double combs on a top bar hive

Finally a bee post!

The inside view of one of our top bar hives. This is the back of it.



Bees on new comb, it's very light in color.




Bees on older comb, the comb is more of a yellow/gold. There are some larvae, and capped brood in this photo.




A close up of capped brood and larvae.



More capped brood and larvae on comb that's not so brand new. The raised bullet shaped cells are drone brood.

Since we started with the top bar hives we had a couple bars that the bees had double comb on. Initially our philosophy was to leave it bee. The bees won't do anything that isn't good for them right?! Right. Well eventually we had 4 and in some cases 5-7 bars that couldn't be lifted individually. Not so bad for the bees, but really problematic for us, and totally uninspectable. Here's some pics of what was going on. We figured out that out top bars were too wide and have started replacing all the original bars with narrower bars.



Notice the long peanut shell looking cells at the bottom of the comb, those are queen cells.




Closer view of the queen cells.

As I saw it, we had a few options;

• leave them alone - least invasive, but this would have made the hive inaccessible eventually
• slowly move these double combs out by adding new smaller bars in front of them - less invasive, but it could take awhile and in the mean time the problem is getting worse.
• cut off the double combs and reattach to new narrower bars - involves an incredible amount of intrusion, and as we found out, carnage.

The other situation was those queen cells.....swarm cells, supersedure cells, just in case cells (some were not capped), or was the queen gone entirely and they were trying to replace her? To be honest, I have no idea, initially we thought swarm cells due to their placement on the comb. Our plan was to do a split, moving the old queen and some bees to a new hive and letting the old hive raise a new queen. Simulating what would happen in a natural swarm. Lots of folks say once the bees decide to swarm they'll do it, so we figured on trying to work with it.

Problem was, once we got in the hive we couldn't find the queen, and realized there weren't any eggs, plus we didn't give ourselves enough time to do what we wanted to, and we forgot our smoker, and the bees were incredibly grumpy that day(it was a cloudy day so that probably didn't help). It was a disaster, and after only seperating one bar of double comb we gave up for the day. I also dropped a whole comb full of bees, it was awful. We never did find the queen and have since realized that our hive is queenless, no eggs no new larvae. Good thing we didn't do that split, or maybe they were ready to swarm and we killed the queen during one of our inspections,at any rate it was a disastrous first attempt at cutting off the double combs.

We left them alone for awhile to settle down and to fix all the damage we caused. I was worried that they'd be furious when we went back, or that they'd have left the hive altogether, I wouldn't blame them if they did.. In the meantime, we re-evaluated our plans, for one we realized we should give ourselves double the time we think we need, and if conditions aren't right to mess with the hive we need to just not do it, also don't forget the smoker. We also picked different hair clips, the ones we initially chose were too wide and the bars wouldn't sit right next to each other, causing the bees to have too much space, and yes again make double comb on those bars.....

When we went back the bees were still there, queen cells were all still capped, but no eggs or larvae, so we're hoping they're well on their way to making a new queen. We finished off the job of seperating all the bars with double comb in just a few minutes, and closed the bees up to continue their work.

We'll figure it out eventually, it's a learning process, I just felt bad the bees had to suffer. Still it seems that they are resilient little creatures.

Garden 2011- Progress

So far so good.

Here's a couple things we figured out so far.

• Just laying some dirt on top of the hay and putting seeds or tiny seedlings into it means you have to water constantly. Until the roots are established enough to draw moisture from the soil beneath you risk them drying out and dying. Solution-put in bigger seedlings, deeper in the compost.

• Don't just pile grass on as a top layer because it mats up and forms this impenetrable barrier that water runs off of. Solution- mound grass on and then put hay on top of that.

• This method isn't work free, but it is nearly weed free! I hate weeding and by this time every year my garden is over run with weeds, but not THIS year. Every couple days I pull a blade of grass or two, that's it.

• Letting go of all the ideas about rows and how far apart things have to be is liberating. This garden may not be traditionally beautiful, but I've really found the beauty in how certain plants grow together. How the close growing plants help keep the weeds down, and how much the worms and other insects love our undisturbed soil.

• Companion planting works! See brassicas in the following photos....

Ok done with the words time for PICS.....





Directly in front is horehound, to the right is our sage, and in between the two is lavender. Somewhere in there is some rosemary, dill, lemon balm, and persistent mint growing through many layers of cardboard and mulch.



Swiss chard, egyptian onions gone wild, and peppers getting killed by slugs!



Baby tomatoes and pole beans, mixed in there are onions and carrots.



Broccoli and cauliflower

Broccoli in the herb bed....noticed it is untouched by the slugs...

More brassicas (kohlrabi) not in the herb bed, getting murdered by slugs... companion planting seems to be working.

Again hardly touched by slugs in the herb bed.

Pumpkins..... I think...

Our first head of broccoli forming.

lavender blooming

Sage blooming

Side note:
We gave up TV again this summer. Cable's off today, hopefully this summer is as busy and productive as last.

Next up:

That sauerkraut post I promised you, AND bee updates....seriously..... now that I have no TV I have more time to blog....=0)