::Pssst:: Wanna be my apprentice?

I'm pleased as punch that YOU (yes, you!) are among the very first to know about BAABA: the Big Apple Apiary Beekeeping Apprenticeship.

What the heck is that?

Lemme tell you: The clever young men and women at the Brooklyn Grange and I have secured a roof in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to host a few dozen hives, most of which will be dedicated to helping new volunteer beekeepers get the hands-on experience they'll need to become WICKED SWEET beekeepers. And YOU can apply for a spot!

Here's the full description of the program, and how to apply. And hop to it, we're reading applications as they come in!

Big Apple Apiary Beekeeping Apprenticeship

Brand new rooftop apiary seeks 12 volunteer beekeeping apprentices for the 2012 bee season (April through October or November). Working in small teams, our apprentices will gain hands-on experience in both basic and advanced beekeeping techniques, with a focus on treatment-free and organic beekeeping, and have the opportunity to pay it forward and mentor next year’s students.

About
This 20 hive apiary – poised on an expansive rooftop in the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard – will play host to NYC’s first hands-on beekeeping training program. Through education and outreach we aim to foster an inclusive community of new beekeepers and arm them with the tools they need to play an active role of the long-term sustainability of our city. The apiary is a joint project of Brooklyn Grange Farm and Timothy O’Neal of Borough Bees.

Benefits & Responsibilities
Our apprenticeship program is structured to give you all the first-hand knowledge you need to start a beehive of your own on your roof, community garden, or backyard. We will provide teams of two to three apprentices with several beehives, beekeeping equipment, basic safety gear, and close guidance through a season of hive management in a small group setting. Our goal is to give you the training you need to apply your knowledge independently by the end of the season, and leave prepared to be a mentor to new beekeepers next year. We’ll also arrange for a few field trips and special guests throughout the season to welcome you into the greater beekeeping community in New York City and beyond.

Apprentices will work directly with experienced beekeepers and gain hands-on experience that covers the gamut of beekeeping tasks: basic hive inspections, pest identification and management, swarm prevention, requeening, combining and splitting hives, and honey harvesting. You’ll also learn about more advanced techniques like cell size regression, queen breeding, and managing top-bar colonies.

Apprentices are required to devote an average of 3-4 weekend hours per week to the maintenance of their hives. On a typical weekend the instructor will give a quick, hands-on lesson (30-60min) using a demonstration hive on what to look out for at that point in the season, at which point apprentices will break into small teams to inspect their own hives under supervision from the instructor. Teams are responsible for maintaining close records of hive conditions and manipulations. Some heavy lifting required, must be able to climb 4 flights of stairs and work in all weather.

Who We’re Looking For
This is not a beekeeping 101 course; ideal candidates will be able to demonstrate some degree of knowledge, but hands-on experience isn’t necessary. We’re a brand-new program so we need people with a sense of humor, patience, and a willingness to help us find ways to improve as we go!

Benefits
In addition to the valuable hands-on training using provided equipment, we may be able to provide starter bee colonies to apprentices who successfully complete the whole program, to start their own hives next year. Students will get a portion of the honey harvest - but be aware that first-year hives sometimes produce little or no harvestable honey. This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone who’s interested in getting started managing their own bees and giving back to the larger community.

How to Apply
Please respond to bigappleapiary@gmail.com no later than March 21st with an email telling us about yourself and your interest in the apprenticeship. We will be reviewing applications as they are received. No resume necessary, creative applications encouraged.

We encourage teams of two to three to apply together. Those who do not apply in teams will be paired with other selected applicants. Youth, members of under-served communities, and people from diverse backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

Applicants who will be available during the work week, or with an interest in queen breeding and genetics will be given special consideration.

You could spend your time like this!

Well, this is probably a bit more accurate.

Or this.

Or this.  Bees errywhere.
Oh.
Yes.

THIS COULD BE YOU!

Hive Check: October

Now that spring has sprung and summer has past, the hives I started this year are preparing to go into their first winter. Fall is the crucible of any new hive; a test of their ability to stand on their own six feet and survive. Once the queen breaks her brood cycle and stops laying for winter, the bees are more or less on their own. As a beekeeper, you can keep on jamming in some extra feed and ensure that they won't starve, but the most important factor is the basic health of the bees themselves.

