Watching my bees enter their new hive. Oooh! There’s the queen!
Most everything I need to know about my bees, I learn by sitting in front of my hives. Armed with an old stethoscope and a magnifying glass, I can be found on most summer afternoons sitting at the hive entry boards, spell-bound. In fact, I have chairs or stools stationed all around my bee yard. Sometimes, I bring a large jug of ice-tea and a book or magazine to read while the bees buzz in soft amber clouds around me.
I don’t consider this idle time, although it may look like it to the casual observer. I have read that if you are not getting into your hives at least every two weeks to do inspections, you are a poor beekeeper, or worse: a bee “haver.” However, my hours of observation time are my primary method of hive inspection, and I find the most of the information I need without the need for suiting up, lighting smokers, or disrupting the hard work of the hive.
My bee mentor, Jacqueline Freeman (www.spiritbee.com) calls this “Putting in your thousand hours—” not a thousand hours inside the hive, but observing the hive from the outside as you sit beside your bees patiently, over many months. In the beginning of my beekeeping seasons, I was a patient observer mostly because I was keeping three Warre’ hives. There were no viewing windows on the hives, and once a Warre’ begins building up, removing single combs is major surgical event for the bees, so I had to restrict my inspections to whatever I could see on the landing board. It was an education that has served me and my bees well. With viewing windows on my hives now, I feel like I am in bee observation heaven.
So, what can you learn from sitting at the hive?
Do I Have a Qeen?
This is something everyone who catches a swarm of bees will be wondering over their first month or two with the bees. I’ve seen queens entering a new hive often this year since I switched over to walking the bees into the hive rather than dumping them in. As my eyes adjust to the movement of thousands of humming, fanning bees marching up a covered plank into their new home, I’ve been blessed to see the tell-tale long abdomen of royalty, hurrying up the ramp with her escorts clustered around—and sometimes on top of—her.
Which bee is not like the others? A queen and her court dash into a barrel hive.
If you are not lucky enough to see a queen on the ramp, looking for her inside the hive is a major disruption of the new colony, and can quickly convince them all to leave and find a home where foul-smelling giants with fat fingers do not go bumbling through the fragile new white combs. Bees do not welcome your inspections, which to them are invasions. Trust me on this. They will let you know with stings and head bumps when you have overextended your welcome. For some hives, just opening up the lid is overextending your welcome on some days.
So how can you know that you have a mated, working queen? With some practiced observation, you can see all you need to know at the hive entrance, or from your viewing window. This is what bees with healthy, mated queens do:
- They bring in pollen as soon as they get a few wax combs built, usually within three to five days.
- Wax building is strong and steady.
- They move in a steady, purposeful way both from and to the hive.
- There is busy activity on the landing board with bees guarding, cleaning, collecting nectar and pollen from returning bees, and carrying out hive detritus.
- The sound of the hive is a smooth and steady hum. If you tap on the side, there will be a very short burst of louder humming that will immediately drop off to a normal hum state.
Hive numbers will drop, then slowly begin to rise. - Anywhere from a month to two months, you will begin seeing lovely clouds of bees spiraling slowly in front of the hive as new foragers set their inner GPS tracking chips in preparation for heading out into the field.
- From the viewing window, you will learn to identify the look of new, sealed brood comb
In contrast, this is what you may see and hear if your hive is queenless:
- Little pollen coming into the hive.
- Bees milling about aimlessly on the entry board.
- If you rap briefly on the hive, the bees will answer with a droning tone that slowly tapers off.
- Not many bees come and go, and those that do don’t move with purpose. Purpose is something you identify only by watching hives over time.
This year, I started six new colonies from swarms. All but one were blessed with strong, successful queens. One was not. I merged that hive with another queen-right hive. All of these decisions I made were based only on what I could see from the entry boards and the viewing windows.
What’s Going On In There?
Are your bees building up well, or just hanging on? Are they attracting robbers? Are they weak in some way? Are they getting ready to swarm? Most of these answers are literally right in front of your nose. A strong hive shows increasing numbers of bees coming and going. Sometimes the landing boards in mid-summer look like a subway platform at rush hour.
These bearding girls swarmed later in the week.
Do you notice your hive bearding, that is, hanging in a dense clump from the front of the hive like a…well…beard? Your hive may be telling you that they are evaporating a lot of nectar in the hive and all superfluous bees need to hang outside for the time being. Or they might be preparing to swarm, depending on the time of the year. Sometimes in very hot weather, the bees will chill out on the landing board in a big beard.
