Classes start up again today, which confirms that the space time continuum has been fractured since it seems like we just got back from Korea yesterday.
We went out with some of the new and existing faculty, Lark had a good time meeting everybody.
.jpg)
Yes she is even cuter than she was last time you saw her. Here's another in her signature polka dotted pjs:
This semester I am teaching classes on the New South, the history of Virginia, and a survey on the United States. I am offering a new class on "Space and Place in the United States" to incoming freshmen which I am looking forward to. My research into Latinization in Appalachia inspired me to teach this class. My syllabi will be online on my webpage if you are interested in seeing how they are constructed.
Being back on campus has given me the opportunity (finally!) to go check on the school's beehives. My personal hives in three separate yards around Tidewater have done well despite my absence and a deliberate lack of chemical treatment (or maybe helped by it). Set the bees up with enough space and good forage and they will do fine.
The school's hives had a much different experience. 10 of the hives are dead. It is impossible to tell why at this point since the comb has been completely destroyed by wax moths. The hives are all filled with worms and moths.
Three swarms did survive quite vigorously though, as I will describe in a moment.
One very troubling thing was that after processing the honey supers last year while I was away, the students left the equipment out for the bees to clean up. That in itself is a good idea, but where it became troubling is that they never returned to pack away the equipment for the winter. The result is that 100% of the honey supers and the comb (the most valuable part because of the energy demands on the bees to make it) is ruined. yikes...cat away mice will play and all of that. Looks like I will have to spend much more time on how to care for equipment next time I teach the class.
Here is the overgrown yard as you approach it:
A primer in how NOT to store bee equipment:
At some point in the last year, three of the hives swarmed. There may have been more, but I know there were three because the bees moved into the equipment left piled in the yard. Each hive presented its own challenge, it was fun to see what had transpired. Fun, but also a bit dismaying given the work involved to make things right.
The first hive was just a normal swarm that moved into a single deep hive body that helpfully had been sitting correctly placed on a screen bottom board. In other words, this was a hive set up as it should be. This hive was vigorous, healthy, productive, and very gentle. All I had to do was add some honey supers on top and it is good to go.
here it is:
The second hive was also very lively but a bit more challenging. They had settled into another stack of equipment and built up four medium supers in height. The stack had no bottom board and was just sitting on a couple of cinder blocks. The bees didn't seem to mind, and they actually filled the hollow spot of the cinderblock with resinous propolis, waterproofing it. That was actually very neat to see (the pictures didn't come out).
here is the hive when I walked up to it:
The inside was a bit of a mess because the frames were left cock-eyed in the boxes. Bees like only a certain kind of space (called "bee space") and anything bigger than an 1/8 inch is filled in with wax or propolis. These bees wasted no time doing that. It was great fun untangling that mess.
It didn't help that this very large and vigorous hive was also mean as hell. Perhaps they requeened themselves and got a bit more aggressive, which happens sometimes, or perhaps they were just ornery. I got stung a large number of times all at once and finally had to put on gloves just to get through the thing.
Thinking of you, dear reader, I took this opportunity to take a picture of me getting stung. This was on my right hand so I had fish out my camera and take the picture at with my left hand, which gave the bee time to really get its stinging done. You can see the stinger in my hand and the bee pulling away.
(p.s.- kids, don't try this at home)
The third hive looked a bit more complicated on the outside and it was. Here is the outside with the bees hanging out since they have filled in all the space inside:
.jpg)
First of all, this swarm picked a really ill-thought out pile of equipment mismatched and in no logical order. There were three screen bottom boards that were left at angles, allowing the bees to make a truly magnificent mess of things as far as this beekeeper is concerned. No worries for the bugs though, these bees just filled in all of the open spaces with wax and propolis. The boxes were also all empty, which means the bees just built the hive the way they would have if this was a hollow tree. It is quite beautiful to behold. But there was a mess when I pried it open, though it makes sense to the bees.
These bees were very gentle. And why not?--they got to make their hive just as they liked it. I enjoyed having the chance to deal with something this messy. I basically just put some regular boxes with frames on top and will wait for these bees to move up into some semblance of order.
