1st Sting T-Shirt contest - Blog Giveaway

We were accosted in parking lots. We were snickered at by friends.
Finally, we were congratulated for joining the ranks of S3BS (Stung by Bee Beekeeper Society)

So by popular request or out of sheer craziness we have decided to hold a 1st Sting T-Shirt contest.

Here are the rules:

Qualifications:
1. You have to bee a beekeeper. Bee observers are ineligible.

2. The story has to be about your 1st sting.

3. You agree to abide by our capricious/whimsical judging in awarding the men's large T-Shirt

Requirements:
Send in your 1st sting story as a comment to this posting. We will read all that are sent in and let you know how things turned out. We will look at your comments for about 2 weeks or, if possible, until we get tired of reading about other people being stung by bees.

Award:
If your story is the winner of our arbitrary and fickle judging, we will provide you a Men’s large, 1st Edition, bee sting black, with a little bee character, T-shirt and official membership into S3BS (Stung by Bee Beekeeper Society). Good luck and go out and get stung just to get into the contest.

Plan Bee Orchard - Bees need Trees

If you read this month's Bee Culture, you learned that bees are viewed as 6 legged canary's of our environment.

Bee Culture Magazine

Funny thing bees, they don't like pesticides, herbicides or most any other kind of cides.

Funny thing people, we are the same way but just not as smart as the insects we are attempting to tame.

So, we at Plan Bee have been busy planting trees. Our motto, trees need bees and bees need trees. We believe by creating a healthy bee environment, we are also creating a healthy people environment.

One might say, our lives depend on it.

Below is a little diagram of our little orchard. It is located on the north side of our property a short bee flight away from our 3 1/2 hives. I have all of the trees listed with the month and year they were planted and the supplier. We will be replacing about 1/4 of the trees since we planted them as bare root trees and they didn't make it. At $7.00 for bare root trees instead of $49.00 for some our potted trees they were quite the bargain.

Our one really interesting tree story is about Sandy's miracle peach. Last year a friend of my wife's gave her some small peach seedlings. One of the three made it through the dry summer weather of 2010. I was going to pluck it out but sensed it had some green life left in it. With a tear in my eye I told my wife it was still alive and as long as there was any chance I was going to water the little tree. We were so pleased when spring came and the little peach tree began putting forth small purplish leaves. We have called the tree a Miracle Peach as it should have died but made it through. We are hoping for more miracles on Plan Bee.

1st Sting, 2nd Sting now it's Spring

We'll get to the stinging in a moment but let's talk about beeeees and their behavior.  Like so many of our friends, we love studying bees.  We have attended numerous bee schools conducted by PhDs that are educated bug people or as some would say, bug educated people.  The bug of choice is, of course, the honeybee.  We sit around restaurants talking about the mystical little creatures and are constantly trying to understand them.

So, before we visited our little six legged vixens, we hatched a game plan.  You see, it was springtime and those silly bees didn't know what they were supposed to be doing.  When we last saw them, they had moved up to the middle box of their three box world and were huddling to stay warm through the winter.  Now that it was springtime, at least according to the Gregorian Calendar, they should move down to the bottom box.  Alas, they didn't know this because afterall, they are only bees.  Of course they needed a beekeeper to "HELP THEM OUT".

Aleph (right) & Gimmel (left) after adding new boxes

So on the first day of  Spring, we decided to visit our bees on Plan Bee and move their world from the middle box to the bottom box.  When we finished, our Aleph hive, the first hive, would have the colony in the bottom deep box with the middle deep box empty and ready for brood building and the top medium box ready for honey.  Our Gimmel hive, our second hive, which was comprised of a deep and two mediums would be shuffled so that the middle medium would contain brood and the top box honey.  We were ready for them and their little world of boxes and frames were about to be shuffled.

A more seasoned beekeeper than my queen bee and I once sagely stated that "BEES WILL BE BEES".

The big day arrived and after a two hour car ride to our little slice of heaven in Liberty, North Carolina we arrived at Plan Bee and were greeted by swirling flying bees.  The obviously hadn't gotten the word that spring had just arrived and they were to be huddled in the middle of their boxes. As we looked into the hives we discovered that our bees were not just in the middle boxes as they had been with our last inspection but were spread throughout all three boxes.  Their numbers had grown dramatically and we saw pollen, brood and honey everywhere.

HERE COMES THE STINGING

So my queen bee and I have often and publicly announced we have never been stung by our bees.  After all only those less experienced, careless beekeepers that weren't paying attention were stung said I smugly.  Well, someone forgot to tell the bees that I alone on the planet was not to be stung.  So as I plied my trade of  scraping burr comb and brood from Gimmel and placing it on a bench nearby, a pesky bee crawled up on my shoe and stung me though my sock.  I winced in disbelief. 

