By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Everyone wants to help the bees. Suddenly honey bees are the new chickens: backyard hives are sexy. They're trendy. Ed Wagner of  Mannlake Ltd. says there’s no question about it, sales of beekeeping supplies to new customers are up, and suppliers of package bees have been selling out all over the country. After years of unpopularity, bees, it seems, are becoming fashionable pets.

Trendiness involving animals always sets off cries of alarm from my inner animal-rights activist. I wonder if now that we’ve kindled an interest in bees and beekeeping, could we be in danger of loving the girls to death? Can there be too many hives in an urban area? Will all those extra bees have to compete for a finite amount of nectar and pollen? I know, I know, my concern is not completely altruistic, but will our bees make less honey for us?

I called Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine and the Beekeeper blogger at thedailygreen.com to ask him how many bees could fit in a neighborhood.

He wasn’t worried about them finding enough food. “The carrying capacity of a city can be phenomenal,” he said. “You’ve got parks and roadside plantings. Draw a circle 2 miles around a hive, you’ll find backyards with flowers and weeds.” You’re not likely to run out of forage in most areas.

Kim thinks water—especially in our drought prone Western states—may be more of an issue than lack of forage. “The urban area is all cement. So where will the bees find water? If you’re in the backyard watering, bees will find you.” Swimming pools can be troublesome he said. “The chlorine cloud attracts bees. They love it.”

We all know what it’s like to come nose to proboscis with a floating bee in a swimming pool. And while some cities are changing their zoning codes to allow bees—Denver recently decriminalized keeping bees, and their municipal code declares that domestic honey bees are not “wild or dangerous animals"—bees can and will sting if threatened or scared. And we humans, when we see a bee, tend to flail and shriek and scare the bee.

As more people take on beekeeping in urban areas, the bee-human interface will become the most important issue bees and beekeepers face. I hope we can help the bees can win this one.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Whew, I'm tired. We spent today going through our three hives. It was the first full inspection we've done since April. Everything seems to be going well in Veronica. She has lots of brood, larvae, and eggs. Midge we're worried about. She has fewer brood cells, not much larvae, and no eggs. We never did see the queen bee, But we did spot her two weeks ago; perhaps we just missed her today.

However, there were many queen cells in Midge, and some were capped—you can see two in the photo at right (click the photo to see a larger image). One looks like a queen has emerged. Does this mean Midge is about to swarm again? Or perhaps she's swarmed and we missed it?  Or this queen cell could be left over from when she swarmed this spring.

Califia is a strong hive and has filled the top bar hive with brood and honey. She's also kind of testy, and more defensive than the other two hives. She tries to chase us away whenever we are near the hives; she gets positively riled into a blue rage when we open her up. Perhaps naming her after an Amazonian warrior queen was not such a good idea.

Actually, all the girls were unhappy with us today, and stung skin, gloves, and suits numerous times. But we were tearing apart the hives, so we did deserve it. And we stole—I mean, harvested—honey. Lots of honey, and each frame has honey of a different flavor. Yum.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Hank Shaw in his garden, in front of a gigantic cardoon.

Handmade boar salami....home-cured olives...wine grown in the back yard....fat, juicy venison sausages.

We ate this—and much, much more—on Saturday at the home of Hank Shaw, a political writer, and his partner, Holly Heyser, a journalism professor at Sacramento State.

Hank was also nominated for the James Beard blog award this year. We shared a table with him and Holly and his mom at the awards ceremony in New York back in May, and really enjoyed their company and like-mindedness. Hank writes fascinating accounts of making food from scratch, which in his case involves hunting and fishing as well as gardening. Holly grew up hunting in Minnesota and has a blog of her own about, as she says, "acquiring food the hard way."

Talk about a gracious guy. Even though he lost to us, he invited us to a cookout at his place on the east side of Sacramento. 

Dinner fell on what turned out to be a fearsomely scorching day in his neighborhood—as in, 108 F°. Nonetheless, a small group of us One-Blockers left our cool coastal habitat behind, lured by his promise of wild game.

A Wild Feast

The minute we walked in the door, Hank had his homemade and very respectable sangiovese ready for pouring, and a glistening array of things to eat:

* Good home-cured olives, which I found impressive since we've tried to make them ourselves, without success (yet!)
* Hank's own pickled beets, carrots, and sunchokes
* Totally delicious shad rillettes—a sort of loose pâté, traditionally made with pork or rabbit but here with  tasty local shad that Hank caught with his dad recently on the American River. I had no idea that shad existed in the West. I thought they were strictly an East Coast species. Now I'm hankering to catch some shad myself. (Their roe are particularly amazing, fyi.)
* Excellent saucisson sec, a dry salami from a wild boar Hank bagged in Monterey County. Secret ingredient: 1974 Heitz Cellars Angelica, made from Mission grapes. This fortified wine was the first wine made in California back in the 1700s.
* Lonzino, air-cured from the loin of above boar—more delicate and thinly sliced, so it looked like rose petals
* Fennel- and ouzo-cured salmon, made with an Alaskan pink salmon caught by one of Hank's friends

Bear in mind, these were just the appetizers. I hadn't seen snacks so hefty since my New Year's in Moscow, when I noshed on an enormous spread of zakuski.

After a fully appreciating all that was on the table, we presented Hank with a couple of just-baked fruit pies, plus gifts from the One-Block Diet: last year's honey from hive Veronica and this spring's honey from Midge, plus a bottle of red-wine vinegar and some fresh eggs from the flock.

Then he took us on a tour of their abode.

The Tour

The first guided look-around of a person's house is always fun, isn't it? It's especially interesting when the place is full of strange and quirky stuff. Hank and Holly live in that kind of house, and seeing how Hank makes his food only increased our pleasure in eating it.

Hank's homemade wine, hanging out with the books.
Each carboy holds one varietal; included here are
Tempranillo, Sangiovese, and deep, dark
Portuguese Touriga.The two tiny carboys in back are
Zinfandel, which Hank made from his own grapes
(the rest used grapes he bought).

The garden, where Hank grows everything from beets
to heat-resistant romaine to salsify. 

It occupies a chunk of their 1/4-acre back yard,
but there's plenty of space to grow more stuff. We
semi-seriously suggested he try growing wheat—
since he actually has the space for it.

A few of Hank's vines (I think these are mainly Zinfandel).
More grapes grow against a far wall.

In the garage, garden zucchini dry on a rack.
Several ripe figs were set out to dry on a work
surface nearby.

And best of all...

The "curing fridge"—a battered but useful appliance
in the garage, equipped with a thermostat control
and a teeny humidifier (at bottom right).

Hank at the grill while we gab under the tree.

Hank slowly and tenderly grilled a slew of those venison sausages until they were shiny, taut, and on the verge of bursting. The rest of us sat around under the big shady tree just beyond and gabbed for a while.

The Dinner

We went indoors—merciful air conditioning!—and feasted on those sausages, stuffed into giant buns with homemade pickles; firm, meaty marinated octopus liberally seasoned with paprika; two pasta salads—one with the couscous-like Sardinian pasta called fregola, studded with bocconcini (tiny fresh mozzarella balls), and the other with barley and sundried tomatoes—and a lovely, simple little beet salad with feta cheese and lovage. So much care and generosity went into this dinner. Hank even made the paprika. As in, he grew the peppers, dried them, and ground them. Having made our own salt, we knew this wasn't as crazy as it sounds. These kinds of things are worth doing, if for no other reason that it makes you really, really appreciate paprika and salt.

Hank served his honey lemon-verbena ice cream, I cut up the pies, and we chewed our last bites in a semi-stupor. Hank brought out some little glasses filled with that precious 1974 Heitz Angelica, which tasted surprisingly similar to Italian nocino, a walnut liqueur. Delicious. 

Then Hank and Holly, pied pipers that they are, ushered us into what they proudly call their Opium Den. It's a library with deep pink walls, a comfy sofa, a fireplace, and a mantle adorned with bare skulls of past game. As we sank into the sofa, Hank plied us with homemade absinthe. Yow. You could practically see the fumes emerging from our lips as we tried it. It only took a couple of sips to finish us off.

We eased into our cars and drove home, sated from head to toe and marveling at all that Hank and Holly do. Before we left, they accepted our invitation to munch freshly baked pizzas from our brand-new wood-fired oven, topped, naturally, with whatever will be ripest and most flavorful in the One-Block garden. Coming soon.

UPDATE: Here's what Hank wrote about the evening (and you can see the food he made, too).

Reader Karl Arcuri sent us a question last week: I live in Austin and I'm thinking about starting an urban hive. I've been following your blog, and I'm curious on how big your yard is where you keep your hives?

Team Bee member Brianne McElhiney: Here at Sunset, we are fortunate to have a campus that is about 10-12 acres, but the beekeepers guild that I belong to says that you only need about 10 sq. ft.to keep a hive. Recently, I have heard of people in San Francisco raising hives on top of their apartment buildings, and one of the men in my beekeepers guild keeps them at his condo complex.

You just want to be sure that there is a large enough food source for them in your area. Typically your bees will stay within a mile radius, so as long as there are plenty of flowering plants in your neighborhood, the bees will stay around. I would also recommend that you contact your local beekeepers guild (in Austin one guild is the Capital Area Honeybee Stewards) and perhaps attend a meeting. The members are usually very knowledgeable and more than willing to answer any questions you may have about raising bees.

Brianne McElhiney (shown in photo), assistant to the editor-in-chief, keeps bees at her home in the South Bay, as well as working on Sunset's Team Bee.

Team Bee member Margaret Sloan: Our beeyard is in the back of our nursery area (bees like privacy). We keep our hives far enough apart that we can still work between them, but commercial beekeeps stack them on pallets with little or no room in between hives. It’s up to you.

Before you buy bees, be sure to check your city’s municipal code or call the city to find out what the restrictions are. Some cities are fairly restrictive when it comes to beekeeping, and some outlaw beehives altogether, although that is beginning to change.

Update: Since Karl sent us his question, he's emailed us with the news that he's started beekeeping lessons with the owner of Round Rock Honey, and hopes to start his hive in August.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Beekeeper and beeblogger Kirk Anderson believes that with bees, backwards is the new forwards. Inspired by the writings of Charles Martin Simon, he practices this new trend in hive management. “Take everything you knew about beekeeping and forget about it,” Kirk told me. “Don’t use foundation. Don’t treat them with chemicals. Don’t feed them any additives. If I have to feed them, I’ll feed them cane sugar and water. I let them use their own wax to make their own comb, and then the hive is clean.”

