Bee communication: two views

Produced by the Multi-Agent Robotics and Systems (MARS) Laboratory at Georgia Tech, this video offers a clear, understandable, and rather mind-blowing explanation of how honey bees use the sun, an inner clock, and dance moves to navigate and communicate. Also: lederhosen.

Produced by Cornell University PhD candidate Michael Smith, this video demonstrates the complicated behaviors bees use to assess potentially weaker hives, defend their own honey stores, and communicate danger or opportunity to their hive sisters. Also: pantyhosen.

There’s an app for that! (Of course there is)

So I’ve been spending HOURS poking around on the intertubes, researching bee-friendly plants. (Beats working, anyway.)  And after more hours trying to synthesize and localize the info, complete with links and photos, I discovered that the Pollinator Project has a nifty little app that’s far more useful than anything I could cobble together.

BeeSmart lets you describe what you’re looking for in terms of location, specific pollinator, sun requirements, bloom color (important for some pollinators), acidic or clay or other “soiled type” (I LOLed), and plant type. Once you’ve set your parameters, Bee-Smart sorts through its database of almost 1000 mostly-native plants and selects those that meet your criteria. You can then look through the photos and mark favorites to create your own customized list. And it’s free!

My only quibble: I wish they’d added a way to sort by bloom time. Each plant’s description includes that info and there may be a way to sort the customized list itself, once you’ve made your selections — but I haven’t figured that out yet.

The app’s available for download here, in both iPhone and Android versions. Go play with it!

And we’re off! 2.0

Now that you’ve met the hives, here are the deets from yesterday’s inspection plus about a billion pixels’ worth of exciting photos.

The crew gathered around Stripey B. Plum.

Jennifer, Corinna, and I headed up the troops. Six kids—Ella, Simon, Emmett, Lark, Ruby, and Charlotte—suited up and took turns with the smoker and the brush. Emmett, Simon, and Ella are experienced hands at this and helped explain what we were doing and why; the new recruits were (understandably) a bit nervous at first but they soon were drawn in by the bees’ exotic allure. Plus—honey! All six were a delight to work with and they all get big fat gold stars in their permanent records.

We began by inspecting the two newly established hives, Stripey B. Plum and Miss Queen Angelica. They arrived at the garden on April 23 as two nucs of five frames each. (You can see pics of the installation here.) Both hives are doing well; we spotted lots of larvae and capped brood, plus sealed honey cells as well as lots of new honey in the making. As soon as we’re done painting and sealing the hive bodies, we’ll add those to make sure the ladies have room to expand. We don’t have much of a sense of Stripey B’s temperament yet but Miss Queen Angelica is extremely laid-back.

Two frames from Miss Queen Angelica, with capped honey on the left and capped brood on the right. Honey cells caps are made of flat, translucent wax. Looks like these cells have been capped pretty recently, judging by how pearly-white the wax is. The caps on brood cells, in which the pupae are developing, are domed, bumpy, and opaque.

Here’s a close-up of capped brood so you can see the texture of the wax. The workers with their heads poked into the cells are possibly feeding larvae or cleaning out whatever mess was left by recently hatched bees.

Capped honey at the upper left and a strip of capped brood just below center. Above and below the brood, you can see open cells containing gleaming recycled nectar that will become honey. A bee can’t possibly fill a cell in one go; instead they add the semi-digested nectar bit by bit, after many harvesting flights. When the cell is full, the bees cap it so the honey can season and ripen. (See if you can spot the emerging bee among the capped cells, and the cell with what looks like freshly unloaded pollen.)

Capped brood, which I’m sure you recognize by now. Look closely at the open cells below and to the right and you can see the larvae. The queen started laying eggs on this frame in a classic pattern: starting in the middle and working out in concentric circles. So the larvae farthest from the center are the youngest and the smallest and the brood near the middle are the oldest — and some may have already popped out as new worker bees.

When Adam, Jenn and I inspected Buzzzy two weeks ago, the bees seemed awfully touchy, bordering on hostile. We didn’t want to run the risk of the kids getting stung so yesterday’s inspection was adults-only. As it turned out, the Buzzzy bees behaved quite well! With all three hives, we tried to poke and prod as little as possible; we also took our time, which gave us a chance to look around and gave the bees a chance to settle down.

The very best thing about this leisurely approach is that it allowed us to spot the emergence of several brand new bees. I posted the video last night and here are a couple of close-up stills that Jenn took.

The bee in the middle is squeezing out of her cell. Above and below her are bees still gnawing away at the caps.

And she’s out!

One puzzling thing about Buzzzy: tons of drone cells! We noticed at an earlier inspection; by yesterday, they’d made even more. It’s a little worrisome, mainly because I have no idea why they’re doing it or what it means. I’m researching this now and will post anything I find out.

Drone cells at lower right. Notice how much bigger and bulgier the cells are compared to the worker cells above.

But that’s the only blot on an otherwise glorious start to the season. All in all, I’m very hopeful! (Well, as hopeful as my congenital eeyoreishness will allow.) So… onward!

Meet the hives!

Yesterday I accumulated a bunch of suggested names from anyone in the garden who would write some down, threw them all in a bag, and drew three this morning. After talking it over with Jenn, I also added more specific descriptors. And so I now present to you…

Stripey B. Plum! This is the hive farthest to the left as you face them, nearest the plum tree.

