Hypnotized by My Bees

I am learning so many things about bees and beekeeping. I opened up my hives twice in the past week to check on things. One of the biggest hurdles for me right now is getting my smoker lit and stoked with enough fuel to last through an entire inspection. Good grief. I'm using shreds of newspaper as kindling and then adding pine shavings I bought originally for my chickens. Well, the chickens can just share. Getting the darn thing lit and then avoiding smothering my little flames or, worse, getting too much in there and starting a large blaze has been a difficult balance for me.

When I checked my hives last Saturday I was amazed to see such a difference in style between the two queens. The Victoria hive looked textbook perfect: bees busily drawing comb out on the frames, working their way from one side to the other; lots of capped brood in an even, nicely filled out pattern without gaps in between cells; squirming little larvae waiting to be capped; and a calm air of productivity.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, is not such a tidy mistress. The pattern of capped cells looked uneven across its surface and the laying pattern seemed higgledy-piggledy. I couldn't see any wiggling larvae anywhere, and to my inexperienced eye the capped stuff looked almost like supercedure cells because there were large, almost volcano-shaped cells in random places across the surface of the foundation. Supercedure is the process whereby the worker bees decide the queen isn't doing her job and so they start cultivating new queen cells to self-re-queen their hive. I tried emailing my bee mentor, and while I waited to hear back from him I was scouring the internet to try to figure out what I was seeing. I opened up the Elizabeth hive again yesterday, since it was the first sunny day since Saturday, to see what was going on. I actually saw little wiggling larvae this time, and I even saw a pupae with half of its back-end hanging out of a cell (did you know there is a pupae stage called the "purple eye" stage? Weird. But it's where the pupa's eyes actually look purple). I talked with my bee mentor today and he said that if I am seeing larvae and pupae then my queen is still alive and working. Phew.

I've been so worried about that hive that I go to bed thinking about them, wake up thinking about them, and worry through the day about them. It's not just that I have a major financial investment in the hives' success. I feel personally responsible for their welfare and want to do whatever I need to to help them thrive. There is still so much to learn and in some ways this feels like a crash course because I am learning on the job! I love it, though. I love seeing "my girls" flying through the air, buzzing around the cotoneaster bushes against my house or landing in the blue plastic bin on my back porch that has rainwater collected in it. I feel almost (but not completely) guilty digging up dandelions in my yard. They're thirsty ladies, having gone through three quarts of syrup per hive already in the twenty days they've lived here. I find myself looking out my back windows often to see whether the sun is shining on their hive, how active they are at the entrances, whether their entrance feeders need refilling.

I'm not the only one who is excited about this. My two youngest children are very interested in what is going on. Bronwyn got to don a bee suit with me for Saturday's inspection. I haven't let Liam do it yet because I'm not sure how snug around his waist the waistband would be -- I have two jacket/veil combos. It's fun to include them in this.

As for the rest of my suburban farm, the kids helped me plant watermelon, pumpkins, green beans, and butternut squash last week. Those went out in the open garden space, along with my pepper and tomato starts. I covered the starts with gallon milk jugs because we are still experiencing rather cool nights and cool, wet days. I discovered today that they probably aren't getting enough water. I'll give 'em a soak tomorrow. I would rather just put those plastic Wall O' Waters around all of them, but they're expensive to buy, so I only have three. Today I also found that my radishes, carrots, and beets are sprouting (yay!!), and the blackberry twiglet I transplanted looks to be happy in its new home too. I haven't seen any signs of life from my potatoes or the yard-long green beans we planted. And I think I may actually get some peaches this year, despite the late April snows we got. Sweet!