These Two!

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My recent evenings are often spent in the back garden, feet propped up, camera and binoculars at the ready, unobtrusively watching for migrating songbirds as they visit the garden and pond before sundown.  It’s a quiet time of day, falling water and birdsong the primary serenades.  

At least, most of the time it’s quiet.  A few evenings ago, these two Blue Jays,  Cyanocitta cristata, landed on the peanut feeder and couldn’t, or wouldn’t, co-feed in peace.  Rather than sharing the bounty, each snapped at one another, reaching around the feeder, sharp beaks aimed to intimidate, movements swinging the feeder.  Both birds were belligerent and possessive of the desired protein snack.

Eventually, the one on the left flopped to the ground and contented himself with peanut bits there.  The victor noshed a bit longer, then flew to a nearby branch, allowing the vanquished to visit the feeder once more, before flying off for the night.  

I typically have between 5 to 7 Blue Jays coming to the garden.  Though they all look alike to me, I know the number of individual Jays because in the mornings, I pour a cupful of unshelled peanuts into a different feeder which is attached to a privacy fence.  The Jays come from all over, alighting in the Oak tree and along the fence, so it’s a quick count of birds as each politely flies in for a nut, grabs the prize, then speeds off to enjoy in some distant tree, leaving the feeder free for the next hungry bird.   In the mornings, there’s no argument between birds.  Everyone plays nicely.

I guess like all of us, birds are refreshed and easy going in the morning, a bit grumpier by the end of the day.

I’m joining with Anna and Wednesday Vignette today.  Check out her lovely Flutter and Hum for garden stories.

An Incomplete Story

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This garden scene of a Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae, emerging from its transformational home is incomplete.  I’m sure at some point, I observed and snapped a photo of the chrysalis, all on its own, but I didn’t witness the initial breakthrough into the world by the new adult, wings not quite ready, as it climbed out of its crib.  Before that?  There was a many-legged caterpillar, inching its way, up and down and all around, the vine that fed the insect in its infancy.

It’s obviously making progress, but stretching is a necessity.

 

Free from sequestering, the new butterfly rests.

It moves, just a little, finding a comfortable spot, taking a breather. 

 

Wings not entirely unfurled, the butterfly relies on legs, much like it once did, in youth.

 

As wings dry, curls relax.  

I didn’t see this butterfly’s final stage of emergence–wings dried and spread–nor its first flight from the nursery.   Even so, this one is ready to fly, ready to pollinate, ready for the next phase of life.  It looks determined.

An incomplete story, but complete enough.

I’m joining with Anna and her Wednesday Vignette.  Pop over to Flutter and Hum for garden, and other, stories.

Absconded

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Honeybees.  They’re good at delivering lessons to those who are arrogant enough to think that we “keep” them.  Each of the five years (happy honeybee anniversary this month!) that we’ve been beekeeping, the insects have taught us something new, forced us to ask questions about their complex biology and our competency, and humbled us with their honeybee prowess.

So what’s on tap for 2020?  For the first time, we’ve experienced the absconding of a hive.  What does that mean? Absconding is when the bees leave the hive–all of the bees, all at once, and with the queen. Why does this happen?  There are many reasons, including lack of food sources, overcrowding, heavy mite, beetle, wax moth load or ant invasion, but it’s mostly unclear why honeybees bolt.  What happened to our hive?  We haven’t a clue. 

Three weeks ago, our honeybee hive, Buzz, swarmed.  A fascinating event to behold, swarming is a normal and healthy event for a honeybee hive.  Swarming is honeybee procreation and usually occurs in spring and early summer. Swarming means is that the hive is ready to make another hive, a new hive.  The established queen sends out her let’s get out of here and find new digs pheromones, and she leaves with a fair number of worker bees to set up a new colony somewhere else, leaving the new queen with the remaining the original worker bees in the old hive.  Basically, there’s one hive, then there’re two hives, and this equals procreation.

