What’s Buzzin’ in the Bee Space—Episode 2: High Tech Queens of Glensheen

Here at Glensheen we are beyond excited for yet another year of bees! Arriving during the first week of May, the bees moved into their new homes in the Glensheen Apiary. As always, the process of ‘hiving’ bees inspires excitement and a little bit of fear.

Our bees arrived in these boxes! They are clustered around a sugar water feeder.

The bees arrive in a box with wire mesh walls, a sugar water feeder, and a young queen in a smaller cage within the box. Hungry and tired from the journey, the bees are spritzed with a sugar water mix. The sugar water spray distracts the hungry bees. Next comes the fun and terrifying part.

In this photo you can see developing larva at the bottom of their cells.

Along side Glensheen’s head gardener and beekeeper, Emily Ford, I was told to give the box of bees a ‘firm rap’ against the bottom to shake the bees loose. Despite having watched Emily do this with the first box of bees I was admittedly timid about shaking a box filled with several thousand bees. So with a fresh spritz of sugar water, I gave the bees a good firm knock to shake them loose, then overturned the box and like a salt shaker poured them into the hive. The bees were just happy to be out of the box and into their new home.

Here you can see Emily knocking the bees into the hive with the ‘firm rap’ on the box

With the bees settling into their new homes we began preparing to take care of our several thousand friends in the coming year. To up our beekeeping game we decided to go high tech.

This is what the bees look like after being knocked loose into an empty hive.

In addition to our regular checkups on the hive, a HiveTool will be installed! HiveTool is an open source project ran by beekeepers to provide beekeepers with vital information on their hives.

To be less invasive and more informed, we decided to add HiveTool! HiveTool is an open source project dedicated to making an affordable DIY option for beekeepers. Our HiveTool will have a few sensors attached, namely a temperature and humidity sensor, and a scale underneath the hive. Once installed these sensors will collect data every five minutes and store it on an online database.

Monitoring hive weight allows a beekeeper to track how much pollen a particular hive is bringing in. A healthy hive can bring in several pounds of pollen and water on a good day. Then overnight the weight will drop as the bees use the gathered water and pollen to make honey, the weight loss results from the bees decreasing the humidity in their hive.

Red: Weight in pounds. Dark Blue: Internal Hive Temperature. Light Blue: Tempature outside the hive. Yellow: Sunlight outside the hive. Source: http://hivetool.net/Athens

Another reason why temperature monitoring a bee hive is important is because the Bee brood, the little larva, have to be raised in a very specific temperature range somewhere around 90 degrees Fahrenheit to 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Brood is more likely to die or develop poorly when not raised in the optimal temperature. By tracking the temperature of the hive every five minutes, we can make sure our bees are able to keep their hive at the right temperature for their babies to grow.

Stay tuned for more updates on Glensheen’s bees!