A Ridiculously Busy Day Part 2: The Swarm

So after doing that roof cutout it was off to work. Around 6:45 I noticed my phone vibrating, followed by a single buzz that means the caller left a voicemail. I work in a restaurant right now while going to school, so that means no personal calls. Things finally slowed down around 7:30 and I went to the bathroom to check the voicemail. Turns out that it was the Broward association's president giving me a call to let me know that a lady in my local area had called to see about having a swarm removed! I was excited to give her a call, but wasn't sure if I'd make it in time since I still had another hour and a half on my shift. Fortunately things were extremely slow and I was told to clock out early around 7:45.

I quickly gave the homeowner a call from the parking lot. No one had called her back about it, other than professionals who wanted to charge $400 for the job. Pretty expensive for a simple retrieval. She confirmed that it wasn't a cutout, and they were still there! I wrote down her address and rushed home! Only stopping to pick up a headlamp from the store.

Upon arriving home I ran up to the garage, rolled the door up, and quickly tossed everything I could think of into the car. I'd never done a swarm retrieval before, and definitely had never done a cutout or retrieval on my own! Jacket, smoker, matches, nuc box, hive tool, gloves, and ryoba saw.

A bit about the ryoba saw. It's a Japanese style saw, bought at Home Depot, which works on the "pull" stroke of the sawing motion. American style saws generally work on the "push" stroke. This made a huge difference when I got to the property. One side is fine toothed for cutting across the grain, and the other side has larger teeth for "ripping" with the grain.

Back to the story! I arrived at the home, which ended up being only two major streets away (1 mile maybe). I pulled into the drive way and met the homeowner. I asked, "Where are they bees?", and she told me to look up. Sure enough, almost right above my head was a large, softball sized bundle of bees!

The only thing was that they were higher up than the homeowner's ladder, doh! She called her son out and he pulled his pickup truck into position under the tree. We then set the ladder up in the bed of the truck. It was a bit risky due to the plastic liner in the bed of the truck, but we used some bungee chord to secure the legs to the bed. After that I told the homeowner (who was allergic) that she should probably go inside, at least until I got the tree limb taken down. That way she'd be safe if the branch fell for any reason, resulting in a cloud of bees.

Getting up to the top of the ladder it was pretty obvious that this was going to be an awkward branch removal. I had to twist at the waist and lean forward to get a good grip on the branch, resulting in practically no leverage. However, the ryoku saw was exactly what this situation required. With just the weight of the saw and a few fingers on the handle, it quickly sawed through the branch... but it was longer than I could initially see! The whole branch swung down like a pendulum from my hand!

I couldn't see right away where the bees had went, but I also didn't see any flying around in the air... so that was a good sign at least. By then the homeowner had come outside to check out the progress. I asked if she saw where the bees went, and she pointed to my elbow and said look down. Sure enough, there they were, still clustered upon the branch with the nearest bees just inches from my elbow! Phew! I quickly trimmed the twigs off the branch and came down off the ladder. Next step was to trim the limb even further so that only the 3 foot section with the bees remained. That would make it quite a bit easier to manipulate while searching for the queen.

I rotated the limb and brought the top half of the branch (where the bees were) down to the ground. This left the other end resting on the tire. That was a quick five minutes of sawing, leaving the bees sitting comfy on a few feet of branch with no leaves or twigs.

For the next thirty minutes I combed through the swarm, parting the bees with my gloved fingers. The mass of bees was at least seven bees thick from exterior to the bee holding on to the bark itself. It was slow going. But the key with bees is to work slowly, methodically, and with only gentle pressure. Finally after twenty five minutes there was a flash of solid orange in the mass of bees! I tried to clip her, but she slipped out escaped back into the swarm cluster. It took five minutes to find her again, but finally I was able to clip her! Here is her abdomen in the above picture (left side of the bottom "window" of the clip.

After that, it was merely a matter of putting the clip in the nuc box and shaking the bees off the branch into the box. Immediately they could detect the queen was in the box and they all stayed put, even without having sprayed them with sugar syrup to inhibit flight (forgot to bring that, oops). I gave them 15mins to fan out the smell of the queen, and for strays to rejoin the swarm in the box.

