Yes, fellow beekeepers: I'm baaaack!

It has been seven months since my last post on this blog.  So needless to say, I am a little behind.  Nay, I'm way behind.  Even thought I had the best intentions of jumping online and update my blog, something would come along and my ambition would be set aside.  But I do appreciate the messages or emails from several of you who just wanted to make sure that I'm still alive and kicking. The good news is, yes, I'm very much alive and kicking.  The bad news is that the realities of life got in the way of me keeping everyone updated on what was going on.  So let me catch everyone up from then until now.

The last part of 2011 was somewhat of a mess for me.  I'm fond of telling people that I was wide awake on New Year's Eve, not so much to celebrate the grand entrance of 2012, but to make sure 2011 was gone for good (and good riddance too).  

My mom was sick quite a bit in 2011 which included several hospitalizations, so my brother and I had to make sure my dad was taken care of while she was away.  Plus there were countless trips to and from the hospital too.  Luckily she got well and was able to finally come home.  Once she was stable and settled at home again, we got to go on vacation in September and spent a great week at the beach.  But it seemed as if once I got back home, life got hectic with work and other things that took up a lot of my time so many things fell by the wayside.  From Labor Day to the New Year, especially during the holidays, it is a really busy time in the broadcasting business anyway. 

I started feeling really bad in mid October, physically ill, and thought I may have developed an ulcer.  But as the days passed, the pain I felt became more localized, so I finally went to see a doctor (after changing my self-diagnosis to a hernia).  Thank goodness I'm not a doctor.  It wasn't an ulcer or a hernia; it was my appendix which was at the point of rupture.  After having a CT scan, the doctor would not let me leave the hospital and they started pumping me full of antibiotics for an early surgery the next morning.  Thank goodness it all came out just fine and I only had to spend two and a half days in the hospital.  My only real pain afterward was the bills that started rolling in.  I think I received a bill from every doctor within 10 miles of the hospital.

But then November rolled around and more problems came along.  As I started feeling better, our beloved Fritz, a Dachshund we adopted from the local pound, started feeling poorly.  We took him for several visits to the veterinarian to find out what was wrong, but an ultrasound revealed the worst fears we had.  He had cancer of the liver.  In the thirteen years he was with us, he had been through so much.  He had survived several surgeries to remove stones in his bladder and various cysts here and there too.  In the last three years he became totally blind, but he did really well with it because he had learned his way around the house and was always with us.  But this cancerous tumor was something he couldn't fight and we knew time was running out and running out fast.  Two weeks after the diagnosis, old and weak, he lost his fight.  With us surrounding him with all the love we could muster, he drew his last breath and left us for good.  Truthfully, it was one of the toughest moments in my entire adult life. And four months later, it is still hard and not a day goes by when I don't think of him.  I plan to post more on him later.

The Christmas holidays rolled around on time, and while I had finished everything I needed to do (including shopping and cooking)..I started feeling really worn down on Christmas Eve.  Thinking that I was just physically and mentally tired from the holiday rush, I finished what I needed to do and had dinner that night with my family at my parent's home.  After dinner, I went back to my own home and was so tired that I just couldn't hold my head up so I went to bed.  You guessed it!  Just a few hours later, I was really, really sick.  I'll spare you the gory details, but it turned out to be a really nasty case of the flu.  I finally got to see my family doctor on the day after Christmas (being a cheapskate, I wasn't going to fork out $500+ for an emergency room visit) and one shot and two bottles of medicine later, I finally started to feel better. So much better that I stayed up on New Year's Eve to watch 2011 leave for good.  It was a really bad year and I'm glad it is gone forever.

I'll spare you January and February of this year other than to say they were pretty good months overall.  And March has been pretty darn good too.  My area of North Carolina was in spring weather way before it arrived officially on the calendar.  Luckily all four of my bee colonies survived the winter although I probably wasn't as attentive to them last fall as I should have been.  Over the last month, hardly a day goes by that I don't see a flurry of bees in front of each hive although one of them appears to be weaker than the rest.  I plan to spend some time over the next few days with them and see what is going on internally.  But as you can see from the picture, my girls are definitely taking advantage of the nice warm days of spring.  

So yes friends, I'm back.  I plan to try to post regularly and let you know what is happening with me and the bees at our humble apiary in the Triad area of North Carolina.  And once again, thanks to everyone who sent a message to check and see if I'm still around.  It means so much to know that even though I haven't met many of you personally, you still care.  Beekeepers are like that!   We're a special lot!

Bee good!

-Mark

SNOW! My area gets the first snowfall for the fall/winter season of 2010-2011!

