Honeybees and a Struggling Beekeeper

In 2013, I was finally able to start on a journey to become a beekeeper. This was something I'd wanted to do for a number of years, but I had to figure out how to do it despite a disabled hand/arm, and get the money. It is expensive to begin, and to make matters worse, the honeybee population has been in trouble since the 1980's. Before that date, there were more bees than there was equipment available to beekeepers. Now there is plenty of equipment and less honeybees.

The "Bee" and "Butterfly" hives in 2013.
Copyright Tracey R. Simmons

To begin my journey, I took a beekeeping class and read through various beekeeping books. In addition, the beekeeper teacher and I discussed alternative ways for me to "work the hive".

The following is just a small dent of information I have learned:

Queen - at the egg stage, workers and a queen are identical. The future queen is fed royal jelly throughout her development from egg to larva to pupa to adult. This takes sixteen days. The cell the queen develops in is larger than those for worker bees.

Drone - a male honey bee. It takes twenty-four days for a drone to develop from egg to an adult. Drones are bigger than female worker bees. They do not have a stinger and do no work. (The Bee Movie is extremely incorrect - written by males who didn't do their homework.) The drones purpose is to mate with queens from other hives; and they die in the process.

Worker Bees - it takes twenty-one days for a worker to develop from egg through adult. The egg gets royal jelly for two and one-half to three days. After three days, their food is changed (lowered) in quantity and protein. Workers bees are females with undeveloped reproductive organs. They do all the work in a hive except laying fertile eggs.

As the adult worker bee ages, it will have different jobs to do. Workers take care of the queen, build comb, raise the young, guard the hive, clean the hive including removing dead bees, keep the hive either warm or cool depending on outside temperature, and they forage for food.

Worker forage for nectar, pollen, water, or propolis. This is dangerous work, since the worker can become prey to various predators, be killed by moving vehicles, or get into insecticides and even herbicides which have been linked to the major decline in the honeybee population worldwide. This is disturbing since we humans need the food honeybees pollinate, yet the humans who make or use these chemicals do no want to admit to the damaging effects these insecticides and herbicides are doing, not only to the honeybee, but to animals, birds, and even humans.

My 2013 journey was filled with frustration and zero answers to the problems I was seeing in my two hives. I never got to the point of being able to put honey supers on my hives, because the bees were just not working properly.

After the first winter (now 2014), I had one hive that barely made it through the winter. And the teacher I took the class with became involved. He tried to help me, because he saw the desire and drive I had to help the honeybee. As the hive struggled through the spring, I wondered about the plan he had. In late June, he brought frames full of brood and a new queen to put in my hive. He thought this would fix what was happening. The problem was not fixed. The population and work done never allowed for honey supers to be put on the hive. Despite plenty of food for the bees, to include a large candy board to help them through the winter, they died in early March 2015.

My only option to continue beekeeping was to hope for a swarm - to be called about a swarm and to capture it. That didn't  happen. I did not have hives to watch and observe for the summer of 2015 - something that actually is very relaxing.

It was a non-beekeeping friend who thought of the possible cause to all the troubles with my hives. She knew my hives were about fifty feet from a country road which is quite busy compared to other country roads. She asked if my hives were dirty - they were. She lived off a highway and knew how dirty her house was from the exhaust from all the vehicle traffic. Plus, as my adopted dad, a retired professional firefighter, told me - carbon monoxide is heavier than air and settles low. My hives sat lower than the road surface. I discussed this with the beekeeper teacher, and it was something he hadn't thought of, but worth pursuing.

Finally, a possible answer, and the fix - move the hives back more than two hundred feet from the road. The nice checked paver squares that my hives sat on would have to be moved. I was game if it got me back into being a beekeeper.

Now it is 2016, and after rolling two years worth of change, I had enough money to buy package bees. This is a screened box that has three pounds of bees in it, which is about 10,000 bees. It also has a queen with a few worker bees inside a smaller cage.

The "Bee" hive siting on the checked pavers.
Photo by Tracey R. Simmons

Last Monday, I got my package and put them in my hive. I hope to keep you informed on how my hive is doing throughout this coming summer. And I hope to get some wild honeybees I've been told about to put into my other hive. These wild bees are considered survivor bees and could help improve the gene pool in my area. Keep watching for new post...