GET THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE

I did remember to pull the stinger immediately and kept on going.  My queen bee was not so fortunate.  She bravely stood where no beekeeper should stand, in front of the hive.  My fault.  To be more exact, with her derrière sideways to incoming bees.  Everyone knows that bees cannot sting through blue jeans right??

SOMEONE FORGOT TO TELL THE BEES

So my poor wife winced at her sting and as we discussed the solution we agreed that dropping trow in front of the hive to remove one stinger was NOT a good solution.  Being a woman, she endured the pain until the appropriate time and removed the stinger from the INSIDE of her blue jeans.

So what did we learn class?

I would suggest the old adage of Bees will be Bees seems to ring true. If you have some other clever adage you feel would apply, please feel free to submit your comment.  Please note we do have to approve them and while our egos have been damaged, we still love our bees and are now officially part of S3BS.

(Stung By Bee Beekeeper Society)

Learning about vineyards and nut trees for Plan Bee & bees

As we ponder what we want to put on Plan Bee for us and the bees, my queen bee thought a vineyard would be great. 

WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT VINEYARDS.

The old expressions goes "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."  We aren't angels so I guess I know what that makes us.  My queen is a wide reading and researching machine and it wasn't long before we were members of the NC Muscadine Grape Association.  Yep, we looked on line and discovered that that a scant week away the NCMGA was holding a meeting at Gregory Vineyards and if we would get up early we could attend the all day event.  So we did.

Beeing Beekeepers we have discovered something interesting about people.  There are horse people, bee people, football people and grape people.  Some of the groups mingle well with others and well, some don't.  If you are a grape person and make wine, most everyone loves you except the AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) people.

As we stood in the midst of grape people and thought oh goodie we have bees and surely every plant loving person on the planet felt the same, we were, how shall we say, educated. Grape people are not real fans of bee people as many of their grapes are hermaphrodites, they prefer the term self-polinating.  It also turns out that many grape people spray their grapes with a fungicide every two to six weeks.  Most spray an herbicide below the grapes to keep the grass and weeds down.

Pause--  So let's see.  We spray a grape friendly version of roundup underneath the grapes which is sucked up by the 2 - 6 " deep roots to the leaves, then to the grapes and finally to your glass of wine. Yum!

We also heard about all of the spraying done for insects except near harvest time and the chemical companies are actively working to reduce the window of time between spraying and harvesting.  More time, more spray.  Still liking those grapes?

Cute factoid about grapes -  They should be planted North South so as to maximize the sun on the fruit.
Cute factoid about bees - Hives should face Southeast so they would be roughly lined up with the grape rows/vineyard.

Muscadine grapes are native to the Carolinas and can require no spray depending on how your want to run your vineyard.  Our great Grape orientation will be to worry about bees first and grapes second.  Whatever grape juice/wine we eventually get will be "gravy" or is that grape juice.  Oh, well.

So we will plant our little north south rows of muscadine grapes with clover beneath them to keep the weeds down knowing that some of the vitality of the grapes will be sacrificed to the clover.  Our bees will enjoy the clover and the grape blossoms, we hope.  Sounds like we are creating bee heaven to me.

Above is the first layout proposed by our Land Planner, Brandon Price of Wildland Forestry.

http://www.wildlandforestry.com/

Note that the little grape  vineyard is lined up with a Northwest/Southeast orientation.  In our next pass we will change the proposed layout to reflect our great grape knowledge.

Nuts - A Quick word on this before I end this post.  Turns out that trees like Pecans don't share well with other plants.  At a gardening class, I know we spend too much time in classes on this stuff, we learned that trees like pecans really diminish the growth of other plants underneath them.  It is unwise to use their leaves when composting because of the chemical in the leaves.  When we plant our pecan trees, which have a 30' reach, we will plant them where we don't want anything else to grow.

Sure hope my bees like all of the trouble my wife and I are going through to provide them a nice place to live.

Final thought,

WE KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT VINEYARDS
& NUTS NOW

Planning @ Plan Bee

In January we decided it would be a good month to do some planning.  The name for the month of January comes to us from the Julian Calendar.  January was named after the Roman pagan deity Janus, a two headed deity.  One of its heads looked back and the other looked forward.

LOOKING BACK on 2010 - We decided first to look back at our accomplishments on Plan Bee.

• May 19, 2010 - Purchased 6985 Bowman Dairy Road, Liberty , NC (aka Plan Bee).

