The lovely Ms. Smith and I went to the horse races at Eureka Downs, Sunday. We met her parents there and enjoyed a lovely afternoon of horse racing, square dancing futile gambling. Her parents used to raise and race horses. While we were there her dad tried to showed me how to read a racing form and how to bet. He might as well have been trying to teach me french.

No money was made, but the weather was excellent and the races were very exciting.

My “recent” experiences with swarming bees left me with some interesting pictures involving the process. After the second swarm, I cracked open the original hive to see if I could make room in the brood chamber. This would, hopefully, reduce the swarming urge in the hive.

I moved some frames of brood around and put empty frames between some of the full frames and then buttoned it back up. While I was in there, I noticed several (6 – 7) queen cells on various frames.

Most were already open and empty. Several, however, were still sealed. I probably should have destroyed the sealed ones, but I was afraid that the hive was waiting on one of the queens to emerge and take over. I was afraid that I would make the hive queen-less if I did.

Like a great man (or woman) once said, “it’s better to be lucky than good”. All three hives are rolling right along. I think I’m even going to steal a little honey from my big hive. It has a full deep of honey that’s so heavy I could hardly move it during the last hive inspection.

Well, it’s been almost two months since my last post. I’ve been busy, but haven’t we all.

When last we spoke, my hive had swarmed – twice. I was pretty upset, because I knew that this would effectively dash my hopes of harvesting any significant amount of honey this year. I was also worried that I had not gotten the queens into the boxes when I recovered the swarms. I checked at one and two week intervals, and found no new eggs or larvae.

I was seriously considering buying a couple of queens and trying to save them, or recombine them into the original hive. None of these alternatives really appealed to me.

Finally, about two weeks ago, while doing a routine check of the hives, I found that both new hives had babies. Not just babies. They had lots of babies. They were flourishing. Even the original hive, the one who’s brood chamber I had to reorganize, was going gangbusters. The picture below is a frame of brood from the original hive. Life is good.

One of the top ten things you don’t want to hear as a thunderstorm is rolling in: “You’ve got a lot of bees in your tree”. I thought, “you’ve got to be kidding me”. But when I went out into the backyard, this is what I saw.

The storm was rolling in, so I had to leap to action. I threw on the bee suit, grabbed the neighbors ladder and a hive box and shimmied up the ladder. There’s nothing like balancing on a ladder, holding a hive box in one hand and a bee brush in the other and fighting a stiff breeze.

I knocked most of them into the box and managed to make it down the ladder. I set the box on the ground, next to a couple of clumps of bees that missed the box. It was amazing how the bees in the box immediately started fanning at the hive entrance and the bees on the ground made a “bee line” to the hive. I cut it pretty close. If you listen, during the last few seconds of the video, you can hear the rain starting to hit the metal top of the hive.

I’m really hoping that this hive is done swarming. I will open the original hive and check the brood chamber and maybe insert some empty frames. In the meantime, I have three weak hives instead of one strong hive. Oh well. Just like the Chiefs, I’m in a rebuilding year. Except I hope I don’t have to string as many together as they have.

I spent last night keeping my fingers crossed that the queen is in the new hive. There’s not really much I can do if she’s not, except attempt to re-queen, but I’m not sure if I’m really up to that. I got up this morning and checked to see if the hive was still there. It was. Then, after it started getting light, significant activity was noticed in front of the hive. Obvious orientation flights were taking place, which is a good sign. It doesn’t mean the queen is present, but at least they are getting on with business.

A little later in the morning, I opened the hive to put in the frames I left out last night. I had purchased some “all in one” plastic frames that contained foundation of a smaller, more natural, cell size. But the topic of smaller cell size is for another post.

Anyway, I opened the hive and pulled one of the empty frames (I neglected to glue a starter strip to the top of my frames). The bees were hard at it making wax. This process is called “festooning”. The bees join legs and hang from the top of the frame and place wax into the frame. Another good sign. Not necessarily of the presence of the queen, but the girls were keeping busy.

So I put the missing frames in and buttoned the hive up. Now, I’ll just wait and see.

I guess you either keep bees, or they keep you. I knew that I should have checked on my backyard hive more often than I have. I just didn’t want to disrupt them. I got them last July and I really wanted them to do well, so that I could harvest some honey this year.

As a result of my “hands off attitude”, they swarmed on me. I knew that I should have taken measures to prevent the swarming activity. They swarm when the brood nest becomes crowded. I had read that if you enter the brood chamber and place empty frames between the frames filled with brood, you can make room for expansion and prevent a swarm. But I kept putting it off. That is, until my son called me and told me to hurry home because there were “bees everywhere on the deck”.

When I arrived home, this is what I saw. The hive had moved into the roof of my deck. I had left an empty hive with some drawn frames on the deck, just in case this kind of thing were to happen. But I had really intended to place it closer to the hive, not leave it on the deck. Oh well! Good intentions.

