December snow! And yes, you can tick off guard bees...even in the snow!

Greetings everyone! As promised, I made pictures of the snow storm we had here in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina. Not just here mind you...I see Lynn at Walter Bee (who is in the mountains of North Carolina..to the west of me) had a doozy of a snow fall there too. Parts of our state definitely became a winter wonderland overnight -- and weather forecasters are saying that we might, just might, have another system moving in on Christmas Eve!

I decided to make pictures of all sorts of things, including my bee hive, and of course, each picture has a story. You can click on the picture and it will open up in a new browser in a larger size. So here we go...

This one really doesn't need a description. He's everywhere...

Thank goodness that the hummingbirds are farther south for the winter. If they were here now to see this, they would be totally irritated with me. I just have a feeling that I'll need to buy a new feeder before the spring comes.

Fritz, my 13-year-old Dachshund. He is almost totally blind now. He was extremely reluctant to "do his business" in the yard with all the snow, but after a little coaxing, he finally did it. When he was a pup, he loved the snow and would run like a rabbit through it. But today, after being outside for a new minutes and completing the task at hand, he let me know he was ready to go back inside and get under the blanket with Klaus, my 5-year-old Dachshund. By the way, Fritz was a shelter dog and just a baby when I got him. Animal control officers picked him up wandering and he was scheduled to be put down when I rescued him. He's the best dog I've ever had and there will never be another like him.

My snow covered bee hive! When I got to the hive, a bee, who was dying, crawled out and fell on the ground. I figured that others had to be dead inside, probably from the cold, so I decided to take a closer look while I cleaned the snow away from the entrance hole. It was a sad sight to watch her dying, but I suppose it is a part of nature.

As you can see, I was right. There were casualties of the cold lying inside the entrance reducer..all dead. Not wanting the dead bodies to pile up and trap the living bees inside, I cleaned it out as best I could. But here is where it gets interesting. Pay attention to the upper part of the entrance. See it? That's the cluster of bees. While I was raking out the bodies of the dead bees, I heard them tune up a little -- the buzzing started -- and out comes a frisky guard bee. Oh yeah, I had to dodge that one..and she flew within inches of my head. I have no clue where she went, but I hope she got back okay. She still had plenty of light to guide her back to the colony.

This is a sad picture. This is what I raked away from the entrance -- all dead. I know it only seems like a few bees...less that fifty, but it still bothers me. And yes, I know its nature...like all living creatures, bees are going to die. But something gnaws at me and I always wonder if I did something wrong. The hive is still bustling with bees on warmer days, so I think they'll do okay for the rest of this winter. But whenever I see dead ones, I tend to think the worst. Maybe its because I struggled with this colony when they first arrived in June. I just don't know. Paging Dr. Freud!

Not wanting to let it get cold inside the hive, I hurried myself and put the entrance reducer back in place, then I cleaned off the snow from the top. Now when the temperature warms up and the girls decide to make their cleansing flights, there won't have anything to stand in their way. Plus the mortician bees can clean the rest of the dead bees out of the hive.

I just had to snap this picture of the creek below the house. This is the same creek that sits just feet from my hive and where my girls get their water supply. The picture would be a lot better if it didn't have that pipe that runs across the creek, but I can't help that...it is part of the city's water system. I understand that several years ago, before I moved here, a tree fell across it and when it cracked the pipe, around 400 people lost water until it was repaired. For the sake of the beauty of the creek, you'll just have to pretend it isn't there.

So there you have it. Some of the pictures I made of the great December snowfall of 2009. I hope you enjoyed seeing them as much as I enjoyed making them!

And now, its off to make some hot chocolate!

Red devils looking for a free snack! And they found it..

So things around the hive have been rather slow lately. Not much to tell really. The girls seem to be doing rather well, busy flying in and out all day long and enjoying the sunflowers I planted behind them. And with the crepe myrtles being in full bloom here, they have have lots to keep them busy. I'm glad its a popular tree here in the south.

The screened bottom board I added a few weeks ago was a big help with the ventilation issue. The bearding has almost completely stopped, and I think the second brood box was a big help too. They now have more room to work with and won't be so darn crowded.

I did mow around the hive yesterday and since it has been ungodly hot and humid here (the high temperature yesterday was 97 and the humidity was really high) and I figured they would be a little testy. Nope. Even with the push lawnmower all around the hive, and me riding the lawn tractor up and down in front, they didn't give me a second glance...unlike a few weeks ago when a few of them followed me and the lawnmower all the way to the house.

We did have a really nasty storm brew up here yesterday afternoon, and just to make sure that the "honey bee condo" (stacked three high) didn't blow over, I put a cinder block on top of the landscaping paver that was already there. Some of the trees were blowing sideways because of the intense wind, and around the corner, a pretty big portion of a tree broke off in front of an office building. But we all survived. I'm going to leave the cinderblock on since the weather service says we can expect strong thunderstorms for the next few days.

While I was replenishing the sugar syrup yesterday, I did notice that some fire ants found their way into the hive-top feeder, especially when I found one crawling up my arm. Not many ants, maybe ten or so, but enough for me to be concerned that I may be fighting an invasion. While fire ants are pretty common to North Carolina, I haven't seen too many of them in my yard...that is until now. I have a feeling that they're getting in through the top of the hive. To aid in hive-top ventilation I have some popcicle sticks glued to the inner cover, so I think they're sneaking in through the tiny space between the box and the cover. I knocked off as many of them as I could and this weekend, when I do an inspection, I'll sprinkle come cinnamon around the top of the inner cover and around the edges of the feeder. I did that before with the tiny black ants that found my hive and the bees didn't seem to mind it at all.

