April 26 Source Hive Check

I was going to check on my top-bar in the backyard yesterday, but it was so rainy and windy I decided to let them be. It's a nice, not too hot, but sunny day. I went out at 11:15am and there was gentle sun on the hive and lots of activity at the entrance.

My agenda for today was is to check on the feeder, make sure the queen made it out of the cage and see if I can detect her, and take a general look.

Feeder: They were still feeding from it, and from the weight check, it felt about half-full. I'm using the syrup that came with them in the package, but I think on my next check (in a week) I will simply remove it and put regular sugar water inside.

I discussed the feeding with a local beekeeper, Jessie Brown, who has had 10 years experience, and she said that it would be best to keep feeding them through the summer, so I will do that. Most sources say that once they start making honey, you should leave them alone, but Jessie said that you can't predict the weather and you don't want to stress them as they are making all their resources for the hive.

Queen: Scooting the bars back until I reached where they were building, I found the queen cage. A quick look showed that it was empty, so the queen must have gotten out. I looked for her quickly, but didn't see her, and will make that my primary goal for next week.

Comb: The bees are going gangbusters making comb! They have about 8 bars they are working on, and at least three of them are full comb now, though I stopped after the first four bars. I think that next week I will look at all of them, looking for evidence of the queen and brood, and see how far along they are. If they have that much comb, I may want to space some of it out, especially if I find that they are doing well with brood.

Unfortunately, possibly where there was some residual wax on the bottom, they have built a layer of comb on the bottom board. I know I don't want it there, but it's the only one that they have put anything in: nectar and what appeared to be pollen! On the one hand, I don't want to take their nascent resources. On the other, it's uncapped nectar, so trying to scrape it up and attach it to a bar is probably a bad idea, as all of the nectar will just run out. So I'm going to check with some folks to see what they think I should do.

My next check will be on Tuesday, May 2.

April 18 Hive Check

I checked on the hives today to release the queen into the hive. I am totally unsure if I did this right, but I went ahead. I will be honest...I was so nervous checking on the bees! Part of it is wanting them to be alright, part of it is me wanting to do things right. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but I'm still running on a bit of adrenaline.

Source Hive
At the Source hive, which is my top-bar in my backyard, the bees were in slight shade at noon and coming and going from the entrance. I gently smoked the entrance, took off the cover, and started moving bars down so that I could get to the entrance bars. They are already starting to make beautiful looking comb! It was quite a sight with them all festooning and working away.

I got to the queen's cage, but they had started building comb AROUND it. Plus, bees were swarming all over her and it was hard to carry once I DID release her. I swept some bees off, though that seemed to make them all mad and the hive got agitated. I was working fast and tried to get the cork out. Unfortunately, it fell in. Not wanting to risk having the queen immediately fly out, I placed the cage on the bottom of the hive. I wanted to put a marshmallow in its place, as recommended, but it wouldn't fit immediately and I decided I didn't want something bad to happen. It was adrenaline talking, I'm sure.

Anyway, it has been five days in the hive with her, and they seemed pretty content the last few days of me watching the hive, so I am hoping that they don't kill her. I sealed up the hive so that they could have their space to continue what they do and I will go back out in a a few days, maybe a week, to check on how things are going and look for the queen.

SR Hive
Tristan wanted to join me this time to work on the Langstroth Hive at Sunflower River. We gathered everything and headed out to the hive. They seemed content to do their own thing, so we got the smoker going and went to look for the queen cage. She was still well, the cage covered in bees. The hive was busy laying down comb and it was beautiful.

This time, I was able to get the cork out of the queen cage and Tristan had a marshmallow ready and stuffed it into the hole. We replaced the frame and the queen cage, and then closed everything up. We refilled the feeder with sugar water and moved the hive slightly, as the box was too far back and the bees were using it as an additional entrance.

Tristan and I discussed making a new cover for the hive, as this one fell apart as we were putting it back on. And we also need to shave the entrance reducer down so that it can be used with this hive.

Everything looked good, and I will come back in a week to see how they're doing, look for the queen (or evidence of her) and remove the queen cage.

The Bees Are Here!

I'll be posting a couple of updates in quick succession, the first about the bees themselves, and the second about my garden. This weekend was abuzz with activity! (Oh yes, I went there.)

We spent all of Friday preparing my backyard into what Kat calls my "urban micro farm." Mostly this was work on planting and drip systems, but kindly, Kat's intern Michael helped put together the last of the cleats on my top bar frames to make it easier to direct where the bees should build comb.

Terra walking out of
the cooler amidst
the swarm

our two 3# packages
of bees! their faces
were so cute poking
out the holes!

Once we had things well underway, however, the time to go pick up the bees was nigh. Kat drove myself, Charey and Michael to Hay's Honey and Apple Farm in Bosque Farms to pick up the two packages of bees from Craig! It was quite an experience wandering into the cooler with Craig, the bees buzzing around. Such a wonderful sound, and I love have honeybees landing on my body and crawling around.

