Cradle of Forestry Pollinator Week

I was privileged to be invited to demonstrate and educate the public about honeybees today as part of the grand finale of Pollinator Week at the Cradle of Forestry in America. It is a chance to go full circle, so to speak, for me as I actually graduated from the Biltmore Forest School of Forest Resources at NC State University. This is the place that famous and prestigious school had its humble beginnings as the Vanderbilts began forestry in America by bringing in Carl A Schenck from Germany to begin modern forestry practices in America. If you have not visited this facility, though it is a bit out of the way in the Pisgah National Forest, you need to do so soon! It is a first class facility and is a crown jewel of the US Forest Service.

I took an observation hive, two regular hives, a bee gazebo and lots of honey as well as bee tools and props. The day was spent answering questions from an engaged public, as well as doing demonstrations on beekeeping inside the gazebo. I also got to sell ALOT of my fresh Locust honey. Some people could not wait to taste the honey and instantly proclaimed it to be excellent and unique. Mackenzie helped me with sales when I was busy with education and my friend Burt Hardwick, who volunteers at the facility and is also a beekeeper, lent a hand. I must say I was pleased with honey sales and I believe each customer will be equally pleased with this unique and tasty delight of Locust honey that we only get to experience about once per decade.

I took this opportunity to explain how and why I keep bees without chemicals. I educated about my efforts to locate wild colonies of bees and use these superior genetics of survivors to boost my queen breeding program. After finding I use no chemicals in my beekeeping, a facility employee gladly paid premium prices for some chemical free wax to use in candles and skin care products. I handed out plenty of cards and shared many smiles. Some new friends were made and some old friends were rediscovered. All in all, it was a very good day indeed. I anxiously await my next installment.

Mackenzie's Birthday

My youngest turned 14 today and we celebrated by going to her favorite restaurant, Asia Grand Buffet, in West Asheville. They grow up so fast! Mackenzie was joined by family and friends and even a birthday cake decorated with a horse and fence. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Kenzie! I hope you have many more!

Kyle and Rene's Wedding

I have been to and in a lot of weddings and to be honest most are stiff formal affairs that are not alot of fun. In fact, I have only been to two weddings that were fun! One of those was today, when I attended the wedding of my nephew, Kyle Moody, and Rene Barefoot. Kyle is an engineer with Eaton and Rene is a teacher at Enka Middle. They will be living in a home Kyle built in Fairview. Kyle is also a contractor and is looking to sell this home but they will live there until it does sell. I wish Kyle and Rene many blessings in life and a very happy marriage. They both are great people and I pray will continue to be a great couple.

The wedding was at Taylor Ranch and the reception was catered with a fine barbecue pork and chicken with all the fixings. Kyle is a graduate of NC State and Rene is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill. A chance to dance with either of them was available for a dollar and the one with the most dollars at the end would decide where they would receive season football tickets. Rene won, so it looks like Carolina tickets. I did my best to make sure Kyle got State tickets, by paying a dollar to dance with him. It was a short dance with no contact and brought a few laughs. I could not let a fellow State grad have to endure season tickets at Carolina! It was close, but Kyle lost out. I just wish my own wedding had been such fun. Way to go Kyle and Rene!

Bee Vacuum

There used to be a Bee Vac brand vacuum cleaner when I was a boy, I know because we had one. It was about 3 feet long and about 8 inches in diameter. The suction hose went in one end and it had handles to pick it up and move it. It was very 50's and we used it until the late 60's when we got a Kirby upright to vacuum the wall to wall carpet.

I made a bee vacuum today, and it is not for vacuuming around the house, though it would do that, it is for vacuuming honeybees! I remove bees from structures and trees and a little assistance from a bee vacuum is handy. I have never had one before because they killed too many bees. Most home made bee vacuums are little more than shop vacuums with a cage inside.

