For Those Of You Wondering About The Bees at NPR....

Check out their new blog entry


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thisisnpr/2013/09/26/220790498/its-easy-bee-in-green

Making Simple Small Hive Beetle Traps

My friend Jerry showed me how to do this.  Cheap, easy, and effective.  We use two of these on the top of each brood chamber (on the frame top bars), set close to the edge of the box where the beetles like to congregate.

Harvesting a Ton of Rhode Island Honey

You may remember that we have a place in RI where we have two hives on the roof.  When we returned this spring I had expected both to be dead, based upon the national stats on dead-outs after this winter.  And these bees had to deal with both Sandy and a cold and long winter and high mite infestations.

Got Abejas?

*Through a partnership with Global Bees, DC Honeybees was able to help install two beehives at a primary school in Almeria near Cusco, Peru. Here are our updates and stay tuned for more!*

WE BOUGHT OUR BEES TODAY! Our director, Oscar, came back from his business trip, corraled me, Mads and Baltezar into his car, and drove us to his “bee guy” in Cusco. Well, this was a friend of his former bee guy who now is apparently a fugitive avoiding law enforcement somewhere in Argentina. Sounds a little crazy, but apparently todos los apicultors en Peru son un poco loco, and actually, that’s pretty much the same in DC too. Anywho, I digress. Once we got to the Mundo de las Abejas de Jossua (a self-proclaimed Gringo, according to his flyers) the Quebecoise owner, Jossua, immediately starting falling all over himself to help us out. We told him about Almeria and our current state of funding, or better yet, lack thereof, and immeiately he jumped on board, handing us some sort of cure-all diluted propolis spray por los ninos.

Over the course of what seemed like five hours, Jossua had — very thouroughly — gone over the beekeeping basics, rattled off the same bee statistics that Jeff Miller and I quote for DC Honeybees engagements, scooped out taste-testers from each of his honey/pollen products, and last but not least, showed us his nucleus colonies on the rooftop behind his shop (sound familiar Jeff?)

Australian Broadcasting Corp Piece on Bee Losses in America

Some of our friends and fellow beekeepers were interviewed about their rooftop hive for this very nice piece.  Check it out HERE.

My new $688 Acquisition

This is me getting ready to expand the apiary to do some pollination.  We have lots of Don's bees, and lots of equipment.  We are building pallets.  We are making splits.  We are considering purchasing a trailer to drag these things.

But we need to identify our hives by markers other than our colors (white, and Ballerina Pink, per my kids....those things will stand out!!).  We need to properly mark our hives for identification so that they are easily recognized and loaded in the almonds.  Ahhhh....the almonds.

We Made the Drudge Report!

Well, sort of.

Here is the headline:

NPR Shows Off New Facility: Wellness center, café, beehives on roof... a gong?

Those are the beehives we installed for them a few weeks back and are managing.  We will take what we can get.

Here is the article.

Making Pallets

With the bee delivery season behind us we are making splits and introducing queens to increase the number of colonies we have to 40 at our off-site apiary.  These 40 will make the trek to FLA in September or October to feast on the Brazilian Pepper nectar flow, build up in size, and then be ready for the almonds in February.

Pollinator Week!

Pollinator Week is back! Designated by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Pollinator Week will run from Monday, June 17 through Sunday, June 23. Events will run throughout the week in an effort to educate people about pollinators and their essential role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. 

DC Events

Monday, June 17, 7-9 p.m.

Vanishing of the Bees Film Screening

921 Pennsylvania Ave., SE

Thursday, June 20, 6:30-9 p.m.

Cirque D'Insectes

City Blossoms Garden at corner of 11th and Harvard NW              

Friday, June 21, 10-2 p.m.

USDA People's Garden Pollinator Festival

2th and Independence, SW

June 12 - 26

Pollinators Depicted in American Indian Art

U.S. Dept. of the Interior: 1849 C St., NW

This celebration will recognize the importance of birds, butterflies, bats, beetles, and, of course, bees! Honeybees are specifically designed to carry pollen, which they consume as a source of protein. In flying from flower to flower, bees drink nectar and collect pollen grains they store in pollen-baskets on their hind legs known as scopa. In doing so, honeybees help to transfer pollen from the male anthers of a flower to the female stigma, initiating fertilization.

Pollinator Partnership has a full list of events.

Article On Bee Shortages In the Almonds This Past Spring

 My buddy Jerry from, Rock Hill Bee Farms, sent me the following article.  You may remember that Jerry has helped us supply bees to the DC area, and has graciously allowed me to partner with him as we expand our apiary for pollination.  I am posting it as a link as it is rather large:

http://www.ilsba.com/uploads/1/0/6/4/10649295/what_happened_to_the_bees_this_spring2013_opt.pdf

The article is especially interesting for us hobbyist as it details the commercial beeks' issues with varroa last year, which translated into significant losses coming out of this past prolonged winter.  Sound familiar?

It also tries to put into perspective the science behind the threat of neonics.

Jeff.

Our Third and Season Finale Trip to Don the Not-So-Fat FatBeeMan - VIDEO

We had our final visit to Don this season, to bathe in his knowledge and pick up 35 more packages.  Most of these packages will go into nucs in our nuc-ery and be used to expand our pollination prospects.

Vandal Hits Church of the Pilgrims' Hives

One of our intern's Kallisa went out to tend these hives this past weekend and was greeted with all the boxes upended and on the ground.  She put them all back together, and we assumed it was an isolated incident.

It wasn't.  I received a call from the church's caretaker on Tuesday saying that he had seen a homeless man screwing with the hives again the night before, swatting away bees.  He must have come back after the caretaker went to bed, because the hives were in bad shape Wednesday.  We came out to witness the carnage.


The bees were in good shape, huddled in the deep supers.  We did not look for a queen, but rather just put the hive bodies back in place and hoped for the best.

We are going to ratchet strap these hives down to deter another event, although a determined vandal can get through those.  We will see.

More Bees Coming

We are getting more package bees in from Don the FatBeeMan on May 30.  Please visit our store to order them.

I know it seems late in the season to install a package, but with regular feeding through the summer the bees should get a satisfactory start before heading into winter.  We are building up our own apiary with these friendly bees.

Note that these bees have been raised on small cell foundation (4.9mm), and these small cell bees are reputed to be more resistant to varroa mites then standard cell size (5.4mm) bees.  So consider raising these on small cell foundation, although standard will also work.

NPR Story On Recent Bee Losses

The bees we helped colonize on NPR's new green roof are featured in the audio.

Queen Rearing Essentials, Dr. Larry Connor, Day One -VIDEO

This weekend we had the pleasure of spending three days in the mountains of Virginia, in a town called Syria, to take a queen-rearing class with the noteworthy Dr. Larry Connor.

What a pleasure is was to spend a weekend with such a wise beekeeping rock stare.  And to drive him around in the convertible was a blast.  Dr. Connor has been a prolific author of books about beekeeping.