James and Kirk get a surprise swarm

Los Angeles Backwards Beekeeper James writes:

Over the past few weeks I had started to notice the comings and goings of the hive was becoming greatly reduced. I spoke with Kirk a few times and he encouraged me to see what was going on for myself.

Upon doing this on sunday morning, I noticed that the bees had become restricted to a third of the super at the bottom of the hive. Lots of empty black brood filled the other 4 brood boxes. I rang and spoke to Kirk about this and seeing as he was close by, he very kindly offered to stop by.

We set about donning our gear and firing up the smoker, to take a further look. My smoker fuel was a bit on the lame side, so Kirk went to his truck to fetch some more fuel. It was then I walked down to the hive and heard what I thought were some angry bees buzzing around the box. I then looked up and saw a massive swarm about to descend on the hive. Kirk arrived back from the truck and we stood in amazement by what was happening!

Kirk said they were either leaving the hive or arriving...it took him but only a few minutes to recognise it was a whole new swarm of bees. We went down to the hive and Kirk slid open the two top brood boxes a little and the bees happily moved inside.

Needless to say Kirk and I spent a great couple of hours in and amongst the bees, watching them doing the amazing work of establishing a new home!

—james

Here's the video!

TakePart TV visits the Backwards Beekeepers

The nice people at TakePart TV recently shot some video in the beautiful yard where LA Backwards Beekeeper Max keeps her bees. Kirk and I gave host Marisha Ray the Backwards take on beekeeping.

Here's part 1:



Here's part 2:

Video: Subculture Club meets the Backwards Beekeepers

Check out this fantastic episode of Thrash Lab's Subculture Club, all about the Backwards Beekeepers. Lots of familiar (and new!) faces make an appearance. It's a great overview what our members are up to!

Our group isn't even 4 years old yet, and look what we've accomplished. All without elected officers, membership dues, incorporation, a treasury, rules, regulations, or bylaws. We fly under the radar and we're pretty damn effective that way.



Bonus Thrash Lab videos:
The History of Bees (animated)
Urban Beekeeping Life (16mm film).

Oregon beekeeper gets a swarm

Bill in Oregon, who first got in touch with us last month, has now expanded his skills.

Bill writes:

It's me again. I just caught my first swarm! Hurray!

The bees seem to be swarming a lot at the moment here in Oregon. We're finally getting some warm and dry weather. I actually got 2 calls from my Craigslist post in the one day, just 10 minutes apart. I also heard of a 3rd swarm as well but it had moved on.

Since I was really only looking for 1 swarm and the first one was easier to get to, I let someone else take the 2nd.

Lesson learned in this trip: put gloves on. Here's some video, stings and all.

—Bill

You can see all of Bill's YouTube videos here.

Barbara & Roberta rescue bees in Long Beach

LA Backwards Beekeepers Barbara and Roberta have been doing fantastic work lately—not just rescuing bees, but documenting the process to help others learn from their experience.

Barbara writes:

Warren had contacted us about some north Long Beach bees in need of rescue. Josie had watched a swarm descend upon her lemon tree about 4 months prior and that was about the time she noticed bees flying around in her carport. She has a pretty strong allergy to honey—one day too many of putting honey in her tea gives her a pretty nasty rash—so it was important to remove the bees.

Carport wall before demolition...

Once Roberta and I arrived, it was clear that it would be easier to access the hive from next-door neighbor Monica’s backyard than from Josie’s storage-filled carport. Fortunately we had permission from them both to tear down whatever was necessary to get to the bees.

We took turns pulling down fence boards then took a crowbar to the back wall of the old carport. There they were: lots of bees, living on what seemed to me to be some pretty old comb. I doubt the hive arrived 4 months prior. I’m guessing what Josie saw was a swarm leaving, not arriving.

...and after.

Roberta had thought we would finish in an hour but unfortunately I can rarely keep up with her (who can?), so it took 2 hours. By the time we finished scraping off as much wax as we could, ants had already started moving in to clean up the remaining honey.

I did mention to Josie that since she loves her honey, she should start buying untreated raw honey from a local beekeeper; that the pollen in it might get her over her allergy.

—Barbara

Here are some more great video clips of the process:

Roberta demonstrates a cut-out

Kieran and his bees.