• June 6, 2010 - 24' bee stand installed.

• June 10, 2010 - Installed pipes and gravel over culvert allowing us on to the land without breaking an axle.





•  July, 2010 Well - Signed paperwork in July and actually received final paperwork that we could drink the water in December 2010.





• July 18, 2010 - Picnic Shelter started and eventually constructed using cedar poles from the land, some purchased 1"x2" and salvaged aluminum corrogated roofing. 

• July 18, 2010 - Outhouse project started. 


•  August 2010 - Electric installed via Duke Energy to power well pump and to use power tools.
• September 11, 2010 - Moved our 2 hives of bees on to Plan Bee from Charlotte, NC
• October 2010 - Our first deer harvested via a bow.  Nice shooting son.
• November 19, 2010 - Plan Bee fully surveyed.

Most of the work was done by my son and his friends with my wife and I assisting in completing some of the projects that required  continuous follow up such as the well and well inspection.  Yep, my son spent a lot of time in the heat of the summer working and getting things started.

LOOKING FORWARD on 2011
As we think about Plan Bee, we are fortunate to have very low expenses.  We do have to pay for electric and government (taxes)  Therefore as we had planned all along, we need to generate income to at least cover these minimal expenses and yet not lose sight of all of the fun of owning 23.58 acres in a rural community. 

Here are some goals for 2011:

• January 15, 2011 (Begun) - Develop Land Plan that can be used when considering planting trees, herbs and flowers as well as tax implications.
• Timber some of the property to make way for more productive trees and vegetation.  Will hopefully generate revenue.
• Make sure plan will allow us to achieve Present Use Value in 3 years (2014)
• Continue to expand our bee yard. We now have 2 hives and can grow the number up to 25.
• Add at least 2 hives this year.
• Harvest honey from our hives or fire the bees and get a new bunch for next year.
• Complete work on new hive stands pointed to the Southeast (Optimum direction for bees)
• Continue to plant fruit trees for us and the bees. (Bees need trees and Trees need bees)
• Trees we want to plant - PawPaw, apple, fig, peach, Mulberry, others to be named
• Plant 6 grape vines and evaluate if a vineyard is possible. (Attending a NCMGA (North Carolina Muscadine Growers Association) meeting
• Water Improvement:
• Install yard hydrant for year around water.
• Install drip irrigation system for garden, trees, herbs and bees.
• Build tool shed for storage of equipment.
• Plant Moroccan Mint

Inserting wax foundation into frames

We are getting ready for Spring.  One of our first steps is assembling new hive bodies and wax frames.  Below is a slideshow of pictures showing how to insert wax foundation into frames. If you click in the picture below you can pause it to allow you to study it in more detail. Double-clicking a picture will take you to the Picasa Web Album where you can see a larger view of the picture .  My mentor, Frank Clements, aka the bee boss, was kind enough to show me how to do this.  Not sure why but it stuck and I can actually insert the wax foundation into wooden frames.

Excuse all of the pictures but thought you might enjoy how my Queen Bee, Rayleen, painted our hive bodies.  Some of our beeyard compatriots may be none too thrilled but what are parents for.



Good luck with your own wax foundation installation.  If you have ideas or questions, please send them our way to Savtascreations@Gmail.com.

How to move a Beehive

In an earlier post we discussed how NOT to move a hive of bees.  This is the counter to that moving experience and discusses HOW TO move a hive of bees.

While much of the nation was commemorating the fallen of 9/11/2001 on 9/11/2010, we were moving our bees.

We had studied the process under the expert tutelage of one Frank Clements, our mentor for our first year of beekeeping. He explained that when late evening arrives and the last of the bees have returned to the hive, screen them in and you are ready to move your hive. After repeatedly asking what time that might be, he repeated that it would depend on the last bee. 

We acquired another hive of bees from a former beekeeper that decided to fly off in a different direction. As a reminder, we live in a condominium and had our bees living in the backyard of our mentor, Frank Clements, the bee boss. For first year beekeepers this turned out to be of great advantage as our mentor would periodically peek in on our bees and let us know when we had stepped in some bee paddies. Our second hive of bees was an additional hour drive away. Since we would be moving the new bees shortly, this didn’t pose a huge problem but it did require some late night driving down country roads in the dark.

FRIENDS – So what do you do when you don’t own a pickup truck to haul bees and lack the expertise and equipment to make it all happen, call on your beest friends. One of our bee buddies, George Beckwith, lent us his pickup for the weekend. Oh my gosh, I cannot begin to say thanks enough. He even showed up at 7:00 in the morning to help us load our screened hives into the back of his pickup. My other friend and mentor, assisted in loading the hives into the pickup as well. My wife and I need to pay it back and forward to repay their kindness. Once arriving at Plan Bee in Liberty, NC, the new home for our bees, my son helped me unload the hives onto the nifty bee stand he and a buddy had constructed.

