2018 A new year!

May 26, 2018

I have been away for a very long time. 2017 was a year of loss and grief with no time for bees. The year was spent caring for my husband Bill as he fought his last good fight with prostate cancer. He died on Dec 5, 2017. You may remember that Bill was always fascinated with honey bees and was constantly creating things to make working with the bees easier...or cooler. He learned as much about the bees as I did and often retained the information better than I did! Now I am here in PEI without his great ideas and support but nevertheless, I have decided that it is time to start having bees again.

May 16

Roger O’Neill of Montague sold me a couple of packages imported from New Zealand! #1 was very strong with brood and capped honey...7 frames and #2 was less strong with only 5 frames.  All of Roger’s frames are all plastic foundation. He was very curious about my open frames but was a bit skeptical. He loves bees!  Beekeepers  are so cool and creative and inventive. He suggested that I screw jar lids on a piece of plywood the size of the hive. Ea ch lid would have a little hole under to give access to the bees. The jars would be screwed into the lids and then an empty box is placed over them and the bees are left to it. The bees will build comb in the jars and when they are full they can be unscrewed and another jar put in. Roger fills the jars with liquid honey and sells them!  Not sure that I will try this but it is very innovative.

May 22


#1 was booming when I opened her up so I added a box but #2 was not as strong so I left her alone. The bees are very busy and calm. Their main food is the amazing crop of dandelions we have on the
property.  Friends then helped me move the fence from the old bee yard to the new placement to give the bees a wind break from the north and west.  The new placement brings the hives closer to the house which will make it easier to reach them...especially in the winter!  Here’s to the warm weather and bee success!

#1 hive

Dandelion field

Hives in their new home 

Happy New Year!

December 30, 2016

Hard to believe that 2016 is coming to an end!  It was an eventful year for all of us in many ways... polically and emotionally. So on to 2017!  Here are a few shots of what winter is like in PEI.

Grasses and snow

Rocks covered in ice

Small hive completely covered in snow

Autumn in PEI

October 25

Sorry to have been gone so long but summer theatre and beekeeping are not a good fit...never mind blogging!

A quick over view of the summer:
1.  Got one hive.  Planted a field of wild flowers for the bees and Bill's metal sculptures.
2.  Worked like crazy at the theatre and finally got to the bees just after they swarmed. Sigh.
3.  Found lots of queen cells so split them up between two hives to let them start over again.
4.  They have been going great guns without any sign of mites or disease though I did have a significant die off end of September which could have been pesticide related.
5.  Getting them ready for winter and leaving them all the honey for food. Have to buy my honey at the market.
6.  Making resolution to take time away from the theatre for the bees next summer!!!  Happy Autumn!

Wildflowers planted for the bees

 

Two proud hives--no names

Frame of bees on hybrid frame

Field of mustard next to bees

New bees in PEI

May 21. 2016

I'm back...almost

Happy Thanksgiving 2015!!!

This is a quick post to let you know that I am alive and well in rural PEI. We have 9 1/2 acres of farm land with a tiny bit of woods and are dreaming of turning the first field into orchards, gardens and wild flower meadows. Bill is dreaming of turning this space into a sculpture garden as he turns the barn into a shop and I dream of a perfect habitat for bees!

I have chatted with a beekeeper who has 2,500 beehives situated all over PEI and will be getting a couple of colonies from him after his bees have pollinated the blueberry fields. I would rather get swarms so I don't have to change from deep frames with foundation to my shallow open frames but there is no way of guaranteeing a swarm capture. I will place some bait hives in the spring just to see.

In the meantime I am cleaning up all my boxes and painting them in anticipation. I am also re-reading my bee books to make sure I remember how to do this. I got a wonderful book called Bee Time by Mark L. Winston, a bee keeper, scientist and thinker in Vancouver, B.C. which is fantastic. It is a unique look at our relationship with bees, both wild and managed and nature in general.  Worth checking out for everyone.

So to all of you I wish a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend...and if you have time to read, lucky you!

Fall-Winter 2014 Update

I finally have time for a blog!  Sorry to have been away so long.

I am afraid that my news is not good news.

At the end of September, both hives were doing great.  Lots of honey and healthy queens...Olivia still had 2 queens but all seemed to be well.  We had found piles of dead bees in both hives a couple of times throughout August and September but I decided that the wet summer we were having was the cause of that.  I put them to bed feeling confidant.

In mid-October we had a sunny cold day but I didn't see any activity at either hive so I went in.  Queen Mab had a cluster of dead bees covering 4 frames with a lot of honey around her.  Queen Olivia was exactly the same story.  Quite likely, the cause of the bee kills wasn't too much moisture but herbicides at the train yard across the street. The bees just couldn't sustain themselves once they were confined in the hive.   The train yard had been cleaned up this summer in honour of the LPGA Tournament being hosted by CP Rail here in London.  It was quite a coup for London to have this international event here.