Sure, it’s revolutionary. And controversial. But Kirk keeps “backwards bees” with great success all over the L.A. area in places like Pasadena, Silver Lake, and Studio City. It turns out that Southern California is a great place for bees. Kirk says, “They flourish in urban areas. I haven’t bought bees since 2000. I use feral bees. There are lots of swarms in the L.A. area.”

Kirk’s Beehuman blog centers on how he captures those swarms, and his joy in promoting the fine art of beekeeping. "The number of bees and beekeepers has gone down in the last 20 years.  But it’s like planting seeds. People are getting interested in beekeeping."

Perhaps the trend of keeping backyard bees isn't as popular as the not-so-bogus backyard chicken trend. But less than a year after Kirk started the Backwards Beekeepers bee club in September 2008, 132 people have joined. That's a pretty good number of newbees.

Kirk’s strongest advice on keeping bees to those new to it? Leave the girls alone. “Most people get bees, they think they’ve got an aquarium and want to inspect them once a week or more. When you first get them, give them a week and inspect to make sure she’s laying. Then go through the hive a month later to make sure there’s a good pattern of eggs and brood.

“And be a responsible beekeeper. Because you usually don’t have trouble with bees. You usually have trouble with people.”

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

There’s been a synchronicity of bees around here this week. The other day, Kimberley and I were discussing the National Wildlife Federation’s June/July story about the importance of native pollinators (and that means bees!) when we saw something crawling on the floor in her office.

It was a bee. This little bee you see here, no longer than an eraser on a pencil.

We don’t know what kind of bee this is, but in the last 2 days, we’ve found 7 of them crawling around the imaging department (2 of them engaged in the activity that fulfills their half of The Birds & The Bees concept). We think they’re native bees, but we don’t know for sure.

Now, I’m no slouch when it comes to plant and animal identification. I love a good dichotomous key. But I have to admit, it was daunting to try to identify this little bee on The Bug Guide, a site that promises to help you identify insects, spiders, “and their kin.” Honestly, there are more kinds of bees on there than you’d find at an overturned Pepsi truck on the highway.

And that is exactly the point of the National Wildlife Federation’s story about native pollinators. It turns out that the numerous native bees of North America may be among the answers to the pollination woes brought about by the decline of the European honeybee. In California alone there are more than 1,600 known species of native bees, and there may be over 4,000 species of bees and wasps in North America. That’s a lot of pollinating possibilities. 

But our native pollinators are at risk as well, through habitat and forage loss, pesticide use, and other troubles brought about by bees living wing to elbow with humans (a species, as you may have noticed, that is not in decline).

There’s good news. You, the human, can help native pollinators, and it’s not as hard as you might think. The National Wildlife story has tips that range from reducing your use of pesticides to becoming a “messy” gardener by leaving patches of unmulched soil and brush piles that pollinators can use for nests. (I wholeheartedly endorse and practice that advice).

And you can plant a bee-friendly garden. I like Urban Bee Gardens, a website with a whole hive full of information about bees and the gardens they love, including plant lists. And definitely read “In the Key of Bee,” in BayNature, for more information about bee gardens.

Or branch out and plant a garden that will attract may different types of pollinators—like butterflies, moths, bats, and birds. Pollinator.org has some nifty downloadable guides tailored to specific areas of North America.

Bee gardens aren't just altruistic pursuits. Gardening to help pollinators will also help your garden, and you’ll reap the benefits with better yields of fruits and vegetables.

Happy bee gardening!

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Just another day with Sunset’s Team Bee. Kimberley Burch, our team’s queen bee, bottles an unexpected honey harvest. We pulled a few frames from Midge, and bottled 32 3 oz. bottles (and ate a fair amount before bottling). Since one frame had enough honey to fill 22 bottles, I guess we ate more than a fair amount. It was delicious—light and fragrant

The girls seem to be doing well. Veronica has a tiny spot of brood of her own, some eggs that may or may not work out (we didn’t see them in the frame—my bad old eyes, I’m afraid, couldn’t pick out the tiny tiny eggs in the cells—and so we hung it from the side of the hive on the frame stand. Maybe too long.) We replaced one of Veronica’s honey-laden frames with a frame of brood and some nurse bees from Midge (who has a good amount of brood).

Califia is steadily filling her top bar hive with comb. Every day at about 4 p.m. there are young bees making orientation flights in front of the hive, flying zig zags as they scope out their surroundings before taking off on foraging trips.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Ok, I admit that Minnesota is out of Sunset's coverage range of the Western United States (although Minnesota—correction:a part of Minnesota— is west of the Mississippi). But when I found that one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman (Coraline, Anansi Boys, and the Sandman series), kept bees on his rural property outside the Twin Cities, I had to find out more.

It turns out that although he is a supreme weaver of tales, and while he does attend to the hives when he has time, Neil is not the Big Bee Boss. Sharon Stiteler, birder and beekeeper, is the lady in charge.

Sharon says she always wanted to keep bees, but until very recently, beehives weren’t allowed in Minneapolis.

“One day we were visiting with Neil, and he mentioned he was thinking about getting bees to pollinate his fruit trees. I said, ‘I always wanted to keep bees. But my husband said ‘Oh no you’re not.’ ”

Her husband mentioned that she was busy. Neil was busy. And if Neil was away at a book signing and Sharon away a birding event, who would be stuck taking care of the bees? The husband.

Neil’s assistant chimed in saying keeping bees wasn’t in her job description.

Sharon laughs when she finishes this story. “Now they’re my biggest helpers.” She finds that people love to visit the hives. “When they’re in a bee suit, it’s like they’re in their own little fortress of solitude.”

Sharon's been a beekeeper for 3 years. "When I first started bee keeping, I realized that if you ask 5 beekeepers a question, you'd get 5 answers." One day she was having a discussion with Neil about the hives, and she suddenly realized, "We must be real beekeepers now. We're arguing about methods."

The Gaiman beeyard is planned to grow to 7 Langstroth hives strong this year, with 4 hives of Minnesota hyegenic Italians and 3 hives of Russians. Why Russians? “We read that Russians have varroa mite resistance. And they also do better in long, cold winters.” 

Sharon has a very cool video on her blog, Birdchick.com of hiving their bees. You can see how the bees pour out of the box.  Having just hived a package of bees, I can attest to how easily the bees flow into their new home.

I'm curious. Any readers from cold places like Alaska been trying Russians?

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Last Sunday, Erika Ehmsen, Johanna Silver, Amy Machnak, and I sat in a darkened theater at the Millennium Broadway Hotel, nerves tingling. As some of you know, we'd been nominated—along with fellow one-block-diet bloggers Elizabeth Jardina, Rick LaFrentz, and Margaret Sloan—for a James Beard Journalism award.

Since we were sitting at a table near the exit sign, way way at the back, I was sure we wouldn't win. After all, no one would put us here if we were actually meant to get to the stage in any reasonable amount of time. I gently suggested that everyone just relax and enjoy dinner and give up the dream of winning an award.

So we did, and got to know our tablemates—fellow nominee Hank Shaw; his wife, Holly; and his lovely mother--all come from Sacramento. Hank writes a very entertaining, knowledgeable, pull-no-punches blog called Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Like us, he's trying to show how possible it is for you to make your own food — from scratch. He tends to hunt and forage, we tend to garden and make wine, but the intention is very much the same. We felt glad to be sharing our table with a kindred spirit.

Then Kelly Choi, announcing the winners for the award ahead of ours (for Audio Webcast or Radio Show), accidentally opened the wrong envelope. "Erika Ehmsen, Elizabeth..." Oh, my lord. She'd flubbed, but we knew we'd won. Whoever got the Audio Webcast award, well, sorry, dude, our screaming completely drowned out your moment. Then we ran to the stage. (Ok, Erika walked. She's pregnant and wise.)

Hank Shaw's mother very kindly took this picture of us accepting our award:

 

Left to right: Johanna, me, Amy, and Erika, beside ourselves with joy.

And moments later, in the lobby:

Courtesy Hanna Lee

The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur. Some very fine journalists won awards, including the multiple James-Beard award winner Alan Richman, of GQ magazine, and we cheered them all. For the full list, click here. Erika, bless her, was Tweeting like mad the entire time.

The next night, we put on our fanciest duds and went to the chef awards, at Lincoln Center. What a scene. We were quietly ushered around the red carpet, ah well. Amy's shoes deserved to have a prance before the papparazzi!

Amy's shoes. Actually, she had to mince, not prance.

The awards ceremony, which this year honored Women in Food, lasted three and a half hours, and although many deserving (and terrific) chefs won (including San Francisco's Nate Appleman and Maria Hines of Seattle), we were as famished as wolves by the time it was over. We dashed out and devoured tidbits put out by some of the top female chefs in the country (my favorite: Anita Lo's steak tartare with anchovy broth).

It was Quite a Scene. Besides the best and most celebrated chefs in the country, we spotted Salman Rushdie (we unabashedly had our pictures taken with him, on a camera that, alas, was lost at JFK).

Amy, Johanna, and me in the thick of it.                                   Top Chef Jeff McInnis and Erika.              

We had a very, very good time, piling happily into taxis for an after-party at Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton's tiny, excellent, jewel of a restaurant down in the East Village. (She'd been nominated for Best Chef New York City.) Gabrielle makes the best hamburgers EVER, intensely flavorful and so juicy they squirt.

I remember the clock saying 3:30 when I closed my eyes.

--------

Now, back we are at Sunset with all of us winners together, in front of the crazy-tall hops that we'll be using in an upcoming batch of beer:

Left to right, Sunset's Beard-winning bloggers: Elizabeth Jardina (with Honey), Rick LaFrentz, Amy Machnak, me (with Ophelia), Johanna Silver, Margaret Sloan, and Erika Ehmsen.

and because they were part of it too...the very patient Honey and Ophelia, representing the coop:

:

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Happy May Day!

Our bees are doing well. Veronica, who was broodless last week, is following directions and has been laying eggs in the empty frames we placed in her hive. Kimberley wrote on the empty frames “put brood here,” so evidently bees can read. We know bees are smart, but we didn’t know they could read English.

