When we started to keep bees

Relaxing with my bee buddies …

My German grandpa kept bees.

I only knew my German Grandpa from childhood stories told by my father and uncle. They grew up with their older sister in a little town named Eschweiler, close to the Belgian border, and Grandpa Johan was the towns school principal, whose passion was Imkerei (German for Bee-Keeping). Those stories fascinated me since I was young and the wish to one day keep my own bees has accompanied me over the years. And yes, I too am originally from Germany where I grew up, but have been living in the US since the late 80s.

Anyhow, after I settled down in Seattle in the early 2000s I started out with both, pesticide free edible gardening and the keeping of chickens, which turned out very different from what I thought it would be. But that is a story for another time.

Of course keeping bees was a natural extension of my homesteading our lot in the Crown Hill neighborhood of Seattle.. However my initial attempts at “Mason Bees keeping” were less then stellar. All the Mason bees I raised all eventually made off to some neighbors garden, probably where they had enough fresh mud during the spring to build homes for their next generation. I have since learned much about Mason Bees and realize I could have done better. So if you are new to and interested in Mason Bees, check out https://crownbees.com to get you started. Its one of my favorite websites for backyard pollinator info.

Fast forward a few busy years working as a veterinarian, and finally, it was time to begin the new adventure of keeping honey bees in the back yard. And this time I started by reading anything and everything about beekeeping I could get my hands on first. Then I took a class, joined the local bee keeping club and asked for help. Luckily an old client from my days as a vet (I took care of his goats) is a seasoned and knowledgeable beekeeper, and was gracious enough to let me tag along and ask questions while he was tending his hives on a sunny day in February. It didn’t take but an hour and I was thoroughly hooked. Initially I had planned to absorb as much knowledge for a year before getting my own bees, but rather than only sitting around other peoples hives my mentor encouraged me to get my own hives that same year I started my beekeepers apprenticeship. And so the adventure began.

Something borrowed and something new.

Old friends helped a lot with the loan of used equipment to get me started in mid April that year when my first 2 nuclear colonies were ready for pick up. And before you know it I was driving in my VW Golf to the hum of bees and the heavenly honeyed scent of beekeeping frames and boxes, driving home from the foothills of the Cascade mountains back to Seattle, hoping that ‘everyone’ was properly secured. It was April 18th, I marked the calendar.

Cant imagine what would have happened if one or both of the 2 card board boxes with bees on frames of honey and pollen would have tipped over and cracked open. Naturally I had properly packed those boxes and all the other stuff before I got in the car, but your mind goes to all the potential scenarios where you might end up with 2 colonies of indignant bees circulating your airspace in a very small, confined area. No no, nothing untoward happened driving home, where my beekeeping friend, and by then mentor, waited to help me move the bees into their new homes. But could you imagine? I think I sang with the radio the first few miles to relax on the drive home. Then I tuned into the bees buzzing and we all made it back to my house in ship shape.

To start, before assembling the beekeeping equipment, we parked both cardboard boxes containing the nuclear colonies, or “Nucs” on the designated “beekeeping table” to keep the bees off the deck, and removed the entrance plug to let the bees out. And boy, they were ready to come out, orient themselves to a new home and fly off to take a poop.

After all, they had been locked into their little boxes and been holding it for probably for a whole day by then….

New cat entertainment on the bee table…

Setting up the beehives is pretty straight forward, as in: you start with bottom board, put a box on that and add 5 frames of honey and pollen to get your baby colony started on the outside before we moving the 5 frames with each nuclear colony of bees into the middle of the box, top the box with an inner cover and then put the top cover on. Voila. A real bee hive with real honey bees, well…. make that two beehives.

After we set up the hives and my mentor went home, I pulled up a garden chair and slowly inched closer and closer to the bee table, trying to see what the bees were doing. It was super fascinating and I wanted to watch from as close as possible to not miss the details. I was amazed to find the bees tolerated me practically sitting on top of the hives, after much inching closer. And I finally parked the chair about 2-3 feet away from the bottom board to observe everything close and personal. And I have been sitting to watch the bees whenever I can practically ever since. My husband calls it the bee commander chair, which hasn’t moved away from the hives ever since that first day. It is the favorite perch for either the cats or I, or all of us together to sit to watch the bee traffic. There is nothing better to wake up early during the summer months, get a cup of coffee and hang out by the hives in the morning sun for a while to get your day started right.

