Honeybee exposes her Nasonov gland
Never has tail in the air looked so good.
Our new girls have officially accepted us, as evidenced by some Nasonov action on the landing board yesterday.
The Nasonov gland, hidden at the base of the abdomen, releases a special pheromone that calls forager bees back to the colony. It’s essentially used to declare “Home, Sweet, Home” in case anyone’s confused or lost.
To me, it’s a sign the girls in the Kerry hive have decided to call us home.
We inherited a new hive today and installed her facing east in the back of our garden.
Alex and Paul help set up the "Kerry" hive originally started by beekeeper Bill
She’s a robust hive of bees bred by B. Weaver, housed in a beautiful top bar hive of TJ and Bill’s design. Given the disheartening events of last season, we’re feeling damn lucky to have a merry band of Apis mellifera back in our lives again.
Ghosts be vanquished! As of 20 minutes ago, the “Kerry” hive (originally part of Bill’s hive duo called “Cash and Kerry”) is now safely installed near a patch of Russian sage and Goldenrod, pure bliss for bees come summer.
Their original keeper, Bill wrote a farewell in his Bee Log:
2-15-09: Sold hive with bees to Chantal and Alex. I know they will be great parents! I wish them well and anticipate good reports of my girls making lots of honey for them. Go in peace, your beekeeper, Bill
Bill hands off the girls to Alex
Like a long awaited lover or maybe a flourless chocolate cake, our new hive arrives tomorrow morning. We’ve conned the whole family into helping us prepare for Bee Day.
Pawlik paints the bee stand
Five months later and with the promise of new bees arriving this weekend soothing me like a sweet low hum, I’m finally able to describe the tragic end of my first year of beekeeping.
July 24 about 10 a.m., we noticed a massive exodus from the hive. This wasn’t an exuberant swarm though; this was thousands of dying bees crawling from the hive like zombies.
When we approached the hive, there were already thousands dead near the entrance. When I pulled out the bottom board, piles of bees fell to the ground. Clearly, the carcasses had been blocking the bees inside from moving between the comb.
Those on the ground crawling were clearly in great pain as they twitched and hopped amid rocks and mulch. Hundreds twitched around me at any given point in a ten foot radius around the hive. Continue reading
Albuquerque top bar bee sage TJ offers the following report:
Poppies in my Albuquerque garden
Still too dry for a good honey flow in the spring. Forecast is for rain and snow for the next several days. Could come in time.
Swarm season (in Abq) usually starts around Good Friday/Easter.
Not everyone feeds their bees, but now is a good time for supplemental feed. Try sugar water at 1:1. After the weather is warmer, try four parts of water to one part of sugar (same ratio as nectar), as this causes the queen to start laying a bit early for strong spring buildup.
To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees’ backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain.
The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them.
Manna in an otherwise stark desert!
Much of American beekeeping instruction and support is focused on the Langstroth hive. Those of us who maintain top bar hives are frequently left to our own devices. Until now…
Top Bar Beekeeping Forum is an active online space for top bar beeks like myself. Check it out.
Nature’s a cruel hussy.
Less than 2 weeks ago, my hive lost 95% of its inhabitants to what I now believe was a neighbor’s innocent application of Behr deck sealer. The deck sealer, when you call Behr, contains “anything that might keep insects from biting the wood.” Um, insecticides anyone? Sprayed less then 20 feet from my hive too. Four days later, the girls were piled in heaps outside the hive.
But that wasn’t nature.
Neighborhood ants and wax moths moved in nearly immediately. With sticky tape, the ants were easy to control but the wax moths? My girls have succumbed.
Albuquerque bee-man TJ Carr is endlessly engineering new tools and methods to ease the plight of top-bar beekeepers like myself. His latest nugget of beekeeping wisdom is a gravity-filtration system for honey harvesting from top bar hives.
This weekend, I tried it for myself. With a filtration system dependent totally on gravity and 24 lazy hours, let’s just say it fit right into my schedule.
Gravity Honey Filtering
Wanna try it for yourself? Here are some more details to get you started.
Continue reading
And I thought that the great bee emergency was reserved for commercial beekeepers and the good folks in Baden-Württemburg…
This morning — right now — my bees are dying by the thousands in great heaps under the hive in my Albuquerque backyard.
The worst part? There’s absolutely nothing I can do.
Perhaps the City sprayed yesterday for the mosquitoes that follow our annual monsoon season. Perhaps a neighbor went pesticide crazy. I’ve no idea, but just yesterday I had a full and burgeoning hive.
All I can do right now is ease their discomfort as they twitch and writhe. Maybe remove the bottom board so the few remaining bees can move freely between the comb without being encumbered by thousands of their dead sisters.
I’m disheartened right now. For my bees. For our world.
Photo by Joy Godfrey
mistress beek 
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