It is late January, and it is time to check in on the hives; see how things are going for the bees. The winter, to date, has been relatively mild; very little snow with many days above freeze with the exception of several days of -10 degrees F (-23 degrees C).
During the winter months, unlike the spring, summer and fall months where bears and errant children tend to be a hive's major foes, the major foes of a hive are moisture (condensation), temperature (cold), and food (or lack there of). Moisture is most easily controlled through adequate ventilation - leaving an entrance open at the bottom of the hive (with a mouse guard in place) as well as having a top entrance of some sort usually allow for things to be well ventilated. Moisture plus cold are a certain death for a hive. It is very similar to a wet human in the cold - hypothermia sets in quickly followed by death.
We deal with cold by adding insulation to the mix. Our hives at the Ahrens' Bee Yard are encased in a polystyrene tomb (with entrance holes). All of our hives at the location are back to back or side to side (we have eight hives at this location). Two hives deep by four hives wide, this rectangle is encased by two inches (51 mm) of polystyrene insulation on all sides (including underneath). in addition to giving the hives an extra R value of about 9, it acts as a fantastic wind and draft break.
Food is a long term planning item for the bees. Because they spend all spring and summer gathering for the fall and winter, under normal circumstances, they should have an adequate store of honey and pollen - if they were left to their own devices. However, we, the keepers, add another variable to the mix when we harvest the sweet goodness of honey. Luckily, we did not harvest honey from the Ahrens' Bee Yard this past season. We wanted to establish the colonies in their hives and be able to start this coming season with fully drawn out comb with seasoned, over-wintered queens. If we had harvested, we would be concerned, going into February, with whether the bees had exhausted their food stores. This is why we perform winter checks -- to supplement, when needed, the food stores of the hives.
Rolling into the Ahrens' Bee Yard in the truck, it was apparent that they had received more snow than at our house thirty miles (48 km) to the south. Looking in the rearview mirror, I could see two paths cut through the eight inches (20 cm) of snow by the tires. We pulled up over the hill, and tucked up against the pines at the edge of the field was our polystyrene sarcophagus. Melissa helped with the initial snow removal from the top and disassembly of some of the panels, but she quickly made it back to the truck when it came time to break into the bee-chamber.
The first hive to check was my beekeeping partner's hive. Upon pulling off the inner cover, the hive-scent hit my nose and the feisty Russian bees began to trickle up toward the surface. The sugary syrup in feed pail had crystalized -- a quick slit of with my knife and the lid was freed. The lidless pail was returned and the hive buttoned back up.
The second hive to check was the Canadian bees. Upon removing the inner cover, I was greeted with emptiness. No hive smell, no hive sounds - just emptiness. I removed all but the bottom deep set of frames - empty. Just dead bees. There was very little honey in the frames, which made think of robbery by the other bees in the sarcophagus.
Hive three's only special attribute was a dead mouse suspended face down in the remaining heavy syrup in the insulation/feed box. Hive four revealed an extremely strong, extremely feisty lot of bees. With the inner covered removed, I found an empty feed box a multitude of bees cleaning the remaining sugar crystals out. Removing the feed box, the hive foamed over with bees and the alarm pheromone of the bees, which smells a lot like bananas, wafted up in my nose. I worked quickly, and frequently puffed smoke at the hive to calm them. I replaced several empty honey box ("super") frames with frames containing fondant.
The remaining hives were uneventful; no other dead hives, no other dead mice, and no other angry, banana-scented hives, just bees keeping busy in the depths of winter.
I spend large amounts of time planning; it is my nature - I am a planner. Planning a thing - new endeavor, trip, construction or woodworking project - is often a source of great enjoyment for me. From the end of December and through January, I researched and read material on relative newcomer to the arena of honeybees in the United States: the Russian bee. The Russian bees, originating from the Primorsky Krai region, were first imported into the US by the US Department of Agriculture's Honeybee Breeding, Genetics & Physiology Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1997. The particular strain of bee has a few interesting properties which drew me to it. The region of Russia where it originated has a similar annual average temperature and precipitation to that of our region of Duluth, MN. They have also shown excellent overwintering in colder climates. In addition to the climatological similarities for their home region, the bees have the added advantage of having resided in the home region of the varroa mite (Varroa destructor) for over 150 years and consequently are relatively resistant to the mites (A Comparison of Russian and Italian Honey Bees - North Carolina State University; Breeding, Genetics, Stock Improvement and Management of Russian Honey Bees for Mite Control and Pollination - Agricultural Research Service, USDA). As I developed a plan for rolling out more hives this spring, the Russians looked increasing interesting and a very viable option.
