Doug and Rachelle's Bee News

Anyone who's sick and tired of the whole honey bee obsession should stop reading right now. I will try to put something up soon that isn't about bees. But until then, here's the latest on our little colony.

We captured ANOTHER swarm and they, too, took off. That was a bummer because they all left single file from a tiny hole that was in the floor of the hive. But the most amazing thing about the whole event was, unbeknownst to us, a colony had adopted our hive as their home! These bees that moved in are a very small family but will hopefully grow big enough to survive the winter with a bit of help. Although I was very pleased to see a bunch of bees in the hive, I was crestfallen to see that they had been building their comb across the bars instead of along them. This means that you can't pull out the bars to inspect the bees because the little buggers have glued them all together. I was obviously over my head at this point and had to call in the big guns.

Luboš is a neighbor and has been keeping bees forever. He's a throwback to the old world Czeck Republic, living in a beautiful stone hut surrounded by tall, dense, natural gardens. He very graciously agreed to come see our hive and help us with our newbie efforts. We came up with a plan that I knew in my heart was the only way to do it, but that I didn't have the stones to carry out myself. We would cut the comb off of the 3 bars and fasten it in the right direction on new bars.

First I modified a top bar by drilling holes through it so that the string wouldn't create a space between the adjacent top bars. That space would affect the size of the "bee space" and would be less attractive to them.

First I modified a top bar by drilling holes through it so that the string wouldn't create a space between the adjacent top bars. That space would affect the size of the "bee space" and would be less attractive to them.

Then Luboš cut comb off of the tree top bars.The comb was very new and contained no brood so that job was much less stressful than it could have been.

While  Luboš held the comb I slipped the loops of string underneath.

Then I tightened the string and tied it off on the top of the bar.

We replaced the bar and put everything back together.

Then we reveled in smug satisfaction.