Earlier this year, I ordered a package of bees to replace the colony that didn’t make it through the winter. They were supposed to be ready for pickup the first week of April, but they ended up being delayed due to bad weather in Georgia (where they were coming from). Unfortunately, that meant they’d be delivered when we were scheduled to be out of town. The beekeeper I ordered the bees from was kind enough to install my package into a nuc box and keep them fed until I could pick them up. (Thank you, Lloyd!)

It turns out they’d been really busy in my absence. When I picked up the bees and moved the frames from the box into my hive, I spied several queen cups (cells created specially to make new queens) along the bottoms of a couple of the frames. That usually means they’ve run out of room and are preparing to swarm. I destroyed the cups and put them in the hive with lots of space, hoping they’d decide not to swarm. New Vulcan colonized.

Capped queen cell

I went back a week later and found a lovely little capped queen cell–which meant I’d apparently missed a cup the week before when I’d destroyed the rest and that they’d already swarmed at that point. Blarg. At that point, I decided to just leave it and let them raise the queen. At the same time, the OTHER colony (Andoria) looked like they were raising a queen, as well, I guessed because the existing one wasn’t laying very well or they didn’t like her for some other reason; I hadn’t seen very many eggs on earlier inspections.

And then I proceeded to leave town for a conference.

I spent the next couple of days debating whether I should indeed just let these colonies raise their own queens or try to find an already-mated queen for sale to install. I finally decided to buy a queen, since raising one meant it would be at least a month until she was laying (she’d have to emerge from her cell, get strong, go mate, then start laying–assuming she even survived her mating flight), meaning the colony would be set back in bee production and therefore honey production. So I found a queen for sale nearby and ordered. (Thanks, Aaron!) Since I had been a good little energy worker and carpooled to the conference, my boss was nice enough to take a short detour on the way home to pick up my queen.

This was last Thursday. I didn’t get home that night until about 7, but I wanted to see what was going on in the hives. Turns out Andoria (the one that overwintered with the crappy queen and the one I’d decided to put the new queen in) had a ton of eggs, so apparently they’d already raised a healthy queen or the existing one stepped up her game. So there was no reason to mess with that one.

Went into New Vulcan (the package/nuc) and, lo and behold, found about a dozen capped queen cells. So they REALLY wanted a new queen. I destroyed all of those (I think), but there was one that had potentially already emerged. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell.) If so, that means there was already a new queen in there, and so less chance that the colony would accept the new queen I’d just bought. Blarg again. I looked hard to find her, but wasn’t able to. So I put the new caged queen in anyway, thinking maybe she’ll make it. Checked on her 5 days later, and she’d at least been released from her cage. Doesn’t mean they didn’t kill her, though. Guess we’ll see. To be continued…

It’s essentially a working prototype at this point, so nowhere near mass market, but it does have promise: The promise of hands-free hive inspection recording. Since it sits on your nose like a pair of glasses, you’re essentially recording a first-person view. Just start up the recording with a couple of taps, throw on your veil, and you’re good to go.

I borrowed the contraption for a little hive maintenance. First up was hiving a nucleus colony. Unfortunately, one of the files got corrupted, and of course it was the most important bit, i.e., actually transferring the bees from the nuc to the hive. But at least you can get an idea of what it’s like. (Note: I’ve never narrated anything before, so cut me some slack.)

I also did an inspection of the neighboring hive. Tim grabbed a clip from that recording and posted it for engadget, which you can see here.

I found this experience to be pretty awesome. No cameras to deal with and get all sticky, and I could record my entire inspection, so I don’t forget what I saw. Keeping good records is essential to good hive management, but it gets to be a pain to either fumble around and take pictures or try to write everything down in a sticky notebook. This way, it’s all right there for me to look back on.

It would definitely benefit from having voice-activated extended recording. Right now it does record on voice command, but only for 10 seconds at a time; if you want to record longer, you have to manually tap on the device, which is impossible to do through a veil. But I’m sure that’s coming; this is pretty much just Google’s first cut at the technology, after all. I don’t think whatever the eventual price point is will make it worthwhile for most beekeepers, but if you happen to have other uses for it and happen to keep bees, this is one more use to add to your list of cool things to do with Glass.

