Keeping Bees at Edgewise Woods-

May 16, 2014

My history with bees is not the greatest. I originally got started

through helping my neighbor, Harry, with his bees back when I lived near Harrisville, WV in the 1970’s. I mostly helped him with taking the honey at the end of the season and jarring it up. I made the best beeswax candles from the cappings. They smelled so good when you burned them and lasted a long time. We were able to just run into town, about 8 miles away, to the old Stout family hardware store and get everything we needed for bee keeping. Veils, long gloves, hive bodies, wax foundation and frames, feeders, everything. Some of their stock might be 30 years old but you knew it was in there some place if you had the time to look. Also, if it was a rainy, nasty day the younger brother would let you have stuff for next to nothing, or the price that was marked on it from the 1940’s. Rainy days depressed him. They tended to depress me too and I tried not to take advantage.

I got my own bees after awhile but then I lost one hive to bears- thanks to the DNR for reintroducing them to our area, and then one to foul brood, and I backed off from beekeeping until I moved to Freshwater Cove in Nelson County Va. My partner at the time brought me a present one day of a bee hive that was so mean, that when a bear got into them and turned the whole thing over, the bees actually won the fight. I think he was hoping they would get me too. They stung me every chance they got- even while wearing a protective veil. The last time I went near them I was pregnant with my youngest daughter and they somehow managed to get under the veil and sting me on my neck about 20 times. I think this might be why she was sensitive to insect stings for the first few years of her life. I am not sure what later killed those bees but I was glad to see their demise as they were the meanest bees I had ever encountered.

When I moved to Shepherdstown, I no longer had any bee equipment except a couple of old smokers and a hive tool- no veil or gloves or hive bodies hanging around. I discovered about ten years ago just how hard it is here, to get a hold of an empty beehive when you need one in a hurry.  We had a hardware store and a Southern States then but neither one kept bee supplies in stock. So, why did I need a hive all of a sudden when I had no bees? Well, a friend had some construction going on at his house, so he brought his hive over to visit with us for a while as the bees were placed too close for comfort. You cannot move bees a short distance without confusing them as to where home is. The old adage is ‘Three feet or three miles’. They needed to go more than three feet so they came about ten miles to our place until they were done building. When they arrived, my apple trees were in full bloom, along with lots of nut trees and such, so they were quite happy. Anyway, maybe they made so much honey they ran out of room. No one brought them a super to expand with and so they swarmed. A whole bunch of the bees took off with the queen and landed about 20 feet away, on a young apple tree, right about eye level. They were only going to hang out there for so long, until the scout bees found them a new home in a hollow tree or something, and they had to be gathered up quick or lost. I knew that much but not much else.

I called the bees owner at home, hoping he would be around, but of course he was not and neither was his son. They had not shown much interest in the bees since they dropped them off weeks before. So I ran down to the hardware store to see if anyone there knew any beekeepers but the only one who knew anything was off somewhere. A woman shopping for paint gave me the number of a beekeeper nearby in Maryland who offered to come take away the swarm for himself. Fat chance, they are expensive to buy and I did not want to waste them. He would have sold me an empty hive, except his were an unusual size, and I would never be able to get parts for them. So I went over to the feed store to see if they knew of anyone who kept bees and might have an extra hive laying about and they put me on the phone to a local orchardist. The woman who answered said her husband was out in his bee yard trying to catch a swarm right then (obviously a good day for swarms) but she would have him call me back as soon as he came in.

Meanwhile, I was frantically reading my old beekeeping book, trying to come up with alternative bee boxes. They have to be something fairly strong as this group of bees probably weighed 9-12 pounds and they would be hanging from the top of the box. Cardboard would collapse. I was rigging a 20 gallon plastic tree bucket with bamboo stakes stuck through it and trying to figure out how to get them to go into it, when the beekeeping orchardist called back. He was full of useful information and gave me confidence that I could get these bees caught without a problem. I was out talking to him on my cell phone, with the bees clustered around, when the original owner and his cousin finally drove up with a hive body, just in time. Thank goodness they also brought some veils and long gloves. Those are nice. Actually they are more like a necessity most of the time.  The pair had very little experience, it turns out, and they were not looking at all enthusiastic, but I convinced them it would not be a problem and it wasn’t. Really it was a lot of fun. The bees behaved as if they were connected in a long rope, moving as one unit, about two and a half feet long and 8 inches wide, wrapped around a branch of the young tree. I placed their new hive, with frames of wax foundation hanging in it, on the ground below the swarm and we shook the branch. The bees all just dropped right in. They started to get a little stirred up and buzzed around us some, but they settled down pretty quick. It was neat to watch and hear them drop – kind of like hearing a few pounds of mini marshmallows fall on the kitchen floor. Not that I have ever heard that. We took a soft brush and made sure there weren’t any missed bees still up on the branch and then the guys went on their way. I stayed out there awhile until almost dark, put the top on after they all clustered back together, and moved them back over next to the other hive Then I took the lid back off, added another empty super box, and set up a feeding station with a jar of sugar water, so they would feel at home and have enough energy to draw out the new comb they needed. Unfortunately, the first hive swarmed again a couple of weeks later, and since we had no more hives for them, I gave them away to the orchardist neighbor, who had been so helpful. That winter, the snow drifted so deep I think my visiting bees suffocated and died. I felt terrible and asked the guys to take their boxes away.

