Amy Pollien

The perfect time to disturb a colony of bees is when most of them are away from home. A perfectly still, hot day when the sun is at the meridian and the air is full of pollen means that every field bee will be out foraging, stopping home only to unload and taking off again like B17s in the African theater. Yesterday was not that day. The Maine spring can be cool – it was 60 degrees with a brisk wind blowing the apple blossoms apart on the Russian crab and making my full English bee suit comfortable, instead of stifling. However, a beekeeper with a day job will work with whatever weather happens on her day off (short of drenching rain), and be thankful. *

This hive was new from a package three weeks ago. When I dumped them in they persisted in a forming a bulge above the frames. Since they had obliged me by exiting their box at all, I gave them a spacer when I put the hivetop feeder above them. I had hoped to deconstruct the whole arrangement before they built comb to connect the frames to the feeder, but no such luck. They have been busy, busy bees. I finally had to cut away quite a bit of comb (full of fruit blossom honey, poor beekeeper!) and carefully settle the new super on top. I wore the full suit because this colony is new to me and I was going to be elbows deep in their territory, but I didn’t need it. They traveled calmly over my hands, and went about their business with only a very casual fly-over from the guard bees.

There were plenty of eggs in the newly filled frames, and a wealth of pollen stored up in rainbow colors. Now I hope they continue the good work in their new second story – May is halfway done and winter’s coming!

* I feel I should mention that I’ve heard British beekeepers work on their hives at night, while the bees are asleep. Do bees sleep? Does this technique work? I can’t find much about this on line and it has the feel of fable, somehow. . .

Larry the Postmaster called at 7:30 this morning that “my package” had arrived – thanks, Larry! Drove down to Mount Desert center (the gas station/one stop, the post office and a bank) and picked up three pounds of Buckfast bees and a queen from Bee Weaver Apiary – thanks Laura! They were in fine shape, clustered around their can of sugar and the queen cage on this 50 degree morning.

I removed the can, brushed everybody off the queen cage so that I could confirm her health and remove the wax plug from the bottom of the cage and placed her between two frames. Her exit is also plugged by a little bit of candy, and the workers will eat through that and release her sometime in the next few days. Then I dumped the workers out of the box and over the frames, closed the hive, filled the feeder with sugar syrup and propped the box in front of the hive entrance so that the bees that didn’t fall into the hive will find their way inside on their own.

Today I worked with a bee suit but no gloves, and no smoker. The bees were social, very curious and very active, but I was not stung – or even menaced – even as I was rather literally up to my elbows in them. I like these bees. The peach trees in the front yard are moments away from full bloom, so I think they will like it here, too.

The Tri-County Beekeepers Association meetings are chock full of information. I have scribbled notes in my Moleskin that I’ll probably decode some day, but one of the tidbits I picked up was that my hives should all be slightly different  so that the bees have visual cues for which one is home. I’ve painted all of my woodenware light cream but it hasn’t really been an issue because this is the first year I’ve had more than one viable hive.Today I wanted to make a “split” – to remove a few frames of brood and eggs (or perhaps even a capped queen cell to make a new queen) and let the bees go on to make a second colony in the new boxes.

I like the Behr “Premium Plus” paint and primer combination for finishing woodenware.  It is acrylic, very durable, dries quickly and is less expensive than buying primer and a finish coat. The Paint Lady at Home Depot was having an extended hoe-down with someone on the phone who wanted to take a class in lead paint removal, and she was being extremely polite to this idiot as she helped me make my paint selection. We had a kind of sign language conversation about how she didn’t stock the dark base paint in quarts, did I want a gallon of dark green, or a quart of something lighter? And that’s how I ended up with a new hive in “Pistachio”. I had a dream last night that Martha Stewart was visiting, and she liked it, as do the bees.

I don’t have any pictures of the interior of the hives as I did the split. I was wearing my full suit and it was 50 degrees and breezy today. Bad enough that when I separated the boxes I exposed brood – I didn’t want to let them sit out long enough to grab the camera. They had been busy. Every frame I pulled was studded with capped queen cells along the bottom – swarming was imminent! I eliminated a few and transported one frame with a capped queen all ready to go to the new (pistachio) hive, with a few frames of food and nurse bees. I blocked most of the entrance with straw and put the feeder on full of syrup. Now I just have to wait, and not disturb them, and see if they “take”. I hope they do. This hive is so sturdy, and so social – I was elbow deep in them today and they never took offense. It would be lovely to have more of them.