A Humble Hum

I got a really special treat in the mail a few weeks ago (sorry, we’ve been on vacation). Grandpa (the same one who sketched the hive in the corner of this blog) has been scanning old slides in and came across some that include pictures from his hives. This one is the best. My little 6-year-old Dad is helping with the smoker. Look at his boots! So cute. Fast forward almost 50 years and he’s STILL helping with the bees but this time it’s a bit more skilled labor: he has built me a honey extractor which I will be picking up this weekend! More details on that to come.

And in case you were wondering the queen drama has been resolved. Wiser FL beekeeper Johnnie Beshearse says:

On your queen confusion. It is possible and likely that you missed seeing a supersedure cell. If your original queen (Tamar) was a poor layer they probably superseded her. Normally on supersedures, the new cell will hatch out BEFORE the old queen is deposed. Otherwise they run the risk of not being successful at raising a new queen (no second chance). Once the new queen emerges and mates, then she will kill the original queen.

What does this mean?  Your new queen was not an egg the first of August, but before then. You simply missed the supersedure cell (they are not like swarm cells and abundant, normally only one or two located in the center parts of the frames, not the bottoms.

Yeah. I didn’t know they let the old queen live while the new queen mates. That changes EVERYTHING. Guess I’m in the market for another new queen name.

The Wake County Beekeepers Association descended upon Big Boss for a brewery tour and mead tasting. Jason & I had already done the brewery tour and we love a nice glass of Bad Penny as much as the next guy, but I always love it even more when a Raleigh/Durham business embraces the bee. And they do! I think Monkey Bizz-ness is the brew that includes honey. And they’ve just started a few hives out back. Looks like at least two are well on their way.

We also had a mead tasting – my first time ever to taste the stuff. I’m not entirely sold but I’m also still a little overdosed on all the honey I’ve been eating, so I’ll withhold a final judgement. Starrlight’s Mojito Mead was my favorite and I really enjoyed the introduction by Ben Starr himself. It would be fun one Sunday to go to Pittsboro for a tour!

Big Boss has a lot in common with the honeybee. Lots of work to do, lots of deliciousness to taste while doing it.

More pics here.

= A pretty danged good Saturday morning. Especially when you add old and new friends! Angela is the brilliant mind behind Bitty Boom Farms as well as my current queen’s name and was so sweet to let me and our mutual friend Laura have a peek at her young colonies and hang out in her gorgeous backyard! I should have gotten some pics of her bees drinking from the rock in the pond she just built for them but here are a few more pics from our inspections.

All in all her colonies are building up nicely! Our only concern was not seeing as vastly many eggs as we expected to see in the more established of her two hives. Both of Angela’s hives are established from 5-frame nucs and are a few weeks apart, the elder of the two having pulled all the deep frames below and almost done pulling a whole medium which contains both brood and honey storage. The next super I bet will be alllll honey!

Caught some bees doing trophallaxis in one of the photos – where a forager passes honey off to another worker who’s going to process it and store it in a honey cell. We beekeepers don’t put our tongues in each others’ mouths (well, most of us) but it is a neat picture of how we rely on others’ experiences to make decisions about how we manage our own hives. So I figure, the more beekeepers I talk to, read, & do inspections with, the better I’ll get.

Thanks Angela! And excellent job with that smoker Laura.