[The Sanctuary] It's For The Bees! (Pt 7)

by **Kavala** on November 19th, 2012, 9:25 pm

Continued from: [The Sanctuary] Lessons From The Real Beekeeper (Pt 6)

Timestamp: 75th of Fall, 512 AV

Kavala had no idea when Collin was going to show up. She suspected he might be there in the very first part of the morning. However, thinking back to her lessons she remembered that working with the bees always went better from between the tenth bell and the fourteenth bell. So that meant if he had all her hives, the remaining eight that weren't delivered, loaded into his wagon, all he had to do was package up his bees, grab queens, and head to The Sanctuary. That meant the earliest he'd be around was somewhere after the eleventh bell. But truthfully she didn't expect him until around lunch.

Anticipating the Beekeeper might like a meal with them, Kavala got busy cooking first thing in the morning so she could put a shepherds pie in the oven. So she hurriedly peeled potatoes, carrots, and celery. She put the potatoes on to boil and then gathered up her sugar, flour, lard, and salt and began mixing the crust for the pie. She added two heaping cups of flower, a cup of lard, and then mixed in salt and a tad of sugar into the crust. She used homemade baking soda for leavener and then rolled out the dough to fill the long slender baking dish she had. After that, she went and grabbed lamb, one of the mystery roasts, diced up the meat, throwing it in the skillet to brown. She added the chopped vegetables with a bit of garlic to the deep pan lined with crust. Once the meat was browned she tossed that in too, covered it with cheese she shredded and then mashed the potatoes she'd boiled. Once they were mashed and mixed with butter, she smoothed them over the lamb and vegetable mixture and then coated the whole thing with the potatoes.

The dish went into the oven, which she'd set to bake things slow and low, and then she got to work.

The first order of business was moving the beehives she already had into place. She hauled these the furthest out on her property within the walls. She had a place in each far corner of the paddocks on either end along the riding trail that was around the walls. The hives were out of the way but it was also good training for the horses to have to walk by honeybees and or gallop by. Kavala made sure she placed them so there was room to enter the hive from behind. She also marked the other areas she had for where she wanted the hives to go. Four of them were scattered around the gardens near the core of The Sanctuary while the remaining six went to the medicinal gardens for easy access from the clinic. She marked the places she wanted them, having told Collin to skip the horse gate and come in the clinic side with the wagon where it would be easier to offload the bees and the bulky hive components.

Then, she checked the pie, took it out of the oven and placed it in the warming section of the hearth, washed up, chained and brought her smoker and the gear up to the table near where the majority of the hives would be. The table was actually a set of sawhorses with scrap lumber laid across them until she could actually get an outdoor table set up near the bees to work from.

Then, jumping the gun a bit, she gathered some tinder and practiced lighting a light light fire in the smoker... fussed with her hive placements again, and then practiced naming off all the parts and telling herself what they were about. Deep super, brood chamber... medium super.. .food chambers... queen excluders... wrong season for them though... hive stand, hive bottom, hive inner cover, hive outer cover...

Kavala paced around, shook out her hands, and glanced towards the healing entrance.

Where was he?

She decided to adjust markers showing where she wanted to place he hives when the sounds of a horse and wagon could be heard in the healing courtyard. Kavala almost whooped in joy as she headed out to see who it was. Collin was there, of course, perched up on his wagon, driving an older plain looking mare. The wagon was filled with eight hives in its bed, and had other boxes beside it. She could practically hear the bees buzzing as she rushed up.

"You made it!" She said, walking up calmly to his wagon, repressing the urge to jump up and down and shout for joy and demand what took him so long.

by **Kavala** on November 25th, 2012, 1:29 am

Kavala followed Collin into the clinic courtyard. She helped him tie up his horses and get them settled for the duration of the unloading. Not being able to help herself, she peeked into the back of the wagon and saw what appeared to be five boxes and five core hives strapped down. She lithely jumped up onto the wagon bed without being directed and began to unfasten the straps and carefully move the hives towards the tailgate. She shoved the heavy super boxes, careful not to jar them and then lifted lighter boxes until everything was stacked neatly on the tailgate.

“This is a lot of heavy lifting.” Collin said, then hefted up a box of bees and began setting them down on the ground. Kavala did the same, careful to lift with her legs and not strain her back. She swung the boxes over the side, knowing that her empty hives would be the most important things to get set up first. Once all the bee boxes were carefully lifted down, they moved the core boxes down. Kavala thought it felt a lot like lifting Elem’s weights because she had to really be careful not to drop any of them and the actual loaded core hives were more than thirty pounds apiece.