When we had the packages, we left for Sunflower River as a first stop on putting bees in their hives. I was quite nervous. This was my first time handling a package of bees, and I was so intent on getting it right. I read and re-read the class booklet from last year's Certified Beekeeper course on putting packages in a Langstroth Hive, and then I took a deep breath and just did it. We put the bees in the shade while we collected all the things, placing the hive on the back of the property while Jenny, one of the Sunflower River stewards, made the 1:4 part sugar-water mixture to feed them. We started the smoker -- well, Kat started the smoker, as I'm not good at fire-building. I probably will be soon, though. Then we put some honey on the frame cleats, I suited up, and we went to work.

shaking bees into the hive

The book was wrong. Or, at least, it didn't go as planned. I kept telling myself that it was just a guide and the bees would do what was best for them with the queen inside and a feeder around. Still, it was a frustrating first attempt. As instructed in the book, I bounced the package downward onto my hands a few times to get the bees to the bottom of the package. Unfortunately, the package was too small and all it did was piss them off. Next, I had to get enough bees out to get to the queen, whom I had to place while the bees were zooming around, rather than placing her first. To watch that process, which is kind of cool, Kat got a video here. Unfortunately, she stopped filming because a really angry bee stung her right on top of her head. The next time I looked up, the three of them were all the way across the field.

battle royale at the beeyard! The Beekeeper versus Skeletor!

Once I had the bees out and the queen placed, I put the hive back together. Which was the biggest fail, as we had forgotten the hive cover. I shouted back to them to go get it and Kat said, "You didn't have us make one." That stopped me dead and I fretted. Fortunately, the old one, which had broken on one side, was in the compost. So they went back to get it and repair it quickly while I stayed there. With angry bees pelting themselves off my veil. It took a good fifteen minutes for them to fix it and I slowly placed it on top, and then Michael came back and we had a major battle! Actually, it just looks like that from the picture...he was very helpful in handing me things as we were getting things done. Then it was time to place the feeder -- no problem -- and the entrance reducer...crap.

The entrance reducer wasn't long enough, and too thick, to be functional. After some fretting, and accidentally killing a couple of bees, we went back and got some fabric and stuffed it gently into the entrance in order to make it smaller and more defensible. On Tuesday I would return and Tristan, another SR steward and the one who wants to learn how to keep the bees, will figure out another more permanent solution.

Dispirited but holding it together, we packed everything up and left to come back to my house, the Source. Michael stayed, and so it was just Kat, Charey and I. Part of our adventure continued on an uneven path when we exited the freeway and the bee package in the back of the truck tipped. We pulled over and I went into the back to find the feeder can had come out and bees were starting to come out into the cab. I quickly righted it and replaced the can, accidentally crushing a few of the girls along the way. Shoring it up, we continued the last couple miles to home and I took them -- and the swarm of a hundred bees we had in the back seat following me -- into a spot of shade.

replacing the bars...
and being aware of
the crack in the wall
behind the hive

Thankfully, things went better after that. I decided not to shake the girls anymore and just get them out into the top-bar hive and grab the queen, and then put everything back together. It went quickly and well, these ladies quite content to just do their thing and explore their new home. I shook the bees out into the back of the hive (video here), lodged the queen cage between a couple bars at the entrance, placed feeding can on a couple sticks in the back, and then started replacing the bars. I was very careful and didn't kill any more bees, working slowly and carefully. They were all very happy and inquisitive, and we watched for a while until they started using the entrance, and then we left them alone.

they found the entrance!

This called for a milkshake, which we promptly went to the 66 Diner for, before collapsing into a hot tub on the farm after 12 hours of work and adrenaline.

I checked both hives, from a short distance, Saturday morning. The SR bees were going just fine, a lot calmer, and were doing orienting flights. They needed more sugar water, which Tristan did that evening. At my house, the Source hive was happy and doing the same, and I soon felt much better. I will see them on Tuesday afternoon to check on the queen and place a marshmallow on the cage for her to slowly release into her new hive!

While I'm Waiting...

Yesterday, I sat through a Varroa mite class -- the facts about them, their prevalence in New Mexico, and how to test and treat for them -- and it got me a little scared. I don't want my bees to die! So this morning I ordered some Mite-Away, just to hit them with a hopefully less-impactful mite reduction program for when they first arrive. That said, I'm very interested in more organic cures. Les Crowder (top-bar master who lives here in New Mexico) apparently uses creosote in his smoke. Next time I'm on a road trip, I'll gather some and try it. Also, there's a recipe for rhubarb strips that the bees chew up to get out of their way, and that also are poisonous to mites. (Blog post on that here.) So I'll be trying these later, but I'm scared enough to jump to chemicals since I wasn't nearly as ready as I thought for the thought of my bees having bugs of their own!

In any event, I'm feeling a little underprepared. I'm probably not. Hell, the bees are going to do the work of surviving, and all I am is an occasional disruption in their lives. But still, I'm getting as prepared as possible. To that end, while I'm waiting for my bees to arrive (April 14!) I have been working on getting hives ready.

