Robbers in the Hive

Do you remember my post from last spring about bees and beekeeping? If not here is the link

http://germandolls.blogspot.com/2009/05/bees-in-our-backyard.html



I just thought I'd give you an update on our bee hive. Well, the news is not good. We had such a cold winter here that all the bees died. My husband checked on them a couple months back. He looked through the little window, and all he could see was piles of dead bees. We are not sure if the bees death was due to the nature of the hive (top bar hive). Normally this type of hive is used in Africa and warmer countries. Did we doom our poor bees by making them move into a house that was not well suited to this climate? I feel so bad for them.

Since we were on spring break last week, and it finally warmed up here, we did some gardening. I walked over to our hive, and found to my surprise that lots of bees going in and out. I asked my husband whether he was sure the bees were all dead. I was kind of hopeful he had been wrong...Well, it turns out that these were robber bees stealing our bees' honey.

So we quickly sprang into action and opened the hive to harvest the remaining honey. I did not take any pictures, because I found it too depressing. Also, we had to act fast to rescue what was left of our honey.

I spent most of last week processing the honey and beeswax. In the process I learned that the brood chambers did not contain all that much wax. When melting the brown sheets in a pot, I ended up with a thick glob full of dead bees and debris. Not so fun. On top of it I managed to get stung by one of the robbers who had made it into our house and attacked me as I was breaking the comb into pieces. Ouch! My finger is totally swollen today.

After all this work, I am left with two quarts of very delicious honey and 1.5 pounds of stunningly beautiful yellow beeswax. I made some granola with the honey. Now I need to go to the library and find some books on candle making...

Bees in our Backyard: Part II / Bienen in unserem Garten: Teil 2

Thanks to Lucky Pebble, I just remembered that I never told you what became of our bee project. Remeber the bees, my husband and I received as a birthday gift in April? Well, I am proud to say that they did not abandon the hive! They decided they liked it here and worked as hard as only bees can work. Sometimes I wonder if humans could solve the global warming problem if people worked on this project as hard as bees work on their projects...

We think the bee population in our top bar hive grew from around 10,000 bees to over 50,000.

Pretty cool , eh?

Along the way we did encounter some problems. For some reason the bees did not build their combs straight down from the top bars. On some bars they built multiple "sheets" of comb at a slanted angle. You can see that in the closeup picture below. There really should just be one comb per bar. This sort of messed things up because we were not able pull the bars straight up and out. The crooked "sheets" of comb needed to be cut because they were stuck together in places. In the process we had some loss of life and honey. Very frustrating.

Why are the bees building crooked comb? Any beekeepers out there? Could it be because the hive itself is not sitting straight on the ground - but slightly angled? My husband rested the hive on a couple of benches from an old picknick table.

In the other closeup you can see some unfinished honeycomb. The cells are not closed or capped off. Apparently the bees decide when the honey is at it's best and put a lid on. We opened the hive twice over the last five months. I only have pictures from the first event.

The uncapped honey was not very sweet and as tasty as the final product. The last time we opened the hive we got a few beautiful chunks of the most delicious honey comb. We did not take a lot. We want our pets to be able to survive the winter and continue their happy life in our backyard. We got ONE precious jar we will savor down to the last drop over the next few weeks.

Plus, I got some wonderful beeswas to seal the wood buttons for my doll clothes. I love our new pets. They stung only twice. Luckily the kids and I got off scott free...