The Memories in Honey

Dear Bees,

It seems that in righting your crooked combs, we have have set things right in the hive overall. I'm so glad the mysterious queen finally made an appearance. I wish you could tell me what happened to the original queen, but maybe you just knew she was not your own. One special egg was laid and fed royal jelly so that your very own queen could emerge and reign over the  hive. It makes me smile.

I know that I still have quite a bit of your honey. Don't worry, my little friends. I am going to give it back to you. I just have to figure out the best method of delivery. I've had a little for myself, and I must say, it's very flavorful. A friend of mine who tried it said that the first flavor had a hint of freshly cut hay. 

I wonder if when you eat your honey you can taste each flower and tree that played a part in its making. When you taste it, do you feel the breeze that took each worker on her path to find nectar? Do you see the color of each flower for just one second? Part of the honey making process involves worker bees passing the nectar back and forth so that some of the moisture is lost. When you pass that nectar along, do you pass the memory of your flight, the way the light was hitting the leaves, or the scent of the flower? I guess those jars of honey in my house must hold thousands of tiny memories of flying and of warm winds. 

These are the things I think about when I watch you coming and going. I really wish I knew where that brilliant red pollen comes from. On warm days, I see you on the front of the hive, moving up and down rhythmically. I learned that this is called "washboarding," and it is one of the many bee mysteries that no one has figured out yet. No one knows why you do this dance, but there is speculation that it is a social activity. Maybe you are giving thanks. They say that only healthy, happy bees will do this. I hope it means that you are happy. 

I hope you're still keeping things straight in there, and raising all your babies to make the hive strong. I suppose it's been a bit of a rough patch for us, but we'll get through it. 

Love,
Sarah

"What you hold, may you [always] hold,
What you do, may you [always] do and never abandon.
But with swift pace, light step,
Unswerving feet,
So that even your steps stir up no dust,
May you go forward
Securely, joyfully, and swiftly,
On the path of prudent happiness,
Not believing anything,
Not agreeing with anything
That would dissuade you from this resolution
Or that would place a stumbling block for you on the way...."

- Clare of Assisi"The Second Letter to Agnes of Prague." 

Episode 10: Queenright

Finally! Three months after installing my first package of bees, I found the queen. Today during my hive inspection, I began pulling out the third bar from the front and heard a louder buzz come up from the hive as I lifted it up. That was my first clue. I thought: she must be here. Sure enough, there she was in her royal majesty, looking just like a queen bee should. She was large and golden and just perfect.

When I bought my package in April, I paid a little extra for a marked queen. The queen I received had a white dot on her back. I remember thinking that she didn't really look like what I imagined a queen would (much smaller), but I just went with it. Well, guess what my queen bee does not have? That's right, no white dot to be found. So, either what I got wasn't really a queen (unlikely) or, the queen I got died or was killed. My hive made and raised its very own, homegrown queen bee. This also means she probably mated with local drones, so my hive is not really Russian bees but a sort of local mutt strand. Although it sounds bad, it's actually better for me. Local feral bees have survived the parasites that are taking out so many hives these days, and their resistant genes have been passed to my queen and then to my hive. I'm thrilled.

The corrections from a few weeks ago continue to look good. We cut out a lot of honey comb at that time, but it also seemed that there wasn't much brood to be found. Today, every bar has brood on it, as well as capped honey. I saw no drone comb at all. The bees also don't seem to be building much in the way of new comb. While I'm slightly concerned about their honey stores and wondering if I need to start feeding the harvested honey back, I'm happy to see a much stronger brood pattern. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that the comb is now all straightened out.

Liz should be coming back in the next couple of weeks, so I look forward to being able to ask her about these things. My gut feeling says that all is as should be in the hive now, but I want to make sure that my bees have what they need to make it through winter.

So I have learned in these past weeks from my bees, that sometimes you have to cut things away in order to set them right. It may be difficult and painful, but the result will be something better and healthier.

Here's to you, my bees, and to me... And most of all, to health.

