Spring in our urban meadow (our back yard)
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April was a busy month for us with both our programs (The Cajun Experience and Cajun Fiddler Honey Bee Show) booked just about as much as we'd like for them to be booked every month. One of our favorite experiences was to go LSU to introduce the parents of incoming freshmen (and the freshmen themselves) to our culture "down here." But my very favorite was bringing the honeybees to young kids (3, 4 and 5 year olds). Such fun! We got one of the teachers to put on the beekeeper's whites (the children were too small for even our children's beekeeper suits!), hood and gloves and all (she was a small teacher, almost just right for our children's suits.)
And April was a busy month for our bees as well. We brought the number of our hives down to 2 last winter because of one weak hive. But we've been busy putting a super (where the honeybees store their honey) on each hive every week. It will soon be time to harvest that golden delight (some beekeepers, including Goldren Delight Honey beekeeper James Henderson, are already harvesting).
I told a friend of mine in an email that the queen lays about 2,000 eggs a day. The eggs take about 20 days for the 2,000 to be ready to eat their way out of the cell. In that 20 days she's laid another 40,000 eggs to begin their 20-day cycle. In the spring and summer months, honeybees live from 28-35 days, so by the time the second batch of eggs hatch, the first gaggle of bees have about reached the end of their lives. It's that 28-35 days that allow the hive to build up in numbers (and therefore in honey). Any way you do the math, that's a bunch of busy bees!
- sheila's blog
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A cold winter.
January 21, 2010
It's already January of a new year. The bees had a big job to do this winter in our almost record-breaking cold December here in south Louisiana. They keep the hive at a constant 93 degrees (F). In summer, that means fanning their wings for cooler temperatures. In winter, that means shivering their small bodies, which brings their own body temperatures up. This is just one of the jobs of the female worker bees, but as the temperatures go lower, more and more bees get into action. This winter they must have all been wiggling, dancing without music, tapping their feet and rubbing their antenea. I wish I could have seen them!
- sheila's blog
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Mysteries and Discoveries
Sept 16
September is the month of the fall harvest for the bees, the late harvest of honey. Any later and they may not be able to collect enough pollen (their protein) to help them through the winter months. Here in southern Louisiana, winters are not cold but pollen isn't readily available. I watched today as the foragers trucked in bright yellow pollen in their “bees knees” baskets, entering directly through the round vent holes into the brood chamber and the honey supers. Busy little girls!
It's almost time to cut the wild yard back. Some weeds have grown, if not as high as an elephant's eye, then at least at high as my eyes, without ever providing blossoms and their gifts of pollen and/or nectar. I want to mark the beneficial weeds (read those with pollen) so I know where they will be next year. This summer we let everything grow and cut paths to the water source and the hives. Next year I'd like to be more selective in what is left alone to grow.
We went from 3 short hives to 2 tall hives this year. When we noticed hives 1 and 2 were weak, we combined them. This was a first, combining hives. .jpg)
We took out the marked queen from the first hive and placed her in the observation hive; then we covered the top of the second hive with newspaper and stacked the supers from the first hive on top of that, brood chambers and honey supers both. The bees quickly ate through the newspapers to meet their new hive mates, and hive 2 became very strong this summer.
The funny thing was when we removed the old queen (marked with a red dot to signify when we had added her to the hive) to the observation hive on a brood frame, we discovered we had also removed a new queen, not even laying eggs yet, on the other side of the frame. They passed each other coming and going for about a week, then one day we noticed the new queen (without identifying dot) was laying and the old queen was missing. We had seen the old queen only the day before. We didn't get to see the changing of the queen, however that happened. There are mysteries here, and that is as it should be. What would life be without mysteries and the prospect of discoveries?
- sheila's blog
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Frozen Honey
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February 20, 2010
We woke to a strange sight a few days ago! It had snowed! In Louisiana! We worried that our young colonies had frozen, but they were buzzing along nicely under their winter-white blankets of snow. We covered them up with spare blankets (on the north side especially) and all of us settled in for a cozy winter day.
- ann's blog
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