A New Beekeeper’s Journal By Michael Steinkampf Beekeeping update 10-21-09: Eviction notice. Here are a couple of photos from October 18th. The foragers are still bringing in pollen, mostlygoldenrod (bright orange-yellow), but some pale pollen, too.

Pollen packets, probably goldenrod.

Pale pollen packet, unknown source. Today (October 21st) we returned from a trip to Atlanta to find considerable activity at the hiveentrances. It looked like a bee wrestling match, with numerous bees locked together in pairs or groups,often falling off the landing board onto the ground. It took a moment to realize what was going on - thedrones were being evicted.

Drones (arrows) being evicted from the hive.

Worker bees piled onto a drone (not visible) at the hive entrance.

Discarded drones at the hive entrance.

A closer view of the discarded drones. Note the goldenrod pollen packets. Drones (the male honeybees) are easily distinguished in a hive. They are larger and appear “chunky”,with a blunt or rounded abdomen and large eyes. Drone larvae hatch from eggs which the queen beedoes not fertilize; thus they have only half the chromosome count of worker (and queen) bees (16

does not fertilize; thus they have only half the chromosome count of worker (and queen) bees (16chromosomes for drones, 32 for the others). Of course, drones serve a valuable role by mating withqueens from other hives. A queen will typically mate with 10 to 20 drones during her mating flights, anddrones die after mating. Drones comprise up to 15% of the total hive population, but they are normally expelled from the hive inthe Fall, or whenever there is nectar or pollen supplies become scarce. During this time, worker beesstop feeding the drones, weakening them, and then they are ejected from the hive. Since plenty of pollenwas still coming in, it is likely that these hives recognized (perhaps by the changes in day/night lengthsor weather) that it was just time for the drones to go. There was a cold snap a few days ago; my guess isthat was the trigger for the event. Drone eviction is a sign that the hive is getting ready for winter.

Discarded drone and pollen packets. I don’t why so much pollen wound up being lost, but my guess is the traffic congestioncaused by evicting the drones bumped off some of the pollen loads being brought in by incoming foragers.

A windbreak for hives made of tarpaper. Bee hives need ventilation during the winter to prevent moisture buildup, but protectionfrom wind is beneficial. _____________________________________________________________Beekeeping update 10-2-09 Inspection day. It is said that a hive inspection should always have a specific aim. In this case, we werelooking for either queen cells (“swarm cells”), indicating a recent swarm, or signs of disease in theframes. It didn’t take long to discover the problem.

The top of the honey super on the parent hive. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

One of the frames from the honey super. The frame had previously consisted of capped-off honey, but now it was mostly larvalcells, most empty, some capped).

The mystery is solved – there are numerous queen cells (arrows) in the honey super.

Another view of the queen cells.

An interesting photo from the parent hive showing how the hive had converted a frame previously filled with honey (on left) toraise more bees (with capped larvae on right). The ex-swarm hive was doing this to a lesser extent.

A frame taken from the honey super of the ex-swarm hive. No brood here, only capped honey. This what the super should looklike, with honey stored for the winter.

Frames from the ex-swarm honey super showing more capped honey. We ended the inspection without examining the brood boxes themselves, as it was clear what hadhappened to the missing bees in the parent hive – they had flown away with the queen. Hopefully, thehive will generate yet another queen. I had been feeding the hives to build them up for the winter, both to establish an adequate store of honeyand a sizeable number of bees. This advice had been widely advanced at local beekeeping meetings andin the state bee society newsletter, but in my case the bees took the opportunity to try to reproduce onemore time.