If I see lots of fanning bees on the entry board, along with the bearders, I know honey is being processed. If I see rushing bees knocking hard into the bees in the beard, or jumping on their shoulders and shaking them, I know a swarm is about to take flight and soon!
Honey fanners: Their tails are pointed down.
Do you wonder if your bees have mites? If they are bearding, just look at them through a magnifying glass. It is simple to see mites that way. Actually, you don’t even need the magnifying glass. I can see mites on bees as they are coming or going from the hive. Sometimes, I’ll grab the mitey bee, pull the mite off, and let her go. It’s a small triumph, I agree, but it’s satisfying, nonetheless.
Do your bees “washboard,” moving forward and back in rows, using their feet to “wipe” the hive? No one knows what this really means, but I’ve also seen bees do this inside the hive from the viewing windows, and it is thought to be an indicator of a strong hive.
One of my hives attempting to eradicate mites by tossing out mite-weakened drones and drone pupae. I found hundreds of these on the floor by the hive over a period of a week last spring.
Do you have hygienic bees? This is all the rage right now: Bees who clean mites from themselves, each other, and remove mite-infested larvae. You may see your bees vigorously nibbling between the body creases of returning foragers, or see bees pulling out “purple eyed” pupae—immature bees that have white bodies and purple eyes—and tossing them off the landing board.
Do you see bees balling up and fighting on the landing board, or hear high-pitched, agitated buzzing with bees scurrying up the sides and face of your hive? This is a clear sign of robbing—stranger bees swooping in to steal honey from your bees.
Nasonov fanners: Tails pointed up/out, and tiny white gland evident at their tail end.
Do you see many nasonov fanning bees on the landing board—bees with their tails hiked high in the air exposing the small, whitefish nasonov gland at the end of their abdomen? If you have a hive with a virgin queen, the bees will often send out a cadre of nasonov fanners to guide their young queen home from her mating flights.
If you are at the hive at the right moment, you may even get to see the ancient, yearly ritual of bees expelling their drones for the season—a melancholy time for me. It means my bee year is coming to a close. And it is hard to watch those fuzzy, clumsy drones get pushed out of the hive by the hundreds.
One of my favorite sights on the landing boards of my hives is the honey-kiss—two bees exchanging nectar, proboscises extending, antennae touching gently and excitedly.
Three Warre’ hives…and a short green stool.
So, do I ever go into my hives? Certainly, but not as often as you might think necessary. To be honest, I only enter my hives a few times a year. And I find that to be plenty. Each time you enter a hive, you run the risk of injuring the queen. You upset the temperature balance in the hive, a balance critical to the development of the young bees. In cracking open the hive, you also break the propolis seal—that sticky red/brown stuff that is the external immune system of the bees—and allow the entry of pathogens. I have read that it takes bees two to four days to put their hive back in order after an inspection. I don’t want to make my bees spend their short, precious summer days having to repair the damage I’ve done by poking around in their sacred space.
On my knees “conversating” with my bees.
Thankfully, I rarely need to. Am I a beekeeper or a bee haver? I like to identify as both. There is something to be said for meddling less in the complex daily life of the bees. Through patient observation, I am coming to trust the bees’ innate good sense and ancient wisdom more as the years go by. I learn a lot from good beekeepers, but I learn most sitting at the feet of my good bees.
35 Comments
Hi, this is the second article we have read of your. Very interesting. We are new to Bee Keeping one full year in now. We 6 langstroth and 10 AZ hives from Slovenian now 3 that are established and we are trying to move our langstroth into the AZ. Look forward to more natural ways of Bee keeping.
Congratulations on your first year of beekeeping! The Slovenian hives look really interesting. As you can tell, I’m a real fan of trying different kinds of hives. I love the more “natural” approach to beekeeping that is happening with so many backyard beekeepers these days. Less stressful on the bees and the keepers!
Great article! I have been preaching less opening the hives for years! And you are absolutely correct, you can tell what is going on by careful observation! Thank you for the article!