I have always said I thought the bee mortality rate would go down if they did not have to bounce down a corrugated tube. I also knew a larger space inside would minimize any impact. I had a job removing bees which were inside the living quarters of a house, and kill bees or not, I needed a bee vacuum. My friend Darrell had one so I borrowed it. He had been telling me how good it worked, and he did not lie. I do not think I killed a bee with it. I basically works like the old bee vacuum my mother had except it is made for honey bees. The bees go down a slick tube and in the end of the canister. The 8 inch canister is 2 feet long and padded at the bottom with foam in case one hits the bottom.

I liked it so well, I decided I had to have one myself. Mine is basically a copy of Darrells ingenious design with a few modifications a carpenter such as myself would make. I bought a 12 inch diameter and an 8 inch diameter "quick tube" concrete form, some screen wire, and some duct tape. I already had an old upright vacuum cleaner the the motor still worked on but my kids had abused until the upright part did not work. From my playhouses, I had various scraps to put all of this together with.

I used a hole saw to put vent holes in the the inner canister and for the vacuum motor suction hole. I also put a hole in the lid for the hose with the hole saw. I used a part from the old upright to put into the lid and attach my hose to make the hose swivel in the lid. I wrapped the inner tube with screen wire and wrapped duct tape around it to hold it in place. Several laps around the tube with the tape makes it stay because tape on tape does not let go. A few screws and some glue did the trick. I am amazed at how well it works. I need to install a vent hole to make the suction a bit less, and I will put it in the outer 12 inch canister, so I do not have to screen it up. Darrells model has the hole in the lid for the inner tube, but that has to be screened over. I am too lazy and figured a vent hole is a vent hole and I will put mine where it requires the least amount of work. Thanks Darrell for your great idea

Now, I am thinking of breaking it in on a colony of bees I know about that are in someones well house. It is tempting, because I really wanted 20 hives before the summer was over and this would make 20!

Enka Triathlon

My nephew, Kyle Moody, and his fiance' Rene Barefoot ran in the Enka Triathlon at Biltmore Lake today. Kyle and Rene are getting married on the 21st. This is the second time they have done that triathlon, and in fact met in the last one two years ago. Kyle is the number one ranked triathlete in his class and won the Clydesdale class in the event this year as well as finishing 28th overall. Rene is the 10th ranked female triathlete and finished second over all in the women's division, losing only to the number one ranked triathlete. My prayers are that they are as successful in marriage as they are in triathlons.

Personal Bee School

I teach beekeeping to large classes or to individuals. I have a current student, named Alex, who just started her personal beekeeping school this morning. She is a really enthusiastic student and a very quick study. I went into some basics of beekeeping when she first arrived and soon moved to the hands on in hive experience. Alex picked up on some of the points I had made and made reasoned statements about the condition of a hive that were correct and used knowledge she had obtained to evaluate the evidence she saw. I was impressed.

She was ready to get her fingers into the hive without waiting and we did just that. I let her light a smoker and I lit mine. We both had a hive tool and just went into the hive to evaluate what we saw. In the first hive, we had a newly emerged queen and another which I just closed up and left alone for now. In the second hive Alex was impressed to see where the bees, which had been taken from a wall in a house, had attached the comb to the frames and were removing the rubber bands. The next hive found lots of drone larvae and a supersedure queen cell that had hatched. Other supersedure cells had been torn into from the side and I told Alex we were looking for a new unmarked queen. She almost immediately said, "There is the queen"! I was taken back, because I had not seen her yet. Alex pointed her out and I picked her up and marked her with a yellow dot. The next hive had a queen that was laying eggs and I had marked before with a red dot. The queen had lots of places to hide because the bottom of the comb had a space between it and the bottom bars of the frame. I was looking for her on a frame that seemed the likely candidate but not seeing her when Alex said, "there she is in the crack between the comb and the bottom bar. See how big her abdomen is? Sure enough there she was!