All in all, minus the awkwardly positioned ladder for cutting down the branch, things couldn't have gone any better! These bees were also extremely docile. So I'm very glad to have them and will be keeping them in my backyard, on the patio, for a bit. That will let them build up strength, and get their brood comb constructed since I don't have any established wax comb for them to use. That way they don't have to worry about hive beetles maturing in the dirt and then flying up to the hive. They're a small swarm so they need ever advantage I can give them to begin with. They'll be on poured concrete with partial shade as well, which is the best environment they can have for starting absolutely fresh.

Here's the nuc box all set up with the feeder I picked up at South Florida Bee Supplies. It took another hour to get them situated and to put all my equipment away. I was so beat after a very busy 16 hour day. It wasn't until midnight that I actually got in bed. However, there's nothing like going to bed feeling accomplished and productive!

Coming next: Update on the captured swarm

A Ridiculously Busy Day Part 1: The Cut Out

There's been so much going on the last few days that I'm going to have to do this in two parts. I don't think anyone wants to read a book in one sitting haha. Thursday started at 8:30 with an hour drive to Loxahatchee (near Palm Beach Gardens) to help with a cut-out and possibly take home a feral swarm of bees. Followed by that was another hour drive back to go straight to work at 5pm. Then while at work I received an unexpected phone call about a local lady who called the Broward Association to report a swarm of bees in her tree. That was from 8pm until 11pm. What a day!

The Cut Out

The location for the cutout was West Loxahatchee, a very rural area by South Florida standards. The property had been foreclosed on a while back and was being attended by a management company. A few days prior, one of the lawn men had been riding a mower and come across a football sized clump of bees on the lawn. He called it in to the property management company and they called it in to Brendan, a fellow Palm Beach Beek Assoc. member and redditor (/u/brendhan), who in turn called Mike to assign to the job to. That clump on the lawn was a swarm, which we will soon find out happened to be very significant to these bees.

I woke up at 8am, took Ren (my Japanese Kai Ken pup) out to do her business, packed my stuff in the car, and set off for the hour drive to Loxahatchee. I was all set to go with my jacket, smoker, queen clip + nuc box, and giant thermos of ice water! Mike sounded like a real experienced, relaxed, fast-is-slow-and-slow-is-steady kind of guy, and had me looking forward to a very educational experience.

The traffic was a bit more than expected, so Mike had already found the entrance to the hive and set up the ladders by the time I arrived. After doing a once-through of the house, listening to the walls for buzzing, feeling the walls for hotspots, we concluded that the bees were concentrated in the eaves of the house. So back outside we went. We suited up, smoked the entrance a bit, and started working the board on the edge of the house/roof. This single board ran the entire length of the house so we ended up having to dig out the nails with hammer and mini-crowbar, eventually cutting the board down at about 10ft in length. There were a LOT of bees, which ended up being another strange thing. The hive itself was split up into three parts as well due to wooden support boards for the roof. If you look at the picture right above this you'll see the yellow comb, preceded by a bunch of bees. The area with bees is one section, then there's a board, then there's the honeycomb. Before the bees is another section of honey/brood comb (it was weird).

We began by cutting out honeycomb with a small paring knife, and got our first sign that something was wrong with these bees. Now normally beetles don't give me that skin crawling reaction like when there's a ton of scavenger insects (ants, bunches of roaches, etc). In this case however... there were just soooo many beetles it was truly disgusting. In this picture you can actually see a dead one that has drowned in the unfinished honey. They're small, scurry quickly to get away from the light, and have a parasitic relationship with honeybees. In short, they're pests. In a healthy hive, especially a feral one, the guard bees will corral beetles into cracks in the hive walls. Once corralled, the bees will actually imprison them by sealing over the cracks with propolis. Or, in the case of screened bottom boards for human-kept hives, the bees will shove the beetles out through the screening. These bees were not managing the beetles whatsoever, and on every comb we took out there were dozens of these little fiends. I truly felt bad for these poor bees.

A quick detour from the play-by-play... I was scanning bees for mites with every panel of comb that we took out. However, there was only a single varroa mite that was apparent with at least five thousand bees scanned over the entirety of the wax taken out. Mike and I talked about what options there were for the hive, and decided that even if the comb wasn't salvageable that he would take the bees to combine with another recovered feral hive that was low in numbers. The bees were incredibly good natured. Even with the sawing of the boards covering the hive, cutting out the comb, scooping up bees in a large Taco Bell cup, and all the chaos we were causing, neither of us were stung. The only stings received were on my gloves when manually scooping them up and being too rough. There were a few workers hatching out while taking out the comb so we gave them some time before dumping the comb in bins. The above picture is a baby bee who is covered in downy white baby bee fur, even on their head!

