Holy crap. Has it really been that long since I wrote last? Life has been zooming by at near light speed during the last few months. After almost 4 months of having a tree land on our house we are nearly half-way through getting the work done. The outside looks trim and proper but the upstairs bathroom looks like hell. Just last week they blew in all of this foam insulation into the rafters, as a result it looks like the Stay Puffed Marsh Mellow Man set himself on fire in our bathroom and stumbled all over the place.
I also just landed a new full time job as a Cartographer for SNL Financial, a locally based research company that provides an exhaustive amounts of research to the business sector at a national and international level.
The bees have been doing fairly well. I plan on heading out this weekend to provide them one last dole of heavy sugar syrup to tide them over until early Spring. My friends hive..well we will see. They don’t share the same robust nature of my insectoid demon spawns from Texas.
So far I have not provided any Apistan strips, Menthol packets, Checkmite, essential oil colonic s or one gram of Terramyician powder to my bees and they seem just fine. The true test will come next year when I wait and see if they pop out from the dark side of the moon come Spring alive and well or in a wooden mausoleum. They seem strong.
Before I moved to the Central Virginia area I took off about 60 pounds of frames from my older colonies to extract as soon as I moved in. Well 1.5 years later I extracted the honey in my driveway within the city limits. What a mistake. I thought I would encounter less bees. I forgot that Charlottesville is an agro-friendly community. We can have goats, chickens, and yes even bee hives on our property.
Within 10 minutes of uncapping they began to come. The scout bees. The scout bees must have danced a highland jig because within 40 minutes every honeybee within the Charlottesville area was at the Rugby Road Honey Free For All Festival. It was almost absurd trying to extract but it had to get done. Hundreds of bees perished in my extractor whose lid had been torn off by the movers. If you looked down into the sea of Fructos you could see the poor souls trying to extricate themselves one leg at a time to no avail. Eventually they went under and were later filtered out into a mass of sugary death. I probably only pulled about 40 pounds of honey but it is enough to give away to people who count in my life. So much for reaping huge profits again.
With the cooler weather came Halloween. This year I dressed up as a Zom-BeeKeeper. The makeup kit provided to me by the Halloween store assured me I would have the skin of a Ghoul if I followed the simple directions. About an hour later I looked like a white guy in black face. I quickly had my wife take a few pictures and washed off the makeup and put on the less controversial Cowboy Action Shooting costume. Happy Halloween to all.
Oh Nooo A Zombee Keeper!!!
More braiiiiiiinnss!!
The other day I received an email from a fellow named Timothy Sellers of the band Artichoke. He wanted to see if I might be interested in reviewing his bands album called “Bees”. I said sure. What could it hurt. He mailed off a CD for me to listen to. It must be said before my review that the last album or CD I have bought was Guns and Roses last recording, Chinese Democracy, a true stink festival of music that should not have seen the light of day. I fully expected “Bees” to be as good as that or any form of Christian Rock and Roll music used in those “hip” teen church services. It sounds like music but is just as bland and tasteless to the ears as a generic .25 cent can of fake Coke.
Arriving in the mail box a few days later I ripped off the mailing package and looked at the box. First impressions are important to me and it was nice to see a real CD in a case with nice graphics and not some hand scrawled note of “Listen To This” sticky noted to a generic Panasonic 750MB data cd. So far so good. Driving to the bee yard was a perfect time to listen to this album. How was it?
Pretty darned good. Instead of music engineered for a Raffi concert I heard real music with real love and heart packed into it. These guys were not just singing flim flam songs about bees with touchy feely vocals and healf hearted strumming of the guitar. They believed everything they were pouring out of the speakers. From listening to the lyrics you get the feeling that at least one of the band members has bees because their lyrics spoke truth to the biology and the behavior of Apis Mellifera.
This album is just fun to listen to, more so if you happen to bee a beekeeper and can understand the inside the hive humor. If I had to label them as sounding like another band it would be hard but for the sake of the review I would say a combination of The Violent Femmes, maybe a little They Might Be Giants, The Presidents of The United States, and a dash of Weezer or The Sex Pistols. Good fun music that is catchy and should be paid for with a modest payment to Amazon or using their website found at the link below.
I give them 4 jars of honey. Of note, 5 jars of honey equals something like the greatest song in the world and has never been acquired in human history.
As stated before my bees are some spiteful little bastards. Originally I thought it might be external factors but with the re-queening of one of my friend’s hive with the same type of queens purchased for mine I can almost safely conclude it is the genetics. Weeks ago my friends hives were the vision of serenity. Easy to work with Italians that could be handled without gloves and very little smoking. The hive whose queen has been replaced has now transitioned into the House of Usher with all sorts of horrors coming from within. They exhibit the same level of tension as my hives do when its lid is opened. You can hear the thrum emanate from its core. They are just pissed off bees. The other hive of his, which still is inhabited by Italians is still mellow and nice to work with.
