Ed Colby
A Honey Mix-up
It’s August as I write, not the Fourth of July, but you should have seen and heard the fireworks when I inadvertently dumped the wrong honey into my sidekick Marilyn’s special lavender-infused honey bucket. Unless you served in the Navy, you never heard such colorful language. I kept my head down. Later, I had to tickle her to make her smile.
Hey, mistakes happen! When folks ask, “How’s your day?” I generally reply, “ I haven’t screwed up yet… that I know of.”
Yesterday I made a Varroa mite-testing trip to an isolated high-country yard. The final half-mile I’d call wild and wooly. I took the all-wheel-drive Subaru, because it goes about anywhere – less clearance than the pickup but better maneuverability. What I didn’t anticipate was the heavy rain the night before, and a phalanx of mud holes.
I charged ahead anyway. I tried to go around the mud holes but kept getting sucked in. I’d lose my steering down in the slop and pop out at weird angles. Luckily I didn’t hit a tree.
Then I got to the place I knew would be the worst, and it was. A small pond covered the entire road, and the bypass that you’re not supposed to use was underwater, too. At least I know when I’m licked. I somehow got turned around and had about as much fun getting out as I did coming in.
The experts say you should replace a third of your brood comb annually, at least partly to get rid of impurities that accumulate in the wax. These include pesticides, as well as the chemicals that we beekeepers sometimes have to resort to, to keep our little darlings alive.
But a third of your comb every year? I say easier said than done. You can put in all the new foundation you want, but if the bees aren’t on a wicked honey flow, they’ll do their best to ignore it. As my little darlings emerge from Winter, I’ve generally got one deep brood box full of bees and honey, and one pretty much empty. I figure if I can replace two old black combs from the empty super with foundation, and the bees actually draw it out, I’ve accomplished something.
I call myself semi-retired and keep only half as many hives as I used to, so I have plenty of spare equipment. A lot of my stored brood frames are at least partly chewed down to the plastic foundation by mice. For some reason, bees seem to love to draw out half-eaten frames. So if I put them in a honey bee brood chamber, and the bees draw out the mouse-eaten parts with brand new white comb, as neat as you please, does this count as comb replacement?
And all those mouse droppings on the top bars? Scrape ‘em off if you must, but what if you didn’t bother? I promise you, bees will tidy up those frames squeaky clean, cleaner than you ever could. You’ll never know a mouse ever used them as a toilet.
Whoa, now! Am I making you gag? Is this sanitary, or okay to do? You’d have to ask an expert. I’m merely reporting to you what I’ve observed in the field.
This Summer (It’s August, remember!) most of my locations haven’t been very productive. “Pathetic” would aptly summarize my honey crop. But beekeeping’s like fishing – it’s location, location, location. And last year’s hot spot might be this year’s bust.
What I’ve noticed at my marginal yards is strong colonies making sometimes impressive quantities of honey, while their weak sisters right next to them practically starve. This brings me to an intriguing conclusion: the measure of a beekeeper’s wealth, at least in terms of honey production, isn’t necessarily the number of hives they own. It’s more the number of bees and how they’re divided into colonies.
Let’s say you own a million bees in July. That could be 20 colonies with 50,000 workers in each. Fifty thousand is a strong population. If they got on a honey flow, they ought to kick it. But, what if your census came up with the reverse scenario – 50 colonies with 20,000 bees in each? You’ve still got a million bees, but these would be relatively weak hives, perhaps not strong enough to make a surplus on that same honey flow.
Marilyn keeps going on trips this Summer, like to New Orleans or Italy or school reunions, so she’s not always making it to her farmers markets. With my honey production down, maybe this is a good thing, providing we don’t starve. We have a revenue sharing arrangement. And I have my Social Security. Without it, I’d have to work ‘til I drop.
Marilyn comes from a big close-knit Irish Catholic family, and this weekend is the sisters’ get-together somewhere over by Denver. Marilyn’s there right now. She called in a huff, complaining she received a pricey careless driving ticket for “swerving but swerving in my own lane. I only crossed the white line on the right once. I’m going to fight this!” When I gave her my take on the situation, she shot back that “You always take the cop’s side!”
Later, she reported back that the sisters agreed that the sheriff’s deputy was way out of line. But those girls stick together, always.
I don’t know how Marilyn thinks she can get out of this. She’s a free spirit, however, so technically the rules don’t apply to her. She never leaves the house without an ace up her sleeve, and I wouldn’t write her off quite yet. Life rolls her way, pretty much always.
