Sugared Bees

I mentioned last time that fall is almost upon us - leaves are starting to drift off the trees and waft down around our boots, the air is just slightly crisp, the sky a touch bluer. When you sit out on the porch swing you hear the familiar *thump* of apples falling to the ground. Pumpkins are starting to show up everywhere you look, especially in my chai lattes.

This means a lot for me and you. Usually in fall, although deer season has already started and James sightings are scarce, we tend to venture out into the distilleries, wineries, fall festivals, and markets more. I'll be completely honest. I just like fall. I am totally prejudiced. And I am not even sorry, Summer.

Fall also means something for our little bumbles, too! They are packing up and waiting for winter. We had already harvested a few pounds of honey, but still stinging (pun absolutely intended) from last winter's loss, left most of the honey intact in hops to sustain our hive.

We went out to check on them this past weekend and they. were. buzzing. Our goal this visit was to check for hive mites (like bee fleas or ticks) and make sure they look stocked up enough to make it through the winter. They are still working on gathering pollen, and we saw some bees loaded down with pollen packed into their baskets. The bee's pollen baskets are on their back legs - and when they are that full they remind me of tiny little body builders with gross-weird bulgy legs.

The hive was moderately full of honey, but we will still need to supplement them over the season with sugar water and pollen patties. We'll worry about that later though. What we really wanted to do is see how badly stricken our bees were with mites.

So, one by one we pulled out frames and scanned for honey, baby bee cells, and mites. What's great about this is that in order to treat for the mites, you sprinkle the bees with powder sugar. Can you imagine? That's the equivalent of ice cream falling from the sky for us! This serves a dual purpose. The bees can't stand being dirty, so they immediately get to work grooming themselves and eachother. In this process they are pulling the mites off of each other and dropping them through the hive and onto the ground, where they die. The mites also have a terrible time trying to stick to the bees when they are coated in the powdered sugar so some of them will fall off on their own.

James and his mom pulled out drone larvae one at a time with tweezers. Which means we needed to comb through every frame of each hive. Which also means that every single bee in there was pissed off at us.

Regardless, the drones were removed which is a good thing for our hive. The mites live in the drone bee cells and that is how they build up their numbers. Unfortunately for the drone bees, they were required to sacrifice their lives for the good of the hive. How very altruistic. In reality, the hive kicks out all drone bees at the beginning of the winter anyways. We all know how much guys can eat and when colony starvation is a very real problem, who needs those extra mouths to feed anyways?

Good news for the boys is - if they make it through the winter, then their milkshake brings all the queens to the yard.

So our bees got sugared, we sacrificed some drones, visually inspected the hives, were chased all the way to the house twice by one particular angry bee, and nobody was stung! I'll write that off as a success.