christina's world by andrew wyeth

hihat's world this summer near deadwood, south dakota

i wish you could hear the bees!

When I started my hives in Brooklyn I planted a few lavender plants around them in hopes of flavoring my honey.  But Mom said that it would take fields of lavender to affect the taste, and, as far as I know, that really only happens in France.  Even so… I thought I tasted it in my Brooklyn honey anyway.  Perhaps all the lavender in window boxes in New York City add up to one French field?

the zinnias the day before they died

Here in the south, in November, my mother’s zinnias are still blooming! Every time I visit the garden I pick a bunch to take home to Oxford with me.  Last week I saw some familiar faces around the flower beds.  Mom’s honeybees were gathering pollen.

Pollen is the honeybee’s protein. They carry it back to their hive in baskets on their legs, like panniers on a bicycle. It’s a heavy load for a little bee.They combine it with sweet nectars to make brood food for their larvae. This is likely some of the last pollen Mom’s bees will gather this fall, as Dad proclaims tonight will be the first frost.  It’s also a full moon. I’m not sure how much blooms in these parts after a full-mooned frost. Not zinnias.

bees carry pollen on their legs like panniers on a bicycle

We hope the bees have enough pollen, nectar, and honey stored in their hives to survive til the spring. Bees make honey to eat through the the winter when they can’t get the nectar they prefer.

The chef had designed a  cheese course tableau, crowned with raw honeycomb.  Local hihat honeybees happened by, lured in by the string quartet and free champagne no doubt. They must have been shocked by the honeycomb — free for the taking, no guards! At once they kicked off their high heels and got to work robbing the honey. They carried it back to their hive on sticky legs, gave fellow worker bees directions by a waggle dance (probably a Charleston), and before we knew it there were hundreds of bees robbing the honey.

“Is the cheese still ok to eat?” I was asked. “Yes!” I said.

I advised we do nothing, that the bees would go home at dark, and I demonstrated the cheese was ok to eat. I did end up with a bee or two in my hair.  There was one sting (unfortunately it was the chef), but all in all, the wedding was a sweet success.

the man with the thistle-down hair is a magician from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

My bees did not survive the winter. I know they didn’t starve, because I saw there was still honey to be eaten and raw sugar piled on newspaper as emergency ration. I think they were severely weakened by varroa mites, and being from Georgia, just couldn’t hack the sleet and snow and the wicked wind off the East River.

At a NYCBA meeting I saw a Vermont man with thistle-down hair speak about how Italian bees from the bee farms in Georgia just can’t hack it up North. However, I know other Georgian bees survived this year, so I must claim some responsibility for the thousands of deaths within the combs of HiHat Honey. But Italians, in addition to being sensitive to cold, are also vulnerable to varroa mite infestations, which spread across New York this year. If I were doing it again, I would try Minnesota Hygenics or other breeds better suited to the conditions here. I think the best thing you can do when starting a hive is buy nucs from someone in your region.

As my mom says, beekeeping today is harder than ever, with so many pests, diseases, and pesticides to contend with. But the honey is still sweet and the stings few and far between.

I am not starting another hive until next spring, in Oxford, Mississippi, where I am moving for graduate school. There my bees will flourish among bottle-tree orchards and Faulkner’s honeysuckle. Until then, this blog will explore apiaries and pollination from Brooklyn to Bolinas, as oy vey! — I depart the city soon for a cross-country road trip.

design by miss kate smaby

How impish of me to make you wait to see the golden bounty of this year’s crop! Earlier this fall, I robbed two frames, as described here. I was giddy with excitement when I brought the frames home, and quickly laid out by an overdose of sweetness. It became clear that the stuff was too potent to devour by the spoonful, comb and all, so I decided to bottle it for tea and crumpets to come. I had about ten pounds to work with, which is a light load, but not bad for a hive’s first year.  If all goes well, next year could yield sixty or eighty pounds! Then we will really be in business.

I extracted by cutting out comb from the frame, and setting on cheese cloth, so the honey would drip through without the wax. The wax is edible too, but I don’t like it in my tea.

cheesecloth method of extracting one frame at a time

It was with great pleasure that I surprised my Mom with some HiHat Honey

And then my uncles, my grandparents…and everybody who has come to my home or office since.  I’ve heard the honey described as “leafy,” “like kale,” “like lavender and basil,” “from herb garden window boxes,”  and “very interesting.” It is translucent, with a goldilocks palette, which means it was made by nectar gathered in the spring.

the total harvest was about ten of these

plenty of honey for tea time

Harriet's apiary in Como Mississippi

Here lies my apiary in a wood. The hives resemble headstones now that the bees have abandoned them.

This grove of white oaks, dogwood, magnolia and holly  in Como, Mississippi was an apiary once before in the 1970′s. Then it was my favorite, in the shade of a line of cedars and next to the sheep shed.

This spring I started these bees from four nucs. Nucs are a few frames with a laying queen; they give you a little head start compared to package bees, which can’t begin laying until after they are released from the shipping container.

But, what  happened to my apiary over the summer? I know that at least one of the hives swarmed because it was witnessed flying by the silo that stores cotton seed. The remaining bees aren’t strong enough to last the winter.  Was it beetles that came in with the nucs, or the mysterious colony collapse disorder? Twenty-first century beekeeping is more difficult than it was in the 70′s,  that is certain.

However, we beekeepers must carry on because there are so few wild hives.  In the 1980′s when the girls were small, I would spend evenings upstairs with the windows open and bees coming in the screens attracted by our reading light.  We would have to be quick with Peter Rabbit or James and the Giant Peach to avoid the frantic buzzing and possible sting.  Upstairs is quiet now. The children are in Charlottesville, Concord and Brooklyn.  The grove is crunchy with falling leaves and winter coming, but I will look forward to new swarms in the spring.

