The Healthy Honeybee

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Here's what the ob hive looks like so far! It was quite the production getting it populated - I have never been in such an angry cloud of bees. One crawled into my brand new glove and stung my hand!!! I thought I was Fort Knox with all my gear but it turns out I had a weak point.

Many thanks to Andrew, who is an intern at Fertile Ground CSA, who braved the angry buzz to help me out with the glass and wood and screws.
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My only real issue with this video is the stingers on the boy bees. You can't have a stinger package and a *cough* male package. There's not enough room. The girls get the stingers, the boys get the ability to genetically alter the next generation. Fair is fair I guess. In both scenarios, the bee dies after using it once. Quite the sacrifice.

Thanks Ken for sending me the link.
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I finally was able to put in my entrance reducers today. Life is busy! Hopefully now the bees will be able to heat their homes even more efficiently. I thought for awhile about which way I should put the opening... do they look like they're upside down? I'm not sure what's the best way, or if it matters. This hive didn't really care that I was putting in the entrance reducer - they're my weaker hive for sure.

If you look at this next pic, you can see the difference:


These ladies were mighty ticked with me - one stung my veil (not me), and another just clung to my veil and b*tched at me for awhile. They did not like having this thing stuck in their doorway, not at all. I'll check on Wednesday to see if they've managed to work together and shove the thing out, or if they've decided to live with it and cram the cracks with propolis.
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It's been quite a few years since pennies held any fascination for me, but beekeeping has brought them once again to a significant place in my life. My first sting as an adult was in Ken's beeyard, and right away Steven put a penny on it for me. No swelling or pain. Weird! But wonderful. I started telling everyone who had the potential to be stung by a bee, that they should put a penny on it because it really works. My second bee sting, same story. Penny to the rescue yet again.

Along the way, people questioned what it was about the pennies that gave them these magical bee-sting-soothing powers. Some wondered if it mattered whether it was Canadian or American, or whether older or newer pennies were better. I had no idea, I just knew it worked for me.

Then.... my day of foolishness, tearing apart a beehive with only a veil as any significant sting protection. Well, the pennies didn't work so well that day. I thought because I had so much venom pumping through my system, perhaps the pennies were no match for it.

Well - here's a new piece of information from my fellow beekeeper Margaret, who also started beekeeping this spring:

I discovered the copper content of pennies is less than 5%, except the older coins (pre 1982 for the American ones) are 95%. I'm still skeptical about the copper cure.

Perhaps the level of copper makes a difference, or maybe it's all in my head, but I'd rather put a penny on it than a piece of onion. (That was Todd's trick.)

The photo above is of Margaret, scraping off the inner cover of one of her beehives. She rides her motorcycle to check her bees, and finds that the leather makes a good bee jacket!
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I haven't done much with bees lately. First, I was recovering from my 9 stings. Now, I seem to be having some sort of reaction to something that touched my face. No one really knows, or has any concrete answers for me. I'm slathering (sparingly) the itchy red swollen stinging burning oozing parts of my face with a corticosteroid/antibiotic cream combo, and taking two kinds of antihistamine (sleepy and non), prescribed by my doctor. Needless to say I don't really want to come into contact with potential allergens right now, especially since I'm just over the bee stings. I'm hoping it's just (!!!) poison ivy, and not anything related to bees. But I'm staying away for now, just in case.

I hate using the cream, because it just grates against my anti-antibiotic sensibilities, but really. If you saw me you would realize why I actually want to use it regardless. No, I'm not posting pics.

So - what's with the pot of tomatoes? It's that time of year: tomatoes by the bucketful coming in from the garden, ripening on my dining room table, and being turned into sauce. Mmmmm....

The recipe?

Ingredients: lots of tomatoes

1. Wash tomatoes and remove anything inedible.
2. Cut them in half and throw them in a big pot.
3. Mash them a bit with a spoon to release liquid.
3. Cook them (simmer) until they're soup - uncovered.
4. Cook them some more, to reduce the amount of liquid.
5. Blend them. I use my immersion blender right in the pot.
6. Use a food mill to take out the seeds. Or leave them in.
7. Freeze for cold winter nights. (This step is optional.)
8. Add stuff to make a sauce you like.

Pics:
1. Cooked and blended, still with seeds:


2. Using the food mill:


3. Lots of seeds:


4. Seedless sauce, ready to chill:

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Well, the results of the poll are tied between counting until my age, or counting forever. So I guess I'll keep track for now. If I'm going to keep accurate results, though, I should mention that I actually had 9 stings last time, not 8 as previously posted. Once they all started to swell I noticed I had another one that was overlooked in the original counting.

I think I'll be wearing more protection next time I do some radical shifting - so the numbers should stay low for awhile.

Speaking of which - Ken checked the hive that I was worried about, and he thinks I'll get away with leaving them as is, and not re-organizing their home. Yay!
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Not much happening with the bees - other than me trying to figure out what I'm going to do with them. I've been talking to Ken about how I should deal with the hives - well, the one hive in particular. My two hives have very different personalities, which I think can be attributed to genetics in a large way. The first hive does a really good job of reproducing - the queen lays eggs like no tomorrow, and the workers take care of them. Not so much honey, though. The second hive, full of honey! But not very many workers, when I compare it to the first hive.

So - the second brood chamber that I put on top of the second hive may not have been the best idea. They're so slow to fill it. AND - they haven't even filled the bottom chamber yet. So, I think I may have to rip apart the hive, yet again, to rearrange the insides and squish them into one box for the winter. It's better for them to be crammed than have empty space that can be invaded and has to be kept warm. This was the same hive that went kamikaze on me, so I'm not really looking forward to this event, scheduled for tomorrow morning.

I'm hoping for rain.
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The above photo doesn't much relate to the exact topic of this post, other than to show how wonderfully peaceful the bees were before they turned into suicide bombers.

The results of the penny experiment: well, I reacted more than I usually do, and I think it's because I got so many stings at once. My forearms were swollen between my wrist and elbow joints, and my upper left arm (stung quite close to my armpit). Two of the three of those stings had pennies on them, but that didn't seem to help as much as it normally does. Other places, like my leg and back, didn't swell up that much, but still more than usual. Again, I think because I got such a high dose of venom. I'm taking some allergy meds to keep the swelling down - I don't want the swelling to move past my joints.

That's why there's no pic of my popeye arms - it wouldn't show up very well due to the medication keeping things under control. You'll all just have to imagine my pumped-up, muscular-looking forearms.

Take my poll, if you haven't yet!! .... to the right in the sidebar:
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So... had an eventful time in the beeyard today. Apparently bees don't like it when you take apart their home. 8 stings today brings my running total to 10. When do I stop counting?

Take my poll!!! ....in the sidebar to the right.

Should I explain myself? I was on a mission to get rid of some burr comb between the frames of the upper and lower brood chambers. They had sealed together and it was hard to put them back into the hive once I took them out to inspect them. I took the upper brood chamber off, smoked the lower chamber, started doing a bit of gentle scraping, and ended up with a bunch of stings - right through my jeans, even!!!

I didn't have enough pennies to cover all the carnage, so we'll see how the stings compare.

The worst part? Putting the hive back together, dodging the indignant sisters.