Its the beginning of December, but Santa Claus would be proud of the first snowfall for the fall and winter of 2010-2011. And hey, according to the calendar, its not officially winter yet!  The snow started around 2 o'clock on Saturday afternoon with huge flakes falling, then light snow, and then back to huge flakes.  Throw in a light sprinkling of some sleet too and we got a nice wintry mix.  As you can see though, the concrete and asphalt were warm enough to not cause problems until night fell, but the roads started getting slushy late in the evening.

North Carolina is the home to the University of North Carolina Tarheels, the North Carolina State University Wolfpack, the Wake Forest University Demon Deacons and the Duke University Blue Devils.  Since this bird house is Duke blue, it would only be appropriate that a blue jay reside there in the warm summer months!




A sleeping Dogwood tree.  This is a beautiful tree that borders my property and is covered with dark pink flowers in the late spring in time for Easter.  Snow flakes covered every limb!







One of several camellia bushes in my yard.  Mind you, they're all covered by snow now, but they're loaded with buds for the spring of 2011!  I don't think that bees are attracted to camellia flowers because I've never noticed them on mine.  But my neighbors keep beautifully landscaped yards so they have plenty of other flowers to choose from!    




No album of a snowfall would be complete without a snapshot of my bee hives.  Yes the girls are all snug as bugs inside their hives.  But as you can see, the snow covered up the entrances to all three.  While it sometimes acts as an insulation barrier to keep those icy winter winds out, it also keeps the bees from going out when temperatures rise.



To help the ladies, I opened up their entrances so they wouldn't have to wait for Mother Nature to do it for them.  Now they can quickly and discreetly go outside to do their business when nature calls.  By the way, the bees in the yellow hive are still taking 2:2 syrup from the Boardman feeder.




The snowfall of December 4th covered everything.  It was truly beautiful.  And thank goodness it happened early enough in the day that everyone could enjoy it.  With the Sunday temperatures forecast to be sunny and in the 40s range, you will never know that a snow event even happened here.  But with photos, we'll always have our memories.  Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Easy come, easy GO! My first swarm catch hits the road!

When I went to bed on Sunday night, I figured Monday would be just like any other Monday...and that's really busy. And I wasn't disappointed in the least. But I got a great surprise around 9 o'clock Monday morning. That's when one of the guys that works in my office called the house to say that a public school in the county had a swarm of honey bees on a picnic table and wanted them gone and would I be interested in getting them. The answer was a resounding YES! 

I called the Rockingham County High School which is 8-miles from my house and in the county seat of Wentworth. The school's secretary told me they did in-fact have a swarm on the school grounds. She told me they were under a picnic table and they would like to give them away to a good home. She said one of the teachers heard me talk on my television show about being a beekeeper, so they immediately thought of me and wanted me to come get them. I told her it would take me a few minutes to get there, so I ran and loaded up an empty hive and a spray bottle of syrup and my veil and headed to the school. When I got there about a half hour later, I was met by a friend who is the school resource officer (a deputy sheriff assigned to guard the school). Jeff Strader, the deputy and one of my former co-workers at the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office, guided me to a courtyard just outside of the school cafeteria. And there they were...a big, golden blob of honeybees.

The colony had landed under the end of a picnic table. A teacher told me that they weren't there on Friday afternoon, so its obvious they found their new digs sometime over the weekend. They were very docile, there wasn't any flying around, they were tightly clumped and very still. I got very close to check them out and they never flinched with my bare face just inches from them. So I decided to put on my coveralls and veil and go to work to get them in the hive.

Here's a closer look at the wayward colony. As you can see, the cluster is a little smaller than a basketball. They were in a perfect spot, under the edge of the table at the end...a great place to put the empty hive. So I sprayed the colony really well with sugar syrup, then I picked up the edge of the table and let it drop. The cluster plopped right into the empty hive. By this time, one of the classes stopped what they were doing to come out and watch. Ron Wheeler's automotive technology class watched intently while I collected the stray colony. The students were quiet as church mice until I dropped the table -- then all you heard was "ohhhhhs" and "ahhhhhs" from the future auto mechanics. I felt a little uncomfortable at first, not for their safety but because I was catching my first swarm and now I had an audience watching my every move. But they were super and quiet and asked some really great questions later. They were a great audience. 

Here you see the bees as they were dropped into the hive. Once they fell, most stayed inside and some perched on the top of the frames and went to work fanning their pheremones into the air. And for the first time in two years of beekeeping, I got stung. It was my own fault, I squashed a bee with my bare hand that I didn't see. She was on my leg and when I put my hand over her, she got me on the edge of my hand. I scraped the stinger out with my hive tool. I also carry sting swabs in my tool box so I put one on the sting spot and it didn't hurt anymore. Those sting swabs are great.

