Plain Talk: Apiary Winter Wonderland (261)

Episode 261 – Plain Talk:  Apiary Winter Wonderland

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Jim Tew: Listeners, I'm doing this just because I want to, not because I need to. I just want to. I'm going to walk back to the bee yard. It's this cold. Last night it was probably-- Well, it wasn't probably. It was single digits. I guess I felt like I need to say that it's the first time in my life that I've experienced a white Christmas. It is about three to four inches of old snow. I think most of you know I grew up in a warm climate, and so even though I've lived now in Ohio for soon to be 50 years, snow always catches me off guard. The snow is also always so very revealing.

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I'll walk back and have a look at the bee yard and look at all the tracks in the snow, all the wildlife. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here once a week at Honey Bee Obscura, where I try to have some conversation about all things to do with beekeeping.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today Podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: I have to cut through the barn every year. The soil heaves, and the barn door doesn't open well, squeezed by the equipment. There's an expanded polystyrene nuc, and then open the back door, and I'm in the bee yard. While there's rabbit tracks, deer tracks, it is totally cold out here. I don't care for this. There's quite a number of dead bees on the front of this colony and dead bees in the snow. I'm going to say that the single-digit cold has already taken that one out.

Before we get involved in it, let's just have a quick walkthrough. There has been a vast amount of deer activity back here. There's a few bees on the ground, so that would be okay. This, as you remember that I told you, I put duct tape as an emergency stopgap. It's doing okay. It's not doing great. Nothing is bothering my hives. There's no indication of raccoon damage or skunks because the snow is a dead giveaway. You folks are in a warm climate, I'm sorry, but the snow is a dead giveaway. I've got deer. I do have something that's been eating bees in front.

It looks like a raccoon paw truck. Do raccoons hibernate? I guess I don't know that. There's also groundhogs back here. Once again, the duct tape is holding up. It is strictly a short-term, quick fix. I wouldn't even say fix just this one colony there. There's a couple dead bees. Listeners, I want to see a few dead bees in the snow. I don't want to see a lot, but I want to see a few that would indicate that the colony is working well enough, but not so much so that they're already suffering extensive loss.

Can I tell you the truth? I never have once told you anything but the truth. I had to get an injection in my eye this morning, so I'm basically out here on just one eye, but that eye is working reasonably well, and after I get over the injection, that eye works well enough, but having a hard time seeing as much as I would, and the snow really glares back. I always get philosophical here in the quiet apiary wonderland of the winter yard. It's quiet, but the cold wind blowing, and to just have a look around. There's nothing to be done.

The last thing I would want to do is to open or in any way bother these things. Listeners, I want to go back now and start over again. I've had a walkabout. There's rabbits, deer, and possibly raccoon tracks. Absolutely quiet. You remember last spring and last summer when I was sitting back here and pontificate on some probably nonsensical bee subject, and there were birds and squirrels and whatever. None of that now. It is totally, totally quiet. I'm going to take a short break, hear from our sponsor. Then I'm going to come back and do something that's really enjoyable, but remarkably useless

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Jim: In my hand, I've got the strangest piece of beekeeping equipment. It's a stethoscope, just a common medical stethoscope. There's a problem for me, but probably not for you, and that is that I wear hearing aids, so I've got to take these off. Pardon me while I fumble around and fiddle with the microphone and try not to bump it. Take my hearing aids off. Now it really is quiet, and I don't know if I have enough hearing left without the hearing aids to hear. I'm putting the stethoscope on, and I want to listen to the side of the hive.

Yes, there's a shallow hum. It sounds like an air handler running. Should you rush out and buy that to do this? No, it's my dad's. My dad wasn't a physician, but he had a stethoscope for his personal medical reasons. Wanted to quietly-- This one colony is already dead, beekeepers. There was that package that I bought last spring that gave me so much trouble. It is always so amazing to hear that. I'm sorry, I'm listening. It sounds like an air handler. It sounds like bees humming. This colony is definitely alive. That's the second one.

One colony has already gone on. That one's also working reasonably well. You have to really listen to it closely. That was also alive. It wasn't making as much noise as the second one. Here's a polystyrene unit, and I hear it. It's working through polystyrene too. That's working reasonably well. This thing really hurts my ears. Medical people, is that supposed to do that? That one's also alive. That one's alive. It's too early to be out here doing this. There's no reason to count these as living, counting my chickens kind of thing.

