Bees with a city view

LA Backwards Beekeeper Andrew writes:

I brought these bees to Reed's place in Mt. Washington in the late Summer of last year from Santa Monica. Reed had a custom platform built on a grade in his yard to accommodate the hive.

Essentially, these bees came from two nucs. Both had been struggling for some time so they were combined into one hive.

Reed, a neighbor over here in Mt Washington, was eager to have bees in his yard so a mutual friend made the introduction.

I pretty much left the bess to do their thing over the past 6 months. Reed called me recently to say that there was an immense amount of activity during the day of recent and the bees seemed to be getting slightly aggressive when he got too close to the hive. I knew it was time to take a look inside the hive.

Super Bowl Sunday seemed like a perfect afternoon. When I opened the hive it was absolutely brimming with bees! Almost every frame was completely filled with stores or brood.

I added a shallow super and within minutes they were already migrating up there. They must have felt cramped down below. I will be adding another shallow super in the next couple of weeks.

Will keep you posted on progress...

—Andrew

All photos by Reed Davis.

Winter bee activity goes to 11

Several people have posted on our Yahoo group that their bees are going bonkers with activity lately. Here at Feral Honey HQ, it's the same story—lots of activity from the first light in the morning until well into the evening.


This forager is way into our English Lavender.


Here's hoping for plenty of spring rain and another great year for honey in 2011!

Beekeeping at night

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta writes:

One of the best parts of LA beekeeping is that it can fit into the day before and after work. Everyone's busy but there's always a little time for the bees.

William in Elysian Valley let me show my friend Carmen his roof top bees after work. We brought a swarm and some bees from a trap-out and added them to the top of the hive.

William caught this great shot of the roof line wires, moon, night sky and a little beekeeping.

—roberta

Max and Steve's bees clean house

Backwards Beekeeper Max writes:

The bees were busy pulling the string (that we had used to tie comb into the frames) out of their hive. Check out the bee on the right side of the photo. She's totally riding that string to the ground!

The worker bees heave-ho the string out of the hive, while those fat drones just hang out "supervising."

Slide show from Venice

Those new beekeepers in Venice made a slide show of their cut-out adventure with Kirk.


Photos: Augusta Quirk, Sarah Bay Williams, Paul Gachot; Song: "Bees" by Caribou.

Via Hynogogic Zoo.

The ShopVac Bees Clean House

Following up on the Backwards Beekeepers TV episode The ShopVac Bees, Erik of Homegrown Evolution writes:

The bees must have seen the BB video. They got around this morning to getting rid of some of the string. The pollen they are collecting has gone from white to yellow. Spring must be near...

Hope to see you all soon.

Best,
Erik

The Original "Bee Movie"

Backwards Beekeeper Phil sent the link for Bee City, a 1951 educational film that gives a thorough and knowledgeable account of life inside the hive. The photography is impressive for its time—and because it was made before commercial beekeepers started dumping all sorts of noxious chemicals on their bees, it also fits the Backwards Beekeeping philosophy pretty closely, except for its advocacy of queen excluders.

Best of all, though, is the voice-over. Editor and narrator John Kieran sounds like an easily-distracted grandfather after a couple of glasses of wine, regaling the family with stories during a home movie.



Via the essential Internet Archive.

UPDATE: A reader adds:

Love the blog. I have it linked from my own. Good stuff and very entertaining!

I am a second year beekeeper here in North Carolina, and we're on a winter weather watch for 5-8 inches of snow on Friday. I will be so glad when spring arrives. Wish us luck and that the snow goes away faster!

I wanted to send you a link to a theater short made in 1933 called "Her Majesty The Queen Bee". Its an oldie, but goodie...and it was filmed in Cali. Just thought you might want to share it with your readers.

Mark C.
Reidsville, NC

Thanks, Mark!

Bee Hive Ruins

This week we had the first storm of the season with buckets of rain and pretty high winds. I had to go up to Santa Clara for work the next day and while walking from the office to the hotel I found the remains of a bee hive on the ground with no bees in sight.

The pictures were taken at dusk with my phone so they aren't the greatest quality but you can still see the freshly drawn comb, brood and honey if you click them to enlarge.


The thing that struck me is that bees are everywhere and that it is preposterous to restrict people from keeping them in their backyards.


In the picture above you can see a snail eating either brood or honey from the comb.

The pieces were all sitting in or around a driveway so my guess is that they are all squashed flat by now.

Backwards Beekeeper Hive Report

Backwards Beekeeper Max reports on the progress of her (and Steve's) first hive:

Bees are so photogenic. They are proof that stripes do not make you look fat.

After being cooped up for a week in the nuc box, the bees move into their new home. (Notice the disgusting wax moth larvae near the center hole of the nuke box. Yuck.)

The trapped-out bees have been busy making comb on the bias inside the nuc box. The first three tiers of comb in this picture are on the same frame!

A close-up of the tiered frame. Nurse bees fuss over the brood. My favorite part of this image is that you can see one bee just starting to emerge from her cell. There's an uncapped cell with a little white face and two black eyes peeping out in the lower middle part of the frame.

Ants used a vine that fell off our fence onto the top of the hive to invade our grumpy beehive. The bees formed the apian version of a human shield across the top opening of the hive to keep the ants out. The bees plugged the entrance with their bodies and then later, about 40 bees formed a kill squad and bit the ants that were swarming over the outside of the box to death. By the next day there were only a few ants to be seen whereas the night before there had been thousands.

The Bee Photographer

Whoa! These are the most incredible bee photos I've ever seen. Check out photographer Eric Tourneret's site for a ton more.

Say hello to my little friend.

I spent a little while yesterday getting over my fear of having bees on my bare skin. I found a drone walking around on the ground near the hive, and after checking a book to make sure these guys are stingerless, picked him up and carried him around for a while.

Sure enough, no matter how much I poked or prodded him, all he could do about it was stare at me with those crazy eyes.





















He must have been at the end of his life or extremely lazy, because he never tried to fly away. Maybe he knew it was lousy weather for it.

Great Beekeeping Pictures by Max Westby

I found a great set of photos on flickr taken by Max Westby (Max xx). I don't think he is doing backwards beekeeping but there are lots of great shots of wild swarms and hives.

One highlight for me is a group of pictures of these eccentric hives maintained by an 82 year old man.

This is a wild hive that formed in only 3 weeks between the bathroom window and shutters of a vacation home in Lyon.

See Max xx's whole set on flickr.

Bee porn!

Photographer Rick Lieder shoots birds and insects in his backyard, and the results are spectacular. Check out his bee series.