I don’t know what happened to the afterswarm. I haven’t gotten any calls from my neighbors (whew!). Iam sorry to report that swarms which leave the hive this late in the year usually do not survive. No more feeding the bees for now. _____________________________________________________________Beekeeping update 9-23-09 Take a look at these photos, taken three days apart:

It’s pretty clear that the number of bees in the parent hive (on the left) have dwindled dramatically, whilethe ex-swarm hive (on the right) has continued to build. The feeder box showed a similar picture.Compare the photo below with the one from the previous post, taken a week earlier:

Top feeder box on parent hive, 9-23-09. Although it’s possible for bees to drift from one hive to the other, my understanding is that this doesn’toccur to the extent seen here. Either the parent hive is dwindling from disease, or it has swarmed again. “Afterswarms” are known to occur after a primary swarm, and frankly I would prefer this to somehideous disease that might require drastic measures (American foul brood, a bacterial infection, isgenerally dealt with by burning and burying the hive and all its boxes. It is the main reason why statehive inspection programs were set up, as it is highly contagious once established in a hive). Whilechemical/antibiotic treatments to prevent or treat nosema, foulbrood, mites, and hive beetles arecommonly used in this area, I have done none of these, being concerned with the long-term effects ofthese treatments. Some of chemicals are incorporated into the comb wax and may weaken the bees overtime, and the pests tend to become resistant to the treatments. Instead, I have used physical pest-controlmethods (drone frame swaps, screen bottom boards, and beetle traps). Now I was beginning to wonderhow wise this decision was. I called my mentor for help, but it will be a couple of weeks until we canget together for an inspection. During this time, I will continue to feed them and hope for the best. _____________________________________________________________Beekeeping update 9-17-09 Not much excitement in the backyard apiary this week. I continue to feed the bees to help them recoverfrom their swarming, and bee populations in both hives seem to be increasing. Pollen continues to bebrought into the hives by the bees. Beehives are supposed to benefit from the variety of flowering plantsand irrigation found more frequently in suburbia than in the forest, and one can confirm this from thevarying colors of pollen brought back by foragers. I was reading in a beekeeping book the other day about what kind of clothing to wear to avoid gettingstung by bees. The author strongly recommended against wearing gloves, saying bare hands allow bettercontrol when manipulating the hive frames, bees seldom sting the hands, and bee stings on the handdon’t hurt very much anyway. But take a look at the empty feeder jar below – I just can’t bring myselfto remove this without gloves.

Empty feeder jar – any volunteers for barehanded removal? Since a bee dies after stinging, it would be nice to minimize how many bees sting during hivemanipulations, even if protective clothing is adequate. Now, smoke has long been used to calm bees, butI have overheard local beekeepers remark that they rarely use bee smokers. Smoke is thought to maskthe alarm pheromones that arouse bees; also, bees exposed to smoke begin to ingest honey (perhaps aspreparation for leaving a burning hive), and honey-filled bees are less aggressive. With all the beesflying around during a hive manipulation, it’s hard to tell if the smoke is having any effect, so I decidedto perform a simple experiment: remove the empty feeder jar with or without smoking the top of the hivefirst.

Picture in the tomb of Rekhmire, Governor of Thebes, about 1450 BC. Note the horizontal clay hives in use, with a smoker heldabove the worker who is harvesting honey combs. The earliest records of beekeeping (also from Egypt) date to 2400 BC.

My home-made smoker. The jars were removed on different days with comparable weather conditions (bees are said to be moreirritable when skies are cloudy). Here are the results:

Removal of feeder jar without using the smoker. Each white dot is a stinger (there were 12 in all).

No stings when the top of the hive was smoked before removal. Conclusion: bee smoker good. _____________________________________________________________Beekeeping update 8-3-09 It’s been 13 days since I installed the new queen. I took a peak at the cage three days after the install andthe queen was still there; three days later it was gone, so it could be up in the hive doing its thing for amaximum of nine days.

Queen cage six days after installation Only some curious workers remain, probably attracted by the pheromones of the now-departed queen. Future worker-bee larvae are capped about nine days after the eggs are laid (drone cells are capped atday 10). If we look inside today, we should see some eggs and larvae, but probably not many cappedcells, and no capped cells on the drone frame.

Larval development of the worker bee (and the varroa mite). One of the brood frames. Plenty of larvae here.

A close-up of the brood frame; most of the larvae are capped.

The drone frame. Plenty of capped brood here, too; almost 1,000 larvae, from as many eggs as a good queen can lay in a day. Looks like I wasted my money buying a new queen – there was already one at work in the hive. PerhapsI should have taken one last look in the hive before installing the queen. If I had found eggs, I couldhave transferred a couple of frames and the purchased queen to a “nuc box” (short for nucleus box; it’spronounced “nuke box”), a small box often used to establish a new hive. I even have one of those boxeslying around, made from scrap lumber on a rainy day.