Califia’s top bar hive doing well. It’s amazing how fast they’re building out natural comb. There are 15 bars on the hive now, and 14 of the bars are sporting comb with capped brood and honey.

Brianne inspects Califia's top bar hive

Top bar hives are marvelously easy to inspect. The top bars are simply strips of wood (no frames, no foundation) to which the bees attach their comb. The bars lie across the top of the box with no spaces between them; we only remove one or two bars at a time to look inside the hive (easy on the back), so most of the bees are still in darkness under the remaining top bars. We use barely any smoke, the girls stay calm, and everyone is happy.

These bees are watching us, but they're not attacking.

And the most captivating thing about Califia’s top bar hive? We can look through the observation window in the side and see what’s going on without disturbing the bees. It’s addicting, and I find myself in the bee yard whenever I have a spare moment, watching the bees inside the hive as they go about their business.

Looking through the observation window

We built our hive from two plans we found on the internet.
For the body of the hive, we used a plan from How to Build a Top Bar Hive offered for free by J.P. Chandler, author of the The Barefoot Beekeeper. To build the window, we used plans (also free) from BackYardHive.com

If you’re not handy, or don’t have, as we did, a resident carpenter available to build it for you, (A big thanks to Dan Strack!) you can purchase beautiful prebuilt hives from BackYardHive.com. I’m coveting one of their graceful top bar hive tools.  

Oh, well. I've said my white rabbits (it's the first day of the month). Perhaps I'll have the good luck to get one of these tools.

By Erika Ehmsen, Sunset copy chief

We’re looking over a four-leaf clover that Chicago’s French Pastry School sent to wish us luck at this Sunday’s James Beard Foundation Awards. (Thanks, guys!) Four of us are headed to New York for the ceremony, and we’re excited and nervous—and not just about what to wear!

Our One-Block project is in great company in the Best Food Blog category: Our fellow nominees are Bon Appétit columnist Andrew Knowlton’s The BA Foodist and Sacramento omnivore Hank Shaw’s Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, which takes locavore to a near-complete DIY level. We’re looking forward to swapping stories with Shaw, Knowlton, and all of the other food and wine writers we’ll be meeting this weekend.

Want to hear who we’re talking to and find out if we win? We’ll be posting live updates from the Media Awards ceremony on Sunset’s Twitter page. Sign up to follow us by clicking here—it’s free, easy, fun, and admittedly a bit addictive. Wish us luck, and see you on the Interweb!

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

We spent a seriously warm Earth Day in the hives. Sheer bliss (if bliss is also sweaty and uncomfortable).

It’s been a while since we fully inspected the two Langstroth hives, and we were dying of curiosity to see how our new queen, Califia, and her bees were doing in the top bar hive

Readers, meet our two new queens:

Califia

And Midge

Califia is the queen in the top bar hive. Top bar hives don’t have foundation or frames; the bees build natural comb that hangs from a simple bar of wood that rests on the top of the hive. A strip of beeswax running down the central length of the bar guides the girls to build straight.

Califia’s bees are smart. And quick too. Scarcely two weeks after we installed them in their new home, they’ve begun building comb—straight, perfect comb—on all the original 8 bars. 

We carefully pulled each bar, and then ... there she was! Califia. And right in front of Team Bee, she stuck her tush in a cell and laid an egg! Of course we cheered wildly. But quietly. They're bees, after all.

Midge (thanks to Jen Barnett for suggesting the name) is a daughter of Betty, the queen who swarmed in March. We weren’t sure we had a new queen, an old queen, or any queen at all, so we were very happy when we opened the hive and found it full of brood and eggs. Midge was clambering around in the bottom box. We know she’s not Betty, because she is more orange, and brighter in color than Betty ever was.

Her hive was so full of honey that we took two frames from the center and gave her two empty ones to fill (hopefully with eggs). This will be our first harvest of the year.

And Veronica in the third hive? She’s having some problems. She’s all honey and no brood, but the queen is still in the hive, desperately looking for empty cells in which to lay eggs. We’re trying to figure out what to do. Readers, any suggestions?

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

A couple of weeks ago, while up in the gorgeous Okanagan Valley (B.C.), I met a charming beekeeper named Helen Kennedy.

 

I'd gone to her place, Arlo's Honey Farm, to taste her award-winning honey and learn a bit about her beekeeping techniques. Well, as it turned out, Helen has been reading our Bee blog. She knew all about our strange multiple swarmings and our epic, unending battles with mites, which fasten perniciously to the bees' bodies, weakening them. They also kill brood and spread viruses.

Immediately yet gently, she began dispensing bits of advice about both swarming and mite control. We're passing these gifts along today, Earth Day, for the benefit of any beekeepers reading this--and their bees.

Helen's Earth Day Gift No. 1: How to control swarming

Bees will swarm for a number of reasons--most often when the hive has produced a rival queen (or queens), who each fly off with a portion of the bees, or when the hive is too crowded. Your chances of averting a swarm increase if you a) remove the rival queens before they're born and b) give your bees more space.

Which means: destroy the queen cells as soon as they're formed. "Look for a row of cups (i.e. queen cells) along the bottom of the frame and remove those," advises Helen.

But sometimes the queen is weakening, and really does need to be replaced with a strong, healthy new queen. How can you tell whether you're knocking off a crowd of Pied Pipers--or a desirable new leader?

 "If the queen cell is in the middle of the frame, leave it alone. That means the bees know they need another queen." Amazing little creatures, these bees.

The other point about the row-of-cups formation: this is your heads-up that the bees are considering a mass move. It's valuable information, because then you can remove filled frames and replace them with empty ones, giving the bees room to build and grow--and lessening their urge to emigrate.

Helen's Earth Day Gift No. 2: How to fight mites

Use screened bottom boards, with a removable plastic board to catch and count mites. (We do this already, but Helen gave me a board marked into sixths, to make it easier to count a zillion mites; one square's count times six will do the trick.)

Use formic acid pads. We've tried this, with some success. Helen applies hers in fall (after the honey harvest in August and before the frost) and  three times in spring. She likes to apply three times, 5 days apart, "to get it through all the bees and the brood, too."

Put in an "extender patty", a hamburger-like patty made of  Crisco, icing sugar, and essential oil of wintergreen. The bees eat it, crawl over it, and get thoroughly coated in this slick stuff so that the mites have no toehold.  She'll be sending her recipe to us; look for it in a post coming soon.

Plant nasturtiums. She's not completely sure about this, having not yet tried it herself, but she's read about a beekeeper in Germany who noticed that whenever his hives were set near nasturtiums, they were mite-free. Sounds like an idea worth trying!

 

Here's a last Earth Day gift from Helen's own earth—her bees and her 14 acres of peach trees:

Peach and Honey Preserves

In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, boil 1 part peach chunks with a little less than 1 part honey (adjust the amount depending on the sweetness of your fruit). Boil until the syrup starts to thicken. (Test by dropping some syrup on a plate and popping it in the freezer until it's just cool; if it's as thick as you like, stop; if not thick enough, keep simmering and testing.) Pour into jars and process the way you would any other preserve.

By Kimberley Burch, Sunset imaging specialist and Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Our new bees arrived this week! We asked our fans on Facebook for name suggestions and ...

We’ve named the new queen Califia, after the queen of the mythical Island of California! Thanks to Chryss Yost for her suggestion on our Facebook page.

Califia’s girls are to populate our topbar hive.  We’ve never installed bees before. It was quite an experience.

Kimberley picked up the wooden box of bees (this photo is of the box of bees in her car). She was safe in the car; the screened sides of the box contained the bees. A can filled with sugar syrup hanging down in the center of the box kept the bees fed, and the queen, suspended to the side of the can, kept the bees happy.

And, all suited up, we began the “installation.”

We pulled the can from the box, then took Califia’s little cage from the box. The bees clumped around her and didn’t want to leave her, and we had to gently shake and brush them off.

Then Brianne (who just installed her own bees last weekend) removed the little cork in the queen cage and stuffed in a marshmallow. 

The idea is that the bees will eat through this candy plug in a few days and release her. We hung her little cage inside the hive.

Then we installed the bees. It was really more like dumping them.

Kimberley banged on the side of the box, then shook it over the hive and a ball of bees fell into the bottom of the hive.

They surged like a wave up the sides, and began clumping around the queen.

Not all the bees came out of the box, and there was quite a bit of banging the box on the ground and shaking it to dislodge the remaining bees. In the end we put the box on the top of the hive and told the 50 or so reluctant bees to find their own way out.

Bees were flying everywhere, dazed and confused, but once we put the top bars in place, they began to settle down and come to their entrance holes to fan the pheromones that tell the other bees “this is home.”

After about 2 hours, most of the bees had settled down and were scouting the area. At the end of the day, we could see them (through the observation window!) in a big cluster around the queen.

Now we wait excitedly for our new worker bees to build their natural comb on our top bars!

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

The swarm we gave Tom Vercoutere is booming. We left it in the xerox box, screen taped over the hole, next to the back fence for him to pick up on the Thursday we captured it. He emailed us a week later:

"Your girls got put in a Nuc box on Friday morning and they had already drawn a 4-inch comb from the lid, just sitting in the box for 15 hours.

So did I get Betty? I checked yesterday and there was already capped brood in the Nuc. She must have started laying the Friday I put her in. If it wasn’t Betty, it sure was a mated queen and not a virgin leaving in an after swarm.

One of my hives has a very spotty brood pattern and a failing queen so I am going to put the swarm bees in that hive after I remove the bad queen."

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

This week we pulled the drone frame from Betty and were astonished to find at least 5 queen cells on the drone comb. You can see one of the queen cells in the left of this photo—it’s the long cell hanging from the comb face. If you look closely, you can see that the cap at the bottom has been chewed through to form a little escape hatch. That queen mostly likely emerged successfully on her own by chewing her way out. In fact, it looked like all the queens from that frame emerged successfully, which no doubt spurred our week of swarms.

We had waited the 28 days Randy Oliver recommends for mite trapping, so that we'd be able to kill the drones before they emerged (and in doing so, kill their varroa mites). It was clearly too long to wait.

The hive was filled with drones. Not drones sleeping soundly in their cells, mind you, but lumbering big-butt drones stomping around the frame like it was some kind of testosterone-infused honey-scented male spa. At the right of the photo above you can see one of the drones muscling his way out of a cell. Brute.