Like I said, very gentle bees!

Anyhow, back to the action. After cutting out the far right sections of honeycomb, we moved on to the central panels. These panels were very dark brown in color,  meaning it was very old brood comb which had birthed many a bee. But... there was honey throughout all of the brood comb. A normal comb of brood should have an outer "band" of honey, with a band of "bee bread" next, followed by a central area of brood (eggs + larvae + capped brood, or at least larvae + capped brood) with a solid laying pattern. These panels looked like someone had a shotgun loaded with shells of capped brood and loaded the brood on with it. The terminology used is a shotgun pattern of brood. Maybe 10% of the panel was brood, the rest was unfinished honey crawling with beetles. Gross.

We set up a single frame of recovered brood cell, rubber banding it in place on the frame, but then decided at that point it was a lost cause. There were no eggs whatsoever, no larvae anywhere, and a huge Charlie Foxtrot of Small Hive Beetles on every single piece of comb. The swarm of bees found by the landscaper filled out the rest of the story. There was something wrong with this hive. The queen was either sick, injured, reaching the end of her fertility, or something along those lines, and for some reason had decided to swarm. She must not have been laying in the time leading up to the swarming. The remaining bees were left without any eggs that were able to be raised into queens except for one. We found a single queen cell that was their sole hope for survival. If that queen failed to develop then the hive would die.

Even if the queen did hatch, there was such an infestation of hive beetles that the comb would be reduced to a slimy, writhing mass of hive beetle larvae. Since bees only live for a few weeks and the current workers were mostly older bees with barely any new workers on the way, there wouldn't have been time for the queen to go on her maiden flight, abscond to find a new location, build new comb, and then finally lay eggs to start getting new workers on the way. This hive was a total loss. Time to rescue as many bees as possible!

 I don't know if I already mentioned this, but these bees were incredibly nice! I almost can't get over how nice these bees were. I know that if I did as much damage to my Italian-Carniolans as I did to this feral hive that I would absolutely be getting stung. This was the equivalent of putting an old generator on top of a Langstroth box, turning it on, and then roughly pulling out frames. I wanted to do whatever we could to help the girls. These bees buzzed my veil a bit, but nowhere near what I was expecting. They were also desperate for a queen. Mike had housed a queen in his queen clip two days prior (now empty), and the second we started scooping bees into the nuc box (with clip at the bottom) they decided that it was home. Mike handed a large Taco Bell cup up to me and I literally just scooped up cups worth of bees, then handed them down to him to shake into the nuc box. The picture above is the nuc box entrance with the bees fanning their chemical signal into the air to notify airborne bees that the swarm was located at the signal's origin. They knew they were without a queen, low in numbers, and just wanted to get by.

Mike pulled out the bee vacuum after about four cups of bees. This is basically a shop vac connected to a sealed wooden chamber, that contains a smaller "package" box within it to hold the bees, with another length of vacuum tubing extending from the box. We sucked up the rest of the bees and gave them another 15mins. That way the airborne stragglers could find their way to the nuc box.

With that taken care of, the job was pretty much complete. I had to get to work in an hour and a half, so it was time to hit the road. I helped Mike pack up and moved gear back to his truck. Unfortunately there would be no feral colony to bring home, but I learned an incredible amount from doing this cut-out. Mike put all my uncertainties at ease, was very thorough, explaining everything he was doing along the way, and being patient with my mistakes while telling stories or cracking jokes the entire time. There was just one thing left to do...

Eat some honey! There was only a 3"x 2" strip of capped honey, but it split perfectly into a bite for each of us. Maybe it's just fanciful thinking, but it felt like a "thank you" from the bees.