A little context: Pressure-treated wood today no longer contains the arsenic compound it used to, so it’s supposedly not toxic anymore and ok to use for garden beds. There’s still some question about copper compounds leaching out of the new stuff, though, and the concern that it might be toxic as well, so I’d prefer not to use even the new pressure-treated stuff if possible. All “normal” paints and stains supposedly leach stuff, too, so I’d prefer not to use them.

Now, how much does all this leaching really matter? Is paint or stain from the raised beds really going to leach enough chemicals into the soil to get into your veggies? I really don’t have a clue. Even the copper leaching from the new pressure-treated wood is likely to kill your plants before you can harvest them. But I figure that we get enough chemical exposure elsewhere in our lives, and  as long as I’m growing my own stuff, why not be as chemical-free as possible? Also, I can’t do anything simply. It’s my lot in life to over-think everything.

What about not treating at all and just replacing the beds as they rot, as is advocated by some gardeners? Sure, this is likely the least-toxic option, but I think not. I’m pretty sure I can find other things to do with my time than rebuild my garden beds every 2 or 3 years.

So what’s left? Not a whole lot that I can find. I found a few things that might work but no solid confirmation from anyone who’s actually used them for garden beds. As it happens, in addition to my veggie beds, I’m building small beds for four new blueberry plants. They’ll all be the same size and under generally the same conditions, so it seemed like a good opportunity to compare options. (I unfortunately won’t have answers for several years while I see how they all fare against the weather, but you have to start somewhere.) Each of the beds will be 3′ x 3′ made from 2″ x 8″s, for a square-footage of roughly 24 s.f. including all the edges and sides. (That’s square-footage of the wood to be painted, not the planting bed.) The candidates:

• Eco Wood Treatment: A supposedly non-toxic, “eco-friendly” wood preservative. Nowhere can I find out what’s actually in it, though. The company seems a little sketchy. (www.ecowoodtreatment.com)
• Milk paint: Literally made from milk. Lots of different recipes, but they’re all pretty similar–and pretty much just milk protein (i.e., curds). I could write an entire post on milk paint, but plenty of people have already done that. Feel free to google.
• Beeswax & olive oil: Most recipes call for food-grade mineral oil. I didn’t have that, so I used olive oil. Don’t know if it’ll work the same or not.
• Au naturale: The control–no treatment.

Preparation

Eco Wood Treatment: This was definitely the easiest of the three. Just dump the packet of powder into a gallon of water, stir, and you’re ready to go. The powder stores indefinitely (supposedly) and comes in a resealable bag, so you can mix up as much as you need. I mixed up half a gallon, and it was way more than I needed for the amount of wood I was doing. The prepared liquid supposedly lasts a while, too, as long as it’s stored in an air-tight container. I just bought an empty paint can from the hardware store for a few bucks. Bought the powder itself online at Home Depot; they don’t seem to carry it in their stores, just online.

Milk paint: This is the weirdest one, but everywhere I read says it’s a really durable paint. You curdle some skim or 2% milk (not whole milk, apparently), drain off the liquid, mix in a tiny bit of borax, and you’re good to go. So it’s pretty much cheese curd. In fact, one site I found says to just use cottage cheese if you don’t have time to curdle your own milk. There are LOTS of variations on this recipe (e.g., some mix the borax right into liquid milk and use that as the paint, without bothering with the curdling), and I have no idea if one is better than the others. But they’re all basically the same idea.

Really bizarre, regardless. I have a hard time believing this will work to protect wood, but it’s apparently very durable. Used to be used in the “pioneer days” for painting barns and houses and such. Guess we’ll see. I’m guessing the particular recipe may have an effect on durability.

You can buy milk paint online, too, if you don’t want to make it. In powdered form, so you just mix it with water and go. I thought making cheese curd was kind of fun, and pretty cheap. Roughly half a gallon of milk yielded enough to cover the 3′ x 3′ bed with two thin coats. (Also leaves you with a bunch of leftover whey–the liquid you drain from the curds–with which I’m going to attempt to make ricotta cheese.)