Bees are getting testy and I've started to wear a veil again.
Image c2011, James Barilla

Smoking down Hive #2 while Alex Brown works his magic.
Image c2011, James Barilla

The health of any hive is a mixing pot of a huge number of factors; genetics, location, food quality, food quantity, mite load, climate, and more. You can make an educated guess as to the status of many of these, but it is only a guess and sometimes bees defy your best intentions and die anyways. It's a gamble, and it's one that all beekeepers have to accept.

Beekeeping in the fall is all about trying to maximize the overall health of the colony in any way you can and minimizing any disruption of the hive activity. The bees have their proverbial proboscises to the grindstone and the less you interrupt them the better. At this point in the year, I'm doing a hive check every 2-3 weeks and even those are cursory.

Got food? Check.
Got brood? Check.
DONE.
Close 'em up.

Chillin out, maxin, relaxing all cool,
And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

When a couple of guys who were up to no good
Started making trouble in my neighborhood.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

Not only do the bees have to scrounge up any last bit of nectar and pollen left to store away for winter, they have to combat dropping temperatures to keep their remaining brood warm and viable so that the colony has a fresh generation of the young winter (or 'fat') bees needed to keep the hive viable until spring. These 'fat' bees now being born will never forage for nectar or pollen. Their sole purpose in the hive is to maintain the temperature of the cluster throughout the winter and create enough heat (95F!) for the hive to begin raising new bees as early as February.

To this end, the physiology of young workers born in the late fall is adjusted to maximize their usefulness as heater bees and nurse bees, as well as their long term survivability. These winter bees have more fat bodies (hence the term 'fat bees'), more sugar and fat in their haemolymph (blood), enlarged brood food glands, and lower hormone levels. These physical changes combined with the behavioral changes resulting from cold temperatures result in a lifespan measured in months rather than weeks. Winter bees tend to live about 6 months, and winter workers up to 12 months old have been observed. Summer bees work themselves to death in an average of 6 WEEKS.

Most first year hives have to be provided with additional food to help them build up the stores required for winter, and mine are no exception. I didn't harvest any honey from these colonies this year and Hive #1, headed by the Brooklyn Queen "Esmeralda", looks to be in fine shape for the winter. The top hive body is full of freshly capped honey, there is a nice ring of pollen around the broodnest, and Esmeralda has drastically curtailed her brood laying activity. This is a good sign- it means that the bees have recognized that winter is coming and that they can't afford to maintain an excess population.

Full of honey, each of these frames weighs over 10lbs.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

A hive of Italian bees require up to 100lbs of honey to make it through the winter.
To put it in perspective, at NYC honey prices, they'll eat $3000 worth of honey by the spring.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

They'll need pollen to raise new brood in the Spring and it looks as if they have it.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

Throughout October, I've watched the broodnest slowly shrink from an area the size of a basketball, down to approximately half the volume. Still, a little extra food never hurt, so I've provided them with a little extra thick (2:1) sugar syrup and fresh pollen patties.

Itty bitty brood nest, but nice and solid with a ring of eggs and young larvae.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

I'm gonna submit this to Mike and Tom Eat Snacks.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

Hive #2, headed by the Georgia package queen "Lazing", remains where it has been all year- lagging behind its sister. Despite having been fed significantly more than Hive #1, they have drawn significantly less comb. This is probably due to poor genetics and I am not really expecting them to survive the winter. Still, I'll do my best and force feed them as much as possible, just to hedge my bets. I can't do anything about their cruddy genetics at this point in the season, but at the very least I can make sure that they won't die of starvation.

Lazing?  More like lazy.  Outermost frame of Hive #2.
Emily is sad.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

A bit better.  Frame #2.
Emily is comme ci, comme ça.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

Covered in bees!  Hooray!  Now we just need to fill it with food for the winter.
Emily is happy!
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

Dying light.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

This recent spate of warm weather has been extremely helpful, allowing me to make some last minute adjustments to the internal arrangements and dig in to the hive further than I might otherwise for fear of chilling the brood, but it will be over soon and I'll have to winterize the hives soon.

Beautiful white cappings on their winter stores.
Image c2011, BoroughBees.com

But that's for another post...

The Aftermath

I am happy to report that all of the hives, including the ones living at the Added Value Farm in Red Hook, survived with no damage or flooding! As a reminder, here is how I prepped my hives for the oncoming hurricane.