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta sends a story and a couple of very informative videos about a recent cut-out:

Kieran called the Bee Rescue Hotline about bees in a wall. He wanted to keep the bees and was interested in getting them out via a trap-out. We tried to trap them out, but there were too many cracks in the wall for these sneaky bees. This left a cut-out as the only option.

The bees looked like they had two hives going, so it was going to a fair amount of work. We could feel the warmth of the bees through the wall, so that told us where to cut into it. I used my new-from-Craigslist reciprocating saw and carbide blade.

The first hive had a lot of comb but it only had capped brood—no eggs and a lot of open queen cells. So the hive was in the process of re-queening or was just queenless.

The second hive had eggs, lots of brood but also a few closed queen cells. The bees had filled the space between the studs so must have become too crowded. Hopefully they won't swam right away now that they have more space! We split some of the comb with a queen cell to see if we can lure the straggler bees into another box.

I also tried out my new homemade portable bee vacuum. I was able to wrangle a bunch of bees this way and we dumped them into the hive and it went on the roof. We left brood and boxes to try to get the rest of the bees with a plan to combine all them into one hive.

—roberta

Backwards Beekeepers TV: Principles and Strategies

Earlier this week Kirkobeeo did a video chat on Skype with Danielle, who is president of a beekeepers association in Birmingham, Alabama. She and Kirk talked about the ideas behind Backwards Beekeeping and strategies for getting people informed about them.



We're always looking to make contact with other beekeepers around the world. If you'd like to do a conversation like this one, drop us an e-mail.

Roberta finds a table hive

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta writes:

The bees are definitely waking up and working like crazy. And now the calls are coming in after a couple of months of winter. I planned on following up a call from a couple of months ago. Someone had called about a neighbor's bees in a shed and I was going to check it out Sun. Then I saw a Craigslist offer for "free bees" and emailed Kat who said someone had already claimed them. Bummer. She started to tell me the story and lo and behold, these were the same bees!

She wanted to keep them but thought they would be better off in a location with sympathetic neighbors. Ryan wanted the bees as his first hive and was already planning on going to the backwards beekeeping meeting this weekend!

So I came along to help with the cut out. It looked like a small hive attached to a table leaning against the shed wall. When Ryan turned the table around, boy, did it look big! Kat and Ryan posed for a quick pic before we started the cutout. The bees had started building up with lots of nectar being stored and a fair amount of new brood. It looked like all capped workers. Maybe one drone cell.

When we were done it was wonderful to see the bees marching into the hive like it was always home. Ryan came back at night and all the bees (we think) were inside. We checked them out the next day and there were lots of bees and each frame was covered with bees. They looked great in their new location.

FYI, Kat is an insect wrangler for film but had never worked with honey bees. She suggested that we check out the Lorquin Entomological Society, which has a meeting later this month.

—Roberta

P.S. Here are some videos of during the cutout.

Wrangling the Bees into the Hive:



Setting up the Hive for the Bees to Return to:

When a swarm comes to you

Newcomers to our bee meetings often ask if it's easy to catch a swarm. As Bryan in Puerto Rico writes on our Yahoo group, sometimes it's very easy indeed:

Check out this video of a swarm that entered a nuc on my back picnic table a couple of days ago. The combs had some wax moth larvae and I had put the nuc back there to clean up and throw away the combs. Later noticed lots of bees around the house and suspected a swarm. Sure enough, when I looked back at the nuc it was filling up with bees...

Video: What works, and what doesn't

Here's another video that Kirk found on YouTube. It features Jacqueline Freeman, who has an upcoming book about beekeeping. The video is a bit long because it also includes interviews with two commercial beekeepers who use chemicals and who (not surprisingly) are having lots of problems.

Jacqueline hits all the points that are the basis of Backwards Beekeeping:

—Chemical-free beekeepers aren't seeing any collapse in their hives.

—Using foundationless frames to let the bees draw their own comb makes the bees healthier and lets them regulate themselves.

—Putting chemicals on bees (as virtually all commercial beekeepers do) gives you nothing but weak bees and strong pathogens.

—Using local bees whose queens mate in the wild gives you healthy bees with broad genetic diversity.

—Trucking bees around the country to pollinate monocultured crops stresses the bees and makes them weaker.

—Let your bees keep enough of their own honey over winter so you don't have to feed them sugar water.