Kavala strained, her body sweating, as she moved the heavy items and almost smiled in relief as the last one was sat in place. She then turned to the empty hives, all eight – for he’d already delivered two – and began breaking them down and moving the indivudal supers into stacks as well. Once they got the wagon unloaded, she fetched a wheelbarrow and began loading the heavy deep supers onto them. Each load contained an entire hive. Then, almost as an exercise routine while Collin checked the live bees in boxes, she wheeled first one, then the next then the next into all the places she’d marked in her movements around the facility. Each box was carefully set up and left in its place, and then she’d go for a second.

Kavala had all eight hives set up along with the two she had in place before Collin was doing with his work. He’d taken sugar water and a sprayer and dosed down the boxes of bees with it to keep them cool and to saturate them with food. He’d also got his smoker going and the little billows driven pot was happily puffing smoke.

At that point, they loaded all five core hives onto the wheelbarrow and Kavala took off for the medicinal yard. Once she got there, she carefully lifted them down and into place. Then she headed back to the wagon and got all the bee boxes and set each one up by its intended hive. Excitement still poured through her, but she was nervous as well, uncertain what she could do to make things easier before Collin gave her some direction.

Collin had some basic instructions for her. “Now, since you’ll probably be buying and selling and transporting bees you’ll want to hear some basic advice on this. For one thing, these bee boxes – not the core hives but the boxes – are made of wood and mesh screening. Always douse them down good with sugar water. It does two things. It keeps the bees busy eating something while they are in transit and it can also help cool them if its really warm outside. You cannot really feed them too much, Kavala. Journeys always stress bees out so you want to make them as stress free as you can. You’ll also want to keep your bee boxes in the shade or in a dark place in your wagon. Cover them with a tarp if its cold or raining, but make sure they have plenty of air to breath. They are like us and can easily suffocate.” He added with a knowing look. It was one of those looks that said clearly he’d done this before.

“Then you’ll want to also make sure they are protected from the wind, cold, just about anything. And if you deliver them and the weather is not cooperating, you can always just wait a bit… keep them cool and dry and in the shade. They can survive in a well constructed bee box for two or three days easily.” Collin added, helpfully.

Kavala nodded. “Do you feed them just once a day if you can’t install them right away or how does that work?” She asked curiously.

“You can feed them up to three or four times a day. Obviously don’t drench them, but they need to eat. You’ll find some of them will die, but that’s to be expected. Remember you won’t have a box full of young bees. You have a box full of most of a hive. But you know they did well if there’s only a few. If the box is filled with dead bees at the end of their trip, they were treated roughly. And sometimes the package leaks and a few get out and sometimes they don’t always get all loaded into the box. Usually they won’t leave their hive members, so they will cling to the outside of the box on the mesh. Just look for the leak and seal it.” Collin added, helpfully.

“Are they aggressive after being so messed with? I know a lot of animals would be traumatized in such a move.” Kavala asked.

Collin shook his head. “They can always be aggressive and sting, but in this case they tend to stay calm. Spray them down good with sugar water and they will stay calm. When you spray them, they just mellow out mostly. Remember, with these boxes of bees, you don’t have a brood or honey or pollen to protect. That’s one of the factors that can make honeybees very very aggressive. They have nothing to defend here, so they tend to stay very calm.” Collin instructed.

Kavala nodded. “Sounds reasonable to me. I’m getting to where I think I can predict the answers you give to my questions before I ask them. That means, at least to me, some of this is soaking in." She said, laughing.

by **Kavala** on November 25th, 2012, 2:01 am

Kavala looked thoughtful and asked one more question. “Okay, I understand that between the tenth and fourteenth bell is the best time to work with bees. I see that’s why you are here now. But what tools will we need? I tried to get everything gathered, but I still don’t know if I got the right combo or not.” She said, looking worried.

Collin nodded. “All we need is your sprayer with the sugar water at half half ratio, your hive tool, a knife of some sort to pry out corks, and your protective clothing. Go get that clothing on, Kavala and I’ll meet you back here in a moment.” Collin said, reaching for his hat and veil. He pumped the smoker a few times getting it good and smoking once more, added a tiny bit of tinder and got started. Meanwhile Kavala ran for her protective clothing.

“Now, all these hives set up where you want them to be?” Collin asked when Kavala returned moments later. She nodded and he looked around with approval. “Good job on the setup. I see you’ve done every other one as a core and a box alternating. That’s smart thinking.” He added. “Now, starting a hive from scratch means we don’t need all of the components of the hive at first. You’ll really only need a bottom board, one deep body, ten frames and a foundation. You’ll also need your inner and outer covers.” He added. Kavala nodded and went about removing one deep body and two medium supers from each hive. She was quick about it, breaking them down and making more compact hives of every one of her new little bee fortresses. When she was done she returned and he gave her further instructions.

