Honeybee_ Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper - C. Marina Marchese [25]
FIRST PEEKS INSIDE THE HIVE
Exactly one week after I hived my bees, it was time to open the hive to check on my queen. It takes approximately three to five days for the queen to be released from her royal cage. The queen’s attendants, who traveled with her inside her cage, and the workers inside the hive had been happily dining on the sugar cork that acted as a temporary door between the queen and her subjects. Once the candy cork was completely eaten, the queen would be released, and she would introduce herself to her subjects through queen substance. This pheromone—a chemical e-mail, if you will—is passed along from one bee to another through their antennae until it reaches the last bee. This is how the entire hive knows the queen is present. Once the queen was released into the hive, she would mate and begin laying eggs, and all the activities of a working beehive would officially begin. I was hoping that the queen inside my hive had been released during the first week, and I suited up with my bee veil, hive tool ready, to see how my bees were doing.
The best time to open up and inspect inside a hive is between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon. This is when most of the workers are out foraging. There will, therefore, be fewer bees inside the hive, which makes the job of manipulating the frames much easier.
First, I attempted to light my nice, new shiny smoker. I stuffed it with newspaper and a few twigs, struck a match away from the breeze, dropped the match in, and watched it flame out. I lit a second match, set fire to some newspaper, and then dropped it in. Using my hive tool, I moved the paper around in the canister and added a little air by squeezing the bellows. A miniature blaze broke out, but then quickly self-extinguished. Sigh. Lighting a smoker was not nearly as easy as it sounded. I needed a plan and some luck.
Again I tried the technique of lighting the paper first and then dropping it into the canister. This time I slowly added dried grass, more twigs, and leaves. After a five-minute battle, this method actually started to work, but it took some time to get those twigs to actually catch fire. I kept wondering, “How does a single match burn an entire house down when I cannot even light a humble fire in my smoker?” There unequivocally was an art to keeping your smoker lit, and it would be years before I mastered it. But eventually that day I established a smoldering flame.
Donning my veil, I was ready to open my hive. Standing to the side of my hive, with the sun at my back, I blew some smoke at the entrance. Then, with one hand, I lifted the front outer cover while puffing away with the smoker with the other. I removed the outer cover and leaned it along the side of the hive. When I tried to lift the inner cover, it snapped open, as if it had been glued shut. This was my first encounter with propolis. Worker bees collect this reddish brown resin by gathering the sap from tree buds. Bees use propolis, or bee glue, as beekeepers call it, to seal up cracks and crevasses in their hive to protect the colony from weather, bacteria, and disease that may enter the hive. Thus, they maintain a sanitary environment. One thing I can tell you is that once propolis gets on your clothing, it will remain there for a lifetime. A wise beekeeper carries a spray bottle of alcohol to the hives to help dissolve propolis that may get stuck to fingers or clothes. Later, I would learn to respect propolis for all its wonderful benefits and gently scrape away the excess for my own personal use in healing remedies.
Once I removed the inner cover, I leaned it against the side of the hive as well. Leaning the covers against the hive, as opposed to laying them flat, ensures that any bees still crawling around on them