Bees are Back!!

Over the past week I have been building and getting new boxes ready for more honey bees which I picked up from Logan Utah on Saturday morning before work. It has been so busy with finishing up classes this semester and spring encroaching upon us so early and forcefully I have hardly had time for anything else much less the prep work to get ready for these bees. I suppose there is no good time to have a back injury but a week ago I wrenched my lower back pretty good and I've had to grimace through the pain as I've built the new hives and installed the bees. I mean what choice is there, bees can't just sit around waiting for me. So last Thursday after my last final for the semester I set about building bee hives, These are not the traditional bee hive that people are so use to seeing in pictures. These hives are called top bar hives, Basically instead of a series of vertical boxes, instead you have 1 long horizontal hive box. across the top are wooden bars that the bees attach their comb to. The sides are slanted, this apparently tricks the bees into only attaching the comb to the top bar and not the walls (They normally never attach to floors). The benefits are they are using their own wax, which is pesticide free, which you can't say about commercial bee frames that you normally buy to supply your bees with comb. In addition they are creating their own cell size, which has a complicated reasoning to why commercial cell size is one size and natural bee cell size is another. However the basic jist of it comes down to. They figured bees could store more honey if they gave them bigger cells. More honey more profits... yadda yadda yadda. Which was fine till Australian bees brought over a mite that lays their eggs on the baby brood of developing bees and basically become hitchhikers to a lot of the new bees in the hive, These aren't beneficial hitchhikers they are parasites that add disease, drink the bees blood etc. Okay back to natural and unnatural cell size. With the larger cells the mites lay the eggs and the eggs have enough time to grow to maturity since the bees likewise have a longer gestation to fill larger cell size as they grow (Yes, people we are growing giant bees out there) With natural cell size that bees in the wild (and those that use top bar hives, and foundationless frame hives) the bees mature faster and many of the mites that are laid in the cell never mature at all because the bee hatches before the mites are mature for survival. hence these bees are living a more natural lifestyle, no pesticides in wax, fewer mites getting a free ride. Then again I get less honey, but honestly how much do you need really? I guess that was more than the "jist". Anyway Here are Top bar hives in Production:

And like I said I went up to Logan on Saturday morning bright and early to pick up bee packages which are basically 3 lbs. of female worker bees and a queen bee in her own special cage... All together inside a box with screen on the outside and a can of sugar water to keep them fed while they travel. Here They are loaded in the back of my 4-Runner, The 48,000 bees were all snug (approx 12,000 per box) And generally since even random bees like to hang around a queen there were approx. 50 other worker bees hanging out on the outside of the cages. Oh well they all stayed in the back and even though I didn't have a passenger in the seat not one of them volunteered for shotgun.

How a box of bees looks from the side, spot any stragglers on the outside?

The basic installation of bees, and I say that loosely since there is nothing basic about thousands of unpredictable insects with sharp hind ends, involves: Taking the can of sugar syrup out of the top of the box which leaves a big open gaping hole, remove the small cage holding the queen, smack the big box on a hard surface till you knock all the bees to the bottom of the cage, turn the cage over and shake as many bees into the new hive as you can. Then you hang the queen cage inside for a few days, or just let her go. If they have been with that queen for a few days its safe just to let her out in the hive. Then you put all the wooden bars on top, close it up, and hope they do what they are suppose to. I installed one hive on Monday night, and since it got dark so quickly and since I got stung about a half dozen times, I waited till the next day to do the last three. No stings on the second day but I was more smartly dressed. Apparently being stuck in a box for several days will irritate you into suicide missions. Here are some Pictures of the Hives installed with bees (1st pic) and before installing (2nd). Will be adding the roofs on the hives soon.

And for anyone that is interested the top bars work better if the bees have a guide to work off of. Since i'm frugal and like to recycle I reused some dowels and my air tack nail gun.

You can of course google pictures of how drawn out bee comb looks on top bar hives or you can wait for my next update and be surprised. Ciao!