The Wisdom Of Using the Right Equipment

I got a call by a guy named Richard.  He said,  “I have a hive that I need to have removed, but no money.”  I was like “I charge $80 for hive removal.”  He then told me how it was in his neighbor’s yard, and how the hive was sitting there on the wall.  He said it was from a larger hive in a bush.  I told him I could spray the bees on the wall with some bee removal spray  for free, but the bees in the bush would cost him some money.  I imagined it would be a pain in the neck to get a hive out a bush.

Then a flash of brilliance hit me.  I had a friend, who needed a beehive.  He wanted some bees, and here I could get him some for free.  I called my friend and asked him if he could help me, and then he said yes.  He was really excited to be getting free bees.  So I called Richard back, and I told him it was his lucky day.

We arrived at Richard’s house on Galena Street, and I discovered I forgot to get some equipment.  Yep I was spacey about getting all my beekeeping stuff.   I had to go back to my house and get two bee boxes (large deeps), etc, and I had to get some empty bee frames that went in the deeps (18).

When I returned I got into my bee suit, and I realized that my bee gloves were not matched.  I gave the extra suit to Richard and he got the matching gloves.  Not a real big deal. I also realized I wasn’t wearing a hat.  I knew I was in trouble, that I was going to get some bee stings.  This realization made me sick in my stomach. Yet I couldn’t run home again.  I felt the need to supervise my friend, who is 72 and is very new to bee keeping.  Also there was Richard, the neighbor that I lent the bee suit to.  He was a willing helper, but he had never worked with bees before. How could I leave them alone to face a dangerous African bees?  I got my smoker started.  Then we proceeded to smoke the bees on the wall.   My friend and I  tossed the bees into the nuke box. That was the easy job.  They quickly went into my friend’s nuke box and marched in.  Just like you see it in the videos.

The hard job came up next.  The huge beehive that stretched about three feet long dangling vertically in the bushes.  The bees were in some bushes that had some thorns on them, we had to sit and cut the branches down with hedge clippers while the bees buzzed around us. Fortunately, they ignored us for the most part.  However, the more we cut down, the more agitated they become.  Let me just say during the time we were cutting down the branches and the bees were stinging us, and we were alternately running away and then coming back to attack the bush with the awful bee hive that some choice words were said.  Richard had his veil compromised and got some holes in it from branches poking holes in it.  He got 4 bee stings which made me feel awful.  My friend unfortunately did not have bee gloves on.  He wore leather gloves made for yard work.   According to my friend, the bees stung his gloves about forty times.    Fortunately, my friend did not have much of a reaction to all of his bee stings.  I was very worried about him.

When we finally got the hive down we had to separate some of it to fit into a large deep box.  I realized my friend had not brought any large elastic bands to preserve the beautiful wax brood of the beehive.  I got into my car with $5 from Richard and zoomed off to Staples.  I still had my bee suit on.  I took off my hood to  drive, which is good because you can’t see to good.   I then ran into Staples with my suit, and breathlessly asked the clerk where they kept the rubber bands.  They kindly told me.  I could tell I was getting some funny looks.  I then went to check  out, and my words tumbled out about how I was trying to save the baby brood in the beehive.  The clerk was very sympathetic and kind.

Then I zoomed back to our work site on Galena Street.  my friend had most of the brood in the first box, and we managed to get the clump of bees into the box cut down enough so we could put a lid on it, and shut the box up.  Then we put another lid on the bees with the brood in it.  We cleaned up the site, and I went and talked to Richard who thanked me and gave me $25 for my work.  It wasn’t much, and I wanted to donate it to the bee club, but Matt says I have to pay for the  suit to get repaired.  my friend took both hives home, and the box with the brood in it probably died because it wasn’t put with the main hive.  I was pretty sad about that.   The bees needed to be kept warm by the main hive.

The main thing that I wish I could convey to people is how important it is to wear the right gear and to wear it correctly.  If you don’t you don’t “The bees will learn you.” This is what Matt always says.   I got stung four times because I didn’t have the right hat.  My friend got stung repeatedly through his leather gloves because they were not beekeeping  gloves.  Richard was stung because he had a hole in his suit.   They sure learn you the hard way.  Owie!!!

Beware of the Intoxicating Smell of Wax

I am confessing my true sin of being  addicted to wax and candle making.

I have a  full craft container in my office; in it are candle making supplies.  This has cost me hundreds of dollars.  I have figured out how to make candles with the essential oils and the manufactured fragrances.  And I’ve ignored this craft container for a while.  Yet it’s been there like a fun old friend; that I have had in my office cluttering up another work space.  I love it so much.  I can’t give it up, and yet I know it could be a really bad problem if I became too obsessive about it.  For  example, for one whole year I spent all my time and money making candles.   I feel proud of myself for figuring out a  difficult craft.  I keep these supplies because I might get back into some day.  And so happily today I am doing it today.  Don’t telly anyone, but I am ignoring my dishes in order to make my home made wax candles.