Updates Will Come

So the last two days have been absolute insanity. SO BEESY! The whole first half of the day was just relaxing to maintain sanity, mostly watching a new swarm that I captured come and go from their nuc box on the patio. Followed by my third day at a new job, and now I need to drive up to Central Florida for this weekend's Nihon Ken forum (Japanese dogs) meetup. I have the first part of the update partially written, but I need to get on the road so that I can arrive before 2am (meetup is @ 8am). Once I get there I'll finish up and post before going to bed. LOTS of great photographs from cutting out a hive from a house, the swarm I collected on my own at 8:30pm, and of Winterfell + the new feral hive (Khaleesi/Dothraki, not sure on the exact name just yet) from today. These updates will be followed by a review of Bee Healthy Honey Farms who supplied my Italian-Carniolan hive, as well as South Florida Bee Supplies whom I picked up new Deeps for both hives plus other supplies. If you're in Florida and looking for a local state supplier of woodenware then you'll be interested in hearing about them.

Today Was A Good Day

Today was a really, really good day. I was notified that my petition to have several core college courses' 3rd Attempt Fee waived was approved! Tuition is now $210 for 5 courses + lab at PBSC instead of $4k with 3rd Attempt being charged at Out Of State cost. I also got in touch with Brendan, of Palm Beach Beekeeper's Assoc., and it turns out there is a cut-out to do tomorrow early in the morning! Perfect! I don't work until 5pm so the timing couldn't be better. Except... I forgot I didn't have an extra top cover and bottom board to create a full hive body from my extra Deep. Gah!

Not to worry though. South Florida Bee Supplies just recently opened up in Miami. So in preparation for tomorrow's possible colony of feral bees I drove down and picked up a telescoping cover, screened bottom board, feeder, and queen clip. In addition, since it's an hour drive each way, I also picked up two Deep boxes. One for expansion of Winterfell (Italian-Carniolans), and the other for expansion of the feral hive. I probly could have waited, but at Winterfell's current rate of expansion they're going to be needing a second Deep very shortly (they drew out half a frame in 4 days!).

Expect a review tomorrow, or Friday, about South Florida Bee Supplies and their equipment! As well as the cut-out. That should be a fun write-up if I'm not swollen from angry bees. As usual, detailed photos will be included for the review, and the cut-out too (if things go "ok"). Tomorrow's bee removal is at 9am, So unfortunately I won't have enough time to do that tonight.

As for the bees, they are happily going about their business and chugging sugar syrup. I'd say a good 1/2 inch of syrup had been drained from the mason jar, so that's good to see. No leakage in sight, no sugar stains, and a much lower population of ants around the hive, with only a few scouting the plywood "table".

And with all that said, I'm going to chug a bottle of water and get some sleep. I'll need it to avoid death by angry bees tomorrow!

Keep Calm And Carry On

Yesterday, I couldn't get out to check on how the bees were doing with the temporary zip lock feeder under the outer cover. Mainly because the picture above is what it looked like from 3pm and onwards. There are definitely down sides to having outdoor hobbies in Florida.

It may sound strange to anyone who doesn't keep bees, but I was worried about them! Primarily, I was worried that the occasional fire ant roaming the outside of the hive would detect the spilled syrup and call in reinforcements. I was also worried that a strong wind might blow the hive box off the bottom board. It's a brand new box with only the bare wood for friction, as I left the inner edges of the Deep unpainted, and the bees haven't had enough time to glue it with propolis. I'm invested in them with more than just money. It feels good to help them succeed and to see them thriving, and it would feel equally bad to have been the cause of failure. It's not a mechanical honey factory. It's a partnership, much like falconry. The bees could survive without me, I could survive without them, but we both benefit from the relationship.

Today, on the other hand, had great weather! The sun was shining bright all day, partly clouded, and around 85 for the afternoon. I woke up too late to get any beekeeping errands done before work, but with plenty of time to at least check in on the bees. Even with the great weather there was still some lingering uneasiness about last night's storm and the potential fire ant + syrup pool issue. Pulling into the bee yard I could see the hive lid shining bright. A breath of relief as one worry was scratched off the list. I high-stepped through the weeds, lifted the top cover and...

There were the bees, happily slurping away at what little syrup remained in the bag, and even scouring the sugar stained wood for whatever bits of sugar had recrystallized. Phew! I should have known they could handle themselves. Bees have never "needed" people in their millions of years of existence and certainly know how to keep their hive safe. Today I learned that I should worry less and trust my honeybees. Keep calm and carry on, to use the extremely overused meme. 

