Thursday, July 1, 2010

Harvesting Gold













Save the Bees
Save The World





Last spring I had this great idea to start a beehive. As simple as that. Well not really simple as it turns out. First I had to run the idea past my husband. Keep in mind both of us have one of those childhood nightmare on elm street stories of being attacked by bees. My personal encounter was with an under ground nest of yellow jackets that settled in to our backyard while we were summering in Maine. I ran through that part of the yard and suddenly was assaulted with angry yellow jackets defending their stores. Running in terror was most likely not the best recourse. Needless to say there were multiple stings and a long running fear of any flying stinging insect. All bees are not created equally. Honey bees rarely sting haphazardly. One sting from a honey bee signals the end of that bee's life as part of the bee body is dislodged with the stinger and she gives up her life for her colony. A yellow jacket has the ability to sting and sting repeatedly. Bees have a dark and dangerous reputation to overcome.

Sadly, the honey bee population worldwide is declining at an alarming rate. Disease, pesticides, paving paradise , mites and colony collapse disorder among some of the factors threatening the safety of honey bees. So what say some. Well I say, save the bees, save the world. Without the bees our flowers, trees, fruits and vegetables will not survive. Without trees, fruits, and vegetables the animal and human population of this planet will no longer exist. No, my lone hive in my small corner of the planet will not save the world, but having a healthy hive in my garden will make my flowers, plants and vegetables stronger, more vibrant and twice as abundant. Furthermore I have read that consuming local honey and pollen can lessen the effects of pollen related allergy. This was the selling point for my springtime sniffling, sneezing, snorting spouse.

April of 2009 we set out for the hills of Connecticut to consult a local treasure by the name of Ed Weiss. It seems he is the leading guru of beekeeping in our area. He wrote the book The Queen and I and assisted Martha Stewart in establishing her hives. What can I say about Ed? A true old New Englander with endless stories to tell if you have all day to listen. He set us up with our first build it yourself kit complete with the hooded veil, smoker and tools. We had to assemble our hive from the bottom up constructing each layer and hammering the fragile frames together with tiny nails . Each outer box was constructed followed by ten frames with wax foundation sheets threaded inside.. The assembled hive was painted and set out in a strategic location on cinder blocks back by the chicken coop and under the mulberry bush. Now we need to get the bees.

Getting the bees involved a series of phone calls and an appointment for live bee retrieval from Riley in Southberry Ct.. We set out with directions that included left at white mailbox and down the long driveway " don't turn around in the neighbor's yard" to this small goat farm in the middle of nowhere. The farm was made up of a cluster of ramshackle outbuildings that have been perched on that little hill for many generations. A large tractor trailer truck was parked with Georgia plates and thousands of packages of bees. You could hear a low buzz in the air and hitchhiker bees swirled around our heads. From across the yard came a seasoned woman covered in her bee "hazmat" suit complete with veil and gloves. She thrust her gloved hand our way and identified us as newbees, so she brought us around back to demonstrate how to load the package of bees into the hive
.
Watch this video on how to install bees, or many like it on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDDgxV-pLU&feature=related

The bees are kept in a screened box with a metal can of sugar syrup inserted to act as a feeder during their trek from Georgia to Connecticut. The queen has her own personal cage with five attendants. You prepare your hive set up at home and lift the cover. When you are ready to move the bees inside you spray them with a sugar water solution, open the can covering the cage and flip them upside down into the box. This is all to take place one two three easy as can bee! The queen is placed inside in her cage and the worker bees eat away at a candy plug to release her to begin her systematic egg laying. Of course we watched this procedure multiple times on Youtube in preparation for our own show. Our bee teacher loaded about six packages of bees into various hives in a matter of minutes making it look easier than learning how to ride a bike.

We set off for home with three packages of live bees in the back of the minivan; one for us and two more for a friend. Being the over committed mother of three I was late returning home and I promised my son I would take him and his friend to the mall for a 3:00 show. The bees went with us. Needless to say the teenagers were not excited about riding one row even closer to the live bees and could not understand why anyone would want to start this hobby. Our bees were successfully loaded in that night. We were racing the weather and trying to get it done before the rain came. I neglected to read ahead in my bee keeping book to note that they had to be checked on in a week's time to see if the colony had accepted the queen. We were leaving for spring vacation in two days, so I needed to find a bee bee sitter. Luckily the recipient of the other bee packages was willing to help us out.


As it turns out, last spring was the worst weather for starting a beehive. We had cloudy rainy weather daily and the bees never left the hive to forage for essential nectar to sustain the colony. Finally June came and brought clear dry skies, so our little tribe went about collecting pollen and nectar , building out foundation and setting up camp. Our queen was also a grand old gal and she set about producing good quantities of new bee subjects. This came back to sting us later on that month. It seems too many bees in one hive get together and have a meeting and set forth a plan to split in half and produce a new queen and split with as much stolen bee nectar booty their little stomachs can hold. It is called swarming, and boy did it happen to us.


I was in the backyard on a beautiful day in June throwing mulch by the wheel barrow full onto the back slope when we noticed that all the bees were leaving the hive and flying in swirling circles around it. The air was golden with their little bodies dancing through the sunbeams. The kids were returning from the back neighbor's yard and about to run through this curtain of swarming bees. Fortunately for them on that day they decided to finally take heed and listen to two parents screaming "STOP, DON'T!" to which they all froze in their tracks. The circling bees became more and more organized and concentrated and began to settle onto a branch in the dogwood tree. They follow the queen and encircle her in a big ball that hangs from a branch and pulsates like a heart beating inside a chest. At this time scout bees go out and look for a new home to move the cluster to.

When I was a teenager my father kept two beehives and I had seen them swarm one time. An old man from the orchard came with a sheet and an empty hive and caught the swarm and brought it to his farm. I knew we could catch it, but we needed an empty hive. In the meantime we got an old cardboard box with a house screen and a bottle of sugar water. My husband donned the bee veil and got the ladder out of the garage. With the box placed just so under the tree branch he climbed with a saw in hand and cut the swarm from the tree. The idea was to gently lower it into the box thereby capturing the swarm intact. A near miss caused the bees to panic and dart all over the ground, but the prized queen landed in the box, so all her loyal soldiers followed suit and joined her. A couple of shots of sugar water and the screen in place we were all set. Now all we had to do was locate a new hive body.

And this is where I will leave you now for the garden calls.

From A Child's Garden Of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

Summer Sun
Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.