Bee-friendly garden, swarm arrived, started a hive in my garage wall, interested in beekeeping, what are the options?

[Kelton Temby]

Hi,

A colony of bees arrived in my backyard within the last month, and has made its home in the side wall of our garage between the insulation and the wood.  I rent on the 1600 block of Chapala.  I'm interested in beekeeping, and I think my landlord may allow me to become a beekeeper on the property if I make a good case and am responsible for them.  I suspect the landlord would just as soon exterminate the bees unless I can present options, so I'm writing to this community for support and advice!

My old housemate completed the SBBA bee keeping course and I'll reach out to him tonight for advice too.  My Dad and uncles kept bees in Australia for many years.  I try to do my part to support bees and have cultivated an organic veggie garden which seems to have hundreds of bees in it at any time due to lots of year round basil blossoms.  The block is approx 7400sqft, with the backyard maybe 2500sqft including the garage and a parking/asphalt area.  Aside from the hive I believe I have observed several species of 'European honeybee' looking bees, as well as hover flies, carpenter bees (male and female), paper wasps, mud daubers, ladybugs, butterflies and other interesting looking insects in my garden.  I'm certainly open to becoming a bee keeper and registering a hive with the county if it sounds reasonable to the experts here, my main concerns are my urban location, proximity to neighbors back door (maybe ~30ft), and whether I would be doing the bees a disservice by trying to keep them etc.

I have read through some of the SBBA forum posts and sbba.org and understand SBBA provides a donation based service for 'bee rescues'/relocation.  I also read that sometimes swarms can be 'captured' using a trap, and transferred to a wooden beehive, but do not know if this applies to 'settled' bees as well.  I'm still in the process of reading, but I'd like to get ahead of this before the landlord 'discovers' the bees!

I regularly stand within 6 feet of the 'garage hive' and the bees will rarely show any sign of bothering me, so they don't seem 'spicy'.  I'm more wary of them.  There has been only 1 bee (this afternoon) that flew by close to my face, but I think she was just on the way to my garden.

Can you please recommend resources or advice for

1. Whether this urban location is appropriate for beekeeping

2. Whether 'settled' bees can be transferred to new wooden beehives

3. How regularly you need to check your bees

4. Anything else I really should know before proceeding!

Thank you very much for your time!

Kelton

Some bee and garden pics for context!

 <- Year round bee superfood, this thing is over 6' high, flowers year round and is pretty hardy.

[Kelton Temby]

Hi SBBA,

Big thank you to Steve M for reaching out to me this morning with a warm welcome and offer of help!

I'm excited about bee-keeping!  I read about it all night - looking at different hive designs, wondering if I can make a Langstroth frame myself with reclaimed (non treated) wood, reading up on regulations (SB city is very bee friendly), people's experiences, Africanized bees etc.  I like honey, and I also like the idea of having a bee hive.  Apparently a productive one can produce 60lbs+ (~25kg) of honey a year - hope it can all work out.

I was reading a book called 'The year 1000' (about England) a little while ago.  Back then honey was the only natural sweetener around, and if a swarm of bees arrived on your property, it was considered one of the greatest good fortunes!

Spoke with my landlord this morning, and outlined the options and informed him of the details I have learned from the SBBA group and family/friend resources.  He was quite OK with the idea of getting a bee-hive, and is also aware of the current plight and importance of honeybees.  I explained that I'd keep him in the loop on the project and send him links on bee-keeping in Santa Barbara.  He was happy that I wanted to get the bees out of the garage wall, and impressed that other people in downtown Santa Barbara who are part of the SBBA keep bees too.  Even said that he is interested in seeing how it goes and becoming a bee-keeper himself.  Very encouraging!

Here's what my Dad had to say - 

The longer you leave it the harder to get them to transfer to a hive and the more comb that needs to be removed from the shed.

You need to get a hive with frames and starter comb (and someone with a bit of bee knowledge and protective gear, smoker etc), remove a timber plank or three and gently remove the combs with bees on them (and hopefully the queen) and place them into the hive with enough space between them for the bees to have temporary access.  Then partially cover the hive and if the queen has been taken across then all the other bees will follow -do the job  before mid afternoon so that returning bees will find it and go into the hive.  Once settled into the hive then the lumps of comb can be removed and the bees gently swept off them back into the hive.  Check re licenses etc as there are a few bee nasties to be managed.  Leave hive as close to the original site as possible for a few days then move it to intended site -suggest the opening faces what you intend to be their flight path.

Getting them out of the wall is not a safe or sensible job for a beginner and the landlord would need to be aware of what is going on and be OK with it.

