Au revoir, Woody

Posted on September 26, 2021 by Tina

The honeybees are still at it: pollinating flowers and carrying pollen and nectar to their hive to provide food for their hive-mates and larvae, and perhaps in the future, a bit of honey for their human neighbors.

You might notice that I wrote hive not hives.

Honeybee nectar stealing on the closed bloom of a Globe Mallow, *Spaeralcea ambigua*

In August, we checked our honeybees, as we do roughly every two to three weeks during the growing season. We were late at this particular hive check; it had been closer to four weeks since we last peeked into the gals’ homes. Four weeks between hive checks is too long and a poor beekeeping practice.

What we found in Woody, our older hive, was horrific.

Lesser Wax Moths had infiltrated the hive and destruction ensued. There are Wax Moths in all, or certainly most, hives that reside in warm climates. We’ve seen Wax Moth larvae from time-to-time in our hives, and crush them when we do. A healthy, thriving honeybee hive will keep any invaders in check–honeybees are a tidy bunch and take care of their own. But if a hive is weak–for whatever reason–it becomes vulnerable to invasive species and the Lesser Wax Moth, Achroia grisella, is one of several insect species that can bring catastrophe to a hive. Hive carnage happens quickly.

We’d added a second honey box to Woody in late June; the colony was thriving and needed more space to make honey. In a follow-up check, it seemed like there were fewer bees, but we didn’t take a deep-dive into the hive to check one or both brood boxes for a laying queen and noticeable larvae. Our only excuse is that it was July and hot, and it’s easy to be lazy beekeepers. That shortcut was a mistake. The fewer bees gave us pause, but we considered that maybe Woody had swarmed (which takes the old queen and half the workers) temporarily decreasing the population. Swarming is a natural and healthy process and is how honeybees procreate; a hive that has swarmed is nothing to fret about. But fewer bees could mean that the queen is weak or something else has impacted the hive. Between hive checks, we observed from the outside, but there were no clues of impending disaster, only fewer foraging bees going to and from Woody.

What we found in the August check was the ruin of the frames and comb.

Poor Woody. Poor bees.

We disassembled Woody, top to bottom, pulling out each frame, in both honey boxes and the two brood boxes. As we examined each frame, we killed as many larvae as we could and scraped and smashed the pupae as we found them. Disgusting work, but it was necessary. There were hundreds (thousands?) of larvae of all sizes, and many dozens of pupae biding their time to release adult moths, ready to mate and create more honeybee hive killers.

We left the annihilated frames and fouled boxes out in the hot July sun for several days after our Wax Moth larvae/pupae killing spree. Wax Moth offspring like the dark, moist of the hives, but won’t survive with exposure to bright sun. Interestingly, Woody’s bees hovered around the comb during those days. For weeks afterward, long after we’d put away the damaged frames, I’d see a few bees each day nosing around the area. Pheromones are strong magnets.

The honey frames and boxes were mostly unscathed, the primary damage occurring in the heart of the hive–the two brood boxes. Female wax moths fly to a hive at night and before dawn, ahead of the bees’ daytime activities, and lay eggs in an exposed crack or crevice. A single female lays hundreds of eggs in her lifetime. The eggs hatch and the larvae weave silk trails through the comb to protect themselves as they eat through the comb, honey, and honeybee larvae. Wax moths destroy the comb beyond repair.

As we worked that awful morning, we noticed that the other hive, Bo-Peep, had more bees hanging around the entrance. Also, Woody’s homeless bees had to deliver the minuscule amount of honey from their former home somewhere. We’re confident that Woody’s bees, after slurping the remains of their own honey, took that honey and joined up with Bo.

In the photo below and at the top right, you can see the remains of the chrysalises along the sides of the box. Looking at the frames, you’ll notice that some frames have intact comb, though it’s dark and dirty, but other frames only have bits of the comb remaining. The incomplete comb is the result of the Wax Moth larvae having eaten through it.

In this photo, the webbing spun to protect the larvae is obvious, and you can see that the caps on the comb cells (where baby bees are nurtured to adulthood) are all open. The moth larvae open the caps and eat not only the honey and comb, but the honeybee larvae. In a strong hive, the bees can re-cap and dispose of the moth larvae, but when overwhelmed by large numbers of moth larvae, the task becomes impossible.

During the days that we left the frames out, I hope that some of the juicy caterpillars were snatched by birds, but honestly, we didn’t leave too many of the moth larvae alive.

