My bee adornments from Christmas!

Last year I wondered why I didn't get any bee related gifts for Christmas. I think it's simply because I didn't talk about our bees frequently enough.

So I've changed my habits of speaking to people about bees. "Oh, you like almonds... did you know that a guy living in Lancaster drives a semi truck loaded with 2000 hives of honeybees to pollinate almonds in California from February through March?" or "You're in trouble with your wife? If you were a honeybee she would have kicked you out to freeze to death by this time of year as you've lived out your useful life span and will be easily replaceable next spring." Just kidding with the last one, but the more I read and experience in keeping bees the more I share with others. By now everyone knows I love the bees.

I was thrilled to receive so many thoughtful bee gifts from my friends and family this year! I noticed that two other bee bloggers that I follow shared their Christmas bee bounty, so I thought I would too.

My exceptionally talented boyfriend made me these gorgeous earrings, from an alloy of gold and palladium that he developed in his dental lab for jewelry purposes. He cast them directly from bees in our backyard "city bees" hive. He superglued the abdomen parts solid, and reinforced the antennae and legs to make them thick enough to withstand daily abuse.He also enameled the abdomen and wing details, as well as the eyes. I told him I wanted earrings in the likeness of a bee resting on my ear, and he produced them! I am one lucky girl!

My friend and co-worker gave me this gorgeous dish made by a friend of hers, Elaine Quave http://www.elainequave.com/. I saw her at a local art fair, and considered asking her if she made a bee dish. I thought, "Oh, she probably gets asked all the time..." as soon as I put my hands on the dish, I recognized it instantly. The picture just doesn't do the piece justice. I see an obsession developing here.

Another co-worker presented me with this delightful birdhouse! It has a dangling sign that reads, "Beekeepers Place." Love it!

So, I didn't get this for Christmas, but it's so darn cute I thought I'd include it anyway. My second cousin forced her mom to purchase this for me. She said, "We HAVE to get this for Jaime. It has a bee on it." This 2nd grade girl is going to be our family physician one day. She is inquisitve and brilliant, with the reading level of a senior in high school. I'm so proud of her!

This book is full of useful information.

This motivates me to make my own personal care products. I watched a program on the history of this business, and over the years Burt Shavitz with co-founder Roxanne Quimby grew this from a single pot on the kitchen stove production to a $300 million dollar company. Burt's Bees was purchased by Clorox in 2007 for nearly $1 BILLION dollars. Whoa. The lotion is nicely moisturizing, and I'm glad it was gifted to me because I've only previously bought the lip balm from Burt's.

My sister's boyfriend bought this magazine for my boyfriend, yet he's hardly had a chance to read it. This has a terrific article about the use of pesticides, which I'll be sharing on the blog and on facebook.  We have to get the word out about responsible pesticide use and proper application. Until recently, a close family member was using sevin dust on his tomatoes until I said to him, "You MUST stop that right now! Never again! You're murdering honeybees!!!" 

I've been reading this book for awhile now. It is so packed full of such interesting info and scientific data. Fascinating findings from field research and the genuine love of honeybees.

The death of our first hive. Woe!

I'm calling this the death of our first hive, because as far as I can remember, that is accurate. My boyfriend and I, along with his father, have been beekeeping for 4 years now. At first, it was my boyfriends' hobby, and in a really nice gesture, his father bought all the supplies and got him started. Then I became consumed by it. My obsession with it started when we all attended a one day beekeeping school at a nearby university. After gaining so much useful information and meeting so many wonderful people, I was hooked. I talked our group into attending the next beekeeping school a month later, where we got even more answers to our questions, bought more supplies, and met a man that we later bought a couple nucs from.

So, over the course of several years, we've learned some lessons and experimented alot. We've built our own supers, purchased package bees and nucs from various sources, and even tried catching a swarm from a tree, unsuccessfully. We've had a couple hives vanish, over a couple years, one over this summer. As we are still learning, we're not sure why they left. I always felt a measured sense of disapointment at the loss of a hive, but for me, I always liked to think that they just found better digs. I know they didn't find better digs at our place, but maybe with one of the neighbors or in the cavity of a tree, treehouse, or the walls of a plush cabana somewhere, perhaps. That sounds nice!

It has been unseasonably and sensationally warm, and we've observed my city bees in our urban backyard making short flights and looking active with good numbers. Yesterday, we inspected one of our three hives at his dad's place out in the country.   To our horror, everyone was dead! As I mentioned, we are still learning, and I am remembering now, that we did lose a hive over the first winter. Before I was looking into the hives myself, and proclaiming my affection for bees to anyone that would stand still and listen. Yes, I remember now... and that's how we learned the valuable lesson to reduce the opening of the hive entrance. A mouse got in and ate all the honey stores, and presumably alot of the bees.

I was so saddened by the sight of dead bees yesterday, that I've been searching the web, looking through the beekeeping books I've got, and unsuccessfully trying to email the pictures I took to our state apiarist. His domain keeps rejecting emails, so I will try again tomorrow. During my web searches, I stumbled upon an image of the same substance that I'm trying to identify, but that guy didn't know what the hell it was, either. So, I thought this would be my first post, to plead for help from anyone that is knowledgeable, to not only find me, but answer my question. What killed my girls??

This is the cluster of bees on the frame where they tried to take their last stand. The next pic shows a closeup of the bees. Here I wanted to demonstrate the few number of bees on the frame, and the couple of cells that appear to be perforated.

This closeup shows a few bees with their heads stuck in cells, bums in the air, which may indicate starvation... but wouldn't there be a greater number of bees with bums in the air if it were starvation?

Shown here, our queen. She was in the middle of the cluster. My closest encounter with a queen to date. We don't mark ours. I suppose we should!

This seems to be the most interesting shot. Until we saw this, we assumed that they had starved. Once I laid my eyes on this I exclaimed, "Aha! This must be what killed them! What the hell is it?" To which, we still don't know. I found one other picture of this in the web, which the guy described as crystalline. I would say they look like tiny cotton balls.

I have suspected the worst. I've observed a few perforated cells, some k shaped wings, butts in the air, little honey stores... could it be a combination of all of the above? Do we have a parasite? What is the fluffy white stuff in the cells? It seems that the invasive white filled cells began in the center of the super, and pushed the bees to the far right wall of the hive, where we found them.

We need help. We need to know what this substance is. From the pictures, what do you suppose killed our hive? If it is a pest or disease, what were the symptoms that we missed? How often should we be looking for said warning signs? How do we treat the problem once we've identified it?

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for assorted other posts about the lives of our bees that survive despite our worst efforts. Really, we do try to maintain a better quality of life for them.