I am proud to teach students like Alex and I believe Alex will make a GREAT beekeeper. I am also pleased to hear she is going to keep bees without chemicals like I do. Best of all, I arranged for Alex to meet my friend Darrell, who is removing a colony of bees from a structure tomorrow morning. Darrell is giving Alex the colony of bees in exchange for her assistance! I loaned her a bee suit and some hive equipment to put the bees into. This time tomorrow, the hum of happy bees will be heard at Alex's house, just one day after her first beekeeping lesson. Talk about hands on!

I Meet The Most Interesting People While Beekeeping

I spent the day today working with Mike Singleton in the Queen rearing yard. We had a busy day and really only had contact with each other except for one customer from Morganton NC. Of course, Mike knows everyone in Canton and while at lunch at the Black Bear Cafe, Mike had a steady stream of friends come by the table. If you ever are in Canton, and need lunch, go to the Black Bear Cafe and get the grilled chicken salad. It is delicious and very reasonably priced, not to mention all you want to eat.

Sometime after lunch, we got some queen cells to install in queenless hives. The last batch were to go into hives at his yard in Crusoe NC. Mike has a mating yard there that borders a mobile home park owned by his mother. We circled down the drive into the mobile home park to turn into the mating yard, and when we rounded the curve we were sort of stunned by what we saw. It was completely unexpected and at least slightly over the top, even for a "country redneck trailer park". There was a Ford Taurus with the hood up and someone was bent over the fender with their hands in the engine compartment and working on the vehicle! Oh, that does not sound unusual? Well that someone was about a 45 year old lady! Well even that was not all that unusual I guess, except she was wearing a very small orange bikini!

I looked over at Mike, and said, "you know, you don't see that everyday"! Mike slowly but deliberately responded, "No, you don't". We pulled into the mating yard, (FOR BEES!) and parked in the edge near where the mechanic work was being done. I must admit, it was hard not to look, because it was one of those things that well, YOU KNOW YOU ARE GONNA LOOK! This sight would have made ANYONE look male or female! LOL! Well, as we were feeling ashamed for glancing at this spectacle, Mike made small talk, by asking if she wanted to help work some bees. She raised up, and smiled with a cigarette bouncing around in her lips while her eyes squinted at the sting of the hot smoke that was rising up into them. She then pulled a greasy hand up and grasped the cigarette with some very greasy but manicured nails. This is precisely when I noticed the view we got while rounding the curve in the trailer park drive was not all that was over the top. To make it descrete, Mike and I missed nothing due to not eating lunch at Hooters! Free of the smoking stick of slow death, she resonded that she did not quite think she was dressed for beekeeping today. No kidding, I thought, and not really quite dressed for working under the hood of her car in the driveway of her trailer park. By this time I so DESPERATELY wanted to take my cell phone out and grab a photo of this spectacle for proof we actually witnessed it! I resisted the urge but I considered it while she proceeded to respond to my observation she was a brave woman for attempting repair on her car. She responded that she had paid attention as a girl while she watched her dad work on their vehicle at home. Then she learned more from her EX-HUSBAND about car repair. I wondered if they somehow inspired the uniform of the day by the way they dressed to work on the car. I sure hoped not anyway.

At this point, I realized she had just given me far more information about her personal life than I really cared to know and so Mike and I smiled and went about placing queen cells into the queenless hives he had pre-marked. We were installing queen cells, but we were still laughing about what we had witnessed. Mike had to go back to the truck to get something and then received a phone call. At this point, I thought what the heck, so I started walking back towards the truck pretending to look up a phone number as I turned on my cell phone camera to clandestinly obtain proof that we actually saw what I am describing. As I walked closer, I was going to snap the photo then raise up my cell phone as if I were answering a call. Honest, I have never done anything like that before, but you really had to see this to understand! The phone did not capture the photo, and I did not want to be too obvious. As I turned direction to meet Mike at another hive, she finished up her job and went into the house. She promptly returned with a sun dress on then jumped into the newly repaired car and drove off.

