Plain Talk: Packages and Swarms (281)

Episode 281 – Plain Talk: Packages and Swarms

Jim Tew:

Well hello again, listeners. Jim coming to you here from Honey Bee Obscura, taking the walk that I always take where I kind of introduce you to the world.

Summertime is here, so we're back to somebody having some kind of gasoline engine running all the time. There's no way to get away from it.

I had a great time last weekend. I went over to Northwest Pennsylvania Honey Bee Association, and Saturday morning presentation - it was a good layout. We met on Saturday morning and had a decent crowd there. I enjoyed talking about bees, and then I drove two and a half hours home. So I like to mention them because it was a nice organization and they put up with my foolishness that I do about being hard to reach.

I'm in the yard. I've got these packages.

All right, most of you who listen to me with any degree of regularity know my story for the last years and how I got into a unique situation. The bees went into winter with no preparation. They were just on their own, and I assumed everything would die since they had not had my magical healing hand.

So, expecting everything to die, I ordered five packages. And then, much to my pleasant surprise, they didn't die. Not all of them. Two of them did. I frequently pick up a swarm, so I contacted my supplier and asked to back out on some of those packages. Let's talk about that here in a few minutes.

I'm Jim Tew. I come to you here once a week at Honey Bee Obscura, where I always try to talk about something to do with plain talk 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 honey bees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.

Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.

Jim Tew:

Listeners, can I just kind of talk to you personally?

Those five packages cost $700. That's a lot of money to me. Maybe, you know, maybe it's just my fixed income and my old age and whatever, but if I spend $700, I usually think about it. It didn't used to be such a chunk like that.

Now, here's the odd thing. I'm not arguing that it's not worth it. I mean, I don't want to start trying to raise and shake packages and raise queens and control Varroa and do all that kind of thing while fighting an uphill battle all the time with weather. So I'm not really saying that it's not worth it. I'm saying it's a lot of money.

Beekeeping used to be, you'd build your own equipment, you'd put them in a nail keg, you'd pick up a swarm, and boom, you're a beekeeper. You improvised some kind of protective gear. I don't think that happens anymore.

I contacted that guy. He's a friend of mine. We used to work together. He stayed in bees much more than I did. He said that he had misspoken or had actually ordered more packages than he was going to need himself. He was expecting a typical late rush. I don't know if the late rush ever came or not, but he didn't act like he wanted to take those packages back. And since I said that I wanted them, I bought them.

But here's the deal. I thought I'd have all this empty equipment. You may or may not remember that my grandson wanted some beehives to go to Michigan, so I gave away some of my extra equipment. Now I've either got to assemble some or be close.

I used some of the strangest, most motley equipment. I guess in some ways you'd be so pleased with me because I'm taking slipshod beekeeping to new heights.

I didn't have anything to feed these bees other than the feeder can. What I did was put a deep on top, cutting off some burr comb. One of these will sometimes build comb uphill. And there are no eggs in there.

Just took a sting on my finger.

There's no eggs in the comb. So I put a paper plate on top of the frames and I fed them just enough honey to keep them alive. I've broken my own rule, listeners. I should be prepared.

Just a package of bees are not really that aggressive, but they're kind of coming for me. So the main thing I want to do today - I'm not going to bother them - the main thing I want to do today is just be sure they're in here. They stayed here. They're okay. They seem to have settled down.

I came out some days ago, took a bit of a chance, and released the queen directly. I'm not even going to look for her. If she's dead, she's dead. I'll combine them and then I'll split them out later on.

So there's that one pushed back down to one deep.

Jim, why aren't you doing a better job at this? Why are you rushing through this?

Because I want you to realize there's one, two, three, four, five, six fairly strong colonies here. And even though it's springtime, there are little dearths that come and go. So maple is long gone, fruit bloom is long gone, and now they're just finding catch-as-catch-can. I don't want to entice those strong colonies to come over and take the major resources that these package colonies have.

I put a paper plate - I've never seen or done or heard of this. It's just slipshod beekeeping. Several days ago, when the temperature dropped cold again, I put a paper plate on top of it and poured honey that I had.

So go ahead and ask me: where did that honey come from? Did that honey have American foulbrood? I don't know where it came from. It was honey. It was in liquid form. And that is an old concern, but I don't know that I'm worried about it too much.

Second colony done. So far, two stings. So I'm getting off to a good start. We've got paper plates that are going to blow all over the yard.

I'm surprised these bees are as cranky as they are. I guess they're probably a little bit hungry. You remember in a previous podcast, I told you they were robbing out that dead equipment that had a lot of honey in it. I should have tried to protect that honey because I could really use it now. All that happened was the strong got stronger. So the honey now is in these strong colonies.

You heard that propolis break? They are going to come for me.

I've got to let these bees calm down. These bees are at least a bit feisty to be packages. Normally, packages are like kittens. These may be mangy kittens.

