Sunday, July 17, 2011

Bee report – July 4th, 2011

When I arrived at Willow Springs today the bees were fairly active considering the rainy weather conditions. I was able to get up-close and personal with the bees, examining the entrance-way and bending my ear towards the entrance to see if I could detect any signs of life inside! The bees are fairly active inside the nest, a true hub of activity - notably the ‘fanning’ of the bees to keep the hive at a consistent temperature.

While observing the bees I was able to position myself right in their flight path to see how they would react and realized that they were more concerned about depositing their goods in the hive than getting me out of the way. However, when they started ‘crashing into me’ I decided to move back a little to avoid a fight with any returning foragers. In addition, I would like to conclude by mentioning that these bees are extremely happy and I look forward to working with them during the next few month.

~Paul Dosen

Bee Report – June 24th 2011

[Paul Dosen is a new young volunteer at Willow Springs, who doesn't let visual impairment get in the way of beekeeping! - Willow Springs Volunteers]

Upon my arrival at Willow Springs, my first challenge was to navigate my way to where the bee hive was located and remove the electric fence wire which ran horizontally across and connected to a latch on each spruce tree. After a while I got used to it, using one hand to trail along the wire while holding the disconnected wire in the other!

My next task was to lay wax foundation into 10 deep frames that were going to be added onto the bee hive so that the bees can continue working on hive expansion. It was quite a challenge bending the wax sheets into the frames and tucking them into the little slots on the inner part of the frame, and embedding the wax foundation into the horizontal wires that went across it. The wax foundation gives the bees a point of reference and acts as a guide for where they are to draw the wax comb, building a layer of wax on top of the foundation.

Next, we had to add this new brood box on to the hive and I noticed how the behaviour of the bees had changed from when I first arrived. The hive had been just opened and the bees were extremely investigative in nature, scrutinizing every move we made and paying close attention to our hands. When the hive was reassembled, the behaviour of the bees changed again, they were extremely curious investigating the hive boxes from top to bottom, propilizing any cracks that were visible to them and insuring that any nosey neighbours were kept at bay.

~Paul Dosen