When things go wrong – Remember I told you that my mentor said to screen up the bees late at night. Well when it is warm, late at night turns out to be early in the morning, about 5:00am to be exact. My wife and I left the screen for hive one we are naming Aleph and our great mentor wedged in the screen late that evening just after the last bee returned home. We drove out at about 10:30 pm on 9/10 to do the same with our newly acquired hive which we called Beit. When we arrived at our second hive the bees were still bearding. (Bearding means that the bees are hot and hang on one another outside of the hive forming their version of a beard.) Now the first hive, Aleph, is a happy hive of friendly, no downright passive bees. With Aleph we are more likely to sting them then have an Aleph bee sting us. However, the Beit bees are their opposites. When approaching Beit, you better have them smoked. (Smoking is used with bees to confuse their communication which is primarily olfactory (smell)). The Beit bees are angry awnry bees which we have grown to love but as we were first getting acquainted, they were a problem. We called our mentor late at night and he answered his phone when many would not. He also offered us the loan of a handy dandy moving screen which he left on his front door step. Beekeepers usually don’t worry about thievery as most thieves stay away from stinging insects. (Me smiling)

05:00 on 09/11/2010 – We swung by the home of our bee boss and mentor and quietly grabbed the moving screen. From there we drove out in the dark to our Beit hive. The location is …. but fortunately Evelyn, our GPS, directed us in the middle of the night/early morning directly to our hive. As we bobbed and weaved over back roads in the dark we frequently questioned Evelyn. My wife got into an early morning cat fight with Evelyn, my GPS and I had to pull over to calm both of them down. As we arrived at our hive, the headlights revealed bees were still outside the hive. Our second hive was located in the back of an organic blueberry farm. Because of the location we could drive right up to the hive and shine our headlights on the hive.

Tools – So I had an electric screw driver, 2 screws and the moving screen. With my bee suit on, I carefully snuck up on my bees and gently placed the moving screen over the entrance to the hive. With two quick zips, I had screwed the moving screen into place and our prep work was basically done.

06:00 – We were on the road to pick up our pickup and drive with our driver. We arrived at our mentor’s about bee sunrise, which on this day was about 07:00. We finished tightening the two ratcheted straps we had around our hive and moved it to the pickup. It took two men and my wife to move the hives. My queen bee provided valuable adult supervision as we jockeyed the hive into position in the back of the pickup.

Straps – So I tried small thin straps that I use in backpacking but they didn’t get anywhere near tight enough to prevent the two deeps and one medium from sliding around. When moving bees disaster is spelled like this: “Separating bee boxes while driving down a highway”. So we tried another level up with no success. We finally followed the directions of our mentor and got industrial strength, approximately 2” wide straps and ratchet. The ratchet allowed us to tighten down the boxes and make sure nothing slips during transportation.



We repeated this with our second set of bees and dropped off our kind lender of the pickup and loader of beehives. My wife and I felt like kids borrowing the vehicle from our friend and tried in every way to be careful as this was his pride and joy. It is a trusty vehicle with lots of bells and whistles such as a remote sliding cover for the bed of the pickup. On the drive up we stopped to buy some sandwiches to eat while driving. We figured all of the bees were neatly in the hive, WRONG… As my wife waited for me to return with the sandwiches, first one bee and then another came out from where she had been hiding and began an orientation flight. Seems these bees didn’t get the word about staying in the hive.



Arriving at Plan Bee – We drove the pickup past our bee stand about 50 feet. My son and three year beekeeper was kind enough to help me unload the hives and place them on the stand. I was suited up and once the straps were removed from the hives, he went back to the truck while I removed the screens from the front of the hives. Can you say angry bees?? Our bees didn’t like being moved. They didn’t like being locked into their hives! They were just plain angry and our gentle application of sugar water didn’t help much. Thankfully our bee suits protected us from their wrath.

Lessons learned:

1. Friends, particularly beekeeper friends are key to a safe successful move.

2. Plan on screening in your bees EARLY morning.

3. Have your screen and/or moving screen ready.

4. Use 2” wide straps with ratchets to secure your hives.

5. You will need at least 2 beekeepers to lift and move the hives.

6. Being kind, gentle and slow moving with your bees seems to have a settling effect on them.

7. ALWAYS be in your bee suit during the move or plan on being stung.