Bees flying in and out of their hive

As many of you know, bees are in trouble. In the last several years beekeepers have been noticing what has later been termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Colonies of bees just disappear with no sign, leaving juveniles and eggs in the hive. The most suspicious part is that other colonies and other insects and animals don’t move into the abandoned hive to raid it. Something is wrong with the hive, but what is it? Another thing that researchers are noticing is that the few bees that may be left in the hives are all suffering from every known bee virus simultaneously, which points at a complete immune system shutdown. In a previous blog I brought up that it could possibly be caused by genetically modified crops, so I’m not going to rehash everything here. Instead, I’m going to tell you how we, at Dog Island Farm, are trying to help and how you can help as well.

I’m a chronic researcher. I’ll research just about all I can before I do something…most of the time. In the instance of bees we kind of just dove right in. But it really wasn’t something I needed to research because we’re not actually caring for them. We’re just giving them a place to live. But while giving them a place to live it gives us a chance to learn about them while waiting for their honey. So how did we do this?

We had briefly thought about having bees but never thought about it seriously. Then one day while cruising the Farm and Garden section of Craigslist (something I’m rather addicted to doing) I came across an ad by a biology professor in Marin County who was looking for hosts for his hives. He breeds queens in the hopes of creating stronger, healthier bees that can resist CCD. While most of the places he was looking for were in Marin and Sonoma Counties, he also listed Vallejo.

I immediately emailed him and he responded. He said he liked Vallejo because it warmed up here faster in time for the Eucalyptus bloom. Hmmm, I don’t think I’ve ever had Eucalyptus honey. Within the next couple weeks he delivered an empty box with a stand. The stand was simple – just a wooden pallet with rebar legs. I learned a few things from him regarding setup.

1. A sunny spot with a little afternoon shade is ideal.
2. Place the legs of the stand in cans filled part way with oil to keep ants out.
3. Do what you can to keep tall grasses away from the stand – again to keep ants out. We did this by laying down black plastic and then a bed of river sand on top of that.
4. Make sure you don’t have skunks. Apparently they will raid a hive with no regard to stinging bees.
5. To attract bees you use a pheromone in the hive. A the time of setup though it was too cold so he didn’t add it.
6. They really don’t require much space at all. You want about 3′ clear on all sides of the stand to move around, but that’s about it.

Two boxes on the stand. New bees came in the box on the ground.

A couple of weeks later he showed back up with a second box, this time containing a colony that he had caught at a nearby property. He placed the box next to the empty one, put a shim in between the body and bottom board and out they came. The first few days they were a bit aggressive while they were trying to get their bearings. Not overly so, but while we were digging weeds out of the closest garden bed we spent a good amount of time running from them. Now they are just a bit curious, but mostly they just fly off to far away places to collect their bounty. They don’t stay in the yard as much anymore.

 This past weekend, the professor came back with a package of live bees that he had just bought. These were going to live in the empty hive. I watched in awe as he opened up the clear sided box and poured them onto the open box like water. They can’t fly when they are in a large mass, so they almost turn into a living liquid. The mound of bees on top of the hive oozed down between the bars like honey. He pulled a little tube out that contained the queen. One end of the tube is plugged with a piece of candy that the workers chew through to release her.

He’ll be back in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to learning more about beekeeping.

Print PDF