First view of the farm Sunday morning.  Everything is standing!

Hives still secure and I don't see any water marks.  I removed the cinder blocks myself.

Bees!  Real live bees!  Flying!

We all got really lucky with this one, at least in the city. It could have been much worse. I was more or less resigned to losing some hives to flooding in low lying areas, but it seems that the seawalls held back the worst of it. Parts of the farm are under a couple of inches of water, but compared to the damage done by the tornado last year, I think that the bees (and the farm itself) will bounce back!

Standing water on the farm.  The pumpkins are still there!

So is the greenhouse!

Hooray!

Hives in Fort Greene hunkered down.  Tomato plants in the back looking pretty torn up.

Moving the hives back to their previous location and out of the  standing water on the roof.

There was also some excitement near my apiary location in Fort Greene. The storm had broken open a tree containing a large, healthy, feral bee colony in the south-east corner of the park. Since I was in the neighborhood to check on my hives anyways, I stopped by to lend a hand and watch. I didn't want the bees, I just wanted to see them get rescued. When I arrived, a couple of new beekeepers from the NYC Beekeeping Group and Andrew Cote of the NYC Beekeepers Association were already there and trying to figure out how to get at the bees and salvage the hive.

Majority of the hive up in the tree.  Healthy looking, 6-7 combs!

The bits of comb that fell with the branch.

One of the NYC Beekeeping Group members smoking the fallen section prior to cutting out the comb.

A small part of the hive had been pulled down with the fallen branch, but the vast majority of it remained 20-30 feet up in the tree. It was too high and windy to climb, so Andrew ended up calling Tony, the official beekeeper and bee-rescuer of the NYPD. Tony brought in the big toys; a cherry picker, chainsaw, rope, and more. Using the cherry picker, he cut the damaged branch containing the hive away from the tree and gently lowered it to the ground. He did a amazing job of it. I guess after 30 something years of keeping bees, he knows what he's doing.

Tony and his toys.

Lowering the hive to the ground.  Notice that the hive is wrapped with breathable cloth to prevent the bees from flying off.

Done!  Now on to their new home.

He and Cote sent the bagged hive home with the NYC Beekeeping Group members, who plan to combine with an existing hive that hadn't been doing well. Hopefully, with plenty of feeding, the combined hives will be able to make it through the winter!

After 5-6 hours of hive rescuing, we were treated with some dramatic lighting.

Ghosts! Hive Check: Week 12

This week I took the hive check slow and easy so a film crew could capture the action. Which means my second solo hive check was caught on film. It wasn’t always a pretty picture but we got it done!

The day got off to a slow start. A miscommunication about equipment left me with 20 minutes to find a stand-in smoker and all of my bee people were out of town or not picking up the phone. So I did what anyone would have done—I went up to Eagle Street Farm, transplanted purple basil seedlings while waiting for Annie to get back to open farm day on the roof, and got Meg’s OK to borrow their spare. Added bonus, Annie uses dried herbs for fuel so I bought a packet of tarragon and sage from the farmstand and fired up the smoke gun with Brooklyn’s finest herbs de provence. Lucky bees.

Made it to the roof but with no jacket and no hive tool (Word to the wise: sharing equipment is awesome until it’s not. If you’re jointly managing hives, git your own gear) but since the bees were pleasant and hadn’t left any propolis to speak of, I had no problem pulling the frames out bare-fingered.

Hive #1 held no surprises. The recent super is being drawn out nicely, almost to the external frames. The brood pattern is incredibly tight although I didn’t see as many babies in the center frames as one might want. This hive (Tim’s hive) continues to create wonky, bumpy, psychedelic wax-- unlike the precise, pristine, craftsmanly comb that hive #2 (my hive) draws out. If dog owners and their pets grow to take on each other’s traits, the same seemingly holds true for beekeepers.

There wasn’t much need to go into the bottom super, and the hive had already been open a long time to give the filmmakers a chance to shoot closeups, so I left it alone. But ladies, really. Stop building brace comb in the feeder. There’s a nectar and pollen dearth. Don’t cut yourself off from your food!

Didn't manage to get a good pic of the tight brood pattern but here's one of the penultimate external frame, which is mostly nectar/sugar water.

Before we move to hive #2 I have an announcement. I have settled on a name for the hive and the queen.