Episode 9: Progress

Since we finally got a break with the weather today, I decided to go out and check on the bees. I hadn't opened the hives in almost two weeks, since we made all the adjustments to fix the cross comb, and I was a little nervous about what I would find. I was also afraid that the bees would react more strongly to me messing with them after being traumatized. Thankfully that was not the case.

I can't imagine working my bees in the weather we've been having. Getting suited up and working with temperatures in the mid 80's was hard enough. I had a tank top on under my bee jacket, and I was dripping sweat the whole time. I'm not really sure how beekeepers in places like Florida, Texas, and other southern states do it.

Upon opening up the hive, I was super excited to see that there was no new cross combing! All the combs we had straightened out were still straight, and I was able to pull out all the bars and inspect them with no problem at all. There was a lot of brood and some capped honey on all the bars. I looked for the queen briefly, but she still managed to elude me somehow.

I took out a small bar at the entrance that was but there to give the bees space but seemed to be causing more problems (they were building comb on it.) I was pretty proud of myself for operating a phillips head screwdriver while wearing over sized gloves and dripping sweat.

Just about an hour ago, I looked outside and saw a lot of activity at the entrance. I'm not sure if it was a lot of bees coming back to the hive before it rains, or if this is an orientation flight. Orientation is when new worker bees fly in figure eights outside the hive entrance to sort of memorize the way the hive and the horizon look so they can find their way back after they go out foraging for nectar and pollen. Sorry about my lack of video skills, but here is a short clip of what I saw.

Pretty cool, I think. I feel so peaceful watching them, and they don't pay much attention to me. I think they're used to my presence now.

In other backyard news, my dad said he would help me build a chicken coop. I can't tell you how excited I am! It's another step on my way to having my own little backyard farm. I've been doing lots of reading, too, and next weekend I'm going to a workshop about backyard chickens. So hopefully before the end of the summer, this blog will be about birds and bees!

Things have been a bit personally tumultuous for me lately, but my little winged friends are a constant presence. I know I can count on their coming and going each day just like the rising and setting of the sun. It's funny how little flying insects somehow seem to anchor me in a way.



For Joy's Sake, From My Hands
by Ossip Mandelstam
For joy's sake, from my hands,
take some honey and some sun,
as Persephone's bees told us.


Not to be freed, the unmoored boat.
Not to be heard, the fur-booted shadows
Not to be silenced, life's dark terrors.


Now we only have kisses 
dry and bristling like bees,
that die when they leave the hive.


Rustling in clear glades of night,
in the dense forests of Taygetos,
time feeds them; honeysuckle; mint.


For joy's sake, take my strange gift,
This simple thread of dead, dried bees, 
turned honey in the sun.


-

Episode 8: Beautifully Ruthless

Finally, a long overdue recap of my last hive inspection, where I was joined by Liz of TwoHoneys. After lots of fretting and hand wringing, I finally accepted the fact that I needed help and contacted Liz. Sorry again for the lack of pictures, but without Marc, and with my own hands covered in honey, I was not able to get any action shots.

Temperatures had been (and now are again) in the mid to high 90s. In this heat, comb becomes very soft and it is difficult, not to mention risky, to try to work in your hives. Luckily we had a break in the weather early last week, and Liz was able to come over on Tuesday. She arrived at about 4:30 and was exactly as I expected: smiling, kind, and had a truck full of bee-related gear and supplies. I told her about my troubles getting my smoker lighted, and she shared a tip on making starters out of corrugated cardboard. She also suggested getting a torch from Home Depot to make things easier. (All I want for Christmas is...a torch. Oh, and maybe a chicken coop.)

