Plain Talk: The Fallen Hive (186)

Episode 186 – Plain Talk: The Fallen Hive

Jim Tew: Honey Bee Obscura listeners. I'm on 77 South. Just came out of rural Wayne County, Ohio, through some Amish areas. Nice summer growth. Here with my friend Bob Romig. We're headed south to see what happened to a beehive that I have got that's about 40 miles, 50 miles from me. Well, 50 minutes. Something happened. Either a bear got it or it's been vandalized. It happened quite a while ago, so we're going to go down and have a look at it. Bob's agreed to drive. Nice day to go work a busted hive.

Hi, I'm Jim Tew. I come to you once a week at Honey Bee Obscura, where we talk about anything and everything beekeeping. Right now my associate and my driver is Bob Romick, who's also a beekeeper, fellow university retiree and also a veteran. We're having a good Thursday afternoon. Say hi, Bob.

Bob: Hi.

Jim: That's about all you'll get from Bob. He's having to concentrate on his driving. Hang on, we're going to see what happens with this hive. I'll check in and keep you informed.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: We just came through here in Gnedanhutten, Ohio. Am I pronouncing that correctly?

Bob: Gnedanhutten.

Jim: Gnedanhutten, not even close. Uhrichsville, Newcomerstown, I did okay on that. We're turning onto the path that goes back to Bob's hunting lodge. Back down the road here, it's on a reclaimed land that was strip mined years ago, so it's forested now. We're easing down the road. A lot of deer back here, a lot of wildlife. There's alfalfa growing, but it's not in bloom. Just so you know, it's a narrow lane. Turning back into the forest. Shaded, dark, sunlight breaking through. Up a little knoll. It's hilly back here. Good to have four-wheel drive. The multiflora rose. Sticky vines. One more turn here by a copse of pine trees. No sign of my bees. They're going up there, aren't they?

Bob: They're running along in here somewhere.

Jim: Oh, so they've really been moved. I thought they were up here.

Bob: No. I don't know where.

Jim: Should we get out here?

Bob: They're around here somewhere.

Jim: This is not where I put them off. I put them off up there at the next tree. All right. Hang on, listeners. I don't like this part of this. Yes. Well, here they are and there's still bees coming and going, and it's actually decent flight. Let me get set up. Honestly, listeners, part of me was going to be okay with these bees being dead so we could clean this up and be gone, but no, there's a lot of bees in there. Stand by. Listeners, I'm going to see if I can do two things at once. I'm going to light a smoker. My hypothesis is that this was not bears, that this was wind, and I'll bet you that top deep, there's three deeps. I bet you the top deep's full of honey, but I'm just guessing.

I'm suspecting that the wind came by, because we've had wind, and blew everything down, blew it over. Bees are in it. I'll take a full smoker. They're going to be real happy to see me here. Got to get it going because this is going to take some smoke here, folks. The flow is pretty much over. These bees are not going to be real eager to help me do anything to them even though I promise I'm just trying to help. I guess the bees could argue that most of this is my fault, anyway, for setting the colony up in such a way that it would blow over. All right. I sound like I've only got one lung. A lot of brambles. I've got to cut down some of the weeds to get to it.

It does speak to the bees' resiliency that they're able to function inside this hive on its side. I had a ratchet strap on it and it kept the hive together. I'm going to suit up. This is not regular bee work. This is very irregular bee work. You don't really know what you're going to get into until you're into it, so I suit up, of course. You know what I'm thinking about, for those who've heard the story about the survivor hive? Got my mind on that hive again. Hive tool over in the bucket and I'll move over here, see how I'm going to deal with this. Going to keep really shooting the smoke to them.

Set the hive stand back up. I've got to cut down some of the brambles and growth. They sprung up in the interval. All right, this is not as easy as it looks like. I'm glad there's no video here. The thing I don't quite know what to do with is I've got to turn the colony over to get to the strap. This is going to be an adventure. [unintelligible 00:08:48] heavy. Whoa. That's going to be a good beehive. Keep adding smoke to it. I took the strap off, the top fell off. There's ants on the side. We'll see if I can get this top deep off. It is really propolised on. I wrote about this colony. They're a very aggressive colony that got moved all the way from Worcester down to here because it was so hard to get along with in my backyard. There's the top deep. Just like I thought. That was heavy. I'm having to really work to keep these bees under control. The frame's all hanging at an angle. I've got to tell you, we're just going to leave them that way. Oh, that's heavy.

[music]

Betterbee: Just a quick reminder, Varroa mites might be lurking on your bees, even if you can't see them. Protecting your colonies means actively combating these mites, the leading because of colony death. The good news? There are plenty of natural methods and treatments available to keep those mite counts in check. Learn about different monitoring techniques at betterbee.com/mites.

Jim: Okay, I'm back. Under these conditions, listeners, you can't use too much smoke. Here's the interesting thing. Let's see if I can actually get a picture of it. There's a swarm cell that's in the side position. When the colony was laying sideways, the bees built a swarm cell. Now, my job is to get the next deep picked up, which I hope is a little bit lighter. No, it's no lighter. I can't lie to you, this is work. Is this enjoyable? Yes, it's enjoyable in a strange way, because it's unique. It shows me the perseverance of the bees. I've got to smoke these back down on the top before I put this top deep back on. All this heavy breathing that I'm doing, that just angers the bees even more. Bob, what do you think? You've been real quiet.