“Now… remove four of the center frames from the new hive body. This space is where you are going to shake your bees out of their box and into.” Collin said calmly, and Kavala did so, removing the top box and ten taking four frames out of the bottom and setting them aside. She sprayed all ten frames, even the ones she’d removed from the super down with sugar water, coating them with a thick rich layer of it.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out two items Kavala had read about but never seen. One was an entrance feeder, another was an entrance remover.

“Let me guess. Everything gets sprayed to entice the bees to stay. The entrance reducer makes the opening to get out of the hive smaller so the bees have to crowd to do that. They have that, so they won’t be tempted to swarm out. But whats that other thing?” She asked, gesturing to the entrance feeder.

“Oh, this is an entrance feeder. You’ll want to feed them this way for a few weeks until they get their food source up and running, storing their products – nectar, pollen, honey. This time of year with this late of a start there ‘s not much left so you might be using these feeders because they will save you time and energy and you don’t have to break into the hive multiple times and disturb them.” Collin said, setting up the feeder down at the entrance.

Truthfully the feeder looked to Kavala like a little dog bowl in a wooden frame that suspended itself up near where the bees landed and made it easy for Kavala to fill it with sugar water daily. It wasn’t very big… but then again it didn’t need to be to feed ten thousand bees the size of a thumb. It wasn’t like they were feeding horses.

Kavala grinned.

“You should keep entrance reducers at every hive, Kavala, after we install the boxes and cores because it keeps cold air out and lets the bees stay warmer. It also prevents the box from leaving… but in the spring when they are very very active, it needs to be gone and open as wide as possible.” Collin instructed.

Kavala dosed down the hive one more time, then filled the feeder with sugar water and watched Collin to see what to do next. He didn’t leave her hanging.

“Carefully open the bee box, Kavala. Try not to be afraid. They aren’t going to come pouring out and attack you. Take a calming deep breath, and be confident. Just remove the top panel like this…” He demonstrated. “.. and then use your hive tool to pry open the entrance. Once you open the top no bees will come out yet. This panel is to hold the feeding container in there that I put in. There’s also a strap holding a small queen cage in place. Go ahead, do it.. and look for yourself.” He instructed.

Kavala did as he asked, manipulating the hive tool and prying off the top panel. Then she looked carefully. The bees started getting really noisy, buzzing and moving around excitedly. Kavala looked worried and glanced up at Collin.

“Is that normal?” She asked. He nodded. “Go ahead and spray down the side of the box again. I’ll check the smoker and get it running again if its gone out.” He fiddled with that a moment while Kavala sprayed down the screened sides of the boxes. She kept telling herself… “Be calm. Be calm… Bee Calm.” Kavala giggled.

“I can see the top of a tin can of sugar.” She said, peering in and getting a better look. She saw the strap he was talking about as well, the one that suspended the queen cage in the box. She pried the tin can out with her hive tool and several bees flew free. She braced the box, as Collin instructed, and set the can aside.

“Now tip it up Kavala and pull the queen cage out.” Collin instructed. Kavala did so gently easing the cage out of the way. She then set it aside at his instruction after looking it over curiously. Next she tipped the box up and placed it upside down several inches above the frames. Then, carefully, she began shaking the bees out of the box .

“Shake harder, your not going to hurt them!” He urged, making the motion of violently shaking the box that Kavala was now shaking gently. “You can even slap it with the side of your hand repeatedly to get most of them out. Just watch for bees. Don’t strike one with your hand while your slapping the side of the box. You’ll get stung.” He cautioned.

Kavala broke out in sweat but did as Collin suggested, and got more and more of the bees out. They rained down on the deep super like furry brownish gold rain and spread out, clinging to the frames and disappearing down inside the boxes. She laughed, delightedly, and set the almost empty box down by the hive entrance, so any remaining stragglers would crawl out and find the entrance near the sugar source.

“Time to install the queen.” Collin added, picking up the queen cage, examining it, and looking satisfied. “She’s still looking good.” He said, handing her the Queen. Kavala did her own examination and nodded, satisfied as well. “She does looks healthy.” The Konti added.

Collin grinned. “One of my best queens for sure.” He said, looking slightly like a proud parent and a nervous father.