Beeswax & oil: This one’s pretty simple to make (though not quite like mixing powder and water). Just combine four parts oil to one part beeswax, heat until the wax is melted, mix, and let it solidify. It turns into a nice, soft wax, kind of like Crisco or car wax. I used 2 cups of oil and half a cup of wax and melted it all together in the microwave. Probably would have been safer to do it in a double boiler on the stove, since beeswax needs to get really hot before it melts. Ran the risk of shattering the bowl. But it worked ok. This amount yielded about 2 cups of “polish,” which was WAY more than needed for a 3′ x 3′ bed.

The hardest and most time-consuming part for me was shaving off the beeswax from a big block. You can probably get shaved beeswax or small blocks that make for easier measuring, which would make the process even simpler.

Most of the “recipes” I’ve seen for this call for food-grade mineral oil. Supposedly it’s pretty easy to find, but I couldn’t find any. I was in a hurry, though, so I didn’t look too hard. I just settled for olive oil–it’s cheap and available. Don’t know how it’ll work, but we’ll see.

Application

Eco Wood Treatment: I thought this would go on pretty easily, since you just put it on with a brush, like paint, but I found it pretty messy. It didn’t absorb into the wood quickly at all, just kind of ran around on the surface. So there was a lot of drippage involved.

A note here: The instructions say that if you’re going to use this on wood that will be installed in the ground (like fence posts–or garden beds), you’re supposed to immerse the wood in triple-strength solution for three days. Um, no. I have neither the patience nor an immersion tank big enough for such an endeavor. So if it doesn’t protect the wood like it says, I can’t exactly blame the product, since I didn’t technically follow the directions. But it’ll give me a comparison for the lazy-man’s way (i.e., my way).

Milk paint: Definitely the easiest of the bunch. Just slap it on with a brush. It absorbs fairly quickly–much more so than the Eco stuff) and dries quickly enough that I was able to put on a second coat as soon as I’d finished coating all the pieces with the first layer. Smells like sour milk, but the scent disappears once it’s dry. (If I’d just used cottage cheese or non-curdled milk, it wouldn’t have smelled at all.)

Beeswax & oil: This was definitely the most work and the messiest, but I found it enjoyable. I put it on with a rag, like furniture polish or car wax. I say “messiest” because it was, well, a messy wax. But because I used olive oil instead of mineral oil, it was amazing for my hands. So I just rubbed the “mess” into my skin. I think it’s the only outdoor chore I can do that leaves me with nicer hands than when I started. It also never actually dried, while the other two did, so the boards stayed sticky. I suppose if I went back and wiped off the excess like you do with car wax, it’d be better. But again: lazy. I also figured that it can’t hurt to have extra wax & oil on there to help keep water away from the wood.

The Look

Eco Wood Treatment: According to their website, this gives the wood a “silvery patina/high-end aged weathered look.” And that’s just what it does. The wood is very gray, within just an hour or two of application. This may be what you’re going for, and may fit in nicely with some gardens. I just don’t particularly like the look for my garden. You can actually buy this with a pigment added and have colored wood instead of the aged look; I just didn’t.

Milk paint: This resulted in a clear matte, so it looks almost exactly like the untreated wood. Pretty nice. It’s also really easy to add pigment to this, if you want your wood to be colored.

Beeswax & oil: This one is quite lovely. It really enhances the natural color of the wood. I think my boards are douglas fir, which is a little bit more red than pine. With the wax/oil, they look almost like cedar. Really pretty.

The Verdict

I have no idea. Performance-wise, at least. It’s going to take several years to find out which one holds up to the weather the best. But as I have more raised beds to build before then, I have to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of them. I think I’m going to go with the wax and oil mix. I have a bunch left over, it looks beautiful, and you can’t get much less toxic that beeswax and olive oil. It makes sense to me that wax and oil would protect the wood at least as much as the other options, too, but only time will tell.

From left to right: Natural (no treatment), wax/oil, milk paint, EWT

If I run out of that, I may make more milk paint, just because it would be a little simpler to make (if I use ready-made cottage cheese or just liquid milk).

Last on my list would be the Eco Wood Treatment. It’s certainly easy to make up, but I didn’t find it particularly easy to apply, I don’t like the resulting color of the wood, and I can’t even be sure what exactly is in it that’s “non-toxic.”

