The Bluff Creek Bee Club: Year 2

This blog has been fairly quiet for a while, but the Bluff Creek Bee Club has been (forgive the pun--I can't help it) abuzz with activity!

Last fall, we extracted 44 pints of honey from our two hives, leaving plenty for our colonies to live off through the winter.

After Steve's neighbor's bees cleaned all the remaining honey off our wax, some of us made beeswax candles (with additional wax supplied by Ebert Honey Co.). We sold our candles and the last jars of honey at the annual Flyway auction to benefit literature about the environment!    

In December 2013, our fearless leader Steve Pett retired from ISU and stepped down as coordinator of the BCBC. I, Stefanie Trout, have taken over as the coordinator, but the BCBC has continued to be a collective effort that relies upon the hard work of all of our members!

On February 15, 2014, several of us gathered in David's garage to assemble new supers to replace those we borrowed from Arvin. The effort was organized by Hive Master Nick Youds.

On Saturday, March 6, our mentor Arvin Foell of the Central Iowa Beekeepers Association checked on our hives and found that our first two colonies had not survived the winter--Iowa's coldest winter in 35 years.

An emergency meeting of the BCBC yesterday (Thursday, March 13) resulted in the decision to order two new packages of bees and a schedule of early spring events:

Saturday, March 15 - We will visit the Casey Land to memorialize our first two colonies--BC-Blue13 and BC-Green13. We will clean out the hives in preparation for our new bees. We'll meet in the parking lot behind LA at noon.

Tuesday, March 18 - A few beeclubbers will head out to Amana Colonies to pick up two new hives we had ordered when we thought our bees would survive and might need to divide themselves. These new hives will be used as instructional tools this year and will be on hand next spring should our 2014 bees weather the winter well and need to divide themselves.

Wednesday, March 19 - We will meet at 10:30 at David's to put a second coat of paint on our hand-assembled supers. Later that day, we will make art out of our dead bees, so that the future members of the BCBC will always remember the struggle of our first year and the way we persevered through tough times.

Saturday, April 12 - A few beeclubers will head out to the Central Iowa Beekeeper's Annual Auction at 10:00 am in Perry, Iowa.

Sunday, April 13 - BCBC Session I, a class for new members of the bee club to learn the fundamentals of beekeeping. (All returning members are welcome to attend if they would like a brush-up.) The class will be taught by the third-years in the MFA program.We'll meet 10:30-12:30 in LA2.

Saturday, April 19 - BCBC Session II, a class for all members of the bee club to discuss the specifics of our 2014 beekeeping. We will devise a schedule for checking up on the bees throughout the summer.

Saturday, April 26 - Potential date of bee release, weather pending.

2014 promises to be an exciting year for the Bluff Creek Bee Club! Be sure to check out the Casey Land's Facebook page for more photos of the BCBC in action.

(Beeclubbers, make sure to post updates about when you go out to the hives on this blog. You can share photos here and/or on the Casey Facebook page. Please let me know if you are not a "Content Contributor" on the Facebook page, and I will make you one. Posting photos to your personal page is great for sharing with your immediate friends and family, but we would like to share our experience with a broader audience. Thanks!)

New Supers

We (Geetha, Stef, Steve, and David) installed a third super on each of our hives on Tuesday, August 20th.  Once again Arvin loaned us empty supers to use.  Then on Sunday just before the MFA picnic, we opened blue hive (green? the one on the west) to find only empty cells in the new super.  Let's hope the season hasn't ended.

Grandfatherly Prerogative

From Steve:

Okay, this is outside the main business of the blog, but I can't help posting three photos of my grandson Wilder at the hives in late June.

Four Stories and Counting

Update from Steve:

Last Monday morning, I rendezvoused with Arvin in Gilbert to pick up two loaner supers.  He wasn't surprised to hear how well our bees are doing, since "everything's blooming."  He repeated how impressed he is with the health of our hives and said, perhaps jokingly, we might end up with four supers on each hive by the end of the season, although he thinks three more likely.  He said all this blooming might just come to an abrupt halt without more rain.

Late that afternoon, warm, blue skies, Chris, Geetha, Melissa and I added the supers to our hives. The hives looked great, with Blue's first super nearly full, too.  We each held a frame full of honey, amazed as always at the heft of the thing.  The hive itself much weigh over a hundred pounds.  We sampled Green's very light, golden honey.  Delicious--although Geetha said it lacked the "citrus" edge of honey she had sampled from Blue.

Monday night a whopper of a storm hit--at least where I live.  My heavy, full garbage can up at the top of our road blew over, which made me nervous about those new, towering supers that had yet to be glued down.  So I drove out Tuesday morning to make sure all was well with the ladies.  Yup, nothing had budged.

With a fair bit of luck, we might just end up with an extra two for four supers full of honey for ourselves at the end of the season.  Maybe we could sell it to raise some dough for the next hive bodies.

Super Supers

I, Steve, took Clare out to the hives for her first visit.  And what a visit.  The super in Blue had six or seven frames drawn out.  And Green's super was full.  Also, we saw drones flying in and out of Green.  I'm a little nervous Green might be poised to swarm, so I intend to get another super on each hive pronto.

Varroa mites = negative!

This last Friday, Steve drove Chris, David, Geetha, and me (Claire) to the hives to meet Arvin, who led us through our first check for varroa mites. (Given that - spoiler alert, if you didn't read the post title! - we didn't find any, it may also have been our last check before winter).

There are different methods, but Arvin's choice procedure involves rolling bees in powdered sugar, which I like to imagine they maybe enjoy, or at least tolerate. We checked combs for queen activity, evened out aberrant sections of comb-pulling (some with honey, some with larvae - some with both!), then filled a mason jar with bees - about 1/3 full - and a tablespoon of powdered sugar. The lid has a metal grid on it but the bees were small enough to get out, so we worked quickly, rolling the bees around (looked like we were coating them in flour) and then shaking out the jar over a laminated, gridded white sheet of paper.

Supers in Place--and the First Sting

So here's the latest from my two recent trips to the hives:

Thursday, June 20th.

David and I went out to tackle the jungle sprung up around the hives and on the trail.  David cleared a wide opening around the hives and I weed-whacked paths to the portapotty, the shed, and the white, ladies' mansions.  We also removed the bottom-board covers.

I'd say the queens have been managing, since the majority of the bees now seem to be the black of carniolans.  The Italians we installed with the queens are nearly outnumbered!

Friday, June 21st.

I drove out to the hives with David, my son Morgan, and my grandson Wilder.  We were bee sightseeing, but I also took along the supers.  Wilder is three and a half and was fresh from a trip to the Chattanooga Children's Museum, where he dressed in a bee suit and crawled through giant octagonal cells.

So we put on our veils, fired up the smoker, and opened the hives.  All looked great.  The upper deeps each had three frames drawn out, and one had nearly a fourth full.  We shifted one of the full combs in each of the upper deeps to an outer, empty location, and then we added the supers.  Wilder expertly wielded the bee brush to clear girls off the top board.  It was a this point that the major event happened!  David had earlier found a tick on his shorts and removed it.  Now he believed he felt another tick on his leg and swatted.  And was stung!  In his right hand.  The threshold has been crossed.  Note:  None of us wore gloves handling the hive parts and no one else was stung.  The hives, in fact, despite the wind and the gray sky, seemed very placid.

Last thing, we removed the entrance  reducers.