Here are more disgusting, destroyed hive frames.

This photo shows the underside of the roof of the hive. All those bits that you see are the remains of pupae that we scraped and smashed.

So what do we do with the frames and the boxes? Through the rest of summer, we mulled whether or not we’d replace Woody. I’m a little burned out with beekeeping; it’s work and sometimes more of a burden than a pleasure. Our decision to purchase a new colony can’t be made until late September, when Beeweaver Apiary announces their honeybees for sale during the following spring, so we’ve had time to consider options. I wouldn’t mind having only one hive, but if disaster hits that hive, we’re fresh out of honeybees until the next year. With that in mind, we’ve decided to get another package of honeybees (a mated, clipped queen and 10,000 workers), and this winter we’ll prepare the hive for this new colony.

Visually, the honey frames are in good shape, but freezing the frames for 48 hours kills remaining eggs and larvae, though we haven’t seen any larvae. As for the brood frames, we’ve removed all the polluted comb (whatever was left), disposed of the mess, and will clean and freeze those as well. The boxes are too large to freeze, so we’ll scrub them with a bleach solution sometime this winter. They’ve been outside all summer and we’ll leave them out during winter, too. There’s little possibility that any Wax Moth eggs will survive and be a threat to the new hive next April or May. Fingers crossed!

We’ve never lost a hive to Wax Moth infestation until Woody. But we’ve learned that when we take honey frames from the hives and if it’s going to be more than a few days before we extract that honey (which is typical; it’s usually weeks later before we extract), there are always Wax Moth eggs and larvae in the frames. We might not see anything amiss initially, but given a week or two, they’ve hatched and are crawling around and eating the comb, potentially ruining our prospects for beautiful honey. Before we understood the importance of freezing the frames, we’d keep an an eagle eye on the frames and commenced the squish squad whenever we spotted the creepy crawlies. Now that we know that freezing kills the bad guys, we pop the frames into our freezer for a couple of days kill the eggs and larvae. Constantly checking the frames for signs of those nasty critters isn’t necessary.

We started our 2021 beekeeping with one hive, Woody, after our hive Scar froze in February. We end the season with only one hive, our newest, Bo-Peep. We checked Bo each week after Woody’s debacle to make sure it was healthy. At the the first hive check, we found 4 Wax Moth pupae attached to the underside of the roof. I smashed those immediately. Since then, Bo-Peep has been thriving at each check: lots of brood and honey stores, and her foragers are bringing home the goods.

Bo is a particularly sweet hive, too, which I appreciate, especially when we open her up and muck around in the hive. Her bees are very patient.

Standing beside Bo-Peep, Woody’s base waits for a new colony of bees and a cleaned, disinfected hive.

As the days grow shorter, bees are busy. Here in Central Texas, we’re heading into our second spring of mass blooming. There are at least two months of flowers available for foraging, and even in winter, there will be some flowers for the bees to visit. We’ll check Bo-Peep a few more times before it grows too chilly to open her up.

It’s been a mixed bag of beekeeping this year; I’m glad to have this new, strong hive, but saddened at the demise of our two beloved hives, Scar and Woody. While my garden enjoys the presence of a decent variety of native bees, it’s hard for me to imagine it without honeybees. Honeybees, along with so many other insects, are integral to the garden’s health, vitality, and beauty.

Rock on, little bees–do your thing.

Can you spot *all* the bees in this photo? Not only is the honeybee working, but there are several native *Ceratina* bees. One is near the honeybee’s head, the other two, different species, are on the top bloom of the Coral Vine. There’s also one zooming across the photo, though it’s nothing more than a smear.

The Big Twirl

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Tina

In my last honeybee post, Iddy Biddy Swarm, I explained that the recent hive checks of Buzz and Woody demonstrated how honey bound they were and that there was little room for their queens to continue laying eggs, which each must do for survival of the hives.

So you ask: what happened to Buzz’s two frames that were so full of the sweet stuff? Well, dear readers, here they are, on my kitchen table, jam packed, honey-filled, and ready for the big twirl.

What is the big twirl? It’s the inaugural use of our two-frame honey extractor which we purchased almost a year ago.

Here she is, in all her honey extractor glory–shiny, clean, and ready to fling.

