No swarm is out of reach

Rod lives just south of USC, and Kirk has been trapping bees out of the walls of his building for about a year now. A couple of days ago one the the hives swarmed to a nearby tree.

Kirk wanted to catch the swarm and get it to a new beekeeper, but the tree was difficult to reach and it's not like you can just ask a swarm to move to a more convenient location.


But if you know Kirk, you know he's the king of improvisation. He attached a nuc box to a painter's pole, and that swarm was on its way to a new home in Eagle Rock.

Roberta engineers an unusual trap-out

Bees at their entrance in the base of a tree.

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta writes about a crafty sort of trap-out:

The Bee Rescue Hotline got a call this week from Mary in Sherman Oaks. She has a hive of very docile bees in the base of her front yard tree. They've been there for 4 years but now a fence near the hive needs to be replaced. There isn't time for a trap out with bees flying everywhere while the construction crew is around. So I'm trying a trap out with the bees trapped between the tree and the hive box.

I heard about this technique from Ginger, and to be honest I didn't think it would work. But in a couple of weeks the bees she was trapping out had migrated to the box. Mary thought it was worth a try so we set it up tonight.

The great part is that Mary's daughter, Lulu, really wants to keep the bees and her mom loves the idea.

We checked out the bees during the evening. They were all in the tree with a cluster of tiny bees at the small entrance. It looks like they have built a wall of propolis at the entrance. There was a soft buzz coming from the tree and the aroma of warm honey wafted up from the entrance.

We didn't need any protection and Mary was a natural with the bees. We nailed the screen tunnel over the entrance and they were not happy with the pounding. They moved back and forth in the screen tunnel and into the hive box.

After a few minutes they calmed down and went back into the tree. We'll see how things go and see if the set-up is bee tight. Once the fence is finished next week, we'll move the bees to the backyard.

Hope this works.

- roberta

Your empty hive box is a swarm magnet

Kirk's hive at Jock's place in Altadena died out this winter. Jock left the empty hive boxes out, and I think you know what happened next.

Jock writes:

This will amaze you...or at least it does me. This afternoon I was crawling around under some large flowering shrubs doing some weeding and clean up. I could hear some bees above me in the shrub's flowers, but the hum of the bees just kept getting louder and louder, so I crawled out to investigate.

To my surprise, there was a large swarm of bees all around the top of a medium size tree. At least a few thousand bees I think. As I watched, they did not seem to be congregating in the top of the tree as I thought they were going to do. Instead the swarm moved slowly (in mid air) to the east and began to descend around the old bee hive boxes. It seems as though as soon as they saw it, and a bunch of them checked it out, then that was going to be their new home.

—Jock

Kirk adds his 2 cents to the story:

LA's spring has sprung

LA Backwards Beekeeper Kathryn sends this photo of bees on a friend's bottlebrush tree. We are in a world of pollen here in Southern California!

Rescuing the red barn bees

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roxana sends along this story (cross-posted from her blog):

On Thursday, February 24th, Sherri in Woodland Hills called the Bee Rescue Hotline about a hive she had in her garage roof. Since this was in my neck of the woods I called Sherri and went over to inspect the situation.

The bees were located in the corner of an old wooden garage/barn, which was approximately 14 feet in the air. We assumed the bees had made their hive under the boards. The job looked a bit out of my range so I asked Maurice, one of the master mentors in the bee club, to help out. Once Maurice had gotten the A-OK from the property owners we were ready to get the job done.

Read more...

Warren helps a beekeeper-to-be

Aspiring beekeeper Stan called the Bee Rescue Hotline recently, and here's his follow-up story:

I spotted this swarm while I was working in my garden yesterday afternoon.We are cleaning the area because I want to get into beekeeping. Very ironic.

I saw one of your videos and decided that you guys are better than an exterminator. The guy who came out his name is Warren, really cool guy.

Warren came by and got himself suited up. First, he sprayed the hive with a little sugar water to distract the bees, which surprised me because I thought he would use smoke. But, as Warren explained to me later, the sugar water makes the bees to start grooming themselves.

Then he just reached up with a bucket and in they went, it was that easy and quick. He got about 95% of the bees.
The most awesome thing I've seen.

Ready to start my own bee keeping!!

—Stan

Report from the organic beekeeping conference

left to right: Danny, Maurice, Roberta, Dee, Kirk, Diane, Meredith, Ceebs

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta writes:

A bunch of us Backwards Beekeepers migrated to Oracle, Arizona for the 4th annual Organic Beekeeping Conference, organized by the incredible and one-of-a-kind Dee Lusby. She is a force of nature with a passion for treatment-free beekeeping. The event started out with a swarm arriving on the grounds of the conference, an auspicious sign. Of course, someone had a top bar hive in the back of their car ready for the bee rescue.

