Swarm Season

April 14, 2026April 14, 2026 ~ sanebishop ~ 5 Comments

Staying ahead of your bees is essential to swarm control. This year, I have diligently worked my production hives every week leading up to our main nectar flow, balancing, equalizing, and more or less pestering my bees into staying put. My general strategy is to confuse the bees so much they can’t make adequate preparations to relocate. So far, it has seemed to work, although it has been a lot of work, hence my sore back.

Last year, I got behind my bees and could never get caught back up. It seemed like a daily mass migration of bees left my bee yard, only stopping long enough in a tree top to say goodbye, before they sailed off into the horizon in search for a new land of nectar and honey.

So this year, I have redoubled my efforts to stay ahead of my bees and it seems to be paying dividends. Supers are filling up, despite the severe drought we’re currently in. Honestly, so far, I think the drought has actually been good for the honey crop because there has been no rain or storms to wash out and demolish the fragile poplar blooms. But if the drought persists it will no doubt cut the nectar flow short, so I’m still hoping for some rain.

Here is a picture of Thomas in his bee suit. He got to be my helper on Saturday, and he did a good job working the smoker. Then he contented himself with making wax balls and wax worms out of fresh burr comb. Apparently, beeswax is nature’s Play-Doh.

Despite the drought, and the craziness of swarm season, these are good times.

Bee Friends with Benefits

January 27, 2025January 27, 2025 ~ sanebishop ~ 8 Comments

It’s amazing how fast Thomas can make a friend. His method is pretty direct:
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Addie,” responds a little girl.
“Want to play?”
Instantly, Addie and Thomas are chasing each other. Occasionally, they pause for brief respites on the platform of the sliding board, where they chat about their favorite toys. They talk with a casual familiarity that implies they’ve known each other for twenty years, though they’ve only known each other for ten minutes. Plus, Thomas has only lived for four years, and I suspect Addie is a little younger.

I don’t think Thomas is a playground playboy in any regard because I’ve watched other kids use the same technique. In fact, it seems standard on the playground. A kid approaches another, names are exchanged, play commences, and soon they’re swapping toy stories until a parent announces it’s time to go. Then simple “byes” are exchanged, as if something extraordinary hadn’t just happened.

But it is extraordinary—at least if you’re an adult. Making friends is hard—or at least adults make it hard by overcomplicating things. Case in point: Thomas (who can’t read) seems innately more proficient at making friends than his dad, despite the latter having read Aristotle’s treatise on friendship—which, it turns out, hasn’t helped me much. The problem, I think, is that Aristotle forgot to include a chapter on making friends in an era of social media. Or if he did, that chapter has been lost to antiquity.

I am thankful for beekeeping, not just because I enjoy it, but because other people do too—and beekeeping occasionally draws oddballs into an orbit of friendship around this shared pursuit. And I mean pursuit in the literal sense, as in chasing and catching swarms. For instance, once I showed up for a swarm call only to be greeted shortly after by another beekeeper pursuing the same swarm. He looked oddly familiar, though I couldn’t place him at first. It turns out he was my wife’s obstetrician-gynecologist—the doctor who delivered Thomas into this world. Before long, we were not only swapping bee stories but extracting honey together.

Last year, I made a new beekeeping friend who lives nearby. He’s an engineer. I’ve always been impressed by engineers because their brains make decisions based on logic, math, and physics, whereas my brain mostly fails to make decisions. I’m also impressed by engineers’ discretionary income, which makes them the best bee friends—not only can they design an efficient and ergonomic honey house, but they can afford to build it and stock it with state-of-the-art shiny equipment. Meanwhile, with inflation these days, I can’t even afford to shop for equipment in my daydreams.

My engineer friend designed his own swarm trap and had a local woodworker make forty of them. He plans to place them in trees throughout the countryside. He said if he spent thirty dollars apiece on forty traps—$1,200 in total—he’d only need to catch ten swarms to break even since a swarm has roughly the same value as a three-pound package of bees, which currently costs about $120. I told him I was impressed, that being a former English major, I never knew math could be used like that. “Is that what calculus is for?” I asked.

“No, that’s just arithmetic,” he said.

Beekeeping Blues

January 27, 2016 ~ sanebishop ~ 3 Comments

Well, we lost another hive. It’s a situation I’m becoming all too familiar with. After increasing to eight hives two years ago, we’re now down to three. We lost several hives last winter, one this summer, and one last week. I’m learning a good hive can fail fast.