My nuc box (on right). In case you are wondering, I never did find the queen in this hive. Once I start manipulating the broodbox, the bees come boiling out, mostly looking for a place to sting (my office staff seems to enjoycounting sting marks on my arms). It’s a bit of a challenge to concentrate when your head is surroundedby a cloud of angry bees. Applying smoke to a hive is an ancient technique to subdue bees, but it hasminimal effect on this hive once I start pulling out the brood frames. I will leave that adventure toanother day, but my guess is that the queen we find will not have a green dot.

Just after the inspection of the brood box.

The hive 10 minutes after the inspection, still in a defensive posture. _____________________________________________________________July 21, 2009 – To queen or not to queen? By July 17th, it had been 26 days since the hive swarmed. Doctor Hurst came over last week to see if thehive had generated a new queen – no luck. I decided to take another look, and if there were no eggs, Iwould order another queen. Here are some shots of the brood frames.

No eggs seen.

Lots of pollen, but no eggs.

The queen arrived five days later from an apiary in Georgia (two-day shipping requested, but it arrivedin one day – nice job UPS). The office staff was amused by the package.

This queen is marked with a dark green dot. The bees (queen plus her retinue) looked quite frisky.

I made a hole in the candy plug with a nail to facilitate release of the queen.

Here is the queen cage about to be inserted into the hive. As shown here, the cage was immediatelysurrounded by workers. Welcoming committee or lynch mob? I thought about taking one last look for aqueen or eggs, but at this point, I figured I would just let the queens fight it out. _____________________________________________________________July 5, 2009 – One week after cut-out Bees are coming and going from both hives. It would appear that the things are going as planned.

Still plenty of bees in the new hive. I have removed the queen excluder/includer.

The bees are starting to “draw out” the comb, depositing their own wax, most apparent in the upper rightof the frame.

Arrows point to small white rods in the bottom of cells. These are newly laid eggs. It is possible forworkers to lay eggs (which invariably result in drones, since the workers have no sperm to fertilize theeggs), but worker’s eggs are usually scattered among the frame and often adherent to the sides of thecell, unlike these eggs.

Here is the (marked) queen in the new hive – proof that it was from my original hive. Swarms generallyset up a new hive at least 100 meters from the old hive, but once they are captured, they can be installedright next to the original hive without problems.

The bees are ignoring their own combs – no point in leaving these.

A frame from the original hive. Arrows point to queen cells that are now empty, a sign that the hive hasprobably generated a new queen. We didn’t see a queen or eggs in this hive, but Dr. Hurst says it cantake three weeks for new queens to start laying. We will check again in a week or two. _____________________________________________________________June 29, 2009 – The good neighbor.

The day after my swarm absconded, we went back to where I had caught them. There was a smallcluster of bees under my neighbor’s bay window, but no queen. My original hive seemed to be doingOK despite the recent swarming. The syrup consumption has dropped way off, but there were still aplenty of bees in the hive. Hopefully, this hive will make a new queen. A few days later, my neighbor noticed bees were continuing to fly around his window, and they werestarting to show up in his basement. I could see that bees were coming and going through small cracks inthe caulking around his window frame. He has a son who is interested in bees, and he was kind enoughto let me take off some boards below his window to see if the swarm had returned.

to let me take off some boards below his window to see if the swarm had returned.