I waited about 45 minutes for the stragglers to find their way back and then I put the top on the hive. Once I noticed some coming and going from the entrance, and since it was getting close to lunchtime when more students would be around, I decided to stuff my glove in the entrance, load my girls in the truck, and head for home. There were few bees still lingering around the table when I left, but to make sure no one would get stung, I helped Jeff put yellow caution tape around the picnic area to keep the kids out for the rest of the day.

I've read hundreds of accounts of catching swarms, and watched countless YouTube videos too. So feeling pretty confident that I did everything right, I got the bees to my house and put them in their place of honor next to my other bustling colony in the "lemon" hive. I put an entrance reducer on the front and then made some sugar syrup and put a hive top feeder on. I pictured them getting started on drawing comb and living like - well - queens. End of story. Right?

WRONG! After an hour of watching the occasional bee come and go -- all of a sudden, one bee, then tens of bees, then hundreds of bees and then thousainds of bees came boiling out of the hive. No, this wasn't an orientation flight buzz of bees...this was a swarm of bees. My honey bees, my very first swarm catch, the colony I had every intention of turning into a thriving metropolis...had other ideas and decided to hit the road yet again. And all I could do is stand by helplessly and watch them take to the sky. Honestly it broke my heart to watch them leave and to know that my hard work was pretty much all for nothing.


Just across the creek from my hive is where they landed. They were up about 20-feet off the ground and landed on the side of a pine tree entangled with vines and poison sumac. I watched them perched there for about a half-hour, then I went inside and made a few phone calls, and when I returned to check on them, they were gone. I saw a few bees flying around the spot where they landed, but for the most part, the colony had disappeared. I'm not sure if this pine tree has a hollow spot in it, and for all I know they could be deep inside it, but I don't think so. I just hope they like their new place...wherever that may be.

If I get another call tomorrow to come get an escaped colony of bees, I will do it in a heartbeat. Am I disappointed? Of course I'm disappointed, but I look at it as a two way learning experience. I learned how to catch a swarm, and the students at Rockingham County High School learned that saving the honeybees is extremely important. A school is a place of learning, and besides teaching the young people valuable lessons, I learned one on Monday too. It was an experience I wouldn't take anything for even though it didn't work out like I hoped.

On to other news, next week I'm getting another queen from Busy Bee Apiary...and I'm planning to split my current colony. I'm just hoping and I've got my fingers crossed that I'll have better luck with my split than I had with the swarm from the high school.

Thanks to the staff at Rockingham County High School for thinking of me when they found the swarm, and if another colony drops in anytime soon, please keep me in mind. My motto is; Have hive, will travel!

Yes, Virginia! There is a Santa Claus...and bears in Rockingham County!

This story is from this morning's News & Record (Greensboro, NC). It is about a mama bear and her three cubs (pictured to the left...yes, that's some of them) that scampered up a tree over the weekend in Madison, which is in the western section of my county. Reason they were there? Oh...I don't know...could it be...HONEY? Read on. By the way, I'm glad that I'm a city beekeeper!

OH POOH! NO HONEY FOR THESE BEARS!

The family of bears likely came looking for honey but instead found themselves up a tree, held hostage by neighbors near Old Wagon Trail.



The first sightings of the bear and three cubs came about dusk Sunday, and by Monday morning, they had an audience.


But by 1 p.m., the bears had enough of the show and decided to bid their temporary refuge goodbye.


“I guess they decided to take a chance and run,” said Josh Brim, who lives on Old Wagon Trail.


The Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office said it began receiving calls about the bears Sunday evening. Sheriff’s office spokesman Dean Venable said deputies, animal control and wildlife officers took a look at the bears but hoped they would come down on their own.


When the bears didn’t, the officers returned Monday to see what could be done to coax them.


“It’s not uncommon to see a bear in some of our rural areas,” Venable said. “We’ve lost a lot of our timberland, and they’re coming in to hunt food.”


The area where the bears were found is rural, located off U.S. 311. Old Wagon Trail is a gravel road with just a few homes.


The bears climbed up trees on the property of DeWitt and Darlene Brown. The couple thinks mama bear may have smelled honey for her cubs.


DeWitt Brown raises bees and said bears will “tear your hives all to pieces.”


Darlene Brown thinks the bears’ quest for food was derailed by the barking of her dogs, a black lab and a collie.


The dogs’ lot is next to the trees where the bears sought refuge. Had it not been for them, Darlene Brown guesses, the bears would have had a field day with her husband’s hives.


The sheriff’s office reported seeing a mom and two cubs, but the Browns and Brim said a third cub was in a second tree.


In the end, Sheriff Sam Page said it only took giving the bears a little space — and quiet — to get them to descend the trees.


The barking dogs were moved, and someone operating machinery nearby was told to turn it off, he said. Onlookers were kept back as much as possible.


DeWitt Brown said he’s not worried about the mom and cubs coming after his honey again.


“She’s had so much excitement,” he said. “I think she’s gone from here.”