Moral of this story?  Be careful what you wish for!  The train yard had new fences put up, beautiful blue spruces planted and wide swaths of grass laid.  There was not a weed to be seen.  We were so excited by the "improvements"!  Now we know what we lost for the next little while--healthy herbicide free wild flower forage for the bees.  Give the train yard a year and the golden rod, asters and daisies will be back.

I will be sending samples of the bees to the inspectors as soon as spring comes to find out for sure what happened. Sorry for the sad story!  Onwards!

Midsummer Bee Diary

August 2, 2014

We went to visit Sophia, another urban beekeeper.  She has two top bar hives.  Top bar hives are used in warmer climates such as Africa but we are experimenting with them here in Canada. Usually they don't have foundation and only a bar on top with no sides.  To harvest the honey, the comb has to be cut from the bar and crushed and strained like I do.  They are a bit more fragile since the comb is only attached on the bar whereas mine can be attached to the sides of the frame as well.  One of Sophia's hives is a hybrid in that the original colony was built on frames with foundation.  She is working on switching them to pure top bars over the summer.

Hybrid top bar hive

Traditional top bar hive with slanted sides and Hybrid

Going into a top bar hive is less stressful for the bees since the whole hive doesn't have to be taken apart like mine.  We are not sure how they over-winter in our cold winters so that will be interesting to see.  Her bees looked very busy and happy and have a beautiful pond to get their water and a garden full of vegetables and flowers to pollinate.

Frog in the pond

August 3, 2014  Sunny, humid, 24 degrees centigrades

Paul joined me in the bees today!  I had a packed agenda for the visit.  I needed to see if the queen in No Name was laying.  I had decided if it wasn't working, I would amalgamate her with Olivia, where she originally came from.  I showed Paul the difference between workers and drones, the different capped brood, capped honey and we also found bees with deformed wings from a virus.

Paul and I looking at the frames in No Name

There was no sign of laying, no eggs and no larva.  We found many empty frames and we decided that we probably would be amalgamating her.  Then on the second last frame that we inspected we found...them!  Two queens on the frame...one on one side and one on the other.  This is clearly the summer of double queen hives!  We decided to take one box away from the hive to make it a smaller hive and make sure that the bees weren't overwhelmed by too much space.  We looked at a comb being newly built by the workers.  The workers hang on to each other to start building.  This is called festooning.

Looking at the bees festooning.

Close up of festooning.

Paul and I then went into Olivia.  We saw lots of new larva, capped brood and some eggs.

Looking at a frame of brood and bees.

Paul wanted to see the whole hive so we went through every single box to the very bottom.  It all looked great though we never found either queen...you might remember that Olivia also is a dual queen hive...or was, who knows?  Down at the bottom on the screen we found a large pile of dead bees.  The box directly above the screen was all empty comb.  It is a mystery to me exactly what happened.  We cleaned it up, took the bottom box out of the hive and hoped that all would be well.  It has been raining a fair bit and perhaps there was too much humidity in the hive.

While we were working in the bees, Paul's son, Kai was busy too!

Kai with Smokey

August 4, 2014

I checked on Mab just to make sure that she didn't have the same problem as Olivia but I didn't find many dead bees at the bottom at all.  I gave  Mab and Olivia each a box with empty frames so they can start storing extra honey.  I have harvested about 8 frames from the three hives but I will leave them alone now to store for the winter.

August 10, 2014

Today was No Name's last chance as far as I was concerned.  I planned to go into her, see if any laying was going on and if not, into Olivia she was going.  I went through this hive this morning.  She was very noisy and the guards were being very aggressive.  I am used to gentle bees so I knew something must be awry.  I found some small capped queen cells so I figured that she was queenless again.  Why they thought they had enough time this summer to start over again, I don't know!  I got ready to amalgamate her with Olivia.  I got some newspaper and opened up Olivia.  I laid the newspaper over top and prepared to put No Name's boxes on top.   I would slice some slits into the newspaper with my hive tool and the bees would slowly eat away at the paper until the two hives become one.

To make sure I didn't add chaos into Olivia, I went through the frames again and proceeded to take out the capped queen cells.  I was checking the frames thoroughly when what did I find?  The two queens! They were on the same frame, one on each side.  Now I had to make a decision.  Do I kill the two queens or do I put the hive back together?  I did not have the heart and I figured we still have about 4 weeks left of the summer so I put her back together and I wished her well.

Now she/they need a name.  How about Queen Gemini for the twin sister queens?  Any other suggestions?

Happy August!