As a side note, my little brother came with me to see what honeybees are all about! I bought some mosquito netting to use as a backup veil, so I just tossed that over my bush hat and threw on my gloves. My little brother got armored up in my veiled jacket (that was his condition for coming along haha). He asked all sorts of questions on the way there, while inspecting the hive, and on the way home which was pretty neat. I think he'll get hooked once he tastes some honeycomb. He's always had a sweet tooth and in the future I'd be happy to do a split to get him started.

Upon inspecting the hive it's apparent just how busy the girls have been. I'm going to reference the frames based upon numbering from the left, so the left most frame is 1 and, naturally, the far right is 10. When they were still in their nuc there were 4 frames of brood and 3/4 of a frame of honey, with only one corner of the honey frame being capped. Today upon inspection there was still 4 frames of brood, the difference being that a good portion of the previous capped brood had hatched (is that the right word?) and there were bands of eggs further out from the center. Roughly 1/2 of the previous band of bee bread was now eggs, and the a good portion of the brood frame honey has been capped.

The honey frame (4) that used to only have one corner of capped honey was now super heavy with honey and had a huge area of capped honey. And not just that, but the next door frame (3) had one full side of developing comb filled with honey! In three days they had half drawn a side of frame with comb and filled it with honey. Busy is an understatement! Those random capped cells seem to be drone cells, but I'm not 100% on that.

The one strange thing was that it was the left side of frame 3, the side furthest from frame 4. While the right side of frame 3, closest to the fully honey'd frame 4, had some really wonky comb being drawn. It's like the bees decided that whoever drew up the plans on the right side was an idiot and collectively went to the other side to build. Silly bees! I decided to scrape off the weird comb so they could start fresh.

All in all, as far as I can tell, the hive is doing great. The bees are happy and unstressed as long as I don't keep the hive open for an excessive amount of time. I learned they start to buzz very distinctively when stressed out. I heard the buzz when the empty nuc was fogged out to get the handful of remaining bees out, and heard it again today when I was a bit rough with replacing the second to last populated frame while inspecting. It's a high pitched "something troublesome is going on with the hive" type of buzz. To reinforce this, a guard bee flew over and was loudly buzzing around my face and chest. No actual bumping from the guard or stinging though, and after about 30 seconds she moved back towards the hive entrance.

I also ended up buying a whole case of mason jars... because Publix and Walmart were both out of lids. It would've only been $4 less, so that's not really a big deal. The extra jars will just get used for honey or feeding future hives. A hammer, a tiny nail used for frame construction, a few taps, and presto! A new, non-leaky jar for the entrance feeder! Standard "Dixie" sugar was used for this syrup. All I had on hand was natural sugar for the previous syrups, hence the honey color. The top box feeder is still under construction and I'll do a write-up about it later in the week.

One thing that is a legitimate concern though. If you look at the picture of the hive body you'll notice a black dot on the left side of the bottom board. That's a hive beetle, and he quickly got crushed. It's nice to have an association bee yard for members to use, but I had some thoughts that it'd be a potential breeding ground for pests if it wasn't done right. I figure if someone isn't being responsible with their hive then it could spread problems to nearby hives. Unfortunately, it turns out I was right. My bees are about 4 feet away from the next pallet over which has 4 hives on it, 2 on each side and forming a square. Both hives on the East side seem strong and always have plenty of bees around the fully open entrance, and both hives on the West are dead. I suspected as much last week, but now know for certain that they are. Neither have real covers, they're just political campaign signs thrown over top with bricks to weigh them down. I lifted the sign of the closest hive just a bit to see if I could hear any buzzing, instead I got a crapton of hive beetles and a peek of a very dead hive. Zero bees at the entrance, not even robbers, for the entirety of all visits to the bee yard. Not only that, but afterwards the little buggers were now flying out and over to my hive to try to get in via the exposed inner cover! Oh hell naw! I crushed at least ten of them. That must have been all that got out when lifting the dead-out's lid though. Besides the last one in that picture there weren't any more showing up. All of this is in addition to the two long term dead-outs that had been on the pallet next to this current one problem pallet. At least they were removed within two days of emailing the club.

Needless to say, I'm writing up a short proposal in the morning and going to six nearby farms/nurseries to speak to them about hosting my bees in exchange for pollination.