The drone frame was filled with empty used cells, and more drones were emerging as we inspected the comb. We froze those bad boys, along with their mite load. We made a note to pull the drone frame a few days earlier next time. (I know, this seems cruel, but beekeeping is not all sweetness and honey.)

The rest of the frames are full of capped brood, and the bees act like they’re queenright (meaning they have a mated queen): calm and productive. In turning a frame over to look at it, a big chunk of brood fell off the foundation (Brianne, shocked, is holding the chunk). We stuck it back on, but we’re not sure the brood will survive.

At the bottom of the frame, you can see yet another queen cell. We don't think this one currently houses a virgin queen. But if it does, and if the hive already has a mated queen, she’ll likely chew through the side of the cell and kill her virgin competition.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

We've been working on the May issue of the magazine, so I didn't have time to blog about the rest of the high drama in the beeyard that began when Betty swarmed last week. She first swarmed on a Tuesday, then on Wednesday, another swarm left the hive, puddled on the ground, and then crawled back, ending up underneath the hive. By that evening I only saw a few bees sniffing around the stack of clay pots near the hives. It looked sad, like they'd lost all their girlfriends and were trying to figure out what to do. I thought we'd lost another bit of Betty.

But the next morning we found a small swarm on one of the clay pot stacks!

Bee Team member Brianne, who belongs to the Santa Clara Valley Beekeepers Guild, had just attended a lecture about how to capture a swarm. She calmly and surely scooped the bees into the box we'd prepared as a trap box (we cut a hole into the side and put some wax inside—it's supposed to be enticing to bees on the prowl for a new hive).

Yes, it's a xerox box. Yes, we've heard the jokes about the bees replicating.

The bees tumbled right in, with a little help from a bee brush. They were so docile. Like little kittens (with stingers). They were huddled and sweet, and seemed a little dazed. They never once tried to sting us, although if we had somehow hurt the queen or threatened them, they would have. But slow, steady, and careful handling keeps bees calm.

We figured we'd gotten the queen that was in the middle of the swarm, because after we put the lid on the box, bees ringed the hole in the box, bottoms out, and fanned for all they were worth, spreading pheremones that told the other bees "hey, Her Majesty's in here!" The bees we hadn't caught poured up to the box and into the hole, just like they are supposed to do.

The box of bees went to Tom Vercoutere, of the Beekeepers Guild Of San Mateo County. He's been so generous with his help as we stumble through our first year of beekeeping, we thought we'd give him the swarm as thanks.

This week has been calm in the beeyard, although Betty (or what's left of her hive) sometimes clumps up at the entrance of her box. We're not sure what's going on in that hive. We hope that the bees planned well and prepared some queen cells so they'd have a new queen after they swarmed. There have been plenty of drones, so she shouldn't have any trouble getting mated. Hopefully she'll start laying eggs soon.

Excuse us while we do a little crowing.

We've been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award! Yes, this very blog.

The category is: Blog Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurants, or Nutrition. (Yep, that sounds like us.) The winner will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on May 3.

And this is right on the heels of the news that our One-Block Feast story from August '08 was nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals award.

Spring is feeling very springy indeed.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

We hinted of it here and here, and now it seems there will actually be an organic veggie garden at the White House.

The White House has even released the planting plan. Looks great!

I'm disappointed Obama confessed to disliking beets. Who dislikes beets?! Then again, it seems like an easy out for a disliked vegetable. Can you imagine the uproar from mothers across the country had he chosen broccoli?

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Good news! Our print story last August about our summer one-block feast, We Had a Dream, has been nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) journalism award.

To read our story, click here.

We're thrilled about the nomination, since the IACP has thousands of members—and other nominees include such food-magazine luminaries as Gourmet, Saveur, and Food & Wine. The winners of the awards will be announced at a gala ceremony in Denver on April 4.

We'll let you know how we do!

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Holy moly! The bees have swarmed again! This afternoon they started roaring, and a cloud of bees zoomed up and down the creekbed next to the beeyard (that's Kimberley, looking at the madness of bees in the creek). There were bees crawling all over the ground.

Then they boiled out of Betty’s hive, bearded across the front, and poured out onto the ground to make a big puddle of bees.

Bees filled the air around the hive. The puddle on the ground grew larger.

But they didn’t fly away. After about 15 minutes, the puddle of bees crawled up the leg of the hive, forming chains to cross the waterfilled tupperware.

They clustered on the bottom of the hive. That’s where we left them (we had to get back to working on the magazine).

We also found a queen wandering around on the ground. She was attended by a retinue of about 15 bees. Then she was gone. We're not sure if she flew away or crawled under a leaf.

We have no idea what’s going on. But it’s dramatic. It’s exciting.

And terribly exhilarating to be in the middle of a cloud of swarming bees.

By Kimberley Burch, Sunset imaging specialist

I was out in the Sunset gardens this morning shooting some flowers and plants for the magazine.  I got a frantic call on my cell phone from Margaret.

“Where ARE you!? One of our hives is swarming!!!”

I grabbed the camera, ran as fast as I could (with the huge camera and tripod slowing me down) to the bee yard.  Sure enough, bees were everywhere!  Most in the oak tree just above the hives.  We could see a ball of bees, just barely, through the branches, about 30 feet up. Too obstructed to get a good photograph.

There was a smaller cluster at Betty’s entrance that makes us think it was Betty who abandoned the hive.

We watched them in awe, doing their little bee thing. Thousands of bees flying all around our unprotected heads (there was no time to grab veils!), pooing on our clean shirts (we don't mind). It was all over within 45 minutes. Amazing.

We think we still have bees left in Betty’s old hive— With a new queen? We want to inspect as soon as we can, but have been advised to leave the new queen (or whoever is in there) alone for a few weeks.  Sigh...

More from Margaret to come later this week.  Exciting stuff around the bee yard!

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

We began with salad, wheatberry ciabatta, and homemade butter.

Our winter feast started with a happy accident.

Back in September, Team Kitchen and Team Garden drew up a list of cool-season crops that would do well in our area, and planned a menu around it. First we'd have a salad of Belgian endive and escarole, with a fresh poached egg on top and croutons from extremely homemade wheat bread (as in, we grew the wheat and ground it).

Well, the endive never sprouted. And we couldn't find escarole seeds. Who knew there'd be a run on escarole seeds?

Moral: Be flexible. Johanna, our test garden coordinator, had also planted some red butterhead lettuce and arugula, so Team Kitchen adapted.

It was easy; the lettuces were beautiful. We hardcooked the egg instead of poaching it, because a liquidy poached yolk, great on crisp endive and escarole, would've turned the tender lettuces into a sticky clump. We added small chunks of sweet, juicy tangerines from our tree, garlic-rubbed croutons, and a vinaigrette made with tangerine juice, our olive oil, and sea salt.

Red butterhead lettuce and arugula salad with tangerines and hard-cooked eggs.

We had plenty of wine to go with the food. The Syrah was in bottle at last and had recovered from its bottle-shock; it was back to its original blackberry suaveness. The Chardonnay still tasted fine—like a crisp green apple.

Sunset Chardonnay and Syrah, left; right, wine editor Sara Schneider sips the white as managing editor Alan Phinney tears off a chunk of ciabatta. (By the way, that construction site you see through the windows here will be a big outdoor kitchen, to be completed by June.
Come to our Celebration Weekend and see it for yourself.)

The stunning brassicas from the garden—cauliflower, broccoli romanesco, Savoy cabbage, kale, broccoli rabe, mustard greens—gave us our main courses: a winter vegetable chowder and spicy braised greens with preserved lemon.

Our chowder was packed with cauliflower, broccoli romanesco, and broccoli rabe,
plus a few potatoes saved from fall. On top: broccoli rabe flowers and purple rosemary blooms.

Braised Savoy cabbage, mustard greens, and
Tuscan kale with preserved lemon and chile.

The broccoli romanesco was so beautiful and strange that we used it as decor, too.

We ended not with our original dessert—olive oil tangerine cake, which turned out to be a total clunker given we were destroying the original recipe—but with something that arose naturally from our short list of available ingredients, which included honey, eggs, "imported" cream, and tangerines.

Tangerine honey crème caramel.

We had a very nice afternoon.

Recipe editor Amy Machnak and researcher Elizabeth Jardina.

Test garden coordinator Johanna Silver in the middle of
what must've been a vivid story.

Me (at left) and copy chief Erika Ehmsen.

SO WHERE ARE THE RECIPES?

They and the story of how we raised the ingredients for this winter menu will be showing up in larger form at some point in the months ahead—I promise.

For now, please have some salad. It's hearty enough to eat when it's cold, but bright and lively, too—which suits our California March, the month when winter slides into spring.

Red Butterhead Lettuce and Arugula Salad with Tangerines and Hard-Cooked Eggs

MAKES 6 to 8 servings TIME About 1 hour

We used our own chickens’ eggs, but we let them sit in the fridge for at least a week to let the air pocket inside each shell expand and make the eggs easier to peel.

6 to 8 eggs (not super-fresh)
2 tsp. fresh tangerine juice
1/2 tsp. each finely grated tangerine zest and sea salt
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3 to 4 thin slices wheatberry ciabatta or other whole wheat bread,
     cut into 1/2-in. dice (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 cloves garlic, mashed to a paste with 1/4 tsp. sea salt
5 loosely packed cups arugula leaves
6 loosely packed cups red butterhead lettuce leaves
     (about 1/2 small head)
2 large or 4 small tangerines

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Put eggs in a small pot and cover with about 1 in. of water. Bring to a boil; immediately lower heat to a simmer and cook 10 minutes. When eggs are finished, transfer to ice water; let cool 1 minute. Crack eggs all over on counter and return to ice water for 5 minutes. Peel under cold water. Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, whisk tangerine juice, zest, and salt together in a small bowl. Whisk in 1/4 cup olive oil. Set aside.
3. In a heatproof cup, microwave remaining 1/4 cup olive oil with mashed garlic for 10 seconds. Put bread cubes on a baking pan and drizzle with garlic oil, tossing to coat. Spread in a single layer and bake about 15 minutes, or until crisp, stirring once or twice. Set aside.
4. Rinse greens and dry twice in a salad spinner. Peel tangerines and remove thready white pith; then cut fruit crosswise into chunks, removing any seeds.
5. In a large bowl, toss greens gently but thoroughly with only enough dressing to coat. Add tangerines and croutons and toss just to mix. Divide salad among plates. Add a quartered egg to each plate and drizzle eggs with a little more dressing. Or pile it all on a platter if you like, so people can help themselves.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

In a break between welcome storms (I hope this rain eases California’s third year of drought) we ran out to the hives to give the bees some more real estate.

