In theory, most of them are actually physically incapable of stinging at that point because of their full honey bladders and because they're in "find new home" mode, so only the bees that act as guards still have functioning stingers - but of course, you can't see which ones are guards and which are mules. Besides, it's all fine and well in theory, but try to tell that to your amygdala when it's taking over because AAAAH ALL THAT HUMMING AND BUZZING YOU'RE GOING TO BE STUNG BY BEEEEEEEES!
I was, of course, wearing a suit and gloves and veil - the fear hasn't abated that much yet - but I managed not to run away, not to drop anything, not to run in circles while hysterically trying to beat down any innocent bees that were resting on me, etc. etc. Which is definitely progress.
I did say very silly things to the bees in my most reasonable voice - Mädels, warum baut ihr auch immer so 'ne Scheiße? Jetzt entspannt euch mal, Mädels, ich räum doch nur auf, gleich habt ihr wieder eure Ruh - but hey, maybe they understand German after all. (They're mixed carnica and Buckfast. On a side note, I keep confusing the two terms! See, you can visually differentiate them because Buckfast bees have a sort of reddish coloration around what would be the butt if they were human. (They're thus lovingly called Rotärsche, red arses, by some beekeepers.) Carnica are brown. But because there's a Quenya word carnë which means "red", I keep being convinced that the carnica must be the red arses. -- In the real world, the name is based on the Austrian state of Carinthia. Wow, up to now, I had no clue that Kärnten is Carinthia in English. That's awesome. Sounds like a fantasy kingdom. BUT I DIGRESS.)

Needless to say, even though I spent an hour moving shit around, removing honeycomb the bees had built in places where it wasn't supposed to be, removing propolis in huge batches because it was sticking EVERYWHERE, all this while being surrounded by hundreds of pissed-off (or maybe confused, I cannot tell from the sounds they make, I NEED A BEE-HUMAN DICTIONARY PLS) bees, and disturbing their peace and quiet on a windy summer day (wind is not your friend when you're "in the bees", as it will alert the bees more swiftly to the fact that oops, hive breach, investigate/defend -- it was calm when I started, then suddenly started to get all breezy until I was done, and now it's totally calm again - I am taking that personally!) - anyway, I did all that, and I wasn't stung once.
(I have been stung by a bee once this year, but that was in France, and the poor critter had erroneously flown into my trouser leg while I was a-walking through a buckwheat field, amused by the fact that the French word for buckwheat is sarrazin. But that's another story for another time.)


I'm not doing quite doing things according to the textbook, I'm too nervous for that yet - but then, my bees aren't sticking to the textbook either. But I'm getting things done again, and that's a good start. And hey, 5 kg of honey (if my guesstimate is correct) are better than nothing.
So, yeah!

Comments

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, are you sure we don't have the same bees?

We've also had a long winter, a bad spring and somewhat weird summer where everything flowered at once. We've harvested 4 supers from 3 hives so far and got about 22kg of honey I think, so we're doing OK and expecting a small September harvest perhaps. But the summer here has been pretty glorious so they're at least healthy now (one of our colonies ran for about 3 months with no queen and it took about 6 attempts to re-queen from another colony before it "took", argh).

Do you use formic acid in summer for varroa, then? We apparently use lactic (or oxalic) in winter and thymol in summer. Interesting to learn about different strategies!

I'm ambivalent about smoke, I have to say. Sometimes it does seem to calm them and I guess if it causes the ladies to get their heads down and out of the way, it reduces injury. But sometimes it just seems to alert them that something is wrong and then they get annoyed sooner. If they're still calm I'd rather avoid the smoke but some people in our beekeeping group will start smoking them anyway. But I am definitely still happiest with veils and gloves! We've had a few people show up to sessions in sandals and our bees seem to have a dislike of feet (I wonder if feet smell like their alarm pheromone or something?) - not a wise idea!

I think our bees have approximately four sounds, "Normal/calm", "Confused", "Disgruntled" and "Annoyed". Fortunately "Annoyed" only really seems to happen when they're queenless and under stress. A month ago they hit "Disgruntled" almost immediately and "Annoyed" soon after but now they're all queened they're so much calmer, it's a dream!