Hive notes: No apparent varroa, adult hive beetles attempting to migrate from nearby hive (they were summarily executed) and none apparent in hive upon inspection, 4.5 frames of bees (+0.5), 4 frames of brood (E/L/CB/Recently Hatched Brood), 1.5 frames of honey (+0.5, 1/4 frame capped), 2 cups of 2-1 syrup consumed from baggy (entrance feeder reintroduced w/ new jar added 80% full, 1.5-1 syrup)

Feeder Fiasco

Last night there was quite a thunderstorm down here in Palm Beach County. At least a good two hours of off and on rain and thunder, followed by an overcast night and more rain in the morning. The only thing that tripped me up yesterday while transferring bees was that the entrance feeder was really really temperamental. If I didn't move it whatsoever then it was fine, but while holding it in the air it leaked like a faucet. It also leaked while moving it into place at the entrance, then stopped while completely still again. So I was worried that it would leak overnight or the storm would knock the feeder out of the entrance entirely. The problem with that being that I had it flipped to the full size 4 inch opening. Which is fine for a fully populated "deep" box, but these girls have the box 45% full.

It was still overcast and had some heavy looking clouds here and there, so I quickly mixed up about a cups worth of 2 to 1 sugar syrup, poured it into a zip-lock, and hustled out the door. Along the way I picked up a sweet pair of dairy boots ($20), so that I don't have to constantly be hopping into my high top hiking boots, and a pocket mosquito netting for your head ($4), so that it can just be tossed over a brimmed hat and used as a veil. It can be a pain to fully lace and unlace my hiking boots. Not to mention they tend to stay wet on the outside for quite a while, and pick up burrs like you wouldn't believe. Nice thing about the dairy boots is that pants can just be tucked straight into them. Yeah bees may be able to crawl or fly down into them, but this field is way overgrown and I got at least 6 mosquito bites last night from mosquitoes getting under my pant legs.

Turns out I was right as the top picture shows. It had leaked all night and there was an obvious trail of where it had leaked out from the seams in the bottom of the plastic feeder, down the side of the bottom board, then off the lip of the plywood surface. There was a dark residue along the front edge of the cinderblocks where it had pooled, and there were fire ants having a buffet along the entire thing. A few of them crawling up the cinderblocks towards the hive, and even one here and there on the hive itself. It seems the bees are able to fend them off just fine though. When an ant would crawl up onto the front surface of the hive box it would get chased off by a bee, the method being flying close while buzzing loudly and buffeting it with air from it's wings. The air was strong enough that the ant would visibly be pushed in the other direction with it's body no longer centered over it's legs. Ants are pretty strong so that was some serious wind! How cool is that? I watched for about ten minutes to make sure there weren't any ants that were able to get into the nest. It didn't seem like they could, so I crushed any that I could find on the plywood or hive body. Fire ants are jerks.

I figured that if it turned out the feeder had leaked overnight that it would leak whatever else I put in it, hence the zip-lock. I don't have any other feeders so this was the back up. I lifted the top cover and laid the bag down over the inner cover, cut a slit in it, and watched to see if any bees would come over to it. The idea with this is that the surface tension of the plastic against the syrup will hold against the weight of the bee, leaving them able to drink the syrup from the slit in the bag without it collapsing and drowning them. After a while of zero interest from the bees I closed the top cover and went back to the car to give them some time to find it. After ten minutes I came back and lifted the lid, still no bees. BUT I did notice there was syrup on the top cover. Oops, the bag was too full and the slit was making contact with the "ceiling" of the outer cover.

I repositioned the bag so that it was on the same side of the lid as the entrance was. That way it was on the bottom end of the decline that the hive is set on. Then snipped a tiny hole in the corner of the bag facing up the incline and coaxed a few drops out to make a trail leading to the vent in the center of the inner cover. Once there was a nice little trail I also spread some around the entirety of the vent and tempted a few bees with syrup on my finger. It's pretty cute how they point their antennae towards whatever they're focused on then use their front legs to hold on. After a few seconds I would slowly move my finger, with bee in tow, to a small bubble of syrup on the rim. Once they'd drink the small drop from my finger they'd move over to the larger puddles on the vent.

