New Hive: Demo and Reconstruction

Inner cover of new hive, loaded with bees and unruly comb!

Joe realized last night that the swarm we caught and hived on Sunday was building some pretty unruly comb in their new hive box. He discovered this by peeking in the entrance with a flash light. Instead of building in the frames that we’d placed in the hive, they built comb from the inner cover and the follower board almost all the way to the bottom of the hive box.

After consulting with our teacher, Alan, Joe got to work. We couldn’t wait; this had to be done today, much to my sorrow. So I stayed at work and missed the show. Joe suited up completely: veil, gloves, long sleeves and pants. These bees have been wild for two years that we know of, so working with them is different from working with the Italians we bought in a package 5 weeks ago. And there are simply way more of them.

To get started, Joe assembled all of the tools he would need – bee brush, hive tool, frames, rubber bands, and the smoker, stuffed with burning strips of burlap. When Joe smoked the bees, the volume of the hive instantly rose, and it was clear that they were agitated by the smoke.

First Joe had to lift the cover off. The bees had built comb not only in the empty part of the hive box but also between the tops of the frames and the inner cover, making the cover hard to remove, basically waxed shut by comb. Joe tipped the cover up to a 45 degree angle, and one of the big pieces of comb fell to the bottom of the hive box. The comb wasn’t just one sheet. They didn’t build it in parallel lines. They built a few rows one way and then the next 90 degrees to the first, sort of a Tetris construct. Joe was amazed at how many bees were there, and it was just like a swarm again hanging from the inside of the cover. The bees had actually begun to build comb in just one of the frames, but only about a three inch disk. There were thousands of bees on every frame, some of them hanging in chains, so it’s possible that some were beginning to build in the frames.

Joe didn’t really know how to remove the comb from the cover, so he just grabbed the comb up toward the top (i.e., at the cover) and it pretty much broke free from the wood. Once he got all of the comb off, he just laid it on top of the hive and on the cement and set the lid aside. The lid was covered with bees by the way. Joe then proceeded to rubber band the big pieces of comb into the frames as instructed by Alan.

It was pretty much like catching the swarm all over again, lots of bees in the air, bees crawling all over him. Anything that got honey on it, the bees would stay there.

Good thing for gloves. At least 5 bees stung Joe’s gloves, then took a couple steps away from their stinger and venom sack, and started fanning. This is in contrast to other bee stings we’ve observed, where the bee just falls over and slowly dies, its insides essentially pulled out when the stinger leaves its body.

Joe left in the five frames that we originally put in the hive box – never took them out since bees appeared to be busy in them. He checkerboarded in the 4 frames with the rubber-banded comb, and added the tenth empty frame.

Joe smoked the bees twice, once at the beginning and once in the middle. And by the way, one of the burlap sacks that we picked up from the coffee roastery is actually made of hemp and definitely smelled like weed.

We had put in a quart jar of sugar-water when we hived the bees on Sunday. They had drunk ¾ of it by this afternoon, fueling their tremendous comb output.

Joe did not see the queen, but did see eggs. Not many. Most of the comb is either not fully developed, shallow, or was full of honey and pollen.

Joe brought in a plate covered with broken pieces of comb, which has made for some great observation and tasting. The variety of colors of pollen is amazing: purple, orange, gold, greenish gold, blue like eye shadow, and yellow. Very interesting taste. I can’t say that either of us has ever eaten pollen like this. The honey is very thin and fruity, probably because it is really more nectar still than it is honey.

Mother's Day Swarm

The swarm, resting in the apple tree.
That's 15,000 bees approximately!

This Mother's Day was pretty amazing. I was already happy with the day: breakfast with Laurent, then yoga, then riding the tandem with Joe to the Farmer's Market and meeting friends, then lunch on the patio. And then the best present of all appeared: a swarm of bees over the garage, which then proceeded to land in our apple tree from which we later captured them. Amazing!

Besides the super fun and excitement of hiving these wild bees and doubling our potential for pollination and honey now that we have two hives, some other great things came out of this:

- We learned more about our new bees' background from our neighbor Dave, who had observed them living on the neighbor-on-the-other-side's house for two years:

They used my pond as a water source and seemed to have a highway of sorts out over your roof... it looked like they were heading out towards the big berry patch farther out... but there were always bees in the garden.

So even though they're not exotic, in the sense of having travelled, it's still super-cool that we know exactly where they were before and that we also know that they weren't from a beekeeper's hive that split, but are truly wild bees. And actually, it's great news that they hadn't been swarming long since it means they're going to use all of those stores of honey that they gorged on before swarming to build comb inside their new home.