Looking for a hive. (Photo courtesy of Eric Nelson)

Here is what I found under the window:

Now, you would think a swarm wouldn’t return to their original location after being hauled off, butperhaps I hadn’t captured the queen the first time, or maybe the bees really liked this spot – it is perfectfor honeybees: Southern exposure with a cavity appropriately sized for a hive, several easily defendedentrances, and a small pipe beneath the main entrance that drips condensation water from the airconditioner. Leaving the new hive alone for a few days might be a good strategy, as this would give the queen timeto lay eggs; placing combs with larvae in the hive box would probably increase the likelihood of the hivesticking around. However, in the end I thought it best to get them out of my neighbor’s house as soon aspossible. The beekeeping term for this is a “cut-out”. Generally, a cutout involves the removal of beesthat have set up residence in a house wall for months or years - some homeowners don’t realize that beeshave taken up residence until honey starts to drip out of the walls.

have taken up residence until honey starts to drip out of the walls. This time, I would put some of the comb into empty frames and insert them into the hive box, and Iwould try to keep the queen in the box by using a queen excluder as a “queen includer”. Queenexcluders are carefully machined screens that allow just enough room (about 4 mm) for worker bees topass, but not enough for the queen (or drones) to make it through. They are typically used between abrood box and a honey super to keep the queen from laying eggs in frames meant for honey extraction,but I had read of excluders being used under these circumstances to encourage a swarm to stay in a hive.

A welded wire queen excluder. The interwire space measured 0.163 inch (4.14 mm) using mymicrometer. My other excluder has spaces of 0.150 inch (3.81 mm). In this case, I installed the screen below the brood box and removed the upper entrance. Thus, workerscould come and go, but the hive (or at least the queen) couldn’t abscond again like last time. At least,that’s the theory. There wasn’t anything subtle about this job - I just smoked the hive and started gently removing thecombs by hand, loading them into empty frames wrapped with string and rubber bands, and thenscooping bees directly into the hive box. (There didn’t seem to be any eggs or honey in the combs, but Ithought the bees might still prefer their own combs.) Bees were everywhere, but most of them actuallystayed in the box. Although swarming bees are said to be docile, that wasn’t the case with these bees,who had just established a new hive – I probably took a dozen stings. No way to tell if I got the queen(there must have been 20,000 bees under the window), but here is how things looked under the windowjust after the ordeal was over:

I kept the hive box near the cut-out overnight to collect the stragglers. Here’s how it looked the nextmorning – most of the stragglers had departed, hopefully for my hive box.

The former beehive the morning after the cut-out.

Hive box on my neighbor’s front steps the next morning – encouraging.

The hive box about 24 hours after the cut-out. The bees are ignoring their own combs to congregatearound other frames – OK by me, at least they are still there. My plan is to remove the queen excluder after one week and look for the queen at that time.

Hand edema after bee stings. The stings were on the wrists, but the swelling spread to the hands overthe next 24 hours and resolved two days later. _____________________________________________________________June 22, 2009: Man vs bee. “A new colony start in the spring is not likely to swarm during that first season. A novice beekeepershould not be overly concerned about swarming…” Beekeeping – A Practical Guide, by Richard E.Bonney. “There certainly are a lot of bees out in the yard,” my wife remarked on Sunday afternoon. I put on mybee jacket and went out to take a look. It was a veritable tornado of bees up in the sky.

The bee tornado.

The cloud of bees seemed to be moving toward a nearby tree in our yard. Sure enough, within a fewminutes, the swarm had coalesced onto a branch high in the tree.

The backyard swarm, which contains the queen and about half of the worker bees from the hive.

It is certainly possible to collect a swarm and install it into another hive, but this swarm is just too highfor an easy retrieval - about 25 feet, on a branch too big to easily cut. My mentor suggests we set up abait hive to lure the swarm into a box.

A brood frame makes a good lure for a swarm, but not this one – it has queen cells, which are needed bythe original hive to generate a new queen..

A close-up of the queen cells, which are much larger than worker or drone cells. There are larvaeevident inside. These cells were constructed well before the swarm left. Both queen larvae and workerlarvae are fed royal jelly initially, but larvae continued on this diet past the first few days will developinto queens. It will take a little more than a week after the swarm leaves for this hive to produce a newqueen.

The bait box being lifted up to the swarm. It is loaded with a brood frame, two old frames with drawn-out combs, and a pheromone lure.

Like I said, it’s way up there. _____________________________________________________________June 23, 2009 - Unfortunately, at 8 o’clock the next morning, the swarm took off for parts unknown,ignoring the bait box. Bees generally have new hive locations scouted out several days before swarming,and these bees had already decided they were going to set up a new hive …

… at my next-door neighbor’s house! My neighbor noticed them late that afternoon.

