Bees are sweet. Look at some of the honey our bees made for us this year.
Sometimes though, the bees are NOT sweet. We have a hive of bees that is MEAN! Look what one of them did to Clark.
He was just taking a box off the hive and he got stung on the ankle. This picture was taken a few days later.
In the spring we are planning to re-queen this hive. We’ll do this by smashing the old queen and putting a new one in the hive. After three weeks all the mean bees will be dead.
We like nice bees!
I usually smoke the bees before I check a hive. This does three things, first it masks the alarm smell alerting other bees of an intruder (me), second it makes them start eating honey because since the hive is on fire (they think) they will have to leave, and who wants to leave all that yummy honey? Not the bees. Thirdly, once the bees are full of honey, the can’t bend their abdomens to sting me as easily.
After smoking the bees I open up the hive and start looking at frames. The bees glue things together so sometimes it is quite a challenge to pull up a frame.
On the frames I am looking for evidence that the queen is still alive and laying. The eggs look like tiny little grains of rice at the bottom of a cell. I also look for larva its other stages of development.
Then it’s just a matter of gently (I don’t want to squish anybody) sliding the frame back into the hive and closing things up.
We still need to winterize the hives. I’ll report more on that later.
This is a picture of what wild honey comb looks like. In a managed hive the beekeeper provides frames for the bees to build their comb on. This honey comb came from the hive Clark took out from between the floor in an old house. I think it looks so pretty. - If you ignore the dead bees 
I am checking to see if the bees have left their wild comb to join with the hive below them, but it looks like the queen is still alive and the bees are staying with her instead of integrating themselves into the other hive. It’s too bad, that was their only chance at survival.
I didn’t actually take this picture, one of my photographer friend came over to take honey/bee pictures, and took this picture. 
When I work with the bees, I feel no fear. What’s there to fear when I am sting proof?
This little bee is doing his best to sting me, in fact leaving her stinger behind, stuck in my glove.
I know this bee suit is not going to be seen on fashion models any time soon, but I love it.
I feel safe and sting proof.
I have yet to encountered a bee that could penetrate this suit. (Here’s to hoping I never do!)
The second hive we got called on was in the floor joists of someone’s home. This hive was just like the other one, only in between the floors, vertically.
Basically impossible to salvage the hive intact.
Not to mention the fact that the home owners didn’t bother to call us until September.
A hive of bees needs 60 – 100 pounds of honey to survive the winter – these bees were working hard to get that, but even if we could get the bees out and put them in a new hive, they would never be able to survive the winter on the little they would be able to gather before fall.
Clark combined what bees he could get out with another hive and scraped out the hive from between the floors. The majority of bees died. Sad, but unavoidable. We got their honey. .
This is a pot full of honey (and a few bees).
The problem is that for some crazy reason, bees don’t like to fly off and just leave their honey.
So how does one get the honey without the bees?
Freeze them.
We stick the pot in the freezer till the bees die, then we can either crush the comb and drain out the honey, or heat the pot, melt the wax (it floats when it cools- and so do the bees) and then strain the honey.
We haven’t done anything yet, we still have this pot of honey just waiting to be harvested.
Time.
It’s all about time.
(or the lack thereof)
If a beehive gets too crowded, some of the bees decide to leave with the queen and start a new hive. The half of the bees left in the original hive make a new queen and continue life as usual. The half that swarm fly to a branch or something and ball up together around the queen. They send out scouts to find a place to begin a new hive. Then the group set up housekeeping in the best location available.
Clark is on the swam list which means when someone sees a swarm hanging out on a branch they call the bee club who in turn contact people on the swarm list to go get the bees. This is a great way to get a free hive of bees. The bee keeper simply shakes the bees off the branch into a hive box, closes up the box and takes the bees home.
Sometimes people don’t notice a swarm until it has established a new hive. In the wall of your house or shed for example. We’ve encountered this situation twice this summer/fall. The first case was a hive in the back of a shed. We removed a sheet of plywood to expose the hive.
Behind the comb you see here are three more layers of honey comb. We cut it into rectangles that fit in a frame and put the whole thing into a new hive box. We were able to salvage the queen, and most of the eggs, larva, honey, and bees. Yeah! A new hive.
The queen in one of the hives Clark set up last week perished. Clark thinks he squished her when he replaced the cork on her cage with a marshmallow. The new queen and her attendents showed up today. But Clark is in Idaho for the weekend. And I am here. I’ve never worked the bees before today, I’ve only been a distant observer. Today, however, I got up close and personal with the bees.
Me, all suited up in Clark’s bee gear.
This is the queen (marked green) and her attendents. One takes the cork out of the end that is full of food, and as the bees eat through it, they will get to know each other and let the queen out into her new kingdom. Why the attendents? Well you see, the queen only does one thing (two really, I guess, she lets off pheremones that keep the hive together) but her real purpose in life is to lay eggs. That’s all she does. Lay eggs. She can lay up to 2000 eggs a day. She needs attendents during transist to FEED her. Feeding herself isn’t laying eggs, so she doesn’t know how to do it. Crazy!
I take the cover off the hive and see the sugar syrup on the inner cover. That’s all got to move. I need to take off the inner cover and expose the frames.
Opening the hive. You can see the old queen cage wedged between two frames, I’ve got to remove that and replace it with the new queen. This is a very weak hive that doesn’t have very many bees left, and will die if we don’t get a queen in there soon.
Today is their lucky day!
As I shift the frame over to remove the cage, the bees get irritated. The soft happy buzz escalates into a loud warning buzz, telling the intruder (me) to GET AWAY! I will silly bees, just let me get your queen in…
After I close up the hive I walk around to the front, and there at the entrance is the bee army, ready to fly out and defend.
I’m glad I have on Clark’s bee suit!
Here is a little worker bee. Isn’t she pretty?
I found these in the garage today. Let’s see. Four packages, each containing 3 lbs or about 10,000 bees, that’s around 40,000 bees all together! Better stay away if you don’t like bees. These packaged bees come from pollinating the Almond crop in California. Each package has 3lbs of bees, a can of sugar water to feed them during transport, and a Queen bee in her own little cage. Clark’s job is to move the bees from the package to their new hive.
When working with bees, the first thing to do is suit up. If this is not done properly, bad things can happen (just ask Clark). This is the rule unless you are a photographer, in which case the bees will leave you alone. – They like getting their pictures taken.
After suiting up, Clark takes out the queen cage and replace the cork with a marshmallow. The worker bees will get to know the queen while they eat through the marshmallow, and when it’s gone, the queen will come out and start laying eggs.
Clark puts the queen into the hive, sprays the package with sugar water to keep the bees busy eating and then shakes the package into the hive with the queen. He puts the cover on and leaves the package nearby so the slowpokes can join their friends in the hive.
There you go, simple as can be.