Woody and Harriet in Como

Harriet's foxhole

Dad and Charlie, of the Armadillo Athletic Association, in the era of Harriet's Honey

sketch of the inspiration for Mom's honey jars in Mom's business records

The attached card reads:

My bees made the light honey from the first blooms of spring — honey locust, wild roses and clover. The rich, dark honey comes from late summer and fall blooms– cotton, butterfly weed and goldenrod.

some HH deliveries came in boxes built by my great-grandfather, Snowden Boyle

other HH deliveries came packed in straw and our hometown cash crop, cotton

In the drawing, you can see Harriet  in her bee suit in front of skeps,  or oldtime wicker beehives. In the 1970s, Mom scattered about one hundred hives across backyards and pastures around Memphis. She did a lot of business by mail order with packages like these.

The label was drawn by her friend Cecil Humphreys, a bronze sculptor. Cecil’s depiction of Mom was the inspiration for my HiHat Honey labels… which are coming soon in the next post.

look at the yellow field in bloom! these bees eat high on the hog

Oh, what a treat it was to do a hive inspection with my grandfather Dan and my mom Harriet! I’ve been inspecting my hives either on my own, or with other novices (like my cousin-apprentice Robert Snowden) in Brooklyn, and I always wonder if I am identifying cells and problems correctly. Not to mention wondering how much I miss.

Early in September, Mom and Dan and I drove over to visit our friend Dick and his apiary near the Sprague Grange Hall in Cape Elizabeth.  Dick is fairly new to beekeeping (if you consider a dozen or more years new), and he tolerated the experts’ visit with patience.

my beekeeping mentors: grandfather Dan and momma Harriet

starting the smoker with dried pine needles that Dan brought in his pockets

dan with a mosquito net get-up as a veil

Dick caught a swarm earlier in the summer and installed them down the way from these three hives. He didn’t think they had developed a queen and was concerned for the swarm’s survival, especially since fall was closing in. He had been taking brood-filled frames from his strong hives over to the newer one, so that bees would continue to be born in the new hive even though there wasn’t a queen laying eggs. I thought that was a pretty creative solution, but not sure if there are hidden problems in that method. Does anybody know?

queen cells

So we took a brood-filled frame down to the swarm’s hive, opened it up, and we saw that there was evidence of plenty of queen cells, which meant that the worker bees had been attempting to make a queen.

All workers are females, but usually they don’t lay eggs — that’s the queen’s job.When a hive loses a queen, the workers want to make another so that the hive population does not die out.   In these desperate situations  a worker can turn into a laying worker to lay eggs to be turned into queens.

Any egg laid can be turned into a queen — it must be fed royal jelly, and royal jelly only, for its entire development period in the cell,  and then for its whole life. Royal jelly, secreted from the worker bees’ glands, is like the silver spoon in a democratic society.

If multiple queen cells are developing simultaneously, the queen who emerges first sticks her stinger into the other queen cells, murdering her sister-wives. If two queens emerge at the same time, they fight to the death. That, my friends,  is how a wily, queen-less hive copes and adapts to create a new queen.

you know you're looking at a queen when you see a long, narrow body

It looked like some queens must have emerged from the queen cells in this swarm’s hive,  and Mom took a quick look around and spotted a queen.  She must have either killed the other queens in a battle, or by some other Darwinian feat ended up on top. It was lovely to see her — problem solved, for the time being.

beekeepers make good swimmers:Dad, Dick, another Dick. (not pictured:me)

lucy's interest was piqued at the top of the driveway

That tall hive on posts (seen below) is called a top-bar hive. It’s a leggier alternative to the Langstroth hives that I have. I’d be interested to see what this beekeeper thought of it since he has both kinds — the painted ones in the background are Langstroth. Top-bars are simpler and cheaper than the stacked supers that I have. I see this beekeeper has put his Langstroth hives on platforms made of wooden planks on cement blocks — this is to keep out rodents and to make inspections easier on the beekeeper’s back.

this new hampshire man will be at the polls in boscawen, nh at the primaries tomorrow

On the beekeeper’s biography Lucy writes, “Well he took up beekeeping when he retired 17 years ago. He has a collie / hound who rides around in the passenger seat of his VW Passat while they drive in the back yard, where he has constructed his own driving range…strictly for pitching wedge shots. Beyond the pitching wedge is the apiary.

Lucy continues, “He did invite me to a spaghetti dinner at the old home day in danbury, nh, but it was about 9:30 am and I still had a parade to march in and a new found lake to swim in.”

Below, you can see an electric fence used to keep bears away. Bears robbing honey is not just the stuff of cartoons. While not a threat in my Brooklyn apiary, they can be big problems for rural and suburban hives. Remember that bear in NJ who kept coming back to Tony Soprano’s backyard hive? Hmm.  If they stick a paw in that comb once, you’ll never be able to keep them away.

bear fence / wouldn't they just love to get their paws in those hives!

Lucy writes, “He made me touch the electric wire and then explained that because I was standing on my rubber-insulated shoes I didn’t get electrocuted. But if I was not wearing shoes, as bears don’t, I would have been very hurt and not messed with that wire again. He said his cat touched the wire once and didn’t die, but was really hurt, and he laughed as he told the story.”

Yikes. I am glad little Lucy was wearing her Nike Eclipses that day.  She’s right — I have never seen a bear wearing that sort of rubber-insulated shoes.

The Russian beekeeper whose hive is robbed in the video clearly did not have domestic security at the top of his agenda, like Lucy’s NH Republican. Just teasing you, Lucy.

this beekeeper turns to crafting civil war miniatures in the winter, a natural progression

lucy prefers to campaign in a cape