The winter solstice seems to have come and gone; I will admit, I missed the lunar eclipse on the solstice. I am somewhat disappointed in having missed something that last occurred in the year 1638. It is not like I had any pagan rituals planned, moreover, it is not like I had anything planned.
With the recent snow fall staying on the ground, and the air temperature staying in the region of below the freezing point of water, I can say with a weatherman's confidence, winter is here. Hound Sarge has also informed us on several occasions that "it is winter; it is cold; I would rather poop in the living room." With my thumb healing up, I was able to get the hives winterized only two weeks after I had wanted to get them buttoned up. The Hygienic Italians (in the photo, the one on the left) will need to be checked on mid-winter. The Carniolans swindled them out of honey, and I am concerned they might run low. Other than that, the bees will be left to their own devices for the winter.
Fall begins, astronomically for us, today, September 22, 2010, at 10:09 pm CDT. We had our first frosts at the beginning of the month, but the ground was still warm enough to ward off any damage from it to the gardens. However, the cold, nighttime low temperatures are now hanging on longer into the mornings, and the daytime highs now are not getting that high anymore - barely breaking into the low 60s (mid to high teens for you metric people). Even with the temperatures getting lower, and each day's light noticeably shorter, there is still much to do with the bees and the gardens. Hives need to be winterized and bulbs need to be planted.
The honeybees seem to be going stir-crazy. The weather is hot and humid as of late -- the bees seem to be expecting a massive amount of florae to be available for foraging, but the florae, nearly done with blooming, have something else in mind: fall and winter are approaching. The last day of August, and the deciduous trees' leaves are turning orange and red; tamarack will be showing their fall colors, soon, too.
Ryan, my cousin, would not stop. "Look, a bear! Over there, deer!" Michael Bolton's "How Can We Be Lovers" played on the tape deck. My sister, Meghann, and our cousin, Michael, talked about whatever it was middle-schoolers talked about; Meg made a quick departure from the topic at hand to call Ryan a liar. My mother and her sister, Jane, were in the front; Jane was driving. My cousin, Jonathan, and I watched a VHS of "The Gospel Bill Show". Ryan continued to announce all the amazing northern Minnesota creatures he was certainly seeing in the thick woods.
A week-and-a-half-ago - a bit later than normal in the evening - and the treatment for Lyme disease was underway (it is now pointing toward something else - lupus or rheumatoid arthritis - both, of which, at the age of 30, I should not have) and the not-sleeping-well and the upset-stomach were on full assault modes. An email came in from a friend; it was a forwarding from a post to the UMD Farmers' Market mailing list. Someone had a friend with a tree full of honey bees. They wanted the bees gone.
Our neighbor had been wondering about the poles in the garden and why we were apparently making two small teepees; he asked if we were native.
The long and the short answers to that question are the same: no, we are not native. Both my wife and I heritages that hail from northern and north-central Europe - not native American.
We put a new vegetable garden in this year - eight feet by eight feet. It takes up a small section of the yard that the grass never really grew in and the hounds really were never encouraging to the grass that attempted to grow there. In this new garden, we are mainly growing vine-crops: pole beans, bush beans, and cucumbers; in the non-vine arena, there are red cabbage & parsnips and lavender for a border.
I decided to give videoing myself while I checked the hives a try. I dug around until I found a video-capable camera. Panasonic DMC-FX07. The video shoot (I think that is what it is called in the biz) went well. The audio is kind of bad and when I stood up completely, my head was cropped out of the shot. In the end, it is roughly ten minutes long; I edited out the part where I got stung on the hand and let loose with a string of expletives.