In order to have enough wax you have to purchase it, or you can collect it from your bees in your  apiary.  I do both.  However, it can be a bad distraction to the important work you are supposed to beekeeping.  When we were out in our apiary I would smell it.  The smell of the beautiful beeswax  fills the air around our apiary.  It is so intoxicating and sweet.  I love it.   When we first started beekeeping I would get it in my head that I would have to collect it.  I needed it to make candles.  So instead of assisting my husband with his bees I had find ways to collect it.  Matt would scrape off a lid and throw the wax on the ground.  I would be appalled! I would have important discussions with him to please not throw the wax on the ground.  Sometimes he listens to me.    I used to scrape it off everything.  Matt finally has convinced me to stop doing this.   Matt was annoyed I was not helping him.  Plus I get in his way when I am trying to scrape off burr comb and he is trying to shut the lid of his medium bee box.  Plus the bees get really mad when you scrape off their burr comb.  They don’t like it.  But I had to have their wax.  After many months of  being a beekeeper I finally started to be good.  I quit scraping off the burr comb when doing hive inspections. 😦

Sometimes I do get to collect wax it is really bad burr comb and making the boxes stick.  This caused the worst thing of all to happen to me one day.  Matt asked me to remove some burr comb.  I did as I was told.  I put a nice large yellow wax ball top of a bee hive. Later, when I cleaning up to go home, I did not notice it has a couple of bees in it.  Plus, I was very stupid and did not have my long bee gloves on.  I want all you readers to know I am always paranoid and have my gloves on with lots of duct tape to secure it so no bees can enter my bee suit.  Why I did not have them on is beyond reason.  This is a very dangerous  combination.  Yep. I paid the price. My bees stings hurt for a couple of days.  My left hand was like a balloon.  The horrible stings, itched for a couple of days, and I was miserable.

Now I have collected enough wax to fill a crock pot.  Now I am melting my wax in my kitchen with a crock pot.  My dishes are all piled up, and I am sooo excited.  My love for making candles is back.  Guess what? You too can be a wax addict.  I do not offer any therapy for this kind of addiction.

BEE Advice to Help You BEE Good When You Are Working With Bees

 

1.  When you come up to an Apiary.  Don’t go investigate it.  Don’t walk around the boxes or hives of bees with out a bee suit.  In fact, when you arrive at an Apiary don’t be a nice person and start cutting up strips of burlap (We use burlap in the smoker to burn) and not put on your bee suit while your husband suits up.  Then all of sudden you become aware that your husband says “Them bees are nasty today.”  Then you have to run down the Tapo Canyon hill with your bee suit 1/2 on while a swarm of bees chase you because you were a nice person.  Noooooo you need to respect the nasty bees and wear your bee suit at all times when the bees are being nasty.
2. Always keep your bee suit on when you are in the cab until the windows have been rolled down and you have gone 1/2 a mile away from the apiary because there are always little assasin bees waiting to sting you in the cab of the truck.  They come and sting you immediately when you take off your bee suit.  This is because you are not a good person in other places of your life and you are being punished for your sins.  They know it.  Of course, they don’t care that you are tired, dirty, and just want to go home.  They just want to die stinging you, and they are determined to do it.  So they do it immediately when you take your bee suit off in the cab.
3. Never, never bring the boxes of honey in your house unless you inspect the boxes for the little 1000s of bees that want to eat that honey.  Because if you don’t do this then you get 1000s of bees in your house.  Or in our case about 100.  It was enough to make my daughter, Ana to go on strike.  She refused to come out of her bedroom.  I spent about an hour an half encouraging all the bees to go our the porch sliding glass door, and I got stung.
4. When you have a hive of bees fly into your back yard don’t play with them. They are probably Africanized. I know you are fascinated by the cute little cluster hanging from your orange tree, but remember bees are not play toys. They should not bee sprayed with a hose. You should not mow around a hive. Never stand in front of the hive. Bees have ninja guard bees that always are in the front of the hive if they see you and raise up their little rear stingers up and then fly up towards you, run!!! Obviously don’t have your kids play in front of the hive. Bee good and stay away from the hive!!! Don’t tell your beekeeper that you are allergic to bees and then go up to the beehive and closely examine the bees! The bees are dangerous, even if they are probably going to move on sooner or later and appear to be in passive mode. Don’t pick them up, and don’t help your beekeeper move the bees. If you are allergic to the bees, then don’t put yourself at risk!