Once you have a hive, its needs ongoing management, separation of brood from honey using a queen excluder, and gear for extracting honey.

I'm very fortunate that several of my friends and work colleagues (who new?!) are accomplished bee keepers, and have offered to help out this newbee too!

Please share any further guidance you have, I'll keep posting to this thread with updates too. Thanks again to Steve for welcoming me to the group! 

Kelton

[Kelton Temby]

Hi SBBA!  

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!  Mine was very productive - I spent time Friday with some of my beekeeping friends in Lompoc, and was able to borrow their bee suits and spare hives. 

Saturday I very carefully cleaned the hives, frames, and comb.  There were earwigs, moths, spiders, wiggly whatsies and some other critters among the comb, and some unidentified funks in the boxes.  Prepared the backyard area, and started work on the garage panels (while bees were mostly sleeping) until un-neighborly hours. 

Sunday morning, myself and another friend (who recklessly/admirably agreed to help two nights before) went over our plan, prepared the spray bottle, smoker, various precarious ladders and other tools.  We worked on transferring the bees from the garage into the hive, learning as we went.  Since I was prepared for the beeocalypse, the bees were surprisingly calm and well behaved, and did a pretty good job of allowing me to scoop them out of the wall and into the hive.  A South Coast Deli sandwich container was the perfect bee catcher.  Was very interesting to see the bees alternate between calm and bee-nado as they were stirred up and moved over a couple of hours.  A few bees seemed to want nothing other than to sting us, but we happily laughed at them from the safety of our dripping sweat-soaked bee suit armor.  We were methodical and patient, and had minimal bee losses, and no stings.  The operation was a great success, and the bees are now settling in after the final step of moving them to their new home round the corner last night.

Today I saw happy bees, buzzing and dancing around their new home in the garden. I understand it's expected to take a few more days for them to stop flying near the garage wall, as they orient themselves to their new home.  I'll leave the panels 'open' for a couple more days to discourage them from trying to settle back in, and then re-attach the planks completely.  All housemates and the neighbors bordering the back yard were happy and comfortable about the bees. 

Overall, very satisfying to complete the task, learn new skills, and be doing good for the bees!

Kelton

Here's some final pictures of the operations yesterday -

 

 <-unholy number of earwigs

 <-bee pong

there were a lot more bees than in these pictures, they covered the whole wall gap at one point, the smoke was driving them to move further into the garage

 

 beestie boys ^

​

​

[Kate Eden]

Congratulations Kelton on a job well done!  I loved your pictures.  You were very brave.  Loved the yellow gloves.  I still use rubber gloves rather than bee gloves because the are inexpensive, easy to wash and useful for washing dishes!  Your backyard looks like bee heaven and I am sure the girls will be happy with your plantings.   For the future, you can kill a lot of stuff that is in old frames by wrapping several of them inside a large plastic bag and freezing them for 3 days.  This kills wax moth larvae, and I imagine it would take care of the other weird stuff too.  Then they can be stored and ready for use.  Best of Luck with you Bees, Kate

[Kelton Temby]

Hi Kate,

Thank you for your kind words!  I've got a lot more frames I need to clean, and will definitely use your 3-day freeze advice!  The gloves I was using were actually bee gloves I think - my friend loaned me all her gear including the gloves.  That's a super cool idea to upcycle kitchen gloves though, I'm going to give that a try too!

Not sure if this is paranoid newbee bee-parent fear taking hold or legitimate reasoning, but last night and this morning I opened the hive to look for the queen and check on the heath of the colony (after reading a bunch of posts on the net about what I should be looking for).  I know it's bad to disrupt the hive etc, but during the transfer from the garage, I believe I 'over smoked' the comb area, and caused the bees to cluster away from the comb, and likely did *not* transfer the queen when I grabbed the fairly bare comb (as shown in the pictures).  My friend and I saw bunches of them marching around and clustering away from the comb area, and in hindsight, maybe I should have waited for them to return, with queen, to the comb. Newbee/schoolboy error.

At 11am this morning I was able to methodically inspect the entire hive, and found no queen, no evidence of the queen, or even any capped comb, or eggs etc showing any kind of queen activity.  It has only been 3 days since I moved them, so I get that I'm a newbee and could easily miss all those things if they're not super obvious!  The bees had stored the honey I fed them last night in some of the comb (no caps), and bees almost covered one frame, and were patchily covering an additional 4 frames.  I don't think they're starving at least because of the honey, but not yet looking like a strong hive based on my inexperienced judgement and internet pictures I've seen.