So that’s my story. Check back in…oh, two or three years and I’ll give you the scoop on how they perform in a New York climate.

Going into the winter, Andoria looked nice and strong; Vulcan seemed really weak, though I never did figure out why. I theoretically could have combined them with the strong hive, but I was afraid if they were sick, they’d transfer the disease to the strong hive. So I let them be, assuming that they probably wouldn’t make it through the winter.

Sometime in January I peeked in, and both colonies were still alive! Both clusters were at the top of the hive, however, which meant they were probably low on honey stores. Generally, the bees cluster in the fall at the bottom of the hive; throughout the winter, they slowly move their way upward, eating their way through their honey stores. So when they’re at the top in January, they’re at risk of starvation. So I added a pile of granulated sugar to each to get them through.

Dead bees on sugar. Note the wet-looking newspaper underneath.

Checked on them a couple of times after that and added some more sugar. I was optimistic that since even the weak colony had made it this far, they were both probably going to pull through. Then I checked in early March, and the Vulcans were dead. A pile of dead bees on top of the pile of sugar. Pretty disappointing and sad.

Once it got a little warmer, I took apart the dead hive to try to figure out what had killed them. As it happens, my local bee club (www.CatskillBees.org) had just sent out a newsletter that included an article on different reasons for dead colonies. From their descriptions (lots of bees in the hive, many with their heads in the cells, lots of honey, and the bees look wet), it’s likely that they died from too much condensation–which means it was my fault and could have been prevented. Bees can take the cold pretty easily, but they can’t take being wet and cold. (That’s one reason you put dry sugar in once they get through their honey instead of syrup–not just because it may freeze, but because it puts too much moisture into the hive.) I apparently did not give enough upper ventilation to allow air circulation through the hive, though I thought I had. Poor little bees.

Moldy pollen

The Andorian colony still seems to be doing ok. Hopefully I don’t do something else wrong and kill them, too. I did actually order another package of bees back in the fall when I thought the Vulcans weren’t going to make it anyway. Those will be here soon, so at least I’ll still have two colonies this year.

Dead bees on frame. You can see how they’d eaten through some of the honey on the frame.

Because the deep I have is full of honey and weighs about 70 pounds, I have to take about half the frames out before I can even lift it off the hive to get to the boxes below. This particular day, a few weeks ago, I wanted to take a good look at the activity in all the boxes, so the frames of honey were sitting out in the open for quite a while. I knew what would happen, but I couldn’t see any way around it. So I just went as quickly as I could, relying on my trusty bee suit to keep me from getting stung. My poor bees didn’t have suits. I was also stupid for not closing the entrance to that hive during the robbing.

I was pretty amazed by what was happening by the time I was done inspecting, so I took a video (http://youtu.be/vtGNKa8lH2I). You can see bees rolling around on the ground trying to sting each other. The clicking you hear–especially near the end of the video–is the bees. I’m not sure if it’s just from them rolling around, or if it’s their stingers hitting the cardboard, or what.

A couple of hours later, I went out and took the picture below. All those bees on the ground and cardboard in front of the hive are dead. I felt horrible knowing I caused it. Yet another reason why I’m switching to all medium (i.e., lighter) boxes next year. I went out the next morning, and all those dead bees were gone. The remaining bees in the hive had dragged them as far away from the hive as they could get them. Super-tidy bees. Pretty astounding.

Also: No stings for me. I’d say that’s pretty amazing for being in the middle of that frenzy for so long. Bee suit for the win!

As I was putting the hive back together, I happened to see Her Majesty herself–but not the marked queen I bought! (The one I bought had a dot of paint on her, so I could identify her and know how old she is–the paint color corresponds to the queen’s birth year.) This is an unmarked–and HUGE–queen. Which means they DID raise their own queen, but I somehow missed all the signs. Though I didn’t check, they almost certainly killed the queen I put in there, since they already had their own. $30 wasted? Given that I really thought they were queenless and were about to die out, I say it was $30 well spent for peace of mind.

I actually started out this way—I stopped wearing gloves pretty quickly, and I’ve worked the bees in just shorts and a t-shirt without getting stung. But when I DID get stung, they itched like crazy for several days, enough that it kept me up at night. So I went back to wearing my long pants and jacket.