The swarm is centered on an empty electrical outlet box under a bay window; this will allow them to setup shop inside the wall of the house. At this point, the bees are remarkably docile and can be collectedfairly easily, but once the queen enters the wall it will be very difficult to remove the swarm (thentechnically a new hive) intact. I scoop them into a large cardboard box and close the lid.

My plan is to transfer them to an empty hive stocked with a few of the frames we used in the bait box.

Most of the swarm is in the new hive at this point, with a small opening left to allow the stragglers toenter. By the next morning (6 am), most all the bees were in the hive …

… only to fly off an hour later (shown here is the inside of the hive, with only a few dead beesremaining). I wish I had closed up the entrance completely when I first checked them that morning. Wehoped they would fly back to my neighbor if the queen had remained ensconced within the wall, but theydidn’t return. Why did this hive swarm? Swarming is the mechanism for propagation of bees in the wild, but itgenerally does not occur until the second season of a hive’s existence. In this case, I had continued tofeed the hive syrup, building up the population dramatically, and I had been slow to install additionalboxes to store honey, which crowded them. The recent bout of hot weather was probably the finaltrigger for the bees to leave. Here is a photo the hive just after dark about one week before theswarming.

This “bearding” phenomenon is said to be common in hot weather, but it is also a sign of a crowdedhive. The queen cells (also called “swarm cells”) were already being constructed, and swarming wasprobably inevitable by this point. _____________________________________________________________5-27-09: Solo inspection. The Destructor appears.

After recovery from the last inspection, this hive seemed to prosper, and I thought it was probably timeto add a “super”, a hive body above the brood box which the hive uses to store honey. Typically, thefirst box is retained on the hive as a food supply for the bees during the winter; any additional superscould be used for harvesting honey, although that is not usually done the first year of the hive. Thiswould be my first inspection without my mentor; I figured it was probably time for this. First a fewpreparations:

New frames for the super – some assembly required.

The equipment assembled (on top of an extra hive stand). I decided to swap out the drone frame since Iwas already going to be manipulating the hive, even though it’s best to leave it for a full four weeksbefore changing. The spout has fallen off my homemade bee smoker (it was only a temporaryattachment); it seems to work about as well without it and will not be replaced.

And of course, my new bee jacket and gloves (from Dadant). Shrimp boots previously obtained fromWalMart.

And bee-sting supplies. The aluminum foil is used to protect the medicines from light. My office staff isprobably giving me an Epi-Pen for my birthday – my health (and their job security) is always their primeconcern.

The bees are still avidly taking sugar water, requiring daily refills. I am going to add another bottle likethis one.

Lots of bees at the top of the brood box; they seem to be working on the drone frame.

Although I carefully inspected the drone frame (to look for the queen) as it was being removed, I shouldhave done a more thorough job of brushing bees off the frame. As you can see here, the bees havemoved from the frame to the stand; they slowly moved under the hive bottom board, where they spentthe night.

A view of the drone frame, partially filled in with larvae. Note the small brown spot off the end of thearrow; it’s probably a female Varroa destructor mite, the scourge of American beekeepers (The malesare white and smaller). The Varroa mite lays its eggs in the larval cells just before the cell is capped.Developing mites feed on the bee larvae. Males and females copulate in the cell; the male dies, butpregnant females emerge from the cell along with their bee host and ultimately seek another cell torepeat the cycle.

I picked off the mite, fixed it in alcohol, and mounted it on a slide for a microscopic view.

The new drone frame has been inserted after sliding frames over; the bees seemed to tolerate this betterthan at the last inspection.

The old drone frame goes in the freezer, to be reinserted next month. ____________________________________________________________May 17, 2009: A routine inspection that becomes not so routine. Time for another inspection to see how the frames are filling out, and to check the hive beetle trap.

There are a lot more bees on the top of the frames than when we last looked …

… but the outer frame remains untouched; not yet time to add a super (a hive box with additional framesplaced above the brood box).