I've been reading about what bees will do without a queen, and it sounds like they'll keep working together, but will die out since the workers won't be replaced as there's no brood comb in the hive.  Here's an interesting link: http://theconversation.com/long-live-the-queen-bee-but-if-she-doesnt-the-colony-will-prevail-16619.

I could wait patiently, and observe the hive only from the outside for the next two weeks, hoping I just failed to identify the queen.  Or I could get a new queen now and see if I can introduce her with a queen cage etc, and hopefully keep the hive stronger. What do you think?

Hopefully I'm wrong, and the queen will show up, and things will improve with the abundant food sources still available.  It'd be sad to lose the whole colony.

Good luck bees!  Man, these little girls are like pets to me now, rather than scary animals ('run, bees!'), I really care about what's going to happen to them, and hope I didn't doom them trying to save them.

Kelton

[m.ka...@gmail.com]

Love your words

Bee happy

Sent from my iPhone

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[Kate Eden]

Hi Kelton:

I am a new beekeeper too.  I don't know what you should do.  One gets that the life of bees is quite precarious and rather complex.  Who knew?  

I lost my queen last year while I was traveling, and watching the bees decline and die out was heart-breaking.  I went in periodically and harvested a lot of honey because the wax moths came as the bees died out, so it was a successful colony, but something happened and I don't know what.  

This spring I caught a swarm that landed in my avocado tree by baiting a nuc with honey and lemon grass.  The bees went into the nuc of their own accord.  When I transferred the 5 frames to an 8 frame deep, I saw the queen.  She is obvious; she is much larger than those around her.  My attitude toward beekeeping is pretty hands off - I let nature take it's course and just offer housing in exchange for pollination and a little honey once in a while.  

I am hoping a more experienced beekeeper might come and have a look inside your deep.

By the way, there are many good book out there as well an lots of info online.  I bought a copy of the Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping and the freezing frames idea comes from that book.  I had to clean up all the frames last year after my colony died out.

All the best to you and your girls.

Kate

[Kelton Temby]

Hi all,

Over the last few days I've been keenly watching the bees over breakfast every morning, and relaxing after work in the evenings strumming a little acoustic guitar from my chair near the hive. My neighbor is an elementary school teacher and is quite entertained by this - apparently she wants to write a children's book after telling her students about 'the bee keeper who sings to his bees'.  Trying to observe and learn everything I can!  It's a whole new world for me, and quite a surprisingly complex art.  I just started learning about queen rearing and hive splitting, but I'm just scratching the surface.

Today was something of a turning point in my bee journey.  Thanks to Kate's recommendation, or perhaps just the truly supportive community of beekeepers here, I was very fortunate to have been contacted by SBBA's very own Paul 'The Beeman' Cronshaw!  As I'm sure you all know, he's a teacher professionally, is a caretaker for many of the hives in Montecito, and an all around interesting guy!   Paul offered to inspect my hive and offer suggestions on my next steps.

Jumping at the chance, I caught up with Paul over the phone this afternoon, and learned he was down the road in SB right then.  Sneaking away from work, I raced home and into my bee suit.  When he arrived, Paul casually threw on a bee jacket and brought a mask, asking if I had prepared smoke.  I had.  We chatted briefly and had a look at the garage retrieval remnants, and the few stragglers still there.  After seeing my quietly buzzing colony, with neither gloves on, nor even the mask, he began to lift and inspect the frames with the ease of a master.

On some of the frames we saw bees had stored some nectar, others pollen.  Paul showed me how to see under little clusters of bees on the comb with a quick whoosh of breath dispersing the top layer of bees.  This was bare faced, from just a few inches away from the frame - I watched from the safety of my full bee suit with zipped, velcro'd mask, with hands behind my back slightly nervous I wasn't yet wearing gloves...  As a little black beetle crawled over the top of one of the frames I learned I had a hive beetle, and that they would be similar to hive moths, and eventually could destroy a weak colony.  Might have been a newcomer since i'd frozen the frames before putting them in, I forgot to ask.  The wooden frames were of good quality, and some of the comb received top marks from Paul.  He prefers natural beekeeping wherever possible, and was less of a fan of plastic frames, although there was good comb on some of the plastic foundation.  The ant defenses and hive stand frame were also met with approval. As we went through to the last frame, Paul confirmed what my gut felt, but I'd still hoped wouldn't be the case - there was no Queen.