A couple of weeks ago, I went in to check the bees and ended up getting a couple of stings through my pants—one on my thigh and one on my calf. The stings themselves don’t usually bother me all that much (it’s the aftermath of itching that does), but the one on my calf HURT this time when it happened. Still, it was just a sting, so I finished my work and went back inside.

Not long after, I started itching EVERYWHERE—the bottoms of my feet, palms of my hands, stomach, arms. Then I started getting what I realize now were itchy hives on my arms and side—not many, but that’s what they were. So what does this mean? Systemic reaction. I’ve never had a reaction like that to a bee sting, but it’s not a good sign. No breathing problems or anything like that, but a systemic reaction could be a lot worse next time—or it might not happen again. I don’t think I really want to take that chance, but neither am I ready to give up my bees just yet. My ankle swelled so much this time that I could barely walk on it for a day and a half, too.

So I broke down and decided to order a full bee suit, perceived wimpiness or no. I researched sting-proof bee suits and found that standard suits really aren’t. In fact, there’s only one that seems to get really good reviews for relative sting-resistance. As a super bonus, it’s also really ventilated, which means it’ll be a lot more comfortable to wear in the heat than a regular suit. It’s pricey, but I decided it was worth giving it a try.

Enter the Ultra Breeze. It’s essentially that rubber-mesh drawer liner sandwiched between two layers of finer mesh material.

The sting-resistance comes from the fact that it’s simply too thick for most bee stingers to reach through. I’ve worn it twice—once in a very aggravated mess of bees—and so far have not been stung. So that’s a good start. It’s still hot when you’re working the bees in the sun for several hours, but it’s much cooler than my jacket/pants combo. Worth the money so far!

The other hive was going like gangbusters for most of the summer—tons of bees, honey, really active queen. I was thinking I might even be able to get some extra honey off them this fall, they were doing so well. But, alas…I checked them this past weekend, expecting to find a ton of honey. What I found instead was one deep full of honey—which has been like that for most of the summer—one medium with a bit of nectar, the other medium empty, and the bottom deep, which should have been full of eggs and larvae, was completely empty. Completely. No eggs, no larvae, no capped brood, no nectar, no honey, no pollen. Nothing. Didn’t really see any signs that they’d swarmed, either—no queen cells, they weren’t crowded. So I have no idea what happened, but I’m guessing the queen is gone, for one reason or another.

I ordered a new queen last week, thinking that I need to get one in there ASAP before the existing bees die off. I was considering moving a frame with eggs from the other hive to this one so they could raise their own queen if they need to, but it’s so close to the end of the season that I don’t think they’d have enough time to do that and build up before the cold starts to set in. So I just ordered one.

Talked to my mentor that next day, who agreed that they’re probably queenless. However, if they’ve been that way too long, some of the workers will start to lay eggs. But since they haven’t mated, they’ll only be able to lay drones (unfertilized eggs always become male bees), which won’t help build up the colony. (Drones don’t do any real work in the colony, and they get expelled for the winter and die.) And once you have laying workers, the colony will think it has a queen and therefore reject and kill any queen you try to introduce.

The new queen came on Friday, and I installed her in the hive that afternoon. I checked again and still didn’t see any eggs, so there’s probably not a laying worker, at least. It should take about three days for the bees to release her from her cage. Hopefully that will have been enough time for them to get used to her pheromones and accept her. It’s still possible that there’s another queen somewhere, though, in which case they’ll kill her and I’ll have just wasted $30. Guess we’ll see!

On a good note, I did notice new larvae in that hive, so the queen is laying again. This is the one that seemed close to swarming but never did, though the queen had stopped laying. I didn’t check the other one for eggs this time. I’ve gotten some advice to wait just a bit longer to see if that hive has successfully raised a new queen, so we’ll see what happens with them.

What I did do on each hive is put the medium box in between the two deep boxes that are full of honey. Apparently queens don’t like to cross a huge amount of honey to lay eggs, so this puts the deep box of honey on top and will give her open space to lay in the medium super. That’s really supposed to be for honey and the deep for brood, but I’m not sure I have a better option at this point. I’m probably totally screwing things up, but I suppose that’s one way to learn…