Oh, wow. Getting all kind of noise on that. Interestingly. Yes, there it is. I was going to say that the deep is separating on this. This colony is up top, but it's a swarm that I picked up quite a while back, last spring. It moved in on its own. I've got to take these things out. They're hurting my ears. There's a swarm that moved in on its own, and this clusters seems to be split. There's a lot of noise up top in the top deep, not so much noise in the next deep down, and then more noise again in the third deep, which doesn't mean anything.

It could just be an artifact of me trying to check with the stethoscope to hear where they are. I think that the swarm put itself in an odd place up high. I had a student years ago. I've mentioned him already that did a quick study on where the bees would naturally prefer the entrance, and they didn't choose the bottom entrance. When I had that equipment stacked over there, it had three different entrances, and the bees essentially used the middle entrance and the upper entrance. They didn't use the bottom entrance at all.

I suspect that is for our understanding and happiness. Why would you have a stethoscope and do this? I'm telling you, truly. I'm telling you the truth. I'm playing. I've been back. I had that little medical thing done this morning, and I just felt like getting outside, and I wanted to come back and see my bees. It's just cold as it can be. I didn't check the temperature, but I know it's around 12 or 13 degrees Fahrenheit. I can't wear gloves because I got to access my microphone. I'm not going to make this a really long segment.

On this stethoscope thing, why wouldn't you just use electronic hive scale and get readings and measurements from that? Well, if you would, you would. The only reason I'm playing with the stethoscope is because I'm always intrigued to hear bee biology, so it doesn't take much. If you're out there doing it, it's probably going to be very cold. It probably won't take you long to listen, but I just enjoy doing it.

Otherwise, you're much better off using the electronic hive scales that give you the nice readout and tell you what the hive temperature is inside and all that kind of thing, but it doesn't give you sound. That's what I'm playing with. I've lectured over and over and over and over again on wintering and wintering biology and behavior, and all of that biology that's going on inside these beehives is so quiet except for the little hum that I can hear through this medical device. I'm looking at just one hive here that was nice and loud.

On a spring day, that hive is out foraging and living over 18,000 acres. Now, in this tight wintering condition on this cold day, it has reduced that 18,000-acre sphere to something about the size of a basketball. It's just the tiniest nucleus of what it was last summer, and they're in there just waiting. I used to be so human, so anthropomorphic, that I would think they must go crazy. It must be so boring to be inside that quiet, dark hive for months and months on end just doing nothing but trying to stay alive. That's the wrong way to look at it.

Just don't mean to shock you, but I'm not a bee. What bees are doing is perfectly natural to them. It would be a boring, insane procedure for me to try to sit in the dark in frigid cold weather, all winter, just trying to stay warm enough to get out of it. I'm expecting some of these colonies to die because I didn't manage them well because of health issues in my family. This is my big year of rebirth. If anything survives, I will happily recover from that as much as I can. I thought I'd just come out.

I had steeled myself for having to tell you that they were all dead already, but I'm excited to tell you that, in fact, that's not the case. Most of them are alive except for one, that has given me a fit all the way over. Let's check. Yes. They got a lot of honey on there. They're okay except for the one that gave you such a fit, and so it finally didn't work. For all you new beekeepers, sometimes you just lose. I picked up two or three swarms, so I've still got bees. I'm replacing more than I lost so far.

I'm still expecting to lose these bees or some of these bees. I just couldn't do the right things to help them in this domicile that I've got them in. Now I'm just rattling on and on. It's a nice, quiet, cool, cold day. The bees seem to be bedded down. For now, the duct tape is keeping out some of the wind draft. Honestly, I should come back and stick another piece on that just to reinforce the duct tape that's gotten wet and snowed on now several times. I guess I need to say that it's the first time in my life that I've experienced a white Thanksgiving.

Beekeepers, I'm walking back, and when I walk back in the snow like this through the years, I always monitor the bee that got the farthest from the hive before it dropped and died. Normally, it could be 200 yards, but I've only got bees this time, about 30 to 50 feet from the hives, so there's no snow indicators that the bees have really had an intensive cleansing flight. It's always interesting because it's so easy to see dead bees on the snow. There's a bee out flying. That bee will never make it back. It is 12 or 13 degrees, and I guess she's decided that she's out of here.

Boy, I'd love to get off the subject. Why would that bee do that? Why would that bee unconsciously come out and commit suicide? What was her thought process? Maybe another time. Right now, I sense that I'm out of time, and I should let you go about your business. Here on a cold day in the bee yard with a stethoscope, plain because I just wanted to get out for a while. I had a nice walkabout. This is one of the most enjoyable things I do with bees is just visit them without having to harass them. Until we can talk again next week. I'm going to tell you bye here. Bye-bye.

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