Taro & Ti Bees

A while back a co-worker notified me of a lightning damaged tree that had bees in it. The city had tried to remove the tree by pulling it over, and the top split off down the side, exposing the hive. Needless to say, they scooted out of there pronto. I’m sure they were planning on coming back with some poison later, so this became a rescue operation, as are most cutouts.

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Putting together frames is actually a pretty simple thing, but if you’re doing a lot of them, it helps to have a jig of sorts. There’s a great design for a frame jig over at BeeSource.com but I had a cutout very soon, not a lot of fancy wood-working tools and just some scrap wood to work with and not the time to mull over it so I simplified it a bit for my current project.

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Most of the routine work involved with bee-keeping seems to be inspecting. Going out periodically and giving the combs a good gander. Is the queen laying? Is the laying pattern consistent? Are there queen cells? Drone cells? Are there honey and pollen being stored. Are there any bees with malformed wings – an indicator of mites? How crowded are the brood-combs and do they need more space? Are the bees drawing new comb? Is that new comb straight and orderly? Does the comb need to be separated from the sides or need to be straightened? And the questions seem to continue.

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Since the cutout, I left the bees pretty much alone. It’s been a week and they’ve been busy foraging. It’s strange to conceptualize the thousands of bees inside that box and only see a few bees coming and going as they forage. I’m not seeing a lot of pollen coming in – perhaps they bring that in later on in the evening. Nevertheless, duties await me – I need to see their progress on connecting the combs to the top-bars, clear any comb-work that doesn’t belong like wall attachments, tie up some scrap comb for them and just give them a good gander.

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Having my own honeybees has been a desire of mine for years – decades even. I can eat honey all day long, and there’s just something about having a honey-factory out back that seems like a touch of magic. Empty it one day, come back in a few weeks and lookee – more honey! These bees are tireless and work constantly building up honey stores, pollen stores and tending their babies. All I have to do is give them a home and a nice location where flowers and water are easily accessible.

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