Archive for December, 2010

JINGLE BEE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Saturday, December 25th, 2010

(via BEE-L and James Bruckart, M.D.)

JINGLE BEE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all though the hive
Not a creature was stirring, are they even alive?
Empty honeycomb makes the cluster despair,
They hope that Jingle Bee soon will be there;

The larva and pupa all snug in their cells,
Dreams of royal jelly and bee bread’s sweet smell.
Queen in her castle and nurse bees attending,
These are cold nights that seem never ending.

When up on the roof, there arose such a clatter,
Smoke at the door, can you see what’s the matter?
Bright light and cold breeze in our house does appear,
A white-suited monster is looking in here.

He is chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh when I see him, in spite of myself.
He speaks not a word; but goes straight to his labor,
Looking and checking, with his blasted smoke maker.

His actions are swift to avoid chilling trouble,
Sugar and pollen to the hive he does shuttle.
Honey in frames to the cluster he brings,
Fresh food for the bees to last until Spring

The roof is now back and the darkness restored,
But the hive knows Jingle Bee visits once more.

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

(Adapted from original poem by Clement Clarke Moore.)

Christmas Eve Bee Check

Friday, December 24th, 2010

It has been dark in the morning when I go to work and dark at night when I come home. In the other seasons, I always walk around the hives to see if they are having any problems. Lately, I only have time for a quick check on the weekend.

Today, Christmas Eve day, I walked back and pulled the entrance reducers off of each hive to discover hundreds of dead bees. The Italians, Justine and Ethel, had the most dead bees. They appeared fresh, as though they had died in the last day or so. I hope they are healthy and this is just the outer bees in the ball dying off.

It has not gone above freezing in weeks so the bees cannot take cleansing flights, and I can’t open the top to check on them.

I tipped each hive to see how much they weighed. A hive with good stores will be heavy and a hive light on honey will be light and easy to tip. Martha and Connie seemed heavy. Justine and Ethel seemed light. It is too cold to put in pollen patties or fill a feeder with damp sugar. As soon as the weather goes above 50°F, I will give them all a winter feeding, just in case.

Martha, the Russian did not have dead bees, but an animal had pulled out the entrance reducer. Either this is a good sign, or else an opossum is eating the bees. Connie, the strong Russian/Italian hive had dead bees, but not as many as the Italians. Connie went into the winter with a lower population than she did last year. Russians are like that, but I hope she has enough spare bees to make it through the winter.

I have to decide next week how many packages I should order for next spring. If I underestimate I will have only two or three hives next year. If I overestimate I will have to buy new hives for the spring to house the extra packages. I bought two packages last year, one to replace the original Ethel and one just in case (Justine), which I put into a new box.

So far, the winter has been much colder than last year. Last year the bees were hardly stressed, except for January. It has been mostly below freezing since before Thanksgiving here (lower Hudson Valley). It is hard on the bees, and there is little I can do about it.

Medicinal Honey and Beeswax

Friday, December 17th, 2010

I think a lot of homeopathic remedies are crap. When I am sick, I want real medicine that has lots of statistical data that it works. Anecdotal evidence is no evidence.

That being said, I am very pleased with the beeswax cream that I made. I have trouble with the skin on my feet and legs drying out in the winter. My shins and feet itch when the weather gets cold. I’ve been rubbing some of the beeswax cream into the parts that bother me, and it has done wonders.

The cream is beeswax and sweet almond oil.

The beeswax has honey in it and it also has bee venom. After I filter out the honey there is a bag of beeswax, dead bees and other junk form the comb. One time when I extracted honey, bees got at the sticky mess left behind, and several hundred bees died when they got into the pails and never left.

I heat the wax in a double boiler. The dead bees are heated with the wax. I filtered out the solid stuff and then I let the wax harden on the top. I add water to rinse out the honey and imputities, and then heat it and filter it again. Repeat. In the end I get bright sunshine yellow beeswax that smells of honey because I can’t rinse out all the honey.

The wax has honey in it. The beeswax dissolves the venom in the dead bees and a very small amount of that remains in the wax.

The cream moisturizes (the almond oil), it protects (with a layer of beeswax) and it treats the skin (with the antibiotic effects of honey), and I think it helps my gout (a form of arthritis) with the bee venom. My gout completely went away after a few treatments.

I know my legs are better and I think the cream did that. I am less sure that the cream helped the gout, but I am not counting it out.

I am not selling the cream – it is too complicated to make and actually costs quite a bit, making it too expensive to sell at a profit. Also I don’t want to go through the trouble of making labels for it.

At Christmas friends and family might get cream and lip balm, but I am sure that 90% of them will throw it out.