The bees are drawing out comb on the drone frame, but no eggs or larvae are evident. We decide tomove both these frames to the center of the brood box to encourage the bees to fill them out. The beescome boiling out of the hive, and before I know it there are bees flying around inside of my bee veil. Irun around the yard trying to escape the attackers while my mentor patiently waits at the hive (in his verynice bee suit). I’m stung about a half a dozen times - I guess it’s time to upgrade my protective gear.

The bees are still stirred up 15 minutes later – this inspection was not appreciated by the hive. _____________________________________________________________ May 6, 2009. Twenty days have passed since the bees were installed in the hive, and 13 days since thequeen’s release was observed. It’s time to open the hive to see if the queen is laying eggs. The beepopulation has been steadily declining since the bee package was installed, and it is critical for the hiveto starting making new bees. Once an egg is laid, it takes three days to become a larva and six more toform a pupa, which will hatch in another 12 days. (These numbers are for worker bees; queens developmore quickly, drones are slower.) Queens typically take two to four days to start laying eggs after release,so we should see larvae in the cells today, and hopefully some cells that are capped to form pupae. Another reason to open the hive is to inspect for parasites. Beepkeeping was simple and easy beforeglobal trade – many European households in the 18th and 19th centuries had a few hives in the back yard(or even within the house itself). Now beekeepers have to deal with Varroa destructor mites (originallyfrom Indonesia), small hive beetles (from Africa), nosema (a protozoan probably introduced from China)- the list is extensive (see here if you want the gruesome details:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_the_honeybee). Now, there are chemical treatments for most ofthese parasites, but they tend to become resistant over time. These parasites also stress the hive, which inturn makes it susceptible to viral infections for which there is no treatment. The best one can do is tokeep a hive strong, minimize parasite infestation (the so-called Integrated Pest Management (IPM)approach), and accept that occasionally a hive will be wiped out. Today we are going to install a comboscreened bottom board (SBB – built by me), a drone frame (purchased), and a small hive beetle trap thatDr. Hurst got from a beekeeper in Florida.

Drone frame and screened bottom board.

The drone frame has cells that are bigger than worker-bee cells, and Varroa mites prefer to laytheir eggs in drone cells. The hive wants to make a few drone cells anyway, and this frame will directthe queen to localize them. Swap out the drone frame every month, freeze it for a couple of days, andyou control your Varroa mite population. Put the frozen/thawed frame back in, and the bees will reclaimmost of the energy they expended to make the drones by eating the now-dead larvae (yes, shades ofSoylent Green). I purchased several of these frames so I can open the hive only once a month (this actalso stresses the hive). The frame is green to differentiate it from the other frames. The SBB has a bottom that allows hive beetles and mites to fall through, but keeps bees in (and out).Some people think SBBs improve hive health by lowering humidity, and it does allow more flexibilityfor IPM-type treatments (more on that another day), but others say keeping a hive hot diminishesnosema infection, and a SBB probably drops the interior hive temperature a bit. The SBB I built allowsfor the bottom to be closed up if desired; if you look carefully at the picture you can see a Plexiglasssheet lying over the screen. This sheet will be removed before installation.

Two types of small hive beetle traps. They both have openings small enough to keep out the bees, butallow the beetles to enter and eat the beetle attractant (typically Crisco shortening) which has been lacedwith a non-volatile poison (probably boric acid). We are going to slide the black one through the bottomentrance under the brood frames – this technique worked nicely for queen release, and it allowsinspection and replacement without opening the hive. (The white trap is mounted in an empty frame; wewon’t use it today.)

This is the ventilation hole in the inner cover. The syrup feeding jar has just been removed – it’s clearthat this feeding station has been popular with the bees. Note that some honeycomb is visible; any spacebigger than 3/8 of an inch will tend to be filled in with comb.

The inner cover has been removed and placed in front of the hive entrance to encourage the adherentbees to return to the hive. Bees are on congregating among the center frames, where egg laying typicallybegins. We smoked the hive just before doing this to calm the bees, but they still got aggressive whenwe start pulling up the frames.

A frame just off the center of the hive. Many larvae are evident. We could stop right here, since weknow that the queen is present and laying eggs, but we decide a more thorough inspection would beworthwhile (and educational for me).