Mike and I then discussed how this would apply to the, "you might be a redneck if..." lines. and agreed it may fit better in a PRICELESS commercial. At any rate, we laughed all the rest of the evening and it made our day! We really did hate the fact we had no evidence of the spectical, but hopefully my description here will give you an idea of what beekeeping is like on a day in the beeyard with Cal and Mike!

Spring Showers

One of the great things about living in the Southern Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina is those sudden rain showers in the spring that cools the air leaves the air clear and fresh as well as make the plants grow green and lush.

I have come to love these sudden short rain showers because they bring life to the land and are refreshing to the very soul when you have been working outside in the hot sun. I try to keep my camera close by and when I see one of these storms, I know it could be followed by clouds rising up from the ground, clear air for a great view of the mountains and the always wonderful rainbow. It seems here at Sourwood Knoll, we are always viewing some beautiful weather scene as we look across the way to Brown Knob.

This evening I had to drive up to a friends house to get my honey extractor and it was pouring the rain. I could tell by the distant sunshine that it would pass quickly and if I hurried home I may get to see a rainbow. As I expected, the rain stopped and sun began moving in as I drove up my drive. I went straight and got my camera and as I came outside with it, the rainbow was already developing. Here are a couple of the photos I made. Enjoy!

Eventful Day for Bees

I went to a house off of Fairway Drive in Etowah this morning to remove a colony of honeybees from a dead hollow tree that was too close to a home. A very nice young couple greeted us and we took a look at the tree. Plans were made and action begun in no time. After the tree was felled, my friend Darrell and I split the trunk open with wedges to reveal a nice section of honeycomb.

It was so hot today, I decided to see if I could do this project without suiting up in the hot bee suit and gloves. The bees were very gentle, and did not react as we pounded the hammers on the wedges and barely reacted as we opened the trunk like a good book, slowly and carefully! I started cutting out the comb with a knife and sized the removed sections to fit into brood frames. Darrell started cutting and banding also. In no time we had removed all of the comb and had it installed in the frames. I used no protective gear, not even gloves, and cut the comb out as well as banded into frames with only one sting from a bee that I accidentally mashed. Not bad, considering we completely violated their very home. A very good trait in this colony is gentleness, but that will not be passed on because I was forced to use other genetics to produce the new queen.

There was no brood in the entire comb collection. I only saw about 4 or 5 drone cells, which workers can produce, so it appears there were no laying workers or there would have been much more drone brood. It also was very clear there was no queen, or we would have seen some brood or eggs.

Darrell and I vacuumed up the rest of the bees with a special bee vacuum and I took them home to install in the new nucleous hive I used for the small amount of brood. A nuc is only five frames instead of the standard 10. I then found a hive that had a queen cell in it and shook all of the bees off of that frame. I then put that frame with a queen cell in the nuc for them to raise a queen.

All was well as I admired the new nuc colony and my cell phone began to ring. The caller had gotten my name from the Buncombe County Ag Extension office. He had a bee problem and asked me to take a look. I headed over shortly afterward and found a very nice gentleman in West Asheville with a keen interest in bees. I told him I did not think the removal would cost more than the standard fee and told him I could do it right then if he wanted. He agreed and even provided some tools as I quickly uncovered the bees behind his lap siding under a window in his living room. I began removing the comb one section at a time and fit the sections into frames then secured them with rubber bands. In no time I had the bees cut out and the comb fastened into a hive body. I left the hive near the area where I had cut out the comb and promised to return tomorrow to collect the rest of the bees and seal up the hole.

Two hives of bees gained in one day was very good and two very interested clients got an education about how wonderful and amazing our honey bees are. I love doing work for people and always seem to meet the nicest people that way. We really have a lot of very wonderful people in this world still, even if the other type is always in the headlines. I wonder if I can get 3 colonies removed tomorrow? I do have the possibility of 3 more colonies this week even if I get no more calls. I am up to 19 hives now and, if I can count my chicks before they hatch, I could have 22 by Friday. I love helping good people and saving the bees at the same time. All in all, beekeeping is rewarding for me all the way around.