The bees were behaving less organized and more jittery apparently to what should be happening, and there was also no brood on any of the combs.  I showed Paul all the comb that had been drawn in the garage wall that I'd taken out a few days before and left in the hive.  There was only old completely empty brood cells, based on the dark marking of the comb.  It's possible I scared off the queen during the transfer, but also possible she'd already moved on while i'd been away, or swarmed off again after I applied the smoke.  I guess the rescue succeeded for most of the bees, but unfortunately not for one particularly special bee.  Poor bees!  They had become so nice and gentle the last few days - even letting me rescue some of the stragglers still landing on the garage at night by getting them to crawl onto the end of a twig, then climb into the hive for warmth.  I'm so tempted right now to put the old comb back in and hope something magic happens... sigh!

Paul generously offered to get me re-started with a merger of another small colony which my bees would most likely happily accept and assimilate with.  There seems to be plenty of food available still in my area, so he thinks they'll likely make it through the winter.  I'm reading about a lot of other bee keeper's experiences, and realizing there's a lot of ways to mess up.  I'm excited and hopeful about the merger colony transition, and hope the new bees are of a similar temperament.  It'd be awesome to have happy bees in my yard, making honey and pollinating the garden, and also give the remainder of my colony a queen and growing colony to be part of.  I'm also going to clean up the other hives in the hope there's a chance to retrieve any another wild hive/swarm successfully in the future.   

What an experience.  Journey onward.

Kelton

empty brood comb from garage -> <-honey!

[Kelton Temby]

Wow it's been a busy 2 weeks for this new Beek, I've been part of 2 rescues, 1 bait out, 2 colony mergers and even started building my own hives!  Here's an epic story of all the fun if you're interested -

Instead of taking the 'donor bees' from the last installment, Todd invited me to come assist with a rescue!  Turned out the rescue was from a compost container in a house near the Mission.  Todd brought 2 suits, and after the homeowner (one of Todd's friends from way back) had the extra suit on, Todd said the other was a child-sized suit that wouldn't fit him.  I still suspect he was just setting it up for me to step up and get 'hands on', so that's just what I did!  There was almost a basketball sized cluster, and some comb already formed hanging down.  I gently picked up the cluster, as many bees as would come as possible, and placed them into the capture nuc.  It's really quite bizarre the way clusters of bees hold onto each other - they feel like an odd liquid or a little like pulling apart fairy floss (cotton candy).  Anyways, the bees mostly happily moved over to the nuc once the queen was apparently inside, and I collected the complete nuc right as the light was fading for the night.

The next day I was able to transfer the bees to a new deep above my doomed colony - the Garage Bees would have a new Queen!  I used the "newspaper separation" technique, so that the hives wouldn't mix right away.  Apparently there's a high risk of battles between bees when they mix, and the worst case scenario is that workers who have been queenless, and laying their own drones, decide to sting the new queen on the scene!  Bee drama!  The newspaper mostly prevents that by allowing them to slowly mix.  Look for the new, Dark Queen of the bees!

The next week I was privileged to meet again with Paul and assist him on a 'bait out' project, also pretty close to my place near the Mission.  This one was right in the eaves of a really nice house that wasn't currently being lived in.  The bees had happily made a home on the top of the roof.  Paul was already busy and up the ladder when I arrived!  I handed saws, nails, bits of wood, a backup smoker and other bee apparatus up the ladder as Paul fashioned a stand for the 'dummy hive', as well as a new entrance out of mesh to direct the bees out of their present home.  The mesh guide was really to make what was a large entrance, a small focused one.  Apparently it can be extremely difficult to get bees out of roofs without tearing the whole roof apart, and homeowners rarely want to tear their roof apart (for some reason.. gee don't they know how much honeycomb there could be?!).  Needless to say, I learned the bait out approach requires the most time, patience and finesse of all the bee catching processes.  The aim is to get the bees eventually to be trapped in the new hive with the assistance of the new mesh entrance, and make it impossible for them to go back into their old home.  After a few weeks, once the old colony is almost completely empty, a new queen is brought into the new bait hive, and the bees from the old colony accept her as their new leader!  I feel a little bad for the old Queen, although I read somewhere sometimes she will come into the bait hive too before the new Queen arrives (don't quite understand this.. would she abandon here own brood?).  I was a little caught by surprise when the homeowner showed up and Paul introduced me and said "This is Kelton, he's been a beekeeper for what, 2 months now right?"  Wondering if I was meant to assure the homeowner I was the utmost professional and experienced beekeeper.. I went along with it.  Yep, it hadn't even been 2 weeks! Here's some pics of Paul at work!