Too Much Honey Oozing Out of Our Home

Don’t read this post if you want me to bee all professional and a little bit sarcastic and trifle sad on the attempt at being humorous because I’m really bored. Sorry this might disappoint you a tiny bit. Unless you know me, and then you are probably used to me. Update!!!! Matt says we are going to have, gulp, nightmares of honey oozing everywhere, 400 lbs of honey to sell this season. He says, I have to get my little “butte” in gear and sell some honey. I guess you all know to whome he was referring. I think to lose some weight now. By the way, who has 400 lbs of honey hanging around their house that they have to sell along with all the other things they have to do in life? Oh wait I do because I’m a happy bee keeper, and it’s my job. I should of thought about that thought before I started to play around with all them 1,000s of bees as Matt’s assistant.

Better yet, I should of really been a better wifey nag, and tried to really encourage him to not invest in 20 hives the first year. Who does that? Most people start out with one or two hives. Nope not my husband. He has to start with 20. Yet there was something about that magic number. The first year we played around with 20 hives of wild European bees that were more Africanized than European. Then most of them died. Now we are both addicted bee maniacs devoting all of our free times to going around playing in bee hives. Matt has beecome (notice the pun there–I had to throw that one in) much more knowledgeable. I am just praying for a good year! Also, I am praying that people will buy all this honey around my house, or it will just pile up and up and up some more each year in one oozy mess. Also, I need the honey money for my retirement. Are we crazy? Yes!!! I think it must be the thrill of finding the queen has made our brains over heat with too much excitement, or our brains have gone down hill from too much carbon monoxide from all that smoke we have inhaled from them smokers! It was fun today play rake girl up Tapo St. Canyon raking up all that grass in our apiary. For all who have been hoping against all hope that we actually might get around to processing and bottling our Citrus Blossom Honey; I believe Matt might have actually have ordered the bottles. If not I will actually nag him about that.

Why You Should Not Play Around With Africanized Bees

I am thinking a lot lately about a friend who wants to start bee keeping with a feral hive that is probably Hybrid Africanized.   Hybrid Africanized bees are the strain of bees that we have in this area.  They are a mix of the Africanized bees and European bees.  However, for the rest of the article I will refer to them as “Africanized” because that is how most beekeepers refer to feral bees around here.   Let me tell you all why that is a bad idea.  Africanized bees are extremely aggressive.  They don’t re Queen very well.   Re Queening is when you buy a new queen from a reputable beekeeper.  You stick the new queen in it’s little box into the hive.  It has a little sugar cube that blocks it exit.  The hives’ bees will lick the sugar cube to get at the queen.  They will either accept the queen or kill her.  You either have a great investment and celebrate the fact that you have paid $35 for a new queen, and your hive will no longer have the Africanized bees (or the other kind of bees you want to get rid of) or you will have a nice dead queen because they will kill her.  Then you are devastated because you have wasted $35.  One time my friend Jeremy accidentally left a queen in her little box on top of a hive box.  He wasted $35 too, because he was not able to recover that queen either.  I learned at the LA beekeeper’s meeting from the mentor beekeeper who was answering everyone’s questions (sorry I forgot his name) that it’s about 7 out 10 times you will be able to requeen a hive, and not have the hive kill your queen.  Then, I learned you run into problems splitting Africanized Hives t into nukes, because Africanized hives don’t split up very well.  They are just problem hives.  Don’t mess with them.

So if my friend, let us call him, John gets a hive box like he wants from my husband, and manages to get his Africanized Hive into the hive box.  He then can call himself a bee keeper.  Except, well John has a huge problem.  There are many ways he will run into a life threatening/hazardous situation with Africanized bees that is different that is different from regular bees.  First of all, Africanized bees like to guard their territory.  They have little ninja bees that will set up a perimeter around the hive that will surprise him, and sting him if he is too cheap to buy a suit.  They are more aggressive than regular bees, and will chase him away from their territory, especially if he stands accidentally in front of their hive entrance.   Second, Africanized bees are especially agitated by sounds.  If someone in his neighborhood starts to mow their lawn or cuts a tree down that sound might agitate the whole hive enough to go out and be aggressive and start attacking  the neighbors.  I know about this one from a very painful experience where we had to pull out of an apiary from some tree cutters who were chopping up wood.  They agitated our bees, and our bees started to chase the workers.  They were very aggressive, and I believe some of them were Africanized, even though Matt had carefully re Queened most our bees in our apiary.    Finally,  Africanized bees are not gentle bees when you “work” the bees.  They get agitated easily, they are not fun to work with, and they make beekeeping miserable.  My husband generally turns down calls to go out and do hive removal because he does not want to work with these hybridized African bees that we have in Ventura County.