The bees in Betty were bursting the seams of her single box, and Veronica has drawn out comb in both brood boxes (although she’s filled most of her top box with honey). And, as we found last week in the great drone/mite massacre, her queen is clearly laying eggs.

The sun shone across Betty’s hive as we lifted her lid; we had to admire how beautiful and golden the mass of bees looked.

Betty’s bees are so laid back they didn’t even seem to notice us peering in. We added a second brood box; we’re hoping this spring she’ll be able to fill it out and even support a honey super.

Veronica was not so calm. We pulled off the lid to add her super and soon bees started buzzing up and warning us to go away (it’s a funny feeling when they get up against your veil and yell at you in their buzzy voices). The bees weren't crazy mad like the Africanized bees in this video, and our bees didn't sting us, but they were firm as they let us know they didn’t like being bothered. Sometimes bees will get really cranky if they’re no longer queen-right (queen-right means they have a queen); I hope that’s not the case.

Reader Tina K (friend of Nugget) has commented that she already has put honey supers on her hives, and they are pretty full. Wonder how long it will take our girls to make enough honey to share with us? Seems like there’s a nectar flow going on. The neighborhood is full of blooming fruit trees, eucalyptus, and acacia. Rosemary bushes are full of blue flowers, bulb blossoms are starting to crack open, and spring blooms are budded up ready to go.  Good time to be a bee.

Note from Kimberley: I am happy to report that Betty has already moved up into her new space-- she must have been eager for it!  There are five frames of bees happily building comb on the new brood frames. We still hope she won't be like rebel Veronica and will put brood where brood should be (instead of honey)!

K.Ruby/IUH

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

A couple weeks ago, K. Ruby Blume of The Institute of Urban Homesteading emailed us this message: “I have kept bees with the top bar system for 10 years. I have never once had a problem with mites. The bees build naturally, the cells are smaller which inhibits mite reproduction. We also work with feral bees who have had a chance to breed up their resistance living on their own without human interference here in our bioregion....the only time I had a mite problem was the one year I tried working with the traditional hives.”

Well, we’ve been thinking about running a top bar hive in addition to our two Langstroth hives. So I called Ruby to find out more information.

She’s sold on top bar hives as a way to raise bees.

“They’re good for a hobbyist backyard beekeeper,” she said. “Since you usually build a top bar hive yourself, and you don’t need to buy foundation or frames, it’s much cheaper than buying a Langstroth hive.”   

Plus, she pointed out, it’s easier to work a top bar hive, as you’re only lifting one bar at a time to inspect the hive, rather than wrestling with an box full of 80 lbs of frames, honey, and brood (as we had to do last week).

“It’s easier on the bees too. When you open Lang hive all the bees have access to air and they fly around, but when you open a top bar hive, the hive stays closed except where the bar is out.” This means you can use less smoke, because the bees don’t get so upset.

And she says she can inspect her top bar hives pretty fast. “I have three top bar hives here, and I can go through them in less than an hour. But you have to manage them every two to three weeks [during warm weather] because they are building freeform. You have to prevent them from building crooked comb.”

So where do you get plans to build a top bar hive? You can find many different plans in cyberspace, including two top bar hive plans at Ruby’s website. “Top bar hive styles are not standardized. You can do pretty much whatever you want. Really, bees just need a dry cavity, and they will build.”

Ruby teaches top bar beekeeping in the Oakland area at The Institute of Urban Homesteading. Her next beginner class, Backyard Beekeeping with the Kenyan Top Bar Hive is March 21, 2009.

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Four of our chicks at about two weeks old, back in August of 2007.

If you've been enjoying our blog posts about our various one-block feast projects, and don't yet know about our downloadable how-to guides for each, check them out by clicking on the one that interests you.

The Guides:

How to Raise Chickens

How to Make Beer

How to Make Olive Oil

How to Raise Honeybees

How to Make Wine

How to Make Vinegar

How to Make Salt

How to Grow Summer Crops

How We Made Cheese

How to Attract Beneficial Insects (we threw this one in just for fun, and because it's helpful)

Send us your comments, if you like...and stay tuned for the launch of new projects as we head into spring.

By Kimberley Burch, Sunset imaging specialist

This week, following Randy Oliver’s advice from last week, we prepared to kill the brood in Veronica and treat once again with formic acid, understanding that if we didn’t take this drastic step the hive might be doomed to fail against the mites. 
We first wanted to get a mite % of infestation to be sure the treatment was necessary (and we were curious). To get this, we gathered a sample of bees taken from a brood frame into alcohol, then counted the mites that fell after washing them and divided the mite count with the number of bees in the sample. A few must die for the good of the hive!
So, we opened up our Veronica hive on Wednesday to get the bee wash sample. There wasn’t any brood in the top box (they are still filling all ten frames with honey!) so we took the box off to get to the bottom box.  What a task that was!  There was so much drone and burr comb in between the two boxes that it was extremely difficult to get the two apart.  It took two of us lifting the estimated 80lb. box vertically while using the hive tool to break the propolis seal at the same time!

What we found in the bottom box was a shock! We were not expecting drone brood (white larva in photo) this early in the year, but as you can see in the picture we have LOTS of drone comb and the mites are taking advantage.  (Click on photo to make larger-- I count at least five mites in that picture.  How many do you count?)

We sampled about 125 bees from the brood frame into alcohol and only got five mites after washing, which would be a 4% infestation. However, I am not convinced this number is accurate. For the first time EVER, I saw several bees in the hive with mites on them, and the drone brood is covered in mites. We scraped off the ruined drone brood and burr comb from the top of the frames in the bottom box and put it in a plastic bag. Just in the bag I counted at least ten mites. And that’s just the number that didn’t jump off the brood and onto another bee while we were scraping!

In any case, we can see that Veronica is doing very well, despite the mites!  She has at least sixteen frames of bees in her two boxes, which according to Randy is strong enough to hold up against the mites.  Yay!
We returned to the hive yesterday to scrape off the remaining burr and drone comb. We also inserted the drone frame, now that we know how eager Veronica is to make drones!  We hope this will be enough to keep the mites under control, for now.

Our next concern?  Swarming season approaches!

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

All is gloom in the bee yard these days.

We had been so hopeful. Remember in my last post how I bragged we’d found only 4 mites in Betty? We thought surely the formic acid pad on Veronica knocked down her mites as well. After all, we treated Veronica with formic acid twice; Betty only once, and then only for a few hours a day.

Poor Veronica! Twice she lived with formic acid day and night for three weeks—once in mid December, then in late January. And yet, a week after removing the formic acid from Veronica, what do we find? 102 mites stuck to the sticky board after a 24-hour natural mite drop. And worse, a powdered-sugar dusting that same day yielded 132 mites in 10 minutes! Aye, Veronica!

But weak little Betty, the hive who had such trouble building up last summer, seems to be holding her own against the mites, with only 5 mites dropping 10 minutes after a powdered-sugar dusting.

We’re confounded. We don’t know what to do.

We have been advised: Tear apart Veronica’s boxes immediately, kill any brood we find (the idea being that there shouldn't be much egg laying going on this time of year), shake the bees into one box with some honey and treat them again with formic acid. Sterilize the empty brood box.

I hate this idea. I’ve been doing some reading about beekeeping alternatives, and I tend to agree with the biodynamic beekeepers who try to preserve the unity, or the “bien” of the colony. Since the first time I went into a hive, I’ve thought of the hive—the girls, the queen, even the much maligned drones—as a single, complete organism. You know, like an animal. I often describe the hive to my friends as a tiger in a box. To cut poor Veronica apart and invade her “body” seems horrific to me.

Still, I suppose radical surgery is often necessary. We’re discussing it—really, we're having a dispirited argument. Treat? Or don't treat? It's a huge controversy. But we're going to have to make up our minds, as time is drawing short. Queen Veronica will soon be laying frames of eggs, if she isn’t already.

We’re discussing other ways of raising bees, and are thinking about getting a top bar hive in addition to our two Langstroth hives. This is controversial in itself. And we're researching small cell retrogression. Readers, do any of you have personal experience with top bar hives or alternative beekeeping? Comments, please!

Betty's bees

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

This week the formic acid pads came off Veronica, and the sticky board came out. The board, cleaned and vaselined only a few days before, was coated with clumps of mites. I counted over 200 before I gave up. Some of the mites were still alive, scuttling across the board when I poked them with a stick. Ugh.

I do think the formic acid treatment has helped the bees. There are fewer crawling and dead bees on the ground outside the hive; we don’t know for certain that the girls had tracheal mites blocking their little breathing passages—you need a dissecting microscope to check that—but crawling bees can be a symptom of an infestation. Formic acid is supposed to help control tracheal mites as well as varroa.  (The USDA has some pretty gruesome pictures of tracheal mites. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

And our Betty is getting stronger. When we open her hive to put the formic acid pads in, the frames are full of bees. There is a steady stream of bees at the entrance bringing pollen and nectar. After her last formic acid treatment we waited 6 days and then did a 48-hour natural mite fall. I counted 4 mites and one thing I couldn’t quite identify as a mite. Woo hoo! Those are good numbers.

Hopefully all this mite treatment will give the girls a leg up for the season. Spring is starting up in the Bay Area. I saw a honey bee at the flowering almond outside my kitchen window yesterday. The acacias are puffing out with yellow flowers. and ornamental plums lining the city streets are covered in pink blossoms. Seems like a good situation for a bee.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Here’s another reason to buy honey from someone you know and trust.

You know the honey you buy at the grocery store? The honey labeled “pure” and “organic?”

Hmmm. Maybe not so pure.

In a special report on honey laundering, by Seattle Post-Intelligencer Senior correspondent Andrew Schneider, you’ll find a story of questionable dealings in the honey world. Honey shipped in from undisclosed countries of origin. Honey tainted with pesticides and antibiotics. Honey dumped on the U.S. honeymarket at unbelievably low prices. Reading this series will make you as hot as any Africanized bee hive.

On the home front
We’re still treating our bees for mites. (Disclaimer: Formic acid is classified as organic. And we would not eat honey produced while the treatment was on the hive.)