All week I happily sat out eating my oatmeal breakfast watching the Royal Bee Air Force gathering pollen and nectar, maybe 10 ft from the hive.  I was expecting the hives to look like they were working together, but it didn't seem like there was any chewed up newspaper showing up outside the hive.  The new bees seemed to be finding gaps to come out past the top cover, rather than assimilate down through the bottom deep...

Saturday I received an email from Todd saying he was out of town, and a swarm had been reported down on Cabrillo, and would I like to respond?!  First chance to be a real Bee Rescue First Responder!  Needless to say I quickly gathered up the gear I needed, and headed over.  I felt it would be too awkward walking around in a bee suit, but less awkward carrying a large milk crate with a spray bottle, bee suit and scraper (ok I use my bbq spatula) with an ez nuc on top!  A few calls to the nice person who reported the swarm, and I had it located!  Just a small swarm hanging out on the concrete wall.  On went the suit, and after a gap in the public foot and bicycle traffic, I went to work carefully moving the bees, keeping them as calm as possible!  What a wild thing to be doing on a Saturday afternoon at the beach!  The bees were very well behaved, and weren't really flying around too much transferring to the nuc.  Members of the public were walking past - I let people know it was a bee rescue, and that everything was under control.  A lot of people were really appreciative and supportive once they heard that; "Thank you for your public service, and taking the time to do this!" was a general theme.  There were a few stand out comments too:

   - Q: "What species of bees are these?"   A: "Beachgoing Bees" (courtesy of my friend Jon)

   - Q: "Are you selling honey?"  A: "No, this is a Bee Rescue."  Follow on: "Oh well there are all kinds of people here, thought you could have been an enterprising transient" (maybe I should wash my suit!)

   - Q: "Why did you bring your bees here bro?!"  A: "This is a Bee Rescue, I'm removing the bees to take them somewhere safe".  Follow on: "Oh that's awesome dude!" (gives me a high five!)

At the end of my parking time (yes I was ready to chase after the parking officer in a bee suit), I pretty much had all the bees in the nuc.

 bee selfie!

Next day it was time to introduce the Beach Bees to their new home!  After observing the lack of assimilation between the Garage Bees and the Compost Bees for the previous week, I decided to take a newbie risk and merge the Beach Bees with the Garage bees to form a stronger colony.  Doubling down on my newbie risks, I decided to do the merger of the tiny colonies within the one deep, with a newspaper separation over one of the frames... time will tell if it was a good idea.  The risk and concern is that the laying workers will decide to kill the new Queen.  As I removed the Beach Bees from the nuc I was delighted to see an active, happy looking Golden Queen!  Whohoo!  Long live the Queen!

The final excitement I have to report was my first attempts at building a ventilated bottom for one of my hives, some novelty 'runway entrances', and this morning's inspection which revealed 2 very healthy looking Queens.  The Compost Bees (Dark Queen) had capped brood and capped honey, as well as lots of stores.  The Beach Bees (Gold Queen) definitely had a fair bit of nectar on the way to honey, and the Garage Bees (no Queen) had some capped drone brood!  Hopefully there won't be any more worker egg laying now there's a Queen a few frames and a newspaper away.  I found just one small white beetle.  So far no signs (that I could see with my newbie vision) of any problems or diseases in the hives.  No spiciness, and bees were again happy to have me sit a few feet away for an afternoon observation!  Still haven't been stung... not sure if I'll regret writing that!

I'm reading a ton about bees after work - I think I've made it through almost every post and comment on honeybeesuite.com! Looking forward to building a ventilator rim, quilt, and also a new deep!

Hope everyone is having happy and interesting bee times too!

-Kelton

[marilyn kandus]

Kelton

thanks for your interesting well-written story!

Marilyn K

On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 11:24 PM, Kelton Temby <kels...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wow it's been a busy 2 weeks for this new Beek, I've been part of 2 rescues, 1 bait out, 2 colony mergers and even started building my own hives!  Here's an epic story of all the fun if you're interested -

Instead of taking the 'donor bees' from the last installment, Todd invited me to come assist with a rescue!  Turned out the rescue was from a compost container in a house near the Mission.  Todd brought 2 suits, and after the homeowner (one of Todd's friends from way back) had the extra suit on, Todd said the other was a child-sized suit that wouldn't fit him.  I still suspect he was just setting it up for me to step up and get 'hands on', so that's just what I did!  There was almost a basketball sized cluster, and some comb already formed hanging down.  I gently picked up the cluster, as many bees as would come as possible, and placed them into the capture nuc.  It's really quite bizarre the way clusters of bees hold onto each other - they feel like an odd liquid or a little like pulling apart fairy floss (cotton candy).  Anyways, the bees mostly happily moved over to the nuc once the queen was apparently inside, and I collected the complete nuc right as the light was fading for the night.