Bob: I have been.

Jim: He's saying it from about 200 yards away, which makes his voice the least bit weak. Bob, this hive stand is not right. Something is bent.

Bob: ...see it?

Jim: It's still leaning the wrong way. I'm going to leave it. I'm taking a picture to show you how I'm leaving it. Okay, I'm going to stop. I'm going to take a break and see if I can get some of these stingers out of me. I'll talk to you in just a minute. All right, I'm back in the car. It is hot as blazes, humid. We got them set back up, but that hive stand, it's damaged. When all that weight flipped over on one side, it folded the legs off a dead square. I don't know, in a perfect world, maybe my grandson and I will come back down and set that thing up on a new hive stand. Maybe I'll just leave it. Since they were doing very well with swarm cells inside a hive laying over on one side, I think they could withstand a fall again.

This time they don't have the ratchet strap on, so I'm sure the hive would bust apart when it falls over. I've got to come back. I've got to come back. When I do, of course, I'll bring you with me.

Bob: Well, I look forward to it.

Jim: [chuckles] I'll bring Bob, too. He enjoys driving down here and watching a man take a spanking from his beehive. All right, I may or may not check back in. I'm getting an alarm to hook up my seatbelt. We're doing five miles an hour, but I still need to have a seatbelt on. I may check back in, or I just may tell you bye here at this point and let you know if we got home okay. Let me see if this sound worked out. I hope it did. Hey, thanks for coming along and watching as a world-class bad beekeeper tried to correct some of his mistakes. This is Jim and my good buddy Bob on the road in the forest telling you bye.

Oh, listeners, I'm back home. As much as I'm going to recover, I've long since recovered. That was in the middle of actual bee yard capers. You never really know how things are going to unfold. I try to take you with me every chance I get. You literally need to have three, maybe as many as five hands. You need to work bees. That takes two full hands and major body parts. You've got to keep the recorder close by so it picks up the sounds, because if you try to put microphones on, then they scrub and drag and make all kind of racket. Then to add insult to injury, you've got to have a camera, still camera or a video camera. It's impossible to find friends. I am literally a one-man band.

That's the setting. This beehive was penalized. It was really ugly in my backyard and was stinging me. I found out it was stinging my neighbors. I moved that hive all the way down to my friend's hunting cottage. Remote, isolated, where I could change the queen and get that colony under control. Others have asked, why didn't you just requeen the colony? Think about it. I've got a colony that's stinging everything in sight. It's going to really annoy that hive for me to open it up and dig through and find the queen and then to replace that queen. All that's going to take weeks. All that time, they're going to be stinging people. It got moved. By getting moved, of course, it got forgotten.

My friend Bob came in one day and said, "That hive is over on the ground." I've had bears down there before. Talked about it, wrote about it. It's unusual for that area. I've had issues, some health issues in my family that really overrode any distance bee work. If the colony can make it, great. If the colony can't make it, that'll be okay too. I finally had a date with everybody sitting and whatever, that I could go down to this beehive and get it set up. It was on its side. If you take a comb in your hand, a frame, and just throw it on the ground, that would be the orientation of all the frames inside the colony.

I was thinking when I saw what was happening that colony can't function that way. Indeed, it was functioning. It just opened yet another plethora of questions for how do the bees do that? How do the bees do that? How do they make their life work when the comb is completely oriented in the wrong direction? I got it set back up. As I speculated, it seemed to have been a top-heavy hive on a weakened hive stand. The top-heavy hive took a wind blast and blew it over. Then by the time I got there, it had been down so long, there was a bit of growth around it. The universal ants had come in and taken over that too. It was just a typical situation.

A lot of smoke, a lot of weight. It's a one-man show. It's my mess. Either you pull frames out individually or you pick up boxes. It's not an easy task. There's no equipment you can buy. Nothing like that. Nothing like that. I got it set back up on that same hive stand. It's going to fall again. I faced the hive stand in a different direction. It's going to fall again. Right now is a holiday weekend coming up. I've got to coordinate again with my friend Bob to go back down there. I've got to get a truck that will run and all kind of things, but I will get back to it. It has done an excellent job.

It does have me thinking about how in the world can those bees live in combs that is completely oriented in the wrong direction? Were they, in fact, just going to ride it out, see if they could get through the upcoming winter, and then abscond or swarm next year? I don't know. Here's the bottom line. Bees can live and apparently function with their combs that is completely oriented in the wrong direction. I guess they've had to learn to do that from their trees blowing down. I don't know. Right now the colony looks good. It's an aggressive colony. It was really wanting to survive. The last time I saw it had some surplus honey on it that it'll probably get to keep.

I'll go back, I promise. As soon as I can get back and get my schedule back in order, and I'll get a proper hive stand under it. I appreciate you going along, and thank you for listening to my debacles. This is Jim telling you bye.

[00:20:30] [END OF AUDIO]