I now have to objectively assess what I want to do. Although my bees are not the easiest bees to work with I have to admit their population is vibrant, pulling most of the comb, and actually storing a fair quantity of honey for the winter. I am amazed with their brood patterns. They are solidly packed with eggs, larva and adults. No half-ass placement of eggs by these queens. They have the work ethic and craftsmanship of German engineers. The Italians on the other hand are not so productive. They exhibit the same level of industry as a Yugo factory. They get the work done and in theory it should work, but in the end they will probably starve to death over winter without any help.
I think I will just put up with their antics as long as they keep producing well. They may have the temperament of an angry German engineer but they do fine quality work. Maybe their horrible personality is part of the price for having bees that will survive on their own without medications or weird Rube Goldberg devices to remove the mites.
On another note, as I was working with the bees I realized how important it is for a beekeeper to be mindful in their own actions. My beekeeping mentor of old taught me a lot of what is needed in the way of mindset when working with the bees.
We have a picture in our mind that we are helping the bees and are their benefactor. With our white suit and hat and general outlook on life that I have found most beekeepers have it is easy to forget that to them we are really monsters. Basically we are like a whitely suited King Kong ham-fisting our way through their home on a bi-weekly basis. For all we know they have come up with a hive mind like mythology or religion based upon our appearance. “Oh no, the sun has risen and fallen 14 times. Now again begins the ritual sacrifice we must go through to live in such a well designed home!!! May the great White Sheet God show mercy upon us with his hands of smoke and sword!! May he only crush 200 of us unlike the last time!! Oh woe is us!!” See what I mean.
So we can either be the angry bearded old man god found in the Old Testament who wiped out cities for juggling pigs or we can be the benevolent god of peace which my Google results could not find a single one.
Comparisons
To help beekeepers become the kindly Amun-Ra of their own bees one should keep in mind several things.
1. Know exactly what you want to do before you do it. The more you move the components of your hive the more likely it is you are smashing, grinding, and de-limbing your worshipers. Every action should have a purpose. If you just want to take a look for the sake of looking your are probably going to kill some bees for your own gratification. Look because you are trying to determine something. The hives health, state of stress, mites, anything but just don’t look for the hell of it. That is what an observation hive is for.
2. When replacing hive bodies or supers I place the box at an angle compared to the other box. I then slowly rotate the boxes until they line up. Doing this helps gives the bees time to move out of the way of the oncoming wall. Just plopping the box down on top of the other so that they align right away is a sure way of crushing 10 or so bees.
3. Have the movement of a sloth or Tai-Chi master. Bees don’t like swift movements. Maybe their minds exist in another temporal space from ours but I have found that when you move quickly, like when you swat at bees, it only attracts more and seems to aggravate them.
4. When pulling the frames out. Be sure you have loosened them well and pull them out as vertically as you can. Any movement of the frame off from its 90 degree extraction will kill bees between the frames or at least increase their stress levels as they are mashed into the adjacent comb. Again go slowly as you do it.
5. When placing frames back into the hive, don’t ram them home like a railroad spike. Slowly and deliberately is the plan for the day.
6. Don’t smoke the hell out of them every five seconds. Use just a little smoke when necessary. I have seen some people just asphyxiate their bees with bellows of smoke.
7. Wait until later in the day if possible. Too early and their will be more population in the hive equaling more potential for loss of worshipers. Wait too late and the same thing happens. I usually go out between 2-5 depending on the time of year.
These are just seven lucky tips I try to keep in mind. If any of you have others please add them in the comments below.
The key is just to play it smart, be deliberate in everything you do, and try to keep your bees less agitated. The more agitated they become the greater the chance they will find their location too much of a hassle and swarm to some place less inhabited by the angry bee gods.
I went out to the hives yesterday into the sweltering humidity that only a 3:00 pm summer day in Virginia can provide. Armed with two bottles of ice water and small packet of Propel drink mix I was ready for anything the bees could throw at me. Knowing that my hives were a little bit on the ornery side I double checked all of my bee suit openings to make sure the warrior queens would find no entry.
After smoking the front of the hive I now dub as House of the Rising Stinger I walked behind it and slowly lifted the top cover. I now know what it must feel like to be a member of a bomb disposal team. Would she blow when I opened the box or would this just be another bucolic day out in the apiary like I had envisioned years ago when I started beekeeping. Then she blew. Hundreds of tiny insectoid winged shrapnel flew out from underneath the inner cover with a loud drone. The drone came from me and not the bees. Luckily I had my suit on otherwise my face would look like an 80 pound mutated turnip or Mickey Rourke. Bouncing off of my screened face I laughed at them as I began the process of quickly dismantling their hive for inspection.
House of the Rising Stinger
Solid Brood pattern, check.
New eggs, check.
Pollen, check.
Honey/Sugar Water, check.
Angry worker bees, double check.
All was good. I was a little disappointed to not see much in the way of honey stores yet but they had only just begun working the upper parts of the hive. I also decided to rotate the bottom hive boxes to give them more room as they were already in the upper hive body chamber which was packed with brood. During the whole time time they were progressively getting more angry. As I was putting the hive back together, “Flight of the Bumble Bee” echoed through my mind only performed by classic Metallica and not that new crap they are selling. What a circus.