Just an FYI
[…] Source: At the Hive Entrance: Look, Listen, Learn […]
Hello! This was one of the most detailed yet simplistic observations of bee keeping I have read so far. It reminds me of my way of gardening and the adage that less is more. Too much information out there can overwhelm the novice gardener and bee keeper….I let instinct, common sense, and the will to not “fix” or meddle in something that is not broken. I love that you only enter your hive a few times a year and they do just fine. I’ve often wondered about all the advice to do this and that with hives including the smoking and numerous inspections…how it impacted the bees’ natural rhythm…you have confirmed what I’ve always suspected (just a gut instinct and common sense). Thank you for sharing!
I also marveled at your observation of bees removing mites from themselves and others…and the “housekeeping” that goes on. It makes me wonder if this has always been the case and if the bee population is beginning to achieve strength again (demonstrating past natural mite defeating actions) after so much controversy, rebellion, and protesting about pesticides and herbicides being the cause of their decline.
This is so helpful being a extremely new beekeeper of only a month now I’m trying to jam any and every bit of knowledge I can in to my brain about the bees and how to care for them.
I love this article. I’ve read it multiple times and shared it with my bee friends.
Would you write more on what you can learn from observing your hive from the outside?
I’m having issues with beetles. I’ve tried the beetle blaster and that did not work out so good. I lovey bees I enjoy just watching them come and go from the hive. Also my first year.
Since I’ve been keeping bees for a few months now I’ve gotten more advice from experienced beekeepers than you can believe. The most recent is I’ve got to treat for mites NOW. I just don’t want to do it. It seems barbaric. They’re doing so well and are calm and making lots of honey, and the activity at the landing boards seems really healthy to me. I don’t want to meddle. I might be dreaming but I feel like they will deal with the mites on their own. Do you think I’m in fantasy land? Given the way you “handle” your bees it seems like you don’t treat either. I’d really love to hear your thoughts on this.
As you guessed, I don’t treat my bees for mites. It is messy, dangerous, and if it worked we would no longer have mite problems, would we? I’m going down the path of Darwinian Beekeeping, where I let natural selection rather than human selection rule in my bee garden. It is hard to lose hives, and these days, most of us (conventional and alternative) lose a lot of hives. While I don’t treat, and don’t “manage” or intervene often in my hives, this does not mean I’m advocating not bothering to learn about bees. Whether I choose to intervene or not, I like to know what is going on with my bees, and most of that, I learn by reading and by observing my bees through the seasons. And the great thing about bees is that there is always something new to see and to learn.
I have a boat in my back yard that was totally decked with plywood.So you could walk around the whole boat. My neighbor did this ,kind of like a 15 foot barge so to speak. Well i ended up with it in my backyard . I flipped the boat upside down and kinda forgot about it until the other day. To my surprise it now house a swarm of honey bees.However you cannot see anything as it is full enclosed with only the plug hole as their entrance. I just found these bees and really am confused on what to do next.
Gee, I’d call that a fortuitous event! If you plan to leave the boat where it is at, you could just let the bees be and enjoy having them on your property. If you have reason to want them gone, go online and look for a beekeeping association/club near you who can help you rehome the hive.
Susan,
Very enjoyable reading. I agree that the less disruption to the hive, the better.
Thanks
Don
This is one of the best articles on beekeeping I have ever read, and reflected my own beliefs about beekeeping (although until you put it into words I did not know I felt that way). I have much to learn still, but enjoyed your article immensely.
Judy, I’m glad it resonated with you.This winter, I’ll be blogging here more about my “hands-off, eyes-on” beekeeping style.
Thank you for this article, this is what my dad is teaching me. All I read is put this on them and add that.. Nice to see someone who gets it.
Thanks, Carole. I’m unorthodox in that I’m pretty much hands off with my bees. They do better that way.
Really enjoyed this post. I found myself a bee -haver when a large bee tree was taken down on my property. I never intended to become a “keeper.” I figured the wild bees knew more about what they needed than I did. They lived successfully in their tree for years without my help! I still think of myself as a hostess to the bees that live on my property. I try to provide accommodation for my (hive) guests, but hate intruding on their private lives. I also spend hours watching the hives, just as I spend hours watching my chickens, ducks and horses. You are so right about the conversation they will have with you if you let them.
Great article! We recently got a nuc with a queen cell and no queen and it’s been stressful as we don’t want to open the hive during this precious time but also need to know what’s going on for the good of the whole colony. I have spent the last week staring at opening trying to understand what is going on without disturbing the hive and this article is exactly what I was looking for. I’ve read a lot as we are doing a top-bar hive but this has been one of the most helpful articles. Thank you so much!