“Ready to do the install?” Collin asked and Kavala nodded.

by **Kavala** on November 25th, 2012, 2:15 am

“Okay, here’s the deal. The queen cage is this small wooden box with two corks in it. The corks were how the beekeeper got the queen in there. You need to pry the cork out using the knife and replug the hole with a bit of sugar candy.. the soft kind. The other bees will eat through the candy and by the time they are through that, everyone is used to the hive and the queen will not try to leave nor will the bees around her. So go ahead and pry the cork out, replace it with this candy and then insert it into the frames….” Collin added.

Kavala picked up a knife, did just that, and stuffed candy into the hole. It was a thin cotton-like stuff that smelled sweet even to her insensitive nose. She then made sure the candy was secure and then sort of wedged the small wooden box with the candy side down between the frames and then slowly grabbed one of the empty frames sitting off to the side and began replacing them into the space to crowd the hive once more and thus making sure the queen cage stayed intact.

“Good, good. You need to replace all the frames.. go ahead and do so. If you don’t the bees will start industriously building comb in the space and you don’t want that to happen. You want the comb to be built on the frames. So throw all the empty frames in there gently, making sure the queen cage doesn’t get loose, and then replace all the covers.” He said, as Kavala nodded. She did as he asked, then replaced the covers… firs the inner and the outer.

Then, stepping aside, she brushed her hands off and grinned.

“Not so much as a sting.” She said softly, almost victoriously. “One down and four more to go before even talk about the cores.” She added.

“Well, lets get too it then.” Collin said, moving down to help her. He unstacked hives and broke them down (every other one) ahead of her while Kavala pried open the bee boxes, removed the sugar feeders, and queen cages, and shook the bees into the open spaces. It was a very smooth install up until the last one. When she peered into the queen cage, it was obvious the Queen was dead. Kavala frowned.

“She’s dead, Collin.” Collin came to look and nodded. “This is bad but in a way its very good too. I’m glad you’ll have an example of what needs to happen once a hive looses a queen. This one won’t even stay here without a queen, I don’t think." He added, not being happy about it. “But we can borrow one from the cores. I brought five of them and most of the cores are five frames.. so I’ll show you what to do.” He added as she finished her install.

Kavala nodded. The resealed all the five hives and then the Konti took a moment to remove the cork and shake the dead queen out of her cage. She’d either need it for a live queen or whatever Collin had planned.

“So what do we do?” She said, pausing now, uncertain. This was out of her league. “We look at the other cores and start installing them. Once they are installed, we’ll go ahead and borrow a frame from one of them… hopefully out of a core that has at least three queen eggs forming on it. I think there was a couple that I packed for you.” He added.

Kavala nodded.

by **Kavala** on November 25th, 2012, 3:29 am

Kavala mused, wondering how Collin was going to handle the loss of one of the queens on the trip. She watched him and nodded as he indicated they spread out and break down all the hives once more. The Konti got busy, and of the five remaining hives, she pulled of the top cover, the inner cover, and then pulled both medium supers off and one of the large supers. She stacked them behind the hives, out of the way and then got ready to listen to what Collin had to say. When he returned to the first hive they had left a core hive at, she joined him and studied both the core hive and the broken down super.

“Now, what do you think we’re going to do.” He asked. Kavala looked thoughtful at his question, the answer somewhat obvious to her.

“We’re going to transfer the cores to the new hive. Do you actually scrape off the comb and move it or is there some other way?” The healer asked. Collin laughed abruptly, as if her question had amused him.

“Kavala, your over-thinking this. Go ahead, and like with the boxes of bees.. go ahead and pull out five frames from the middle of the super and set them aside.” He instructed. The Konti nodded and went to do as he asked. While she was doing that, Collin got the smoker going again, and then began to carefully smoke the core hive, which looked like a shrunken down narrower version of the hive Kavala was breaking down. He carefully tipped up the lid and puffed smoke into it, carefully smoking the bees and getting them to calm down. Then he bent even lower and puffed into the hive entrance, making sure the smoke wafted up into the combs it contained.

“Okay, now what?” Kavala said as she had her frames out and set aside and was just waiting on him.

“Go ahead and lift the lid of the core hive, and smoke it a bit from the top down, blowing the smoke into the frames fairly consistently.” He said. “Once they are calm, we’ll go ahead and use the hive tool to pry the frames apart and lift out the first one on the right side.” He instructed.

