
wild comb
Hive Report for week two:
The learning curve is vast, this week I made some major errors in my handling of the Hives during my first check. I opened them both up after 14 days of solitude, the time where the queen is released by the Hive and starts laying eggs whilst the workers collect pollen and begin the alchemy of honey making. Here are the details of each Hives’ condition during this, the first opening of the Hives since I dropped each colony. Note that the recommended time for Hive check is no later than ten days, a timeline I blew by four. Had I been timelier I think I would have avoided a lot of trouble. Either way I learned a lot of valuable lessons this week and now share them with you.
HiveX:
Opened the hive, making sure to really give a good dose of smoke in the process; unsure of what to expect I used caution and care when handling all aspects of the hive. The colony was doing well, I checked every frame for brood, pollen and cured honey but I never found the Queen, one of the primary reasons of my mission. I settled that the specter of brood was enough evidence of her work and left it at that. Since the hiving I have been feeding both colonies plenty of simple syrup and in a consumption by comparison, this Hive has been lagging, not eating much of the syrup and generally slower than, not as bustling as the other. About five frames in the Hive were drawn out with comb and on all of those were brood and pollen in various stages of growth and cure. There was quite a bit of burr comb, or wild comb and I scraped it all off, setting is aside for later inspection. It is snowy white and stunningly flawless in its creation. These bees are fascinating to watch and nurture but if you let them have their little ways, they will fill the Hive with wild comb and that will create all sorts of hell for you if you don’t maintain the space. Do NOT LET THEM BUILD UP WILD COMB. Wild Comb will act as a cohesive agent within the Hive, binding all it touches to itself as I am about to discover in my next Hive, disastrously.
The bees in this Hive are a little slower than their sisters next door but I am glad for it to a degree of education. It’s good for me to have two Hives of different pace; I can learn more this way. Of course I want them both to rock and roll, but right now it is what it is. The bees were getting annoyed with me, a promising sign; I closed the Hive and moved on to the next.
Black Death:
This hive has been very busy the past two weeks. Tons of syrup is getting consumed and tons of bees are very busy flying in and out of home, stuffed with pollen: Interesting to note that the only color of pollen coming into this Hive is yellow, while next door the girls are coming back with orange, blue, red and yellow pollen. I felt pretty good going into this Hive since the first check seemed to go so well, despite not having seen the Queen. We got the film rolling and the smoke billowing and I set about my work of getting the outer cover off the main body. Smoking the Hive and carefully lifting the lid, you can see in the footage that I looked below to try and observe what I was doing, but the bulky bee veil obstructed my view and I ended up making a big time destructive move. The colony has been so aggressive that they built wild comb up the queen’s frame, through the inner cover and attached that to the outer cover, a phenomenal feat! In the process of pulling the main cover, you will see that I pulled the inner cover and attached frame along with it, ending up with the wild comb giving way to the weight and collapsing to the ground. I couldn’t believe it; I had a full frame of honey, bees and brood just lying on the ground. The Hive itself went into overdrive on me, they were pissed and I couldn’t blame em. I rushed about as carefully as I could to fix the issue and not kill any of my girls but it was a terrible feeling, seeing my girls out of the Hive in those circumstances. I felt really bad, still do. The footage is heartbreaking to watch but it’s a powerful tool for me to be able to watch and learn from.
I collected the frame, left the main bee body on the ground and went about placating the rest of the Hive. A hurried check of the rest of the frames revealed a massive amount of work in the Hive. There was brood and pollen plus capped honey everywhere, I only have 4 frames left that have any room for the girls to build upon so I am adding the second deep this week, to give them more space. It was very exciting to watch, even amidst the suffering going on below the Hive on the ground. I took off as much wild comb as I could and set about to closing the Hive. In my mind all I could see where images of Haiti after the earthquake and then of course the iconic tsunami image we all know so well. In bee land, this surely was the equivalent and my hand of God had caused it. Ugh. Let’s move on.
I reassembled their house and sat next to the Hive watching the displaced bees scuttle about on the ground, gathering clumps of them as I could and putting them back near the entrance. On the entrance itself was buzzing like a 5 alarm fire, the bees were furious and making the wing noise to let me know. I did not know yet that the Queen herself was on the frame that hit the ground and not in the Hive. It was fascinating, what happened next: Watching the clumps of bees on the ground, trying to help as I could with getting them home, the pitch on the deck was audibly getting more severe, the bees were getting really tuned up and I was out of smoke to calm them but suddenly on the ground, a wave of bees parted and I saw the Queen on the middle of them all! You will recall I paid to have her marked with a dot of white paint so I could easily spot her during my checks, well by God there she was on the ground and that’s when it all came together for me, why the Hive was as rowdy as it was. I got her to the entrance of the Hive; she tried to not go in so I put her back at the front door gently, one more time. This time she was carried in by her attendants and within 5 seconds of her being returned, the alarms died down and the buzzing took a whole new pitch. I was blown away to see it in action. Everything changed in the bees, it seemed now the new mission for them was to secure her and the door, begin rebuilding immediately. I watched for awhile and then decided to leave them alone and go have a drink up the street. I felt really bad about the whole thing so I called my guru and was told what I already suspected: I won’t know if anything terrible happened until a few days, so hurry up and wait. Over the weekend the Hive has been normally active and nothing seems amiss. After I returned Friday night to the Hive, all dislocated bees had found their way home and the flight deck was loaded with workers and their overstuffed pollen baskets.
Here is what I learned: never underestimate a bee’s ability to build. If all hell breaks loose, do what you can and then get out of the way; let them take care of themselves: nobody knows better how to take care a bee, than a bee. Always film what you do at the Hives. I was lucky to have film footage to watch my mistakes and even better upon looking back at the pictures of both Hives, I found the Queen in HiveX in a photo! Excellent verification for me.
That’s the Week 2 report, thanks for reading. .
Up next is the footage.