The next day I was able to transfer the bees to a new deep above my doomed colony - the Garage Bees would have a new Queen!  I used the "newspaper separation" technique, so that the hives wouldn't mix right away.  Apparently there's a high risk of battles between bees when they mix, and the worst case scenario is that workers who have been queenless, and laying their own drones, decide to sting the new queen on the scene!  Bee drama!  The newspaper mostly prevents that by allowing them to slowly mix.  Look for the new, Dark Queen of the bees!

The next week I was privileged to meet again with Paul and assist him on a 'bait out' project, also pretty close to my place near the Mission.  This one was right in the eaves of a really nice house that wasn't currently being lived in.  The bees had happily made a home on the top of the roof.  Paul was already busy and up the ladder when I arrived!  I handed saws, nails, bits of wood, a backup smoker and other bee apparatus up the ladder as Paul fashioned a stand for the 'dummy hive', as well as a new entrance out of mesh to direct the bees out of their present home.  The mesh guide was really to make what was a large entrance, a small focused one.  Apparently it can be extremely difficult to get bees out of roofs without tearing the whole roof apart, and homeowners rarely want to tear their roof apart (for some reason.. gee don't they know how much honeycomb there could be?!).  Needless to say, I learned the bait out approach requires the most time, patience and finesse of all the bee catching processes.  The aim is to get the bees eventually to be trapped in the new hive with the assistance of the new mesh entrance, and make it impossible for them to go back into their old home.  After a few weeks, once the old colony is almost completely empty, a new queen is brought into the new bait hive, and the bees from the old colony accept her as their new leader!  I feel a little bad for the old Queen, although I read somewhere sometimes she will come into the bait hive too before the new Queen arrives (don't quite understand this.. would she abandon here own brood?).  I was a little caught by surprise when the homeowner showed up and Paul introduced me and said "This is Kelton, he's been a beekeeper for what, 2 months now right?"  Wondering if I was meant to assure the homeowner I was the utmost professional and experienced beekeeper.. I went along with it.  Yep, it hadn't even been 2 weeks! Here's some pics of Paul at work!

All week I happily sat out eating my oatmeal breakfast watching the Royal Bee Air Force gathering pollen and nectar, maybe 10 ft from the hive.  I was expecting the hives to look like they were working together, but it didn't seem like there was any chewed up newspaper showing up outside the hive.  The new bees seemed to be finding gaps to come out past the top cover, rather than assimilate down through the bottom deep...

Saturday I received an email from Todd saying he was out of town, and a swarm had been reported down on Cabrillo, and would I like to respond?!  First chance to be a real Bee Rescue First Responder!  Needless to say I quickly gathered up the gear I needed, and headed over.  I felt it would be too awkward walking around in a bee suit, but less awkward carrying a large milk crate with a spray bottle, bee suit and scraper (ok I use my bbq spatula) with an ez nuc on top!  A few calls to the nice person who reported the swarm, and I had it located!  Just a small swarm hanging out on the concrete wall.  On went the suit, and after a gap in the public foot and bicycle traffic, I went to work carefully moving the bees, keeping them as calm as possible!  What a wild thing to be doing on a Saturday afternoon at the beach!  The bees were very well behaved, and weren't really flying around too much transferring to the nuc.  Members of the public were walking past - I let people know it was a bee rescue, and that everything was under control.  A lot of people were really appreciative and supportive once they heard that; "Thank you for your public service, and taking the time to do this!" was a general theme.  There were a few stand out comments too:

   - Q: "What species of bees are these?"   A: "Beachgoing Bees" (courtesy of my friend Jon)

   - Q: "Are you selling honey?"  A: "No, this is a Bee Rescue."  Follow on: "Oh well there are all kinds of people here, thought you could have been an enterprising transient" (maybe I should wash my suit!)

   - Q: "Why did you bring your bees here bro?!"  A: "This is a Bee Rescue, I'm removing the bees to take them somewhere safe".  Follow on: "Oh that's awesome dude!" (gives me a high five!)

At the end of my parking time (yes I was ready to chase after the parking officer in a bee suit), I pretty much had all the bees in the nuc.

 bee selfie!