Let’s talk about the anatomy of a honey extractor for a moment. You can view the exterior as we situated it in our kitchen in preparation for the extraction. There is a step leading to the family room and while generally annoying, it now proves useful for our honey hobby. The drum sits on the step, we then placed the honey-catching strainers and bowl just below the extractor’s honey spigot, adding extra height to the drum with a few 2 x 4 blocks of wood. Of course, we laid towels just below this whole business, because…honey. Even when we’re as careful as we can possibly be, somehow, the stickiness of honey makes its presence known in all sorts of weird ways and strange places. Towels are a good thing to have around when dealing with honey, as are plenty of damp cloths.

The hand crank is at the right of the drum (in the photo), near the top. Before we started, I was skeptical that hand-cranking would be enough to sling and fling the gooey glory from its framed cells, but it proved just fine.

A look inside the contraption shows that the drum holds the basket which holds the frames. The hand crank is attached to the main bar, so that when it moves, the whole basket pivots on a vertical pole which spans the height of the extractor drum.

An up-close shot demonstrates the thing of beauty that is a full frame of honeycomb.

Near the bottom the frame, you can see that the bees didn’t cap whatever honey was placed there, but that’s not unusual. As well, the the wax covering the honey cells isn’t necessarily completely smooth–there are undulations and indentations because the frames sit in close proximity with one another in the hive and the close-knit honeycombs are impacted by their neighbors. The honey captured and capped on frames isn’t always perfectly smooth or uniform.

We popped Buzz’s two frames in their respective slots for the big twirl. These frames are brood frames and are 18 inches long, 9 inches wide. Brood frames are–you guessed it–for brood! However, a brood frame will have not only brood, but some honey, as well as cells with pollen stores. As you now see, there was no brood because Buzz was honey bound and there were no honey-free cells (in sufficient numbers) in which the queen could lay eggs. That’s why we took these frames and added new ones; the queen needs plenty of free comb cells for her many multiples of eggs and when the bees make honey in the majority of cells (because that’s what bees do), sometimes a hive runs out of room. Swarms happen and even the densest of beekeepers finally figure out that the bees need fresh frames. Duh.

Other frames, called dadants, are narrower than the brood frames and are only for honey. In both of our hives, they are the top two boxes. Theoretically, those are the frames we’ll most likely take in the future, but for this first time, it’s the two brood frames that needed replacing and are our honey extractor guinea pigs.

Happy Halloween! Be wary of the Bee Daddy with an uncapping knife!

The uncapping knife is a necessary tool for stripping the top layer of wax which seals the cells where honey is stored. Ours is electric which, when plugged in, heats the knife. And thank goodness for that–a hot knife makes the job of uncapping the wax much easier than if we used a cold knife. The edge of the knife isn’t particularly sharp and drawing the knife downwards through that layer of wax requires steadiness in order to break through the wax.

I especially like this shot because the wax curls perfectly as Bee Daddy brings the knife downward.

With a firm hand, Bee Daddy and I each took turns drawing the knife downwards, scraping off the very top layer of wax, allowing the wax to fall into the extractor drum. I must say, Bee Daddy has a knack for uncapping. I tended to gouge the wax and I wasn’t steady in my strokes. I also burned my hand a couple of times. Ouch! And next time, I’ll pony-tail my shoulder-length hair before extraction. Because…honey.

Notice in this photo that at the top of the frame, the wax that has been scraped from the cells and the honey which is exposed sits in those cells, shiny and ready for dripping. Below the knife, the wax still covers the honey cells and is not shiny, but dull. The honey there isn’t yet free to ooze.

Once we’d uncapped all there was to uncap, it was time to twirl and swirl.

Round and round and round he goes! Bee Daddy turns the extractor handle for several minutes, occasionally peeking into the drum to check on the spew of honey out of the frames. Centrifugal force is the power that flings and slings the honey to the side and bottom of the drum.

After only 3 – 5 minutes of turning, we decided that most of the honey was out of the frames and into the bottom of the drum.

Here sit the frames, sans honey.

Even with extraction, there’s still honey remaining on the equipment. It’s impossible to get all of the honey off of whatever equipment is used–no way, no how! I’m not meticulous about scrapping every bit of honey and always leave plenty for the bees; they’re efficient honey cleaners and they’re quite determined to finish the work. I placed the extractor drum outside by the hives once the bulk of honey was out of the drum, through the strainers, and into the bowl.