What about cats, dog and bees and getting stung????

It took a bit to get our furry house mates adjusted to the new going ons on the back deck. Particularly our cats Thelonius and Seumas (Scottish spelling, pronounced SHAY-məs) were quite fascinated at first with all that new buzzing. And Seumas sat either on or next to the hive bobbing for bees for several days. But they did learn fairly quickly however not to mess with the bees, which too is a story for another time, just like my adventures in keeping chickens. These days the felines skirt the front of the hives where most of the traffic in and out of the hives occurs.

It took our dog Ronin a bit longer not to try and “catch” bees. But even he now circumnavigates the bee bench these days, walking behind it rather than in front. It is just if he finds a bee in the house that all bets are off. Luckily no animal ever gets hurt from RoRo’s bee hunts, however the same cannot be said for various house plants in the windows. Just ask my orchids how often they ended up tipped over.

I can honestly say than neither the cats nor the dog have ever been stung to my knowledge, while I lost count how often I end up with one. Or two, or ten…. Its the cost of doing business when it does happen, and since recommendation from allergists and doctors is to average about 200 bee stings a year to keep a hard earned immunity for us beeks, (slang for beekeeper or apiarists), I really don’t mind getting stung occasionally as I work with a lot of bees during the year.

In terms of bee stings, there are stings and then there are stings!

As the famous line goes its: Location, Location, Location. That and a few other things, like how long has the stinger been stuck in your skin before you remove it - the faster the better. Or did you get stung by a summer bee or a winter bee. More on summer versus winter bees and other topics later.

But mainly location! As in the worst is getting stung the face, and the worst of the bee stings on your face is over the eyes and sinuses. You will end up looking like you went a few rounds in the ring after a while, even if you remove the stinger quickly. Yeah, I came home once after working field bees with both of my eyes swollen shut. That was fun for a day or two. Thank God no one took pictures. In contrast, at least for me, any sting over a fleshy area, scrape the stinger off asap and ignore. Those stings barely swell anymore these days and are often gone within hours. Barely worth putting salve on it.

Humble Beginnings

Looking back, it may have just been my neighbors elderly garden table, my friends used bee equipment and my mentors old bee suit and gloves, everything on loan, (Thank you so much guys, you know who you are!), but I could not have been happier when my bees arrived. They were my bees, my very own and I never stopped parking close to the hive to watch the girls come and go, and get into that nirvana state of time stopping and worries disappearing. I call it “B-Time” and it is my go to form of meditation.

These days B-Time at my house involves lounging in front of a DYI built bee bench, and several hives of honey bees. For some reason you can never have enough gear as a beekeeper, or bees. Its a mystery. But sitting in front of a hive, it never gets old, just wet sometimes when it rains. I could watch bees forever. Old hive, new hive, my hive, someone else’s hive. Makes really no difference. But to be honest, I like watching mine the best, because: A) it’s close to home as in super convenient and B) has proper accommodations, as in a bee commander chair with side table for coffee mugs and such and C) it now has a roof to keep your bee watching dry and comfy. Aforementioned roof is still a non-permanent structure. This fall has been unusually wet in Seattle - don’t laugh out-of-towners. It usually doesn’t come down harder than a drizzle. And since here in the Pacific Northwest it is the wet that kills bees during the winter months, not the cold, and of course to better enjoy B-Time during Seattle’s Monsoon season, I now have the hives under a tarp. It stretches from our pergola over the bee bench to keep the bees dry and protect them from the elements. Talking about which, this summer temperatures topped the 100s for several record breaking days and yes, you guessed it, my bees were sitting as cool as possible under our only garden umbrella. Eventually they will get a permanent roof, and I will continue to upgrade my gear, but come to think of it, so far none of the ladies has ever complained about their accommodation or pissed off permanently to the neighbors. And we still hang out for now during the nicer hours of the day unless the weather is too blustery, wet or cold and none of the bees are flying. Soon they will stop flying for a while once the temperatures drop below the 50s, and I will yearn for spring, watching bee vids and reading up more on the latest in beekeeping. So, in the end I guess I am better at keeping honey bees than Mason bees. And that is alright.

To share a little B-Time with you, here is one of my home-baked videos of the ladies from the first year I started keeping bees. Enjoy.

Slow Motion Bee aerial manœuvres