The girls seem to agree with us; the formic acid treatment is nasty . Betty gets a treatment for a half a day only. We put the pad on in the morning and take it off in the evening. In the mornings, when we open her hive up, she’s fine. The bees are very calm, just buzzing quietly to themselves as contented bees do. But when we put on the formic acid pad, what an uproar!

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

This is a picture of Kimberley suited up to put formic acid in the hives to treat for varroa mites. Formic acid stinks, and the vapor burns. Makes your nose feel like it’s been toasted, your eyes feel like they’ve been torched. Our advice: Wear a respirator. Wear eye protection.

We’ve treated with formic acid once, although just on Veronica. It didn’t seem to help; a week afterward, we sugar dusted, and the sticky board from Veronica was still covered in mites.  Lot’s of the little vampires—almost 200 in five minutes! Even natural 24-falls yielded high counts.

To kill mites, formic acid needs daytime outside air temperatures to be between 50-79 degrees. The first time we applied formic acid we had a cold spell, and the temperature never reached optimum levels. Perhaps that’s why we didn’t kill so many mites. For this second application we’ve been in luck, with summer-like weather during the first two weeks of January. We put the formic acid in Veronica on January 14, and we’ve been slaughtering mites ever since. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Too many to count.

Betty gets a formic acid pad for only a few hours during the day. She's too weak to live with the vapor for longer periods of time. She doesn't have as many dead mites, but still there are enough to be worrisome.

Formic acid may slow down spring brood production, but the mites will weaken and eventually kill the hive. We'll take the pad out of Veronica the first week of February. We hope this works.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Put your garden design skills to work helping bees by entering the Honey Bee Haven garden design competition at University of California, Davis.

This garden, funded by Häagen-Dazs, will “be a pollinator paradise,” according to Lynn Kimsey, chair of the Department of Entomology. At a half-acre, it will provide year round blooms for bees, research material for the on-going study of bees, and inspiration to visitors interested in building their own bee-friendly paradise.

But enter soon. The deadline is January 30, 2009. You can read all the particulars at UC Davis’s Department of Entomology website.

On the home front
The battle with varroa mites continues. Even after the formic acid treatment, a sugar dusting a week later knocked off just under 200 mites from Veronica. A natural 24-hour fall produced about 100 mites. Happily, the same 24 hours only yielded 9 from Betty (although with less bees, she provides less potential mite victims).

Frankly, we’re about out of ideas. We've tried Apiguard, drone comb trapping, sugar dusting, and formic acid. There are other products to try, but they're not organic, and we're loathe to try them. Readers, any advice?

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

In December, Todd Schofield wrote that he and his young daughters often found dead or dying bees in their yard. And, concerned about the troubles facing bees, he asked what they could do to help bees.

It’s always sad to find a dead bee, but the sad fact of bee life is that a worker bee's allotted time is short. A summer-born worker bee lives only 28 to 35 days. They simply wear out; their tattered wings can no longer carry them and they often die in the field, on the job.  So, Todd and daughters, don’t be too upset about the bee bodies you find.

But do help bees! European honeybees are in some serious trouble, as are native bumble bees. Here are some things you can do (and not do) in the new year to help bees of all kinds.

1. Don’t use any pesticides. This is probably the single most important thing you can do. Many researchers (and beekeepers) suspect that the low level of  pesticides found in bees is weakening them and making them more susceptible to other diseases. (Sharon Cohoon wrote about a common pesticide in lawn fertilizer, Imidacloprid, a nerve toxin which is taken up by the plant and goes into all parts of it, including pollen, in our Fresh Dirt Blog.)

2. Plant a variety of pollen bearing plants. Don’t go for flashy, sterile blossoms. Let clover grow in the lawn, and dandelions too. Relax. An added benefit of bee-attracting plants is that they’ll also attract beneficial insects and birds to your garden.

There’s a good bee-plant list at the Melissa Garden website.  And take our quiz How Green is Your Garden, to find out how softly on the planet your garden grows.

3. Buy honey! Buy it from local beekeepers if you can. We want to keep these folks in business; their bees pollinate our gardens, forests, and meadows. And, on the plus side for you, you’ll be tasting the terroir of the land as found through the honeybee.

For more on how you can help bees, see Elizabeth Jardina's Sunset story, Give Bees a Chance, as well as the Haagen Dazs Help the Honey Bees website.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

We’ve been shivering in the San Francisco Bay Area with an arctic express barreling through. I know it doesn’t mean much to folks living in the east, but believe me, it’s different out here. The thermometer dives much below 50 degrees Fahrenheit and we turn blue and stay shivering inside.

Our girls are no different. They’re hunkered down in their hives, in a shifting cluster that they keep between 64-90°F. When the weather’s cold and wet, we don’t see them.

The other day I was out checking on the girls in a little window between storms. The sun was out, and the thermometer read about 56°F. The bees were going crazy, flying all around! I could hear them buzzing from five feet away.

There was a fist-sized clump of bees on Betty. At first I thought. oh, great, all her other troubles, and now she’s getting robbed by other bees. But then I saw that many of the girls had something bright yellow-white (Propolis? Pollen? What’s blooming right now?) on their hind legs. They were all jockeying to get into the hive.

Veronica was also active, although fewer of her bees carried pollen.

Also, for the first time since this cold weather rolled in, I could smell that sweet eucalyptus scent of our bees. I couldn’t smell the formic acid in Veronica, though. That’s probably not good, since it needs higher temperatures to work. Darn.

Sadly, everyday there are lots of dead bees on the patio, some with the yellow stuff on their legs. We sweep nearly everyday, so these are new dead bees.

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Here's what we're giving for Christmas this year:

Photograph by Spencer Toy

Yes! The fruits of our summer one-block diet.

Happy Holidays, everybody.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

One of our readers (and fellow beekeeper), Tina, suggested we do a beginning beekeeper gift guide. Thanks for the suggestion.

For the beginning beekeeper, our free Guide to Raising Honeybees Download OneBlock_Bee.pdf has a list of materials, links to suppliers, and instructions on how to get started beekeeping. Did I mention it’s free?

We started our beekeeping adventure with Master Pollinator kits ($299.50 each) from Dadant & Sons. Each kit includes almost everything a person would need to get started in beekeeping, except for bees.

These kits got us started, but beekeeping, like woodworking, offers ample opportunity for equipment acquisition.

Some things, like a Country Rubes bottom board ($40), are essential to the health of the hive. It has a screened bottom for greater air circulation and a slot for a sticky board to make monitoring pest levels easier.

We’d love a frame perch ($19) from Mann Lake Ltd. for holding heavy frames of honey. It would make the job of inspecting easier and keep the frames off the ground.

And the clothing...well, it’s not cocktail wear, but a beekeeper needs to be well dressed. We found that the bee suit set-up in the beginner kit needed some upgrades...

Well-made helmets fit better than cheap plastic helmets and are more comfortable to wear (and they last longer too). We like the vented helmets ($14) from Mann Lake Ltd.

And we like the round tie-on veils ($13) rather than zip-ons. Sure, bees can get inside the veil more easily, but when you’re in a hurry and just need to get out there and check the hives, it’s great to just tie on a veil rather than struggle into a clumsy suit and zip up your veil.

Gloves really need to fit. Too-big gloves are clumsy to work in and are a menace to the bees. Kimberley and I both wish for a pair of children sized gloves ($19); our small hands swim in even the small adult size gloves.

We enjoy our subscription to the American Bee Journal (from $25 per year). And there’s always something worth reading in the opus The Hive and the Honey Bee, edited by Joe M. Graham, ($36) But First Lessons in Beekeeping, by Keith S. Delaplane ($9) is better for the beginner, with lots of photos. Both books are available from Dadant.

The best advice is from Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine (from $25 per year) and the author of The Backyard Beekeeper ($20) says in his beekeeper gift guide blog at thedailygreen.com, “My advice, first off, is to get a gift certificate, because that just-starting-out beginner doesn't even know what he or she wants yet.”

So true. But he or she will know soon.

By Kimberley Burch, Sunset imaging specialist

Last week I had the great pleasure of being invited to help teach a few classes of 1st graders all about bees!

My friend, Karen Gallion-Biggers (above right), is a volunteer teacher with the BUGS (Better Understanding Garden Science) program at Brittan Acres Elementary School in San Carlos, CA. The BUGS program mission is: To better understand nature, the relationships necessary for the growth of the plants and where plants fit into the cycle of life. This month’s session is BEES!

I came to the school all dressed in my suit and veil, much to the children’s delight. I brought with me a drone frame, super frame, and brood frame to show the different sizes. I also brought along a jar of Sunset honey, a piece of comb from the hive, a piece of our melted and filtered wax, and a tube of my lip balm.  The children (and teachers!) got a kick out of seeing all the different products the bees can bring us.

Karen asked me a series of questions covering the basics of beekeeping; we passed around a few show-and-tell items and generally just had good fun interacting with the inquisitive 1st graders.

I’m glad I was able to do my part to spread the word about the importance of bees.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator
Kimberley spoke well when she said, "maybe we should be called Mitekeepers."

Our girls are afflicted with varroa mite, that vampire of the bee world. Varroa mites weaken the bees, kill brood, and pass along dreadful viruses. We've treated three times this year with Apiguard, and were dismayed to find that one week after our last Apiguard treatment, a powdered-sugar dust knocked off well over 63 mites from Veronica in 5 minutes. Randy Oliver recommends that you find no more than few mites fall in 5 minutes after sugar dusting.

Our mite counts are not good and we’re worried. In the mornings the cement pad is littered with dead bees. When the day warms enough for the bees to work, I often see them carrying dead sisters away from the hive. (They don't like to have dead bodies littering their living area, anymore than we would.)

All our beekeeper friends have warned us: take a more aggressive approach to help the girls or probably lose them all this winter. Monday we applied a formic acid pad (thanks to local beekeeper Thomas Kemp) to Veronica, our stronger hive.

We're not treating Betty with formic acid; she's is far too weak. The idea is to poison the mites, but not the bees. Kind of like chemotherapy. We don't think Betty could survive the treatment, but we're hoping Veronica can.

We were dismayed when we opened Veronica’s hive; what two weeks ago had been a top box boiling with bees was now deserted. This is worrying. However, as we watched, bees came up to see what was going on. That cheered us a bit. We're hoping that they were all down in the bottom box keeping queen and brood warm.