Literal, glam-rock loving woman that I am, this hive shall be known as Queen.

God save Freddie Mercury

Since their first album was eponymous and the second was Queen 2, I’ll either keep numbering them ad infinitum or name the third “Sheer Heart Attack.” The queens themselves will take the names of songs, because with long names they’ll sound like racehorses. This queen is now known as Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon. For one, we do a lot of Sunday inspections. Two, were this queen human she’d be a quaintrelle; interested in a life of leisure and cultivation of an aristocratic lifestyle although being solidly middle-class. Perfect embodiment of the song! And I like to imagine her bicycling, waltzing to the zoo, painting in the Louvre, and doing all the other things the dandy does in the song.

So how is Queen Lazing doing? Well, predictably. These ladies haven’t made many inroads to building up into the top super, or building out in the bottom super. I did see her, and many of her little eggs, but the eggs were in a spotty, devil-may-care pattern. The brood pattern was weak too, in the top and bottom supers both. Oh Queen. Where’s the energy? Where’s the passion?

Nothing to see here

But beyond that I got a nasty surprise looking at frame 7 of the top super. Ghost bees! A small cluster of fully developed bee babies were stuck in their cells, nearly-completely uncapped, white as sheets. It wasn’t a dusting of white—they were white to the bone. Er, exoskeleton.

I ain't afraid o no ghosts.

See 'em?

What would cause this? The phenomenon is known as “bald brood” which is a blanket term for a lot of things that could go wrong. Here’s my email to TimO after doing some looking into it.

ooookay! I looked through a lot of sources and given what I observed I do believe it's early stages of wax moth infestation. that's based on:


-- localized occurrence that we hadn't seen before till now. if it's behavioral or genetic why would it be in only one area, and take so long to appear?
-- wax moths usually come in from the top (so good prevention is a top screen) and occur when the bees have too many supers to adequately monitor. that's not unreasonable given the slow comb drawing of hive 2.


the good news:
-- i didn't see more than this patch. no evidence of destroyed comb or spiderwebby moth larvae. it's probably either in its early stage or the bees will take care of it soon. but i'd rather err on the side of early intervention rather than waiting to see


available treatments:
-- deweb, remove ghost brood, freeze for 2 weeks. Recommendation: pain in the ass, my freezer is tiny, i don't buy it.
-- certan (aka b401). it's basically what organic farmers use as an alternative to chemical insecticide. it's just concentrated bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which is as you no doubt are aware is one of the more common things to put into a GMO (so the plant produces its own insecticide) but in natural form it's quite harmless. Will not hurt the bees, the applicator (i.e. us) or the environment. Recommendation: Ask Kirk Anderson if it's really as benign as people say it is, and get it on there asap. Mabye one of our friends in brooklyn has some they'll give us if we replace it so we can get it on there asap instead of waiting for a delivery from BeeWorks in Canada. I'll gladly foot the $23 canadian dollars
-- ParcidiChlorBenzene. AAAAGH! RUN AWAY!
-- additional precaution: make a moth bait. exactly like a fruit fly bait. put it over in one of the corners of the roof a little away from the hives. water, vinegar, sugar, banana in a 2-liter soda bottle with a hole up near the neck. to help make sure the infestation doesn't spread. and if we catch moths we'll have a positive ID that there are moths in the vicinity. Will also lessen moth population to avoid spreading into other hive.
-- consider sanitizing equipment when moving between hive 1 and 2 (or just always do hive 1 first). consider sanitizing equipment before going to Added Value.

Tim texts back:
Probably not a problem. I’m not sure I buy the wax moth theory of bald brood. They eat cocoons, not wax, and usually travel in the midrib.

And then he texted me a picture of his family’s lake in Canada where he was spending the weekend, and the conversation dropped. So stay tuned for the next episode of the Case of the Ghostly Bees, in which the mask comes off and our villain, present from the start, says he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you darn kids.

Hive Check: Week 11

Well, we're gonna leap-frog week 10 for now and go straight to week 11 because even though I am on vacation, I drove into town and am stealing wi-fi from the local visitor information centre.

That is how much I like bees.

I'll mention again that I really like it when photographers come up to the roof to play. It gives me a good opportunity to show off, it frees up my hands to actually work the bees, and nets everyone some nice pictures. This week, I was joined by Macolm Hearn, a photo/videographer based in Brooklyn who is snagging some bee footage for a music video project he's working on. He kindly provided all the pictures featured in this week's update.

