The Great Escape

If only chamfered top bars worked as well as the Vortex Bee Escape. Within hours, all was quiet inside the super.

I really want chamfered top bars to work, but the bees insist on hanging comb from one side of the V only. And our girls prefer to make 2" thick honey combs so "standard" bar spacing just doesn't work. (Next year we'll space seven bars according to the marks left by the brace comb on the walls.) As it stands, not one of the combs in the super is properly attached to its top bar. This is one time I won't feel so guilty about crushing the comb to get the honey out of it.

Here are a few snapshots of our Summer Honey Harvest. Hover over each photo to reveal its caption.

Letting Go

Drone and Worker Bee

Both of these bees have imperfect wings (not visible from this angle) and were probably airlifted then dropped this short distance from the hive. The worker bee has two varroa mites on her, the likely cause of her deformed wing. Since she can't fly back home, I guess the colony decided to evict her and her passengers, rather than groom the mites off.

Our second effort at drone culling didn't go so well; there weren't any drone cells on the combs we selected and both of us ended up getting stung. So we're letting go of the idea that we can use this method to manage varroa for the bees. For now, we're embracing the philosophy that if the colony is unable to deal with the mites on their own, then they have genetics that should be let go. Time will tell, but we feel confident in our colony. They've been displaying hygienic behavior, such as pupae with mites being rejected, and mites being thrown outside the hive, so it seems they've got good genetics. If they overwinter and swarm next year, we won't try to catch them. For the greater good of the world around us, we'll simply let them go.

Long-Horned Bee on 'Dragon's Blood' Sedum

Melissodes bimaculata on Sedum spurium var coccineum

Often 2 or 3 Long-Horned digger bees can be found inside a single squash blossom. You can see them from across the yard, their inky blackness in striking contrast with the yellow flowers. They move from male to female flowers, collecting pollen and then drinking nectar to their hearts' delight. When honeybees forage, they usually are either gathering pollen or getting nectar, not both. Honeybees also display "floral fidelity," but these bees move on to other flowers as morning - and the squash blossoms - draws to a close.

Super Wonky

July Harvest: 9 3/4 lbs. (4 for us and the rest for the girls)

Some say that managing a Top Bar Hive is more intensive than a Langstroth. Instead of pulling off a 30+lb. super all at once, harvesting honey from a TBH is done in increments. As the hive gets full, you pull out a comb or two of honey and replace them with empty top bars. Repeat as necessary. In my opinion, the management of a TBH is easier because there's way fewer bees to deal with on a couple of combs versus 10 frames.

Our hive is definitely full. These are the combs from the very back of the box. Unfortunately, the girls joined them together and attached them to the false back to boot. Not realizing this, I made a mess trying to pull out just one. But they were really nice about it and let us take both combs without incident. We'll cut off the wonky parts, and give them back the straight parts.

We'll store them in the freezer until sometime in August, when we start prepping for Winter. Yes, Winter. It was 97°F on Saturday, but we beekeepers are always concerned about having enough stores to survive the next Winter. There's probably 15 lbs of honey still in the hive, but we want them to have at least 30lbs by Labor Day.

So what of the super? BB lifted it up, and here's what's up...

I'm very relieved that the queen did not go up and lay eggs, but Wow! is this comb a mess.

The honey is not harvestable, yet. We're going to give 'em a couple of weeks to continue feasting on Lindens. When the flow is over and the cells are capped over, we'll pull the super off.

Orange-belted Bumblebee and Lamb's Ear

Bombus ternarius laden with pollen from Stachys lanata.

Wondering what the honeybees are up to? For 6 weeks, there were more bees than would fit in the hive and hundreds would just hang out on the face of the hive 24/7. Then a week ago the Lindens started flowing and Bingo! no more blob of bees. The full force of bees is out collecting nectar, which begs the question, "How fast can they fill the super?"

Ultragreen Bee on Hairy Poppy

Agapostemon texanus on Papaver pilosum

Jelly-Belly Bee Excavating Nest

Also known as mason or leafcutter bees, jelly-bellies carry pollen on their scopa, the fuzzy yellow area on this bee. They are solitary bees and don't live in colonies. Instead, one female leafcutter bee will dig out a nest, create nest cells and provide her young with food. Adult females may live up to two months and lay 35-40 eggs during this time. (Our honeybee queen is laying up to 3,000 eggs a day.)

At least one species of leafcutter bee is cultivated for agricultural use in Colorado. Megachile rotundata is used to pollinate alfalfa, a function that it does far more efficiently than honeybees. The leafcutters are provided with predrilled "bee boards" to use for nest construction. At the end of the season, the nest cells with developing bees are collected and carefully stored, to be released the subsequent season when alfalfa blooms (June).

Leafcutter bees are important native insects of the western United States.