- We discovered that we're part of a cool community of bee-people now. I posted something to my Facebook about the swarm just after it appeared and we were getting ready to go get them, and my new beekeeping friend Rebecca and her adorable daughter Ruby responded instantly, and rushed over to help. After I posted an email message to the Marin beekeepers listserve, I got some amazing, helpful and charming responses by phone and email from fellow beekeepers, all of them strangers to us, and even found a long-lost acquaintance in the mix. One email in particular, which arrived after I shared with the list that we'd caught and hived the bees, read:

Congratulations, Ariane! What auspicious blessings for you! You must have had many lifetimes as a loving mother for this gift to appear now! Have fun giving them a new home!

I was already completely high on the experience of the swarm and its capture, and then had extended buzz from all the beekeeper love and support that poured in. Now that's sweet as honey!

So now we'll be settling in to managing two hives and are just thrilled with this gift that just fell out of the sky into our laps. It's probable that we'll see and catch another swarm. But a swarm just coming to us in this way? That's a once-in-a-lifetime blessing that we're savoring, every moment of that experience just vibrant like the bees.

Sunday Service

Over and over again in yoga yesterday, Sianna and Darren, in keeping with the weekend's theme, asked us what we were in service to. They spoke a lot about Gandhi and his eleven vows -- and the 11 was the foundation, not just of the price of the classes ($11/hour!) but also of the practice (11 different back bends). Gandhi and his followers were in service of the truth. How do we serve when we practice? What do we serve in our lives?

Clearly the question sank it.

But I didn't really realize it until I was in the shower just now and thinking about whether or not to go today, to the final in the series of classes. I was just thinking about going to the nursery and looking at plants that our bees would like, and of being in service to our bees. Whose lives are lived in service, really, to the needs of the hive.

And then I remembered how yesterday's class felt so much like being in the hive, surrounded by the thrum of all of the other happy bees in the room, held up and held together like members of one community, devoted to one end.

So of course I'll go today. Because on such a deep level, the practice is service, so it doesn't matter if I'm tired, if I'm a bit daunted. What matters is being there, doing my best, participating in this great service.

And could there be any better way to spend a Sunday?

What made the day amazing

Today was a perfect day. I can't believe my good fortune. This is how it went.

- Waking up naturally, no alarm. OK, so I woke up at 5:30, lazed til 6:30 -- felt so good!

- Heading out to check the bees at 8, which seems to be the time right now that they begin their flights. Hanging out with Joe on a bench that we moved under the apple tree precisely for the purpose of bee-servation, watching those golden sweeties do their thing.

- Walking on the levies with Jasper, where I saw a cormorant sunning himself on a stump, wings completely outstretched. Hilarious.

- Reading biology homework in the sun for a while.

- Checking the hive around 11:30 and being totally stunned by how productive those creatures are. 3 out of 5 frames with comb on them, and the beginning of the fourth. Plus, handling the hive is such a treat. I thought it would freak me out, but it's calming and satisfying in an utterly unexpected way.

- Being in San Francisco for yoga. Since it was just about 70 degrees out, people were out in droves in shorts and tank tops, enjoying what passes for summer weather in those parts. Such a great feeling on the streets.

- Practicing yoga for three hours with Sianna and Darren, and the deep pleasure of an Om and invocation sung by 50 people in utter harmony with each other. Now that's some bee-buzzing.

- Seeing Lisa and Rachel, old friends from my street, from Everett, from Lowell, for a few hours. It's a lovely thing to have those bonds that withstand the passage of time.

- Driving back across the socked-in Golden Gate Bridge, and looking back at the city, glistening white buildings on rolling hills rising above a bank of fog.

- Watching fog pour over the Headlands and vultures circle over Strawberry.

- Coming home to hot stew and a glass of wine.

Damn, that's a whole lot of Good. I am so lucky.

Beeing

The bee experience so far has been utterly amazing. The class at Green Gulch Zen Center with Alan Hawkins was everything I hoped for - plenty of time looking into hives, plenty of time building frames, plenty of laughs with other bee-ginners. Shaking our bees into their new hive yesterday afternoon was super-fun, as was assisting Rebecca with shaking her bees in today.

Overall the thing I've been so struck by is the bee-mind that beekeeping requires. Like diving, the optimal physical state is one of utter calm, smooth slow and deep breathing, and that observatory frame of mind, taking in everything happening without reacting quickly. With the bee-veil over my face, I quickly drop into that undersea mind -- go quiet, slow, and calm. It's utterly restful.

I did manage to get stung yesterday - totally my fault, and I much regret the sacrifice of that one lovely bee. And what struck me the most as it was happening was -- yes, how much it freaking hurt -- that I didn't panic, I didn't move any faster, I just slowly moved away from the hive, pulled my pants down (got me in the thigh), and got the venom sac away from me.

This morning I spent about 1 1/2 hours sitting next to the hive just observing what the morning's activities would bring. I was utterly lost in bee-vision, fascinated, every sense engaged. After yoga, visiting the bees was my first order of business. After Easter dinner at the Amons, checking them for the night was the day's last To Do.

It's so delightful to be sharing space with these 10,001 remarkable organisms. They are teaching me so much already, lessons that are particularly well-timed.