A center frame. The lower left of the frame has capped brood larvae, the upper right capped honey.

A frame almost completely filled with capped brood larvae – the sign of a successful hive. Dr. Hurstsays this is the strongest new hive he has ever seen (probably due to a good queen, favorable weather,and his mentoring skills).

Here is the queen laying eggs on another frame. The hive seems to be working its way west among theframes, perhaps because it is a little warmer on that side. The paint is starting to flake off her thorax. Atthis point, even if she flew off or were killed, the hive could generate a new queen by modifying workercells and feeding existing larvae more royal jelly, but this would set back bee production substantially –best to be careful with this frame.

We removed an outer frame that had not yet been worked, slid the frames over, and inserted the droneframe as shown. Later in the day, no bees were visible at the lower entrance, but they were back as usualthe next morning, apparently having recovered from the stress of the hive inspection. I’ll be back onJune 3rd to swap out the drone frame.

"Festooning". Within minutes of removing a frame, the bees are forming living chains to span the spacein preparation for bridging the frames with honeycomb. The presence of any space more than about 3/8",the height of a honeybee, triggers this behavior. Modern beehives (popularized in 1851 by LLLangstroth, a Massachusetts clergyman and beekeeper who is considered the "Father of AmericanBeekeeping") maintain this "beespace" throughout the hive, allowing hive frames to be removed withoutdestroying the hive. _____________________________________________________________Three honeybees, one laden with pollen. Taken 5-2-09, Birmingham, Alabama.

_____________________________________________________________Beekeeping update 4-21-09 My friend and colleague Dr. John Hurst got me thinking about being a beekeeper, so I read a few booksabout beekeeping, bought a hive kit, joined the local beekeeping society, and ordered a package of bees.Here is my hive. I made the two upper boxes from scrap lumber (southern yellow pine), the rest iscypress, from Rossman’s apiary. The main bee entrance is the slot below the boxes.

Next, a trip to my mentor’s apiary. Dr. Hurst has been keeping bees for almost 30 years.

With all those bees buzzing around and moving all over the hive frame, I had to suppress the urge to run.

My package of bees arrived from south Alabama last Thursday. I kept them in the basement until Fridayafternoon. Jars of syrup and my home-made bee smoker flank the box.

A close-up of the bee box. About 10,000 bees, and one queen in a small box inside. I paid an extra dollarto get a queen marked with dot of paint (money well-spent, as I found out later). There were only twodozen dead bees in the box, pretty impressive survival. The bees are clustered around the queen box andthe can of syrup, neither of which are visible here.

Firing up the bee smokers. Chris is not sure what to make of this operation.

Time to load the bees in the hive. Dr. Hurst was kind enough to loan me a veil (which I am wearingbackwards)

We poured the bees in the hive and put the queen box on a stick, sliding it under the brood box throughthe entrance. This allows for inspection of the queen without opening the hive (none of the bee booksshowed this, but it is an excellent technique). We put the bee box in front of the hive entrance, hopingthe rest of the bees would eventually enter the hive. The next morning, a few bees remain in the box andants are entering the hive, no doubt attracted by the sugar water needed to feed the bees.

Some permethrin granules sprinkled on the ground and watered in took care of the ants. One must becareful about exposing bees to pesticides, as they are very sensitive.

Two days later, the queen has not yet escaped from her box. On the left is the “queen candy”, an whiteedible plug which the bees eat away to let the queen escape. The workers surround the queen (not visibleon this photo), hopefully to welcome her into the hive. This process needs to occur over a period of afew days, or the workers will reject the queen and kill her.

Sugar water inside the upper box of the hive, suspended over the ventilation hole. The bees are drainingboth bottles of syrup through small perforations in the caps.

One week after setting up the hive, the queen is no longer in her box.

It is apparent the plug has been eaten through. Next step is to open the hive to see if the queen has begunlaying eggs. It takes about three weeks before the new workers hatch, and the hive population willcontinue to dwindle until then, so it is important to confirm that the queen has survived (otherwise onemust order a new queen and begin the acclimation process over again.) I’ll do this next week.