I am not sure why I have decided to get bees again except that I feel a need to produce at least a portion of the food we eat. I have always kept chickens, grown a big garden and put a lot of food up each year. Luckily, on my third go round with bees, there is internet shopping with UPS delivery right to the porch. My new bee Guru, who has fifty hives and tends bees with his elderly father, told me where he gets his supplies online, so I did some research and ordered mine from the same place http://www.mannlakeltd.com/ . The two complete hives, each with two bodies and two supers, arrived in four large awkward size boxes right on time. I felt kind of sorry for the UPS man. Since I made the decision to get bees late in the season, it was hard to find a source of the actual bees for delivery this spring. When I did finally find some package bees that originated here on the East Coast (for better acclimatization, less shipping time) they were Russian and Italians from http://spillehoney.com/bees.html.

The night before I expected them to arrive, I made up a few gallons of sugar syrup to feed them with so it could have time to cool. The bees  arrived in good shape in two shoe box sized screened in boxes at the post office at 6:30 am the next morning. The Post Mistress called my cell to come get them, and since I was already at work, I had to turn around and come back and install them in their new hives, which only took about an hour, plus another hour and a half of travel. I had heard that the Italians were the most gentle but it was one of that lot that stung me and they seemed more riled up than the Russians.

I wore my gnat veil, a pair of leather gloves and a nylon raincoat with a hood, Velcro sleeves and a draw cord hem. That one bee got me on my ankle. Four days later, when I removed the separate little Queen boxes I had hung in the center of the hive, and made sure she was released, I added duct tape to my outfit around my ankles. The worker bees have to work to get her out of her cage, which comes plugged with candy at one end. That gives the bees about four days to get acquainted with each other before she is free. If you release a new queen right away they might kill her. I have had the bees a week now and have refilled their feeders with another gallon each. So far, each hive has been busy building out comb but they have not made it out to the furthest frames yet. When they do, I will add another hive body and move the feeder up a level. When that gets full, I will add a super (a shallower box with frames and foundation) one at a time as they need it. I have an entrance reducer in place so they can defend against robber bees but as soon as this cold rain ends I think I will give them a larger front door so they can forage easier.

The Wild Cherries are in full bloom and I have planted buckwheat for later in the season. I may plant more of that. We don’t need all this lawn. The buttercups I don’t want out in the back pasture are also in full bloom. I might till them up as soon as they are done and plant some clover and orchard grass, which Mara, my horse will also like. The neighbor across the way has removed the cows from fifty acres and is about to plant it in corn. Round Up ready corn of course, which is what everybody plants these days. I was glad they killed the grass more than a week before I got my bees. If they had sprayed it when the clover was blooming and the bees were working it, it would have killed them. Luckily, they now have a beekeeper maintaining two hives on their farm on shares, who will be as worried as I am, and hopefully will help them prevent such things.

I am starting to remember how much work it takes to take proper care of bees and hope I can keep up properly. On Monday morning, before work, I will need to see if I can find the queens and make sure she is starting to lay eggs. If not I may have to order a new queen. I have never been good at locating the queen and probably should have had her marked. I will have to meet with the farmers on both sides of us and ask them to keep me informed and meet the couple doing the bees over there. There is a lot to learn. Rosie, my bee guru at work, is full of information and loves to talk bees so he will be a big help. There is also a local beekeeping group that meets once a month so I plan to hook up with them.  All I need now is more hours in the day.

– Wendy lee Maddox, writing athttp://www.edgewisewoods.com