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

So fascinating :D this is a hobby I will for sure never take up but it's so interesting to read about. I also like how you talk to the bees. Makes me feel saner about talking to two rodents that would be flattened with a shovel if a Chilean farmer would see them. ("Na Jungs, gut geschlafen? Warum habt ihr wieder ins Sandbad gekackt?").

I hope, not only for the bees, that the seasons next year are not so whacky.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

See, my bees only filled up half their super! ;_;
EDIT: But I'm relieved that you might be expecting a September harvest, too! Over here, everyone seems to be all "If you don't harvest in August, you can't harvest at all" even in this funky year.

My biggest fear about the fledgling was whether it would be queen-right, because it was such a bad spring. I was convinced that I'd have to return them to the mothership (motherskep, haha), so to say, because when I first checked them after three weeks - no brood. Look back after four weeks - no brood. Went on vacation for a week, came back convinced that they would've died out or started the emergency drone breeding program - but no: suddenly, everything was full of fine worker brood. Probably the poor baby queen just had to wait a while before she could take off on her wedding flight...

There are different strategies here, too, but the one that's officially promoted ATM is using lactic in spring/ with fledgling colonies before there is any brood, formic in late summer/early fall (after harvesting honey) and oxalic in winter. The theory being that lactic is so mild that it wouldn't get through to the brood (where most of the mites would be hiding), but you can spray on a lot of it without harming the bees (so it's fine for use in summer when they're all spread out and all over the place); oxalic wouldn't get through to the brood either, but it's a lot more aggressive so you should use as little as possible, which is more effective when there aren't that many bees anyway and they're all huddled together against the cold. Formic is good for summer use because it reaches the mites that are hiding in the brood, too - as soon as you don't plan on harvesting any more honey (because it would seep into the honey too, of course, and German honey laws are pretty strict). Some older beekeepers also use and recommend thymol, but that can strictly speaking be interpreted as "blending" honey (like, trying to fake thyme honey), so it's not entirely kosher; unlike formic, it also seeps into the wax, so it'll spoil your honey even a year later.
No clue how well the theory holds up to reality! That's just what I've been told.

Yes, sometimes it seems foregoing the smoke is actually easier than using it, because they're all fine and going about their business when I look in! But I don't currently dare to go in entirely without smoke. (In my first two beekeeping years, I often used no smoke at all.)
Who knows? Cats seem to think that feet smell of moggy in heat! Maybe to bees, they smell of alaaaaarm!

I haven't reached the point yet where I can differentiate between different sounds. To me, it all sounds like "slightly disgruntled". >_>

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I used to talk that way to my guinea-pigs, too, whereas the cats get proper baby talk. (That's what they get for meowing on the same frequency as "hungry human baby", I guess!)

Yeah, me too! Cold winter is fine with me, but it should end with a proper spring, not some sort of dragged-out February that lasts until June!

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating.I'm glad you didn't get stung. There is a bee camera in Bavaria on the Explore.org site

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I would've survived a sting, no doubt. But of course it's better for my only-just-returning confidence that it didn't happen! ^^

Wow, that is fascinating! The honeycomb cave-in was terrifying. O.ó

[sermanya.livejournal.com]

honey :)
bees are nice folks, but i am allergic (in a foot swells and doubles its size in no time kind of way - but not life-threatening serious) and i think would go completely crazy if too many of them were humming around me...........

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I can understand that all too well! I'm not even allergic (yet :P), but there were times when a bee that innocently landed on my hand, or too many bees buzzing in a potentially threatening way, would make me toss away my tools or the entire frame. (Which is a stupid thing to do, of course, because that'll give them a reason to be pissed off... but alas, panic and reason rarely go together!) Bad in a beekeeper! I'm very relieved that I'm now feeling a bit more comfortable around them, even if I don't yet dare to go back to my i-need-no-veil-or-gloves beginnings. >_>

[(Anonymous)]

My grandpa used to go in the bees without anything and I truely admired that. (standing nearby - keeping just enough distance to be able to see EVERYTHING ;) )

I didn't know that there are different sorts of bees though. Learned something new - thank you :)