Next day it was time to introduce the Beach Bees to their new home!  After observing the lack of assimilation between the Garage Bees and the Compost Bees for the previous week, I decided to take a newbie risk and merge the Beach Bees with the Garage bees to form a stronger colony.  Doubling down on my newbie risks, I decided to do the merger of the tiny colonies within the one deep, with a newspaper separation over one of the frames... time will tell if it was a good idea.  The risk and concern is that the laying workers will decide to kill the new Queen.  As I removed the Beach Bees from the nuc I was delighted to see an active, happy looking Golden Queen!  Whohoo!  Long live the Queen!

The final excitement I have to report was my first attempts at building a ventilated bottom for one of my hives, some novelty 'runway entrances', and this morning's inspection which revealed 2 very healthy looking Queens.  The Compost Bees (Dark Queen) had capped brood and capped honey, as well as lots of stores.  The Beach Bees (Gold Queen) definitely had a fair bit of nectar on the way to honey, and the Garage Bees (no Queen) had some capped drone brood!  Hopefully there won't be any more worker egg laying now there's a Queen a few frames and a newspaper away.  I found just one small white beetle.  So far no signs (that I could see with my newbie vision) of any problems or diseases in the hives.  No spiciness, and bees were again happy to have me sit a few feet away for an afternoon observation!  Still haven't been stung... not sure if I'll regret writing that!

I'm reading a ton about bees after work - I think I've made it through almost every post and comment on honeybeesuite.com! Looking forward to building a ventilator rim, quilt, and also a new deep!

Hope everyone is having happy and interesting bee times too!

-Kelton

--

[Dan]

Thanks Kelton for the really interesting and informative report of your BEEK adventures !! Terrific fotos too !! A question, do you know why the two hives are of such different colors, down the the queens themselves ? Both of my hives are of the darker ilk, so to me the lighter colored bees seem odd ...

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[Bella Donna]

Thanks for sharing!!  We're struggling over all central Arizona with Africanized bees who DO NOT like to stay in boxes.  

Bella

On Saturday, September 13, 2014 11:24:32 PM UTC-7, Kelton Temby wrote:

Wow it's been a busy 2 weeks for this new Beek, I've been part of 2 rescues, 1 bait out, 2 colony mergers and even started building my own hives!  Here's an epic story of all the fun if you're interested -

Instead of taking the 'donor bees' from the last installment, Todd invited me to come assist with a rescue!  Turned out the rescue was from a compost container in a house near the Mission.  Todd brought 2 suits, and after the homeowner (one of Todd's friends from way back) had the extra suit on, Todd said the other was a child-sized suit that wouldn't fit him.  I still suspect he was just setting it up for me to step up and get 'hands on', so that's just what I did!  There was almost a basketball sized cluster, and some comb already formed hanging down.  I gently picked up the cluster, as many bees as would come as possible, and placed them into the capture nuc.  It's really quite bizarre the way clusters of bees hold onto each other - they feel like an odd liquid or a little like pulling apart fairy floss (cotton candy).  Anyways, the bees mostly happily moved over to the nuc once the queen was apparently inside, and I collected the complete nuc right as the light was fading for the night.

The next day I was able to transfer the bees to a new deep above my doomed colony - the Garage Bees would have a new Queen!  I used the "newspaper separation" technique, so that the hives wouldn't mix right away.  Apparently there's a high risk of battles between bees when they mix, and the worst case scenario is that workers who have been queenless, and laying their own drones, decide to sting the new queen on the scene!  Bee drama!  The newspaper mostly prevents that by allowing them to slowly mix.  Look for the new, Dark Queen of the bees!

The next week I was privileged to meet again with Paul and assist him on a 'bait out' project, also pretty close to my place near the Mission.  This one was right in the eaves of a really nice house that wasn't currently being lived in.  The bees had happily made a home on the top of the roof.  Paul was already busy and up the ladder when I arrived!  I handed saws, nails, bits of wood, a backup smoker and other bee apparatus up the ladder as Paul fashioned a stand for the 'dummy hive', as well as a new entrance out of mesh to direct the bees out of their present home.  The mesh guide was really to make what was a large entrance, a small focused one.  Apparently it can be extremely difficult to get bees out of roofs without tearing the whole roof apart, and homeowners rarely want to tear their roof apart (for some reason.. gee don't they know how much honeycomb there could be?!).  Needless to say, I learned the bait out approach requires the most time, patience and finesse of all the bee catching processes.  The aim is to get the bees eventually to be trapped in the new hive with the assistance of the new mesh entrance, and make it impossible for them to go back into their old home.  After a few weeks, once the old colony is almost completely empty, a new queen is brought into the new bait hive, and the bees from the old colony accept her as their new leader!  I feel a little bad for the old Queen, although I read somewhere sometimes she will come into the bait hive too before the new Queen arrives (don't quite understand this.. would she abandon here own brood?).  I was a little caught by surprise when the homeowner showed up and Paul introduced me and said "This is Kelton, he's been a beekeeper for what, 2 months now right?"  Wondering if I was meant to assure the homeowner I was the utmost professional and experienced beekeeper.. I went along with it.  Yep, it hadn't even been 2 weeks! Here's some pics of Paul at work!

