All about my bees

Why Bees?
People are always asking me why I got started with beekeeping. It's really simple: I like honey, and I like to know where my food is coming from. So after I started raising chickens and growing my own vegetables, bees seemed like a natural extension of my "live close to the earth" philosophy. About 3 years ago I started learning about bees, and what I learned is...there’s a lot to learn!

Beekeeping Equipment
And not only is there a lot to learn, but there’s also a lot of equipment you need. Here’s what’s needed (at a minimum), for just one hive:

- Medium size hive body (where the queen lives and lays her eggs)
     

- 10 frames for the hive body (a frame is a wooden rectangle with a plastic or wax insert so bees can lay eggs and draw out honeycomb)

- 2 smaller size hive bodies called honey supers with 10 frames each (these are where surplus honey is made and stored)

- Bottom board (keeps insects out and gives the bees a landing platform)

- Telescoping outer cover (seals over the edges to keep moisture out)

- Smoker (for calming the bees)

- Hive tool (for cleaning the hive or opening hive body)

- Bee suit and gloves (if you don't want to get stung)

- 10,001 bees (more on this later)

I accumulated my equipment over the course of last winter, thanks in large part to my friend Tom, who built the hive bodies and honey supers for me, as well as the bottom board and outer cover. What Tom couldn't make I bought from my favorite bee store, Dadant.

Ordering Bees
I ordered my bees on-line in early November 2011 from Beeweaver Apiaries in Navasota, Texas. Bees are usually sold in packages, which contain about three pounds of bees (around 10,000). A package of that size is enough to start one hive.

The bees are in a screened shipping box with a round hole in the top for a can of sugar syrup to provide food for the bees during shipment.

 If you're starting a new hive, as opposed to adding to an existing hive, you need a queen; in that case you would have about 10,001 bees. She is placed inside the shipping box, along with the bees, but in a small wooden box called a queen cage. This is to keep her separated from the bees until installation in the hive.

Here’s a picture of two bee packages:

 

You can see the syrup cans in the top, and the orange straps are holding the queen cages.

Bees are available for shipment in early spring, just before the honeyflow begins. You can have your bees shipped through the mail, but I decided to pick mine up since my rural mail service is very unreliable.

Getting the Bees
So in early April I drove to Navasota, about 3 1/2 hours from my house. The drive there was uneventful; the drive back was exciting. I picked up probably 100 or so hitchhiker bees--bees just flying around the apiary that were attracted to the sugar syrup can in the shipping box and hung onto the box when I put it into my car. I had not planned on that!

The good news was that 10,001 of the bees were contained; the bad news was that there were a lot of bees just flying around inside my car. It takes a lot of concentration and willpower to drive for 3 1/2 hours with bees flying around your face!

I thought my adventure was almost over when I got home, but it was only just beginning. What I thought would be the easiest task, hiving the bees (installing them in the hive), was actually harder than it looked.

Next Week....Hiving the Bees.

On predators and prey

My country life involves a carefully orchestrated dance to keep predators separated from prey. On a good day, all goes well, and no one dies. Today was not a good day.

My dogs like to hunt in a pack and are unapologetic killers. If something moves, they go after it. And they don’t discriminate between animals we regularly encounter in nature, (wild pigs, skunks, armadillos, mice, snakes, porcupines, and raccoons), and my animals (cats and chickens). Nor do the cats differentiate between birds and my chickens!

So I follow a complex schedule to try to keep all the animals, domestic and wild, alive. After the sun is up and the wild animals have had time to return to their daytime hiding places, I walk the dogs. I get home in under an hour; the dogs typically disappear for a few hours.

Once they return, I lock the dogs in the backyard, and then the chickens get their turn to free range. When the chickens are put up for the night, the cats go outside, but either hide in the barn or come back inside before I take the dogs for their evening walk.

Today I wanted to get to school early, so I deviated from my normal schedule. I took the dogs out well before sunrise, and we surprised a large female raccoon just returning, no doubt, from a pleasant evening of doing whatever raccoons do. The dogs chased her, and in the panic, she climbed up a small willow tree just a few feet above ground. The dogs were able to easily pull her out of the tree. I tried to get them off of her, but I am no match for 6 large dogs with finely honed hunting skills. They killed her.

I obviously didn’t know this raccoon, but I mourn her loss. I am haunted by the terror she must have felt that last minute of her life, and the knowledge that had our paths not crossed, she would still be alive.

I am reminded once again how fragile life is, and the importance of keeping to my schedule.

                                                                     

Mystery in the henhouse

Exactly what’s up when the egg count's down? Since my hens started laying in September, 2010, I've kept a daily record of the number of eggs laid. But something hasn't been right for several days now. 

From my 14 laying hens (20 pullets, hatched in May, have yet to lay), I normally get 10-12 eggs per day, but lately that has dropped to about 8 eggs per day.

 I’ve thought and rethought the many alternatives:

-       the extremely hot and dry weather we’ve had here in south Texas

-       early molt (and that would be a very early molting season)

-       hidden nest  where they sneak off to lay eggs when they’re free-ranging (not unheard of with these girls!)

-       fear from the howling coyotes at night or constantly circling chicken hawks in the daytime

-       illness or disease

I’m happy to report that the mystery was solved today. When I went to collect eggs, I noticed the girls were a little more chatty (or should I say clucky) than normal, but didn’t think too much of it.

When I reached into the top row of nesting boxes I got quite a shock.  There was a large chicken snake with its unhinged jaw around an egg. Without thinking, I grabbed it by the tail and threw it on the ground, which had the nice effect of getting the snake out of the hen house, and the egg out of its mouth (unbroken too, for the record).

Then I had to deal with a very angry, but fortunately not poisonous snake. Did you know that chicken snakes will strike, just like a water moccasin or rattlesnake? I didn’t either, and believe me it’s pretty scary when it does.

The happy ending to the story is that I didn’t get bitten, and the chicken snake didn’t get killed. I put it in a pillow case and released it down by the river, at least ¾ of a mile away from the hen house. Here’s a cell phone picture (I apologize for the quality) of me holding the snake before I took it down to the river. 

Morning coffee

"Give fools their gold, and knaves the power, let fortune's bubbles rise and fall: who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all." - John Greenleaf Whittier

I don't know if it's just my normal unbounded enthusiasm, but I think there's a touch of fall in the air this morning. Sitting outside with my morning coffee and watching the sun rise, there's a little fog over the lakes below the hill, and my thoughts fly to all the outdoor projects I can get done in the coolness of this almost fall day.

Since there's no hay to harvest because of the drought, the field needs to be shredded, and then there's the fallen oak branches to cut for firewood, and the beehives to check, and the chickens to feed and water, and the dogs to walk, and the land around the lakes and river to mow, and.....the list goes on and on.

But for now, before the day turns hot, and dusty, and dry, I'm content to sip my coffee, pet the dogs, and think about how very fortunate I am to live the country life. The work will wait, but this beautiful sunrise will be gone all too quickly!