For about a year and a half, in the eighties, I lived down the road from my place, in Owl Hollow. It was the cutest little house in the back of the Thackers farm. I had to get out and open and close the gate each time I came through the lane, to keep the cows in. The drive was about a third of a mile long and in the winter, my VW bus tended to be parked out by the road, and we walked in. There was only one bedroom, up in the attic, and the three girls shared that. I divided it up with a fabric and two by four wall so my older daughter could have a modicum of privacy from the two little ones. I slept out on the screened in porch on a futon on the floor. When it got cold, I installed insulation and plastic to keep it warmer. The woodstove was in the tiny living room and I kept the window into that room open for the heat. I don’t know how I managed to fit it all in, but I had my weaving loom, treadle sewing machine, and an armchair in there. The kitchen held a sink with gravity fed cold water, an old fifties style refrigerator, a gas cookstove and the kitchen table. I also had my big shelf of canning jars and the China cabinet (turned sideboard) I helped my Dad build when I was a kid in there too. It was pretty tight but homey. There were two tiny little sheds coming off the kitchen. One had a short iron bath tub in it and we kept a pee pot in there. The other was the mudroom entrance with the chest freezer in it and a flap cut into the screend door for the dogs to come and go through. I’ ll bet the whole house measured less than 500 square feet. It was simple and really cheap. Rent was $65.00 a month, electric was maybe $30 dollars and the phone was like $25. I was able to work off the rent by helping the landlord with chores sometimes. I painted the walls up at his house on the hill, mucked out the barn, repaired fence, chased cows, cut firewood. I finally managed to convince them to let me install a hot water heater. They were sure it wouldn’t work on a gravity fed line and the cows got first dibs on the water. It was esy to set up though and I sure enjoyed being able to use that bathtub inside the house. We still had an outhouse for a toilet but we were used to that. There were two large Sugar Maple trees in the yard and the kids had two tire swings hanging from them in the shade. I had a job as a cook at a conference center about 15 miles away and things were starting to look up. I was hoping to build a house on my land nearby as soon as I could swing it but this little house was a fine place for us in the meantime.
The critters who lived in the hollow with us shared the space freely. Cows would wander right up to the door. Skunks and raccoons came in the dog door into the mudroom. Something lived in the walls and I was hoping it was not rats.
One night, while asleep out on my futon, I felt something run right up the covers on top of me. I was not really thinking, being asleep, and I just grabbed at it, fast like. It was warm and furry and definitely alive. I jumped up, grabbed the empty water glass, pushed it inside, and turned on the light to check it out. I had never seen one before, but I was pretty sure it was a flying squirrel! The poor thing was as startled as I was. He didn’t bite me though. I got a half gallon wide mouth jar from the kitchen, rigged up a screen lid for it and went to wake up the kids. I was so relieved we didn’t have rats. I hate rats. Flying squirrels, on the other hand , are cool. He had the biggest round eyes, although he was smallish in size. The kids were good sports about being woke up and after we all had a good look at him, they went back to bed. I took him outside and asked him,
“Please to not come inside again. Living inside the walls is OK, but running across my bed is not. OK?”
He was quiet but I think he got it. It never happened again and when I heard them in the walls at night, it no longer bothered me. Now that I knew who it was.
I was woken on another night by a scritching sound on my pillow. I could not imagine what it was but it was constant and it seemed loud to me. I got up turned on the light, and looked back at my pillow. There were hundreds of honeybees walking across my pillow! Not flying. Not buzzing. Hundreds of tiny feet, walking across my pillow. They were all headed in the same direction and seemed to not notice what was in their way. I st down cross legged on my bed and watched them for awhile. It was very strange for them to be up at night I thought. And strange to be walking, not flying. Quiet too. I decided to have a conversation with them in the same quiet way. I sent my thoughts to them. I asked them ,
“Please, do not walk across my pillow or come inside the house anymore. I don’t mind sharing the house with you, but you need to stay in the walls and use an entrance on the outside. Please don’t sting the kids or scare them and you can stay right where you live now. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t have you walking around on my pillow though. Please?”
The bees kept marching. I opened the door to the outside for them and they left. I closed the door , went back to bed, a little nervous about noises on my pillow. In the morning, I put my ear against the wall and could hear them working inside, but they never came inside the house after that. I appreciated their cooperation. Bees are usually fairly calm and docile if you treat them right. They have work to do and like to be left alone to do it. I think of them fondly these days while I tend to my bees at home.
05/05/14- Bees ship out from Kentucky, Ron and Carrie Spille, Spille Honey, 3 # bees and a queen @ $126.00 for Italians, $129.00 for Russians, including shipping. Shipped a week later than originally planned (April 28th) due to cold weather.
05/07/14- Bees arrive 6:30 am at Post Office, Suit up (jeans, ball cap, raspberry colored raincoat with hood, Velcro sleeves, drawstring waist; net gnat hood, leather work gloves) Install bees in 2 Hive bodies, from Mann Lake, Minnesota, cost =$627.40 (includes 2 hive bodies and 2 supers for each hive). Feed 1:1 sugar water mixture-boil 1 ½ gallons water (appx 12#), add 12 pounds sugar, stir till dissolved , cooled over night . Remove 2 frames from outer edge, insert 1 gallon frame feeder w/ bee ladders, fill. Remove cork end and hang Queen cage in between 2 center frames. Install queen excluder, top board, roof, use small section of entrance reducer.
05/11/14- Check for Queen release. OK. Do not need feed yet.
05/15/14-Open hives, spray sugar water to calm, use stick to get a few drowned bees out, feed sugar water using funnel, Remove a few frames and search for queen. Cannot see her but see eggs laid.
05/20/14-Feed bees 1 gallon to Russians, ½ gallon to Italians ( throw out moldy batch in clear jug, check for mold in feeder -OK), shuffle full center frames towards outside, to even out drawing of comb. Open entrance reducer to larger size and opposite side from feeder. Russians have filled more frames than Italians and eaten more as well. Also, Russians seem calmer to work with. One Italian stung me- add duct tape to pants legs next time.
05/29/14- Feed bees ¾ gallon each, adjust frames again, add Hive body to Russians, move feeder up to second story. Move queen excluder to top of second body.
06/06/14- Russians- Feed 1 gallon, remained calm after one spray of sugar water. Built some comb into second story but it was sideways on frame and bottom of frame. Trimmed it off with hive tool. Keep building wax on queen excluder too. Italians –agitated, and seem to have enlarged population- sprayed three times to calm, one got under my face net but I got him out. Pulled feeder out from bottom hive and inserted into second hive body above, filled ½ to ¾ full. Have not tried smoke and would prefer not to, but maybe it would work better on the Italians? Also might have to get a bee veil that closes better and does not shine with glare in the sun. Used half chaps (leather gaiters) instead of duct tape at ankles, easier to take off.
06/06/14- Buckwheat patch I planted for the bees is starting to bloom
My history with bees is not the greatest. I originally got started
Two New Bee Hives
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.
Setting up the frames and feeders
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.
Three pounds of mailorder Bees in their cage
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.
Checking for the Queens ReleaseThe Queens cage-empty
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.