All week I happily sat out eating my oatmeal breakfast watching the Royal Bee Air Force gathering pollen and nectar, maybe 10 ft from the hive.  I was expecting the hives to look like they were working together, but it didn't seem like there was any chewed up newspaper showing up outside the hive.  The new bees seemed to be finding gaps to come out past the top cover, rather than assimilate down through the bottom deep...

Saturday I received an email from Todd saying he was out of town, and a swarm had been reported down on Cabrillo, and would I like to respond?!  First chance to be a real Bee Rescue First Responder!  Needless to say I quickly gathered up the gear I needed, and headed over.  I felt it would be too awkward walking around in a bee suit, but less awkward carrying a large milk crate with a spray bottle, bee suit and scraper (ok I use my bbq spatula) with an ez nuc on top!  A few calls to the nice person who reported the swarm, and I had it located!  Just a small swarm hanging out on the concrete wall.  On went the suit, and after a gap in the public foot and bicycle traffic, I went to work carefully moving the bees, keeping them as calm as possible!  What a wild thing to be doing on a Saturday afternoon at the beach!  The bees were very well behaved, and weren't really flying around too much transferring to the nuc.  Members of the public were walking past - I let people know it was a bee rescue, and that everything was under control.  A lot of people were really appreciative and supportive once they heard that; "Thank you for your public service, and taking the time to do this!" was a general theme.  There were a few stand out comments too:

   - Q: "What species of bees are these?"   A: "Beachgoing Bees" (courtesy of my friend Jon)

   - Q: "Are you selling honey?"  A: "No, this is a Bee Rescue."  Follow on: "Oh well there are all kinds of people here, thought you could have been an enterprising transient" (maybe I should wash my suit!)

   - Q: "Why did you bring your bees here bro?!"  A: "This is a Bee Rescue, I'm removing the bees to take them somewhere safe".  Follow on: "Oh that's awesome dude!" (gives me a high five!)

At the end of my parking time (yes I was ready to chase after the parking officer in a bee suit), I pretty much had all the bees in the nuc.

 bee selfie!

Next day it was time to introduce the Beach Bees to their new home!  After observing the lack of assimilation between the Garage Bees and the Compost Bees for the previous week, I decided to take a newbie risk and merge the Beach Bees with the Garage bees to form a stronger colony.  Doubling down on my newbie risks, I decided to do the merger of the tiny colonies within the one deep, with a newspaper separation over one of the frames... time will tell if it was a good idea.  The risk and concern is that the laying workers will decide to kill the new Queen.  As I removed the Beach Bees from the nuc I was delighted to see an active, happy looking Golden Queen!  Whohoo!  Long live the Queen!

The final excitement I have to report was my first attempts at building a ventilated bottom for one of my hives, some novelty 'runway entrances', and this morning's inspection which revealed 2 very healthy looking Queens.  The Compost Bees (Dark Queen) had capped brood and capped honey, as well as lots of stores.  The Beach Bees (Gold Queen) definitely had a fair bit of nectar on the way to honey, and the Garage Bees (no Queen) had some capped drone brood!  Hopefully there won't be any more worker egg laying now there's a Queen a few frames and a newspaper away.  I found just one small white beetle.  So far no signs (that I could see with my newbie vision) of any problems or diseases in the hives.  No spiciness, and bees were again happy to have me sit a few feet away for an afternoon observation!  Still haven't been stung... not sure if I'll regret writing that!

[Kelton Temby]

The community here does a lot to help bees.  People raise awareness, plant pollinator friendly gardens, oppose pesticides and keep healthy hives.  I'm proud to be part of it thanks to this group's encouragement to become a beekeeper in the thread above.

With a team of fellow engineers I founded a company whose mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable agriculture.   We don't accept that 30% of bee colonies have to die every year, or that pesticides and herbicides must be sprayed in mass quantities in agriculture. We want to prove that using visual feedback and trends our products can help people make decisions and practice their art.

We first designed a system to help beekeepers remotely identify when a colony is at risk.  Urban beekeepers can use this for their own bees - I am for mine.   It's really exciting to share it with you all! keltronixinc.com