The pitiful remains of a tiny cluster of bees that froze to death

We had a drought this summer, and that was rough on the bees. No rain equals no nectar equals no honey. Despite feeding sugar syrup, the bees never seemed to build up a large population. I’m sure varroa mites probably played a part. So far, I’ve taken the “head in the sand” approach to varroa, hoping that the tiny mites weren’t there or that our bees, which we caught from swarms, were somehow more resistant than normal bees. But, in my gut, I know varroa is there and playing a part. We had a booming hive last spring that collapsed this summer. That’s a classic varroa sign. And to make matters worst, we not only lost all the bees, but we also lost their comb because wax moths (another pest) destroyed it. A lot of people have had success with the treatment-free approach for varroa, but obviously I’m not doing something right. This year I’m going to monitor mite levels and treat if need be with essentials oils, like thymol, and natural acids, like oxalic acid.

Overall, I just need to do a better job taking care of the bees, from feeding them (sugar and pollen) in times of dearth, to monitoring mite levels, and checking for queen productivity. Natalie is helping me now; she has her own bee suit. Having a second pair of hands while checking hives has made things a lot easier. If the three remaining hives make it, I’m going to try my hand at grafting and raising queens to increase our number of hives again.

It’s disappointing to lose another hive, but hopefully we can learn from it and become better beekeepers. I know it’s no fun to keep losing bees.

The Other 85%

November 1, 2012 ~ sanebishop ~ 4 Comments

Recently, North Carolina’s head apiarist visited our local beekeepers’ meeting. He had a monkish, Mr. Rogers-like calmness about himself, which I suppose is one reason why he’s such a good beekeeper. When examining hives he didn’t wear a protective suit, veil, or gloves. He didn’t seem the least bit afraid.

So far I’ve yet to develop this calm confidence around bees. Although I’ve graduated to glove-less beekeeping, I sometimes shelter my hands in pockets when bees finally take interest in me. Ironically, it’s never the bees that buzz loudly around my body that sting me. These bees are just hoping to irritate me enough that I’ll leave—they’re all bark but no bite. The ones that get me give no warning. They just make a “beeline” to me and thrust their stinger in.

Once stung I usually lose all self-respect and run away flailing and flapping, after which I put gloves back on. When one bee stung the head apiarist, he didn’t even flinch. He just calmly removed the bee and went about his business.

I guess it’s the unpredictability that gets me flustered. A sting doesn’t hurt that bad, but I can’t foresee when one of those suicidal bees will take aim at me. And once one stings me, I become even more worried that I’m about to be popped again. Since I’ve started keeping bees, I’ve been stung three times in five months, and I usually inspect the bees once a week. This means I’ve been stung three times in about twenty inspections. Unfortunately, it’s the 15% I remember, not the 85% in which I’ve escaped unscathed.

Of course, worrying about stings does no good. I’m sure bees can sense fear and anxiety somehow, and I know if I remain calm the bees are more likely to as well. Perhaps one day I’ll develop a Mr. Rogers-like persona around bees, but for now I’m more like Sir Robin in Monty Python: I bravely runaway.

oh honey, honey…

July 10, 2012 ~ sanebishop ~ 4 Comments

We spent a hot, happy July 4th doing something entirely new and different.

This year we extracted honey from two of our three bee hives. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect…beyond getting sticky…but it ended up being a lot of fun.

Stephen began the morning suited up in his bee suit and retrieved two hive supers from hives Barney One and Barney Two. Being terrified of the “Barnies,” I faithfully stayed inside and ate a bowl of cereal and watched an episode of Leave it to Beaver.

We set up our honey extracting operation on the back porch, using a honey extractor from our local agricultural extension office. As Stephen brought in the honey frames, I would cut the wax cappings off of the honey comb.

Two frames at a time are loaded into the extractor, which is turned until all of the honey has been pulled from each side of the honey comb. Extracted honey then pools into the bottom of the extractor where it is allowed to drain into a bucket strainer system.

Wax cappings are left to drain over cheesecloth for the afternoon. Once they are sufficiently drained we will run the extra honey through the bucket strainer and the cappings will be rendered into refined bees wax.

Once the honey has been strained of any impurities (extra pollen, dead bees, and honeycomb) it is ready to be bottled. Stephen attributes the dark color of our honey to the local yellow poplar trees, clover, and sour wood trees that his bees have been frequenting.

As far as taste goes, its good. The honey has a mildly floral scent and a pleasant sweetness. Its not overpowering or sickly – its just nice. And this assessment is coming from someone that doesn’t really like honey all that much.

We spent from nine in the morning until nearly midnight to complete the entire process – but it was time well spent, once again carrying on a Pleasant Hill bee keeping tradition. We did a lot of hard work, had a lot of good fun, and ended the day with a final product that we can be proud of.