July

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ONE OF THE STAR PERFORMERS - at the moment . . .
Four supers - full of honey and it's only the middle of July! Not too many of them stacked up in the warehouse now, like last month - they're out in the beeyard and most are full! We still do have a few empty supers left, but they will be gone in a week or ten days - that's when the extracting must start or the bees won't have a place to store the surplus honey they are bringing in.
Tune in next month for a look at the extracting operation - it's all about pulling supers off the hives and removing the honey from the frames. Once emptied, the supers can be placed back on the hives to be filled again as long as the honey flow continues. In our operation, we start extracting in late July or early August and usually finish up in September.

1. Mid July - supers are filling up fast.
INSIDE THE SUPERS
This frame (fig 2) is filled with honey, but it's not ready to extract because it all the honey hasn't been capped. Honey starts out as nectar, which is about 80% water and 20% sugar - on the other hand, honey is over 80% sugar and less than 20% water. It must be less than 18% in order to qualify as USDA Grade A. High moisture honey has the potential of fermentation while honey with a moisture content less than 18% will not ferment.
So the bees must dry the nectar as part of the process of turning it into honey and they do this by fanning the hive. On hot summer nights, the hive can be heard to "buzz" as the bees move air through it with their wings to evaporate the extra moisture. During hot days this acts as evaporative cooling to help maintain the preferred temperature of 92° F inside the hive.
The white area on the frame in the picture his honey that has been capped with beeswax. This is the last job the bees do in the honey making process - and it's not done until the honey is sufficiently dry. The honey to the right of this area which has not been capped is still too wet to harvest.
2. Partially capped frame full of honey.
MEANWHILE OUTSIDE THE HIVE . .
dead bees! They don't live forever, but how long do they live?
It depends on the time of year. Their life span is shortest in the summer months when they are flying constantly - sun up to sun down - seven days a week. Their wings literally"wear out" to the point where they can no longer fly. A German scientist once calculated a bee can fly about 500 miles in it's life time. Once bees reach the point where they can no longer fly they are expelled from the hive. There is no old age retirement program for bees - other than to crawl around in front of the hive until they die. The result of this is what we see in the picture (fig 3).
Bees only live two or three months during the summer honey season but they can live six months or longer during the winter when their flying is more limited. The exception, of course, is the queen who can live a year or two.
3. The bee's grave yard
VEGETABLE SEED POLLINATION

SEED CAGES
Q. Where do the carrot seeds for your garden come from?

A. Chances are they are hybrid seeds developed from parent plants selected to produce the desired flavor, uniformity and color of the carrot.

Seed companies are on a continuous quest to produce a better carrot, onion, or any other one of the many vegetables we eat. Our area here in Idaho is particularly well suited for seed development and production and without the bees it would not be possible.
Hybrid seed varieties are developed and produced initially in nylon mesh cages where bees cross pollinate the selected varieties under controlled conditions to create a new hybrid seed with the desired characteristics. Providing bees for these seed cages requires preparation that starts in early spring when the bees return from California.
4. Nylon mesh pollination "seed cage"

HUNDREDS OF SEED CAGES AND BEE HIVES

A beehive can survive for only a limited time in the closed conditions of a seed cage. The hives are specially prepared 8 and 10 frame single boxes made up with a new queen in the early spring (take a look at March and April to see how this is done). By mid June when the flowers in the cages start blooming and the bees go in, the hives are strong and boiling over with bees. The hive is limited to three weeks in the seed cage during which time it will survive on the stores in the box and a water pail placed in the cage for the bees. Pollen and nectar gathered from the relatively few flowers in this closed environment is totally insufficient to sustain the hive and as a result the queen stops laying eggs and hive goes into survival mode shortly after placement. In order to function as a pollinator under these conditions, the small hive must meet the following requirements prior to placement in the seed cage:

  1. Sufficient numbers of bees in the hive
  2. A laying queen with an abundance of brood (preferably capped brood)
  3. Sufficient weight (honey stores) to survive for three weeks

These hives are overflowing with bees as can be seen in the pictures. Seed research personnel place the bees in the cages through a zippered entrance at either end. Cages are numbered and progress of the plants carefully tracked to place the bees in each cage at the exact time so that pollination occurs when the bloom is ready. Bee hives are loaded on the truck from our various bee yards the previous night. Pictures show the hives being transloaded to carts at the seed facility for the trip to the cages around sun up the next morning. You see lots of bees in these hives and that's exactly the idea, but they can get too crowded too early causing the hive to swarm which sometimes happens. In this case, the hive is too weak to do the job and it becomes unusable for the seed cage.

The day before being placed in the cage, field bees from the hive had gathered pollen, nectar and water from sources as close to the hive as a few hundred yards and as far away as several miles . Consequently, when placed in the cage the field bees do not adapt well to the new confined conditions flying instead against the net in a continuous search for an exit - all the while ignoring the flowers right under their noses. New field bees who have not yet taken their first flight are emerging from the hive on a daily basis and these bees who fly for the first time in the cage go right to work on the flowers they find only a few feet from the hive entrance.
This is why the second requirement is so important. Without a laying queen with the attendant backlog of brood plus a pipeline full of young bees waiting to graduate to flyer status the hive would have only the older field bees and nothing else. Since the older bees don't function well in the confined area, the hive would be little use as a pollinator in the seed cage.
5.Unloading at day break.
6. Bees overflowing their hives.
7. Transloading the hives.
8. Off to the seed cages for placement.
9. Let's get it right!
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