Here is how things stood once I got the three hives a bit more orderly. I'll go back in a couple of days and see how things look.
We went out with some of the new and existing faculty, Lark had a good time meeting everybody.
.jpg)
Yes she is even cuter than she was last time you saw her. Here's another in her signature polka dotted pjs:
This semester I am teaching classes on the New South, the history of Virginia, and a survey on the United States. I am offering a new class on "Space and Place in the United States" to incoming freshmen which I am looking forward to. My research into Latinization in Appalachia inspired me to teach this class. My syllabi will be online on my webpage if you are interested in seeing how they are constructed.
Being back on campus has given me the opportunity (finally!) to go check on the school's beehives. My personal hives in three separate yards around Tidewater have done well despite my absence and a deliberate lack of chemical treatment (or maybe helped by it). Set the bees up with enough space and good forage and they will do fine.
The school's hives had a much different experience. 10 of the hives are dead. It is impossible to tell why at this point since the comb has been completely destroyed by wax moths. The hives are all filled with worms and moths.
Three swarms did survive quite vigorously though, as I will describe in a moment.
One very troubling thing was that after processing the honey supers last year while I was away, the students left the equipment out for the bees to clean up. That in itself is a good idea, but where it became troubling is that they never returned to pack away the equipment for the winter. The result is that 100% of the honey supers and the comb (the most valuable part because of the energy demands on the bees to make it) is ruined. yikes...cat away mice will play and all of that. Looks like I will have to spend much more time on how to care for equipment next time I teach the class.
Here is the overgrown yard as you approach it:
A primer in how NOT to store bee equipment:
At some point in the last year, three of the hives swarmed. There may have been more, but I know there were three because the bees moved into the equipment left piled in the yard. Each hive presented its own challenge, it was fun to see what had transpired. Fun, but also a bit dismaying given the work involved to make things right.
The first hive was just a normal swarm that moved into a single deep hive body that helpfully had been sitting correctly placed on a screen bottom board. In other words, this was a hive set up as it should be. This hive was vigorous, healthy, productive, and very gentle. All I had to do was add some honey supers on top and it is good to go.
here it is:
The second hive was also very lively but a bit more challenging. They had settled into another stack of equipment and built up four medium supers in height. The stack had no bottom board and was just sitting on a couple of cinder blocks. The bees didn't seem to mind, and they actually filled the hollow spot of the cinderblock with resinous propolis, waterproofing it. That was actually very neat to see (the pictures didn't come out).
here is the hive when I walked up to it:
The inside was a bit of a mess because the frames were left cock-eyed in the boxes. Bees like only a certain kind of space (called "bee space") and anything bigger than an 1/8 inch is filled in with wax or propolis. These bees wasted no time doing that. It was great fun untangling that mess.
It didn't help that this very large and vigorous hive was also mean as hell. Perhaps they requeened themselves and got a bit more aggressive, which happens sometimes, or perhaps they were just ornery. I got stung a large number of times all at once and finally had to put on gloves just to get through the thing.
Thinking of you, dear reader, I took this opportunity to take a picture of me getting stung. This was on my right hand so I had fish out my camera and take the picture at with my left hand, which gave the bee time to really get its stinging done. You can see the stinger in my hand and the bee pulling away.
(p.s.- kids, don't try this at home)
The third hive looked a bit more complicated on the outside and it was. Here is the outside with the bees hanging out since they have filled in all the space inside:
.jpg)
First of all, this swarm picked a really ill-thought out pile of equipment mismatched and in no logical order. There were three screen bottom boards that were left at angles, allowing the bees to make a truly magnificent mess of things as far as this beekeeper is concerned. No worries for the bugs though, these bees just filled in all of the open spaces with wax and propolis. The boxes were also all empty, which means the bees just built the hive the way they would have if this was a hollow tree. It is quite beautiful to behold. But there was a mess when I pried it open, though it makes sense to the bees.
These bees were very gentle. And why not?--they got to make their hive just as they liked it. I enjoyed having the chance to deal with something this messy. I basically just put some regular boxes with frames on top and will wait for these bees to move up into some semblance of order.
Here is how things stood once I got the three hives a bit more orderly. I'll go back in a couple of days and see how things look.
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