Backwards Beekeepers TV: Swarm Capture For Beginners

As the Backwards Beekeepers club grows ever larger, more and more people at our meetings tell us that they're ready for feral bees of their own, but they're intimidated by the thought of capturing a swarm themselves.

Well, here is a step-by-step guide on how it's done.

A few things to remember:

• Always wear protective gear! Swarms are typically quite docile, but it's important to always be prepared.

• Take your time and don't rush.

• Re-read your copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping, search this blog (using the box on the right), or post a question to our Yahoo group if there's anything you're unsure of.

• Take photos (with people in them as well, if possible) and send them in to the blog!

You can subscribe to our Yahoo group to get notifications of bees that are available for rescue.



You can watch the video in full-size HD here.

Video: Re-queening a mean hive

Kirk found this great video made by TheOhioCountryBoy on YouTube.

Very occasionally a hive will turn mean to the point where the bees become unmanageable (it happened to Amy and me earlier this year). This video shows an elegant method of re-queening such a hive from brood with calmer genetics. It's a step up from Beginner's Beekeeping and requires you to put up with the mean bees for several weeks, but it has the great benefit of eliminating the bad behavior without losing the hive.

Backwards Beekeepers TV: Hive War

I recently watched one of our hives get attacked by another bunch of bees. By the time I got a hold of a camera, the damage was done—but I had Kirk come over to do his specialized bee detective work.

Here's the result: Hive War! Soundtrack by Black Sabbath, of course.




More Backwards Beekeepers TV Episodes

Maurice mentors a swarm capture

Albert, a new Los Angeles Backwards Beekeeper, recently got his first bees. He writes about this video:

Maurice from Santa Monica caught a swarm and we transferred it to my hive. They were slow to start, but then raced right into the hive. But then apparently the queen must have flown out of the hive to the nearby fence, so the swarm followed her (yikes!). Maurice then sort of shook the swarm off the fence into a bucket, which he then literally just dumped into the top of the hive. That seemed to work (lucky!), and the swarm on the fence dissipated, and the remaining bees on the ground in front of the hive all went into the hive. This all took about 4 hours.

Maurice has become one of the most active bee rescuers in the city. He frequently posts to our Yahoo Group after collecting swarms or hives that people have called in to the Bee Rescue Hotline.

By the way, notice that the swarm-catchers are working sleeveless and gloveless—bees in a swarm are almost always docile and disinclined to sting.

The SwarmGrabber™, by RonCo

Backwards Beekeeper David S. pointed us to this video (by YouTube user Jeff McMullan) of an inventive method of swarm capture. It may not be gentle, but it looks pretty effective.

Backwards Beekeepers TV: Treasure In A Swarm Trap

Kirk headed over to Leonardo's place last week to open a swarm trap that was full of bees, and I went along to shoot a video.

Here Kirk tells us why a swarm trap is useful, how to set one up, and how to transfer the bees to a hive once they've moved in.



You can watch the video in full-size HD here.

Kirk makes new beekeepers in Venice

Kirk went to Venice the other day to work his hive cut-out magic, and his clients sent some hot-off-the-presses video of the process. Be aware that there's a bit of very colorful language when an onlooker gets stung on the hand.




Hey, new Venice beekeepers: send us an e-mail (see the sidebar on the right) and let us know how it's going!

Backwards Beekeepers TV: The ShopVac Bees

Backwards Beekeeping guru Kirk Anderson (aka Kirkobeeo) brings a ShopVac-turned-beehive over to Erik & Kelly of Homegrown Evolution..

Once there, he shows us how to do a cut-out, which is a live transplant of a bee hive from a bad location into a good one.



By the way, these bees continue to live happily in Kelly & Erik's yard (along with chickens, dog, and various urban wildlife).

Corey harvests honey

Check out Backwards Beekeeper Corey (and daughter Chloe), doing some Very Urban Beekeeping.

Backwards Beekeepers TV: The Honey Harvest

Collecting honey is the part of beekeeping that gets everyone the most excited, but how do we do it the Backwards way? Kirkobeeo takes us through the process as he opens up two of his hives in Studio City, one of which becomes very testy in the process. Then he shows us the fast and easy crush-and-strain method of extracting honey, which anyone can do at home with just a few inexpensive pieces of gear.

It's honey time!