We quickly put the pad over the top bars and closed up the hive. Formic acid, while marketed as a "natural" mite control, is still pretty toxic; the precautions say to use chemical-resistant gloves, eye protection, and a respirator. 

The formic acid stinks. Really stinks. Like vinegar, only stronger. It makes your eyes and throat burn, even from five feet away. I feel so sad for our girls.

To read more about mite control, try Randy Oliver’s Scientific Beekeeping website. And keep your fingers crossed for our bees.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

In the middle of November I wrote about Hive Veronica’s unfortunate honeycomb construction. Last week, just before we went on holiday we finally had time to go out the hives and fix the problem.

Veronica is boiling with bees; two boxes chock-a-block full of bees, and a 3-inch-tall spacer box on top of the hive (the box gave us room to put in medication and a hive beetle trap—which did not trap many hive beetles). The bees built comb in the spacer box (it helps insulate the hive), and started filling it with nectar in November. What a mess!

Ok, so it wasn’t a mess until we opened the top of the hive and broke all the comb apart, spilling nectar everywhere. The new comb was well ordered and beautiful (especially to the bees). The poor girls began drinking up the nectar we spilled, and we had to brush them off the comb so that we could take it out of the hive.

Tragedy was inevitable. Bees were doused in honey, some drowning in sweetness. I fished a few bees out of the puddles of goo and placed them on the landing board; they were immediately surrounded by other bees who licked them clean.

We pulled quite a bit of comb filled with nectar out of Veronica. We'll freeze this and feed it back to them later in the winter.

We took off the spacer box, and cleaned her up. Since she’s still in a building mood and she’s honeybound (the frames are all filled with honey, and there’s no space for eggs or brood), we pulled two frames of honey from the center of the box. We replaced them with empty foundation. We’re hoping that they’ll build out comb and Queen Veronica will start laying eggs after the winter solstice.

Hive Betty, poor Betty, who has only 4 frames of bees in one brood box (she should have more), and not much honey stored for the winter, was the recipient of Veronica’s largesse. We don’t know if Betty is going to make it, but we’re going to do everything we can to help her.

By Samantha Schoech, Sunset senior editor

Every year my husband and I get together with about 12 of our nearest and dearest to celebrate the holidays and eat a whole lot of old-school Italian food. For a long time we handed out gag gifts and other trinkets to one another—a Velveeta t-shirt here, a doggie chew toy in the shape of a politician there. 

But then we got to thinking.  What if we pooled our money, avoided the trinkets, and collectively gave to something worthwhile? We might actually be able to do a tiny bit of good in the world.

So last year we gave the gift of honey bees!  Together we collected about $250, which buys 6 beautiful, buzzing hives through Heifer International, a non-profit dedicated to helping struggling families lift themselves out of poverty.

Bees help individuals in developing countries (ours went to Tanzania) by pollinating crops, and providing a steady stream of honey, wax, and pollen for food and income.

Better than another cheesy t-shirt any day.

Hey chicken fans: Heifer provides lots of different livestock and other productive animals including flocks of chicks for just $20

Please tell us your best charitable giving ideas for the season.

By Margaret Sloan, production coordinator and Kimberley Burch, imaging specialist

In folk medicine, beeswax is used for many things—emollient, antiseptic, and ointment. We think it makes great lip balm, and our homemade lip balm makes great gifts.

Supplies
Double boiler (we made our own from an old saucepan and 4-cup plastic measuring cup)
Beeswax
Sweet almond oil
Jojoba oil
Flavor oil of your choice
Plastic transfer pipettes
Kitchen scale (We recommend using a digital scale with a tare, or zero function)
Plastic Tom
Lip Balm Tubes

Basic lip balm recipe
2 parts beeswax
1 part sweet almond oil
1 part jojoba oil

Kimberley bought everything we needed from Majestic Mountain Sage. The beeswax and kitchen scale we had on hand.

It took about an hour for each batch and we suggest you make a small batch first, and adjust the recipe to your liking. More oil makes the balm softer, and less oil makes the balm harder. Kimberley pointed out the the harder balm stayed on her lips for a longer time, even through brushing her teeth.

Directions

1. In the saucepan we put enough water (about 1.5 cups) to float the plastic measuring cup, and brought the water to a boil.

2. We weighed the measuring cup and used that weight to zero out the scale. We broke up the wax into small pieces—the smaller the peices, the faster the wax will melt—and weighed it in the measuring cup, then added the oils by weight. To make the math easy, we re-zeroed the scale after every addition.
For approximately 50 .15 oz (4.25 gram) tubes, we used 128 grams of beeswax, and 64 grams each of jojoba oil and sweet almond oil.

3. Once the water in the saucepan boiled, we reduced it to a simmer and put the measuring cup full of wax and oil in the boiling water, stirring occasionally as the wax melted.

4. While the wax was melting we put the lip balm tubes on the Plastic Tom.

5. When the wax was completely melted and mixed with the oil, we removed the measuring cup from the boiling water and wiped any water from the outside of the cup.

6. Using a plastic pipette to measure and dispense the flavor oil (we used a honey flavor oil for this batch), we quickly stirred it into the melted balm mixture. The amount of flavor oil needed varies, depending on the type of oil used. Follow directions.

7. When the balm had cooled a bit but could still be poured (Majestic Mountain Sage recommends pouring when the mixture has a haze over the surface, as seen in this Lip balm tutorial), we carefully poured the melted wax and oil mixture into the Plastic Tom. Over filling the tubes isn’t a worry—we simply scraped off the excess balm with a spatula and remelted it.

8. After the balm cooled and hardened, we pulled the tubes from the Plastic Tom, capped them, and labeled them.

Sources
Majestic Mountain Sage
Plastic Tom

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By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

The holidays are upon us, and with tough economic times, books are still a great value gift. Here's our list of bee books that we recommend for anyone interested in bees, but not yet ready to commit to keeping them.

The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco

Patricia Polacco writes and illustrates kid's books that often veer towards the serious, but in this hilarious book, a little girl and her grandfather go on a bee hunt, along with half the town.  It's not really about bees. It's about the little girl learning to love reading. But the bee hunt is wonderful, crazy fun.

The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive
by Joanna Cole, Illustrated by Bruce Degen, Bruce Degan

Part of the Magic School Bus series by Scholastic, this is a fun book for kids and grownups as Ms. Frizzle's class takes a field trip through a bee hive. Lots of great illustrations.

Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey—The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World
by Holley Bishop

This was the book that initially interested me in bees. Bishop is a beekeeper, and she's clearly deeply in love with bees.

Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis
by Rowan Jacobsen

This is a scary book. Not good bedtime reading, but you'll learn about the problems facing bees, beekeepers, and ultimately, the world. As dismal as it seems, he does end on a happy note as he talks about raising his own bees.

The Queen Must Die and Other Affairs of Bees and Men
by William Longgood, Illustrated by Pamela Johnson

A book of essays about bees. You'll get a good course in bee behavior and biology along with a dose of philosophy. Don't worry, the philosophy is sweet because Longgood always returns to the subject of bees.

Ok, I have to admit, I haven't read these last two books. They're in my "to read" pile, but I haven't gotten to them yet.

Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind
by Stephen Buchmann and Banning Repplier

Sweetness and Light: The Mysterious History of the Honeybee 
by Hattie Ellis

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Some people view a swarm of bees settling on their property as a blessing. Last week a friend sent me link to a link to a very sad tale of a swarm of bees that settled on a barbecue in Australia (it's spring there-swarming season). The barbecue owner, dubbed the barbecue beehive bomber, didn't view the hive as a good thing, and so exterminated the bees with a can of bugkiller strapped to a rake. Sunset's Team Bee wept at the carnage.

Please, please, please! If you are visited by a swarm of bees, call a local beekeeper organization. They will be able to point you to a beekeeper who would love to take away the swarm. It's awful to kill so many bees if they can be saved.

And more importantly, removing a swarm of bees yourself could also endanger you and your family. In 2000, a swarm of bees attacked a family and killed their dog after they had tried to remove the hive themselves. So much damage could be averted with a little knowledge. The California Beekeeper Association website has a great page about beeswarms. Your local beekeeper organization will certainly be able to point you to people who would love to take your visiting bees.

It's not swarm season in the Northern Hemisphere right now, but it will soon be in many parts of the western United States. Wherever you live, make friends with a few beekeepers and let them know if a swarm of bees decides to grace you with buzzing. And perhaps you'll be graced with a jar of honey after the beekeeper has settled the bees in a new home.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Bees are contrary creatures. They’ve evidently never read the multitude of beekeeping books about how they are supposed to act.

And with all the contrariness of bees, Hive Veronica is building comb in November. There are a lot of bees in that hive, and they’re filling the top of the spacer box with comb and nectar. It's a mess in there with a big fuzzy pile of bees and gloopy, nectar-filled free-form natural comb all over the tops of the frames.

The thing is, it's nearly winter. Bees are supposed to cluster together in the center of their box, keeping queen and brood warm and fed during these days when the sunlight shortens. They're not supposed to build comb and fill it with nectar.

What's going on? And what should we do?

We emailed Tom Vercoutere, President of the Beekeepers Guild Of San Mateo County.

"Don't worry," he told us. "They're bugs." They know what to do.

Perhaps they are simply trying to fill in the 2.5 inches of empty space above the frames to keep that space warm. Or perhaps, as Kimberley suspects, Veronica is a hoarder, and the 13 full frames of honey she already has isn’t enough.

And this is the San Francisco Bay Area, and it is different here from the rest of the country. There's the weather, for one thing. Chilly days of rain alternate with short, warm, sunny days. There are plenty of flowers blooming. The brugmansia in our test garden is blowing gigantic yellow trumpet-like flowers, the Mexican sage is still unfurling fuzzy blue curls. The bees are dizzy with delight over this late season boon. And I just noticed the sweet scent of a citrus tree wafting over a neighbor's fence.

November, and already we, the bees and I, are looking forward to spring.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

I’m giving you fair warning. If you’re the kind of person who gets queasy easily, better skip this blog. I’m going to talk about icky stuff.

Here it is: I never thought that my job at Sunset would include analyzing bee poo with my co-worker, Kimberley Burch. But it does.