It was a nice set-up for the bees and they worked for the rest of the day cleaning up that bit of honey impossible for us to get. My other choice would be to wash the whole lot, but that’s a waste of perfectly good honey. I think the bees deserve the honey as they’re the work horses in this honey adventure. After the bees slurped the bulk of post extraction honey, I washed the drum and extraneous parts. To see how I’ve washed the bulky extractor previously, check out the post about the extractor’s first bath.

There was very little wax wastage in this extraction process, which is, after all, the point of mechanical extraction. Heretofore, because of Scar’s Warre hive design, we’ve always employed a crush-n-drain method, which destroys the beautiful wax and is messy and time-consuming. Taking honey with an extractor is the bomb! Easy, significantly less effort and mess, the combed frames preserved for future use by the bees, it’s clear why the mechanical extraction method became the process most beekeepers use.

We extracted nearly a gallon from the two frames. Fall honey is always darker, thicker, and richer than our spring honey.

The frame removal check was probably our last hive check for this year. It’s now cool and wet enough that the bees are snuggled in for their autumn/winter respite. We’ll check them sometime in February and I’ll probably feed them at that time, too. Then as the days grow longer and the weather warms, the queens will ramp up their egg laying and our honeybee world will be back in action.

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Posted on February 13, 2019 by Tina

If you follow Bee Mama Missives, you might remember this contraption from the end of 2018.

Along with the new extractor is a frame knife for breaking the comb and freeing the honey during spinning and a mesh for catching the honey prior to bottling.

Its looks are fuselage-like, but is a sweet thing: it’s our new two-frame honey extractor and in the not-too-distant future it will be recruited into action. At the top, you see the nearly, but not completely, flat cover; just below and to the right, is the handle which turns the cage holding the frames of honey. The spout at the bottom–with the poetic name honey gate–is typically closed, except after the frames full of honey have been whirled and twirled. When the handle is rotated (more about that later), the freed honey will fling to the sides and bottom of the extractor, ready to flow out in glorious, golden goo. We’ll capture the honey in a bowl, first straining it through the mesh, then bottle it for friends, neighbors and ourselves. Yippee!

As soon as our weather cooperates–this coming weekend, I hope–we’ll open our two Langstroth hives, Buzz and Woody, to see how the ladies and their queens have fared since our last meeting in mid-October. In that last 2018 hive check, both hives had plenty of honey: each had one 10-frame brood box loaded for bear (no actual bears here, just frames packed with honey), plus a smaller box on top, full of the sweet stuff.

Lots of honey, which the bees probably slurped a fair amount of during these past chilly, wet months. But until we peek in, we don’t know how much honey, if any, is left. Plus, the honeybees could be (probably are) gearing up for action with the queen laying eggs and honey production ramping up. So it’s time to prepare our extractor for the removal of whatever honey is left, which will also allow the bees more room in the comb for the next generation.

This is a small, two-frame extractor. We’re hobbyist bee keepers and don’t need anything particularly big or extravagant. It’s a manual extractor, but there are plenty of Internet videos instructing how to attach a drill to the handle, thus converting to a less manual, more automatic honey-getter.

Hope it works. No doubt there will a Bee Mama Missive post in the future if it doesn’t.

Ahem.

Like any food equipment, it’s a good idea to wash before use, so wash we did!

Flat cover removed, let’s peer into the extractor bowels and look at its innards. The flat bar across the top holds firm the mechanism for the handle which spins the basket. As well, in the center of the flat bar is affixed a spindle which spins the basket-with-frames when the handle is turned. The basket runs much of the length of the extractor body.

Insides dismantled and removed, the lid and handle are washed and left to air dry on the counter.

Bee Daddy (flashing a double thumbs-up) displays the ready-for-washing frame basket. This is where the frames are placed in the extractor to remove the honey by centrifugal force, either by arm or drill force; we’ll figure that out when the time comes.

The chasm of the extractor’s body is deep. It looks pretty and shiny, but I don’t want any honey spilling and filling into it without a nice, soapy scrub and a good, hot water rinse.

You’ve probably noticed that we’re not in the kitchen where normal food-related equipment is washed. The extractor is too big, too tall, too weird for the kitchen. So the bathroom it is and the rub-a-dub-dub commences.

Inside.

Outside.

Once washed, we let basket and drum dry on a clean towel before reassembling the extractor. It now waits, clean and at the ready, for the bees, or more accurately, their honey.

As for the honey makers, each day’s march toward spring sees increased activity as they gather pollen and nectar. It’s early days in the season, but it has begun.