Checking in on the Bees

In Extension, we like to say that not only is every day a little bit different, but you never quite know at the start of the day what you're going to be doing by the end of it.  Which brings me to this:

I thought I would be spending today in the office finishing up some computer work, completing an assignment for my class, and tying up some loose ends after being out of the office all day Wednesday and most of Thursday.  But as it turns out, a local beekeeper stopped by at about 11:00 and asked if I wanted to go check on some bees with him.  He and I have been working together over the past month to start a local beekeeper's association and he is a great source of beekeeping knowledge.  I have been stuck in the stage of novice beekeeper for about five years now, never really having a whole lot of success, so I thought it would be fun to tag along with someone more experienced for awhile.  Plus, as you can see, I look great in a bee suit and am always excited to put one on!

Right now, we're in a period of the year that is very important for beekeepers.  All winter long, bees stay inside their hive in a period of semi-hibernation, trying to keep warm and survive off of the supply of surplus honey from the previous season.  Now as the weather turns warm, the bees will begin to leave the hive and search for food and the queen bee will begin to lay eggs.  Unfortunately, with few flowers in bloom, there is very little pollen or nectar available for foraging bees to feed on.  Beekeepers will often provide supplemental food to their bees at this time in the form of sugar water or pollen patties in order to keep the bees healthy and strong as they head into spring.

The round brown blob on the top of the frames is a pollen patty.  It looks and feels a little bit like peanut butter.  Once we added it to the boxes, the bees quickly moved towards it, clearly attracted to the smell and eager to feed.  The patties are rich in protein and will provide strength to bees as they begin to forage and also help young bees develop into mature adults.  Around the edge of the hive box, you can see some white powder.  We applied an antiobiotic called terramycin to prevent against two dangerous bacterial diseases, American Foulbrood and European Foulbrood.  Both of these diseases can result in complete colony loss and an expensive and time consuming equipment sterilization process, so prevention is extremely important.  In order to get the bees to consume the terramycin, it is mixed with powdered sugar.  It will be added to the inner perimeter of the hive box every five days, for a total of three applications.

In addition to feeding and applying the terramycin treatment, the other job for the morning was to switch out the boxes.  In the picture above, you can see four different hives, one of which we had open as I was taking the picture.  Each hive consists of multiple boxes- usually two full sized hive boxes, and one shallow box called a super.  The two hive boxes are where most of the bees congregate during the wintertime and are where the queen lays her eggs.  The super is usually where excess honey is produced.  During the spring, summer, and fall, beekeepers will stack multiple supers on top of one another, encouraging the bees to produce as much honey as possible, with each super capable of holding roughly thirty pounds of honey.  When the honey is harvested, one super is usually left through the winter for the bees to feed on.  As the bees huddle together to stay warm in winter, the majority of the bees will be found in the higher of the two hive boxes.  Once they are in the higher box, they rarely move back down and can become overcrowded and attempt to swarm (leave the hive) if they are feeling claustrophobic.  Many beekeepers will switch the upper and lower hive box in late winter/early spring to keep the bees from feeling the need to swarm and also to keep the queen from getting into the supers and laying eggs there.  

Since it's not terribly warm out yet (It is low 60's as I write this, but was 26 degrees overnight), we didn't take out many individual frames because we didn't want to disturb the bees too much, but we did take out a few to look for evidence of egg laying.  If you look closely at the picture above, you can see in several of the cells a small bit of white.  This is the developing bee larva.  The female worker bees will feed the larva until they mature (it takes 21-24 days from egg to winged adult).

We spent a total of about an hour working the four hives and talking about bees and beekeeping, during which time I learned quite a bit. All signs point to four healthy, happy colonies based on what we saw today.

For those who are interested in bees and beekeeping, our first Beekeepers Association meeting will be held on Monday March 25th at 7 pm in the Halifax Agricultural Center in Halifax, NC.  Since it's our first meeting, we hope to get an idea from those in attendance what sort of needs they have as beekeepers, what topics they'd like to learn about in future meetings, and how they feel the association can help them.  All are welcome, from novice beekeepers to professionals and everyone in between.  Please leave a comment here or email me at matt_stevens@ncsu.edu if you'd like to join us.