Hey, it’s not that gross. After all, bees only eat honey and pollen. And it’s the kind of thing you have to pay attention to if you’re going to manage livestock. Our One-block diet has turned us into urban farmers here at Sunset.

Here’s what happened. We checked the girls during some rainy weather earlier this week. There were still bees flying, even in the rain, but not many. Then, on Wednesday, after the rains had stopped, we noticed several spatters of yellow bee poo on the cement pad and one spatter on Hive Betty.

What now?! Bees are terrifically clean house keepers. If at all possible, they won’t soil their hive, or the surrounding area. In winter while they are trapped inside the hive by inclement weather, they “hold it” until better weather and they are able to make a cleansing flight and get far away from the homestead (or hivestead).

We’re worried by these spatters so close to the hives. It could be bee dysentery. It could be signs of a bee virus called Nosema apis, which is a little like bee flu. Some think this nasty virus, and its close relation, Nosema ceranae, could be one of the causes of colony collapse disorder. (For another theory about the cause of colony collapse, see Sharon Cohoon's blog on nicotine-based pesticides in our Fresh Dirt blog.)

Today is warm and sunny and the girls are out in force. I see no new tell-tale yellow spots. Perhaps what we saw was simply a the results from a few bees who couldn’t get away fast enough.

We’re trying not to worry, but it’s awfully hard not to get emotional about bees.

Yet another worrisome sign. Bees on the ground, unable to fly. Could be Nosema. Could be a sign of tracheal mites. Or could just be cold bees.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

While inspecting the hives last week, we found that Veronica and Betty both had built great big cells. Big, sticking-out cells. They looked suspiciously like queen cells—the type of cells bees build to hold the larvae of a new queen. You can see the cell on the upper left of the photo at left.

We quickly sent a photo to Tom Vercoutere, President of the Beekeepers Guild Of San Mateo County. He emailed back, saying “What you are looking at is a queen cup. Bees commonly build and destroy these so it doesn’t necessarily mean there is a supersedure (queen replacement) or a swarm eminent. If Betty is “less than great”, the hive may be trying to supersede her. Let them do it.”

Queen cells! Are the girls starting new queens?

Was there a seccessionist movement in their hives? Was a group of bees getting ready to fly off and start a new colony somewhere else? It’s autumn, so it’s not swarm season, but it can happen.

Or were they going to replace their old queen with a new queen? Frankly, Betty’s not a very good queen—she’s been making spotty brood, the hive’s not very clean, and her daughters are sickly. She could stand to be replaced. But Veronica’s been pretty successful. We’d be sad to lose her.

But who knows with bees? It’s like farming a wild animal, something that I think of everytime I open the hives. They’ll do what they want to do, and all we can do is stand by patiently and try not to get stung.

By Erika Ehmsen, Sunset copy chief

Bees pretty much scare the bee-jebus out of me. And I can deal with that, but I don't want to pass this phobia on to my daughter.

One of my earliest memories is of my mom being stung while gardening. From preschool picnic tables on, I was wary. But I didn’t start stuffing an EpiPen in my purse till I was in my mid-20s, after a bee turned a family rafting trip into a trip to the ER in our swimsuits: On our way back to the river after a picnic lunch, a yellow-jacketed insect of some stinging variety landed on my brother’s hand. He yelped and cursed, then started turning blue and breathing erratically—he was in anaphylactic shock.

As we panicked and plunged his arm into the cold river to try to slow the venom’s spread, a clear-headed rafting guide grabbed a first aid kit with a syringe of epinephrine. The shot of adrenaline slowed the anaphylaxis, an ambulance soon whisked him away, and an ER doc administered an IV of epinephrine to stop his body’s severe allergic reaction (to heal him completely, the therapy had to continue for days).

I haven’t been stung, and I don’t know if I’d have the same reaction, but I keep my EpiPen nearby to be safe. And I try not to spaz out and shriek when I hear buzzing, but I recently realized that I do flinch and flail just a bit: A few weeks ago, a fly hitched a ride in our car, and my 2-year-old daughter nearly started crying as she contorted her arms under the seatbelt and attempted to stuff them safely under her shirt. “A bee, a bee!” she yelled out. “Mommy, help!”

I opened the window wide and encouraged her to flick the insect away: “Shoo, fly, don’t bother me!” we sang, wiggling our arms. She quickly recovered, but I realized that I had some work to do if she was going to respect bees and their place in nature.

At a book-sale fundraiser for my daughter’s preschool, I spotted The Beeman, Laurie Krebs's rhyming tale of a grandpa beekeeper and his adoring grandson. It's packed with bee details (Krebs's husband is a beekeeper) and sweetly illustrated by Valeria Cis.

My daughter is head over heels for her grandparents, so I thought she might get hooked on the concept of a grandpa story. I usually have a price threshold for kids’ books, but I figured that $17 now might save me hundreds in therapy bills later. So the other evening, after carving pumpkins (Happy Halloween, everyone!), we sat down for a snuggly read.

I pointed to the cover: Do you know what that is? "Yeah, it's a bug." What kind of bug? "One that flies." Yes, and one that helps trees produce sweet fruit. And they make yummy honey, I said, showing her a tiny jar of golden goodness from Sunset's own hives (thanks, Team Bee!).

Eyes wide, she opened the cover and I started reading. We buzzed quickly through each page, pausing to act out the bees' wiggly wings and admire the grandma's apple-honey muffins (the book includes a recipe).

When we got to the part about extracting honey from frames, I handed her the jar of Sunset honey. "Bees made this?" she asked, incredulous. Yes, I said. "This bee made the honey?" she asked again, pointing to the bee on the label.

Yes, lots of bees made it, including that one (an especially photogenic worker from a Sunset hive). Would you like to taste it? Vigorous head nodding, then an excited little "Yeah."

I put some on a spoon and she opened wide.

"Mmm, yummy, Mama."

I'm glad you like it ... now what do you say?

"Thank you, beeeez!"

  Yes, thank you, bees.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

The gentle art of beekeeping has been turned into a new art medium by these two artists. I’d love to try making a sculpture like these, but as Kimberley pointed out, the artists  have to sacrifice a lot of brood to accomplish their very interesting work.

New York magazine has a cool slideshow of artist Hilary Berseth’s hive-built sculptures  and how he builds them.
Aganetha Dyck is a Canadian artist who is making sculpture with the bees’ help by putting objects in the hive and allowing the bees to build comb on them.

Of course, I have a piece of comb on my desk that the bees generated without any prompting from us. The beauty, delicacy, and superb engineering never ceases to amaze and surprise me.

On the home front

To help fight our battle against ants and small hive beetles (SHB), we’ve built our own little defensive Green Zone: a cement patio for the hives. SHB larvae can’t burrow into the soil to pupate, and we can easily spot ants crawling and hopefully control them. Tony Soria (Sunset facility supervisor), Dan Strack (building maintenance), and Rick LaFrenze (landscape supervisor and Team Beer member) have been the champions for Team Bee. In two days they moved the hives, poured the cement and moved the hives again.

Tony Soria smooths cement next to Veronica and Betty

Even though we moved the hives less than 6 feet to their new patio, there were some mighty confused bees hovering in two hive shaped clouds precisely where their hives had been. I imagine most of them were foragers who had flown out at dawn, only to return home to find the rest of the girls had packed up and moved away without telling them. Bees, creatures of habit, locate their home hive visually; they don’t expect it to move while they’re out gathering groceries. The poor things flew around all afternoon looking for their missing homes, but fortunately by the next morning, bees were zipping in and out of their hives without a hitch.

We shall see how this patio works. Keep your fingers crossed.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Our girls are busy this beautiful October week of Indian summer. They’re working the wild blooming ivy hedge behind our nursery and Mexican bush sage in the test garden.

Today we set some frames outside to dry; they had honey left on them after our last harvest and we thought we had washed them pretty well. But within the hour bees had come to the frames and were slurping up the honey flavored water. They were so excited they were vibrating. Very fun to watch. The girl in this photo is really happy (click on the photo below  to make it a larger size.)

Photo by Kimberley Burch, Sunset imaging specialist

We are excited about the new movie, The Secret Life of Bees. The beekeeping world seems all abuzz; in the October 2008 issue of the American Bee Journal, beekeeper Julian Wooten describes teaching the cast of the movie how to work with bees. He said Queen Latifah was nervous at first, but “came through with flying colors.”

Here is a cute clip of Dakota Fanning and Tristan Wilds learning to keep bees. I love it when Dakota says, "I think I want to be a beekeeper." Hopefully they’ll get the beekeeping part of the movie right, because a badly done movie metaphor just doesn’t fly.

Ulee’s Gold (1997) is a another movie about beekeeping. Well, it’s about a family of humans, really, but Henry Fonda plays a beekeeper, an occupation that informs his life. And the movie gets the beekeeping right.

I expect there will be a lot more interest in beekeeping after The Secret Life of Bees opens. If you’re curious about our project, you can Download OneBlock_Bee.pdf about how we got started beekeeping. There are also other pdfs about our One Block Diet Projects. And add a comment to our blog! We’ll do our best to find an answer your questions.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Sometimes a bad thing makes me reconnect to what I love about beekeeping. 

We had to open the hives to put in the small hive beetle traps, but we decided not to smoke the bees, not wanting to disrupt them and cause a hive-wide panic attack and mass nectar robbing. The bees were peaceful, so we watched for a time. Every frame was full of bees; they’d come to the tops of the frames, look at us, then go back down into the chamber. No problems. No threats. No stinging. Only a low fuzzy buzzing and the smell of warm honey and bees.

Unfortunately, we spilled some mineral oil into Veronica when we put in the trap. They didn’t like that at all, and a small chorus of shrill bee voices complained from under the plastic container. The bees nearest to the spill clustered around, cleaning the top bars madly.

But the hive stayed calm. Only a couple bees were loudly griping. The rest were annoyed at the oil but remained very businesslike. As they cleaned, it seemed they were communicating—touching each other, licking each other, bumping together gently. I thought how marvelous is a working hive. It sounds sappy, but I fell in love with bees all over again.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m worried that the mineral oil might hurt them. I’m worried that the SHB is going to starve them, demoralize them, kill them. I worry about mites, ants, birds, virus. Bees are a lot of worry, a lot of work.

But the SHB gave us an excuse to open the hive. And just to be able to watch their inner world for a few moments as they go about their lives is the best part of the job. Even sweeter than the honey.