Kavala took the smoker, began blowing puffs of smoke, and did as Collin asked. Once the bees seemed to be calm – not that they were excited in the first place – she set the smoker aside and gently pried up the first frame using her hive tool on the right side. She lifted it up, out of habit checked the bottom, and nodded. “No queen cells, but it looks like it’s a frame of honey and pollen, and a tiny bit of brood in the corner, with some nectar in the other corner. And, I don’t see the queen.” She said, after she got done inspecting it carefully. Collin looked as well then nodded.

“Good.” Collin praised, then gestured to the empty hive. “Go ahead and transfer that frame to the new hive… gently slide it in.. and make sure you put it on the right side… you want these frames to go in just in the same order they came out.” He added, showing her what he meant. “This is one two three and four. This is only a four frame core. But that’s okay.. the rest should be five. This was a very strong core.”

Kavala nodded, then moved to pick a second frame up. After a moment of inspecting it, she gasped, pointed with her chin as her hands were otherwise occupied, and said… “Is that the queen?” She asked. Collin peered in, then nodded. “Very good. You see her.” The larger bee was surrounded by circled attendants. She gently turned it over, looked at the bottom and found nothing. With that, she slide the frame into the new hive in the same order as the old, then proceeded to move the rest of the frames in a similar manner, until they were all transferred into the new super.

Collin smiled with approval. Then he grinned, picked up the core hive, and tapped on it to gently move any of the rest of the bees still in the core box into the new super. Kavala nodded, grabbed the bee brush quickly, then brushed a few remaining stragglers off as Collin held the box.

He sat it down and they quickly sprayed down the new frames of bees in the new super with sugar water to keep them calm. Then, the empty frames that came out of the new hive went back into the core box, replacing those that now occupied Kavala’s hives.

“That’s it?” She said. Collin nodded.

“That’s it.” He confirmed and offered her a smile. “You did very well, for a sea fairing Konti.” He said somewhat playfully, and Kavala laughed.

“I ride too. I think swimming is the least of my hobbies.” She added, gesturing to the other hives. “We do them now too? What about the dead queen?” She asked, concerned. “We’re looking for queen cells already raised and half ready to hatch. They’ll be on the bottom of the frames. We have about twenty more to look at so we’ll find one or two. I promise.” He said, moving to the next hive.

They repeated the procedure and didn’t find any queen cells. That core had a queen though so Kavala was happy with it. That transfer went smoothly and she felt a whole lot more confident going into the third transfer. And that was where they found not one but two queen cells attached to the bottom of the hive protruding from the frame. Collin smiled. “There we go.” He said, happily, and then began quickly brushing bees off the frame. He made sure he completely cleared the bees off the frame before he had Kavala carefully replace the lid on the core and the new hive, then pump up the smoker and follow him to the queenless hive marked at the end of the row. She carefully, without asking, started smoking the hive with the box out front, and then after a few minutes opened the lid. She smoked the bees good, and without being asked carefully pulled the middle frame out of the hive and scooted the other frames over using her hive tool. Then, delicately she began brushing the new bees off the empty frame, making sure they gently fell down into the space. Setting that frame aside she stepped away and Collin slide the frame in that contained the queen cells.

“They’ll raise their own replacement queens and there won’t even be a fight when shes born… because the bees will accept her as their own.” Kavala said, wonderingly. It was fascinating how the hive mechanics worked and just how well nature took care of its own.

Collin nodded. “And there’s two queen cells on that frame so if one doesn’t work out, the other will. If the first one to hatch is strong, the workers will kill the second one. So whichever crawls out of her cell first will most likely rule. And the hive will hopefully thrive… this one has a jump on the others that have to make all their combs too because they now have twenty five percent of their core done.” Collin remarked. It was something Kavala understood well.

“Lets go finish the rest. I’m eager to see which others have queen cells. Did you send me more?” She said, curious. The beekeeper nodded.

“You always need a backup plan in Beekeeping, Kavala. Those queen cells were my plan. You were just lucky to loose only one queen out of ten so far. Lets see if the others are fairing as well.” He said softly, and moved back to pick up where they left off.

The rest of the afternoon the two beekeepers, one a master and the other simply an apprentice worked to transfer frames and locate hives. They fiddled and fussed until they were both satisfied with the placement. Then, and only then, did Kavala shake Collin’s hand and really thank him for all the training.

She also paid him, counting him out all the coin she owed him for the bees and hives and equipment. Two hundred and five mizas was a lot of money, but Kavala knew the bees would be the best thing in the world for The Sanctuary in the long run.

ledger :

by **Traverse** on January 20th, 2013, 11:15 pm

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Questions, Concerns? PM me and we'll be to the bottom of it. Safe Travels!

Solo [The Sanctuary] It's For The Bees! (Pt 7)