No bees

This happened a while ago, but my bees disappeared.  Up and vanished.  The friend whose land they are on said he still sees bees, so I guess they just didn't like my hive.  Makes me very sad, even now months later.  I don't think I'll try again this year due to a recent addition to our family, just too much going on.  So I'll order some next november.

Bees in the hive

Here are my girls! (And a few boys, but they don't do much). The only function of the male bee is to fertilize the queen, and that is only done once. The rest of the year, the male bees don't do a thing but get fed by the worker bees. They don't even have a stinger, so they can't defend the hive either.

They are a little bigger than worker bees, you can see one in the close-up I took above. It is about the fifth or sixth one from the bottom, kind of in the middle of a little cluster. Nice and fat. Sound like the good life for these male bees? Not so much. Come winter, they get kicked out. So a beekeeper knows his bees are done making honey when the male bees are out in the cold. Those poor, defenseless bachelors die in the winter! But I guess they deserve it, since they didn't do much to prepare for the cold.

I did get stung a couple more times moving the bees into the hive. One bee managed to find her way under my hood and sting me right in the throat. That hurt. I couldn't help but take off screaming, and in the process another bee took advantage of me tearing off my hood and stung me in the forehead. I guess they didn't like moving day very much.

Now I'm supposed to wait a week before I can check on them again (let them get settled in). I think I saw the queen, but I'll look harder next time, for sure.

See the grass stuffed into the entrance? That is me helping the bees defend their hive while they are a little light on numbers. Smaller entrance means less defenders necessary.

Wikipedia: Nucs, or Nucleus Colonies, are small honey bee colonies created from larger colonies. The term refers both to the smaller size box and the colony of honeybees within it. The name is derived from the fact that a nuc hive is centered around a queen - the nucleus of the honey bee colony.

I got a nuc! Had a few adventures in getting it. First, it was delayed. The worker bees killed the queen before I even got the package. So I had to wait a week for the bee company to orient a new queen to my little hive. Good thing that happened there not here, as I am a little short of queens.

When I got the package from a friend who picked it up for me, we lifted it up and accidentally picked up the lid a little. About a dozen bees got out, one of which stung me on the forehead. My first sting.

Following the instructions, I put the bees on site, pulled off the opening, and let the box sit. I think this lets the bees get acquainted with their new land. Today I am going to take frames out of the cardboard box they were given to me in and put them in my hive. Hopefully I won't get stung again! Hopefully the bees survived, living out of their cardboard box! Hopefully the queen isn't dead! Hopefully... etc., etc... Now it begins!

Sad day in bee-ville

I'm sorry to say, my bees have been delayed again due to all of the rain we've been having, so I am going to have to wait until next year. Next year I'm going to order EARLY.

Rain, rain go away, come again another day

So I still haven't painted the hive yet (but I will).  Now I see rain in the forecast for this weekend.  That's bad news for the little bugs.  They don't like rain when trying to get into a new home.  I've read that if it's raining, you need to keep them dry, so they'll be going in my garage if it rains, where I can hose them down with sugar water to keep them fed.  Sound like fun?  I hope my boys (like my youngest 3 year old) don't open the box up.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to buy the paint and finish the hive.  From now until Friday, I'll be praying the coulds overhead will rain themselves out by the time Friday rolls around, so there will be plenty of blossoms, but dry weather too!

The hive is done...almost

I've decided I'm going to keep bees. I started thinking about it last year about this time (which was too late, you need to have everything ready by now). My grandpa keeps bees (a ton of them, I don't know how many hives he has), and I thought it would be a good way to show some pioneer spirit. Bees are fascinating creatures. I plan on sharing some bee trivia on every post, we'll see how far that goes. Bees guard the entrance to their hive, but if a stranger bee comes to the entrance, he can bribe the guard with some nectar and get some honey from inside!

I have a hive. It is almost done, all I need is to paint the outside, which I plan on doing this week. My bees are coming May 8th. I'm getting excited! I ordered them a little late, but with the cool weather we're having now, I'm not regretting it at all. I ordered 4 lbs to make up for the late start. It's kind of hard to imagine 4 lbs of bees, how much does a bee weigh? How many bees does that make up? Some of them die in transit (sad). The queen will be shipped separately, and I have to go through this whole process to get the bees acclimated to their new queen. I have the weekend they are coming off, so I should be able to devote all the time I need to them. Fun!