I lost a picture of the bottom-board that Rev created for the hive at Sunflower River, but I do have the boxes with frames that Kat, Tristan and I put together for their Langstroth.

I also went out to inspect the top-bar hive here at the Source, with my trusty assistant Orlando scoping things out for me. He says it needs more rope, but he says that about everything. I have started preparing these frames with cleats, so that the bees have a good start on building comb.

We're also in the process of getting my yard's garden ready. I'm going to have an herb garden, some rows of veggies and some fruit trees, but the most exciting thing is my pollinator garden! To that end, Kat has been helping me figure out a drip system, which will also fill a couple of bowls of water for the bees throughout the day. I'll post more pics of that when it doesn't look like someone took shovels to my yard. Because we have.

I know it's not much, but that's all I have for now. I guess, like me, you'll just have to wait. And wait. Patiently, of course.

A Little About Me, or Why the Hell Am I On the Internet?

Hello! My name is Terra Phoenix, pleasure to meet you. (That picture is me, at BioSphere 2, photo credit to the lovely and talented Kat Heatherington. A sizable portion of the pictures on this blog will probably be hers.)

Since this is a free blog, and created in part to be a journal for my Certificate in Beekeeping with the New Mexico Beekeepers Association, it will focus primarily on how my venture into keeping bees goes. But, considering it'll probably become a habit for me over the course of the next several months, and may end up being my long-term bee journal for myself, I will probably be adding personal stuff, too. I'll try to figure out how to tag them so you can avoid my other ramblings, but you probably can't avoid it. I'm a bit long-winded.

First, a little about me. Originally from Western Washington (grew up small-town, moved to Seattle for college and more-or-less stayed there for 20 years), I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico a little over a year ago. I am a queer, genderqueer Witch, as far as labels go, and so that makes me a little between-the-margins. That keeps extending into what I do in the world; by trade, I'm a somatic therapist and sacred intimate/sex and intimacy coach. How I see it, I get to be a Priestess helping folks heal and transform their lives. It's a hoot.

In fact, this blog is named after both bees and priestesses. In Ancient Greek, melissa is the word for bee (meli- meaning honey) and in several Mediterranean cults and religions, the bee was considered psychopomps, insects that spanned our world and the underworld. Priestesses of Artemis and Demeter were called Melissas, or simply, bees. And while this is a lovely synchronicity, this isn't how I got interested in them.

I have always been fascinated with bees. Unfortunately, like most other bugs, they scared the crap out of me. I mean, the worst were spiders, and I still struggle to keep my fear response in check when I see even teenie tiny ones. But as a kid, most bugs would get me taking a huge step back. As I got older and, perhaps, a little smarter, I realized that they were important and I ought to be nicer to them because without most bugs, we wouldn't exist. But bees were kind of the exception (and probably the reason I got over my fear). They were pretty, they made honey, and their buzz was simply intoxicating, and so I screwed up my courage and got as close as I could to them when I was younger. Considering I started out life as an academic, studying mythology and folklore, I couldn't avoid things like knowing what a Melissa was, and so bees have always had a kind of...sacred place in my heart. Didn't mean I wanted to keep them, though.

But rewind to about four years ago or so. I was in a relationship with a couple of people (oh, I'm polyamorous, as well) who decided to become farmers. Well, as someone who also kind of hates getting dirty (I'm getting over it) I wanted to be able to plug in. So I was their administrator for the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and decided that I would keep their bees. So I read books, took a couple classes, got a fancy new white jacket with a veil, and was ready to have bees...and then the farm dissolved. I cancelled the package and continued my urban existence where I couldn't keep bees easily enough. Still, I continued to read about them, hoping at some point to have a place to keep a couple hives.

Now I live in Albuquerque, and part of my conditions of moving here (as I see it) is that I would keep bees for some folks. Sunflower River, to be precise. I was in a long-distance relationship and we figured that was a bad idea, so I moved here for love. (Queue the "awws.") But she's one of the stewards of a farm, and I said, "Well, I could keep your bees...?" Turns out most of the stewards were pretty excited for that, so before I even moved across the country, I joined the NMBKS Certificate Program and got re-oriented toward being a beekeeper. Sunflower River had an old Langstroth hive sitting around waiting for bees. In addition to that, I live and work and practice at The Source, a community of health care and wholeness practitioners, and they had a beehive there that needed some love. It's a top bar. So I get to learn both common hive types, in parallel, in two different micro-climates. How's that for a good time?

In any event, here's my blog. Be prepared for a lot of technical things (May 1, Sunflower River, 5 bars of brood, 4 bars of honey...) as well as some of the more ephemeral stuff that buzzes around in my brain around beekeeping. That is, more ancient bee facts and folklore, stuff about apitherapy (so interested in that) and maybe even dreams that I have. I mean, I'm woo, so you'll have to forgive me. Anyway, my hope is you'll find some fun, maybe some laughs, and generally just enjoy yourself. Feel free to contact me by e-mail (terrakitty at googlemail-period-com) if you have questions. Thanks!