As an aside, and since it is spring, you might hear about or see swarms, and you should understand that swarms are not dangerous.   In fact, honeybees are at their most docile during a swarm:  they’ve engorged on honey before they leave the hive (happy, contented bees), they’re hanging out (literally) with their queen, and they have no honey stores or larvae to protect.  Swarming bees are laid-back bees, more so than at any other time of their life cycle.  A swarm might look scary and has the undeserved reputation of being scary, but it’s not scary.  Photos of honeybee fans with bee “beards” are taken when the bees are swarming and not protective of anything; that’s when it’s okay to scoop up a bunch and plop onto your head.  I’ve never placed a swarm on my head or face-nor am likely to do so–but I have picked up a clump of bees in swarming mode and moved them from one place to another.  I’ve also stood amidst a swarm of our own bees.  It’s an unsettling, but incredible experience.  Remaining calm is a must and not because of any issues with the bees, per se, but because humans have an innate fear of bees (those stingers!) and that fear must be controlled if you’re going to hang out with a swarm of bees.  It’s just best not to freak out.

So, Buzz swarmed; she went into my SIL’s tree for an hour or so, then back to our oak tree.

By late afternoon, she was gone from our property.  I have no idea where the bees went, but wish them well in their new home.  Since the swarm, Buzz’s bees looked normal; there were foragers, to and fro, and by all appearances, things looked good.  We should have check the hives a week after the swarm, but rain, then cold, prevented a regular hive check until late last week.  By then, Buzz was quiet.  There were a few bees around, but not many.  Once we opened her up, there wasn’t much to see except a lot of empty comb in both brood boxes and the honey boxes.  While there were some honeycomb cells with pollen stores,

…there was no honey, no capped or uncapped larvae, and a few bees around.  I didn’t see any indication of wax moths, though there were some hive beetles.  Hive beetles are bad news, but every honeybee hive has some beetles; hive beetles (and varroa mites and wax moths) are an unfortunate part of modern beekeeping.  

Could there have been a heavy varroa mite load in Buzz?  That’s certainly possible;  we haven’t consistently checked for varroa mites since last spring; our bees are varroa resistant and the reason we’ve become lazy about checking for mites is that we never saw any.   We lost  a hive several years ago, which you can read about here, to a presumed varroa mite infestation, but it was in late autumn, which is the more typical time for a mite infestation to kill a hive.  Also, Buzz wasn’t “killed” by anything.  There were no dead bees around the hive.  There were simply no bees.

So what happened?  I’ve wondered if perhaps there were actually two swarms, the one we witnessed and another, either before, or after that one.  Other than that, all we know is that Buzz is empty, bees absconded. 

We’re not beekeeping for honey production.  Yes, taking honey is part of this weirdness, but not the reason we started beekeeping, nor why we continue;  honey is a sweet reward, not the ultimate goal.  Therefore, we don’t ignore our hives–never checking them, never heading off problems–but we’ve also learned that too much fussing, too much checking the honeybees is not necessarily best for the honeybees.  What we’ve come to understand is that these critters know what they’re doing and it’s best for them if we encourage an environment that allows their lives to be as easy and productive as possible by providing organic nectar sources, water, and the space to be bees.   We check our hives once every 2-3 weeks throughout our growing season. 

That said, they love messing with our beekeepers’ heads and have tossed a honeybee curve ball to us each and every year.  There’s always something new to learn with honeybees.

Buzz’s brood and honey boxes, abandoned and bee-less, are stacked together in the room where we store the honey extractor. 

Bee Daddy will engage in woodworking magic to repair some minor damage to the frames and the bee hive parts will likely remain sequestered in the house for a year, maybe longer.  Currently, I’m not inclined to purchase a package of bees because a new hive would require feeding with sugar water (to help them get established) which is the ONLY nectar replacement source that should be fed to bees.   With white, refined sugar in shorter-than-normal supply, I don’t want that commitment or responsibility.  If a swarm appeared nearby and was easy to capture, we’d snatch it up, but I’m not going to search far and wide for that scenario. 

We have two, apparently healthy, hives. The Langstroth hive, Woody,

…and the Warre hive, Scar.

If it was my decision, I would have chosen Scar to be emptied.  Scar is much more difficult to manage and when we take honey (which is delicious), it’s a complicated and messy process compared to any similar management of the Langstroth hives.  But that wasn’t our choice; it was Buzz the Langstroth that absconded, deciding that its hive wasn’t safe, or comfortable, or…something.  Whatever was going on with Buzz’s bees, they felt the need to vamoose–and they did. 

Honeybees.  When honeybees are a part of the garden, there’s always a new event to respond to or a different situation to make allowances for.  Learning their ways is rewarding and flummoxing and we’ll continue our education.

Honeybee nectaring on a dewberry flower.