Thanks, Bonnie. Our nonprofit (preservationbeekeeping.com) does bees very differently. You are on the right track not wanting to open the hive. We learned in Europe last year that when a hive is making a new queen, it is a very fragile time for the hive, and if interfered with, the colony may actually kill their new queen. So, we are told best not to poke a nose in for a good month. Also, we have experienced that the new queen may delay laying for weeks, perhaps as a self-treatment for varroa. Check out our website and FB page, as you will learn things there no one else is talking about.
Is there any non destructive, safe way to encourage a group of bees out of my chimney?
Linda, yes, there is. The process is called a “trap out.” You can advertise on Craigslist that you are looking for a beekeeper to do a trap out from your chimney, and you should get some folks who know how to do this.
I loved your article. Thank you for sharing.
I read the article in a recent Science issue, and it made me curious:
How many bees arrive or leave a minute?
How fast do they walk?
Do they fly inside the hive, or mostly walk?
What times do they start and stop their typical days?
Thank you very much for any help or redirection.
Best wishes. You really enjoy your life, I’m happy for you and all Nature lovers.
Aloha from Mililani Hawaii
Another observation i like to do, is assess whether the bees are landing heavy or light especially on days with not much wind. If lots of bees with large pollen baskets are landing short and having to walk up to the platform then there is plenty of supplies available. If they are landing lightly with nothing in their baskets, right in front of the entrance, then there is a dearth of pollen.
I have some terrible news for you. You do not in fact have a qeen. I am sorry for bee-ing the bearer of bad news, but honey, you are qeenless.
Do you treat your hives for mites ?
Do you harvest honey often?
Hello Susan,
I was delighted to come across your backyard bees website. As a fellow Warre beekeeper it was so refreshing to find a beekeeper who believes in a “ hands off” approach to beekeeping. Like yourself I spend hours sitting outside my hives observing the bees, I never tire of watching them. All my hives, like yours are totally unagressive and because I don’t disturb the hives with frequent inspections and chemical dosings they are healthy, strong and content. Keep up the good work! Louise
I love sitting and watching my bees, I have only had them for 4 months now and they fascinate me. I have a 10 frame langstroth hive, I haven’t put the honey super on yet that may happen in the next couple of weeks depending on how full the brood super is.
Apparently I should smoke the bees every time I open the hive but I have read that smoke agitates the bees. Is it ok not to smoke the hive?
I’m still a learner in beekeeping and started with my 1st box this spring. I’m very fond of sitting infront of the box and observing what the bees do and sometimes wonder what their each dance/move means.. your post has really been insightful. Thank you so much 🙂
Last fall, because of various circumstances, I lost three hives….all of which, I believe, were due to my ignorance. I sealed up the hives for the winter. About three weeks ago I unsealed one hive. About a week ago honeybees started coming by the thousands. I’m afraid the are only robbing. Only an occasional bee with pollen enters.. guard bees stand in front of the entrance lined up facing entrance like soldiers. What do you think……robbing or looking for a new home?
I like your article on observation (“At the Hive Entrance”)–a lot. I live in a small town in Alaska that is currently experiencing a boom in beginning beekeepers. I’ve been keeping bees for going on fifty years–seems hard to believe, but it’s true–which makes me by far the most experienced beekeeper in the area, and as such I answer a lot of questions, have a lot of mentoring sessions with beginners. My advice, over and over, is always some version of: Less is more; just about everything that you need to know about a hive is right there in plain view at the entrance; everything we know about bees, everything without exception, is rooted in someone sitting in front of a hive spending hours and hours just watching the bees go in and out; shed your preconceptions and learn to observe–the bees will teach you the only lessons you really need to learn.
I get an abundance of eye rolls, and I can imagine the eye rollers thinking, “God! I ask this guy a simple question, and instead of a simple answer, I get all this woo-woo crap! There’s gotta be someone in this town who can tell me what I want to know.” But I also get a lot of people who listen and follow my advice–not surprisingly those are my star students.
Thanks for publishing my thoughts almost exactly the way I would have expressed them–keep up the good work.
Rob Lund
Homer, Alaska
I just loved your very knowledgeable article. I am a very new bee keeper, but already I love my bees, and visit them every day and just watch them. Apparently, they can recognize me, and never threaten me in any way. They are magical creatures, and their society organization defies belief. The more I learn about them, the more amazed I am. Thank you so much