It's good to be Queen

Instead of holing up inside knitting the collar for that little sweater (on size THREES, people), I took advantage of the mild and pretty day to stir up the bees a bit. I've been reading back copies of a beekeeping journal, and getting a little worried that I hadn't been managing their mites very well. The last thing I wanted to do was have the death of 60,000 or so of my pets on my hands. . .

I figure I can avoid questions such as "Just how are you planning to knit that sweater this month, young lady?" and "Why haven't you set up the Sweater a Month KAL faster/better/why am I not on the sidebar yet/do you even read your email?" by posting a photo-heavy distracting bee tour!

Among other clues, one reason I know I'm not a real beekeeper is that I can't keep my smoker lit. There is special fuel that burns and smokes for hours, but I don't need hours of smoke -- just minutes. Beekeepers talk about grabbing some leaves, lighting them up, and off they go. I painstakingly gathered bags of dried eucalyptus leaves during last fall's soccer season (just another way I distinguish myself from the normal other soccer parents) because they're so oily they're supposed to be good smoker fuel.


Mine go out every 2-3 minutes. It got so bad that Thing 1 had to bring out a lit candle and periodically brave the bees to relight it for me. She's a trooper!

Those bees looked pretty great, actually. Four very full frames of capped honey -- more than enough to see them through any winter we might have.

No drone brood, or very little, which is good, since cold weather is no time for loafing males who do no work yet consume food. Ahem.

As I was replacing some of the frames, I hadn't put them at what is the preferred spacing -- bees are big fans of the "not too close, not too far" approach, or something called "bee space." When I looked in, the bees were making a chain of their bodies (this, alas, isn't a great picture -- I took it while wearing my veil. The good ones Thing 1 took with a clear face). They do this when they're going to fill up a too big space with honey comb. It kind of looks like a bucket brigade, but I think it's more a wax brigade.


I even saw my favorite sight, the good mother of them all.

See the big, pointy red/brown bee in the middle of the top of the frame? That's her. Every time I see her I get jazzed all over again. That's probably another clue I'm not "real" -- although I'd rather be an amateur and get excited over her.

Her children may be planning for a future that doesn't include her, however, as I think that peanutty-shaped thing is what's called a "swarm cell."

That happens when some workers decide, for whatever reason, to feed one of the babies a mix of pollen and honey and some goop from their pharyngeal glands. That baby then develops into a queen. She'll either swarm away with other workers to form a new hive or kill the existing queen and install herself. This is a decision I'm going to let them make for themselves.

So now my children would like me to feed them, although not from a gland in my head, and I'd like to get that knitting done. Maybe onion soup and corn bread will buy me some knitting time later.