I also put out some Terro outdoor ant baits. To make sure my curious bees wouldn't get into it, I put it under the hive stand and to the back...where I believe the ants are entering the hive. And the good thing about the ant baits, the hole is small enough that the ants can get in, but the bees can't. The package indicates that the ants are attracted to it, take the liquid bait back to the nest, and that kills them. We'll see if it works. I'd much rather try this than some of the other remedies that I read about, including using Sevin dust -- things that would kill the ants -- and could possibly kill my colony if they got into it and took it back to the nest. If you've never been bitten by a fire ant, they're horrible and relentless. I've got my fingers crossed that this will work out. Wish me luck.

This weekend, I'm also planning to spray around my hive with a homemade weed killer formula -- kills the weeds but won't harm the bees. All natural, all of the ingredients come from the food pantry. More on that later!

Thanks for reading and a big thanks to those who post comments on my blog. I truly appreciate it. You guys (and that includes you gals too) ROCK!

They're back! The yellow jackets are back!

Okay, so I thought I had totally gotten rid of the yellow jacket's that I found in my yard this week. I was pretty proud of myself for destroying the nest and getting rid of the angry yellow menace. Boy was I wrong..

Yesterday, thinking that I would go out and see if the ground was sinking where the entrance hole was located, I peeped out of the laundry room window, which is about 20 feet from the nest. As my eyes settled to the location of the hole, and I see one, then two, then five yellow devils, all flying around. Thinking they could be stragglers, the ones out foraging on the day I poured gasoline down the hole, I didn't give it much thought, and figured they would go away.

Wrong. This morning I look out and there they are again, about five to ten of them, flying over the old entrance hole (which was filled in when I poured gasoline down the hole). So now I realize that they must have a second entrance/exit hole somewhere, but I can't find it. I have watched and waited, but they fly around...land here, land there...but for the life of me, I can't see one point where they are coming and going. I just don't know where it is, and it is irritating me. I've encountered yellow jackets in years past, matter of fact, last year I had one within feet of where my bee hive is now, but this is the first nest I've run into that I couldn't destroy.

Now I'm a man on a mission. I plan to watch the ground to see what they're doing, then when I find the suckers, I'll go Dirty Harry on them. I hate yellow jackets. I got into a nest of them as a kid and they stung me repeatedly, getting in my clothes and hair and going crazy on me. I plan to return the favor.

Stay tuned!

YELLOWJACKETS and divine intervention...

I have to admit that I'm not the most religious person in the world. Like others, I have my beliefs about what lies beyond and even what happens here on earth, but rarely do I ever talk about it. Sometimes its better to keep those ideas to yourself. It keeps everybody happy and out of a fuss. Same thing with politics.

But in this situation, I just had to blog about. It was my encounter with yellow jackets while mowing my yard today. Read on...

After returning from a morning doctor's visit (I have a horrible sinus infection from the air conditioning, I get one every year) I decided to mow my back yard and concentrate close to my bee hive because the grass was a little high. After having my yard graded, I planted grass, and now it is coming up like crazy, so I decided to mow and trim near my hive too. Even though I've been all around the hive with my weedeater, and without my protective overalls, I decided that since I would be using the lawn tractor, it might be a good idea to wear it just in case they get a little testy because of the noise. Besides, I'd already been stuck once today (a shot in the rear at the doctor's office) and didn't want to try for more from my girls.

I mowed all around the hive and didn't even get a response from my bees at all. I guess they had other things on their minds, and I was the least of their concerns. And while I was at it, I decided to mow up the fence line which separates my yard from my neighbor's. But the sun was beating down and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I started to get soaking wet with sweat from my overalls so I went inside the house to take them off and come back to finish mowing the back yard.

In jeans and a tee shirt, I cranked the lawn tractor and decided to continue mowing near the fence line. I made it right to the fence line and that's when I saw it. A cloud coming out of the ground. A thick cloud coming out of the ground. A thick, yellow cloud coming out of the ground and it was in a frenzy. I bet there were at least a hundred or more and the cloud kept getting thicker.

YELLOW JACKETS!

Now mind you, they were flying in the same exact spot I just ran over with the lawn tractor while I was wearing my protective overalls. I normally just wear them when I'm at the hive, but for some odd reason, I wore them going up that fence line and right over top of that yellow jacket's nest.

Needless to say, I panicked. I turned the ignition off and jumped off the tractor with the blades still engaged, so when it shut completely down, it backfired and sounded like a pistol went off. I stood a good distance away and watched them and finally figured where the entrance was. And that's when I decided on a plan of attack.

WARNING: Don't try this at home. I just have to say that just in case you're thinking of doing it if you find a yellow jacket's nest in your yard. I don't want you to get hurt and blame me. Nuff said? Okay, so I suited up again and took some gasoline and burned the area where they were flying out and hoping that I got some yellow jackets in the process. Then when I put that out with my garden hose, I found the entrance hole..that was big enough to put my index finger inside. At that point, since there was no danger of fire, I took more gasoline and poured it inside the hole, maybe a half to one gallon, and just stood back and watched. A few were determined to get to the hole, and I even got divebombed a few times too, but they eventually went away. An hour later, I would see the occasion yellow jacket fly over the hole, make a few passes, then fly away.

I then finished mowing my back yard which looks great now. And bee-free too (except the honey bees in my hive).

About me wearing the protective overalls that far up the fence line. I have no clue why I decided to do it, but I did. Maybe I just thought about it and did it...or maybe there was some sort of divine intervention that forced me to wear them. Whichever it is, all I can say is, thank you, thank you..THANK YOU!

Until next time, watch the ground when you're mowing, and bee careful!