So Dylan and I hurried to try to capture them before they headed off to greener pastures. This took some courage on his part. He is not that fond of bees, since his first encounter with them when we cut a wild hive out of an old trailer the summer before and he got stung just a few minutes into the operation. Click here for the story.

I’m sure it’s not the first mistake I made. But the first mistake I noticed was that I used a screened bottom board on the swarm box. As you can see from the picture, the bees were confused about how to enter the hive. They could smell through the screen, unlike a solid bottom board. Hence, they balled up underneath the hive, instead of in it.

After they settled down a bit, Dylan and I took a solid bottom board and placed it under the box, then brushed the bees from the bottom of the screened board, into the box. Clumsy, awkward, amateurish, but hey, that’s how we roll!

Here, Dylan displays the proper stance for looking for the queen. He advised that it does help if you make buzzing sounds as you search. We’ll let them settle down for a while, and hopefully, the queen found her way into the hive, and we have an additional hive.

I decided to clean the observation hive yesterday. This is the hive that I drastically mismanaged last fall and caused it to abscond (Observation Hive – Lessons Learned?) I got out the hair dryer and warmed up the propolis, in the hopes that I could slide the glass up without breaking it. To my surprise, after about 2 – 3 minutes of heating, the glass slid up and off.

I cleaned up the burr comb and placed the frames into an empty nuc I just purchased. I’ll use this as a bait hive, or I may use it later for a split. The empty observation hive, I’ll use to house the Lindsborg bees I got a few weeks ago. I’ll crack the log open and place the comb in frames and put them in the observation hive. Hopefully, I’ll get the queen and they’ll flourish.

My friend and coworker, Steve Schmidt, found a listing on the local Craig’s List asking for someone to remove a wild hive from a tree at their house. The tree was dead and due to be cut down. The owner had read about the plight of the honey bees in the U.S. and didn’t want to just kill the bees. After a few emails and phone calls, Steve and I finally traveled to Lindsborg to retrieve the little darlings.

The tree owner had sent a picture showing where the bees were entering and exiting the tree. It didn’t look too high, and the owner assured us that the tree was rotten and would be easy to cut up.

After some intense debate and coin flipping, Steve finally climbed up the ladder with the chain saw. After a few slices off the top side, we decided to cut the limb off of the tree and lower it to the ground. We figured we could trim the branch down easier on the ground. Steve cut through the rotten branch and I lowered it gently to the ground. The first thing we saw was dissected honeycomb packed in the hollow branch. We didn’t see any bees, but we wasted no time in sealing the end of the branch with some plastic that Steve had brought along.

I then went up the tree to investigate the hive remaining in the tree. To my relief, the comb left in the tree, was dry and deserted, so we didn’t lose any bees. That left me with about five feet of hollow tree branch stuffed with bees and honeycomb. Jackpot!

I finally got the branch home and walked it over to my covered breezeway and strapped it to one of the roof supports. As soon as I removed the paper stuffed in the knothole entrance, 10 -15 bees came pouring out. As of this writing, it’s been several hours since they arrived at their new home. I think today will be dominated by orientation flights, as they adjust to their new location and try to fix landmarks. Tomorrow will be hunting and gathering.

I think I’ll give them a week or so to calm down, then I’ll try to move them into a hive body. I may even move them into my empty observation hive, but for right now, it’s just cool watching them come in and out of that knothole.

Station 16 was the site of a first class lobster feed Saturday. Our lovely benefactor, Tammy Smith (aka the Captain’s Wench), provided eight 1 1/2 pound lobsters, two pounds of mussels, and two pounds of clams. Station personnel supplemented the fare with steaks, homemade cheddar biscuits, and wild rice. The event took on a carnival-like atmosphere with lobster rides for the kids, clam races, and a “dress like your favorite fish” contest.

(click on the pictures for a better look)

The little beauties came packed in seaweed, in a styrofoam cooler, fresh from Maine. Also included were 8 servings of special “Maine made” deserts, cooking instructions, eating utensils, a map showing where they were caught, and DVD showing the fishing process and a little bit about the company Catch a Piece of Maine.

Here, Ms. Smith demonstrates the proper technique to dispatch a lobster. Brice Romero brought in the pot he uses to deep fry turkeys. It worked perfectly!

Of course, once the process started, no one could resist taking a closer look. It’s just not something any of us had a lot of experience with.

Most of us with any time on the job, just knew that the meal couldn’t come off without a fire or some other call coming in the middle of the prep or the actual meal itself. But to everyone’s surprise, we prepared and ate in peace.

It seemed a shame that with all of this fine food. No one seemed to be enjoying themselves at all.

It’s a shame really!

Thanks Tammy!

This is some video of AP-16 in route to an unknown fire. Engine 16 is already up ahead. It tuned out to be someone burning leaves and brush, behind their house. Not too exciting, but I had my Blackberry on and wanted to try the video again. Notice how the nice West Side drivers get out of the way. If this had been on the east side of town, I don’t think things would have gone as well.