The Joys of Beekeeping

By Pat McGinty 

OMG (in the vernacular of the texting generation)! It is June already; where has the first half of the year gone?  

Since last we visited, my two new hives have been busy expanding their numbers and preparing for the infamous “nectar flow.”  Nectar flow, of course, is when the bees start turning nectar into honey for themselves, and us, if all goes well (no monsoons, hurricanes, so much heat the nectar dries up.)  Bees are extremely organized and know instinctively that if they are going to survive they have a lot of work to do (some people could stand to learn that ethic) and the more bees to do it the more quickly and efficiently it will be done (an excellent example of community effort.) The worker bees in my two new colonies have been drawing out cells on new foundation and cleaning up cells drawn out on old foundation by previous occupants to make room for the nursery and the food supply, both of which are important factors in their survival.

Healthy “brood” is essential to a strong hive and her majesty, the Queen Bee, can lay 2,000 or more eggs a day – and if she doesn’t the colony can decide to get rid of her and start over (who says it’s great to be queen?).  In her lifetime, which averages three years, she could lay over one million eggs, supplying the colony with worker bees, nurse bees, and drones. The latter are the male bees and pretty much useless until a new queen is needed, and then they are fertilization machines that die with smiles on their little bee faces. Each of my hives has five of the eight frames filled with varying stages of brood. Some have eggs so small you almost need a magnifying glass to see them (don’t do this in direct sunlight unless you want fried bee eggs); some at the larval stage, looking like tiny white worms; and other cells already capped, with tiny bees growing inside. Since the turnover in worker and nurse bees is fairly frequent (they live only four to six weeks, depending on the work load) it is important to see a lot of brood in the hive. Five or more frames full, though, means it is time to add another story (hive box) to the living accommodations or it is likely that one of the dreaded experiences of beekeeping, swarming, will soon take place.

As I said before, they have also been collecting and storing pollen (of which there was plenty and early this year) to feed, among others, the baby bees. Since a single frame with a solid (not spotty) brood pattern could produce nearly 6,000 new bees at hatching time, they will need a lot of pollen. One of the responsibilities of the beekeeper is to observe just how much stored food there is in the hive. Looking for pollen stores is one of the easier beekeeping jobs. When opening the hive and pulling out a frame, you will see some variously colored cells. This is not because the hive has a decorator bee, but because pollen from different plants has different colors. For instance, the bright yellow is probably dandelion pollen, but you will also see red, orange, gray, brown and so on (if you see black it may not be pollen but disease so look carefully); it all depends on the plant source.  Supposedly honey bees will collect 66 to 100 pounds of pollen per year (I am not sure how this was determined but it doesn’t seem an impossible feat with nearly 60,000 bees populating a hive.) It is a nutritional powerhouse for the bees supplying 35 percent protein, 10 percent sugars, carbohydrates, enzymes, minerals, and Vitamin A, B1, B2, B3, B5, C, H (biotin), and R(rutin). Without a good supply of pollen the hive will weaken quickly.  Unfortunately, pollen has great commercial value in the human world and some beekeepers have found ways to rob the bees of their pollen and then wonder why the hive dies. Duh!!

So now we have opened the hive and checked for brood and food. We are also estimating our hive strength because if the “hive doesn’t thrive they will not survive.” Additionally, you will not be getting any honey for your winter biscuits. A healthy hive has frames covered in bees doing their assigned duties. The frames should not have bees that are so packed together they cannot move about; a hive with frames like that will most likely swarm (leave home to find better accommodations). If all the frames are covered with working bees and the brood is occupying half or more of the frames, then add the new hive box full of frames, close the hive up, and leave them alone. I will wait two or more weeks at this point, as long as I see lots of motion going on outside the hive as the workers leave and return with stores for the colony, or it becomes obvious the nectar flow has started.

Because of the extreme heat we seem to already be experiencing this year, I want to address one more important nutrient for the bees and that is water. You will remember in my last column I said that bees do not like to be wet and that is true but they don’t like to be hot and thirsty either; water is an important ingredient in many of the processes taking place in the hive. In the summer heat (which seems to be upon us early this year along with everything else), water is used for evaporative cooling of the hive. The water is spread in a thin layer on top of the capped brood and then the nurse bees fan the water with their wings to create air currents that cool down the hive (kind of a bee air conditioning). If your hive sits in an area that is sunny all day you may also see the bees congregating on the outside of the hive to keep the interior heat down. Two years ago I had such a hive and it was not unusual to see the bees outside the hive at ten o’clock at night.   

The bees get their water supply from different places including morning dew, damp rocks, puddles, ponds, animal water dishes, and that kiddie pool you’ve been cooling off in, just to name a few. The most helpful thing you can do is set up a shallow bowl, like a bird bath for instance, put some rocks or sticks in it, and fill it with water. The rocks and sticks give the bees something to land on (since they are not very good swimmers; remember the kiddie pool?). Check the water level daily or more often if it is really hot, because not only will it evaporate faster but other fauna will also take advantage of the available sustenance. I use a two-gallon chicken waterer and, once it is filled with water and closed up, I put rocks and twigs in the moat. I usually have to refill it once a week and the bees use it readily. So help out your local bees and have a watering station handy for their use.

I have barely scratched the surface of bee care so for those of you wanting to learn more about bees and beekeeping, the Backyard Beekeepers Association will be meeting on Thursday, June 18, at 6:30 p.m. at the Bug-n-Out store (108 E. Crawford St. in Deer Park.)   We are all about beekeeper and wanna-be beekeeper education and support. See you there.