The second hive went much more smoothly. None of that pent up aggression was found in their hive. I found the queen and told her what a wonderful job she was doing in keeping her children in line unlike the ruffians down the way.
The third hive was a dream come true. Quiet, industrious, and friendly. I call these bees The Waltons. They actually gave me a tour of their hive with shortbread and tea as a treat. The most surprising new addition to their home was a 1/2 full super of pure liquid gold. For only being active for 4 months they had done a great job of building up their population and wax structure to actually allow for significant honey storage.
The Nice Bees
As I closed their hive I said thanks and then clicked my heels in the air before I headed home.
That first hive is a real problem. Defensiveness works wonders in nature but when you are in a bee yard it can become catostrophic. Sometimes I feel like committing regicide and replacing the queen with a better one but I should at least give this hive a chance to prove itself. It may work to my favor if a bear is seen around here again. A bear poking its nose in this hive is likely to regret it.
This has probably been one of the worst weeks I have had in a long time. My bees hate me, the sun hates me, mosquitoes love me, and now even trees plan my demise. About a week ago we had either a micro burst or a tornado go over our area and man it looks like the thing from Cloverfield took a stroll through Charlottesville. Trees were split in half, some bisected nice little brick colonials, and one even landed on our house. Still I consider myself lucky.
The Death of Treebeard
It was around 4:30 PM. I had just taken Leia home from the pool because I noticed some storm clouds moving in our direction. Not less than 5 minutes in the door the wind really started to pick up. The trees began swaying, lightning began to streak across the sky and the once blue heavens turned a dark greenish color. It was like going to a Rave Party except all of the dancers were 100 ton trees who were angry at us for living in a house on their Killing Floor. At first they only began throwing limbs at our house and when that did not force our exit they decided to fall on us. Contrary to M. Night Shyamalan’s crappy movie about vengeful flora our trees are not yet sentient with most of them banzai-ing onto their fellow flora or simply falling to the earth with a thud. All of them except for one cluster of bastards that decided the apex of our roof would be a nice place to recline.
This tree looked like one of those mutant trees you might find growing near Chernobyl. Three torsos from one pair of roots.
From inside the safety of our basement we heard the wind from outside just blow the trees around like dandelions. Then, the sound of a wooden sail ship getting rammed by a white whale echoed over our house as one of the tree triumvirate broke its back on the top of our roof. Immediately following that, from our back basement window we spied the top part of its carcass crash down on the other side of our house clipping our deck.
Once it settled I ran upstairs. First floor was OK except for some cracks in the ceiling. The second floor was far worse for ware. Right where the tree had fallen, on my office bathroom, it looked like it had survived a medium sized earthquake. The roof had shifted and there were breaks in all of the dry wall.
Outside the mutant tree had fallen right along the crease of our roof and the one larger tree was hanging precariously over the entire length of our house applying considerable weight on our beams.
I can only imagine, and I frequently do, what Charlottesville might sound like during a zombie invasion. The following 5 hours was an audio replay of one. Sirens everywhere, horns honking, and people wandering around in disbelief. Worse were the gawkers. You know those kind of people. The ones that rubber neck at traffic accidents or the ghouls who watch war footage on You-Tube all night. If there was a hell, these people have a special place in it. One dude was even taking pictures.
With this calamity came the second one. Our Safeco Insurance salesman and the fly by night “arborists” that descended onto our household. Both trying their best to weedle money out of us.
Hey Man we will take care of your tree for 20,000 quid.
By far the faux arborists were the worst. Knowing people were in a tight bind their rates became extraordinary exhorbinant to the point of criminal. One group of clowns offered to cut our tree off the roof for a measley 10 grand. When he found out we had gone with someone else, a real aroborist, he wanted to see if he could match their price. I was like, you just tried to gouge us buddy for 4,000 dollars more than the real tree man, why the hell would I trust you to cut my trees. The funniest attempt were these dopes having nothing more than a beat up pick-up and two chain saws. When they saw the amount of work involved they did not even bother to come down the stairs to our house and tucked tail and ran.
The people that did come out were professionals with a capital “P”. They gave us a solid quote, came out the day we had the estimate done, and took care of our main concern of getting the large tree off the roof. They used ropes and other tree limbs like a master surgeon when extracting the the lifeless body of Treebeard from our roof.
Stihl vs Treebeard
During that time my family and I took up lodgings at the nearby Discomfort Inn with the rest of the Charlottesville refugees and made the best of it. Across the street we drowned our sorrows at Duncan Dunouts and a local restaurant called Lord Hardiwicks.
Once most of the tree had been cut off we moved back into our house and are now living in our basement. It sounds bad in words but our basement is finished so don’t shed a tear. We are doing fine.
Later in the week I went out to see the bees to see if they could comfort me in my time of hardship and like before they stung the bejeezus out of me. My bees are hateful little bastards. I might jar 100 of them and leave them in my Insurance Man’s car for being such a cheapskate.
Other than the 20000 cc’s of bee venom volunteered by my bees they are fine.