At the conference we had the opportunity to meet up with beekeepers at all stages. Some were just starting to be beekeepers and didn't have a hive yet; others were commercial people with 100's of hives. There were representatives from the East Coast, West Coast and everywhere in between including Utah, Colorado, Vermont, Arizona, etc. There was even a commercial beekeeper from France!

Kirk had the most laughs from the audience and inspired many to inquire about how to start a group like ours in their city. We saw talks about changes in the government regulation of the "organic" label, apitherapy (the use of bee stings as medical treatment), the Denver Community of Backyard Bee Guardians model, hive building techniques and much more.

There will be another treatment free beekeeping conference coming up in July organized by the authors of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping. Check out the details at their website.

—roberta

Your Bee Rescue Hotline at work: Hollywood Hills

Here's a swarm rescue report from Kathryn Bakken Robertson:

Amy agreed to help take me on my first swarm capture this morning in Beachwood Canyon. Turns out it was smack in the middle of Sunset Ranch which made for an interesting audience of people, horses and peacocks.

We arrived as they were clearing all of the horses from the area. The swarm was small, about grapefruit size, and hanging from the bottom rail of a corral gate. We geared up and Amy proceeded to spray the small group with sugar water then dusted a big clump of them into the box. We were encouraged by their descent into the box but there was a stubborn little group still clinging to the gate. We gave them a few minutes to figure things out.

In the meantime, peacocks wandered over to see if this strange white box contained snacks, cocking their heads and watching intently. Then the 'rock star' peacock ambled over, pure white with a smattering of blue across his back. Horses and humans practically bowed as he passed through. Horses stuck their heads over the rail trying to nibble on the nuc box getting scolded by stable employees, "Charlie, get your nose out of there!"

After a few more doses of sugar water spray and dusting most of them landed in the box. We taped it up leaving the small hole open in the front. We really didn't want to leave any poor bees to fate so waited a few minutes longer to get as many as we could. The small hole actually seemed to encourage them and just about all of the stragglers found their way into the nuc box. 

The people at Sunset Ranch seemed really interested in the whole process, taking some of their own pictures and expressing concern over where the bees would end up. They seemed relieved they were going to a good home (mine!). We carried the buzzing nuc box down the dirt road, waving good bye and promising to take good care of the Ranch Bees. As we got to our cars arriving tourists stared at us like we were another planet. In a way, we kind of are.


-Kathy

Next Meeting: Sunday March 20

The next Backwards Beekeepers meeting is on the books! Come on down and learn about beekeeping.

When: Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 11am
Where: Under Spring outdoor space at Metabolic Studio (aka Farmlab) in downtown L.A.

NOTE: The LA Marathon is happening on this day. Because it starts early and heads west, all of the streets around downtown should be open by the time you're heading to the meeting. Click here for a map of the route and notes about street re-opening times.

ALSO: Please use extreme caution when walking through the alley and bridge underpass on your way to the meeting. The street may be flooded or partially blocked by debris. This area is constantly under construction and not very pedestrian-friendly.

Everyone is welcome, whether you're a newbee or not.

We'll post an agenda as the meeting nears.

We'll also have Backwards Beekeepers t-shirts for sale - we'll have a new run of sizes by the meeting. All shirts cost $15.

Hope to see you there! Let's change the world.


Click here for a map to the Backwards Beekeepers meeting.



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Piping queens that toot and quack

LA Backwards Beekeeper Marianne recently posted to our Yahoo group that she'd heard a newly hatched queen making "piping" sounds inside the hive. I had never heard of this and was totally confused. Fortunately Marianne followed up with some attached text (quoted from BeeSource, originally in Scientific American) that tells more of the story:

Naturalists have long known that queens inside the hive emit two kinds of sound, called "tooting" and "quacking." A close analysis of these sounds and the circumstances of their emission now provides the strongest evidence that bees use sound to convey specific messages.

Tooting is the regal identification of a virgin queen soon after she has emerged from the cell in which she developed. A hive cannot tolerate more than one queen at a time. In a hive that lacks a queen several queen-bearing cells develop simultaneously in a comb, but one matures earlier than the others. Once this queen has emerged, has hardened and has become steady on her legs, she proceeds to visit other queen cells, tear them open and sting to death their potential but not yet mature queens. Often, however, the worker bees do not allow her to dispose of all her potential rivals in this way; they bar her from some of the cells. She then begins to toot and continues to do so day and night, perhaps for a week or more. Her tooting rises in intensity and sometimes can be heard more than 10 feet from the hive.

There's a video of piping queens after the jump.