You can check out his other work here: http://malcolmhearn.org/

Late day inspection, the hives were in the shade.

SOMEONE (*cough, cough* Emily, *cough*) forgot to return my frame perch, so I was stuck leaning frames against the hive.  Great population!

As the summer comes to a close and we start to hit the first serious nectar dearths, the chances of the bees deciding to swarm is reduced to practically nil. Once you're past swarming season, you only have to check the hive every couple of weeks to assess stores and do basic population checks for diseases and parasites, especially if you're dealing with established (not first-year) colonies.

Esmeralda continues to impress with some solid brood.

For E.M.: The miracle of birth, minus the episiotomy.

Late Summer and Autumn hive checks should be kept succinct and to the point. With little or no new nectar coming in, the bees can be a little more sensitive to outside interference, and are more likely to respond defensively than earlier in the season, when food is cheap and plentiful. On top of that, the bees are more likely to start robbing from other colonies if you leave open comb out in the open too long, and you might even attract some unwanted guests.

Fucking Yellowjackets.  Hate them.  So do the bees.

Yellowjackets can be a huge problem for hives in the Fall. As their own brood laying winds down, they start to get desperate for something sweet to replace the sugary secretions that wasp larvae exude to reward the adults that feed them (really). Honey is an obvious replacement, and if you leave full comb out in the open for too long, wasps WILL find it and start to raid the hive.

Once a wasp gets past the guard bees, they will fill up with honey inside the hive, pick up the scent of the hive, and bring their friends back for more. If you see any wasp traffic in and out of the hive, you should reduce the entrance drastically to help the hive defend itself. Make sure you keep the varroa card out, for ventilation.  A weak hive can be completely destroyed by a strong wasp nest.

The population in Hive 2 finally 'popped' and they are now into their second deep, which they will need to draw out completely and fill with stores if they are to survive the winter. The deep and the frames have been living on top of the feeder for a couple weeks now, but we installed the foundation just before giving them to the hive. In this heat, the foundation will sag and fall if you leave it in the frames too long before you give it to the bees.

The frame assembly line:
Reed, my helper at Added Value, is breaking off the frame wedges.
I am putting foundation in the frames and nailing them in.
Malcolm, the photo/videographer, was putting in support pins, but is behind the camera here.

After meeting Dee Lusby at a beekeeping conference and listening to her talk, I decided to try a technique known as "Housel Positioning" in both of these hives. You can read her explanation of it here at BeeSource, but the basic idea is that bees prefer the foundation, and the comb built on it, to be in a specific orientation in regards to the center of the brood nest. Proponents of the practice believe that it helps increase spring build up, reduces brace comb, and just generally improves the health and mood of the hive. It certainly can't hurt (although I'm sure I'll get a cranky e-mail from *someone*), and I'll do my own write up and explanation of the theory after I get back from vacation.

Marking the frames with cell size and cell orientation.

Housel positioning within the hive.  Notice that I brought down a frame of 4.9mm foundation into the lower deep to encourage the bees to work it.  I put the two corresponding drawn frames of 5.1mm foundation containing brood and stores into the new, empty deep to force the bees up in to the second box.

I'm still feeding both hives with very light sugar syrup to promote comb drawing, and a little bit of supplemental fresh pollen because of the current dearth. Rather than feeding them the fresh individual pellets, I decided to provide the pollen in patty form this time.

Pour fresh pollen  on to a sheet of (paraffin) wax paper.

Spray it with sugar water to moisten it, fold the paper over, and mash it flat.

Rip off the excess paper.

Set it on top of the top bars of the frames and poke holes in the wax paper with the edge of your hive tool to improve access.

Come on little dudes, draw that comb!

Well, I came in town to pick up some new line for my fishing rod and I've been writing for the last couple of hours instead, so for now I will leave you with a picture of me getting stung.

The bees really are getting a little more wary, so if you aren't using your protective gear, you should at least keep it handy. By the end of the inspection, there were at least two bees who were ready and willing to follow me across the roof. One of them got me, the other flew away after I popped down the roof hatch.

If you're gonna get stung, you may as well look manly doing it.

Hello, Ladies.

Thanks again to Malcolm Hearn for providing all the photos for this article!