Just in case you’ve been wondering, the beekids are alright. In fact, they are very happy these days when the sun shines and they can head outside to forage for nectar and pollen. I thought they might like the clover in the yard, but they seem to prefer these poppy blooms far more.

As I stood watching, honeybees alit and disappeared to the bottom of the flower, then slowly worked their way back up. As many as four honeybees worked one flower at a time. If one headed back to the hive, another arrived, as if cued by a choreographer.

We have six active colonies in our little apiary now, and they are all busy. We overwintered one hive and split it in April to make two hives (we added a queen to the second colony). The brood chambers (kind of like a new bee nursery) are three boxes and we’ve added two shallower boxes for honey on top. We hope to get a good harvest from it.

In early April, we bought four “packages” from our bee supplier, Jim Kloek at Nature’s Nectar in Stillwater. They are all doing ok and we’ll probably add more room to each colony for their growing brood soon. We’ll let them keep most of the honey they make so they can get through the upcoming winter.

We check in on the hives every week or two to see how things are going for them. So far, so good.

The two apricot trees I planted in the yard last fall burst into bloom this past weekend, which pleased our bees. We successfully overwintered one hive and added four more about 10 days ago.

When colonies of honeybees come through the winter strong (and if you’ve been reading about problems such as Colony Collapse Disorder, you know some colonies didn’t make it at all), beekeepers can divide them — a sort of buy one, get one free deal with nature.

Normally, such a hive would have enough workers and brood (eggs and unhatched bees) to split in May. But when we pried the cover off our hive on Saturday, I knew we needed to take some action sooner that that. Talk about wall to wall bees! There was abundant honey, pollen and brood, but not much room for the queen to lay eggs.

Preparing bees for their new home

What to do? We called on Mike Mackiewicz, an experienced beekeeper in Scandia, near where we live, and asked his advice. He came over within an hour and we went through the hive together. As beginning beekeepers, it was great to get his observations and help. He pointed out a large number of drones (those are the dudes of the hive, who get to spend the summer hanging out and watching beeTV while the gals do all the work — at least they do until their mating services are needed). And then we saw a queen cell that looked like a small circus peanut. Then another. This hive was thinking seriously about “growing” a second queen so it could swarm –divide itself — and, soon.

The queen bee in her cage

We did some rearranging of boxes and frames to give the queen some room to lay, and slow down their urge to swarm. We’ll get a new queen and split the hive this coming weekend if they haven’t already done the deed themselves. It’s wonderful they are healthy and happy. But the experience was a good reminder that bees don’t read beekeeping calendars or how-to books. They know what they are doing. Now I just need to catch up.

Honeybees have gone missing from their hives, and the reason has confounded both scientists and beekeepers. For those of you unfamiliar with Colony Collapse Disorder, don’t miss reporter Matt McKinney’s story that ran in today’s paper. Without our hardworking pollinators, a multitude of commercial crops like almonds, oranges and cherries are also in danger.

More on Colony Collapse Disorder:
+ New York Times: Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons
+ Washington Post: Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
+ Mid-Atlantic Apiculture
+ Penn State University Entomology Deptment
+ American Beekeeping Federation

The honeybees, eight pounds of them, are set for me to pick up on Saturday, and I am excited to get them into the hives prepared and waiting for them. My bee supplier picks up a whole trailerload from California, I believe, and brings them back to Minnesota for his beekeeper customers who want to restock their “supply.” We overwintered one colony and were delighted they made it through the winter. Soon, those residents have four more hives of co-worker bees buzzing all over.