What Happened to the 2008 Tulip Poplar Honey?

Well, this has been a very good spring for blooms of all types! The Locust bloom was one of those that happens about every nine years and the blackberry bloom was huge after being frozen last year. Everything seemed to bloom double this year following a disastrous 2007 spring.

I was very excited to see my bees were bringing in LOTS of Locust honey because this honey is truly wonderful and beats even Sourwood for color and taste! The blackberry honey is very tasty too and both of these blooms combined seemed to have my bees all abuzz. I noticed the Tulip Poplar began blooming, but I never saw the trademark dark color showing up in my hives. Several beekeepers had commented to me that they were not seeing Tulip Poplar honey in their hives. I had my theory on what was happening, because most years we would be producing loads of Tulip Poplar, but this year none. Every beekeeper in this area looks to Tulip Poplar to provide winter stores and get a little for sale. Then they all look to Sourwood for the money crop. A honeybee has to visit from 20 to 100 blooms to fill her honey stomach on most types of plants, but the honey stomach can be filled on 1 Tulip Poplar bloom. This makes Tulip Poplar very efficient for maximum production.

Yesterday at the Buncombe County Beekeeper's field day, I had a chance to talk about this Tulip Poplar issue with my friend Greg Roger's who owns Haw Creek Honey. Greg has about 400 hives and I figured if anyone had seen this lack of Tulip Poplar and had a good explanation, he would. Greg confirmed my suspicion when he said the bees started on the excellent Locust and Blackberry blooms and just stayed with them even when the more productive Tulip Poplar started blooming. The bees did not switch over to gathering nectar from the Poplar until the Locust and Blackberry blooms had ended. By this time, the Poplar bloom was nearing the end and very little Tulip Poplar honey was produced.

Greg and I discussed the plus side of this situation being we now have a very rare and premium spring honey to sell. The negative side we agreed is that we have about 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of honey we should have had if the bees were working the Poplar. I can get a little more money for the Locust honey, but not enough to make up for having half as much honey as usual. I love Locust honey, but give me the Tulip Poplar every time for being a productive beekeeper.

Track and Field

Today I learned that a new world record was established in the 100 meter dash. Usain Bolt from Jamaica set the new record with an amazing run. How ironic his last name is Bolt! He ran like a bolt of lightning for sure by finishing first in the 100 meters at 9.72 seconds. He specializes in the 400 meters and only runs the 100 usually for practice because the 400 is so grueling. At 6' 5" tall, he is amazingly tall for a 100 meter sprinter.

I watched this video over and over because the 100 meters is one of my favorite events in sports and is amazingly difficult and full of stategy for an event that is over so quickly. It brought back memories of when I was in high school and full of dreams about setting records in track and field.

I mostly did field events, including the high jump (6'4" was my best), Broad Jump (23' was my best) and Triple Jump (43' was my best) I also did some hurdles when needed as well as 400 and 100 yard dash. At the time, in high school, I was fairly tall compared to competitors and was considered a very good size for the 400. I did run it once in practice and I thought I was going to die when I finished. It is an exhausting all out sprint as fast as you can run for a quarter of a mile. My time without ever having practicing it before was 58 seconds (the current world record for 400 meters is 43.18 seconds held by Micheal Johnson) and was very good for a high school kid that was doing field events and not really that conditioned. It was so exhausting, I did not ever want to run it again, unless I had to, so I never trained at it. I really should have worked on it a little and competed more in it, but field events were just too easy for me and I was spoiled by them. I did do some short distance hurdles and once ran the 100 yard dash in 10.1 seconds. I really could run sprints pretty well, but without practice and conditioning, I just mainly stuck to my best events that involved jumping.

I can not wait until the Olympic track and field events because I love to watch these incredible feats of human speed, leaping and endurance. I also have much respect because I know what kind of training and ability is needed to be at a world class level in these events. Running a sprint is so basic and I think that is what makes it so beautiful. I find it amazing because these humans can actually outrun a quarter horse in these short distances.