On the down side... apparently this miniscule hole + the syrup's weight was enough to get a flow of syrup started out of the bag. There ended up being a 4" by 2" puddle of syrup at the bottom of the inner cover. Doh! There is, however, enough space between the inner cover and outer cover for the bees to walk through. So I left it like, figuring (hoping?) that once the bees figured out where the bag was that they would also follow the syrup trail to the larger puddle. Right now I'm hearing Archer in my head yelling "Oh is that what you want? Because that's how we get ants!".

Other than that though, there was a steady, low, and seemingly content buzz coming from the hive. No stressed guard bees shooing me away and the ones that did come by barely spent any time time inspecting me. Seeing as how it was 6pm, the ants had been there for a while sucking up that spilled syrup. If it'd been that long without any trouble to the hive then I'm thinking they'll be ok cleaning up that puddle up top. I didn't use a jacket, gloves, or veil today seeing as how it was just going to be a non-intrusive syrup swap.

P.S. I named this hive Winterfell. Future hives will get named after other Game of Thrones rulers/kingdoms based upon their personalities. This was mainly because any queens that aren't playing the "game" well get pinched and replaced + some hives will be "civilized" hives and others will be feral hives. Oh and because the book series is awesome. Anyone reading this should read the books and not just watch the series, and if you don't... you're bad and you should feel bad.

The First Bees Are Home!

They’re in the hive! I picked up a nice 5-frame nuc from a great local beekeper (Bee Healthy Honey Farm) yesterday evening around 6pm. Turns out he’s also a pilot! We ended up talking about bees, aviation, and entrepreneurship for about an hour. A bit longer than I expected, but very cool. He’s only a year into beekeeping, yet already breeding queens/nucs and getting small pollination contracts. Very motivating! Afterwards, I hustled to the bee yard and ended up arriving around 7:40. By that time it was getting a bit dark out, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any pictures. I decided to leave them overnight in the nuc to get acclimated to their new location and then check on them the next day to see if they were populated enough to move to the hive box. I spent three days assembling and painting two deeps, a telescoping cover, and the base board. Needless to say I was excited to see if they’d accept my handiwork!

So today, after a 9am orientation at my new job, I went out to the bee yard and transferred my new Italian-Carniolan nuc to their new hive body. While I was walking up I noticed plenty of traffic to and from the hive! It was all routes to/from the hive in generally straight lines so it wasn’t the other club hives robbing mine. Once I got a little closer I could see a good number of bees entering the hive with little yellow/orange/white pollen packs on their legs. This queen runs a tight ship. I dig it!

Here in South Florida it’s been high 80s (and what felt like 90s in the sun), so I was sweating like a beast once suited up in the jacket with attached veil. On the upside, I’m sure my pores are the cleanest they’ve been in months. I did somehow forget my hive tool and had to do some manipulating of frames by hand etc. I definitely won’t be forgetting that again and am thinking of picking up some leather to fabricate a tool holster. After 30mins all of the nuc frames were transferred over to deep I built, and somehow wrangled all of the remaining bees from the nuc into the hive box (or in the air around it). It was pretty incredible standing in a small cloud of bees, handling the frames, and even having one drink a drop of sugar syrup off my bare finger! I was also able to find the queen while transferring frames. She’s a beautiful golden brown with a fresh fuzzy vest. The queen cup was still embedded in the comb and no natural queen cells were visible.

Oh, after about 15mins I took my gloves off. It was too awkward without a hive tool and the bees were nice and calm. Enough so, that I felt comfortable enough to be cautiously adventurous. No stings! Once they were all settled in I let them be for ten minutes and cooled off in the shade. Afterwards I went back in just jeans and shirt to watch them for a bit. A few inspected me for no more than 3 seconds before being on their way. It’s really relaxing just to watch them go about their business and see a new hive’s workers come back with full pollen baskets. I have high hopes for this already vibrant queen.

Hive Notes: No apparent varroa, no hive beetles, 4 frames of bees, 4 frames of brood (eggs, larvae, capped brood, very solid laying pattern with negligible amounts of empty cells), 3/4 frame of honey and pollen (yellow/white/pink/orange pollen, 1/6 capped honey), approx 15% of sugar syrup consumed, about 15 dead bees at the bottom of the nuc… but from the state of them it’s because I crushed them last night while replacing the nuc lid in the dark :(