Buzzzy Fuerte! The erstwhile Stripey, in the center. They’re a strong-willed bunch.

Miss Queen Angelica! On the right. Remarkably calm and sweet-tempered ladies.

As queens are replaced, we may want to consider changing the descriptors — but I think we can stick with Stripey B, Buzzzy, and Miss Queen from here on out.

All three hives seem happy and healthy, and I have my fingers crossed for a rich, sweet harvest this fall!

Dog whisperer? Pfft! Bee doula is where it’s at

The first triple-hive inspection and workday of the season was a spectabulously splendiferous success. I have SO MUCH to report and SO MANY pictures to post but while I’m sorting all that out, you must see this video.

While we were taking a look at the middle hive, the one that overwintered, we spotted a brand-new bee clambering out of her cell. And then we noticed another one nearby, and another, and another, until we were watching about a dozen bees emerging, over about ten minutes. The bee-parazzi (Jenn and Corinna) documented all of it so eventually we’ll have something to rival Warhol or Cimino but for now, here’s a wonderful record of that first emergence: Bee-Birth2, a Corinna Lindberg Joint.

beebirth2

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I feel compelled to note that right after I said, “The doula speaks!” Jenn (former doula) said, “The doula never speaks.” Which of course isn’t literally true and it’s all about context but I’m just putting it out there lest anyone think that Jenn was some kind of useless chatterbox doula which could not be further from the truth and now I’m way overanalyzing everything and I am very exuberantly exhausted and can I just remind all of us that we just watched a brand-new bee enter the world and so aren’t we all silent bee doulas, in a way? Or not. Nighty-night!

Do you know anyone who needs a puppy?

Someone asked me that question years ago and thus brought a prolific shedder, noted tennis-ball aficionado, and all-around fabulous soul into my life. I’m hoping the words will work their magic again.

The other day I picked up a bag of dog food from the outside rack at the store on Ave A & 2nd and when I walked in to pay, there was a knot of people bent over a stroller, cooing and oohing, and no one behind the counter. For, like, a while, and I was in kind of a hurry. ANNOYING. Until I realized the stroller was full of puppies.

The pups’ mother-to-be was plucked from the kill list at the city shelter and, 10 days into her foster-home stint, produced a demographically balanced litter of four males and four females. Mama seems to be a boxer-pit mix; Maury only knows about the dad, though it’s a good bet he’s got a similar lineage.

These are the four boys. The girls have similar markings: lots of white with light brown, chocolatey, or (in one case) brindle spots. They’re 8 weeks old, weaned and ready for new homes.

These photos don’t capture a tenth of the solemn, squeezeable cute. The video (a fine example of cinéma mauvais) comes a little closer. They’re sweet and very placid little creatures—happy to be held and played with but not at all yappy or hyper.

If I hadn’t already stocked up in Texas, I’d have come home with all eight. If you’re low on dogs—call Elizabeth the fosterer at 212-780-9348. Leave a message and let her know you’re interested.

Apologies for lack of bee-relatedness; plenty of news on the hives after this morning’s inspection.

 

 

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“Tell me, honey, can you guess my name”

Stripey in mufti, sporting the new super.

Last Sunday Adam, Jenn and I carried out a blitz inspection on the very active Stripey. They were so active that we (OK, I, your neurotic beek) were worried they might swarm soon. Turns out they have plenty of room to expand, with several frames just being built out with new cells to accommodate eggs, larvae, honey, pollen, unread piles of very tiny New Yorkers, whatever. We did install a new, empty super because—why not? If they don’t need it, they won’t use it.

The two new hives seem to be thriving as well. Now that they’ve had time to settle in, we want to make sure they’re queenright. (I love that word.)  So Jenn and I have set the next inspection for this coming Sunday, May 13, at 10 am. As always, everyone is welcome to come suit up or just observe.

Other items on Sunday’s agenda:

Look—glorious art AND white space ready for your paintbrush!

* Finish painting and sealing the woodenware. On 4/29, Susie honored her hard-working, fastidious Polish foremothers by spending a couple of hours scrubbing grit and grime off our supers to get them ready for painting. And indeed, over the rest of that day and the following week, various people painted up a swarm. If you want to make your mark on the hives, there’s still room! We’ll finish painting everything Sunday and then add a coat of water-based sealer to preserve the gloriosity.

* Get ready for Andrew’s visit. Our bee-ru will be coming by to pick up our excess equipment. We need to clean up the feeders and extra supers, and move the old Mayflower hive stand then spread out the three remaining hives.

* Name those hives! “Flower” and “Stripey” were my improvisations, based on what was showing on the front of the hive bodies at the moment we needed names, five (six?) years ago. It turns out that’s a bad way to name hives. Supers and (to a lesser extent) hive bodies can and will be turned, moved, shifted from one hive to another. And so you’re likely to end up with, say, a stripeless Stripey or a Flower with nary a blossom in sight.

We could go with various sets (Mick, Keith, Ron; Larry, Moe, Curly) or geography (Susie suggested Plum for the hive nearest the plum tree). We could pick names out of a dictionary. Or follow Maryanne’s cat-naming protocol. Makes no difference to me; I just want some names that’ll work over the long-term without adding another branch to the decision-tree during hive maintenance.