Hey, let's take a break and hear from our sponsor. Come back in just a minute.

Betterbee:

Swarm season's here. Are you ready?

Get the Colorado Bee Vac made just for Betterbee. The CBV, as beginning beekeepers call it, is the top hive relocation vacuum out there. It's built to gently collect up to 10 pounds of bees with very little loss.

Don't miss out. Grab your Colorado Bee Vac today at betterbee.com. That's betterbee.com.

Jim Tew:

I'm using some of the Bee Smart insulated tops. I've got about four of those, and so far I'm liking them fine.

Here's a honey jar that I put in here, and they cleaned it out spotless.

You know what they really don't like? They don't like this dark screen on my microphone. So I'm paying a bit of a price here for you to be where the action is.

I'm using the insulated top just because I need tops. I've got to tell you, those solid plastic hive bodies - those things just don't go away. They really seem to last pretty much forever. So I've been using them.

There it is. Got the brick back on top.

They just sit in the weeds. If you put regular wooden hive bodies in the weeds and clutter, they rot away. Here's kind of a dirty little secret: the carpenter ants burrow into my expanded polystyrene hives and eat everything up. Then, when you try to get all the carpenter ants out and take them over to the barn, the mice move in trying to eat, I guess, the larvae, I suppose.

I understand why they glue it down so hard. It is really glued down.

You know, listeners, you can just tell. I'm not a bee whisperer, but I am talking on the colonies. And you can just tell when they really are on a short fuse - the way they respond to cracking the hive.

I had to let the one cool down. So there's the outer part of the insulated cover back on, and there's the outer cover over it.

So here's one that's going to swarm. It's a nice hive. I don't have anything to do with them.

Beekeepers, you remember in one of the previous episodes, I came out here in the winter on my first edition of Slipshod Beekeeping, and I put duct tape on the hives. There's a piece of that duct tape that's still on one of these hives, still serving as a protective cover. I don't know if I can pull that off without being sent to heaven or not.

Yep, it came off easily. Now the whole entrance is open. This colony on the left is really looking for any reason to go.

Let me go back to the feisty hive now and see if I can get this off without - I just don't want to light a smoker. I hate those things.

So far, so good. There's the queen cage out. There's the James E. Tew paper plate. There's the third and fourth sting. That hurts at the fingertips. They're stinging me more than I thought they would.

It's all right. I'm not using any smoke. So there is the queen cage out, and the colony is back down to one size.

Please set the paper plates. Step back out of the way.

These bees over here, the first one I did - it had a rotten spot at the back of the deep I had on there. Now they're all going back to where there was an entrance back there, and that entrance is gone. So they've got to figure out what they're going to do about that.

I want to tell you something I think I'm going to try. Lost track of time. I don't know where I am on the time for this episode. I'm going to go to one of the big box stores, or over to Harbor Freight, and I'm going to look at those oscillating cutters, flush-cut cutters that you use to cut trim molding, to put tile underneath or carpet or whatever you want.

I've got one that's fine. It's a nice machine. It's old, but it's a plug-in model, and I'm way, way away from them.

There they go. I got a swarm leaving.

So I'm going to see if I can't buy one of those flush-cut cutters to open these colonies that are so propolized up that you would never get the frames up.

Let's walk over and look at the swarm. Do you think I could ever find the queen in this morass? I really hope they don't go to the neighbors' yards.

This is how wrong I was. This is how great of a beekeeper I am. I thought this colony was going to be dead, and here it is with 50,000 bees in the air, just flooding out of this hive.

This is one of the most stringent forms of mite control you'll ever hear because this will cause a brood cycle break. So I'm not recommending this.

They're in the air. They're all around. They're completely unformed. I should be trying to find a box, or what? I don't know. I truly don't know.

I've gone from some nice lady wrote me and said that if I would send her a shipping address, she would send me a package of bees since my bees were all dead. She was so gracious, and I thanked her for that, but I reassured her of it. I had been seriously wrong in calibrating how many of my bees were going to die.

Well, I ought to take a break, listeners, and I guess go see if I can find a box. I don't know if I even have one. Now maybe I'll be looking for a nail keg or something to put these in if they land closely.

There's a lot of bees in the grass in front. If she dropped into the grass, this is going to be kind of a matted run. Talked about this before. When the queen comes out, this is only the second time, third time she's ever seen daylight because she lives in the dark hive all the time.

I've got to get this under control and see if I can save this swarm.

You know, listeners, they may be coming back. They have a look like they're actually coming back. I should be getting boxes. I should just be standing here because this is one of those wonder moments where you're in the middle of a bee swarm. The bees have no interest in me or attacking me. They're on their own, making their own business trip.

All right. I'll let you know what happens.

This is Jim at Honey Bee Obscura in the middle of a swarm, not quite sure what I'm going to do with yet more bees. Got the queens out of the packages. Everything looks good. I got bees everywhere.

Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you sometime soon. Bye-bye.