Once we were both suited up, we got down to business with the hive. As expected, the cross comb was pretty bad. Once we had pulled out a couple bars, Liz realized that we were going to be doing some major surgery (chopping off some comb) and that, ready or not, I was getting a honey harvest. The first few bars were all honey, and some of it was cut off so we could push the remaining comb into a straight line parallel with the top bar. We left one comb with uncapped honey inside the hive on the bottom so the bees could take that honey back. The rest that we were cutting off was put into a bucket for harvesting. The comb built on my hair clip fix bar from two weeks ago had fallen off :( Liz told me that she has tried that method before, too, and it didn't work well for her either. To re-attach comb, she just uses large rubber bands around the entire comb and bar.

It became apparent to me once we started working (or, when Liz started working) that one of my problems is my fear or reluctance to hurt bees while moving things around inside the hive. She said that "sometimes, you have to be ruthless" and just get down to work.  So, yes, more bees than I would have like died while were fixing issues that were the result of my inexperience. It made me sad. But she also said that when you keep bees, you're going to kill a few for the greater good. So, in being a bit more "ruthless", I can avoid situations like this in the future.

We carried on further into the hive, pulling the bars apart one by one. We finally reached the brood area and cut out some drone comb which was thrown away. Since the only purpose of drones is to mate with queens, they don't really serve much of a purpose in the hive. Their larger size also makes them targets for one of the worst pests plaguing honey bees: the varroa mite.

I think there were about 3 combs of mostly brood. We looked for the queen while we were working, but didn't spot her. There was worker brood, though, which means that she was there somewhere. This may have been when she slipped out the front entrance. I'll never know for sure. Anyway, apparently my bees are super honey-makers, but my brood nest seems a little weak. Finally, we got all the bars separated and comb straightened out, for the most part. Liz suggested some adjustments and told me that my popsicle stick guides weren't going to cut it, so I need to make a trip to Home Depot this week and get some materials to make better guides. Once it was all said and done, there was honey everywhere. Luckily, the bees can drink it up and put it back into combs for themselves, so all is not lost. Makes me feel a little better about the combs I've broken in the past. Upon closing up the hive, we noticed the unusual activity at the entrance I mentioned in my earlier posts:

 Unprofessional photo taken by yours truly. "WTF" - the Bees

There you can see tons of bees clustered on the front of the hive. I'm still not sure if it was because the queen was outside, or if they were just really upset, but for a while things were pretty dicey and I thought they might hit the road (or the air?) Luckily, they stayed with me and things seem to be back to normal. Unfortunately temps are back up again, but I need to get back in there and see how things are going. I may end up doing it earlier in the morning one of these days. 

Now for the fun part: harvesting the honey. 

 Harvested comb before crushing

One of the cool things about a top bar hive is that you don't need any special equipment to extract the honey. You can either harvest cut comb honey (honey sold to be eaten with the wax, still inside the comb) or use the crush and strain method. To crush and strain, I just got a potato masher and mashed all of this comb and honey into a big, gooey mess. All the instructional videos I watched said you should put down cardboard where you work to help contain the mess. "Oh, I don't need that," I thought "I'm not going to make a mess." Oh, how wrong I was. Somehow, honey goes everywhere, whether or not you intended for it to happen. I'm still finding sticky spots in my kitchen almost a week later. Anyhow, once you have your crushed honey/comb mix, you pour it into a sieve so that the clean honey drains into a pot, leaving the wax and other debris behind.  Something else I scoffed at while watching YouTube tutorials was that there would be bees in the honey. There weren't lots in mine, but I think there were at least two dead and two or three alive that I took out of the pot before straining (a couple of which I later found crawling around my kitchen, covered in honey. Sort of sad.) 

It was so great to be able to meet Liz and learn from her. I hope it is just the beginning of some additional education for me in the world of bees and top bar hives. It was sort of a difficult experience, too, though. I hated seeing so many bees die, especially because of something I could have prevented if I had known better. I know it happens, but to me, each one is still a life. So, I will learn to be a little more ruthless, but I will still try to work as carefully as possible and avoid injuring my bees. They spend their short lives working to make honey and care for each other, as part of one amazing, greater organism. The bees are teaching me so much, and I never want to take a single one of their lives for granted.

Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamt - marvelous error! -

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

-Last Night by Antonio Machado